All is not well with the couple Animus and Anima, the mind and the soul. The time is distant, the honeymoon was soon over, during which Anima had the right to speak as she wished and Animus listened to her with delight. After all, isn’t it Anima who brought the dowry and who supports the household? But Animus did not let himself be subjected for long to this subordinate position and soon he showed his real nature, vain, pedantic, tyrannical. Anima is an ignoramus and a fool, she never went to school, whereas Animus knows heaps of things, he has read heaps of things in books, he learned to speak with a small pebble in his mouth, and now, when he speaks, he speaks so well that all his friends say one can’t speak better than he does. You want to listen to him forever. But now Anima hasn’t the right to say a word. He takes, as you say, the words right out of her mouth. He knows better than she does whät she means, and with his theories and stories he turns it out and fixes it up so that the poor simple minded girl can’t make head or tail of it. Animus is not faithful, but that does not keep him from being jealous, for deep down he knows that Anima has all the money, and he is a tramp living only on what she gives him. So he doesn’t stop exploiting her and tormenting her to get a few francs. He pinches her to make her yell, he plays tricks, invents stories to hurt her and to see what she will say, and at night in the café he tells it all to his friends. During this time, she stays at home, without a word, and cooks and cleans up as best she can after those literary gatherings which smell of vomit and tobacco. But that is exceptional. In reality Animus is a bourgeois, he has regular habits, he loves to be served always the same dishes. But something curious has just happened. One day when Animus came home unexpectedly, or perhaps he was taking a nap after dinner, or perhaps he was absorbed in his work, he heard Anima singing all alone, behind the closed door. An unusual song, something he didn’t know, and there was no way to find the music or the words or the key. A strange marvellous song. Since then he has tried slyly to make her repeat it, but Anima pretends not to understand. She shuts up as soon as he looks at her. The soul keeps silence as soon as the mind looks at it. Then, Animus hit on an idea. He is going to see to it that she thinks he isn’t there. He goes outside, speaks in a loud voice with his friends, whistles, plucks the lute, saws some wood, sings some foolish songs. Gradually Anima relaxes, looks about, listens, breathes, believes she is alone, and noiselessly goes to open the door to her divine lover. But the eyes of Animus, as they say, are in the back of his head.