If you feel at any time that warmth of heart, sincere unforced affection, innocent enjoyment, and warm, breathing, palpitating reality—
DON JUAN.
Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have left those two greasy commonplaces behind us?
THE DEVIL. [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my teeth, then, Don Juan?
DON JUAN.
By no means.
But though there is much to be learnt from a cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor Commander: you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven.
Be good enough to direct me.
THE STATUE.
Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.
Any road will take you across it if you really want to get there.
DON JUAN.
Good. [saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.
ANA.
But I am going with you.
DON JUAN.
I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; but I cannot find yours [he vanishes].
ANA.
How annoying!
THE STATUE. [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute.
A faint echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in acknowledgment]. Ah! there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out through his lips] Whew!
How he does talk!
They'll never stand it in heaven.
THE DEVIL. [gloomily] His going is a political defeat.
I cannot keep these Life Worshippers: they all go.
This is the greatest loss I have had since that Dutch painter went—a fellow who would paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.
THE STATUE.
I remember: he came to heaven.
Rembrandt.
THE DEVIL.
Ay, Rembrandt.
There a something unnatural about these fellows.
Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is dangerous.
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.
To a man, horses and dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world.
Well, to the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world.
This Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human character of the soul.
THE STATUE.
And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL.
Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics.
Did you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish madman—what was his name?
Nietzsche?
THE STATUE.
Never heard of him.
THE DEVIL.
Well, he came here first, before he recovered his wits.
I had some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper.
It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.
THE STATUE.