In 1710, it is said that Bernard de Mandeville, in the corridor leading from the dining room to the drawing room, knocked against an implement someone had left there and spilled the tea he had prepared for himself. In the drawing room John Closterman was waiting for him, and tried, without fully succeeding, to remove from the portrait he was beginning that afternoon the irritated expression on the face of his acquaintance Bernard. In truth, Mandeville did not even care much for tea. The irritation had set off a thought about a constant that was always insufficiently expressed, one which, in his view, had to be included, though he had absolutely no idea where.
A few years later, this forgettable incident would play no part in his Fable of the Bees: there, a hive prospers so long as each bee cultivates its own vice, and collapses the moment virtue is imposed upon it. But the uncontrollable part of the affair, fortune, or rather misfortune, evaporates. Now, however, we know that every gesture enacted by power sets off a chain that leads it to its worst possible outcome, where the kingdom does not collapse but endures, intact and hollowed out, in misfortune.
I have constructed a plaster interior, to scale: a barrel vault, an entrance, a half-open door, a functioning chandelier.
The figure inhabiting it is made of wax, motionless, at the foot of the staircase. The light falls from above onto its outstretched hand, asking.