end of the
century, the _bourgeoisie_ begins to assume the airs, habits,
extravagances, and even the immoralities, of the higher classes.

Below the _bourgeoise_ was the workingwoman, whose ideas were limited
to those of a savage and who was a woman only in sex. Her ideas of
morality, decency, conjugal happiness, children, education, were
limited by quarrels, profanity, blows, fights. At that time brandy was
the sole consolation for those women; it supplied their moral force
and their moral resistance, making them forget cold, hunger, fatigue,
evil, and giving them courage and patience; it was the fire that
sustained, comforted, and incited them.

These women were not much above the level of animals, but from them,
we find, often sprang the entertainers of the time, the queens of
beauty and gallantry--Laguerre, D'Hervieux, Sophie Arnould. Having
lost their virtue with maturity, these women had no sense of morality;
in them, nothing preserved the sense of honor--their religion
consisted of a few superstitious practices. The constituents of duty
and the virtue of women they could only vaguely guess; marriage itself
was presented to them under the most repugnant image of constant
contention.

It was in such an atmosphere as this that the daughters of these women
grew up. Their talents found opportunity for display at the public
dances where some of them would in time attract especial attention.
Some became opera singers, dancers, or actresses, and were very
popular; others became influential, and, through the efforts of
some lover, allured about them a circle of ambitious _debauches_ or
aspirants for social favors. Through their adventures they made their
way up in the world to high society.

From this element of prostitution was disentangled, to a large extent,
the great gallantry of the eighteenth century. This was accomplished
by adding an elegance to debauch, by clothing vice with a sort of
grandeur, and by adorning scandal with a semblance of the glory and
grace of the courtier of old. Possessing the fascination of all gifts,
prodigalities, follies, with all the appetites and tendencies of the
time, these women attracted the society of the period--the poets,
the artists, even the scientists, the philosophers, and the nobility.
Their reputation increased with the number and standing of their
lovers. The genius of the eighteenth century circled about these
street belles--they represented the fortune of pleasure.