"
O! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams
through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you? Where
there is no shadow of hope can there be memory? Where shall I seek for
memory's meed? What is there more dumb in human memory? What is there
more completely forgotten than you?
If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them:
I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty,
about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a
question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals;
eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed
to pass, by order of the police, but near which a dozen women prowled who
were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could you expect
of her, when, after having tired her hands and eyes all day long on a
dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls? That dress
she has sewed, that hat she has trimmed with her poor and honest hands in
order to earn a supper for the household, she sees passing along the
street on the head or on the body of a public woman. Thirty times a day a
hired carriage stops before the door and there steps out a prostitute,
numbered as is the hack in which she rides, who stands before a glass and
primps, taking off and putting on the results of many days' work on the
part of the poor girl who watches her.
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