r 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