For the casual arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of
peasant girls started out from the surrounding villages toward the
city. It was inevitable that the demand on prostitution should
become unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from Lodz, from
Odessa, from Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from
abroad, flocked together an innumerable multitude of foreign
women; cocottes of Russian fabrication, the most ordinary
prostitutes of the rank and file, and chic Frenchwomen and
Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting influence of the
hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though this cascade
of gold had lashed down upon, had set to whirling and deluged
within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders
increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in
augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet.
But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful
bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and
listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It
happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight
somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?"
"Fedorov.
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