sprightly wives of the soldiery and the plump widows of Yama, with
their black eyebrows, had secretly traded in vodka and free love,
there began to spring up wide-open brothels, permitted by the
authorities, regulated by official supervision and subject to
express, strict rules. Towards the end of the nineteenth century
both streets of Yama--Great Yamskaya and Little Yamskaya--proved
to be entirely occupied, on one side of the street as well as the
other, exclusively with houses of ill-fame. [Footnote: "Houses of
Suffrance"--i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.--Trans.] Of the
private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they
were taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores,
catering to the needs of Yama prostitution.

The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical
in all the thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in
the charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently
in certain external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or
less handsome women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes,
in the magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of the
furnishings.

The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to
the left upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its
present owner bears an entirely different name, and fills the post
of an elector in the city council and is even a member of the city
board. The house is of two stories, green and white, built in the
debauched pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little
horses, carved facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with
lace-also of wood; a carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in
the front hall a stuffed bear, holding a wooden platter for