"Life," said that grim old man with a furtive chuckle.

"It must have been a horrible life," I said.

"That was not my affair," the proprietor said, lazily rattling
together as he spoke a little pocketful of twenty-franc pieces.

Strange 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