It
was now nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had
to inspect in such a manner several hundred girls; and he had
worked out that habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm
carelessness of movements, which is; frequently to be found in
circus artists, in card sharpers, in furniture movers and packers,
and in other professionals. And he carried out his manipulations
with the same calmness with which a drover or a veterinary
inspects several hundred head of cattle in a day.
Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he
appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain
which is called legalized prostitution?
No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in
the very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked
abdomens, naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all
this faceless herd of every Saturday would he have recognized
subsequently on the street. The main thing was the necessity of
finishing as soon as possible the inspection in one establishment,
in order to pass on to another, to a third, a ninth, a
twentieth.
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