The Pros of Paris

A Round Dozi years ago, France, a country whose interest in sex – and whose tolerance of its various aspects – can only be described as titanic, gravely decided, after appropriate public discussion, to do away with two areas of sexual activity. First was the French house of prostitution, which throughout the years had become so enwreathed with story and song that it had become an institution. Second was the licensing of prostitutes. Laws were duly passed and some people cheered and some wept: others shrugged their shoulders and wondered whether c'est, indeed, la vie.

But for our purposes, it will be helpful to explore briefly the conditions, both economic and moral, which induced the traditionally tolerant and worldly French to abruptly try to prohibit something.

The French houses of prostitution, particularly those of Paris, gained world-wide fame because they provided considerably more than girls, just as French restaurants provide considerably more than calories. The houses of, say, Berlin or Hong Kong or Istanbul were factories: the French houses were studios. The large ones had dance bands (the famous Sphinx in Paris had two), pleasant bars, intimate little theatres for showing intimate little movies and, in general, all the relaxed atmosphere of a swank club rather than a business establishment. A gentleman could walk into the Sphinx, for instance, and be greeted by a handsome hostess. The man could sit clown at a marbletopped table and be served by a waiter or he could belly up to the 50-foot bar. The prices would be only slightly higher than in his corner bistro. There would be an accordionist strolling up and down the bar, pumping out the tunes – Madelon, Paleiitina, Bourn! – which have almost magically become the very theme songs of Paris' wondrous heart. The girls would mingle easily with the prospective clients, but there was no aggressiveness, no salesmanship. The costumes they wore were somewhat startling: all the girls were nude from the waist up, although some of them wore shorty jackets made of some gossamer fabric. Some of the girls wore flowing, Grecian-style skirts; some wore short, Apache-like skirts slit up the side, and some wore slacks, as tight on their behinds as a second skin.

A girl would ask a man to buy her a drink but he was under no obligation to do so. Or she might ask him to dance; and if he had eyes for her they would go to the dance hall, which was furnished with dazzling appointments: liquid music, scarlet drapes and the velvety girls.

Of course it was a business and of course it was a tease and of course the girls were the merchandise, but these things were obscured by the general nonsordid air of the place. The French house was famous because it was fun.

The French attitude toward these establishments, as indicated above, was one of easy tolerance. They were as much a part of the Paris panorama as the Seine or the Eiffel Tower. But this attitude changed and a principal agent of this change – and this is one of the most incredible aspects of the whole picture – was the Communist party.

After the Second World War, the Communists were extremely powerful in France and they seized on the open, legal houses of prostitution as a political issue. The Communists contended that legal houses placed the French government in the position of holding a certain amount of women in degrading bondage. They cried for equality of the sexes and for freedom for the girls. The fact that this position completely baffled the girls themselves didn't matter.

The issue was raised again and again in the Chamber of Deputies and when put this way it was very difficult for a deputy, no matter how sophisticated he might be, to resist the pressure. An American congressman could hardly be expected to put up a fiery resistance to Mother's Day. The law was passed.

The closings were somewhat sentimental. (In late March of this year, just before the Japanese houses of prostitution were "officially" closed, the Japanese police, similarly sentimental, took films of the houses and the red-light districts in Japan to preserve them for posterity.) Farewell parties were held, tears were shed and it took nearly two years to get the houses shut down; since the closings were delayed so frequently it was something like the final grand tour of an opera star. However, they were finally closed. It was expected officially that the girls, now liberated from their vile slavery, would eagerly seek jobs as clerks or models or waitresses.

Anyone past the age of 10 could have anticipated what would happen. The girls did not take jobs as waitresses. They simply took to the streets, like the girls of any other metropolis. But the Paris girls – being individualistic, as the French notably are – did it a little differently. They went to various areas, largely according to the price they charged. After a time these areas broke down into four principal districts.

The lowest-priced girls – $5 and under – filtered down into a small area around the Boulevard de Sevastopol. The next group – $7-$ 10 – took to the streets around the Opera and the Madeleine. The highest-priced-$15420 and up-strolled the famous Champs-Elysces and its side streets. The fourth group, which had no price range, was made up of the semi-professionals who gravitated onto Paris' Left Bank. This latter group had no fixed fee because the price could be anything from a dinner to a vacation at Cannes. They were generally young and frolicsome, accepting money more as a gift than as a payment.

Thus, a dozen years after the law clamped down, the world's oldest profession continues in the City of Light. The entire machinery of French law has not succeeded, as joyfully anticipated, in driving the prostitute to a virtuous life hoeing a garden outside Bordeaux. They are still there, the pretty Giselles, the Michelles, the Gabrielles, the Georgettes. And where does one find these girls?

It isn't hard. It isn't hard and it's kind of fun. Let us examine the region around the Place de l'Opera, one of the favorite haunts of the chicks.

The girls here – : the $7-or-so girls – : may, in pleasant weather, stroll the streets, in which case they will talk to you. But mostly they hang around in bars. In Paris, bars – : though not restau-rants – :are often unnamed. You will refer to Antoine's or Pierre's or Marie's, but there will be no sign on the outside to tell you what the name of the place is. This is of no importance. Almost any of the streets around the Opera, or the Madeleine, has these little bars. The Rue Halevy, the Chausse-e d'Antin, the Rue Bordreau, the Boulevard des Capu-cines, the Rue Danielle Casanova – : the latter name seems theatrically appropriate.

The bars are small. They are dark. They are cozily intimate. You pick your bar and walk in, order a drink. The bartender – it may be a woman – will start a conversation with you, perhaps about the weather, and you will say that you are a foreigner and you will offer to buy a drink for the cute little trick three bar stools away from you and the bartender will say, "Ah, Georgette! Ah, oui, monsieur. Georgette, elle est tres mignonne, tres," and presently Georgette will be sitting beside you.

She will probably have a rough command of English, at least enough to keep a conversation moving. She will be in no hurry. She will be impressed because you are an American. Propaganda to the contrary, most of this world is impressed by Americans. She will consume her drink – it will be an aperitif and will cost you about 50¢. You will suggest a second drink, which she will take, not particularly because she wants the drink but because the little bar, which she uses without charge as a place of assignation, expects her to order the drink.

She will then suggest a little walk, you will ask her price and she will name it. If you were a Frenchman you would argue about it: but since you are not, you will agree – only a few dollars are involved, anyway. So you will walk away with Georgette.

The procedure is much the same on the Champs-Elysces, except that while the bars around the Opera are small and dark, the bars on the Champs-Elysces tend to be somewhat more chromium and mirror. If they didn't have sidewalk cafe-s, some of them could be almost Hollywood. Except that the bars of Hollywood lack one thing, and that is the girls of the Champs-Élysées.

The Champs-Élyséec, though only a couple of miles long, from the Place de la Concorde to the Place de l'Étoile, is very probably the prettiest street in the world. It seems proper that inhabiting it are very probably the prettiest girls in the world. They don't have the healthy, orange-juice look of American girls and they don't have the horsy elegance of the British beauties and they don't have the pouting, almost sullen attractiveness of the girls in Rome. They have- their own typical Champs-Elysc-es sheen.

These girls will – like the girls of the Opera – sometimes pace the streets, but mostly they will sit in the cafes of the streets off the Champs-Elyse-es. There is the Rue Pierre Charron, the Rue Mar-beuf, the Rue de Colise-e and the celebrated Rue de Berri, well known to Americans because it is here, at number 21, that the New York Herald Tribune publishes its Paris edition.

The procedure is absurdly simple. You see your girl, you ask the waiter if mademoiselle would like a drink and she would, mais certainement, monsieur, and she has it, either at your table or hers, and she will act the immemorial part of the French cocotte – probably a little more adroitly than the less expensive girls of the Opera – and then you will have your girl. If you meet her early in the evening, it is possible that she will have dinner with you – it will be in a comparatively flossy place and it will cost about §15 – and then you will go to her hotel, or she will come to yours.

Since the girls of the Champs-Elysees are the most charmingly conspicuous, it might be interesting to examine a few of them. There is, for instance, Janine, an extremely mobile girl who bears the nickname La Croix Rouge – The Red Cross. The nickname is inevitable, one supposes, since she plies her trade, in and around the Charnps-Élysées, in an ambulance. She declines to use the hotel rooms the other girls use; she drives her own hotel. She finds her man, drives him to a side street, tumbles into the back with him and that's that. The Red Cross is extremely popular: she is pretty and moreover with her the man can save the cost of the hotel room. Furthermore, she is immune from police action. There is a Paris law which makes it illegal to use a residence for "immoral" purposes; but the city fathers did not anticipate Janine, and thus it is not illegal to use a vehicle for similar high jinks.

Then there is Michelle. Michelle pa-trols the Champs-Élysées not in an ambulance but in a gleaming white Citroen. Michelle, who is now 22, came to Paris when she was 16 from a farm in northern France. She promptly realized she could never own a white Citroen slaving away as a shop girl, so she fell into her present livelihood. At §10 or $15 a client, Michelle makes about $250 a week – a staggering fortune in France.

Then there is Françoise, who is 24. She was born in the south of France and five years ago she took her vacation on the nearby Riviera. There she met a man from Paris to whom she gave her noticeably pretty self. In return he gave her his card and promised to help her if she ever came to Paris. Fran¢hise waited a proper two weeks and then appeared on his doorstep. She lived with him, but Franchise knows her men, and before he could toss her over for another girl, she walked out on him and added herself to the girls of the Champs-filyse'es. Outwardly, Franchise appears frivolous, capricious, almost foolish. But she's about as foolish as a tiger. She presumably has the first franc she ever earned. (She earns about 20,000 of them a night, or about $45.) She wants to get married, but not to one of the men who comprise her clientele. She wants to marry a farmer in her native Provence, buy a farm and settle down to raising a family. She figures that $20,000 will buy a satisfactory farm; she has already saved $8000.

Another streamlined girl is Gabrielle Dupont, a blonde with a ponytail. She works the bars in the Rue Caumartin, just off the Champs-£lysees. She, unlike most of the other girls, was born in Paris. Gabrielle carries herself with some hauteur, an attitude arising out of the fact that one time she got $75. When asked why she got so much, her reply was made with a charming lack of modesty.

"Just try me, monsieur," she said. "Just try me."

But probably more typical of the girls is Giselle Monteil. Giselle is an impish little brunette of 23. She came to Paris from a city in central France and got a job as a secretary for $18 a week. That isn't much, even in Paris; and when she met a man and fell in love with him three years ago she promptly and gratefully moved in with him. At this point, a technicality of French law seized Giselle, as it has seized thousands of French girls.

Under French law, a man may use a contraceptive because it is regarded as a disease prevention device. But a woman in France may not legally buy or possess a contraceptive. And though the French are lax in their enforcement of many laws, they are rigid on this one. A Frenchwoman who travels can, of course, get one in Belgium or England, but working girls such as Giselle don't travel. So the old, old story happened again: Giselle got pregnant. She couldn't afford an abortion so she had the baby and then the second chapter of the old, old story happened: her boyfriend left her. Now Giselle had two mouths to feed and who would take care of the baby if she had to work? So she farmed the baby out and Hastened to the Champs-Élysées. This is not a sob story nor does Giselle regard it as such.

"I am a girl," she says, with Gallic realism, "and girls have babies."

Because of her looks and her pixie charm, which completely liquefies men, Giselle was an instant success. She made more in a week than she could have made in four months at her old job. She has a pleasant apartment with a nurse to watch the baby when she is out. She has clothes, she can take a vacation in the country and she can1 go to the movies whenever she wishes, a luxury most French girls, all of whom are movie-mad, could never afford.

Giselle, like most of the other girls, doesn't work hours; she works dates. She starts out about seven and tries to have four of them (she calls each one a "rendezvous") before midnight. Sometimes, if the weather is bad, she won't get them, but mostly she will, and at $12 and up per rendezvous, she nets something more than $800 a week.

Sometimes Giselle will walk the streets looking for clients, but often she will simply work the sidewalk cafes. She comes in, sits alone at a table and orders a coffee – she doesn't drink much, even on a rendezvous, because Giselle sincerely regards herself as bien élevée – : well brought up – : and in France well- brought-up girls don't drink. Then she waits, her soft, beautiful brown eyes surveying the scene. Often a man will send a drink to her, which she accepts with a smile. Then he joins her. Sometimes, if she sees a likely prospect, she will go up to him and ask for a light. This is hardly a novej approach, but it works.

Giselle is particularly partial to Americans, not solely because they pay more (they do) but because she likes to talk about America and especially about American film stars. She was shrewd enough to learn fairly fluent English, which she speaks with a piquant accent, precisely that of Fifi, tjie French maid in the bedroom farce. She enchants her American clients, always carrying a small English-French and Frepch-English dictionary, and flies into gales of laughter when she translates something awkwardly.

Giselle, like many Europeans, thinks that all Americans are on intimate personal terms with film stars. Her current flip is William Holden and she invariably asks her Americans about him.

"Beel 'Olden," she will say. "You know heem?" Astonishingly enough, a lot of the Americans say they do. under the impression that this will impress her. They are right – it does, and it of course serves to strengthen her conviction that all Americans have lunch with Monroe, cocktails with "Gairy Coopair" and dinner with Dietrich.

After talking with her client for a while – : 10 minutes perhaps – : and establishing a price, Giselle will walk her "rendezvous" to a nearby hotel which will cost the man an additional S3 or $4. They will not register. The room will be small and clean. After about half an hour, if the rendezvous shows no signs of terminating, there will be a discreet tap on the door and Giselle will answer. The voice will say, "Je m'excuse, mademoiselle. On vous appelle" – :"Excuse me, miss. Someone is calling you." Unless the client is willing to pay an additional $5 or so, Giselle considers the romance at an end. Giselle, since she is a polite and well-brought-up girl, will apologize for this untimely interruption but she will also explain that business is business. And because she is polite, Giselle will ask her client would he please leave a little something – : 50ç or a dollar – : for the maid. Giselle will shake her client's hand outside the hotel, smile her gay smile and, if he is an American who knows William Holden, she will say, "Say hello to Beel 'Olden for Giselle, yes?" and then she will walk back to the Champs-£lysees and she will order another coffee, and she will again wait, her soft, beautiful brown eyes again surveying the scene.

The languid luxury of the Champs-Élysées is one thing; the atmosphere surrounding the Sebastopol area is quite different. The Champs-Élysées girls are out of a ballet; Sevastopol girls are out of an old-time Apache dance. For the most part, they don't bother with bars. They stand in the doorways of the streets, their lips crimson with lipstick and their dresses as tight as their skin. They are noisily competitive and physical, often grabbing potential clients by the arms. And if one girl succeeds in nailing a customer, the nearby girls set up a fierce clamor, pointing out that the successful one is racked with disease, burdened by extreme old age and absolutely unskilled in bedroom arts.

The Sevastopol girls aren't as pretty as the uptown girls nor do they have the Dior clothes and the white Citroens, but they have one thing that their customers seem to like, and that is vivacity. They chatter in their doorways like sparrows in a tree. They make comments on every man who passes – : and if he doesn't stop, the comments get rather gamy.

There are those who sometimes get damply sentimental over prostitutes – : the old wheeze about the heart of gold beating under the tough exterior – : and in the case of the Sevastopol girls, it is sometimes true. Lots of them are sentimental, just as sentimental as a candy-box cover, and lots of them do have hearts of gold. One shop in the Sevastopol area does a brisk trade in hand-colored, Valentine-like postcards which the girls mail to each other and which they hang up in profusion in their rooms. These are the girls whose amatory tragedies are so consistently celebrated in the torchy songs of such singers as Edith Piaf and Juliette Greco.

Across the river, the winding Seine, in the little bistros and downstairs boites – : literally, boxes – : of St. Germaine, frolic another class of Paris girls, the semi-pros. These are girls in their teens or early twenties who are out for kicks, and sex is one of their kicks. They may wind up on the Champs-Élysées as full-time girls or they may wind up in a Paris suburb as prim housewives and mothers, but in the meantime they're having a ball.

They hang around the jazz joints – : all of them within a stone's throw of the famed cafe1 Les Deux Magots – : and they belong to a rather self-consciously arty group. The girls often wear their hair long, they often wear slacks and men's shirts – : a horror in France – : and they are, or think they are, infinitely more sophisticated than any other girls.

Some of them even have daytime jobs, but mostly they drift. They move from one boyfriend to another almost aimlessly, reserving the right, of course, to have other boyfriends – : or customers – : in the process. They invariably live with some man – : or men – : but part of their free-living arrangement is that they are at liberty to do what they want where they want when they want. A man in Paris can, almost without trying, seek out one of these girls in a dark, smoky boite and take her home with him. She may stay a long time or she may run off the next day. She may stay overnight for nothing or she may demand some money, but if she does, it won't be much. Sex to her is part of self-expression.

Oddly enough, these gamines are fervently pro-American, and not for financial reasons. Frenchmen are everywhere; the American boyfriend is a prestige item. He is foreign, exotic, groovy. He will typically have more money, of course, but these girls are not in the business for money. If they were, they'd move uptown. They like the Americans because they're not Frenchmen. The Frenchman smiles; the American laughs. The Frenchmen are old; all Americans are young.

It is for this reason that an American can probably have more fun with these girls than with the others. They are more American in spirit than the other girls. They are the girls of the Francoise Sagan novels. They are experimenting, not only with sex but with life, and experimentation demands diversification. These chicks may well have a French boyfriend; they may well want an American one as well.

These boîtes, with their amateur girls, all sprang from the original one, La Rose Rouge, which is still in existence. They are all below street level, all smoky with the acrid smell of French cigarettes (and sometimes marijuana), all seem to be lit with red lights, which may or may not have significance, and all have some sort of jazz combo blasting through the smoke.

The girls here are not as crisply businesslike as the girls on the Champs-Élysées. They often come in pairs, sit at tables and wait to be picked up – : or at least get spoken to and maybe offered a drink. If they like your looks they will sometimes come to your table, but typically you go to theirs. You can be absolutely certain that if a girl is sitting alone, or with a girlfriend, she is amenable to casual conversation and – : if she likes you – : to conversation somewhat less casual.

You don't discuss money with them; if they want money they'll say so. They might take money from one man and absolutely refuse it from another. This is principally their social life, not their economic one. They would certainly prefer a weekend somewhere outside Paris to an outright cash payment and a weekend with one of these girls—who will know her way around – can be something unforgettable. These are the girls with the ponytails, the girls who scorn bras or panties, the girls with the sweaters and skirts, the girls with the canvas sneakers. Lorraine, of the smoky boîte, is not only free living. She can be free.

As indicated above, the French were unable by law to put the prostitutes out of business. They appeared, at first, to have put the house of prostitution out of business; but in the past few years that, too, has reappeared, though it must be admitted, not on so widespread a scale as 12 years ago. The houses are new and each customer is carefully screened before he is admitted – if he is admitted at all. The girls working in them are rather part-time girls, part-time pros.

The French do not have the same opinion on sex as other Western European countries and their attitude is re-flected in the attitude of the new girls in the new houses. They do not regard taking money for sexual favors as immoral, any more than they regard posing nude in the Folies-Bergere as immoral. These things are part of life.

The new girls are models, actresses, artists. Some are married. They work in the new houses to supplement their income. And they supplement it handsomely. They can get §50, or even more, and they appear to be worth the price. They are all professional beauties. They are trained charmers. They are well spoken, calm, even languid, in the best tradition of the French courtesan.

They ply their part-time trade in apartments off the Champs-Élysées, apartments always furnished in satiny French luxury. No ponytails here, or canvas sneakers. And no vin ordinaire. The guest is served champagne, if that's what he wants, or whiskey. Some of the new places, the modern ones, cater to wealthy men on their way home from the offices or banks or publishing houses, even serve pre-dinner hors d'oeuvres, wheeled in by a maid. A phonograph will be playing, and a customer may, if he wishes, have a pre-boudoir dance.

There won't be many girls working in these new houses; perhaps a half dozen – which is nothing of course to the 50 or so who used to work in the big, old houses. There will be no naughty movies – the famed cinema bleu – of the old houses, nor will there be any sex circuses, as there used to be. And though their business is being undressed, the girls will be highly dressed – by Lanvin, Balenciaga, some in London tweeds, which to certain Frenchwomen are the very apex of chic.

Like their sisters in the boîtes, these girls are not here primarily for money, although that is certainly a consideration. They are here for kicks and they are also here to find a rich man with whom they can make an arrangement, perhaps even a marital one. A customer who falls for one of these glossy chicks might very well keep her; he might even marry her. Or he might finance a play for her, or make arrangements with a well-connected film producer for a screen test. In this sense these new places are well-organized, decorous casting couches. The phonograph plays, the champagne bubbles, the girls smile and love is made.

The street or café" girls or the girls of the boîtes are of course not hidden, the houses are, more or less. But for a reasonably presentable man there is no problem. A thousand francs or so — less than S3 – pressed into the hand of your hotel doorman will produce precise addresses, plus a phone call to the house identifying you before your arrival.

So there it is:the girls of Paris years after they were supposed to have vanished.

What is the official French government view of this situation?

Any government, municipal or national, when concerned with the problem of the prostitute, falls into a state of utter confusion. The Tokyo police, as noted above, bans the houses and then itself makes films of them. Agitated middle-class voices arise constantly in England protesting against the streetwalkers in Piccadilly, who are sometimes so thick that it takes a Sherman tank to get through them, but the matter never arises in the House of Commons. In New York the callgirl, regarded by ladies' clubs as a terrifying threat to the Republic, is virtually immune from police action.

In Paris there is the same confusion, but it is a gentle confusion. The French passed a law they hoped would banish the prostitute when it banished the houses. After a year or so they discovered they had not banished her at all; they had merely placed her beyond their control. In the houses, the girls were available for medical examination and certification. Now they weren't. The statistics on venereal disease shot up.

The police then set up a kind of medical inspection system, with vaguely defined powers – :vague in the sense that no one seems to know just what authority the police have over the girls.

Under this system, a known prostitute – : a term which is vague in itself – :is obliged to submit herself every week (although sometimes it is every month) to a medical examination. If she doesn't, she can be arrested (although sometimes she can't) and forced to submit to examination. If it is discovered she is ill, she can be forced (but not always) to remain in a hospital until she is cured.

The French government thus finds itself in a curious situation: with one hand it takes measures designed to wipe out the prostitute and with the other hand it takes measures designed to cure her so she can continue to operate in a business it is pledged to exterminate. It is like a man standing in a cloudburst saying, "It's not raining but I'll use this umbrella to keep dry."

The principal medical inspection center is Saint Lazare, a former, and highly historical, Paris prison. There each day the girls arrive, some in Jaguars, some in taxis, some on foot. Anyone can watch them enter the prison. If they pass inspection, their health cards are signed and they are free. The officials at Saint Lazare claim their service is highly efficient. They claim that of the 2000-odd girls who are registered there, less than 1% have any venereal disease. They claim that with unregistered girls the proportion is from 10% to 11%. This may well be true – it could also well be true that there is a Santa Claus. No one knows for sure.

No one, apparently, can even tell how many girls there are in Paris. One Paris paper, in a series of stories of a rather sensational nature not long ago, put the figure at 25,000. But early last winter the Paris paper Le Monde, which is about as frivolous as The New York Times, in a series of six front-page articles on the subject, put the number at 5000, although Le Monde was careful to hedge by admitting it was a guess.

It might be somehow possible to count the girls on the Right Bank, but it is absolutely impossible to count the girls on the Left Bank, those semi-professionals who haunt the intellectual cafe's. In French slang they are called the "short nails" as opposed to their more elegant counterparts on the Champs-£lyse'es, the "long nails."

The situation is a muddled one. The police have almost nothing to say. Yet when Le Nef, a highly sober monthly magazine, recently ran a lengthy story of the girls of Paris, it accompanied the article with a series of questions addressed to M. Genebrier, Paris' Chief of Police. It was an astonishing feat of journalism, exactly as if an American magazine were to ask a series of questions of New York City's Police Commissioner about the girls of New York.

What is even more astonishing is that Monsieur Genebrier answered the questions. His answers appear to be fair, and he takes a pretty pessimistic view of the situation. The Chief put the number of girls in Paris in 1957 at 5460 as against 4600 12 years ago, though he did not explain how he came to such a precise figure as 5460. The Chief thought there might be as many as 6000 dnndestins, or semi-pros.

This reporter talked, off the record, to one police official who is in charge of the regulation – loose as it is – of the girls.

"Monsieur," he said, "it is very difficult. For the French to legislate against love and for them then to ask me, a Frenchman, to enforce an anti-love law —" He paused. "I will explain."

He leaned back in his chair, his handsome and highly un-coplike face wearing the barest of smiles. He was obviously pleased to explain to a foreigner what he perhaps couldn't ever have explained to a Frenchman.

"Monsieur," he went on, "you will understand that there is no law in France which prevents a man from being with a woman. There is, furthermore, no law which restrains a woman from taking a gift – either a dinner, or a week's rent, or, for that matter, a new Cadillac – from a man.

"If you meet a pretty girl on the Champs-Élysées after you leave me and take her to your hotel, am I to follow you and burst in on you and arrest the girl? She would laugh at me and say, 'Monsieur cop, please drop dead. It is true that I met this man at a cafe' and it is true that I came back to his hotel and it is true that I am in bed with him. as you can see, with nothing on. But, monsieur,cop, I love this American gentleman and he loves me and he is taking me back with him to Chicago as his wife.' And she would look at you and she would say, 'Isn't that true, little cabbage?' and probably you would say 'Yes'; but even if you said 'No,' she could insist that you promised to marry her. I would then leave you two, since you were busy, and come back to this office and feel a fool, which I would have been."

When asked about the plight of girls like Giselle he sighed.

"Ah, monsieur," he said. "You are a sentimental man, but you are sentimental about the wrong things. You think your Giselle is unhappy with her lot, but I assure you most sincerely she is not. You are a stranger to me, monsieur, but I shall nevertheless be frank. If you think your little Giselle would be happier working in a factory, making shirts, rather than in the streets off the Champs-£lysees, making love, you are in error.

"The issue, monsieur, is not one of law; it is one of life. There will always be men and thus there will always be our little Giselles, our little poules" – one of the French slang words for the girls which means chick. "We French do not regard our girls as some kind of monsters. We rather like having them around. There is, since the girls took to the streets, a new word for them. It is tapin and it comes from the tap, tap, tap of their heels on the sidewalks. It is a fine word for them."

I rose to go and the official shook my hand.

"By the way," he said, as I opened the door, "if you decide to see your little Giselle again and go to her hotel, don't forget to register. Not to register, ah, that is against the law."

I saw Giselle just before I left Paris and I told her I was flying to America.

"America," she said warmly. She turned her soft, beautiful brown eyes on me. "Perhaps, later, someday I come to America." She smiled in her gay way. "Monsieur, you see Beel 'Olden when you 'ome?"

"Of course," I said.

"Oh, monsieur," she cried. "You say 'ello to "im from Giselle, oui?"

"Sure," I said. "Sure, Giselle."

Stunning Jacqueline Renaud is a top-priced Paris courtesan who looks like a high fashion model. She has her hair done at the best coiffeurs,purchases her hats at the most exclcusive chapellerie, bought her sleek Merceedes 190SL (left) all by herself.

She also maintains her own frilly apartment (but rarely uses it for business) and dotes on her parakeet Fou-Fou (above and right)

Who likes to perch on Jacqueline's pretty head while she arranges her evening "date". it's likely to cost the customer as much as $100 plus dinner at a posh Paris resrtau-rant (below), then a visit to the night.

Below,22-year-old Adrienne has been a paris pro for a year, dislikes working the street,perfers to make her contacts in one of the Rue Caumartin. She is a warm,well-bred girl who wants to save enough money to open a little shop of her own, get married and raise a family. She charges $20 per client and will either accompany him to his hotel (for an hour or so)or guide him to one of the transiwnt hitels nearby. Adrienne, like the other girls, has a steady clientele and usually takes care of from two to four men inan evening. She likes American men because they are heavy tippers.

Below, blonde, ponytailed Simone also chooses to work from a bar, frankly faces up to the fact that she canearn more selling her favors than in any other occupa-tion. Her dream is to latch on to a wealthy sugar-daddy.

Babette (left) looks more like a college cord than a pro, prefers to cus-tomer-hunt along the leafy lanes of the Bois de Boulogen or among the bookstalls of the Seine with a friend (right).

She is from a northen prov-ince, tells her parents she is now a nurse, which gives her a handy excuse (sitting up with a sick friend) whenever they visit. At night (below),Babette takees on a sophisticated look.

Like all Paris tapins and cocottes, Babette takes her men to one of the small hotels that line the side street, where a room can be readily had sans baggage, registering or a side glance from the worldly cooncierge (who must be slipped $2 in ad-vance by the customer). inside the room, Babette adjusts a curl (below, left) while she slips out of her clothes, then requests her petitcadeau (3000francs, or $7) from the gentlemen before getting down to the business at hand.

Like all Paris tapins and cocottes, Babette takes her men to one of the small hotels that line the side street, where a room can be readily had sans baggage, registering or a side glance from the worldly cooncierge (who must be slipped $2 in ad-vance by the customer). inside the room, Babette adjusts a curl (below, left) while she slips out of her clothes, then requests her petitcadeau (3000francs, or $7) from the gentlemen before getting down to the business at hand.