Summary

The story begins with the unnamed Minister of the Interior looking around a room at three suits that lay over a chair: "They were slung across one another every which way, three corpses in a pile" (1). The rest of the room – adorned in marble – has been boxed up, and the Minister imagines that, once he leaves for Paris, his household staff will take the boxes of possessions for themselves. He is happy that he is able to bring a painting with him. It is a miniature landscape by Dutch artist Aert van der Neer, and the Minister has wrapped it in a pillowcase and put it in his suit bag for travel. As he looks around, he mumbles the phrase, "So it goes," which the narrator describes as "a sentence from a previous existence" (1).

The housekeeper, Elena, enters the room. He tells her...