escape the punishment by swearing four times before God that she is innocent, and that her husband has lied.[1] If she is convicted, both she and her accomplice receive a hundred lashes in public. Then the woman must be shut up "until death visits her, or God finds her a means of salvation,"[2] all of which is relatively mild enough.
Although Mussulmans, the Kabyles of Algeria do not keep to the somewhat humane prescriptions of the Koran in regard to adultery. In general, they are pitiless towards all infractions of morals. With them a kiss on the mouth is equivalent to adultery, and costs more than an assassination.[3] Every child born out of marriage is put to death, as well as its mother.[4] If the family tries to spare the guilty one, the Djemâa stones her and imposes a fine on the relatives.[5] The child and mother are stoned by the Djemâa or the family. Even when a woman is actually separated from her husband her adulterous child is killed, but the fate of the mother is left to the discretion of the relatives.[6]
Whoever carries off a woman, especially a married woman, and flees with her, becomes a public enemy, and the village where the fugitives have taken refuge must give them up under pain of war. The man is put to death, and the woman is restored to her family, who do not spare her.[7]
Custom authorises the deceived husband to sacrifice his wife, and if he rarely does it he is only hindered by the loss of the capital she represents; but usage requires the repudiation,[8] and the husband must, besides, take a striking and bloody vengeance on the lover.[9] At the very least he must simulate it, must fire, perhaps, on the guilty one with a gun loaded only with powder, and strike or slightly wound his wife's lover. He has thus saved his honour; he is content with little, as in our rose-water duels.] With the Kabyles, more than elsewhere, marriage is a mercenary
