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.