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]