I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;
I said: “O Soul, make merry and ,
Dear Soul—for all is well.”
—The Palace of Art.
“And where next? I don’t like Colootollah.” The Police and their charge are in the interminable waste of houses under the starlight. “To the lowest sink of all,” say the Police after the manner of Virgil when he took the Italian with the indigestion to look at the frozen sinners. “And where’s that?” “Somewhere about here; but you wouldn’t know if you were told.” They lead and they lead and they lead, and they cease not from leading till they come to the last circle of the Inferno—a long, long, , quiet road. “There you are; you can see for yourself.”
 
But there is nothing to be seen. On one side are houses—gaunt and dark, naked and of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls, lighted, and with shamelessly open doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and mutter and whisper one to another. There is a here, or at least the busy silence of an officer of counting-house in working hours. One look down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentlemen of the Calcutta Police. Let us escape from the lines of open doors, the lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables with little plaster dogs, glass balls from Christmas-trees, and—for religion must not be despised though women be fallen—pictures of the saints and statuettes of the . The street is a long one, and other streets, full of the same pitiful , branch off from it.
 
“Why are they so quiet? Why don’t they make a row and sing and shout, and so on?” “Why should they, poor devils?” say the Police, and fall to telling tales of horror, of women decoyed into palkis and shot into this trap. Then other tales that shatter one’s belief in all things and folk of good repute. “How can you Police have faith in humanity?”
 
“That’s because you’re seeing it all in a lump for the first time, and it’s not nice that way. Makes a man jump rather, doesn’t it? But, , you’ve asked for the worst places, and you can’t complain.” “Who’s complaining? Bring on your . Isn’t that a European woman at that door?” “Yes. Mrs. D——, widow of a soldier, mother of seven children.” “Nine, if you please, and good-evening to you,” Mrs. D——, leaning against the doorpost, her arms folded on her . She is a rather pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and whatever shame she may have owned she has long since cast behind her. A shapeless Burmo-native , with high cheek-bones and mouth like a shark, calls Mrs. D—— “Mem-Sahib.” The word jars unspeakably. Her life is a matter between herself and her , but in that she—the widow of a soldier of the Queen—has stooped to this common in the face of the city, she has offended against the white race. The Police fail to fall in with this righteous indignation. More—they laugh at it out of the wealth of their unholy knowledge. “You’re from up-country, and of course you don’t understand. There are any amount of that lot in the city.” Then the secret of the of Calcutta is made plain. Small wonder the natives fail to respect the Sahib, seeing what they see and knowing what they know. In the good old days, the honorable the directors him or her who misbehaved grossly, and the white man preserved his izzat. He may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian on a large scale. He did not sink in the presence of the people. The natives are quite right to take the wall of the Sahib who has been at great pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and blood.
 
All this time Mrs. D—— stands on the threshold of her room and looks upon the men with unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that English soldier, who married her long ago by the forms of the English Church, be now flitting bat-wise above the roofs, how singularly pleased and proud it must be! Mrs. D—— is a lady with a story. She is not to telling it. “What was—ahem—the case in which you were—er—hmn—concerned, Mrs. D——?” “They said I’d poisoned my husband by putting something into his drinking-water.” This is interesting. How much has this creature? Let us see. “And—ah—did you?” “’Twasn’t proved,” says Mrs. D—— with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like laugh that does infinite credit to her education and upbringing. Mrs. D——! It would pay a novelist—a French one let us say—to pick you out of the and make you talk.
 
 
The Police move forward, into a region of Mrs. D——’s. This is horrible; but they are used to it, and evidently consider indignation affectation. Everywhere are the empty houses, and the women in print gowns. The clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but the Police show no signs of stopping. They hither and , like wreckers into the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample of , , and .
 
“Sheikh Babu was murdered just here,” they say, pulling up in one of the most troublesome houses in the . It would never do to appear ignorant of the murder of Sheikh Babu. “I only wonder that more aren’t killed.” The houses with their breakneck staircases, their hundred corners, low roofs, hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem built for crime of every kind. A woman—Eurasian—rises to a sitting position on a board-charpoy and blinks sleepily at the Police. Then she throw............