red as a State
institution of public health; the word _toleration_ being used in this
connection, signifying that it is regarded as a tolerated evil.
Nevertheless, this distinction only rests on uncertain and subtle
characters. To tolerate, to license, to organize, to recognize and
favor, to protect and recommend are notions which merge into one
another insensibly. As soon as the State tolerates prostitution and
brothels, it is obliged to enter into official contracts with
prostitutes and proxenetism; therefore, it recognizes them. Moreover,
the services which it renders must be paid for. It is therefore
necessary that prostitutes and proxenets should pay their tribute to
the State and to the doctors: but "the one who pays commands."

No doubt this proverb must not be taken to the letter, nevertheless
the one who pays always exerts a certain pressure on the one who
receives, and for this reason proxenets and inscribed prostitutes have
some idea that they form part of an official institution, which raises
their position not only in their own eyes but in those of the
irreflective masses. I will cite two examples which show how
effectively the public organization of a vicious social anomaly
confuses ideas in persons of limited intelligence.

One of my friends was engaged in combating the official regulation of
prostitution. A woman, who misunderstood his object, came to him
complaining bitterly of the loose life her daughter was leading, and
asked him if he could not help her by placing her in a brothel
licensed by the State; she would then be under the care of a paternal
government!

An old proxenet in Paris requested the authorities to transfer the
management of her brothel to her daughter, aged nineteen. Her house,
she said, was honest and managed in a loyal and religious spirit; her
daughter was capable and initiated into the business and would carry
it on in the same irreproachable manner as hitherto.

These two examples of ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of
the morality of the system. In _La Maison Tellier_ Guy de Maupassant
has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prostitute,
the proxenet, and their clients.

For reasons previously mentioned no real confidence can be placed in
periodical medical examination of prostitutes; on the contrary it
gives the male public a false security. The object of these medical
visits is to eliminate diseased women from circulation and compel them
t