In a chic apartment overlooking the Seine, Isabella stood before a grand, gold-leafed mirror. She swirled her glass of Bordeaux, sighed with the dramatic flair of a fading cinema star, and whispered:
“Mon Dieu, Louis… look at me. I’ve become old, plump, and as withered as a forgotten rose. We women suffer so much, sacrificing our youth for family, only to end up terrified of our own reflections.”
Louis, calmly sipping his Espresso while flipping through Le Monde, didn’t even look up. Isabella, now irritated, stepped directly between him and his newspaper:
“Are you even listening, Louis? My heart is breaking over my lost beauty!”
Louis slowly lowered his paper and looked at her with the steady, detached gaze of a philosopher.
“Isabella, ma chérie… you are actually incredibly lucky compared to me. So please, stop complaining.”
Isabella’s eyes flashed with a dangerous spark.
“Lucky? I’ve gained five kilos and found a new wrinkle, and you call that luck? Explain yourself, before I exile you to sleep with the cat on the balcony!”
Louis shrugged with effortless nonchalance.
“Isn’t it obvious? You only gaze into that mirror for, what, ten minutes a day? And even that makes you miserable. But look at me… I have to gaze at you twenty-four hours a day, year after year… and yet, have you ever heard me utter a single word of complaint about my ‘suffering’? I am the one with the nerves of steel here!”
Isabella: “…” (A terrifying silence fell over Paris, just seconds before a velvet cushion flew directly into the face of the “philosopher.”)
