Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/266

238 hands over the legs and thighs, feeling and testing them as they would test cattle or poultry on market days, taking their chins as if it were a question of telling a foal's age by its mouth. A little more and they would have asked the unsuspecting rustics to undress in order to examine and auscultate them more easily. Slave dealers behaved hardly any differently with the negroes at the slave markets. They operated especially among young, vigorous men, gaining their confidence, jesting, bantering paternally, as free in their pleasantry as military surgeons presiding at a board of appeal.

These crimps, fugitives from the country or emaciated denizens of the slums, broken to unclean business, knew well how to beget eager desires in these primitive but complex hearts; they stirred up the vague need for enjoyment that slumbers in the hearts of brutes; they enticed these illiterates, warmed them up, worked them up morally, as they did physically.

Deceived and ravished as if in a dream, our rustics inhaled the honeyed discourse, lent themselves to insidious caresses; never had so much attention been paid them, never had such flattering opinions so highly extolled them to themselves, the louts! They became slack, became the lieges of their magnetisers, and no longer moved, fearing lest the lethargy and long enervation should cease! And presently, the crimp would but have to pull the string in order to catch a plentiful and flourishing haul.

Ah! they were not squeamish, these emigration agents! After having operated throughout the rest of Europe, draining prolific but degenerate races, here they were casting their spell upon the best blood of Flanders, choosing strong and well-built fellows as patient and hard-working as their dogs. "We must