"To his Excellency, the Prefect of Police, whose signally successful administration has changed the face of Paris. "You will be gracious enough, Monsieur le Préfet, to pardon the importunity of my client, Mme. D——, who solicits your authority to open forthwith a _maison de tolérance_. She knows and appreciates the responsibility which this undertaking involves, but the austerity and circumspection of her conduct, her calm and peaceful life in the past, proclaim her fitness; and the inquiries which you may deign to make on my client's account can only result to her advantage." This was the tenor, and these the terms, of the official requests to the prefect; and if the applicant could show that she was in a position to support an establishment, she generally received her licence. Amongst the women whom she lodged, and the frequenters of her house, she was styled at different periods _maman_, _abbesse_, _supérieure_, _dame de maison_, and _maîtresse de maison_. During the Consulate and the Empire, she might be sent to prison as a _femme publique_; but after the Restoration it became the custom to punish her—on any conviction involving the conduct of her house—by suppression of her licence. If, however, no attempt at classification was made by the prison director, certain distinctions of rank existed which were generally acknowledged by the prisoners themselves. The authors of _Les Prisons de Paris_ mention a class of elegant adventuresses who were always apart in Saint-Lazare, and who stood as the shining examples of the aristocracy of vice. The passage is interesting and worth translation: