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?