They lie most of all when they are asked: 'How did you
come to such a life?' But what right have you to ask her about
that, may the devil take you! For she does not push her way into
your intimate life? She doesn't interest herself with your first,
'holy' love or the virtue of your sisters and your bride. Aha! You
pay money? Splendid! The bawd and the bouncer, and the police, and
medicine, and the city government, watch over your interests.
Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the prostitute hired by
you for love is guaranteed you, and your personality is immune ...
even though in the most direct sense, in the sense of a slap in
the face, which you, of course, deserve through your aimless, and
perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as well
for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to
control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history
as you--yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian--will
digest easiest of all. Because by itself life is either
exceedingly humdrum and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly
improbable as only life can be improbable.
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