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Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned

to divorce-another solution selected by several of the husbands

he remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew

of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest

society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch

could not find a single example in which the object of divorce

was that which he had in view. In all these instances the husband

had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the very

party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a

fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties

with a self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey

Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to say, one in

which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was impossible of

attainment.