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._