Part 3

The intense nausea this system has lately caused France may make apparent to what kind of despotism it gives up self-dependent women. Moreover, if a head official is continued in power after the mistakes which are the necessary consequence of his orders, it is a crying injustice; if he is deprived, it is as great an injustice, since this victim is sacrificed for having done what he considered his duty. Our machinery for morals will remain for ever an evidence of the degree of barbarity which depraved communities may attain to; let us not expect anything more humane from them, and if we have forgotten the history of prostitution in ancient France, let us recall that when slavery had developed in the Roman Empire those excesses which are consistent with the right of citizenship among ourselves, Tiberius was compelled to put down the incontinence of women, and Domitian issued sumptuary edicts against women of loose morals. _The protection accorded to the immoralities of the man is the cause of the incessant persecution of the girl of the town_; she alone is followed up in furnished rooms and hotels, which are likewise the refuge of the workwoman, the female-servant, and the art-worker without employment, who, when there, find themselves the subjects of the harsh misconstructions of the police, who are invested with the right of intruding upon, and of arresting them at any minute. Immorality has, from this motive, gone to the length of driving women from our boarding-houses who were trying to get a respectable living. In 1845, the Prefect of the Seine, acting on the express order of the Minister of Public Instruction, issued a regulation prohibiting mistresses of boarding-houses and _secular_ institutions from receiving women-lodgers as boarders, and ordered them, under the penalty of a prompt closing of their establishments, to turn out of doors, without delay or exception, those then residing with them. As a consequence of this severe measure, the modest woman, often not knowing where to rest her head, sees herself obliged to submit to the discretionary discipline of public girls. The convents, it is true, not being included in the regulation cited above, admit women very far advanced in pregnancy, who are presented to them by an ecclesiastic.

The young woman endowed with youth and beauty cannot show her face alone in our streets without being exposed to insulting looks and words; if she accept a situation behind a counter, in a spirit dealer’s establishment, she will, by the laws of 1861, fall under the action of the police, as _guilty of corrupting young people_.

To finish on the subject of this despotic law, it must be added, that a large number of places of public resort, of promenades, cannot be frequented by unaccompanied women, and that a quite recent regulation forbids every _unaccompanied woman_ to enter any of our cafés on the boulevards. Formerly, public places of resort were forbidden to prostitution; at present, having obtained the wall-side there, it drives respectable people away from them.

The anxiety of the Administration for the debauchee might, however, leave him some monetary miscalculations; but legislative enactment and legal exposition are on the watch, in their turn, like anxious mothers, that mistresses should not be too expensive. Every day our courts of law sanction the rights of prostitution by annulling his presents and debts, and issuing orders like this: “_It exists as a principle in jurisprudence_, that the _individual who has excited to debauchery to gratify his own passions is by no means looked upon as guilty by our legislation_.”[25]

This solemn charter is confirmed in all the specific applications. Formerly our law courts, refusing their countenance to men whom they looked upon, and with justice, as the greatest disturbers of social order, refused to entertain any of their suits whatever, upon the ground of this old maxim of law; “_Nemo auditur turpitudinem suam allegans._”[26] Practically, those who support courtesans never appear before the judges except as complainants to claim protection, if these women owe or get money from them unfairly, or continue to use the name which they themselves had inscribed upon their crests.

Let us judge of the complicity of the courts of law by some facts recorded in our judicial annals, which constantly corroborate the same principles in similar occurrences. A clerk, convicted of having stolen 45,000 francs, which he had sent to his mistress, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, while the woman had to undergo five years of the same kind of punishment.[27]

Justice sometimes goes so far as to punish the woman for the theft committed by him who keeps her. A young man of 20, after having freely prostituted himself with a courtesan, robbed his mother. The judge, by an inquisitorial examination, tried to make the thief acknowledge complicity on the part of the woman he was cohabiting with. He affirmed, on the contrary, that he left her in the belief that the money expended with her was part of the salary attached to his appointment. The court, however, let this precocious debauchee off, and sentenced the courtesan to 8 months’ imprisonment.[28]

The young man who has not attained his majority thus meets with a special protection in corrupting himself; for, while our law courts, upon the pretence that it is swindling, annul the pecuniary engagements made with courtesans by men of all ages, they keep the young man under 21 especially safe. When robbery occurs, the fact of prostitution brings the two principles of family and property face to face, but the former is, in this matter, always sacrificed to the latter.

Military men, even officers, bring before the law courts the robbery of their epaulettes, which has been effected in a brothel; and, without any blame, without any penalty against these family destroyers, the Government or Magistrate, after imprisoning the woman inculpated, replaces the symbol of official honour on the shoulders of her accomplice in profligacy.

Has not the student, too, the privilege of declaring to our judges that he claims the repayment of 30, 40 francs, &c., pilfered by women with whom _he was cohabiting_; not only does the court not pronounce him guilty, it by no means seeks to know if this youth, the hope of his country, has been the cause of a wrong, irreparable, perchance, to society, by allying himself with abandoned women and outlawed youths, whom his irresponsibility in wickedness has urged on to commit larceny. It neither condemns this rebel against society to a fine nor to disgrace as a citizen, and, by imprisoning the woman, it proclaims the man’s right to be dissolute.

A well-known courtesan who lived in a splendid town-house in one of our wealthiest districts, was there receiving, every year, from her admirers, an income of about 100,000 francs. Carriages, liveries well known in the official world, were shamelessly standing at her door. In those orgies, which are only to be compared to the Babylonian nights, she boasted of having _the particular charge of training young people_. The police, forcing an entrance into her house, accused her of illegal gambling. It is unnecessary to say that the court did not sentence—did not even name, any of her high-placed accomplices; certain organs of the periodical press gave an account of this affair, and spoke of the courtesan under the appellation of _amiable hostess, well-known in the fashionable world of Paris for the choice suppers she gave_. Our jurisprudence is still the zealous protectress of these men who manifest an equal shamelessness in tricking out the courtesan with their heraldic name, and taking it from her when they are in search of the marriage portion necessary to restore their fortune impaired by profligacy. With an unfeeling barbarity they then set to work to drag their discarded mistress before the courts of law, to take her ducal coronet from her, to efface the coats-of-arms they had themselves engraven upon her carriage, and, at length, to have her sentenced for usurping the titles of the aristocracy.

The seducer unpunished, (what do I say,) protected, encouraged! is not even prosecuted for the purchase of girls under age; for our code only recognises guilt where this traffic is made a _regular calling_. As to the seller bungling enough to fulfil all the required conditions, he renders himself liable to an imprisonment of from one month to five years, and to a fine of from 50 to 500 francs; but the full extent of the punishment being never imposed, the risk is small, the advantage certain from the time that the sale of a young girl can fetch, from 1,500 to 10,000 francs. No search for, no mention even is made in any case of these monsters with a human face, who have a constant right to the produce of this horrible traffic; no indemnification is granted to the wretched parents from whom the victims have been carried off by stratagem. I have already cited the solemn right which the spirit of our laws acknowledges for those who procure debauchery on their own account. Different decrees declare that Article 334 of the Penal Code, relating to the exciting to debauchery, is not applicable to this kind of crime. Even when there has been systematic persuasion, cleverly exercised by a man of ripe years upon a girl under age hurried away from a respectable way of life, our courts acknowledge that they have no means of bringing the guilty person to justice.

To the privileges I have just enumerated, prostitution on the part of the man adds that of honour intact. Every time a punishment loses anything in its degree of publicity, or is no longer available for an act that is blameable and hurtful to society, the cry of public opinion is stifled; its isolated manifestations remain powerless, especially when they are looked upon as a crime. Then indignation, no longer finding a free course, a tacit acquiescence, which may be thought a voluntary one, gives daily, new force to the reign of vice, and a great confusion of principle exists between good and evil. It must be confessed, with sorrow, never did civilization in this matter protect evil with more effrontery than ours does. Respect for the man of dissolute morals is, among ourselves, imposed by a system of vicious laws which furnish him with an impenetrable breast-plate; he is able to brave, and he does brave, honour and duty, beneath the shield of the interdiction of investigation to discover the father of illegitimate children, and by the law which refuses to admit proof in cases of libel, and forbids the making known any act of private life. If he is in the service of the State or of his country, his irresponsibility will be still greater; his freedom from annoyance will follow him even in death, for society has further provided that his vices may sleep in the grave with him. Sullied by baseness, he will even receive distinctions that will enrol him in the list of those chosen for official rewards. Do not let us be any longer surprised, then, at the discredit into which these rewards are falling; for, if the cross of honour is given to a man who has deserved well of his country, it will lose its value if a man who has done nothing remarkable obtains it also; it will fall into contempt if a despicable man can get it. Hence result the indifference and disdain which, in depraved societies, certain men profess for official honours, whose symbols which might serve as a safeguard against infamy, they sometimes refuse to wear.

The study of our present subject has shown us a thorough absence of discretionary measures and of penal laws against prostitution in men—a fact unheard of, I think, in the history of civilizations _based on the principle of the family_.

Is this culpable toleration the effect of a general relaxation of morals? Is it possible to reform our laws? This is what every serious mind must ask itself in view of such a rapid downward course.

This consideration is so much the more important that, in its economical aspect, it is connected with the European balance of power. The relative strength of the powers especially consists, it will not be denied, in the manner, more or less effectual, which they adopt in order to maintain, together with the dignity of the man and the woman, the vigour of the child and the honour of the family. We see, in fact, that those nations only which sanction the principle of moral responsibility, have been able to preserve themselves from the decay which prostitution brings in its train. England,[29] Sweden, Switzerland, Prussia, Saxony, the United States, &c., permit, as France in former times did, the private initiative in the closing of the places for debauchery; they refuse to allow the accomplices of prostitutes to bring any action for debt, and impose penalties for the immoralities which we both condone and surround with outward signs of splendour.[30] On the contrary, we see the greatest slavery—that of the passions—among peoples which, having the likeness of liberty, are governed according to the French code. Thus Belgium, suffering from the like social wounds with ourselves, gives the title _conversational drawing-room_ (salons de conversation), to places where young girls are to be bought, and where important personages go to be supplied.

Without pausing here upon all the economic consequences of debauchery, I shall draw attention to the fact that it enervates, enfeebles, and diminishes population, accumulating and scattering, besides, riches got without labour; and devoting to orgies food obtained by pinching the poor, it creates a pauperised community in the midst of one of sybarites.[31]

The European nation which shall most imperfectly put down this vice will therefore be the weakest, the most unstable, and, consequently, the ripest for downfall. Experience teaches that this truth applies alike to ancient and modern civilizations.

Moral responsibility, interpreted in Egypt, by the duty which the lawgiver imposed upon fathers and mothers of providing for their illegitimate children, and by their custom of passing judgment on the dead, had fashioned that granite people which will continue to be the wonder and admiration of all ages. So long as Greece and Rome preserved this Egyptian policy, whose light had been introduced among them by severe lawgivers, they were in a position to defy, in like manner, all external enemies; but, from the time that the absolutism of profligacy _towards their slaves_ had hurried them along the downward path to ruin, they refused to submit to those wise laws, which had constituted their strength, and ensured a hopeful future. What vigour, what energy, did this unceasing control bestow upon the administrator! Despite the depravity which found its way into Greece, in the age of Pericles, still what a noble spectacle there is in the struggles of Æschines and of Demosthenes—in that immortal discourse upon the crown in which we perceive the heart of a free people throb in the reciprocal responsibility of the public man and his accusers!

It is, on the other hand, sad to consider the work of absolutism, not so much in the pyramids formed out of human carcases by the Genghis Khans and the Tamerlanes, as in the civilized systems, polished like the Roman Empire, that of the Low Countries and of France, in which are observed the highest development of material and intellectual progress side by side with moral decline.

Certes, reformers, moralists and satirists, were not wanting in the Roman empire. Honest men, saddened and indignant at the depravity of their age, tried to stem the muddy torrent which was hurrying it in the direction of degrading gratifications. What noble efforts we see, whether among the Catos, the Tacituses, and the Juvenals; or among the Origens, the Tertullians, and the Justins! What moral energy among the Stoics, who took for their maxim _endurance_ and _self-denial_! What grandeur of soul among those obscure Christians, whose performance of the moral obligations which are based upon respect for the dignity of humanity, caused spiritual development to be carried to such a high degree! Did not this reformation, seated upon the throne itself, produce the admirable epoch of the Antonines![32]

Individual virtues were unable, notwithstanding, to save the empire, ruined as it was from the day when the rule of morals no longer found a place in either _law_ or _authority_; from the moment when there were no longer either tribunes to denounce abuses, or censors to repress them. Yes, the Roman empire received its death-warrant at the inconsistent epoch in which Cæsar erected his vices into laws; in which Augustus destroyed, by his example, the morality he preached by his precepts; in which that _censor of morals_, who issued severe edicts against an unmarried seducer, who caused the consecrated fire to be maintained by the virgins on the altar of Vesta, being personally affected by the contagion of the period, secretly introduced the courtesan at home, by paying public and hypocritical honours to Livia. It is all over with that power which shall have for its moral law nothing more than the individual temperament of those who wield it, and Juvenal shall very soon utter his prophetic warning:—

“Saevior armis Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.”[33]

Rome shall drink the poisoned cup by copious draughts; when the queen of the world shall have emptied the fatal beverage, God shall make a sign to the barbarians, and the Northern hordes shall arise. A thousand times unhappy should we be, similarly, if, by scandalous privileges, we continued to attract the dregs of the entire world which will sacrifice France’s future by corrupting her youth and her women. Before pointing out the remedies which the evil calls for, let us, however, see to what degree of horror its too great freedoms have brought the prostitution of the man.

IV.—MALE PROSTITUTION, AND PARTICULARLY THAT OF THE STUDENT, THE OFFICIAL, AND THE SOLDIER.

“May the unworthy man perish who makes a market of the heart, and renders love mercenary! He it is who covers the earth with the crimes that debauchery causes to be committed in it. How should she not be always for sale who has allowed herself to be bought once? And, in the ignominy into which she soon falls, who is the author of her wretchedness—the brute who ill-treats her in a place of bad repute, or the seducer who drags her there, by being the first to put a price on her favours.”—_J. J. Rousseau._

“By refusing virtue the right of being the matter of primary importance, you have granted to vice the right of being so.”—_M. Alex. Dumas, fils._

“There are bad examples worse than crimes; and more States have perished from violated morals than from infringed laws.”—_Montesquieu._

The legislative impunity, the administrative and judicial protection granted to the excesses of the man, must take away from them the stigma of infamy, and, by making them universal, cause them to be lost sight of even to the very odiousness of their name. Every vice which forms part of a nation’s life is disguised under an honourable term. Thus prostitution is called _gallantry_, and to live in those bonds which degrade woman, suppress the child before or after its birth, and hurry society to ruin, is to _divert one’s self, to be a man of pleasure, an agreeable companion, a captivating knight_, &c. The facility with which young men can procure instruments of vice, wherever they go, the guardian-hand of the administration which goes with them for protection into the very haunts of profligacy have caused them to lose their moral sense to such a degree that their passions, nursed by habitual gratification, no longer acknowledge any check. Who has not heard those Societies spoken of which give their candidates formal banquets, to which every member, married or not, repairs, accompanied by one of his mistresses? Our towns are honoured by a crowd of illustrious “gaudins,” who call themselves _followers-up of workwomen_; of celebrated foreigners, earls and viscounts, &c.; hunting-dogs more or less clever at following up the track of hunger and destitution. Upon our boulevards, in our coffee-houses, at races, clubs, theatres, they riot and box for these women, whose champions they glory in being. Fathers, eldest sons, generals, literary men, bankers, &c., even dare to set themselves up as supporters of registered girls. They sign, without any shame, the letters they address to them, and have the assurance to go to the office of the commissioner of police to give themselves out as their lovers, and there to claim them.

Elsewhere such and such a man acknowledges that he is looking for a fortune by marriage to repair the inroads made on his heritage, by more than a _hundred_ women he has kept. Young masters of establishments, where many workpeople are employed, are seen, moreover, reserving to themselves the right of choosing their mistresses in the workroom, and exacting that the mother of the work-girl, who is the sport of their whims, should keep a constant watch over her, and give her up to them herself. Certain fashionable foreigners look out in the “Petites Affiches” the addresses of women out of work, whom they engage under the title of servants, governesses, needlewomen, &c., and afterwards hand over to the public streets those who, having neither means of their own, nor savings, have been put in their power by hunger.[34]

In all classes we meet these men, whose polygamy, simultaneous or successive, has no other limits than the caprices of unbridled passion. This process of making licentiousness common, imparts to it, in the present day, an instability unknown even to the corruption of the 18th century, in which the courtesan was, so far as the aristocracy and the rich among the middle classes were concerned, a woman of inferior rank, with an assured _status_, like that of the legitimate wife; in practice, our dissipated men, rich and poor, allow their _mistresses of a day_ to pass through every successive step in degradation. Such and such a youth writes down among the records of his life, the possession of a girl whom he was able to pay for three months or three days when he left college. Thus the debauchee, not rich enough to keep a mistress, obtains unlawful gratification on a species of five-percent. principle; it is the fact of the existence of these morals that gave occasion to the writing of this:—

“Impuissants a porter un vice tout entier Ils sont amants, joueurs, libertins par quartier.”[35]

But, in order to appreciate better an evil which is sapping society in its very foundations, let us especially consider those who symbolize truth, justice, law and national defence; that is to say, the student, the public official, and the soldier—the soldier who, previously enlisted to defend his country, seems to be no longer kept in pay but in order to corrupt her.

The young man’s course of depravity begins at college; the pestiferous atmosphere in which we are living causes bad books to find their way into our schools, where children are often detected reading the memoirs of our dancing and singing celebrities, to get acquainted with the details of their lives and that of their illustrious lovers; the greater part of them conceive the hope of following their elders in backstairs society, and their young imagination places its beau-ideal in the wealth acquired by corruption and for corruption.