se at
eleven o'clock in the evening?

Where do you wish that our mass of celibates should sow their wild
oats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the
governments or the governed? The social order is like the small boys
who stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report of
the firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has it
recognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must be
allowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question of
legislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and social
dilemma created by this balance of public virtue in the matter of
marriage. It is not our business to solve this difficulty; but suppose
for a moment that society in order to save a multitude of families,
women and honest girls, found itself compelled to grant to certain
licensed hearts the right of satisfying the desire of the celibates;
ought not our laws then to raise up a professional body consisting of
female Decii who devote themselves for the republic, and make a
rampart of their bodies round the honest families? The legislators
have been very wrong hitherto in disdaining to regulate the lot of
courtesans.

XXIII.
The courtesan is an institution if she is a necessity.

This question bristles with so many ifs and buts that we will bequeath
it for solution to our descendants; it is right that we shall leave
them something to do. Moreover, its discussion is not germane to this
work; for in this, more than in any other age, there is a great
outburst of sensibility; at no other epoch have there been so many
rules of conduct, because never before has it been so completely
accepted that pleasure comes from the heart. Now, what man of
sentiment is there, what celibate is there, who, in the presence of
four hundred thousand young and pretty women arrayed in the splendors
of fortune and the graces of wit, rich in treasures of coquetry, and
lavish in the dispensing of happiness, would wish to go--? For shame!

Let us put forth for the benefit of our future legislature in clear
and brief axioms the result arrived at during the last few years.

XXIV.
In the social order, inevitable abuses are laws of nature, in
accordance with which mankind should frame their civil and political
institutes.

XXV.
"Adultery is like