the streets of Paris
were only a slaughter-house." Two hundred and thirty-four buildings were
destroyed, and the losses in property were estimated at a hundred and
fourteen million francs.

The hideous virgins of the Commune are no longer in evidence, but they
have been succeeded by a variety of their sex, in the idle and
fashionable society of the present day, which, if we may believe a
modern romancer, is sufficiently numerous to constitute a still more
formidable menace. His story is put forth as a serious psychological
study of Parisian manners and customs in certain walks of life; the
interest, if not the approval, with which it has been received has been
very marked, and the volume from which we quote is of the hundred and
sixty-first edition. It is in much such a salon as M. Montzaigle has
endeavored to paint that the explanation of these _demi-vierges_ is
furnished to his friend from the provinces by the critical Parisian man
of the world:--"There have happened in Paris, within the last fifteen
years, two grave events,--two _kracks_, as my brother the banker would
say.... Firstly, the krack of modesty. Our epoch may be compared to the
Latin decadence or to the Renaissance, in the matter of love. Our young
girls (I refer to those of the idle world of pleasure) no longer serve
naked at the table of the Medicis; they do not wear necklaces of
representations of the generative organs; but they are as knowing in
matters of love as those Florentines and those Roman women. Who troubles
himself to refrain from speaking before them of the last scandal? To
what theatrical representations are they not taken? What romances have
they not read? And yet conversation, books, the theatre, these are only
words.... There are at Paris, in the world of society, professors of
defloration, men on the hunt for innocence: ... the first lesson is given
to young girls on the evening of their first ball; the course is
continued through the season; when the summer comes, the promiscuousness
of the watering-places or the sea-beach will permit the professional
deflorator to put the finishing touch to his work....

"The second krack is that of the _dot_, as pernicious for the modern
virgin as that of modesty. There are no longer any innocent young girls,
but there are, also, no more rich young girls. The millionaire gives two
hundred thousand francs of dot to his daughter, that is to say, six
thousand francs of income, that is to say, nothing