According to the authors of _Les Prisons de l'Europe_, Charlemagne was the first monarch of France who "formally punished" the calling of the _femme publique_. His edict swept the field, so to speak; the _femme publique_ (known then, however, as the _femme du monde_) and all who gave asylum to her were absolutely banned. The prison, the whip, and the pillory were their portion; the keepers of houses of ill-fame had to carry the pillory on their backs to the market-place, and the women whom they lodged had to stand in it. This edict, completely prohibitive, was in force during four centuries, and its principal result seems to have been to augment the custom of Aspasia. She and her industry increased a thousand-fold. The state of France in this respect struck Saint Louis with horror on his return from the Holy Land. His _ordonnance_ of 1254 bade the women of the town renounce their calling, on pain of being deprived of house and clothing, "even of the clothes in which they stood up." If, after being warned, these women continued as before, they were to be banished the country. But, wiser and more humane than Charlemagne, Saint Louis set apart for repentant Magdalens a shelter in the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and drew from his private purse the moneys to lodge and maintain two hundred of them. The new law, enforced with as much rigour as the old one, proved every whit as impotent. Aspasia went her ways in secret, and devised many arts. She borrowed the manners and the costume of her more respectable sisters (_Les prostituées singèrent les manières et le costume des femmes honnêtes_), glided into the churches, and went with sidelong glances through the most frequented places of the town. This clandestine pursuit of the calling, and the hypocrisy which of necessity it bred on every side, were beyond measure distressing to Saint Louis. A good king, and a pious one, he considered the matter deeply, and then, in the interests, as he believed, of public and private morals, he resolved upon a novel and hazardous measure. It was, to allow the _femmes publiques_ a degree of liberty, and the exercise of their calling, under certain strict conditions. Amongst other regulations, they were to live in houses specially appointed to them, and these houses were to be closed at six o'clock in the evening, no person being allowed to enter them after that hour.