business I watched in that shop for the next few days, the
exchange of odd commodities, and heard strange mutterings in corners
amongst couples who presently rose and went to the back room, the old
man following to ratify.

Twice a day for a week I paid my twenty francs, watching life with its
great needs and its little needs morning and afternoon spread out
before me in all its wonderful variety.

And one day I met a comfortable man with only a little need, he seemed
to have the very evil I wanted. He always feared the lift was going to
break. I knew too much of hydraulics to fear things as silly as that,
but it was not my business to cure his ridiculous fear. Very few words
were needed to convince him that mine was the evil for him, he never
crossed the sea, and I on the other hand could always walk upstairs,
and I also felt at the time, as many must feel in that shop, that so
absurd a fear could never trouble me. And yet at times it is almost
the curse of my life. When we both had signed the parchment in the
spidery back room and the old man had signed and ratified (for which
we had to pay him fifty francs each) I went back to my hotel, and
there I saw the deadly thing in the basement. They asked me if I would
go upstairs in the lift, from force of habit I risked it, and I held
my breath all the way and clenched my hands. Nothing will induce me to
try such a journey again. I would sooner go up to my room in a
balloon. And why? Because if a balloon goes wrong you have a chance,
it may spread out into a parachute after it has burst, it may catch in
a tree, a hundred and one things may happen, but if the lift falls
down its shaft you are done. As for sea-sickness I shall never be sick
again, I cannot tell you why except that I know that it is so.

And the shop in which I made this remarkable bargain, the shop to
which none return when their business is done: I set out for it next
day. Blindfold I could have found my way to the unfashionable quarter
out of which a mean street runs, where you take the alley at the end,
whence runs the cul de sac where the queer shop stood. A shop with
pillars, fluted and painted red, stands on its near side, its other
neighbour is a low-class jeweller's with little silver brooches in the
window. In such incongruous company stood the shop with beams with its
walls painted green.

In half an hour I found the cul de sac to which I had gone twice a day
for the last week, I found the shop