The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

by William W. Sanger

The last mistress of Louis XIV. was the famous Madame de Maintenon, the widow of the poet Scarron; a person of remarkable abilities, and old enough to have recovered from the passions which were said to have disturbed her youth. She was introduced to the king as the governess of his illegitimate children, and by her arts contrived not only to wean the king’s heart from his mistress, but even to alienate the children from their mother. For thirty-five years she wielded supreme control over Louis’s mind; and whatever may be said of her early life, and however harsh a judgment must be formed of her political measures, it must be allowed that, in general, her influence was exercised for the good of religion and morality. Under her direction the court became positively devout. Intrigues were concealed, not ostentatiously paraded before the public eye; and the ladies by whom she was surrounded were obliged to lead at least outwardly decorous lives. She might not be able to check the monstrous practices of the Duke of Orleans; but much of the looseness of the court she could, and really did bring to an end. Her royal lover, who at first piqued himself upon rising as far above obligations of fidelity to his mistresses as he considered himself superior to political obligations to his people, resigned himself to the spiritual direction of the marquise, and allowed old age to assert its rights in condemning him to virtue. All things considered, the last twenty years of Louis XIV.’s reign was perhaps the most moral in the whole history of the monarchy.

This is well illustrated in the history of the literature of the day. The leading philosophers, writers, and poets of the age of Louis XIV. forbore to shock decency, and may be read to-day as safely as any modern work. Preachers—Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue—exercised a potent influence over the tone of letters and society. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries provided the stage with a repertory that could never bring a blush to the cheek. Even Molière, who did occasionally let slip a joke of questionable propriety, for the pit’s sake, seems a daring innovator when he is contrasted with his predecessors. Decency is, in fact, one of the most striking characteristics of the literature of the age.

We may also date from the reign of Louis XIV. the final extinction of many of the old feudal rights which were at war with morality. Horrible as it may seem, there were parts of France where the custom allowed the seigneur to debauch the daughter of his vassal without obstacle or penalty. In some provinces it is said to have been customary for the seigneur to enjoy the first night of every girl married within his manor. In others, the peculiar authority of the seigneur over the serfs who were attached to the glebe was held to endow him with the right of using the bodies of their wives and daughters as he saw fit. No written custom justified these monstrous privileges, but frequent allusions to them in the old French writers show that in certain parts they were sanctioned by usage. Louis XIV. made it his especial business to break down the privileges of the nobility, and it was no doubt to the general police regulations he made for the government of the kingdom at large that the extinction of these rights was mainly due.

With the Regency the scene changes. The Duke of Orleans had long been one of the most depraved men in France. So long as Louis XIV. lived he had perforce observed a certain outward decorum; but the death of the monarch, and the duke’s high-handed seizure of the regency, enabled him to give free scope to his propensities. He resided in the Palais Royal, and gave suppers there almost every evening to a select circle of roués and fast women, among whom Madame de Parabère long held the place of honor. The company not unfrequently varied the entertainment by the performance of charades and tableaux, among which the judgment of Paris was a favorite of the regent. The conversation of the guests was so gross as to shock all but the initiated, and when they separated they were generally all intoxicated.[197]

The most startling and horrible feature of these entertainments was the fact that the regent’s daughter, the Duchess of Berri, was almost always present. Her life was a romance. Married while a child to the Due de Berri, by her passionate temper and her levities she was the bane of her husband’s life. She embraced the infidel and licentious doctrines of the age in company with her father, and the pair were so fond of each other that the most horrible suspicions began to gain ground. They were dispelled for a time by the discovery of an intrigue between the duchess and her chamberlain, which so provoked the duke that he seized his wife by the hair and beat her. On his death, which occurred soon afterward, she gave the reins to her passion, and set an example of scandal. At the Luxembourg, where she had apartments, she exhibited the state of a queen, and lover succeeded lover with startling rapidity. At last she seems to have fallen in love with an officer of her guards, named Riom, whose only merit was youth. He subdued her. She became as docile and submissive to him as she had been intractable and haughty with her former lovers, and all Paris was talking of the transformation. After about a year of this liaison, she gave birth to a child. During the pains of childbirth she was not expected to live, and the curate of St. Sulpice was sent for in all haste to administer the extreme unction. The ecclesiastic happened to be a rigid champion of morality, and he refused to administer the rite till Riom had been dismissed from the Luxembourg. The duchess would not consent to part with her lover, and for many hours this strange conflict went on by the bedside of the failing woman. The curate was obstinate, however, and no sacrament was administered; but the duchess recovering, the regent used his authority, and sent Riom to join his regiment. It killed his daughter. She invited her father to sup with her, and used all her eloquence to persuade him to let her marry Riom; but the regent remaining firm, she withdrew to her chamber, took to her bed, and died two days afterward.

In alluding to the regent’s mistresses, a word should be said of the famous Claudine du Tencin, whose adventures shed a flood of light on the morals of the day. She was a pretty girl, of respectable, if not noble family, living in a distant province. To escape from a marriage that was forced on her, she took refuge in a convent. Instead, however, of suiting her habits to her place of residence, she contrived to alter the mode of life at the convent so as to meet her desires, and it became famous for the gayety of its social entertainments and the liveliness of its inmates. One of the gentlemen who were allowed to share its hospitality was the poet Destouches. He was smitten with the pretty Claudine, who acknowledged the charm of his accomplishments, and, after a few months’ intimacy, gave birth to a male child, who became the mathematician and philosopher D’Alembert.

Claudine had a brother, an abbé, a man of considerable cunning, and no principle whatever. He persuaded his sister to go to Paris and seek her fortune. He obtained an introduction for her to the regent, and Claudine contrived to produce such an impression that she was soon installed as titular mistress. This did not last long, however. One day, venturing to remonstrate with the regent on his loose mode of life, his habitual drunkenness, etc., her lover lost patience with her, and suddenly summoned a crowd of his courtiers from the ante-chamber to witness the déshabillé and listen to the sermons of madame. In revenge, Claudine rushed out and became the mistress of the prime minister, Cardinal Dubois. Her brother, the abbé, got a bishopric for his share in the transaction.

At the death of Dubois, Madame du Tencin gave him as successor the Duke of Richelieu, the most famous lady-killer of the court. But she was growing old, and ambition had more attractions for her than love. She became an authoress, wrote religious works and novels, patronized letters, and brought out Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. Her salons became the most fashionable in Paris. It was not a little singular that she should have been the head of one literary clique, and her son, D’Alembert, the chief of another—neither positively jealous of the other, yet living on terms of cold reserve.

Louis XV. trod in the steps of his great-grandfather and the regent. His amours attracted no attention, being evanescent and trifling, till he quarreled with the queen, and bestowed the title of mistress on the Countess of Mailly. This lady had four sisters, three of whom had reached womanhood. They were jealous of their sister’s success, and solicited a share of the royal favor. The monarch graciously granted their prayer, and admitted all four into an associate liaison. He was much hurt when the fifth, at the age of sixteen, declined an interest in this delectable partnership. Falling ill soon afterward, he allowed his confessor to frighten him into parting with the sisters, and when he got well replaced them by the wife of the subfarmer of the finances, Madame le Normand d’Etoiles. He created her Marquise de Pompadour, and compelled the court to recognize her. Happily for him, she was a person of moderate taste and habits. She patronized letters, was the friend of Voltaire, and seems to have employed her influence over the king for his advantage and that of the public. It is recorded, as an instance of the heartlessness of the king, that when she died he stood at a window to watch her funeral pass, and noticing that it was a rainy day, observed, with a smile, “that the marquise had bad weather for her long journey.”

Her successor was Madame Dubarry, a common prostitute, fished out of the Paris stews in consequence of her skill in debauchery. Her real name was Vanbernier; but, in order to present her at court, a nobleman of the name of Dubarry was persuaded to marry her. It was under her reign that the Parc aux Cerfs (in which Madame de Pompadour was said to have had a hand), reached its highest point of celebrity and eclat. This was a royal seraglio filled with the most beautiful girls that could be bought or stolen. The monstrous old debauchee who filled the throne of France had a weakness for very young girls, fifteen being the age at which he preferred his mistresses. Under the skillful directions of Dubarry, a host of pimps and purveyors searched France for young girls to suit the king’s fancy. Where negotiations could not be effected, the prerogative was stretched, and the police authorities judiciously blinded; but we are led to believe that it was seldom necessary to resort to these violent measures, and that French fathers of that day seldom made difficulties except about the sum to be paid. That the king was liberal may be inferred from the sum which this seraglio cost him—not less than one hundred millions of francs. It was a large, handsomely furnished building at Versailles, giving every woman her separate apartments. The king rarely visited each one more than three or four times; but, on the occasion of his first visit, he prided himself on observing the etiquette of a husband. He insisted on the poor child whom he was about to ruin kneeling down by the bedside, and saying her prayers in his presence. It need hardly be observed that the Parc aux Cerfs was the great reservoir from whence the brothels of the time derived their supply of recruits. After a residence of a few weeks or months, in case they became pregnant, the poor children were thrown out upon the world, and ruin was a necessity.