mplate and talk to,
the courtesan of his sphere."

But while to the simple, ignorant, and hungry youth the prostitute appeals
as the embodiment of many of the refinements and perversities of
civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an
attraction of an almost reverse kind. She appeals by her fresh and natural
coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so
lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial
thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are
compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. They feel in the words
which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used
in explaining her incomprehensible influence over him: "She is so
splendidly vulgar!"

In illustration of this aspect of the appeal of prostitution, I
may quote a passage in which the novelist, Hermant, in his
_Confession d'un Enfant d'Hier_ (Lettre VII), has set down the
reasons which may lead the super-refined child of a cultured age,
yet by no means radically or completely vicious, to find
satisfaction in commerce with prostitutes: "As long as my heart
was not touched the object of my satisfaction was completely
indifferent to me. I was, moreover, a great lover of absolute
liberty, which is only possible in the circle of these anonymous
creatures and in their reserved dwelling. There everything became
permissible. With other women, however low we may seek them,
certain convenances must be observed, a kind of protocol. To
these one can say everything: one is protected by incognito and
assured that nothing will be divulged. I profited by this
freedom, which suited my age, but with a perverse fancy which was
not characteristic of my years. I scarcely know where I found
what I said to them, for it was the opposite of my tastes, which
were simple, and, if I may venture to say so, classic. It is true
that, in matters of love, unrestrained naturalism always tends to
perversion, a fact that can only seem paradoxical at first sight.
Primitive peoples have many traits in common with degenerates. It
was, however, only in words that I was unbridled; and that was
the only occasion on which I can recollect seriously lying. But
that necessity, which I then experienced, of expelling a lower
depth of ignoble instincts, seems to me characteristic and