As to the military man on active service, he must, on that account, reject a poor girl who would gain an honourable livelihood by working; if a marriage contract with her is signed, the minister of war intervenes to punish the delinquent and the notary guilty of this (so-considered) discreditable transaction.[46] The same prohibition is enforced by the commanders of the army against making reparation for a wrong to a seduced woman who might not have any marriage portion whatever; consequently, according to the reports of the societies of St. Vincent de Paul and François Régis, the formal opposition of superiors to the legitimation of soldiers’ natural children. It is impossible to estimate the lax morality which results from this. Independently of the scandals caused by particular leading military men, it has been noticed that illegitimate births increase, in towns, in direct proportion to the presence and increase of garrisons, which have also carried prostitution into out-townships till then preserved from this pest. Of this, an opinion may be formed from the fact that our soldiers defile themselves to the extent of maintaining a third of the common prostitutes; that uniform which should only be met with on the field of honour, even serves to enable soldiers to obtain a reduction of one half the payment in brothels. It is incredible how far the license of knights who wear the colours of the famous women of our streets extends; their _military honour_ is the negation of the virtues which make the good citizen. Idleness, provocations, contests with non-military power, drunken and degrading brawls, in which the name of _father of a family_ is thrown in the teeth of the moral soldier by way of insult,—such is the life of a great number of troopers who have never been in action. Base gratifications have so perverted their moral sense, that brothers carry off from sisters who have not enough to live upon, the fruit of their earnings; insensible even to the distress of indigent parents, they frequently spend their pay in a few days’ orgie. These are the veterans who, adopting the manners of courtesans, spend their time, as _they_ do, in tightening their waists, arranging their hair, and loading themselves with perfumes. An automaton-like precision and instincts of _slaughter_, will be powerful enough, nevertheless, to make them deserve the distinctions to which the terms _country_ and _honour_ are attached.