I’d like at least … See these fingernails? I’d like to dig them into the face of every beautiful woman who passes down the street, teasing men provocatively.

What stupid, miserable and thoughtless creatures all women are! They dress up, put on their fineries, turn their laughing eyes here and there and show off their provocative shapes as much as they can. But they don’t realize that they too are in the trap and are fixedly formed to die, and have the trap in themselves for those that are to come!

For us men the trap is in them, in women. For a moment they put us once again in a state of incandescence to wrest from us another being who is sentenced to death. They say and do so much until they finally make us fall, blind, passionate and violent, into their trap.

Me too! Me too! They made me fall too! In fact, most recently. That’s why I’m so furious.

An abominable trap! If only I had seen it … A demure young lady. Timid, humble. As soon as she would see me, she would lower her eyes and blush because she knew that otherwise I would never have fallen.

She used to come here to put into practice one of the seven corporal works of mercy: to visit the sick. She used to come for my father, not for me. She used to come to help my old governess look after and clean my poor father, who’s in the other room …

She used to live here in the adjoining apartment and had become friends with my governess, to whom she would complain about her idiotic husband, who always reproached her for not being able to give him a son.

But do you understand how it is? When you begin to stiffen and you can no longer move as before, you want to see other small corpses around, very young corpses that still move as you did when you were very young; other small corpses that resemble you and do all those little things that you can no longer do.

There’s nothing more amusing than to wash the faces of small corpses that still don’t know they are caught in the trap, and to comb their hair and take them out for a little stroll.

As I was saying, she used to come here.

‘I can imagine,’ she would say, blushing, her eyes downcast, ‘I can imagine what a torment it must be, Signor Fabrizio, to see your father in this condition for so many years!’

‘Yes, Signora,’ I would answer gruffly and I would turn around and go away.

I’m certain now that as soon as I would turn around and go away, she would laugh to herself, biting her lip to hold back her laughter.

I would go away because, in spite of myself, I felt that I admired that woman. Not indeed because of her beauty – she was very beautiful, and the more she showed she had no regard for her beauty, the more seductive she was – but because she didn’t give her husband the satisfaction of putting another unfortunate in the trap.