le, and in the
number of his consumers Horizon could have counted not a few people
with a prominent social position: lieutenant governors, colonels of the
gendarmerie, eminent advocates, well-known doctors, rich land-owners,
carousing merchants. All the shady world--the proprietresses of
brothels, cocottes solitaires, go-betweens, madams of houses of
assignation, souteneurs, touring actresses and chorus girls--was as
familiar to him as the starry sky to an astronomer. His amazing memory,
which permitted him prudently to avoid notebooks, held in mind
thousands of names, family names, nicknames, addresses,
characteristics. He knew to perfection the tastes of all his highly
placed consumers: some of them liked unusually odd depravity, others
paid mad sums for innocent girls, for others still it was necessary to
seek out girls below age. He had to satisfy both the sadistic and the
masochistic inclinations of his clients, and at times to cater to
altogether unnatural sexual perversions, although it must be said that
the last he undertook only in rare instances which promised a large,
undoubted profit. Two or three times he had to sit in jail, but these
sessions went to his benefit; he not only did not lose his rapacious
high-handedness and springy energy in his transactions, but with every
year became more daring, inventive, and enterprising. With the years to
his brazen impetuousness was joined a tremendous worldly business
wisdom.

Fifteen times, during this period, he had managed to marry and every
time had contrived to take a decent dowry. Having possessed himself of
his wife's money, he, one fine day, would suddenly vanish without a
trace, and, if there was a possibility, he would sell his wife
profitably into a secret house of depravity or into a chic public
establishment. It would happen that the parents of the deluded victim
would search for him through the police. But while inquiries would be
carried on everywhere about him as Shperling, he would already be
travelling from town to town under the name of Rosenblum. During the
time of his activity, in despite of an enviable memory, he had changed
so many names that he had not only forgotten what year he had been
Nathanielson, and during what Bakalyar, but even his own name was
beginning to seem to him one of his pseudonyms.

It was remarkable, that he did not find in his profession anything
criminal or reprehensible. He regarded it just as though he were
trading in