Prostitution is an Isis whose final veil none has raised. There is a
sphinx in this gloomy odalisk of the frightful Sultan Everybody. None
has solved its enigma. It is Nakedness masked. A terrible spectacle!
Alas! in all that we have just recounted man is abominable, woman is
touching.
How many hapless ones have been driven to their fall!
The abyss is the friend of dreams. Fallen, as we have said, their
lamentable hearts have no other resource than to dream.
What caused their ruin was another dream, the dreadful dream of riches;
nightmare of glory, of azure, and ecstasy which weighs upon the chest of
the poor; flourish of trumpets heard in the gehenna, with the triumph
of the fortunate appearing resplendent in the immense night; prodigious
overture full of dawn! Carriages roll, gold falls in showers, laces
rustle.
Why should I not have this, too? Formidable thought!
This gleam from the sinister vent-hole dazzled them; this puff of the
sombre vapour inebriated them, and they were lost, and they were rich.
Wealth is a fatal distant light; woman flies frantically towards it.
This mirror catches this lark.
Wherefore they have been rich. They, too, have had their day of
enchantment, their minute of fête, their sparkle.
They have had that fever which is fatal to modesty. They have drained
the sonorous cup that is full of nothingness. They have drunk of the
madness of forgetfulness. What a flattering hope! What temptation! To
do nothing and have everything; alas! and also to have nothing, not even
one’s own self. To be slave-flesh, to be beauty for sale, a woman fallen
to a thing! They have dreamed and they have had--which is the same
thing, complete possession being but a dream--mansions, carriages,
servants in livery, suppers joyous with laughter, the house of gold,
silk, velvet, diamonds, pearls, life giddy with voluptuousness--every
pleasure.
Oh! how much better is the innocence of those poor little barefooted
ones on the shore of the sea, who hear at nightfall the tinkling of the
cracked bells of the goats on the cliffs!
There was a disastrous morrow to these brief, perfidious joys that they
had savoured. The word love signified hatred. The invisible doubles the
visible, and it is lugubrious. Those who shared their raptures, those to
whom they gave all, received all and accepted nothing. They--the fallen
ones--sowed their seed in ashes. They were deserted even as they were
being embraced. Abandonment sniggered behind the mask of the kiss.
And now, what are they to do? They must perforce continue to love.