Igenlode Wordsmith

One more quirk of the Napoleonic legal system (in addition to the business of needing the father's permission to marry if you were under the age of twenty-five): couples could not be divorced 'by mutual consent' if the husband was under the age of twenty-five -- or if they had been married for less than two years.
So if Raoul wanted to divorce his wife and remarry to Christine, he would have to have brought his concubine into their common residence first, and get Hertha to divorce him, because otherwise they are deemed too young to know their own minds. (Not a completely unreasonable legal attitude, although an unexpected one!)

And the 'concubine' in question couldn't be Christine herself, because the guilty party is not permitted to marry his accomplice subsequent to the divorce. ( Read more... )

A handy translation of the Code Napoléon (nineteenth-century French law): http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/c_code.html