Karen seemed, as she went on, to be addressing the floor. “Then there’s the lodging-house keeper, who steals and cheats. There’s the owner of the house, who acts by daylight as if he wanted to kick you, and comes slinking to your door at twilight. There’s the shop-keeper, who overcharges you, and acts as if he was doing you a favour by giving you rotten stuff for your good money. There’s the policeman that grudges you every step you take. If you don’t slip him a bribe, he pulls you in and you go to jail. There’s the innkeeper; maybe you owe him a bit. He torments you if you got no brass, and wheedles and flatters when you have a little. I don’t mention your own man; but you got to have one if you want to or not, otherwise you’ve got no protection. When he’s sent to the penitentiary, you got to get another. They’re all handy with their knives, but Mesecke was the worst of the lot. But I tell you what’s hell--hell like nothing else in the whole, wide world--that’s your business and your customers. It don’t matter if they’re elegant or common, young or old, skinflints or spendthrifts--when they get to you they’re no better than carrion on a dung-heap. There you see what hypocrisy is and rascality; there you see the dirty souls as they are, with their terror and their lies and their lusts. Everything comes out. It comes out, I tell you, because they ain’t ashamed to let it. They don’t have to be. You get to see human beings without shame, and what you see is the miserable, hideous flesh. Would you like to know how it is? Drink of a cess-pool and you’ll know! It don’t matter if it’s a man that beats his wife when she’s with child, or lets his children starve, or a student or an officer that’s gone to the dogs, or a frightened parson, or a merchant with a huge belly--it’s the same, the same--man without shame and the hideous flesh.”