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especially feeling quite glad that I might at first remain only a spectator. I wondered, however, what the sight would be like.
    We had an endless drive through the narrow straggling streets, alleys, and by-ways, where painted women appeared in gorgeous dresses at the filthy windows of some wretched houses.
    As it was getting late, all the shops were now shut, except the fruiterers, who sold fried fish, mussels, and potatoes. These disgorged an offensive smell of dirt, grease, and hot oil, which mixed itself up with the stench of the gutters and that of the cesspools in the middle of the streets.
    In the darkness of the ill-lighted thoroughfares more than one cafe chantant and beerhouse flared with red gaslights, and as we passed them we felt the puffs of warm, close air reeking with alcohol, tobacco, and sour beer.
    All those streets were thronged with a motley crowd. There were tipsy men with scowling, ugly faces, slipshod vixens, and pale, precociously withered children all tattered and torn, singing obscene songs.
    At last we came to a kind of slum, where the carriages stopped before a low, beetling-browed house which seemed to have suffered from water on the brain when a child. It had a crazy look; and being, moreover, painted in yellowish-red, its many excoriations gave it the appearance of having some loathsome, scabby, skin disease. This place of infamous resort seemed to forewarn the visitor of the illness festering within its walls.
    We went in at a small door, up a winding, greasy, slippery staircase, lighted by an asthmatic, flickering gaslight. Although I was loath to lay my hand on the bannisters, it was almost impossible to mount those muddy stairs without doing so.
    On the first landing we were greeted by a grey-haired old hag, with a bloated yet bloodless face. I really do not know what made her so repulsive to me—perhaps it was her sore and lashless eyes, her mean expression, or her trade—but the fact is, I had never in all my life seen such a ghoul-like creature. Her mouth with its toothless gums and its hanging lips seemed like the sucker of some polypus; it was so foul and slimy.
    She welcomed us with many low curtsies and fawning words of endearment, and ushered us into a low and tawdry room, where a flaring petroleum light shed its crude sheen all around.
    Some frowsy curtains at the windows, a few old armchairs, and a long, battered, and much-stained divan completed the furniture of this room, which had a mixed stench of musk and onions; but, as I was just then gifted with a rather strong imagination, I at times detected— or I thought I did—a smell of carbolic acid and of iodine; albeit the loathsome smell of musk overpowered all other odors.
    In this den, several—what shall I call them? —sirens? no harpies! were crouched, or lolled about.
    Although I tried to put on a most indifferent, blase look, still my face must have expressed all the horror I felt. This is then, said I to myself, one of those delightful houses of pleasure, of which I have heard so many glowing tales?
    These painted-up Jezebels, cadaverous or bloated, are the Paphian maids, the splendid votaresses of Venus, whose magic charms make the senses thrill with delight, the houris on whose breasts you swoon away and are ravished into paradise.
    My friends seeing my utter bewilderment began to laugh at me. I thereupon sat down and tried stupidly to smile.
    Three of those creatures at once came up to me; one of them, putting her arms round my neck, kissed me, and wanted to dart her filthy tongue into my mouth; the others began to handle me most indecently. The more I resisted, the more bent they seemed on making a Laocoon of me.
    —But why were you singled out as their victim?
    —I really do not know, but it must have been because I looked so innocently scared, or because my friends were all laughing at my horror-stricken face.
    One of those poor women—a tall dark girl, an Italian, I believe—was evidently in the very last