The applicant underwent a most minute interrogation. She was asked if she were a married woman, a widow, or a spinster; if her parents were living and whether she lived with them, or why she had separated from them. She was asked how long she had inhabited Paris, and whether she had no friends there whose interest the magistrate might evoke for her. She was asked whether she had ever been arrested, how often, and for what causes. She was asked whether she had ever followed the calling of _femme publique_ in any other place, and finally, what were the true motives of her application. Procès-verbal of the examination was drawn up, and the applicant had then to be seen by a medical man attached to the police service. Next, her certificate of birth was asked for, and if she could not produce it, and had been born out of Paris, she must give the name of the mayor of her department. The magistrate wrote forthwith to the mayor, and after setting forth the facts which the applicant had submitted in her examination, requested him to report upon them, asking particularly whether the relatives of the woman could not be moved to induce her to return to them. All this was done in the case where the girl or woman went alone to solicit her enrollment, but it has to be said that not infrequently one or both of the parents of the applicant attended with her at the bureau, to support her request! When every effort of the magistrate had proved unavailing, a final Procès-verbal was prepared, to the effect that such-and-such a female had requested to be inscribed "_comme fille publique_," and had been enrolled on the decision of the examining magistrate, "after undertaking to submit to the sanitary and other regulations established by the Prefecture for women of that class." Thus, and in all cases by her own act, was she launched upon those turbid waters. Of the 3517 women on the Paris police registers in 1831, 931 were from Paris and the department of the Seine, 2170 from the provincial departments, 134 from foreign countries, and the remaining 282 had been unable or unwilling to satisfy the authorities as to their place of birth. There were amongst them seamstresses, modistes, dressmakers, florists, lacemakers, embroiderers, glove-makers, domestic servants, hawkers, milliners, hairdressers, laundresses, silk-workers, jewellers, actresses or figurantes, acrobats, and representatives of many other trades and callings, together with six teachers of music, and one "landscape painter." As regards the education of this army of outcasts, rather more than one-half were unable to sign their names on the cards or badges which they received from the bureau; a somewhat smaller number appended "an almost illegible signature" (_fort mal, et d'une manière à peine lisible_); whilst a hundred, or thereabouts, wrote "a neat and correct hand."