It is not easy, in telling the story of the prisons of old Paris, to avoid mention of the subject with which this chapter is concerned. That subject is not, however, an attractive one, and readers whom it repels are invited to let the chapter go.

According to the authors of Les Prisons de l'Europe, Charlemagne was the first monarch of France who "formally punished" the calling of the femme publique. His edict swept the field, so to speak; the femme publique (known then, however, as the femme du monde) and all who gave asylum to her were absolutely banned. The prison, the whip, and the pillory were their portion; the keepers of houses of ill-fame had to carry the pillory on their backs to the market-place, and the women whom they lodged had to stand in it. This edict, completely prohibitive, was in force during four centuries, and its principal result seems to have been to augment the custom of Aspasia. She and her industry increased a thousand-fold.

The state of France in this respect struck Saint Louis with horror on his return from the Holy Land. His ordonnance of 1254 bade the women of the town renounce their calling, on pain of being deprived of house and clothing, "even of the clothes in which they stood up." If, after being warned, these women continued as before, they were to be banished the country. But, wiser and more humane than Charlemagne, Saint Louis set apart for repentant Magdalens a shelter in the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and drew from his private purse the moneys to lodge and maintain two hundred of them.

The new law, enforced with as much rigour as the old one, proved every whit as impotent. Aspasia went her ways in secret, and devised many arts. She borrowed the manners and the costume of her more respectable sisters (Les prostituÉes singÈrent les maniÈres et le costume des femmes honnÊtes), glided into the churches, and went with sidelong glances through the most frequented places of the town. This clandestine pursuit of the calling, and the hypocrisy which of necessity it bred on every side, were beyond measure distressing to Saint Louis. A good king, and a pious one, he considered the matter deeply, and then, in the interests, as he believed, of public and private morals, he resolved upon a novel and hazardous measure. It was, to allow the femmes publiques a degree of liberty, and the exercise of their calling, under certain strict conditions. Amongst other regulations, they were to live in houses specially appointed to them, and these houses were to be closed at six o'clock in the evening, no person being allowed to enter them after that hour.

Thus, strangely enough in one point of view, the King who won the name of "Saint," and whose memory has been justly cherished, was the first to give legality in France to the calling of Aspasia. Yet this was also the King who, above all others on that throne, had sought to keep in check the moral disorders of his kingdom. It was only when he had seen that measures of repression were of worse than no avail, inasmuch as the immorality of the town appeared always to increase in proportion to the stringency of laws, whilst the secrecy of the traffic confounded the femme du monde with the "respectable" woman, that he resolved upon giving to the former a domain and status of her own. In this manner, the unrecognised femme du monde was transformed into the femme publique, a woman with a standing of her own, and with the King's authority to prosecute her mournful industry.

She entered under the special jurisdiction of the Provosts of Paris, who from time to time made various enactments on her account. Thus, in 1360, the chief magistrate forbade the femmes publiques to wear certain specified apparel in the streets; and, in 1367, a police order confined them to particular streets in Paris, "a measure rendered necessary by their unseemly behaviour in all places, to the great scandal of everyone."^[24] During the next two hundred years they were occasionally transferred from one quarter of Paris to another, and Parliament more than once took upon itself to "regulate their costume."

In 1560, an edict given at Orleans formulated afresh the stern prohibitions of Charlemagne. Once more, the calling of Aspasia was forbidden throughout the whole of France. The difficulties of enforcing this new-old ordonnance were great everywhere, but nowhere so great as in the capital; and the Provost, it is said, was five years in concerting his measures. The statement is easily credited. Paris herself was little in sympathy at that date with laws to restrict the liberty of Aspasia; and it cannot be said that the average citizen had received much encouragement to virtue from the examples of the Court, the nobility, the clergy, or the magistracy itself. Dulaure asserts in his Histoire de Paris that "La prostitution Était considÉrÉe À l'Égal des autres professions de la sociÉtÉ." The femmes publiques, he adds, formed a corporation by themselves, received their patents, as it were, from the hands of Royalty, "et mÊme Étaient protÉgÉes par les rois. Charles VI. et Charles VII. ont laissÉ des tÉmoignages authentiques de cette protection." The commerce to which was extended the august protection of the throne "Était encore favorisÉ par le grand nombre de cÉlibataires, prÊtres et moines, par le libertinage des magistrats, des gens de guerre, etc. Les femmes publiques, richement vÊtues, se rÉpandaient dans tous les quartiers de cette ville, et se trouvaient confondues avec les bourgeoises, qui, elles-mÊmes, menaient une vie fort dissolue." Provosts of Paris sometimes refused to put in force laws which themselves had framed against the "daughters of joy"; and in so refusing they seem usually to have had with them the sympathies of the town.

This being in general the attitude of society in Paris, it might be thought that the attempt to revive the code of Charlemagne would be received with small popular favour. It appears to have been received with no favour whatever. Seven years, from 1560 to 1567, did the Provost prepare his way, and then the edict was launched. It was read aloud at either end of every street in which Aspasia had her dwelling, and in several of these streets a violent resistance was offered, by the women as well as by their friends and protectors, to the not too-willing agents of the law. By main force at length the women were taken as by press-gang, their streets were closed, the temple of Venus was demolished, and there were once more no femmes publiques in Paris.

So, at least, did the Law assure itself; what then had become of them? As may be supposed, the great majority were still in Paris. Not a few were in prison (but for short periods only); the rest were scattered throughout the town, or in the villages surrounding Paris. As in the days of Charlemagne, and before the second decree of Saint Louis, Aspasia had merely disguised herself. No Magdalen repented on the order of the State. She sought a retreat until the passing of the storm, and in a little while the history of the affair repeated itself: la prostitution clandestine inonda Paris.

Matters continued apparently without the slightest improvement until 1619, when the authorities could devise no better plan than a renewal of the prohibitions of 1565. The femmes publiques were commanded by proclamation to betake themselves to some domestic or other occupation, or to quit the town and suburbs within four and twenty hours. The utter infeasibility of the injunction is not more striking than its stupendous absurdity. Imagine the whole corporation of Aspasias, richement vÊtues, converting themselves at a day's notice into seamstresses, cooks, or chambermaids. It would have been so easy for them to find employers! Saint Louis had shewn himself more generous, more thoughtful, and more sensible in opening his private purse to lodge and maintain the would-be penitents of the order amongst the recluses of the Filles-Dieu. Needless to say, the foolish and impossible decree was quite barren of result. During the next sixty-five years, that is to say until 1684, no definite legal action was taken with respect to the position of the femme publique. Unlicenced and unacknowledged, she fared well or ill according to the laxity or the vigilance of the bench and police, who sometimes harried and sometimes tacitly or openly abetted her. The secret or semi-open practice of her calling was often as profitable as the pursuit of it by sanction of the Crown, but it was attended by the risks of an illegal industry, and in seasons when provosts or lieutenants of police shewed an unwonted activity, Aspasia went to prison. Thus she fared, now sparkling in the finest company, now pinched for a meal, and now doing penance on the prison flags, or perhaps sick (eight to a bed) in BicÊtre hospital, until 1684. At that date, another move was resolved upon, and for the second time Aspasia had the gracious permission of the State to style herself femme publique, and to sell her liberty to the police, to buy une licence de dÉbauche,—for this was what it came to.

At the period arrived at, it was no longer merely a question of irregularities to be repressed, but of the public health to be preserved; and in the new regulations the hospital was named along with the prison. From this time forward, a brief interval under the Consulate excepted, it does not seem to have been questioned in France that women who chose to do so, or who might be driven to do so, were entitled under specified conditions to enter on the calling of femme publique. What steps must be taken to secure the dubious privileges of the order, and what dissuasions were employed by the magistrate who dispensed them, will presently be shewn.

Up to the reign of Louis XIV., the monarch responsible for the provisions of 1684, there was no special prison for the women of this class, who, when under lock and key, were herded with female offenders of all degrees. The first special prison for the femmes publiques was the SalpÊtriÈre, built by Louis XIV., under the designation of "Hospital General." At this era, the women arrested were not put upon their trial, nor was any formal judgment pronounced against them. They were under the sole jurisdiction of the newly appointed lieutenant of police, who dispatched them to prison on the King's warrant, which took the form of a lettre de cachet. Curious, that the fille de joie should be placed in this respect on a footing of equality with the prince of the blood, the nobleman, and the prelate!

At about the end of the eighteenth century (say, towards 1770), the police authorities distinguished two classes of women of the town, the femmes publiques, or authorised women, and a numerous and unlicenced class, of more dissolute habits, officially stigmatised as dÉbauchÉes. To strengthen the line of demarcation between the two classes, the femmes publiques, or the majority of them, were inscribed on the police registers (paying a fee of twenty sous), and being to a certain extent protÉgÉes of the State, the treatment accorded to them was generally of a more lenient character. The terms of their imprisonment (for soliciting in the streets or public places, for brawling and rioting, for signalling from their windows, etc.,) were entirely at the discretion of the lieutenant of police; but it would appear that they were frequently released, at the request or on the bond of a parent, sister, or other relative, after a brief confinement. The houses in which the members of the unlicenced class lived together were continually raided by the police, who descended upon them after dark, "parce que les femmes en Étaient arrivÉes À ce degrÉ de scandale, qu'on ne pouvait plus les arrÊter pendant le jour, À cause du dÉsordre qu'elles causaient, et des collisions qu'excitaient leurs amants et autres adhÉrents."

Eighteenth-century documents concerning these houses are still to be read, and some of them have a curiously modern flavour. There are complaints of householders, and the reports of the police agents whom these complaints set in motion. A certain, M. Ledure, writing under date of the 23d of July, 1785, asks the attention of the police to an unlicensed house of ill-fame adjoining his own, and details his annoyances with a freedom of expression which debars translation. The burden of his protest is, that being a gentleman with a family of daughters, and the holder of a position which obliges him to entertain "des personnes de distinction," his existence is rendered intolerable by the worse than light behaviour of the "females over the way." He can scarcely even get into his own house of an evening.

"To satisfy M. Ledure," runs the police report, "we began by visiting, in Beaubourg Street, the house in which the women complained of were lodging. We arrested there, Marguerite LefÈbvre, the other women having taken themselves off.... In response to the complaints of the residents in Rohan Street, against the women living at No. 63, we forced an entry there, and arrested the woman Rochelet, and the two filles d'amour kept by her. We fetched them out, to take them to Saint-Martin"—a house of detention, from which the women were transferred to the SalpÊtriÈre,—"but, although our guard was composed of five men with fixed bayonets, we were so set upon by the man Rochelet, a hairdresser, and twenty blackguards with him, that we had to let the women go."

The origin of the prison of Saint-Martin, abolished by Louis XVI., is quite unknown. It was a small confined place with a villainous reputation. Regarded by the authorities as a temporary lodging for both classes of public women, a sort of fore-chamber of the SalpÊtriÈre, no attempt was ever made to render it decently habitable. The dark and dirty cells were absolutely destitute of furniture; a truss of straw, thrown from time to time on the stone floor, was both bed and bedding. The food was strictly in keeping; all that the prison gave was a loaf of black bread a day, and whilst prisoners who could afford it were allowed to do a little catering for themselves, the rest soaked their black bread in the soup provided by charitable societies.

Every petition to improve Saint-Martin was answered by the formula that no one stayed there above a few days, which was a callous misstatement of the facts. It is true that the women arrested "by order of the King" were not detained after their lettres de cachet had been obtained; but the women of the other class, who were arrested by simple act of police, and tried at the bar as ordinary offenders, lay for weeks or months at Saint-Martin, awaiting the pleasure of a judge of the ChÂtelet. When the cases to be disposed of were numerous, a part only were heard, and the women whose fate was still to be pronounced were remanded for a further period of weeks or months to Saint-Martin. It was thus not less a prison in the ordinary meaning of the word than what the French call a dÉpÔt; and when its inconveniences were no longer to be endured, Louis XVI. abolished and demolished it, and constituted by letters-patent the HÔtel de Brienne as a prison des femmes publiques, under the name of La Petite Force. This continued to be the temporary prison until the revolutionary era, and here at least the women had air to breathe and beds to lie on.

The first rules for the conduct of the SalpÊtriÈre were issued from Versailles in April, 1684, over the signatures of Louis XIV. and his minister Colbert.

The women were to hear mass on Sundays and Saints' days; to pray together a quarter of an hour morning and evening, and to submit to readings from "the catechism and pious books" whilst they were at work.

They were to be soberly attired in dark stuff gowns, and shod with sabots; bread and water with soup were to be their portion; and they were to sleep on mattresses with sufficient bed-gear.

The nature of their tasks was left to the discretion of the directors, but the labour was to be "both long and severe." After a period of probation, prisoners of approved behaviour might be employed at lighter occupations, and receive a small percentage of the profits, which they were to be at liberty to spend on the purchase of meat, fruit, "et autres rafraÎchissements."

Swearing, idleness, and quarrelling with one another were to be punished by a diminution of rations, the pillory, the dark cell, or such other pains as the directors might think proper to inflict.

These continued to be the rules for the prisons of the femmes publiques; their spirit is modern, but we shall see later on to what extent they were enforced.

In no long time, indeed, after the decrees of 1684, the conditions of life in the SalpÊtriÈre seem to have been little if at all better than those in Saint-Martin. Six women shared a cell by night; the one bed which was supposed to hold them all accommodated four; two of whom slept at the head and two at the foot, while the two latest comers made shift on the bare floor. When one of the bed-fellows got her discharge, or went sick to BicÊtre, the elder of the floor-companions took the vacant place in the bed, resigning her share of the boards to a new fille d'amour. Complaints evoked the cut-and-dried response that the bed was intended to hold six. The cells were always damp, and "il y rÉgnait absolument, et surtout le matin, une odeur infecte, capable de faire reculer." Despite the lack of sanitation, and the fact that the food was always of an inferior quality, the death-rate was not abnormal in the SalpÊtriÈre.

Such was the first regular prison of the femmes publiques, and its rÉgime. The sensible intentions of Louis XIV. were never realised, nor does the character of the monarch himself permit it to be inferred that he was very seriously concerned on the subject. The SalpÊtriÈre continued to receive, if not to chasten, the "daughters of joy" until two days before the September massacres, when, as the beds for six were wanted for political prisoners, they were restored to liberty.

The year '91 saw the overthrow of everything, and the women of pleasure, so-called, entered upon halcyon days. Aspasia, left to her own devices, was "regarded as exercising an ordinary trade." Scandals and disorders followed, and when the public health was again in danger, there being neither control nor supervision of this traffic, a new census of the women was ordered. This was in 1796, but the work was so badly done that the opening days of the Directory found the situation more deplorable, if possible, than ever. Strange to say, the dissolute Directory (which admitted to its salons "gallant dames" who lacked nothing of the status of filles d'amour save inscription on the police registers) turned a severe eye upon the morals of the public. The police were bidden to be active in the haunts of Aspasia, but Aspasia had not forgotten the Republican doctrine of liberty, and when haled before the bench she gathered her lovers and friends about her in such numbers, that the cloud of witnesses in her favour quite overawed the magistrates, who were fain to let her go free.

The Consulate renewed the attack. It was at this era that the Central Bureau, which displaced the old office of Lieutenant of Police, was created, with a special sub-department called the Bureau des Moeurs. This department gave its attention principally to the sanitary aspects of the matter. Then was established the PrÉfecture de Police; and the new prefect, M. Dubois, ordered a fresh numbering of the women, which was made in 1801. The police, however, continued to ask for larger powers, which, to be brief, were conferred on them by article 484 of the Code PÉnal. There were here revived at a stroke the ordonnances of 1713, 1778, and 1780, which gave to the heads of police, "une autoritÉ absolue sur les femmes publiques."

During the period which has been thus hastily reviewed and which commenced soon after the close of the Reign of Terror, three prisons in succession served for the women of the town: La Force, Les Madelonnettes, and Saint-Lazare.

For many years—indeed, until the year after the battle of Waterloo—they were taken to prison in the keeping of soldiers, who led them through the streets in broad day; a crowd following, the women in tears or swearing, the crowd jeering or applauding. If a woman were well known in the town, there was an attempt to rescue her, and she was often snatched from the soldiers before the prison was reached. This public scandal, and bitter humiliation to all women above the most degraded class, was allowed until the year 1816, when the femmes publiques were conveyed to prison in a closed car.

They went to the Force, which has not left a kinder memory than the SalpÊtriÈre. Prison rule was, an art as yet in its infancy, and there was scarcely an idea of cleanliness, moral control, or discipline. The Force, it is said, was "as inconvenient a place as could be found for its purpose." The infirmary, always an important department of prisons of this class, was "unwholesome and wretchedly ventilated." The women were altogether undisciplined, and as workrooms had not been opened they passed their days in idleness and gaming. In the summer months they swarmed in the yard; in winter, they slept, played cards, quarrelled, and fought in dusky and ill-smelling common-rooms. They had no keepers but men, before whom they displayed the most cynical effrontery. It is asserted that, on the days on which clean linen was distributed, the women were accustomed to present themselves before the warders in the precise state in which Phryne astonished her judges.^[25] These things were noised, and the prefect of police had to devise afresh. In 1828, the filles d'amour were transferred from the Force to the Madelonnettes. The record of the Madelonnettes in this connection is not important, except that here it was attempted to employ the women at some strictly penal tasks. This project was more fully developed at Saint-Lazare, to which prison all classes of women of the town were relegated in 1831. At this date, the number of registered public women in Paris was 3517.

Before penetrating within the prison of Saint-Lazare, the reader will be curious to know by what means a woman desirous of doing so enrolled herself in this singular militia. She must seek the countenance and aid of a magistrate of Paris, whose task was in equal measure a delicate and a painful one. Without doubt, it was a strange spectacle; a woman presents herself before a magistrate and says that, renouncing her woman's modesty, her hope or desire of an honourable future, she wishes to be cut off from the world, that she may cast herself dans la prostitution publique. At first sight, she seems to make the magistrate her accomplice, but that this was not the case the sequel will shew.

The applicant underwent a most minute interrogation. She was asked if she were a married woman, a widow, or a spinster; if her parents were living and whether she lived with them, or why she had separated from them. She was asked how long she had inhabited Paris, and whether she had no friends there whose interest the magistrate might evoke for her. She was asked whether she had ever been arrested, how often, and for what causes. She was asked whether she had ever followed the calling of femme publique in any other place, and finally, what were the true motives of her application. ProcÈs-verbal of the examination was drawn up, and the applicant had then to be seen by a medical man attached to the police service. Next, her certificate of birth was asked for, and if she could not produce it, and had been born out of Paris, she must give the name of the mayor of her department. The magistrate wrote forthwith to the mayor, and after setting forth the facts which the applicant had submitted in her examination, requested him to report upon them, asking particularly whether the relatives of the woman could not be moved to induce her to return to them. All this was done in the case where the girl or woman went alone to solicit her enrollment, but it has to be said that not infrequently one or both of the parents of the applicant attended with her at the bureau, to support her request!

When every effort of the magistrate had proved unavailing, a final ProcÈs-verbal was prepared, to the effect that such-and-such a female had requested to be inscribed "comme fille publique," and had been enrolled on the decision of the examining magistrate, "after undertaking to submit to the sanitary and other regulations established by the Prefecture for women of that class." Thus, and in all cases by her own act, was she launched upon those turbid waters.

Of the 3517 women on the Paris police registers in 1831, 931 were from Paris and the department of the Seine, 2170 from the provincial departments, 134 from foreign countries, and the remaining 282 had been unable or unwilling to satisfy the authorities as to their place of birth. There were amongst them seamstresses, modistes, dressmakers, florists, lacemakers, embroiderers, glove-makers, domestic servants, hawkers, milliners, hairdressers, laundresses, silk-workers, jewellers, actresses or figurantes, acrobats, and representatives of many other trades and callings, together with six teachers of music, and one "landscape painter." As regards the education of this army of outcasts, rather more than one-half were unable to sign their names on the cards or badges which they received from the bureau; a somewhat smaller number appended "an almost illegible signature" (fort mal, et d'une maniÈre À peine lisible); whilst a hundred, or thereabouts, wrote "a neat and correct hand."

As for the causes which induced them to cast in their lot with their sister pariahs, they were traceable for the most part to the weaknesses or defects of the social organisation. Thus, a majority of the women pleaded "excess of misery," and the class next in point of numbers were "simples concubines ayant perdu leurs amants, et ne sachant plus que faire." A large proportion had lost both parents, or had been driven from home; many had left the provinces to seek work in Paris; some were widows who could find no other means of supporting their children; and others were daughters looking for bread for aged parents, or for younger sisters and brothers.

And now, standing on the threshold of their prison, we may ask what were the commoner causes which sent these unfortunates to Saint-Lazare. It has been made sufficiently clear that by the act of procuring their licences they sold their liberty to the police. This indeed was the sole condition on which enrolment could be obtained. The femme publique, in becoming such, bought herself an army of masters; the whole force of police were in authority over her, and almost equally so were their agents and spies, and the medical men in their employ. She had subscribed obedience to all the regulations invented by the PrÉfecture, and she was under perpetual surveillance. The great power of the police over her rested on her submission in writing to the prefect's "rÈglements sanitaires" and his "mesures exceptionelles de surveillance," and infringement of the most arbitrary enactment brought her within the danger of prison. Failing to render her prescribed visit to the police doctor, she was almost certain to find herself a day or two later in Saint-Lazare. Special rules and regulations apart, the irregularities of life and infractions of common law which at times were almost inevitable in the calling she had entered on, were amongst the causes contributive to her troubles with the powers at whose mercy she had placed herself. On the whole, one gathers that the fille de joie paid at siege rates for that none too felicitous title.

She seems to have found herself often on the less desirable side of the prison door; and as the class of filles publiques in Paris has always included some of the handsomest and some of the most ill-favoured, some of the most elegant and some of the least refined, some of the brightest and some of the most villainous women in the town, it may be supposed that the floating population of Saint-Lazare (which amounted sometimes to fourteen hundred) offered a marvellous variety of types.

It was the place of waiting for women and girls whose applications to be registered had not been disposed of, and for the women who were to be tried on police charges; and it was also the place of punishment for those who had received sentence.

The position of the untried was in many respects worse than that of the convicted prisoners. The former had the privilege, to be sure, of hiring what was called a private room, but if they went in penniless they were in a bad case indeed. They had no right to the full prison rations, and were fed strictly on bread and water. The convicted prisoners were warmly clad in winter, but the untried were not allowed to add to the clothing they took in with them a wrap or comforter from the prison wardrobe. In hard weather the public women of the poorer class seem to have suffered keenly both from hunger and from cold. Untried, and presumably innocent (and many honest women were sent to Saint-Lazare on the vaguest accusations or suspicions of the police), they were compelled to receive the visits of the doctors, which were not always of the most delicate character. Women awaiting trial sometimes offered money to escape this humiliation, and the case is recorded of a girl who preferred suicide to submission.

It was better, in respect of physical comfort, on the penal side of the prison. There the women were clad to the season, fed not meanly, and lodged with a certain decency. The untaught and feckless had opportunity to learn a trade, for the workrooms were now conducted on a much more practical principle, and the small bonuses bestowed on the industrious were to some extent a corrective of the femme publique's inveterate indolence. There was, for the first time in the history of French penal discipline, a clean, more or less wholesome, and well ordered infirmary for the treatment of maladies peculiar to that class.

In the material point of view, in a word, the prison of Saint-Lazare was, for convicted prisoners, an infinitely better place than any of its predecessors. But the rÉgime from the standpoint of morals left more than a little to desire.

Certainly, it offered none of the grosser features of the old system. The male attendants had disappeared. The principle of work had been established, and discipline was pretty well maintained in the wards, cells, and refectories. When the women had lived together in all but absolute idleness, their prison was always in a state of disorder, and often in a state of uproar. Quarrels were of daily occurrence, and a quarrel usually issued in a fight. Two women, armed with combs or holding copper coins between their fingers, stood up to do battle for an absent lover, whom each claimed for her own; and the other prisoners made a ring around them, not so much in the interests of fair play, as to see that each combatant got her due share of "punishment." If the warders attempted to interfere, they probably retired with broken heads.

There was almost no restraint upon the women, and the lack of discipline, which permitted sanguinary fights at any hour of the day, pervaded the entire system. The femme publique could receive what visitors she pleased, and her lovers and friends crowded the "parlour," and laughed, sang, and swore at their ease. They brought her money, food, clothing, and whatever else she desired. As long as her purse was filled, she was never without luxuries, and she selected from amongst her fellow-prisoners some table companion, called a mangeuse, with whom she shared her meals. This companionship was usually a liaison, the character of which permits no more than a reference; the cult of Sappho was universal in the women's prisons.

At a pinch for money, or for food more dainty than the prison kitchen furnished, the women had recourse to the prison usurers. These were old crones, very familiar with prison, who committed some petty offence which would entail about a month's confinement; a strictly commercial speculation on their part. They took in with them a certain sum of money, with which they bought clothes from, and made loans to, necessitous prisoners. To procure money a woman would sell the clothes on her back, until "elle restait presque nue, et dans un État indÉcent." Others borrowed from the old women at a fixed rate of interest, which was never less than fifty per cent. These were regarded as debts of honour, and the payments were punctually made.

Letters might be written and received without the scrutiny of the director; and the Écrivains publics, or scriveners of the prison, were continuously employed in composing for their illiterate bond-sisters (always, of course, at a price) epistles to lovers outside, which are described as brÛlantes d'amour. All unknown to the authorities, betrothals of a very curious kind were made through the prison post.

Five male prisoners at La Roquette, let us suppose, were on the point of completing their sentences; but the prospect of liberty without a companion of the other sex held no attractions. Where were the fiancÉes to be found? At Saint-Lazare, where five engaging hearts might be expecting their release at about the same date.

In the men's prison there was always an artist whose services could be hired for an affair of this kind, and to him the five gallants would present themselves, with a request for "a bouquet."

"Of how many flowers?" asked the artist.

"Five."

The artist then traced on paper five separate flowers, to each of which a number was attached; and the five prisoners made their choice of a blossom. From La Roquette the "bouquet" was magically wafted to Saint-Lazare, and once there it seldom failed to reach the hands it was destined for. The recipient summoned to her four other single hearts, and each of the five chose her flower. The same mysterious agency which had introduced the bouquet to Saint-Lazare conveyed a fitting answer to La Roquette, and the affair was arranged.

But the new brooms of the PrÉfecture swept out of the system all these injurious relaxations. At Saint-Lazare, the director took note of every letter that passed into or out of the prison, and the Écrivains publics had need to chasten their epistolary style. At Saint-Lazare, Aspasia had no clothes to sell for pocket-money, for the black gown striped with blue, which was her daily wear, was the property of the State. At Saint-Lazare, she could hold no receptions of her lovers; and the presents of money and jewels with which they sought to solace her through the post could not be converted into spiced meats; for all Aspasia's moneys and other valuables were taken care of by the director, who rewarded her good behaviour with a few sous at a time. At Saint-Lazare, she could seldom use her comb as a weapon of offence, and the hours which had been devoted to the duel were absorbed by some industrial or penal task.

All this implied a moral reform of no inconsiderable kind; but, as has been stated, the morals of the new rÉgime were not perfection. The great shortcoming in this respect was that no attempt was made to classify the prisoners.

This, however, in such a prison as Saint-Lazare should have been regarded by the authorities as a paramount duty and necessity. It has been suggested, though not yet expressly stated, how great a variety of types this population embraced. Not all of these were femmes publiques, and of those who belonged to that class by no means all were of a really abandoned or degraded character. There were prisoners scarcely out of their teens, who had not yet quite crossed the Rubicon, and who were importuned day and night by the old and vicious hags to be rid once for all of their virtue, and betake themselves to the "life of pleasure." The crones who had traded as clothes-dealers and money-lenders in the older prisons were not less active in Saint-Lazare, albeit in another and baser capacity. They acted here as the agents and procuresses of the women who kept houses of ill-fame in Paris and the provincial towns. A large proportion of the population of Saint-Lazare were essentially women of the people, girls fresh from the restraints and hard monotony of shop and warehouse. They were in prison perhaps for the first time, paying the penalty of some not very serious offence against the law. But they would leave the gaol with its taint upon them, and whither should they go? The young and pretty ones amongst them were flattered by the addresses and importunities of the harridans who were there to recruit for the maisons de tolÉrance, and who promised them silk gowns, fine company, and gold pieces. There were here also wives of the middle class, whose first false step in life had changed its whole aspect for them, and who knew that home was closed to them forever. There were young filles d'amour who had sickened of their calling almost before the ink had dried on the page of the register which they had signed, and who longed for a means of escape.

This was good soil to work in, and it would be unjust to say that it was quite neglected. The prison was visited by sisters of mercy and other charitable women, and there were even at that date homes and refuges for the penitent, whose agents sought in the prison and at the prison door to rescue the young offenders, and those whose feet were still half-willing to lead them back to virtue. But for inexperience which lacked strength of character, and for indecision which had no moral or religious sign-post, the influence of the prison was omnipotent. Without separation of the classes there was no hope for the weak, and the classes were not separated. At the moment of her release, at the door of the prison itself, the woman who had made no plan for her future found three to pick from. Philanthropy was ready to receive her into one of the houses of refuge. But she was hungry and ill-clad, and a toothless procuress came forward with an offer of clothes, a dinner, and a soft bed. If she still wavered, there was a skulking limb of the law on the watch—probably the creature by whom she had been arrested—whose "protection" was hers if she would accept it; and in this case, at least, refusal was indeed dangerous. For the police spy knew the "history of the case" and would dog the steps of his victim.

It resulted that, up to close upon the middle of the century, the prison of Saint-Lazare, its intelligent aims notwithstanding, was largely a recruiting ground for the maisons de tolÉrance of Paris and the departments, and a place in which uncertain virtue had every opportunity to decline into finished vice. The maisons de tolÉrance have been mentioned once or twice in this connection, and a word in explanation will dispose of them. The femme publique had her own house or lodging, or she lived with others of her calling, under a common roof, a maison de tolÉrance. Licences for these houses were obtained from the Bureau des Moeurs by a process similar to, though less tedious than, that which has been described. The applicant was almost always a retired femme publique, and her request to the prefect was usually composed for her by an Écrivain public, who kept an office for the purpose, under the discreet sign, "Au tombeau des secrets." He had two styles of composition, the plain and the ornate. Adopting the first, he would write:

"Monsieur le PrÉfet: M——, a native of Paris, and inscribed on your registers during the past eighteen years, has the honour to request your permission to open a licenced house. Her excellent conduct during the lengthened period of her connection with a class which is not remarkable for sober living, will, I trust, be a sufficient guarantee for you that she will not abuse her new position, etc."

For a sample of his finer style, the following petition will serve:

"To his Excellency, the Prefect of Police, whose signally successful administration has changed the face of Paris.

"You will be gracious enough, Monsieur le PrÉfet, to pardon the importunity of my client, Mme. D——, who solicits your authority to open forthwith a maison de tolÉrance. She knows and appreciates the responsibility which this undertaking involves, but the austerity and circumspection of her conduct, her calm and peaceful life in the past, proclaim her fitness; and the inquiries which you may deign to make on my client's account can only result to her advantage."

This was the tenor, and these the terms, of the official requests to the prefect; and if the applicant could show that she was in a position to support an establishment, she generally received her licence. Amongst the women whom she lodged, and the frequenters of her house, she was styled at different periods maman, abbesse, supÉrieure, dame de maison, and maÎtresse de maison. During the Consulate and the Empire, she might be sent to prison as a femme publique; but after the Restoration it became the custom to punish her—on any conviction involving the conduct of her house—by suppression of her licence.

If, however, no attempt at classification was made by the prison director, certain distinctions of rank existed which were generally acknowledged by the prisoners themselves. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris mention a class of elegant adventuresses who were always apart in Saint-Lazare, and who stood as the shining examples of the aristocracy of vice. The passage is interesting and worth translation:

"Amongst the class of swindlers, so numerous in Saint-Lazare, who boast their skill in exploiting the ambitious fools of Paris, you might recognise beneath the prison cap, so coquettishly worn, dames whom you had met perchance in the most elegant houses in town, and whose protection you might have sought. This one was a countess, that one a baroness, and, rightly or wrongly, the badge of nobility was painted on the panels of their carriages. Did you need the friendly word of a minister or the countenance of a capitalist, it was enough that you were known to have one of these angels for your friend. There were four of them in the sewing-room of Saint-Lazare,—rogues and swindlers of the first water! For years these corsairs have laid violent hands on all fortunes they could come at, but they continue to hold a position in society which is in itself a more scathing satire on the morals of the age than any which I am able to imagine. At intervals, these dames are lodged for a time at the country's cost in one or other of the houses of detention, without, however, losing one jot or tittle of their prestige in the world of fashion! When they reappear, society receives them open-armed, as poor banished exiles who have returned to the fatherland, or prodigal children whose wanderings are ended."

Nothing delighted plebeian Saint-Lazare so much as to hear the countesses and baronesses discussing the merits, as a gallant, of this or the other minister, nobleman, poet, or banker of renown; and the interest culminated when the question arose as to which of the two could produce the greater number of letters signed by names with which all Paris was familiar.

Roving like satellites around these gaudy planets were a small class of habitual criminals who, out of prison, served the noble adventuresses in several offices, as spies, go-betweens, receivers, etc. These also enjoyed a certain celebrity in the prison. One of them used to open chestnuts with a knife with which, in a passion of jealousy, she had all but murdered her lover, and which had become an object of the devoutest worship since the lover had gone to hide his scars under the red jacket of the galley-slave. Another woman arrived at the prison in a flutter of pride, eager to display a novel charm which decorated her ears. She also had lost her latest lover, but Monsieur de Paris had been kind enough to extract for her two teeth from the head which he had just severed. The disconsolate mistress had had them set in gold as earrings! Nearly all these women carried on the neck, arms, and upper portion of the body specimens of the work of the professional tattooer; they preserved in this way the names of their successive lovers, and the figured emblems sometimes included the most ignoble devices.

Of the licenced women who restricted themselves mainly if not entirely to the calling of femme publique, Saint-Lazare recognised two separate orders. They were the Panades and the Pierreuses. The Panades carried a high chin in the society of their humbler associates; they were generally members of some maison de tolÉrance, where, so long as the mistress found it profitable to maintain them, they lived in luxurious indolence; fed, and pampered, and extravagantly dressed; captives, but in gilded fetters. In prison they separated themselves, as far as it was possible, from the rest, to whom they never addressed a word. They would be known only by some delicate or romantic name: Irma, ZÉlie, Amanda, Nathalie, Arthemise, Balsamine, LÉocadie, IsmÉnie, Malvina, LodoÏska, Aspasie, Delphine, Reine, and Fleur de Marie.

The Pierreuses regarded them with the bitterest jealousy, and spited and abused them at every opportunity. Memories of a gayer past intensified the feelings of the Pierreuses; they too had been Panades until the abbesse had cast them out, faded and worn, to join the foot-sore legion of street-walkers. They used to whisper mockingly: "You may sneer, you Panades; but we were like you once, and you'll be like us;" and as for the prophetic part of the reproof, it was more than likely to be realised. Like the Panades, the Pierreuses had a peculiar set of names: Boulotte, Rousselette, Parfaite, la Ruelle, la Roche, le Boeuf, Bouquet, Louchon, la Bancale, la Coutille, Colette, Peleton, Crucifix, etc. To the Panade, prison was a place of horror and disgrace; to the Pierreuse it was often the kindest home she had; and as years advanced on her, and the gains of her trade grew ever miserably smaller, the poor creature felt never so happy as in the hands of the police, on the once dreaded journey to Saint-Lazare.

There was a strangely sympathetic side to this saddest of the prisons of Paris. The sick and worn-out were always tenderly regarded by their fellow-prisoners, and a woman who brought in with her a child in arms was an object of intense and almost affectionate interest. If a woman died in the prison, it was not unusual for the rest to club together to provide a substantial and costly funeral, and masses for the repose of her soul. Sometimes the affections of the whole prison, directed upon one weak girl, had the result of saving her from ruin and insanity.

In the early years of the Restoration, Marie M——, a pretty peasant girl, was sent to Saint-Lazare for stealing roses. She had a passion for the flower, and a thousand mystical notions had woven themselves about it in her mind. She said that rose-trees would detach themselves from their roots, glide after her wherever she went, and tempt her to pluck their blossoms. One in a garden, taller than the rest, had compelled her to climb the wall, and gather as many as she could,—and there the gendarmes found her. She was terrified in prison, believing that when she went out the roses would lure her amongst them again, and that she would be sent back to Saint-Lazare.

This poor girl excited the vividest interest amongst the femmes publiques in that sordid place. They plotted to restore her to her reason, christened her Rose, which delighted her, and set themselves to make artificial roses for her of silk and paper. Those fingers, so rebellious at allotted tasks, created roses without number, till the cell of Marie M—— was transformed into a bower. An intelligent director of prison labour seconded these efforts, and opened in Saint-Lazare a workroom for the manufacture of artificial flowers, to which Marie M—— was introduced as an apprentice. Here, making roses from morning till night, and her dread of the future dispelled, the malady of her mind reached its term with the term of her sentence, and she left the prison cured and happy. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris, from whose pages her story is borrowed, declare that Marie M—— became one of the most successful florists in Paris.