itself in what one moment before seemed no more than a sleepy and
ordinary wicked old man. And this was the object and trade of that
peculiar shop, the Bureau Universel d'Echange de Maux: you paid twenty
francs, which the old man proceeded to take from me, for admission to
the bureau and then had the right to exchange any evil or misfortune
with anyone on the premises for some evil or misfortune that he "could
afford," as the old man put it.

There were four or five men in the dingy ends of that low-ceilinged
room who gesticulated and muttered softly in twos as men who make a
bargain, and now and then more came in, and the eyes of the flabby
owner of the house leaped up at them as they entered, seemed to know
their errands at once and each one's peculiar need, and fell back
again into somnolence, receiving his twenty francs in an almost
lifeless hand and biting the coin as though in pure absence of mind.

"Some of my clients," he told me. So amazing to me was the trade of
this extraordinary shop that I engaged the old man in conversation,
repulsive though he was, and from his garrulity I gathered these
facts. He spoke in perfect English though his utterance was somewhat
thick and heavy; no language seemed to come amiss to him. He had been
in business a great many years, how many he would not say, and was far
older than he looked. All kinds of people did business in his shop.
What they exchanged with each other he did not care except that it had
to be evils, he was not empowered to carry on any other kind of
business.

There was no evil, he told me, that was not negotiable there; no evil
the old man knew had ever been taken away in despair from his shop. A
man might have to wait and come back again next day, and next day and