St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-05-27
VICE BRUSSELS.
Shocking Picture OF the Degradation
of 1.-THE Belgian CapitaI.
Brussels Letter In Cbioago Tlmes

brussels Letter In CD1caRO Times.
Go from the cafes to the hotels. The
proprietor will wait and fawn upon you
If you be well-dressed and have few dia-
mOnd rings on your tingers-just as his Par
isan confrere does. Here you will find
those private roonls-or, as they call them,
cabinets particulers-that are. by the bye,
mere limitations of the class at the PaIais
Royal in Paris, where gallants eat and
drink tete-a-tete with the fashionable fe-
male tatterdemalions of the city, and where
married women forget their nuptial
VOWS in the arms of dudish dam
dies. On the streets after nightfaIl
we meet the same disgusting sights so com
mon at the same hour on the boulevards
and Faubourg Montmatre of Parasitic
rouged and powdered battalions of smrk-
ing Vice, Haunting its gaudy dresses and
staring you immodestly out of countenance.
Stroll into by-lanes and alleys. where you
VIII not need very much discrimination to
see that Brussels even exceeds Paris, pro-
portlonally speaking, in the number of its
dens of corruption tolerated by the statute
DOCK and patronized by mauy who have
something to do with the manufacture Of
statutes; dens where British, Irish, French
and American girls cater to the brutal tastes
and proclivities of seoundrels of every class
and OF all nationalities. Go into society,
frequent fashionable tea parties, dance at
fashionable balls and eat and drink at mid
night suppers, and what do you find except
that strange sameness of habits and ideas
so prevalent in the city by the Seine-the
same fashionable dictum if not openly ex-
pressed, at least secretly implied and acted
on, that married dame who doesn't afford
herself the luxury of paramOur is the
Wretchedest of sotteS; the same prurient.
practical philosophy that ties respectfully
brought up girls to their mammas' apron
strings till the nuptial day-a philosophy
which makes the minxes hypocrites before
marriage and God knows what after it; the
same simpering ciyilities exchanged between
men and men or women and women who
have no more regard for each other than an
Irish dynamiter has or is supposed to have
Tor the hide OF the average Saxon. Over the
tea cup the same scandal is banded about
as IN Paris. Mime. A. wore, it seems, the
same dress three times consecutively at her
box in the theatre. Nine. B. is proud of the
youngsters, b. never dreaming, poor soul!
that they are not his own. Nine. G. is
stupid enough to love her husband. although
the fellow laviShes thousands of francs
monthly on one of the actresses of La Mon
maize. etc.
So from the tea table to the political
caucus club, and there you will find the
same political profligacy running riot. Here
as there deputies are secretly paid thousands
and thousands of francs for allowing their
names to appear on the directing company
in the prospectuses of financial speculations.
Here as there the deputy's or senator's
pockets are lined with gold for begging min
isterial fav0rs. Here as there political big
wigs carry on the same petty intrigues, the
same double faced chicanery, the same
double dyed hypocrisy. Where public po-
sitions are got by bribery, politics becomes
trade and political traders Tor tricksters)
are as proportionately numerous in Brussels
as they are in Paris.