II.

Ses camarades se saisissent de moi et de Quartilla.

His comrades seized hold of Quartilla and me.

The profession of Quartilla corresponded to that which is followed by

our ladies of the Palace Royal. This Palace Royal is a sort of Babylon,

with this difference; that the former prostitute themselves all the year

round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean

beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient

history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus,

and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since

religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions,

and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, the impostures of

priests, the despotism of kings, the degradation and stupidity of the

people, have been the direct fatal effects of religions; and seeing that

the blind fanaticism of martyrs and the brutal cruelty of tyrants is a

hundred times more deplorable than a sacrifice equally agreeable to the

victim and to the one who officiates at the sacrifice; and seeing that

the enjoyment and giving of life is no less holy than the maceration and

caging of innocent animals.

The origin of courtesans is lost in the deepest antiquity. It appears

that it was one of the patriarchal customs to enjoy them, for Judah slept

with Thamar, widow of his two sons, and who, to seduce him, disguised

herself as a courtesan. Another courtesan, Rahab, played a great role in

the first wars of the people of the Lord: it was this same Rahab who

married Solomon, father of Boaz, fourth forefather of David, and

thirty-second forefather of Jesus Christ, our divine Savior. Yet the

eternal sagacity of man has failed to take notice of this profession and

to resent the injustice done it by the scorn of men. The elected kings

of the people, the man who adopts the word father according to the

flesh, are descendants of a courtesan.

For the rest, it must be admitted that many who follow this noble

profession are unworthy of it and only too well justify the ignominy

which is levelled against the entire class. You see these miserable

creatures with livid complexions and haggard eyes, with voices of

Stentor, breathing out at the same time the poisons which circulate in

their veins and the liquors with which they are intoxicated; you see on

their blemished and emaciated bodies, the marks of beings more hideous

than they (twenty come to satisfy their brutal passions for every one of

them); you listen to their vile language, you hear their oaths and

revolting expressions: to go to these Megeres is often to encounter

brigands and assassins: what a spectacle! It is the deformity of vice

in the rags of indigence.

Ah! But these are not courtesans, they are the dregs of cities. A

courtesan worthy of the name is a beautiful woman, gracious and amiable,

at whose home gather men of letters and men of the world; the first

magistrates, the greatest captains: and who keeps men of all professions

in a happy state of mind because she is pleasing to them, she inspires in

them a desire for reciprocal pleasure: such an one was Aspasia who, after

having charmed the cultured people of Athens was for a long time the good

companion of Pericles, and contributed much, perhaps, towards making his

century what it was, the age of taste in arts and letters. Such an

one also was Phryne, Lais, Glycera, and their names will always be

celebrated; such, also, was Ninon d'Enclos, one of the ornaments of

the century of Louis XIV, and Clairon, the first who realized all the

grandeur of her art; such an one art thou, C-----, French Thalia, who

commands attentions, I do not say this by way of apology but to share the

opinion of Alceste.

A courtesan such as I have in mind may have all the public and private

virtues. One knows the severe probity of Ninon, her generosity, her

taste for the arts, her attachment to her friends. Epicharis, the soul

of the conspiracy of Piso against the execrable Nero, was a courtesan,

and the severe Tacitus, who cannot be taxed with a partiality for

gallantry, has borne witness to the constancy with which she resisted the

most seductive promises and endured the most terrible tortures, without

revealing any of the details of the conspiracy or any of the names of the

conspirators.

These facts should be recognized above that ascetic moral idea which

consists of the sovereign virtue of abstinence in defiance of nature's

commands and which places weakness in these matters along with the most

odious crimes. Can one see without indignation Suetonius' reproach of

Caesar for his gallantries with Servilia, with Tertia, and other Roman

ladies, as a thing equal to his extortions and his measureless ambitions,

and praising his warlike ardor against peoples who had never furnished

room for complaint to Rome? The source of these errors was the theory of

emanations. The first dreamers, who were called philosophers imagined

that matter and light were co-eternal; they supposed that was all one

unformed and tenebrous mass; and from the former they established the

principle of evil and of all imperfection, while they regarded the latter

as sovereign perfection. Creation, or, one might better say

co-ordination, was only the emanation of light which penetrated chaos,

but the mixture of light and matter was the cause of all the inevitable

imperfections of the universe. The soul of man was part and parcel of

divinity or of increased light; it would never attain happiness until it

was re-united to the source of all light; but for it, we would be free

from all things we call gross and material, and we would be taken into

the ethereal regions by contemplation and by abstinence from the

pleasures of the flesh. When these absurdities were adopted for the

regulation of conduct, they necessarily resulted in a fierce morality,

inimical to all the pleasures of life, such, in a word, as that of the

Gymnosophists or, in a lesser measure, of the Trappists.

But despite the gloomy nonsense of certain atrabilious dreamers, the

wonderful era of the Greeks was that of the reign of the courtesans.

It was about the houses of these that revolved the sands of Pactolus,

their fame exceeded that of the first men of Greece. The rich offerings

that decorated the temples of the Gods were the gifts of these women,

and it must be remembered that most of them were foreigners, originating,

for the most part, in Asia Minor. It happened that an Athenian

financier, who resembled the rest of his tribe as much as two drops of

water, proposed once to levy an impost upon the courtesans. As he spoke

eloquently of the incalculable advantages which would accrue to the

Government by this tax, a certain person asked him by whom the courtesans

were paid. "By the Athenians," replied our orator, after deliberation.

"Then it would be the Athenians who would pay the impost," replied the

questioner, and the people of Athens, who had a little more sense than

certain legislative assemblies, hooted the orator down, and there was

never any more question about a tax upon courtesans.

Corinth was famous for the number and beauty of its courtesans, from

which comes the proverb: "It is not given to every man to go to Corinth";

there they ran the risk of losing their money and ruining their health.

The cause of this great vogue of courtesans in Greece was not the

supposed ugliness of the sex, as the savant Paw imagined, and

contradicted by the unanimous evidence of ancient authors and of modern

travellers; but rather, the retired and solitary life which the women of

the country led. They lived in separate apartments and never had any

communication with the streets or with the residences of men "the inner

part of the house which was called the women's apartments," said

Cornelius Nepos (preface). Strangers never visited them; they rarely

visited their nearest relations. This was why marriage between brothers

and sisters was authorized by law and encouraged by usage; the sisters

were exposed to the attacks of their brothers because they lived

separated from them.

With the Romans, as with us, the virtuous women corrupted somewhat the

profession of the courtesans. The absolute seclusion of women was never

the fashion at Rome and the stories we have on the authority of Valerius

Maximus on the chastity and modesty of the first Roman matrons merit the

same degree of belief as the legend of Romulus and Remus being brought up

by a wolf, the rape of Lucretia or the tragic death of Virginia. On the

contrary, in Livy, a great admirer of the customs of the early days of

Rome, we find that in those times a great number of Roman women of the

noblest families were convicted of having poisoned their husbands and

condemned to death for this hideous crime: that, by no means shows a very

exquisite and tender conjugal sentiment. During the period of the second

Punic War with what energy they went about the city seeking the repeal of

the law which took out of their hands the custody of jewels and precious

stones! A repeal which they obtained despite the opposition of Cato the

Censor. It appears that the profession of the courtesan was generally

practised by the freed-women; their manner necessarily showed the results

of their education. But the young sparks of Rome never paid much

attention to them, they preferred to have love affairs with the wives of

their friends. For one Sallust who ruined himself with freedwomen, there

were five Cupienniuses; "Cupiennius, that admirer of the pudenda garbed

in white," Hor. Sat. I, ii, 36. Delia, Lesbia, Ipsythillia, Corinna,

Nemesis, Neeria, Cynthia, Sulpitia, Lycimnia, and almost all the women to

whom, under real or assumed names, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid,

Horace, and others, addressed their erotic compositions, were Roman

married women. Horace is the only one who celebrated a freedwoman in

some of his odes. This is due, however, to his taste for variety and

perhaps also, to his birth, for he himself was the son of a freedwoman.

Ovid's Art of Love and the Satires of Juvenal reveal the extent to which

gallantry was the fashion at Rome and Cato would never have praised the

conduct of that young man who had recourse to a public house if that had

been an ordinary course of procedure.

In Europe of the middle ages, the priests and abbots helped to some

extent in reviving the profession of the courtesans. Long before, Saint

Paul had stated in his Epistles that it was permitted to the apostles

of the Lord to take with them everywhere a sister for charity. The

deaconesses date from the first century of the church. But the celibacy

of the clergy was not universally and solidly established until about the

eleventh century, under the pontificate of Gregory VII. During the

preceding century, the celebrated Marozie and Theodore had put their

lovers successively upon the chair of St. Peter, and their sons and

grandsons, as well. But after the priests had submitted to celibacy they

ostensibly took the concubines of which, alas! our housekeepers of today

are but feeble vestiges. The Spanish codes of the middle ages were often

concerned with the rights of the concubines of priests (mancebas de los

clerigos) and these chosen ones of the chosen ones of the Lord invariably

appeared worthy of envy. Finally the courtesans appeared in all their

magnificence in the Holy City, and modern Rome atoned for the rebuffs and

indignities these women had been compelled to endure in ancient Rome.

The princes of the church showered them with gifts, they threw at their

feet the price of redemption from sin, paid by the faithful, and the age

of Leo X was for Rome a wonderful epoch of fine arts, belles lettres, and

beautiful women. But a fanatical monk from Lower Germany fell upon this

calm of the church and this happy era of the harlots; since then the

revenues of the sacred college have continued to decrease, the beautiful

courtesans have abandoned the capital of the Christian world, and their

pleasures have fled with them. And can anyone longer believe in the

perfection of the human race, since the best, the most holy of human

institutions has so visibly degenerated!