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Look at that face. It’s ugly. She has a moustache, and a mean, crooked mouth. The jaw is massive. She could be mistaken for a drag queen. And yet, the face of this woman, once the Abbess of Port-Royal, exerted a charismatic fascination on the minds of her time. Why? I ask. Because this face was touched by divine grace.

The visitors then huddle around the portrait of Mère Angélique and anxiously search the homely countenance for the stigmata of divine grace.

What is meant by this? I ask. That our corporeal form is of little import.

What ought we to conclude? I would have loved being a professor, Your Honor, but fate decided otherwise. What ought we to conclude? I repeat. That it is fruitless to cling to things of the flesh, that most deceitful and perishable of substances.

I segue into the vanity of human attachment. I know a thing or two about human attachment. I can vouch for everything Pascal claims with regard to the vanity of human bonds. Attachment to another being, he writes, is folly, first of all because all beings are but fleeting, and second, because they are incapable of fully satisfying the appetites and desires of another.

I occasionally embellish. Especially with groups of German tourists. Human bonding, I tell them, is as fatal as it is futile. For no one can influence the orbit of another. Each of us plots his path irreversibly, awaiting the day of the final catastrophe (you should see their faces!), and it is mathematically unproductive (I love saying mathematically), it is mathematically unproductive to link two tangents.

As for the long-term effects of attachment, I continue, they are positively appalling: the reek of promiscuity, the gradual numbing of the mind, pent-up resentment or outbursts of rage. And in the end, in the end, mutual loathing between all parties who have but one idea in mind: sever the ties or be hanged by them.

Tie up an animal, I tell them; for, not unlike yourself, Your Honor, I have a penchant for argument. Observe the animal. Day after day, you will watch it tug at its rope until chafed raw. Then howl at death. Howl at death, I tell them, hoping that death itself might come to deliver it. Then waste away. And die.

Men are like dogs, I tell them. On uttering these words, Your Honor, I think back to Mama, who was as good as dead before dying, and I see her pale face hovering above all my memories. I see a fly land upon her icy cheek and rub its legs together; I see her pale lips closed forever, and her fathomless eyes behind closed lids. And just then, Your Honor, I see the face of her killer who watches with an expression I am at pains to describe, but which fills me with terror; her killer—that’s what I’ve called him ever since I’ve been able to talk—her killer, whom my mother, from beyond the grave, still makes me call Papa. Men are like dogs, I tell them, Your Honor. They are bonded together by feelings, and their bonds strangle them. And I glare at them if I detect so much as a hint of a smile.

For attachment is love’s worst enemy, I tell them: whosoever ties love down delivers its death warrant. This is what I keep telling my wife, Your Honor, a death warrant, theoretically and otherwise. If I cannot always come up with the suitably pithy turn of phrase required for a rational demonstration, I do prove an excellent pedagogue when it comes to empirical argument. Thus, every day, I work at educating my wife. I prod her. I sting her. I attack her. I vex her. I overwhelm her with sarcasm and nastiness. My purpose is that she rid herself of me entirely. And I confess, though this may shock you, that I enjoy tormenting her this way. You’d like some examples, Your Honor? Here’s one that just came to mind.

When I got home from work one evening, my wife asked me if I bought the coffee.

The chancellery is handling it, I answer, bursting into wild laughter.

Why such a strange reply? I’m not even sure myself. The fact remains that this absurd reply brings joy to my heart and helps me face the recriminations to come. I find joy in anything that foils my wife’s excessive cartesianism, Your Honor. In fact, as a general rule, I find joy in anything that foils excessive cartesianism or the crushing logic of things. For not all that is incomprehensible ceases to exist. That’s a line from Pascal. It’s written in bold letters on one of the museum’s walls. And I repeat it to myself whenever the need arises.

As expected, my wife bursts into bitter reproach. She highly disapproves of my deficiency (in household matters) and my (pathological) irresponsibility when it comes to heavy lifting, tidying up, cleaning and other domestic divertimenti, which, I admit, I hold in utter contempt.

In response, I insult her.

I’ll take this occasion to point out that insults and physical abuse, thought to be pedagogical, prove wholly ineffective when it comes to the perfectibility of the human spirit. Does the same apply to incarceration? I don’t mean to encroach on your profession, Your Honor, but we might well ask ourselves that question. Indeed, I believe it to be the case that, where my wife is concerned, my constant harassment, rather than making her more detached and impervious, only annoys her even more. It’s quite discouraging.

What also never ceases to amaze me, Your Honor, is that these near-daily arguments are followed regularly by periods of calm, where my wife, acting as if nothing had happened, revives her conjugal projects, ludicrous fantasies, absurd pipedreams in the form of Olympic-sized swimming pools, mantelpieces of pink marble inlaid with cipolin, an antique claw-foot bathtub, midnight strolls along the canals of Venice. And for my part, I feign acquiescence, Your Honor, out of spinelessness and laziness, while knowing perfectly well that there is but one remedy against these dizzy ideas: a good slap in the face.

My wife then grants me her forgiveness. By that I mean she assumes her sorrowful, resigned air, then goes about her household chores, in sorrow and resignation.

I have the worst time, Your Honor, putting up with my wife’s forgiveness and her sorrowful, resigned face. If truth be told, they drive me crazy. For they remind me of another sorrowful, resigned face; they remind me of Mama’s face in the wedding photograph that, to this day, adorns the buffet in the dining room of my father’s house. In the photograph, my father is drunk. He got smashed to celebrate all the happiness to come. My mother raises her eyes to the camera lens with that look of despairing goodness that she has worn ever since she met her husband. And when I see my wife going about her household chores looking like a martyred saint, when I see her washing the dishes with her pain-filled eyes opened wide to hold back the tears, when I see her shuttling back and forth with that look of forgiveness, that whiff of victimhood, I want to hit her, Your Honor. I shouldn’t be telling you such things, as they could be used against me, but I want to hit her, Your Honor, because at times like that, I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that I’m just like my father. Could I have inherited his malice? Could he have insidiously taken over my soul, to live on while destroying me? This is what I’ve been thinking, Your Honor, and these notions are making me crazy, literally so, for I’ve sworn never to resemble my father in any way; I’ve sworn it and I’ll swear it again, on the heads of my mother and Blaise Pascal together, never to resemble my father. Never.