Probably with a view to enlarge the discretion of the magistrates, a new ordinance was passed in 1778, renewing, in peremptory language, the prohibitive provisions of the enactment of 1560. This ordinance, which bears the name, and probably emanated from the office of Lenoir, the police magistrate, declares that no public woman shall hereafter try to catch (_raccrocher_) men on the wharves or boulevards, or in the streets or squares of Paris, under penalty of being shaved, whipped, and imprisoned; that no householder shall let his house, or any part thereof, to prostitutes, under penalty of five hundred francs fine, and that boarding-house keepers shall allow no men and women to sleep together without seeing their marriage contract. The most curious feature in connection with this ordinance was the fact that it was not intended or held to interfere with established brothels, which the government continued to license as before. It was intended to affect private prostitutes only. We may judge of its success from the general statement that, soon after its passage, the streets and squares were thronged with prostitutes. No woman or modest person could walk the garden of the Tuileries at night. Lewd women showed themselves at their windows in a state of nudity, and shocked public decency still more glaringly by their postures in the streets. It was, in fact, so complete a failure, that two years after its establishment it was practically repealed by a new police regulation. In 1791, the whole body of the legislation of the monarchy was abolished, and in its stead the republican Legislature enacted a code which was the only law in force in France. That code making no reference to prostitution, it was inferred by lawyers that women had a natural right to prostitute their bodies if they chose, and accordingly the traffic became open and free. The consequence of this was a tremendous development of the vice. Prostitutes established themselves in every street, and monopolized every public place. Paris became scarcely habitable for modest women. An outcry against this monstrous state of things reached the Executive Directory in 1796, and that body sent a message to the Council of Five Hundred, begging them to legislate on the subject. The message was clear and able, calling upon the council to define "prostitute," and suggesting that "reiterated offenses legally proved, public notoriety, or arrest in the act," appeared to constitute proof of prostitution. It seemed to call for penalties, in the shape of imprisonment, on women exercising this calling. But neither this suggestion, nor a subsequent project of the same character was ever carried into effect. Napoleon swept the Palais Royal of the prostitutes who had made it their head-quarters, and broke up some of the greatest brothels by harassing their inmates in various ways, but he made no law on the subject.