ersons who were convicted of bigamy were condemned to be
publicly flogged, and, sometimes, to be afterward hanged,--in the latter
case, they were executed between two distaffs. Those convicted of the
crime of bestiality were usually burned at the stake, the animal
undergoing the same penalty. The _filles de mauvaise vie_ were more
numerous than ever, and all the streets formerly assigned to them were
still occupied by them. In 1619, a new decree of the Parliament against
them forbade all persons to let them houses or lodgings, under penalty
of confiscation of their property for the benefit of the poor, and
directed all _vagabonds_ and _filles debauchees_ to quit _la ville et
faulxbourgs de Paris_ within twenty-four hours, under pain of
imprisonment. Every bourgeois and citizen of Paris was required to aid
the first huissier, or sergeant of the Chatelet, or any other officer of
justice, who called upon him to do so, in enforcing this regulation,
under penalty of a fine of a hundred livres parisis.

All these legal penalties, necessarily inefficient in themselves, were
rendered doubly so by the dissolute code of morals, _les moeurs
Italiennes_, as they were called under Mazarin, that obtained in all
classes of society. Under Louis XIV, an ordinance of 1684, drawn up by
Colbert, was especially directed against those unfortunate women who
were afflicted with disease: on entering the hospital they were first
whipped, and then subjected to hard labor and the most rigorous
confinement. Under the Regency, in 1720, Paris was greatly outraged by
the tragic death of the Comtesse de Roncy, a very pretty young wife,
who, justly suspicious of her husband, courageously went to seek him one
day at the house of a certain charmer whom he was in the habit of
visiting. On this occasion, he was not there, but the unhappy wife
recognized his portrait on the bracelet which her rival was wearing; the
controversy soon became heated, the neighbors of this Rue Git-le-Coeur
flocked in and took sides against the intruder, who, in the end, was
thrown out the window and died on the following day. The murderesses
were all sent to the Chatelet. Under Louis XV, the prodigal luxury
displayed by the actresses and opera-dancers, the _femmes a la mode_,
who were called _des impures_, and the effrontery of the grand seigneurs
and rich bankers who maintained them in this state, became, if possible,
more scandalous than ever; it was said, for example, that the