side the legend _Librairie Universelle_, while the other bore the word
[Greek: BIBLIOPOLION], which you may translate as it please your fancy.
Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and
dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They
ran up at the back in a steep _glacis_ with embrasures for curios, and
were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-glasses propped against
the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental
candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were stuffed fish of
grotesque globular proportions, and with staring apoplectic eyes. A
stuffed monkey was letting himself down, one-hand, from a thin chain,
and regarded the customer with a contemptuous sneer, the dust lying
thick on his head and arms and his exquisitely curled tail. And out of
an apparently bomb-proof shelter below several tons of books there
emerged a little old gentleman in a brilliant _tarbush_, who looked
inquiringly in my direction. For a moment I paused, fascinated by the
notion that I had discovered the great Library of Alexandria, reported
burnt so many centuries ago. For once within those musty, warped,
unpainted walls one forgot the modern world. I looked out. Across the
street, backed by the immense and level blaze of an Egyptian sunset,
blocks of Carrara marble blushed to pink with mauve shadows, and turned
the common stone mason's yard into a garden of gigantic jewels. The hum
of a great city, the grind of the trolley-cars, the cries of the
itinerant sellers of nuts and fruit, of chewing gum and lottery-tickets,
of shoe laces and suspenders, of newspapers, and prawns, and oysters,
and eggs, and bread, the rattle of carriages and all the flashing
brilliance of the palaces of pleasure, were shut out from that quiet
street near the Greek Patriarchate. I had the sudden notion of asking
for permission to sit in that Universal Library, and write. And Mr.
Bizikas, the little old gentleman in the vivid _tarbush_, who was
lighting a very dirty tin lamp to assist the one candle in the oriental
candelabrum, had no objection. I have a feeling occasionally that here I
topped the rise of human felicity, as I conceive it. Perhaps I did.
Anyhow, _Aliens_ grew.

I must be brief. It came to pass, after certain days, that _Aliens_ grew
to accomplishment, and I made my way into the city through one of the
many gates of the harbour. I sought the office of the Censor in a large
build