The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals.  The favourite club, which had its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century.  Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer.  A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women’s clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.

Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy.  He complained without ambages of moeurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an effrayable debordement pederastique, even as the verole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of passion, the xvith century.  From the military the fleau spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agissements des Pederastes.  A general gathering of “La Sainte Congregation des glorieux Padarastes” was held in the old Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water.  They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices:  bourgeois, richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it.  At the Allee des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.:  no policeman or ronde de nun’ dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo.  This nuisance was at length suppressed by the municipal administration.

The Empire did not improve morals.  Balls of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, ’64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognise them.  There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l’Imperatrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe:  hence “faire l’Imperatrice” meant to be used carnally.  The site, a splendid hotel in the Allee des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-General, who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings.  The club was broken up on July 16, ’64.  During the same year La Petite Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, “Les echappes de Sodome”:  it discusses the letter of M. Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes.  For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu’s well-known Etudes.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-class is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty five.