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]