great numbers of Orientals who swarmed to the capital),40 public opinion in general, particularly the then all-powerful bourgeoisie, was much less indulgent than it is today in its attitude toward sexual behavior Following the trial of Oscar Wilde which ended in his being sentenced to hard labor, many French writers refused to sign the protest petition which others, more courageous, sent to the English judges. After the trial of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, high society in Paris pitilessly closed its doors to him, the proof of this intolerance is found in the fact that in Proust's novel M. de Charlus takes every possible precaution to keep from disclosing himself

twenty years later, he would have gloried in revealing his sexual proclivities at the worldly parties he attended.

As for the law, it was, in 1900, Just what it was until 1942 that is, somewhat more liberal than it is today as far as relations with minors are concerned.

The police force, which had at its head a number of distinguished men, was much less active than it is today in the matter of morals, and in general, acted with tact and discretion. In 1904, acting upon the complaint of a neighbor, the Vice Squad arrested all the participants of a "Roman orgy" as they were called in those days which was being held in Montparnasses at the home of a rather celebrated painter The orgy was taking place behind closed doors, and there were no minors present. The painter and his friends were convicted, but they appealed. On June 19, 1904, the Appeals Court acquitted them and reprimanded the Vice Squad for having exceeded its authority I am not sure that the case would turn out the same way today

Still, the prudery of a given judge could then, as it can today, read into the law a “moralistic” interpre-

tation, and, well before the new laws of 1942, it might introduce the idea of "act against nature" an idea completely alien to the rationalist mind of the 1810 legislator "Whereas the immorality of

the act against nature . is compli cated by an element completely lacking in the natural passion of one sex for the other, and in the physiological movements of the human being and whereas acts against

nature

perversion

are above all acts of

941

To be sure, and as is natural and to be expected, where minors were concerned judgments were just as severe as they are today The story of the hapless Jacques d'AdelswärdFersen is there to prove it. And I am not speaking of other countries, in which the law was harsher and in which the very years of the Belle Epoque were marked by a two-fold increase in the number of convictions in matters of morals, often as the result of political or other subterfuge, in England, Oscar Wilde was demned to three years at hard labor, in Germany there was the trial of Prince d'Eulenberg in 1908.

con-

It was in 1902 that Baron Krupp, the great German industrialist, committed suicide in order to escape standing trial following the revelations in the newspaper Propaganda of his activities in his villa in Capri, in 1903 the English general McDonald committed suicide in the Regina Hotel in Paris for similar reasons. It is true that other countries had no monopoly on scandals such as these which were basically politically motivated in 1876 the career of the Count de Germiny, leader of the Catholic party, was ruined by his arrest in a public urinal on the Champs-Elysées.42

Let us pause to point out here that as one always must we should modify our generalizations. While it

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