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.