Still another cause is the number of illegitimate children, who, regarded as the children of the state, are reared and educated by the state, and at a certain age are left to provide for themselves. Many of the young men seek military service, while the young women, for the most part, become what their mothers have been before them. Their tastes and their ideas are superior to their rank. They are unwilling to look for husbands in a lower grade, and cannot secure them in a higher. Gallants and lovers, however, are abundant and persevering, and under the circumstances seldom woo in vain. France, moreover, tolerates, if it does not encourage, relations that other countries raise their hands in holy horror at. It does not act on the conviction that the absence of one virtue expels all the other virtues; it refuses to brand and ostracize a woman because she has merely been unfortunate, or to make her responsible for the wrong she has sustained at the hands of man. France, it must be admitted, is juster to women than other nations are, for it gives them an opportunity to be independent and advance themselves, even though they have committed what we might regard as the unpardonable sin. [Sidenote: THE DIFFERENT GRADES.] The first circle of the demi-monde in Paris and other French cities, though it is not so called, includes the educated and rather refined women I have mentioned, who from poverty, dependence, or want of fixed position, cannot marry in the rank to which they properly belong. Their antecedents shape their destiny, and they hardly regard the relation they have been accustomed to consider inevitable as they would regard it had they been differently trained, and had the ethics of the nation been less liberal. The second circle is represented largely by the grisettes. Many of them marry, and live domestically all their lives; but many others have a gay and coquettish disposition, prefer lovers to husbands, excitement to routine, display to conventionality, and the exhilarations of to-day to the serenities of to-morrow. These are truly of the half world, for they are half married, and yet wholly independent. They live with their masculine friends; take care of their apartments; are their companions at concerts, balls, and theatres, in the evening; and yet they have their regular daily duties at the shops where they are employed. They are not isolated; they have society of their own; are contented, cheerful, and often enjoy themselves better than the women who have been honored by wedlock.