In the light of all this, how can one explain this business with the hat? The previous evening, while her husband was attending a meeting of the bar association, Mariana’s father came to their house. He was a kindly old man, wiry and somewhat ponderous, a retired civil servant who was consumed by nostalgia for the days when employees wore frock coats to the office. Even now, a frock coat was what he wore to funerals, not for the reasons a reader might suspect, such as the solemnity of death or the gravity of a final farewell, but for the less philosophical reason that this was how things used to be. He always gave the same reason, whether it was frock coats at funerals, or having dinner at two o’clock in the afternoon, or twenty other such foibles. He was so chained to his habits that, on his daughter’s wedding anniversary, he would go to their house at six o’clock, having already dined and digested, and watch them eat and, at the end, take a little dessert, a glass of port, and some coffee. Given that he was Conrado’s father-in-law, how could he possibly approve of his son-in-law’s bowler hat? He put up with it in silence, in consideration of the man’s other qualities, but nothing more. That day, however, he had caught sight of it in the street, conversing with other hats—top hats belonging to distinguished gentlemen—and never had it seemed so vile. That night, finding his daughter alone, he opened his heart to her, dubbing the bowler hat the “abomination of abominations,” and urging her to banish it.

Conrado was unaware that this was the origin of the request. Knowing his wife’s docile nature, he did not understand her resistance, and, because he was willful and authoritarian, her stubbornness irritated him deeply. Even so, he kept these feelings to himself, preferring simply to scoff; he spoke to her with such scathing irony and disdain that the poor lady felt utterly humiliated. Twice Mariana tried to leave the table and twice he forced her to stay, the first time by grabbing her lightly by the wrist, the second time by subduing her with a withering look. And he said with a smile:

“Now, then, sweetie, I have a philosophical reason for not doing as you ask. I have never told you this before, but I will now tell you everything.”

Mariana bit her lip and said no more; she picked up a knife and began to tap it slowly on the table, just to have something to do, but her husband wouldn’t even allow her this; he delicately took the knife from her and went on: