In the dark, winding alleys behind the city wall stand little houses with large numbers and coloured lanterns. They are filled with a sweetish, foul odour, and have been laboriously built up out of dilapidated lumber-rooms. From the cracks in the closed blinds come forth, night after night, the sounds of shrill laughter. Those who enter are received by half-nude monsters, and are made to sit down on monstrous chairs and sofas covered with red plush.
The citizen calls these places dens of vice. Between Friday and Sunday he thinks with lustful horror of the inhabitants with their bloated or emaciated bodies and the sad or intoxicated stare of their eyes.
Herr Carovius wended his way to this quarter of the city. Because it was only a shadow which he embraced in hours when his inflamed imagination, vitiated by all the poisons of the earth, conjured up a human body, he was angry; now he went there, and bought himself a real human body.
After he had been in a half a dozen of these houses, had been jubilantly greeted, and then thrown out to the accompaniment of bawdy abuse, he at last found what he had been looking for: a creature whose cunning had not entirely been lost, who still had the features of a daughter of man, and whose figure and character still had the power to call up a memory, provided one were firmly decided to see what one wished to see and to forget what one wished to forget.
Her name was Lena, charming reminder of a desired reality! He went with her as she left the circle of her companions, and followed her into the wretched hole between winding stairs and attic rooms. He rattled the coins in his pocket, and gave his orders. The nymph had to put on a street dress, set a modest hat on her head, and draw a veil over her rouged face. Thereupon he went up to her, spoke to her courteously, and kissed her hand. He had never in his life acted in so polite and chivalric a fashion in the presence of a woman.
The prostitute was frightened; she ran away. She had to be given instructions; these were given her by the madame of the house; for Herr Carovius was rattling the coins in his pocket. “You will have to be patient and indulgent; we are not prepared for such refined guests here.”
He returned. Lena had been told what to do. She soon fell into her rôle.
“To be frank,” he said to Lena, “I am inexperienced in the arts of love. I am too proud to kowtow to the berobed and bodiced idol. A woman is a woman, and a man is a man. They delude themselves and each other, or try to, into believing that each woman is a special person, and each man a man to himself. Idiocy!”
The prostitute grinned.
He walked back and forth; the room was just large enough to allow him to take three steps. He recalled the expression on Eleanore’s face during the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all the while. He became enraged: “You don’t imagine that progress can be made by such amateurish efforts?” he said with a roar. “It is all hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in art, any more than there is progress in the course of the stars. Listen!”