Posted in prostitution , uncategorized on November 19, Leave a Comment ยป. In this fifth and last part of the series, Octave Uzanne explores the hidden side of the Parisian sex industry. The text was published in This post is longer than usual, but then the clandestine prostitution possessed more secrets and inventions than the open sex trade.
The clandestine prostitution of Paris is the most interesting branch of the subject for it is the most ingenious, the most fertile in resource, the cleverest in passing off what it has to sell, the most expert in creating an atmosphere of illusion.
As its name indicates, this province of vice is a thing apart. It is a mysterious trade, which depends for its success on histrionic capacity and on a tangle of tricks and intrigues which would be impossible to unravel completely. Clandestine prostitution, like the spider, weaves its web in the shadows.
It has its spies, its brokers, its beaters whose business it is to drive the game into the toils. Its methods are rarely direct, and whatever mode of action be chosen it very rarely comes into the light of day, and uses extraordinary and marvellously combined subterfuges to conceal its operations.
Labyrinths are constructed the windings of which can never be known to the police. In Paris, a clandestine prostitution is everywhere. It surrounds a man in all his acts and avocations. It presents itself in hotels, in restaurants, in shops, in omnibus shelters, at the Louvre and the Luxembourg, where it appears armed with a Baedeker, ready to guide the foreigner. In certain circlesโaye, even in the official onesโit shows itself discretely, almost impenetrably disguised.
