Wives Win

Momentous to every mistress in France last week was an unexpected decision by the country's highest court, La Cour de Cassation. Its sprightly old men, who would be considered insipid and absurd if they did not keep their own quota of mistresses, found on their calendar in a single day three cases of the same type: a master has died in an accident, and his wife and children and mistress are seeking justice. The mistress produces to the court letters from her late master, rent receipts, paid grocery bills and other evidence establishing that she is by no means a "loose or promiscuous" woman as those terms are understood in France but an unswerving, faithful mistress.

Hitherto French courts have held that such an exemplary mistress, whether or not her master was also married, had a juridical right to share modestly with the relatives of her man in whatever is collected from the person to blame for the accident which killed him. Mistresses mourned, wives exulted in France this week for the Highest Tribunal, after hearing in one day three mistresses try to prove themselves admirable, handed down the blanket decision that henceforth any woman upon the sudden death by accident of her man shall "have right to damages only if united to the victim by the legal bonds of matrimony."

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