have charge of the heart, from the time they stand in place of the absent family, take care of and be anxious about the morality and higher nature of these youths, who are the advance-guard of the future, and have been confided by France to their care? And yet this corruption, all odious though it be, is not to be placed by the side of the fierce selfishness of those students who, with a calculating heartlessness, seduce workwomen, artless girls who become attached to them. In order to show the connection between seduction and prostitution, I instance the following among those which abound on this melancholy subject:— A rich foreign student, whose parents used to send him 600 to 700 francs monthly for his personal expenses, became acquainted with a young shopwoman living away from home in Paris. After keeping her for some time, he deserted her when she had told him she expected to become a mother. This woman in the most frightful poverty, reduced to bring forth her child in the street, was conveyed to the hospital. Despite the student’s unfeeling conduct to herself, she was hoping he would provide for the daughter she had given birth to; but he proceeded to take away from her her last hope, and informed her, when sending her 30 francs, that if she had the audacity to annoy him, French police and French law would very soon set all that to rights. Stunned by this last blow, the young girl never again arose from her bed of sorrow. Let us say, for the honour of human nature, that there was a general feeling of indignation among those who knew about this odious action; they did not know how to brand this selfish debauchee who imagined he could, with 30 francs, atone for the murder of a woman and the sacrifice of a child. I, however, consider he was generous, this student. The laws of his own country, sentencing him to allow the deserted child and agonised mother a means of support in proportion to his fortune, might, it is true, have imposed upon him a sufficient fine; but, as he was living under the personal advantage of a code of laws he had been wise enough to call in to his aid, as a protection for his profligacy, and as he was the sole judge of the reparation, he gave 30 francs too much. Perhaps he denied himself an orgie; he showed himself superior to a code which, to preserve the prerogatives of debauchery inviolable, does not condescend to grant the consideration to the human soul which it bestows upon broken glass. The French legislator has said to us, in effect: “_I forbid_ you to interfere with this man; he is my chosen one, my anointed, the apple of my eye; I pronounce him inviolable. Let him cause ruin, let him make victims, I applaud; it is his right, it is my principle of the education of youth.”[38]