Kabanata Kabanata 6 · 第3章（2）

Another pallor in the void, this time not violet, but a disagreeable

smoky yellow. With it, the whisper of a ghostly clarionet turning this

tune into infinite sadness:

(Here there is another musical staff.)

The yellowish pallor moves: there is an old crone wandering in the void,

bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess, in the coarse

brown frock of some religious order. She wanders and wanders in her

slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its rapid busy way, until

she blunders against the thing she seeks: companionship. With a sob of

relief the poor old creature clutches at the presence of the man and

addresses him in her dry unlovely voice, which can still express pride

and resolution as well as suffering.

THE OLD WOMAN. Excuse me; but I am so lonely; and this place is so

awful.

DON JUAN. A new comer?

THE OLD WOMAN. Yes: I suppose I died this morning. I confessed; I had

extreme unction; I was in bed with my family about me and my eyes fixed

on the cross. Then it grew dark; and when the light came back it was

this light by which I walk seeing nothing. I have wandered for hours in

horrible loneliness.

DON JUAN. [sighing] Ah! you have not yet lost the sense of time. One

soon does, in eternity.

THE OLD WOMAN. Where are we?

DON JUAN. In hell.

THE OLD WOMAN [proudly] Hell! I in hell! How dare you?

DON JUAN. [unimpressed] Why not, Senora?

THE OLD WOMAN. You do not know to whom you are speaking. I am a lady,

and a faithful daughter of the Church.

DON JUAN. I do not doubt it.

THE OLD WOMAN. But how then can I be in hell? Purgatory, perhaps: I have

not been perfect: who has? But hell! oh, you are lying.

DON JUAN. Hell, Senora, I assure you; hell at its best--that is, its most

solitary--though perhaps you would prefer company.

THE OLD WOMAN. But I have sincerely repented; I have confessed.

DON JUAN. How much?

THE OLD WOMAN. More sins than I really committed. I loved confession.

DON JUAN. Ah, that is perhaps as bad as confessing too little. At all

events, Senora, whether by oversight or intention, you are certainly

damned, like myself; and there is nothing for it now but to make the

best of it.

THE OLD WOMAN [indignantly] Oh! and I might have been so much wickeder!

All my good deeds wasted! It is unjust.

DON JUAN. No: you were fully and clearly warned. For your bad deeds,

vicarious atonement, mercy without justice. For your good deeds, justice

without mercy. We have many good people here.

THE OLD WOMAN. Were you a good man?

DON JUAN. I was a murderer.

THE OLD WOMAN. A murderer! Oh, how dare they send me to herd with

murderers! I was not as bad as that: I was a good woman. There is some

mistake: where can I have it set right?

DON JUAN. I do not know whether mistakes can be corrected here. Probably

they will not admit a mistake even if they have made one.

THE OLD WOMAN. But whom can I ask?

DON JUAN. I should ask the Devil, Senora: he understands the ways of

this place, which is more than I ever could.

THE OLD WOMAN. The Devil! _I_ speak to the Devil!

DON JUAN. In hell, Senora, the Devil is the leader of the best society.

THE OLD WOMAN. I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in hell.

DON JUAN. How do you know?

THE OLD WOMAN. Because I feel no pain.

DON JUAN. Oh, then there is no mistake: you are intentionally damned.

THE OLD WOMAN. Why do you say that?

DON JUAN. Because hell, Senora, is a place for the wicked. The wicked

are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them. You tell me you feel

no pain. I conclude you are one of those for whom Hell exists.

THE OLD WOMAN. Do you feel no pain?

DON JUAN. I am not one of the wicked, Senora; therefore it bores me,

bores me beyond description, beyond belief.

THE OLD WOMAN. Not one of the wicked! You said you were a murderer.

DON JUAN. Only a duel. I ran my sword through an old man who was trying

to run his through me.

THE OLD WOMAN. If you were a gentleman, that was not a murder.

DON JUAN. The old man called it murder, because he was, he said,

defending his daughter's honor. By this he meant that because I

foolishly fell in love with her and told her so, she screamed; and he

tried to assassinate me after calling me insulting names.

THE OLD WOMAN. You were like all men. Libertines and murderers all, all,

all!

DON JUAN. And yet we meet here, dear lady.

THE OLD WOMAN. Listen to me. My father was slain by just such a wretch

as you, in just such a duel, for just such a cause. I screamed: it was

my duty. My father drew on my assailant: his honor demanded it. He fell:

that was the reward of honor. I am here: in hell, you tell me that is

the reward of duty. Is there justice in heaven?

DON JUAN. No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above such

idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell, Senora. Hell

is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly

virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in their name: where else

but in hell should they have their reward? Have I not told you that the

truly damned are those who are happy in hell?

THE OLD WOMAN. And are you happy here?

DON JUAN. [Springing to his feet] No; and that is the enigma on which I

ponder in darkness. Why am I here? I, who repudiated all duty, trampled

honor underfoot, and laughed at justice!

THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, what do I care why you are here? Why am I here? I,

who sacrificed all my inclinations to womanly virtue and propriety!

DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home here.

As saith the poet, "Hell is a city much like Seville."

THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am nobody!

DON JUAN. Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is hell.

Do not be surprised or terrified: you will find everything here that a

lady can desire, including devils who will serve you from sheer love of

servitude, and magnify your importance for the sake of dignifying their

service--the best of servants.

THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils!

DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?

THE OLD WOMAN. Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of them. But

that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant that my servants

here would be real devils.

DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing is

real here. That is the horror of damnation.

THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and the

worm.

DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance: how

old were you when you changed from time to eternity?

THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was as if I were a thing of the

past. I am 77.

DON JUAN. A ripe age, Senora. But in hell old age is not tolerated. It

is too real. Here we worship Love and Beauty. Our souls being entirely

damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady of 77, you would not have a

single acquaintance in hell.

THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?

DON JUAN. You forget that you have left your age behind you in the realm

of time. You are no more 77 than you are 7 or 17 or 27.

THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!

DON JUAN. Consider, Senora: was not this true even when you lived on

earth? When you were 70, were you really older underneath your wrinkles

and your grey hairs than when you were 30?

THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use is it to

feel younger and look older?

DON JUAN. You see, Senora, the look was only an illusion. Your wrinkles

lied, just as the plump smooth skin of many a stupid girl of 17, with

heavy spirits and decrepit ideas, lies about her age? Well, here we have

no bodies: we see each other as bodies only because we learnt to think

about one another under that aspect when we were alive; and we still

think in that way, knowing no other. But we can appear to one another at

what age we choose. You have but to will any of your old looks back, and

back they will come.

THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.

DON JUAN. Try.

THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!

DON JUAN. Stop. Before you decide, I had better tell you that these

things are a matter of fashion. Occasionally we have a rage for 17; but

it does not last long. Just at present the fashionable age is 40--or say

37; but there are signs of a change. If you were at all good-looking at

27, I should suggest your trying that, and setting a new fashion.

THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However, 27 be

it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, and so handsome that in

the radiance into which her dull yellow halo has suddenly lightened one

might almost mistake her for Ann Whitefield].

DON JUAN. Dona Ana de Ulloa!

ANA. What? You know me!

DON JUAN. And you forget me!

ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan Tenorio!

Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue me.

DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw [going].

ANA. [seizing his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this dreadful

place.

DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.

ANA. [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your presence.

My dear, dear father!

DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?

ANA. My father HERE!!!

DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.

ANA. I knew it. My noble father! He is looking down on us now. What must

he feel to see his daughter in this place, and in conversation with his

murderer!

DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him--

ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.

DON JUAN. He condescends to look in upon us here from time to time.

Heaven bores him. So let me warn you that if you meet him he will be

mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer! He maintains that

he was a much better swordsman than I, and that if his foot had not

slipped he would have killed me. No doubt he is right: I was not a good

fencer. I never dispute the point; so we are excellent friends.

ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in arms.

DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.

ANA. How dare you say that?

DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember that on

earth--though of course we never confessed it--the death of anyone

we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain

satisfaction at being finally done with them.

ANA. Monster! Never, never.

DON JUAN. [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling. Yes: a funeral was

always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative. At

all events, family ties are rarely kept up here. Your father is quite

accustomed to this: he will not expect any devotion from you.

ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.

DON JUAN. Yes: it became you. But a life of mourning is one thing: an

eternity of it quite another. Besides, here you are as dead as he. Can

anything be more ridiculous than one dead person mourning for another?

Do not look shocked, my dear Ana; and do not be alarmed: there is plenty

of humbug in hell (indeed there is hardly anything else); but the humbug

of death and age and change is dropped because here WE are all dead and

all eternal. You will pick up our ways soon.

ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?

DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.

ANA. [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you behaved so

disgracefully to me?

DON JUAN. [impatiently] Oh, I beg you not to begin talking about love.

Here they talk of nothing else but love--its beauty, its holiness, its

spirituality, its devil knows what!--excuse me; but it does so bore me.

They don't know what they're talking about. I do. They think they have

achieved the perfection of love because they have no bodies. Sheer

imaginative debauchery! Faugh!

ANA. Has even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the terrible

judgment of which my father's statue was the minister taught you no

reverence?

DON JUAN. How is that very flattering statue, by the way? Does it still

come to supper with naughty people and cast them into this bottomless

pit?

ANA. It has been a great expense to me. The boys in the monastery school

would not let it alone: the mischievous ones broke it; and the studious

ones wrote their names on it. Three new noses in two years, and fingers

without end. I had to leave it to its fate at last; and now I fear it is

shockingly mutilated. My poor father!

DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated waves of

sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a round of dreadful joy to

all musicians]. Ha! Mozart's statue music. It is your father. You had

better disappear until I prepare him. [She vanishes].

From the void comes a living statue of white marble, designed to

represent a majestic old man. But he waives his majesty with infinite

grace; walks with a feather-like step; and makes every wrinkle in his

war worn visage brim over with holiday joyousness. To his sculptor he

owes a perfectly trained figure, which he carries erect and trim; and

the ends of his moustache curl up, elastic as watchsprings, giving him

an air which, but for its Spanish dignity, would be called jaunty. He is

on the pleasantest terms with Don Juan. His voice, save for a much more

distinguished intonation, is so like the voice of Roebuck Ramsden that

it calls attention to the fact that they are not unlike one another in

spite of their very different fashion of shaving.

DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why don't you learn to sing the

splendid music Mozart has written for you?

THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is a

counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?

DON JUAN. I have too much consideration for you to repent, Don Gonzalo.

If I did, you would have no excuse for coming from Heaven to argue with

me.

THE STATUE. True. Remain obdurate, my boy. I wish I had killed you, as I

should have done but for an accident. Then I should have come here; and

you would have had a statue and a reputation for piety to live up to.

Any news?

DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.

THE STATUE. [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you were

taken with. Let me see: what was her name?

DON JUAN. Ana.

THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A goodlooking girl, if I recollect aright.

Have you warned Whatshisname--her husband?

DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana arrived.

Ana comes indignantly to light.

ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and YOUR friend! And you, father,

have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.

THE STATUE. My dear: I am so much more admired in marble than I ever was

in my own person that I have retained the shape the sculptor gave me. He

was one of the first men of his day: you must acknowledge that.

ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!

THE STATUE. Ah, you outlived that weakness, my daughter: you must be

nearly 80 by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my 64th year,

and am considerably your junior in consequence. Besides, my child,

in this place, what our libertine friend here would call the farce of

parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I beg, as a fellow creature, not

as a father.

ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.

THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound

thinker.

ANA. [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are devils,

mocking me. I had better pray.

THE STATUE. [consoling her] No, no, no, my child: do not pray. If you

do, you will throw away the main advantage of this place. Written over

the gate here are the words "Leave every hope behind, ye who enter."

Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral

responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no

work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what

you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but

amuse yourself. [Don Juan sighs deeply]. You sigh, friend Juan; but if

you dwelt in heaven, as I do, you would realize your advantages.

DON JUAN. You are in good spirits to-day, Commander. You are positively

brilliant. What is the matter?

THE STATUE. I have come to a momentous decision, my boy. But first,

where is our friend the Devil? I must consult him in the matter. And Ana

would like to make his acquaintance, no doubt.

ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.

DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself. Remember:

the devil is not so black as he is painted.

THE STATUE. Let us give him a call.

At the wave of the statue's hand the great chords roll out again but

this time Mozart's music gets grotesquely adulterated with Gounod's.

A scarlet halo begins to glow; and into it the Devil rises, very

Mephistophelean, and not at all unlike Mendoza, though not so

interesting. He looks older; is getting prematurely bald; and, in spite

of an effusion of goodnature and friendliness, is peevish and sensitive

when his advances are not reciprocated. He does not inspire much

confidence in his powers of hard work or endurance, and is, on the

whole, a disagreeably self-indulgent looking person; but he is clever

and plausible, though perceptibly less well bred than the two other men,

and enormously less vital than the woman.

THE DEVIL. [heartily] Have I the pleasure of again receiving a visit

from the illustrious Commander of Calatrava? [Coldly] Don Juan, your

servant. [Politely] And a strange lady? My respects, Senora.

ANA. Are you--

THE DEVIL. [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.

ANA. I shall go mad.

THE DEVIL. [gallantly] Ah, Senora, do not be anxious. You come to us

from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that priest-ridden

place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet, believe me, I have

hosts of friends there.

ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.

THE DEVIL. [shaking his head] You flatter me, Senora; but you are

mistaken. It is true that the world cannot get on without me; but it

never gives me credit for that: in its heart it mistrusts and hates me.

Its sympathies are all with misery, with poverty, with starvation of the

body and of the heart. I call on it to sympathize with joy, with love,

with happiness, with beauty.

DON JUAN. [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot stand

this.

THE DEVIL. [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.

THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he was

talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.

THE DEVIL. [warmly shaking the statue's hand] Thank you, my friend:

thank you. You have always understood me: he has always disparaged and

avoided me.

DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.

THE DEVIL. Courtesy! What is courtesy? I care nothing for mere courtesy.

Give me warmth of heart, true sincerity, the bond of sympathy with love

and joy--

DON JUAN. You are making me ill.

THE DEVIL. There! [Appealing to the statue] You hear, sir! Oh, by what

irony of fate was this cold selfish egotist sent to my kingdom, and you

taken to the icy mansions of the sky!

THE STATUE. I can't complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me right

to be sent to heaven.

THE DEVIL. Why, sir, do you not join us, and leave a sphere for which

your temperament is too sympathetic, your heart too warm, your capacity

for enjoyment too generous?

THE STATUE. I have this day resolved to do so. In future, excellent Son

of the Morning, I am yours. I have left Heaven for ever.

THE DEVIL. [again grasping his hand] Ah, what an honor for me! What a

triumph for our cause! Thank you, thank you. And now, my friend--I may

call you so at last--could you not persuade HIM to take the place you

have left vacant above?

THE STATUE. [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend

anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make himself

dull and uncomfortable.

THE DEVIL. Of course not; but are you sure HE would be uncomfortable?

Of course you know best: you brought him here originally; and we had the

greatest hopes of him. His sentiments were in the best taste of our best

people. You remember how he sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic

baritone, tremulous from an eternity of misuse in the French manner].

Vivan le femmine!

Viva il buon vino!

THE STATUE. [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter tenor]

Sostegno a gloria

D'umanita.

THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.

DON JUAN. Do you complain of that? Hell is full of musical amateurs:

music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to

abstain?

THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!

DON JUAN. [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman fawning

on a fiddler.

THE DEVIL. I am not angry. I merely pity you. You have no soul; and you

are unconscious of all that you lose. Now you, Senor Commander, are a

born musician. How well you sing! Mozart would be delighted if he were

still here; but he moped and went to heaven. Curious how these clever

men, whom you would have supposed born to be popular here, have turned

out social failures, like Don Juan!

DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.

THE DEVIL. Not that we don't admire your intellect, you know. We do. But

I look at the matter from your own point of view. You don't get on with

us. The place doesn't suit you. The truth is, you have--I won't say no

heart; for we know that beneath all your affected cynicism you have a

warm one.

DON JUAN. [shrinking] Don't, please don't.

THE DEVIL. [nettled] Well, you've no capacity for enjoyment. Will that

satisfy you?

DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than the

other. But if you'll allow me, I'll take refuge, as usual, in solitude.

THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? That's the proper place for

you. [To Ana] Come, Senora! could you not persuade him for his own good

to try a change of air?

ANA. But can he go to Heaven if he wants to?

THE DEVIL. What's to prevent him?

ANA. Can anybody--can I go to Heaven if I want to?

THE DEVIL. [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that

way.

ANA. But why doesn't everybody go to Heaven, then?

THE STATUE. [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It's because

heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that's why.

THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military bluntness;

but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable. There is a notion

that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of fact nothing could have

induced me to stay there. I simply left it and organized this place.

THE STATUE. I don't wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of

heaven.

THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is

a question of temperament. I don't admire the heavenly temperament: I

don't understand it: I don't know that I particularly want to understand

it; but it takes all sorts to make a universe. There is no accounting

for tastes: there are people who like it. I think Don Juan would like

it.

DON JUAN. But--pardon my frankness--could you really go back there if

you desired to; or are the grapes sour?

THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read the

book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming that there is

any barrier between our circle and the other one?

ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.

THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf

is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament.

What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen

on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher's class room

and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not come to the class room

for all that. Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest

following--England? There they have great racecourses, and also concert

rooms where they play the classical compositions of his Excellency's

friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can stay away from them

and go to the classical concerts instead if they like: there is no law

against it; for Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do

whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do. And the

classical concert is admitted to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic,

intellectual, ennobling place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of

racing desert their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they.

They would suffer there all the weariness the Commander has suffered in

heaven. There is the great gulf of the parable between the two places. A

mere physical gulf they could bridge; or at least I could bridge it for

them (the earth is full of Devil's Bridges); but the gulf of dislike

is impassable and eternal. And that is the only gulf that separates my

friends here from those who are invidiously called the blest.

ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.

THE STATUE. My child; one word of warning first. Let me complete my

friend Lucifer's similitude of the classical concert. At every one of

those concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are

there, not because they really like classical music, but because they

think they ought to like it. Well, there is the same thing in heaven.

A number of people sit there in glory, not because they are happy, but

because they think they owe it to their position to be in heaven. They

are almost all English.

THE DEVIL. Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as you

have done. But the English really do not seem to know when they are

thoroughly miserable. An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only

uncomfortable.

THE STATUE. In short, my daughter, if you go to Heaven without being

naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.

ANA. And who dares say that I am not naturally qualified for it? The

most distinguished princes of the Church have never questioned it. I owe

it to myself to leave this place at once.

THE DEVIL. [offended] As you please, Senora. I should have expected

better taste from you.

ANA. Father: I shall expect you to come with me. You cannot stay here.

What will people say?

THE STATUE. People! Why, the best people are here--princes of the church

and all. So few go to Heaven, and so many come here, that the blest,

once called a heavenly host, are a continually dwindling minority. The

saints, the fathers, the elect of long ago are the cranks, the faddists,

the outsiders of to-day.

THE DEVIL. It is true. From the beginning of my career I knew that I

should win in the long run by sheer weight of public opinion, in spite

of the long campaign of misrepresentation and calumny against me. At

bottom the universe is a constitutional one; and with such a majority as

mine I cannot be kept permanently out of office.

DON JUAN. I think, Ana, you had better stay here.

ANA. [jealously] You do not want me to go with you.

DON JUAN. Surely you do not want to enter Heaven in the company of a

reprobate like me.

ANA. All souls are equally precious. You repent, do you not?

DON JUAN. My dear Ana, you are silly. Do you suppose heaven is like

earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done can be undone

by repentance; that what is spoken can be unspoken by withdrawing it;

that what is true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it

the lie? No: heaven is the home of the masters of reality: that is why I

am going thither.

ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite

enough of reality on earth.

DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the unreal

and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven,

which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from

earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a

nursery in which men and women play at being heros and heroines, saints

and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by

their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease,

death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must

be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be

engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at

last to have but one prayer, "Make me a healthy animal." But here you

escape the tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all:

you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless,

ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no

political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no

sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions

love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did

on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic

contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing

but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put

it in his poem, "the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the

Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on"--without getting us a step

farther. And yet you want to leave this paradise!

ANA. But if Hell be so beautiful as this, how glorious must heaven be!

The Devil, the Statue, and Don Juan all begin to speak at once in

violent protest; then stop, abashed.

DON JUAN. I beg your pardon.

THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you.

THE STATUE. You were going to say something.

DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen.

THE DEVIL. [to Don Juan] You have been so eloquent on the advantages of

my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice to the drawbacks of

the alternative establishment.

DON JUAN. In Heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and work

instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they are; you

escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and your peril are

your glory. If the play still goes on here and on earth, and all the

world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind the scenes. But Heaven

cannot be described by metaphor. Thither I shall go presently, because

there I hope to escape at last from lies and from the tedious, vulgar

pursuit of happiness, to spend my eons in contemplation--

THE STATUE. Ugh!

DON JUAN. Senor Commander: I do not blame your disgust: a picture

gallery is a dull place for a blind man. But even as you enjoy the

contemplation of such romantic mirages as beauty and pleasure; so would

I enjoy the contemplation of that which interests me above all things

namely, Life: the force that ever strives to attain greater power of

contemplating itself. What made this brain of mine, do you think? Not

the need to move my limbs; for a rat with half my brains moves as well

as I. Not merely the need to do, but the need to know what I do, lest in

my blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself.