In those days gentlemen bathed before receiving the order of chivalry. When one gave a ball it was customary and gallant to offer all the guests, especially the ladies, a free bath. When Louis XI. went out to sup with his loyal subjects, the honest tradespeople of Paris, he always found a hot bath at his disposal. Finally, it was considered a severe penance to forbid a person from bathing, as was done in the case of Henry IV., who was excommunicated. Paris had many bath-houses. From early dawn until sunset the streets were filled, with cryers for bath-houses, who invited all passers-by to enter. In the time of Charles VI., bath-keepers introduced vapor baths. Some of these latter were entirely given up to women; others were reserved for the King and gentlemen of the court. The price of vapor baths was fixed by Police ordinance at twenty centimes for a vapor bath and forty centimes for those who washed afterwards. This price was subject to revision only at the pleasure of the municipal authorities. During times of epidemics vapor baths were discontinued. It was for sanitary reasons, probably, that an order of the Mayor of Paris, named Delamere, forbade all persons taking vapor baths until after Christmas eve, “on penalty of a heavy fine.” This same proclamation was repeated by act of Parliament on December 13th, 1553, “the penalty corporeal punishment for offending bath-keepers.” Parisian vapor baths had such wide-spread reputations and success that an Italian doctor of the sixteenth century by the name of Brixanius, who arrived in Paris, wrote the following verses: “Balnea si calidis queras sudantia thermis, In claris intrabis aqua, ubi corpus inungit, Callidus, et multo medicamine spargit aliptes’, Mox ubi membra satis geminis mundata lacertis Laverit et sparsos crines siccaverit, albo Marcida subridens componit corpora lecto.” Already, in the time of Saint Louis, the number of bath-keepers was so great that they had a trades union; they were almost all barbers, too; they washed the body, cut hair, trimmed corns and nails, shaved and leeched. Bath houses more than multiplied from the twelfth century, imitations of Oriental customs, due to the crusaders. Baths were run not only by men, but by old harridans and fast girls. No respectable woman ever entered a public bath-house; Christine de Pisan bears witness to that fact in the following lines: “As to public baths and vapor baths, they should be avoided by honest women except for good cause; they are expensive and no good comes out of them, for many obvious reasons; no woman, if she be wise, would trust her honor therein, if she desire to keep it.” The establishments known as vapor baths, as early as the time of Saint Louis, had already degenerated into houses of prostitution. The police, in defense of public morality, were finally obliged to forbid fast women and diseased men from frequenting such places.