Nor is it necessary, at a somewhat later period, to invoke, as is frequently done, the Italian origin of Catherine de Medici, in order to explain the prevalence of homosexual practices at her court.
Notwithstanding its prevalence, sodomy was still severely punished from time to time.

Thus in 1586, Dadon, who had formerly been Rector of the University of Paris, was hanged and then burned for injuring a child through sodomy.[70] In the seventeenth century, homosexuality continued, however, to flourish, and it is said that nearly all the numerous omissions made in the published editions of Tallement des Reaux's _Historiettes_ refer to sodomy.[71] How prominent homosexuality was, in the early eighteenth century in France, we learn from the frequent references to it in the letters of Madame, the mother of the Regent, whose husband was himself effeminate and probably inverted.[72] For the later years of the century the evidence abounds on every hand.

At this time the Bastille was performing a useful function, until recently overlooked by historians, as an _asile de surete_ for abnormal persons whom it was considered unsafe to leave at large.
Inverts whose conduct became too offensive to be tolerated were frequently placed in the Bastille which, indeed "abounded in homosexual subjects," to a greater extent than any other class of sexual perverts.

Some of the affairs which led to the Bastille have a modern air.

One such case on a large scale occurred in 1702, and reveals an organized system of homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a handsome, well-made youth named Lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing himself off as a man of quality.