26.4. 4. The same Subject continued.
Gundebald, King of Burgundy, decreed
that if the wife or son of a person guilty of robbery did not reveal the
crime, they were to become slaves.
[4]
This was contrary to nature: a wife to inform against her husband! a son to accuse his father! To
avenge one criminal action, they ordained another still more criminal.
The law of Recessuinthus permits the children of the adulteress, or
those of her husband, to accuse her, and to put the slaves of the house
to the torture.
[5]
How iniquitous the law which, to preserve a purity of
morals overturns nature, the origin, the source of all morality!
With pleasure we behold in our theatres a young hero express as much
horror against the discovery of his mother-in-law's guilt, as against
the guilt itself. In his surprise, though accused, judged, condemned,
proscribed, and covered with infamy, he scarcely dares to reflect on the
abominable blood whence Phædra sprang; he abandons the most tender
object, all that is most dear, all that lies nearest his heart, all that
can fill him with rage, to deliver himself up to the unmerited vengeance
of the gods. It is nature's voice, the sweetest of all sounds, that
inspires us with this pleasure.
Footnotes
[4]
"Law of the Burgundians," tit. 47.
[5]
In the Code of the Visigoths, iii, tit. 4, 13.
