I was about the leave when he took a superb pair of soft, supple leather boots off a shelf.
''See what I can do? '' he said with pride. ''Only three of us in Paris can do this kind of work.''
When I got back out into the street, the world seemed brand-new to me. He was something out of a medieval legend, this old craftsman with his way of speaking familiarly, his weird, dusty felt hat, his funny accent from who-know-where and, above all, his pride in his craft.
These are times when nothing counts but the bottom line, when you can do things and old way as long as it ''pays'' when, in short, people look on work as a path to ever increasing consumption rather than a way to realize their own intrinsic abilities. In such a period it is a rare comfort to find a cobbler who derives his greatest satisfaction from pride in a job well done.