The History of Prostitution Part 8

It is best, perhaps, to throw a veil over the later stories of Henry III., his _mignons_, and the frightful infamies that were practiced in Paris in his time. They may be divined from the fact that Brantome mentions some orgies in which the king and a party of friends, male and female, stripped themselves naked, and tried to place themselves on a level with the brute creation, as rather redeeming instances of his sensuality.

We shall take occasion hereafter to follow the history of the court from Louis XIII. to modern times. Meanwhile, some features of society bearing on prost.i.tution in the age we have sketched must be briefly noted.

It is a.s.serted by all the chroniclers that the influence of the League (_Ligue_) was most pernicious. A sort of religious enthusiasm seems to have been kindled by the sectarian strife of the period, and practices which purported to be religious, but were only immoral, were encouraged by the highest authorities. Religious fanaticism ruled throughout France. Men and women walked naked in processions which were led by the curates. As was natural at an age of civil war, violence was freely used toward females by both of the contending armies. At every city that was taken, either by the Leaguers or the Huguenots, all the women, married and single, were violated by the soldiery; such, at least, is the statement of a contemporary historian. Moreover, in the general confusion, no proper police was enforced either at Paris or elsewhere, and the windows of print-shops teemed with lewd pictures, which no one, says the historian, thought of having seized. It was, in fact, a period of anarchy. The _Moyen de parvenir_, by Beroalde de Venille, which has reached us, affords some criterion of the popular literature of the day. Aretino, text and plates, was much in vogue; and Sanchez and Benedicti left their lay rivals far behind in the composition of works which may contend for the palm of lewdness with Martial or Petronius.[192]

Throughout the Middle Ages, and, indeed, up to the middle of the seventeenth century, great complaint was made by the clergy of the indecency of the dress of the people of France. About the thirteenth century it became fas.h.i.+onable to adorn the toe of the shoe or boot with an ornament in metal; either a lion's claw, or an eagle's beak, or something of that kind. Some immodest person ventured to subst.i.tute a s.e.xual image in bronze for the usual appendage, and the fas.h.i.+on soon became general.

Women even adopted it, and all the best society of Paris soon exhibited the indecency on their feet. The king forbade their use by royal edicts,[193] and a special bull was fulminated against them by Pope Urban V.,[194] but the monstrous shoes held their ground against both, and were only disused when fas.h.i.+on set in a different direction. The _Braguette_ was another enormity of the same character. Originally, it is said, the working-cla.s.ses invented the idea of a small bag hanging between the knees in which a knife or other utensil could be carried. The fas.h.i.+on was adopted about the beginning of the fifteenth century by men of rank, and became immediately of an immodest nature. All the arts of fas.h.i.+on were called into requisition to give the _braguettes_ the most novel and remarkable appearance, and every possible means was used to render them at once disgustingly indecent and extravagantly rich. They were attached to the dress with gay-colored ribbons, and, when the wearer was a rich man, were adorned with jewels and lace. At the time Montaigne wrote, _braguettes_ had almost gone out of vogue: they were worn only by old men, who, in the language of the essayist, "make public parade of what can not decently be mentioned." Women, on their side, invented hoops, bustles, and low-necked dresses. The libraries contain a large collection of works written by moralists and preachers of the time against these "indecent abuses" of the ladies. As they are all in use at the present time, we may perhaps conclude that the old French moralists were unnecessarily alarmed; but it is likely that the form of the bustle was by no means as modest as that of modern crinoline skirts, and that the fas.h.i.+on of ladies' drawers had not yet come in. Such, at least, is the inference from some of the criticisms they provoked. The exposure of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s was checked for a time under Louis XIV., but the reform was evanescent, and the custom against which churchmen thundered in the sixteenth century survives to-day.

Some allusion has already been made to the theatre. Theatricals were forbidden by the early French kings, at the instigation of the Church, but the prohibition was evaded by the performance of scenes from the Gospel dramatized. From the remains of these Moralities it would appear that they were always coa.r.s.e and often immoral. The devil always played a prominent part, and would have been inconsistent had he not outraged decency. Under Henry III. women began to appear on the stage, and farces very broad in ideas and language began to be played instead of the old Moralities. We are led to believe that nothing was too scandalous to be represented on the stage; in fact, the idea seems to have been to crowd as much sensuality and vice into the farces as possible. Scarcely any incident of life was too indecent to be either portrayed or described, and if the latter, the description was given in the most undisguised language. It is altogether impossible to transcribe scenes of this nature. Enough to say that women were made to go through the pains of childbirth on the stage; husband and wife went to bed in presence of the public; and when modesty prompted the retirement of actors for causes still more indecent, a colleague rarely failed to explain why they had retired and what they were doing behind the curtain. Many of La Fontaine's most _grivois_ stories were taken from farces which were once acted with copious pantomime before the ladies of Paris. Even as late as the reign of Henry IV., plays of this character were commonly acted at Paris at the Hotel de Bourgogne. It was usual for the star actor to speak a prologue or an interlude, which was invariably recommended by its indecency. We have some of the t.i.tles of these prologues, and they were generally of the same character as the one on the question, _Uter vir an mulier se magis delectet in copulatione_.

Of the number of regular prost.i.tutes exercising their calling in France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no correct estimate can be made. It was undoubtedly large. During the religious wars, a writer on the side of Protestantism undertook to draw up a statement of the number of prost.i.tutes and lewd women whose vices were chargeable to the clergy. His estimate is, of course, open to suspicion, as being a sectarian performance; but, allowing for great exaggeration, it will still appear alarming. He calculates that there were at that time one million of women, more or less, who led habitually lewd lives, and ministered to the pa.s.sions of the clergy. These were independent of the married women who were led into adultery, and of the pimps and procuresses who were in clerical pay.[195]

To return to the laws regulating prost.i.tution, it appears that a serious effort was made to put it down under the sovereignty of Catharine of Medicis. An ordinance of Charles IX., dated 1560, prohibited the opening or keeping of any brothel or house of reception for prost.i.tutes in Paris.

For a short period it seems that the practice was actually suppressed, and the consequence is said to have been a large increase of secret debauchery. A few years after the pa.s.sage of the ordinance, a Huguenot clergyman named Cayet proposed to re-establish public brothels in the interest of the public morals, but the authorities of his Church a.s.sailed him so vehemently that his scheme fell to the ground without having had the benefit of a public discussion, and he was himself driven to join the Romanists. In 1588 an ordinance of Henry III. reaffirmed the ordinance of 1560, and alleged that the magistrates of the city had connived at the establishment of brothels. Ordinances of the provost followed in the same strain, and all prost.i.tutes were required to leave Paris within twenty-four hours. An ordinance dated 1635 was still more rigorous. It condemned all men concerned in the "traffic of prost.i.tution" to the galleys for life, and all women and girls to be "whipped, shaved, and banished for life, without any formal trial." As might be imagined, this ordinance was alternately disregarded and made to serve the purposes of private malice. Men who wished to revenge themselves on their mistresses accused them of being prost.i.tutes; but _it does not appear that the actual supply was ever seriously diminished_.

CHAPTER VIII.

FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM LOUIS XIII. TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Exile of Prost.i.tutes.--Measures of Louis XIV.--Laws of 1684 and 1713.--Police Regulations.--Ordinance of 1778.--Republican Legislation.--Frightful state of Paris.--Efforts to pa.s.s a general Law.--The Court.--Louis XIII.--The Medicis.--Louis XIV.--La Valliere.--Montespan.--Maintenon.--Literature of the Day.--Feudal Rights.--The Regency.--d.u.c.h.ess of Berri.--Claudine du Tencin.--Louis XV.--Madame de Pompadour.--Dubarry.--Pare aux Cerfs.--Louis XVI.--Philippe Egalite.--Subsequent Sovereigns.--Literature.--Lewd Novels and Pictures.--Tendency of Philosophy.--The Church.

We have thus sketched the history of prost.i.tution in France from the commencement of the French nation to the reign of Louis XIII. This chapter will complete the subject to the present day.

The ordinance of 1560, prohibiting prost.i.tution in any shape, and granting twenty-four hours only to prost.i.tutes and their accomplices to evacuate Paris, remained in force till late in the eighteenth century. Though, so far as the general traffic went, it was a dead letter, it enabled the police authorities to imprison or exile unruly prost.i.tutes from time to time, and was the basis of the high-handed measure by which the colonists of Canada were first supplied with wives direct from the Paris stews. It also enabled n.o.blemen and officials connected with government to avenge themselves upon unfaithful mistresses, and to exercise a convenient sort of tyranny over the pretty _ling_eres and sewing-girls of the metropolis.

In 1684 Louis XIV. made some alteration in the laws governing prost.i.tution. He provided prisons for the detention of prost.i.tutes, and armed the lieutenant of police with authority to correct them; and he drew a broad line of distinction between dissolute women who were not actually upon the town and the cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes proper.

A farther police regulation on the subject was made in 1713. By that measure a sort of regularity was introduced into the procedure against courtesans and lewd women. They were definitely divided into two cla.s.ses: women who led dissolute lives without being precisely prost.i.tutes, and prost.i.tutes proper. The police were authorized to interfere against both on complaint of any person who charged them with outraging public decency. In the case of prost.i.tutes the proceeding was summary. The culprit was summoned, condemned on slight evidence, and sentenced either to exile, imprisonment, or, more rarely, to a whipping or the loss of her hair. With regard to dissolute women who were not regular prost.i.tutes, the authorities proceeded more cautiously. They were ent.i.tled to all the privileges of other accused persons, sentences rendered against them being subject to appeal; and, when found guilty, the penalty inflicted was usually a fine. Occasionally, the houses where they had carried on their calling were closed, the furniture was thrown out of the window, and a crier proclaimed their disgrace throughout the city.

Monsieur Parent-Duchatelet, who had the patience to read all the records of proceedings against prost.i.tutes in the city of Paris from 1724 to 1788, _infers_ the law from these instances of its application, and concludes: (1.) That, notwithstanding the ordinance of 1560, brothels were licensed by the police. (2.) That prost.i.tutes were never troubled except on complaint of a responsible person. (3.) That brothels were disorderly; that riots, rows, and murders not unfrequently occurred within their walls or in their neighborhood. (4.) That the punishment was left to the discretion of the magistrate. (5.) That the penalties inflicted were lighter toward the close of the period examined. (6.) That certain streets in Paris were wholly occupied by prost.i.tutes.[196]

Probably with a view to enlarge the discretion of the magistrates, a new ordinance was pa.s.sed in 1778, renewing, in peremptory language, the prohibitive provisions of the enactment of 1560. This ordinance, which bears the name, and probably emanated from the office of Lenoir, the police magistrate, declares that no public woman shall hereafter try to catch (_raccrocher_) men on the wharves or boulevards, or in the streets or squares of Paris, under penalty of being shaved, whipped, and imprisoned; that no householder shall let his house, or any part thereof, to prost.i.tutes, under penalty of five hundred francs fine, and that boarding-house keepers shall allow no men and women to sleep together without seeing their marriage contract.

The most curious feature in connection with this ordinance was the fact that it was not intended or held to interfere with established brothels, which the government continued to license as before. It was intended to affect private prost.i.tutes only. We may judge of its success from the general statement that, soon after its pa.s.sage, the streets and squares were thronged with prost.i.tutes. No woman or modest person could walk the garden of the Tuileries at night. Lewd women showed themselves at their windows in a state of nudity, and shocked public decency still more glaringly by their postures in the streets. It was, in fact, so complete a failure, that two years after its establishment it was practically repealed by a new police regulation.

In 1791, the whole body of the legislation of the monarchy was abolished, and in its stead the republican Legislature enacted a code which was the only law in force in France. That code making no reference to prost.i.tution, it was inferred by lawyers that women had a natural right to prost.i.tute their bodies if they chose, and accordingly the traffic became open and free. The consequence of this was a tremendous development of the vice. Prost.i.tutes established themselves in every street, and monopolized every public place. Paris became scarcely habitable for modest women. An outcry against this monstrous state of things reached the Executive Directory in 1796, and that body sent a message to the Council of Five Hundred, begging them to legislate on the subject. The message was clear and able, calling upon the council to define "prost.i.tute," and suggesting that "reiterated offenses legally proved, public notoriety, or arrest in the act," appeared to const.i.tute proof of prost.i.tution. It seemed to call for penalties, in the shape of imprisonment, on women exercising this calling. But neither this suggestion, nor a subsequent project of the same character was ever carried into effect. Napoleon swept the Palais Royal of the prost.i.tutes who had made it their head-quarters, and broke up some of the greatest brothels by hara.s.sing their inmates in various ways, but he made no law on the subject.

In 1811, M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, drafted a bill for the regulation of prost.i.tutes, but it never went into effect, and the imperial ordinance drawn by the prefect has been lost. Five years later, M. Anglis, Prefect of Police under Louis XVIII., attempted the same thing with no better success, the law officers of the crown seeming to have supposed that the general provisions of the articles of the code on public decency and "outrages upon public morality" covered the particular case of prost.i.tution. The last efforts that were made in France to obtain a law for the regulation of prost.i.tution were in 1819 and 1822, when the ministry seriously thought of settling the whole matter by a royal declaration. These endeavors had the same fate as the former ones, leading to no result.

A general impression has prevailed of late years that the moral sense of the public would be shocked by any legislative act licensing so great a sin as prost.i.tution; and as the government has a.s.sumed, without const.i.tutional warrant, the control and regulation of prost.i.tutes, and has exercised as full authority as it could have done had there been a law on the subject, the deficiency has hardly been felt. A conscientious official has occasionally experienced qualms of conscience at acting without legal warrant; the government has sometimes been frightened by a menace of resistance from some bold lawyer, but no trouble has ever actually arisen, and custom now gives to the police regulations the force of law.

We shall review these regulations in another place; meanwhile a glance must be cast upon the progress of morality in France during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

The gallantry which distinguished the court of Henry IV. became more refined, though not less criminal, under Louis XIII. Adultery and seduction were every-day matters in the circles which educated Mary, Queen of Scots, and developed the wit of the author of Grammont's Memoirs. Every lady was presumed to have a lover; every man of fas.h.i.+on more than one mistress. Richelieu boasted that no lady could reject him when he chose to throw the handkerchief, and Mazarin was accused of intrigues with the queen herself. Louis did not blush to visit his mistresses at the head of his guards, and in all the pomp of royalty; and, as an instance of their influence over him, it has been stated that it was at the request of Mademoiselle de la Fayette that he consented to visit his wife nine months before the birth of Louis XIV.

A race of women had sprung up, under the teaching of the Medicis, who combined political skill with licentious propensities, and conducted state and amorous intrigues with equal ardor and success. The ladies who surrounded Anne of Austria and Mary of Medicis, and that brilliant circle which has been described in the Memoirs of Madame de Longueville and Madame de Sable, were undoubtedly as dissipated as they were refined; their virtues were in inverse proportion to their wit. Paris no longer witnessed the Louvre converted into a royal preserve, or detestable debauchees haunting its dark pa.s.sages; but there reigned throughout the court an air of polished sensuality, which, in point of fact, must have been at least equally prejudicial to good morals.

Louis XIV. imbibed the spirit of the age during his minority. Royal mistresses had become a recognized inst.i.tution, fathers and husbands rather courting than dreading dishonor at the hands of the king. After having dispensed his favors with some impartiality among the ladies of the court, he discovered, apparently to his surprise, that one of them, a charming girl, named Louise de la Valliere, really loved him. The only person who showed much annoyance at the warmth with which the king entered upon this new liaison was the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, Henrietta of England, the king's sister-in-law, who seems to have expected that she would be the fortunate recipient of whatever crumbs might fall from the royal table.

She was unable, however, to divert Louis from his purpose; La Valliere became his mistress, and bore him two children. When he grew tired of her, as he did soon after the birth of her second child, she retired into a convent, and expiated her fault by thirty years' austere penitence.

The king then turned his attention to a lady of n.o.ble rank, the wife of the Marquis of Montespan, and in a business manner exiled the marquis to his estate, and lived with his wife. A woman otherwise virtuous, proud, and queenly, she lived with the king for fourteen years, and bore him eight children. These children were openly legitimated by Louis, and were married by him to members of the royal family. He even contemplated securing the throne to them, though they were thus doubly adulterine.

The last mistress of Louis XIV. was the famous Madame de Maintenon, the widow of the poet Scarron; a person of remarkable abilities, and old enough to have recovered from the pa.s.sions which were said to have disturbed her youth. She was introduced to the king as the governess of his illegitimate children, and by her arts contrived not only to wean the king's heart from his mistress, but even to alienate the children from their mother. For thirty-five years she wielded supreme control over Louis's mind; and whatever may be said of her early life, and however harsh a judgment must be formed of her political measures, it must be allowed that, in general, her influence was exercised for the good of religion and morality. Under her direction the court became positively devout. Intrigues were concealed, not ostentatiously paraded before the public eye; and the ladies by whom she was surrounded were obliged to lead at least outwardly decorous lives. She might not be able to check the monstrous practices of the Duke of Orleans; but much of the looseness of the court she could, and really did bring to an end. Her royal lover, who at first piqued himself upon rising as far above obligations of fidelity to his mistresses as he considered himself superior to political obligations to his people, resigned himself to the spiritual direction of the marquise, and allowed old age to a.s.sert its rights in condemning him to virtue. All things considered, the last twenty years of Louis XIV.'s reign was perhaps the most moral in the whole history of the monarchy.

This is well ill.u.s.trated in the history of the literature of the day. The leading philosophers, writers, and poets of the age of Louis XIV. forbore to shock decency, and may be read to-day as safely as any modern work.

Preachers--Bossuet, Ma.s.sillon, Bourdaloue--exercised a potent influence over the tone of letters and society. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries provided the stage with a repertory that could never bring a blush to the cheek. Even Moliere, who did occasionally let slip a joke of questionable propriety, for the pit's sake, seems a daring innovator when he is contrasted with his predecessors. Decency is, in fact, one of the most striking characteristics of the literature of the age.

We may also date from the reign of Louis XIV. the final extinction of many of the old feudal rights which were at war with morality. Horrible as it may seem, there were parts of France where the custom allowed the seigneur to debauch the daughter of his va.s.sal without obstacle or penalty. In some provinces it is said to have been customary for the seigneur to enjoy the first night of every girl married within his manor. In others, the peculiar authority of the seigneur over the serfs who were attached to the glebe was held to endow him with the right of using the bodies of their wives and daughters as he saw fit. No written custom justified these monstrous privileges, but frequent allusions to them in the old French writers show that in certain parts they were sanctioned by usage. Louis XIV. made it his especial business to break down the privileges of the n.o.bility, and it was no doubt to the general police regulations he made for the government of the kingdom at large that the extinction of these rights was mainly due.

With the Regency the scene changes. The Duke of Orleans had long been one of the most depraved men in France. So long as Louis XIV. lived he had perforce observed a certain outward decorum; but the death of the monarch, and the duke's high-handed seizure of the regency, enabled him to give free scope to his propensities. He resided in the Palais Royal, and gave suppers there almost every evening to a select circle of roues and fast women, among whom Madame de Parabere long held the place of honor.

The company not unfrequently varied the entertainment by the performance of charades and tableaux, among which the judgment of Paris was a favorite of the regent. The conversation of the guests was so gross as to shock all but the initiated, and when they separated they were generally all intoxicated.[197]

The most startling and horrible feature of these entertainments was the fact that the regent's daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of Berri, was almost always present. Her life was a romance. Married while a child to the Due de Berri, by her pa.s.sionate temper and her levities she was the bane of her husband's life. She embraced the infidel and licentious doctrines of the age in company with her father, and the pair were so fond of each other that the most horrible suspicions began to gain ground. They were dispelled for a time by the discovery of an intrigue between the d.u.c.h.ess and her chamberlain, which so provoked the duke that he seized his wife by the hair and beat her. On his death, which occurred soon afterward, she gave the reins to her pa.s.sion, and set an example of scandal. At the Luxembourg, where she had apartments, she exhibited the state of a queen, and lover succeeded lover with startling rapidity. At last she seems to have fallen in love with an officer of her guards, named Riom, whose only merit was youth. He subdued her. She became as docile and submissive to him as she had been intractable and haughty with her former lovers, and all Paris was talking of the transformation. After about a year of this _liaison_, she gave birth to a child. During the pains of childbirth she was not expected to live, and the curate of St. Sulpice was sent for in all haste to administer the extreme unction. The ecclesiastic happened to be a rigid champion of morality, and he refused to administer the rite till Riom had been dismissed from the Luxembourg. The d.u.c.h.ess would not consent to part with her lover, and for many hours this strange conflict went on by the bedside of the failing woman. The curate was obstinate, however, and no sacrament was administered; but the d.u.c.h.ess recovering, the regent used his authority, and sent Riom to join his regiment. It killed his daughter. She invited her father to sup with her, and used all her eloquence to persuade him to let her marry Riom; but the regent remaining firm, she withdrew to her chamber, took to her bed, and died two days afterward.

In alluding to the regent's mistresses, a word should be said of the famous Claudine du Tencin, whose adventures shed a flood of light on the morals of the day. She was a pretty girl, of respectable, if not n.o.ble family, living in a distant province. To escape from a marriage that was forced on her, she took refuge in a convent. Instead, however, of suiting her habits to her place of residence, she contrived to alter the mode of life at the convent so as to meet her desires, and it became famous for the gayety of its social entertainments and the liveliness of its inmates.

One of the gentlemen who were allowed to share its hospitality was the poet Destouches. He was smitten with the pretty Claudine, who acknowledged the charm of his accomplishments, and, after a few months' intimacy, gave birth to a male child, who became the mathematician and philosopher D'Alembert.

Claudine had a brother, an abbe, a man of considerable cunning, and no principle whatever. He persuaded his sister to go to Paris and seek her fortune. He obtained an introduction for her to the regent, and Claudine contrived to produce such an impression that she was soon installed as t.i.tular mistress. This did not last long, however. One day, venturing to remonstrate with the regent on his loose mode of life, his habitual drunkenness, etc., her lover lost patience with her, and suddenly summoned a crowd of his courtiers from the ante-chamber to witness the deshabille and listen to the sermons of madame. In revenge, Claudine rushed out and became the mistress of the prime minister, Cardinal Dubois. Her brother, the abbe, got a bishopric for his share in the transaction.

At the death of Dubois, Madame du Tencin gave him as successor the Duke of Richelieu, the most famous lady-killer of the court. But she was growing old, and ambition had more attractions for her than love. She became an auth.o.r.ess, wrote religious works and novels, patronized letters, and brought out Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. Her salons became the most fas.h.i.+onable in Paris. It was not a little singular that she should have been the head of one literary clique, and her son, D'Alembert, the chief of another--neither positively jealous of the other, yet living on terms of cold reserve.

Louis XV. trod in the steps of his great-grandfather and the regent. His amours attracted no attention, being evanescent and trifling, till he quarreled with the queen, and bestowed the t.i.tle of mistress on the Countess of Mailly. This lady had four sisters, three of whom had reached womanhood. They were jealous of their sister's success, and solicited a share of the royal favor. The monarch graciously granted their prayer, and admitted all four into an a.s.sociate _liaison_. He was much hurt when the fifth, at the age of sixteen, declined an interest in this delectable partners.h.i.+p. Falling ill soon afterward, he allowed his confessor to frighten him into parting with the sisters, and when he got well replaced them by the wife of the subfarmer of the finances, Madame le Normand d'Etoiles. He created her Marquise de Pompadour, and compelled the court to recognize her. Happily for him, she was a person of moderate taste and habits. She patronized letters, was the friend of Voltaire, and seems to have employed her influence over the king for his advantage and that of the public. It is recorded, as an instance of the heartlessness of the king, that when she died he stood at a window to watch her funeral pa.s.s, and noticing that it was a rainy day, observed, with a smile, "that the marquise had bad weather for her long journey."

Her successor was Madame Dubarry, a common prost.i.tute, fished out of the Paris stews in consequence of her skill in debauchery. Her real name was Vanbernier; but, in order to present her at court, a n.o.bleman of the name of Dubarry was persuaded to marry her. It was under her reign that the _Parc aux Cerfs_ (in which Madame de Pompadour was said to have had a hand), reached its highest point of celebrity and eclat. This was a royal seraglio filled with the most beautiful girls that could be bought or stolen. The monstrous old debauchee who filled the throne of France had a weakness for very young girls, fifteen being the age at which he preferred his mistresses. Under the skillful directions of Dubarry, a host of pimps and purveyors searched France for young girls to suit the king's fancy.

Where negotiations could not be effected, the prerogative was stretched, and the police authorities judiciously blinded; but we are led to believe that it was seldom necessary to resort to these violent measures, and that French fathers of that day seldom made difficulties except about the sum to be paid. That the king was liberal may be inferred from the sum which this seraglio cost him--not less than one hundred millions of francs. It was a large, handsomely furnished building at Versailles, giving every woman her separate apartments. The king rarely visited each one more than three or four times; but, on the occasion of his first visit, he prided himself on observing the etiquette of a husband. He insisted on the poor child whom he was about to ruin kneeling down by the bedside, and saying her prayers in his presence. It need hardly be observed that the Parc aux Cerfs was the great reservoir from whence the brothels of the time derived their supply of recruits. After a residence of a few weeks or months, in case they became pregnant, the poor children were thrown out upon the world, and ruin was a necessity.

The last monarch of the old French line, the unfortunate Louis XVI., forms a bright contrast to his predecessors. His education had been severe, his principles were naturally strict. Placed upon the throne after the Revolution had become inevitable, his whole attention was devoted to the business of reigning, and attempting reforms which came quite too late.

Neither he nor his wife ever gave rise to merited scandal.

The profligate character of the court was, however, sustained by the Orleans family and their connections. Philippe Egalite was a true descendant of the regent. On the very eve of the Revolution he indulged in orgies that were closely imitated from those of the Palais Royal.

Our sketch of the immoralities of the French court naturally ends here.

Though the period of the Directory was marked by a general looseness in the best French society, and both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. set no example of conjugal fidelity to their subjects, yet vice was not exhibited so openly under them as it had been under former kings, and the laws of decency were not actually set at defiance. Their frailties were private matters, into which it is scarcely the duty of the historian to intrude.

The same may be said of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. The former had, in his youth, been a sharer of many of the excesses of the Orleans family, but at the time he became king he was an old man, and could afford to lead a decent life. Louis Philippe had never afforded a theme for scandal, and as king he set an example of rigorous morality.

If we turn back now to the period of the Regency, we shall find letters sympathizing in the most marked manner with the court. Under the regime of severe etiquette and decency established by Louis XIV., authors respected the ear of innocence; under the brutal sway of the regent, and the lewd influence of the satyr Louis XV., the old prost.i.tution of literature was revived. Thus we find that the most successful authors of the day, such as Voltaire, handled themes grossly immoral in themselves, and rendered still more offensive by their mode of treatment. The most popular novel of the eighteenth century--Manon Lescant--the work, by the way, of an abbe, is the narrative of the adventures of a prost.i.tute. Of all the romance writers of that age, no one was more widely popular or more generally read than Crebillon _fils_, whose works would almost fall into the hands of the police at the present time. Diderot, Mirabeau, Montesquieu, and, with few exceptions, all the most eminent men of France, prost.i.tuted their genius to the composition of erotic works which were widely read by women as well as men. Of the light poetry of the eighteenth century very little is fit for modern reading, the poets being, as a general rule, either dull or depraved. Nor were the arts behindhand. Frescoes differing but little from those which had adorned Fontainebleau under Francis I. again covered the walls of rich men's houses; and the most fortunate painters of the day were those who could best outrage decency without positively suggesting the brothel. Lewd books and pictures were freely sold in Paris during the Regency, the reign of Louis XV., and the Revolutionary period. Napoleon burned all he could find, but there still remained enough to supply the demand almost ever since.

It should be noticed in connection with the state of morals in France during the second half of the eighteenth century, that the tendency of the philosophical doctrines which were then current was to undermine the respect paid to marriage and chast.i.ty. The former, being a sacrament, was a.s.sailed as part of the ecclesiastical system; the latter was conceived to be at war with the natural, and, therefore, the proper pa.s.sions of mankind. Several of the philosophers left it to be inferred from their writings, or stated broadly, that promiscuous intercourse, or, at all events, unlimited facilities of divorce, were the natural destiny of the human race, and that the restrictions which have been imposed on sensual gratification had no warrant in reason or sound ethics. These foolish notions brought forth fruits after their kind. Under the Directory, prost.i.tutes were received into certain societies, and ladies of fas.h.i.+on became prost.i.tutes. Even under the Empire it was not unusual for a lady to request her husband to pay her a visit, as it was well, perhaps, to avoid questions of legitimacy arising at any future period.

There was one branch of society in which morality had made great progress during the century: that was the Church. It still contained cardinals like Dubois, and bishops and abbes like Du Tencin, but the vast body of the country clergy led pure moral lives. This point is placed beyond a doubt by the silence of the parties opposed to the hierarchy when the Revolution broke out, and they were so disposed to a.s.sail the priesthood on every vulnerable point. It may be broadly stated that the vices which had infected the whole body of the clergy during the sixteenth century had disappeared by the eighteenth; despite the law of celibacy, the country curates were, as a rule, moral, austere, virtuous men.

CHAPTER IX.