He began unwillingly, but after only a few minutes he was already working with passion. Inspiration, its eyes turned toward heaven, and meditation, its eyes turned to the floor, stand on either side of his chair, whispering a thousand grave and mystical things in his ear. Matias carries on writing, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. The sheets of paper fly from his hands, vibrant and polished. Some have a few corrections, others have none at all. Suddenly, on the point of writing an adjective, he stops; he writes another and scores it out, then another, which meets the same fate. Here lies the nub of the idyll. Let us climb inside the canon’s head.

Ouf! Here we are. Not that easy, was it, dear reader? So don’t go believing those people who troop up to the top of Corcovado and claim that from that great height man seems utterly insignificant. A false and hasty conclusion; as false as Judas and other such diamonds. Do not believe it, beloved reader. No Corcovados or Himalayas are worth much when set beside the head that measures them. Here we are. Notice that it is indeed the canon’s head. We have the choice of one or other cerebral hemisphere, but let’s go into this one, which is where nouns are born. Adjectives are born in the other one, on the left-hand side. This is one of my own discoveries, possibly the principal one, but it is a starting point, as we will see. Yes, sir, adjectives are born on one side and nouns on the other, and the entire destiny of words is based on sexual difference—

“Sexual difference?”

Yes, ma’am. Words have a gender. Indeed, I am currently in the process of finishing my great psycho-lexico-logical dissertation, in which I expound and demonstrate this discovery. Words are of different sexes . . .

“But do they then love each other?”

They do indeed. And they get married. Their marriage is what we call style. You must confess, ma’am, that you have understood nothing.

“I confess I haven’t.”

Well, then, join me inside the canon’s head. Just now there is some whispering going on over there. Do you know who is whispering? It is the noun from just a few minutes ago, the one the canon wrote down on the piece of paper just before his pen hesitated. The noun is summoning a certain adjective, which fails to appear: “Come from Lebanon, come . . .” That is how it speaks, for it is inside the head of a priest; if it were in a layman’s head, the language would be Romeo’s: “Juliet is the sun . . . Arise, fair sun.” But in an ecclesiastical brain, the language is that of Scripture. At the end of the day, though, what do such formulations matter? Lovers in Verona or in Judah all speak the same language, just as the thaler or the dollar, the florin or the pound, are all the same money.