Act III. Shaw, Bernard. 1903. Man and Superman

Fiction > Bernard Shaw > Man and Superman

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Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). Man and Superman. 1903.

Act III


Evening in the Sierra Nevada. Rolling slopes of brown with olive trees instead of apple trees in the cultivated patches, and occasional prickly pears instead of gorse and bracken in the wilds. Higher up, tall stone peaks and precipices, all handsome and distinguished. No wild nature here: rather a most aristocratic mountain landscape made by a fastidious artist-creator. No vulgar profusion of vegetation: even a touch of aridity in the frequent patches of stones: Spanish magnificence and Spanish economy everywhere.	1
Not very far north of a spot at which the high road over one of the passes crosses a tunnel on the railway from Malaga to Granada, is one of the mountain amphitheatres of the Sierra. Looking at it from the wide end of the horse-shoe, one sees, a little to the right, in the face of the cliff, a romantic cave which is really an abandoned quarry, and towards the left a little hill, commanding a view of the road, which skirts the amphitheatre on the left, maintaining its higher level on embankments and an occasional stone arch. On the hill, watching the road, is a man who is either a Spaniard or a Scotchman. Probably a Spaniard, since he wears the dress of a Spanish goatherd and seems at home in the Sierra Nevada, but very like a Scotchman for all that. In the hollow, on the slope leading to the quarry-cave, are about a dozen men who, as they recline at their ease round a heap of smouldering white ashes of dead leaf and brushwood, have an air of being conscious of themselves as picturesque scoundrels honoring the Sierra by using it as an effective pictorial background. As a matter of artistic fact they are not picturesque; and the mountains tolerate them as lions tolerate lice. An English policeman or Poor Law Guardian would recognize them as a selected hand of tramps and ablebodied paupers.	2
This description of them is not wholly contemptuous. Whoever has intelligently observed the tramp, or visited the ablebodied ward of a workhouse, will admit that our social failures are not all drunkards and weaklings. Some of them are men who do not fit the class they were born into. Precisely the same qualities that make the educated gentleman an artist may make an uneducated manual laborer an ablebodied pauper. There are men who fall helplessly into the workhouse because they are good for nothing; but there are also men who are there because they are strongminded enough to disregard the social convention (obviously not a disinterested one on the part of the ratepayer) which bids a man live by heavy and badly paid drudgery when he has the alternative of walking into the workhouse, announcing himself as a destitute person, and legally compelling the Guardians to feed, clothe, and house him better than he could feed, clothe, and house himself without great exertion. When a man who is born a poet refuses a stool in a stockbroker’s office, and starves in a garret, spunging on a poor landlady or on his friends and relatives sooner than work against his grain; or when a lady, because she is a lady, will face any extremity of parasitic dependence rather than take a situation as cook or parlormaid, we make large allowances for them. To such allowances the ablebodied pauper, and his nomadic variant the tramp, are equally entitled.	3
Further, the imaginative man, if his life is to be tolerable to him, must have leisure to tell himself stories, and a position which lends itself to imaginative decoration. The ranks of unskilled labor offer no such positions. We misuse our laborers horribly; and when a man refuses to he misused, we have no right to say that he is refusing honest work. Let us be frank in this matter before we go on with our play; so that we may enjoy it without hypocrisy. If we were reasoning, far-sighted people, four fifths of us would go straight to the Guardians for relief, and knock the whole social system to pieces with most beneficial reconstructive results. The reason we do not do this is because we work like bees or ants, by instinct or habit, not reasoning about the matter at all. Therefore when a man comes along who can and does reason, and who, applying the Kantian test to his conduct, can truly say to us, If everybody did as I do, the world would be compelled to reform itself industrially, and abolish slavery and squalor, which exist only because everybody does as you do, let us honor that man and seriously consider the advisability of following his example. Such a man is the ablebodied, ableminded pauper. Were he a gentleman doing his best to get a pension or a sinecure instead of sweeping a crossing, nobody would blame him for deciding that so long as the alternative lies between living mainly at the expense of the community and allowing the community to live mainly at his, it would be folly to accept what is to him personally the greater of the two evils.	4
We may therefore contemplate the tramps of the Sierra without prejudice, admitting cheerfully that our objects—briefly, to be gentlemen of fortune—are much the same as theirs, and the difference in our position and methods merely accidental. One or two of them, perhaps, it would be wiser to kill without malice in a friendly and frank manner; for there are bipeds, just as there are quadrupeds, who are too dangerous to be left unchained and unmuzzled; and these cannot fairly expect to have other men’s lives wasted in the work of watching them. But as society has not the courage to kill them, and, when it catches them, simply wreaks on them some superstitious expiatory rites of torture and degradation, and then lets them loose with heightened qualifications for mischief, it is just as well that they are at large in the Sierra, and in the hands of a chief who looks as if he might possibly, on provocation, order them to be shot.	5
This chief, seated in the centre of the group on a squared block of stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking cockatoo nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned moustache, and a Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps because the scenery admits of a larger swagger than Piccadilly, perhaps because of a certain sentimentality in the man which gives him that touch of grace which alone can excuse deliberate picturesqueness. His eyes and mouth are by no means rascally; he has a fine voice and a ready wit; and whether he is really the strongest man in the patty or not, he looks it. He is certainly the best fed, the best dressed, and the best trained. The fact that he speaks English is not unexpected, in spite of the Spanish landscape; for with the exception of one man who might be guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink, and one unmistakeable Frenchman, they are all cockney or American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and sombreros, they mostly wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard hemispherical hats, and dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after their leader, whose broad sombrero with a cock’s feather in the band, and voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English as possible. None of them are armed; and the ungloved ones keep their hands in their pockets because it is their national belief that it must be dangerously cold in the open air with the night coming on. (It is as warm an evening as any reasonable man could desire.)	6
Except the bullfighting inebriate there is only one person in the company who looks more than, say, thirty-three, He is a small man with reddish whiskers, weak eyes, and the anxious look of a small tradesman in difficulties. He wears the only tall hat visible: it shines in the sunset with the sticky glow of some sixpenny patent hat reviver, often applied and constantly tending to produce a worse state of the original surface than the ruin it was applied to remedy. He has a collar and cuffs of celluloid; and his brown Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar, is still presentable. He is pre-eminently the respectable man of the party, and is certainly over forty, possibly over fifty. He is the corner man on the leader’s right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who are both English, one is argumentative, solemn, and obstinate; the other rowdy and mischievous.	7
The chief, with a magnificent fling of the end of his cloak across his left shoulder, rises to address them. The applause which greets him shews that he is a favorite orator.	8
THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make to this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing the question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most personal courage? We have gone into the principles of Anarchism and Social-Democracy at great length. The cause of Anarchy has been ably represented by our one Anarchist, who doesnt know what Anarchism means [laughter]—	9
THE ANARCHIST [rising] A point of order, Mendoza—	10
MENDOZA [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took half an hour. Besides, Anarchists dont believe in order.	11
THE ANARCHIST [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and cuffs] That is a vulgar error. I can prove—	12
MENDOZA. Order, order.	13
THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up. The Anarchist is suppressed.	14
MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among us. They are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us three distinct and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.	15
THE THREE MEN IN SCARLET TIES. 1. Mr Chairman, I protest. A personal explanation. 2. It’s a lie. I never said so. Be fair, Mendoza. 3. Je demande la parole. C’est absolument faux. C’est faux! faux!! faux!!! Assas-s-s-s-sin!!!!!!	16
MENDOZA. Order, order.	17
THE OTHERS. Order, order, order! Chair! The Social-Democrats are suppressed.	18
MENDOZA. Now, we tolerate all opinions here. But after all, comrades, the vast majority of us are neither Anarchists nor Socialists, but gentlemen and Christians.	19
THE MAJORITY [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.	20
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [smarting under suppression] You aint no Christian. Youre a Sheeny, you are.	21
MENDOZA [with crushing magnanimity] My friend: I am an exception to all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and when the Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its historic soil of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to volunteer [sympathetic applause—Hear, hear, &c.]. But I am not a slave to any superstition. I have swallowed all the formulas, even that of Socialism; though, in a sense, once a Socialist, always a Socialist.	22
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!	23
MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man—even the ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man [Hear, hear!]—is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of wealth.	24
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.	25
MENDOZA [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the class that produced it and that chiefly needs it: the working class. We do this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and abstinence—especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.	26
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [stubbornly] No more aint we.	27
MENDOZA [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?	28
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [unmoved] Why should you?	29
THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from each according to his means.	30
THE FRENCHMAN [shaking his fist at the Anarchist] Fumiste!	31
MENDOZA [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.	32
THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo Mendoza!	33
MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen, and strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the field.	34
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [derisively] Shikespear. A whistle comes from the goatherd on the hill. He springs up and points excitedly forward along the road to the north.	35
THE GOATHERD. Automobile! Automobile! [He rushes down the hill and joins the rest, who all scramble to their feet].	36
MENDOZA [in ringing tones] To arms! Who has the gun?	37
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [handing the rifle to Mendoza] Here.	38
MENDOZA. Have the nails been strewn in the road?	39
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Two ahnces of em.	40
MENDOZA. Good! [To the Frenchman] With me, Duval. If the nails fail, puncture their tires with a bullet. [He gives the rifle to Duval, who follows him up the hill. Mendoza produces an opera glass. The others hurry across to the road and disappear to the north].	41
MENDOZA [on the hill, using his glass] Two only, a capitalist and his chauffeur. They look English.	42
DUVAL. Angliche! Aoh yess. Cochons! [Handling the rifle] Faut tirer, n’est-ce-pas?	43
MENDOZA. No: the nails have gone home. Their tire is down: they stop.	44
DUVAL [shouting to the others] Fondez sur eux, nom de Dieu!	45
MENDOZA [rebuking his excitement] Du calme, Duval: keep your hair on. They take it quietly. Let us descend and receive them. Mendoza descends, passing behind the fire and coming forward, whilst Tanner and Straker, in their motoring goggles, leather coats, and caps, are led in from the road by the brigands.	46
TANNER. Is this the gentleman you describe as your boss? Does he speak English?	47
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Course he does. Y’ downt suppowz we Hinglishmen luts ahrselves be bossed by a bloomin Spenniard, do you?	48
MENDOZA [with dignity] Allow me to introduce myself. Mendoza, President of the League of the Sierra! [Posing loftily] I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.	49
TANNER [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.	50
THE ENGLISH SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear! General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands. The Brigands drop into their former places.	51
STRAKER. Ere! where do I come in?	52
TANNER [introducing] My friend and chauffeur.	53
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [suspiciously] Well, which is he? friend or show-foor? It makes all the difference, you know.	54
MENDOZA [explaining] We should expect ransom for a friend. A professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a trifling percentage of his principal’s ransom if he will honor us by accepting it.	55
STRAKER. I see. Just to encourage me to come this way again. Well, I’ll think about it.	56
DUVAL [impulsively rushing across to Straker] Mon frère! [He embraces him rapturously and kisses him on both cheeks].	57
STRAKER [disgusted] Ere, git out: dont be silly. Who are you, pray?	58
DUVAL. Duval: Social-Democrat.	59
STRAKER. Oh, youre a Social-Democrat, are you?	60
THE ANARCHIST. He means that he has sold out to the parliamentary humbugs and the bourgeoisie. Compromise! that is his faith.	61
DUVAL [furiously] I understand what he say. He say Bourgeois. He say Compromise. Jamais de la vie! Misérable menteur—	62
STRAKER. See here, Captain Mendoza, ow much o this sort o thing do you put up with here? Are we avin a pleasure trip in the mountains, or are we at a Socialist meetin?	63
THE MAJORITY. Hear, hear! Shut up. Chuck it. Sit down, &c., &c. [The Social-Democrats and the Anarchist are hustled into the background. Straker, after superintending this proceeding with satisfaction, places himself on Mendoza’s left, Tanner being on his right].	64
MENDOZA. Can we offer you anything? Broiled rabbit and prickly pears—	65
TANNER. Thank you: we have dined.	66
MENDOZA [to his followers] Gentlemen: business is over for the day. Go as you please until morning. The Brigands disperse into groups lazily. Some go into the cave. Others sit down or lie down to sleep in the open. A few produce a pack of cards and move off towards the road; for it is now starlight; and they know that motor cars have lamps which can be turned to account for lighting a card party.	67
STRAKER [calling after them] Dont none of you go fooling with that car, d’ye hear?	68
MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we captured cured us of that.	69
STRAKER [interested] What did it do?	70
MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not know how to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the police station. Since then we never touch one without sending for the chauffeur. Shall we chat at our ease?	71
TANNER. By all means. Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire. Mendoza delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right to sit on the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the ground like his guests, and using the stone only as a support for his back.	72
MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until to-morrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours. However, if you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at once, I am at your service.	73
TANNER. To-morrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay anything in reason.	74
MENDOZA [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You are a remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves as miserably poor.	75
TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people dont own motor cars.	76
MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.	77
TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.	78
STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Dont tell me you cant do us a bit better than that if you like.	79
MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese, and bread can be procured for ready money.	80
STRAKER [graciously] Now youre talkin.	81
TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?	82
MENDOZA [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no, no: nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern views as to the injustice of the existing distribution of wealth: otherwise we should lose our self-respect. But nothing that you could take exception to, except two or three faddists.	83
TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable. In fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.	84
STRAKER [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.	85
MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air of the century.	86
STRAKER. Socialism must be lookin up a bit if your chaps are taking to it.	87
MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shews itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.	88
TANNER. But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary citizens?	89
MENDOZA. Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it. We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.	90
STRAKER. Take care! some o the dregs’ll hear you.	91
MENDOZA. It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and likes to hear the others called dregs.	92
TANNER. Come! you are a wit. [Mendoza inclines his head, flattered]. May one ask you a blunt question?	93
MENDOZA. As blunt as you please.	94
TANNER. How does it pay a man of your talent to shepherd such a flock as this on broiled rabbit and prickly pears? I have seen men less gifted, and I’ll swear less honest, supping at the Savoy on foie gras and champagne.	95
MENDOZA. Pooh! they have all had their turn at the broiled rabbit, just as I shall have my turn at the Savoy. Indeed, I have had a turn there already—as waiter.	96
TANNER. A waiter! You astonish me!	97
MENDOZA [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a waiter. Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden intensity] Shall I tell you the story of my life?	98
STRAKER [apprehensively] If it aint too long, old chap—	99
TANNER [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry: you have no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me extremely, President. Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.	100
MENDOZA. The woman I loved—	101
STRAKER. Oh, this is a love story, is it? Right you are. Go on: I was only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.	102
MENDOZA. Myself! I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is why I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her. She had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.	103
STRAKER. A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin. Er name was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasnt it?	104
MENDOZA. No, sir: she was not an earl’s daughter. Photography, reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries, clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise—let me reciprocate your bluntness—I should have scorned her.	105
TANNER. Very properly. And did she respond to your love?	106
MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did? She objected to marry a Jew.	107
TANNER. On religious grounds?	108
MENDOZA. No: she was a freethinker. She said that every Jew considers in his heart that English people are dirty in their habits.	109
TANNER [surprised] Dirty!	110
MENDOZA. It shewed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for it is undoubtedly true. Our elaborate sanitary code makes us unduly contemptuous of the Gentile.	111
TANNER. Did you ever hear that, Henry?	112
STRAKER. Ive heard my sister say so. She was cook in a Jewish family once.	113
MENDOZA. I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the impression it made on her mind. I could have got round any other objection; but no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as to her person. My entreaties were in vain: she always retorted that she wasnt good enough for me, and recommended me to marry an accursed barmaid named Rebecca Lazarus, whom I loathed. I talked of suicide: she offered me a packet of beetle poison to do it with. I hinted at murder: she went into hysterics; and as I am a living man I went to America so that she might sleep without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat. In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by the police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea of holding up motor cars in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to a desperate and disappointed man. He gave me some valuable introductions to capitalists of the right sort. I formed a syndicate; and the present enterprise is the result. I became leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his brains and imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give everything I possess to be an Englishman. I am like a boy: I cut her name on the trees and her initials on the sod. When I am alone I lie down and tear my wretched hair and cry Louisa—	114
STRAKER [startled] Louisa!	115
MENDOZA. It is her name—Louisa—Louisa Straker—	116
TANNER. Straker!	117
STRAKER [scrambling up on his knees most indignantly] Look here: Louisa Straker is my sister, see? Wot do you mean by gassin about her like this? Wotshe got to do with you?	118
MENDOZA. A dramatic coincidence! You are Enry, her favorite brother!	119
STRAKER. Oo are you callin Enry? What call have you to take a liberty with my name or with hers? For two pins I’d punch your fat ed, so I would.	120
MENDOZA [with grandiose calm] If I let you do it, will you promise to brag of it afterwards to her? She will be reminded of her Mendoza: that is all I desire.	121
TANNER. This is genuine devotion, Henry. You should respect it.	122
STRAKER [fiercely] Funk, more likely.	123
MENDOZA [springing to his feet] Funk! Young man: I come of a famous family of fighters; and as your sister well knows, you would have as much chance against me as a perambulator against your motor car.	124
STRAKER [secretly daunted, but rising from his knees with an air of reckless pugnacity] I aint afraid of you. With your Louisa! Louisa! Miss Straker is good enough for you, I should think.	125
MENDOZA. I wish you could persuade her to think so.	126
STRAKER [exasperated] Here—	127
TANNER [rising quickly and interposing] Oh come, Henry: even if you could fight the President you cant fight the whole League of the Sierra. Sit down again and be friendly. A cat may look at a king; and even a President of brigands may look at your sister. All this family pride is really very old fashioned.	128
STRAKER [subdued, but grumbling] Let him look at her. But wot does he mean by makin out that she ever looked at im? [Reluctantly resuming his couch on the turf] Ear him talk, one ud think she was keepin company with him. [He turns his back on them and composes himself to sleep].	129
MENDOZA [to Tanner, becoming more confidential as he finds himself virtually alone with a sympathetic listener in the still starlight of the mountains, for all the rest are asleep by this time] It was just so with her, sir. Her intellect reached forward into the twentieth century: her social prejudices and family affections reached back into the dark ages. Ah, sir, how the words of Shakespear seem to fit every crisis in our emotions! I loved Louisa: 40,000 brothers Could not with all their quantity of love Make up my sum. And so on. I forget the rest. Call it madness if you will—infatuation. I am an able man, a strong man: in ten years I should have owned a first-class hotel. I met her; and—you see!—I am a brigand, an outcast. Even Shakespear cannot do justice to what I feel for Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills, scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick to make it glow].	130
TANNER [slapping him rudely on the shoulder] Put them in the fire, President.	131
MENDOZA [startled] Eh?	132
TANNER. You are sacrificing your career to a monomania.	133
MENDOZA. I know it.	134
TANNER. No you dont. No man would commit such a crime against himself if he really knew what he was doing. How can you look round at these august hills, look up at this divine sky, taste this finely tempered air, and then talk like a literary hack on a second floor in Bloomsbury?	135
MENDOZA [shaking his head] The Sierra is no better than Bloomsbury when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these mountains make you dream of women—of women with magnificent hair.	136
TANNER. Of Louisa, in short. They will not make me dream of women, my friend: I am heartwhole.	137
MENDOZA. Do not boast until morning, sir. This is a strange country for dreams.	138
TANNER. Well, we shall see. Goodnight. [He lies down and composes himself to sleep]. Mendoza, with a sigh, follows his example: and for a few moments there is peace in the Sierra. Then Mendoza sits up suddenly and says pleadingly to Tanner—	139
MENDOZA. Just allow me to read a few lines before you go to sleep. I should really like your opinion of them.	140
TANNER [drowsily] Go on. I am listening.	141
MENDOZA. I saw thee first in Whitsun week Louisa, Louisa—	142
TANNER [rousing himself] My dear President, Louisa is a very pretty name; but it really doesnt rhyme well to Whitsun week.	143
MENDOZA. Of course not. Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.	144
TANNER [subsiding] Ah, the refrain. I beg your pardon. Go on.	145
MENDOZA. Perhaps you do not care for that one: I think you will like this better. [He recites, in rich soft tones, and in slow time] Louisa, I love thee. I love thee, Louisa. Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee. One name and one phrase make my music, Louisa. Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee. Mendoza thy lover, Thy lover, Mendoza, Mendoza adoringly lives for Louisa. Theres nothing but that in the world for Mendoza. Louisa, Louisa, Mendoza adores thee. [Affected] There is no merit in producing beautiful lines upon such a name. Louisa is an exquisite name, is it not?	146
TANNER [all but asleep, responds with faint groan].	147
MENDOZA. O wert thou, Louisa, The wife of Mendoza, Mendoza’s Louisa, Louisa Mendoza, How blest were the life of Louisa’s Mendoza! How painless his longing of love for Louisa! That is real poetry—from the heart—from the heart of hearts. Dont you think it will move her? No answer. [Resignedly] Asleep, as usual. Doggrel to all the world: heavenly music to me! Idiot that I am to wear my heart on my sleeve! [He composes himself to sleep, murmuring] Louisa, I love thee; I love thee, Louisa; Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I— Straker snores; rolls over on his side; and relapses into sleep. Stillness settles on the Sierra; and the darkness deepens. The fire has again buried itself in white ash and ceased to glow. The peaks shew unfathomably dark against the starry firmament; but now the stars dim and vanish; and the sky seems to steal away out of the universe. Instead of the Sierra there is nothing: omnipresent nothing. No sky, no peaks, no light, no sound, no time nor space, utter void. Then somewhere the beginning of a pallor, and with it a faint throbbing buzz as of a ghostly violoncello palpitating on the same note endlessly. A couple of ghostly violins presently take advantage of this bass [graphic] and therewith the pallor reveals a man in the void, an incorporeal but visible man, seated, absurdly enough, on nothing. For a moment he raises his head as the music passes him by. Then, with a heavy sigh, he droops in utter dejection; and the violins, discouraged, retrace their melody in despair and at last give it up, extinguished by wailings from uncanny wind instruments, thus:— [graphic] It is all very odd. One recognizes the Mozartian strain; and on this hint, and by the aid of certain sparkles of violet light in the pallor, the man’s costume explains itself as that of a Spanish nobleman of the XV–XVI. century. Don Juan, of course; but where? why? how? Besides, in the brief lifting of his face, now hidden by his hat brim, there was a curious suggestion of Tanner. A more critical, fastidious, handsome face, paler and colder, without Tanner’s impetuous credulity and enthusiasm, and without a touch of his modern plutocratic vulgarity, but still a resemblance, even an identity. The name too: Don Juan Tenorio, John Tanner. Where on earth—or elsewhere—have we got to from the XX century and the Sierra? Another pallor in the void, this time not violet, but a disagreeable smoky yellow. With it, the whisper of a ghostly clarinet turning this tune into infinite sadness: [graphic] 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.	148
THE OLD WOMAN. Excuse me; but I am so lonely; and this place is so awful.	149
DON JUAN. A new comer?	150
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.	151
DON JUAN [sighing] Ah! you have not yet lost the sense of time. One soon does, in eternity.	152
THE OLD WOMAN. Where are we?	153
DON JUAN. In hell.	154
THE OLD WOMAN [proudly] Hell! I in hell! How dare you?	155
DON JUAN [unimpressed] Why not, Señora!	156
THE OLD WOMAN. You do not know to whom you are speaking. I am a lady, and a faithful daughter of the Church.	157
DON JUAN. I do not doubt it.	158
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.	159
DON JUAN. Hell, Señora, I assure you; hell at its best: that is, its most solitary—though perhaps you would prefer company.	160
THE OLD WOMAN. But I have sincerely repented; I have confessed—	161
DON JUAN. How much?	162
THE OLD WOMAN. More sins than I really committed. I loved confession.	163
DON JUAN. Ah, that is perhaps as bad as confessing too little. At all events, Señora, 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.	164
THE OLD WOMAN [indignantly] Oh! and I might have been so much wickeder! All my good deeds wasted! It is unjust.	165
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.	166
THE OLD WOMAN. Were you a good man?	167
DON JUAN. I was a murderer.	168
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?	169
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.	170
THE OLD WOMAN. But whom can I ask?	171
DON JUAN. I should ask the Devil, Señora: he understands the ways of this place, which is more than I ever could.	172
THE OLD WOMAN. The Devil! I speak to the Devil!	173
DON JUAN. In hell, Señora, the Devil is the leader of the best society.	174
THE OLD WOMAN. I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in hell.	175
DON JUAN. How do you know?	176
THE OLD WOMAN. Because I feel no pain.	177
DON JUAN. Oh, then there is no mistake: you are intentionally damned.	178
THE OLD WOMAN. Why do you say that?	179
DON JUAN. Because hell, Señora, 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.	180
THE OLD WOMAN. Do you feel no pain?	181
DON JUAN. I am not one of the wicked, Señora; therefore it bores me, bores me beyond description, beyond belief.	182
THE OLD WOMAN. Not one of the wicked! You said you were a murderer.	183
DON JUAN. Only a duel. I ran my sword through an old man who was trying to run his through me.	184
THE OLD WOMAN. If you were a gentleman, that was not a murder.	185
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.	186
THE OLD WOMAN. You were like all men. Libertines and murderers all, all, all!	187
DON JUAN. And yet we meet here, dear lady.	188
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?	189
DON JUAN. No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above such idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell, Señora. 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?	190
THE OLD WOMAN. And are you happy here?	191
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!	192
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!	193
DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home here. As saith the poet, “Hell is a city much like Seville.”	194
THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am nobody!	195
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.	196
THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils!	197
DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?	198
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.	199
DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.	200
THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and the worm.	201
DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance: how old were you when you changed from time to eternity?	202
THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was—as if I were a thing of the past. I am 77.	203
DON JUAN. A ripe age, Señora. 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.	204
THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?	205
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.	206
THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!	207
DON JUAN. Consider, Señora: 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?	208
THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use is it to feel younger and look older?	209
DON JUAN. You see, Señora, 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.	210
THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.	211
DON JUAN. Try.	212
THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!	213
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.	214
THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However, 27 be it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, magnificently attired, and so handsome that in the radiance into which her dull yellow halo has suddenly lightened one might almost mistake her for Ann Whitefield].	215
DON JUAN. Doña Ana de Ulloa!	216
ANA. What? You know me!	217
DON JUAN. And you forget me!	218
ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan Tenorio! Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue me.	219
DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw [going].	220
ANA [seizing his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this dreadful place.	221
DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.	222
ANA [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your presence. My dear, dear father!	223
DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?	224
ANA. My father here!!!	225
DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.	226
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!	227
DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him—	228
ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.	229
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.	230
ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in arms.	231
DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.	232
ANA. How dare you say that?	233
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.	234
ANA. Monster! Never, never.	235
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.	236
ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.	237
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.	238
ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?	239
DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.	240
ANA [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you behaved so disgracefully to me?	241
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 dont know what theyre talking about: I do. They think they have achieved the perfection of love because they have no bodies. Sheer imaginative debauchery! Faugh!	242
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?	243
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?	244
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!	245
DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated waves of sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a sound 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 fashions of shaving].	246
DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why dont you learn to sing the splendid music Mozart has written for you?	247
THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is a counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?	248
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.	249
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?	250
DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.	251
THE STATUE [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you were taken with. Let me see: what was her name?	252
DON JUAN. Ana.	253
THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A goodlooking girl, if I recollect aright. Have you warned Whatshisname—her husband?	254
DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana arrived. Ana comes indignantly to light.	255
ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and your friend! And you, father, have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.	256
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.	257
ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!	258
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.	259
ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.	260
THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound thinker.	261
ANA [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are devils, mocking me. I had better pray.	262
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.	263
DON JUAN. You are in good spirits to-day, Commander. You are positively brilliant. What is the matter?	264
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.	265
ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.	266
DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself. Remember: the Devil is not so black as he is painted.	267
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 good nature 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.	268
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, Señora.	269
ANA. Are you—	270
THE DEVIL [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.	271
ANA. I shall go mad.	272
THE DEVIL [gallantly] Ah, Señora, 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.	273
ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.	274
THE DEVIL [shaking his head] You flatter me, Señora; 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—	275
DON JUAN [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot stand this.	276
THE DEVIL [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.	277
THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he was talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.	278
THE DEVIL [warmly patting the statue’s hand] Thank you, my friend: thank you. You have always understood me: he has always disparaged and avoided me.	279
DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.	280
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—	281
DON JUAN. You are making me ill.	282
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!	283
THE STATUE. I cant complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me right to be sent to heaven.	284
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?	285
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.	286
THE DEVIL [again touching the marble hand] Ah, what an honor! 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?	287
THE STATUE [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make himself dull and uncomfortable.	288
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!	289
THE STATUE [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter tenor] Sostegno e gloria D’umanità.	290
THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.	291
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?	292
THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!	293
DON JUAN [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman fawning on a fiddler.	294
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, Señor 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!	295
DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.	296
THE DEVIL. Not that we dont admire your intellect, you know. We do. But I look at the matter from your own point of view. You dont get on with us. The place doesnt suit you. The truth is, you have—I wont say no heart; for we know that beneath all your affected cynicism you have a warm one—	297
DON JUAN [shrinking] Dont, please dont.	298
THE DEVIL [nettled] Well, youve no capacity for enjoyment. Will that satisfy you?	299
DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than the other. But if youll allow me, I’ll take refuge, as usual, in solitude.	300
THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? Thats the proper place for you. [To Ana] Come, Señora! could you not persuade him for his own good to try change of air?	301
ANA. But can he go to heaven if he wants to?	302
THE DEVIL. Whats to prevent him?	303
ANA. Can anybody—can I go to Heaven if I want to?	304
THE DEVIL [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that way.	305
ANA. But why doesnt everybody go to Heaven, then?	306
THE STATUE [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It’s because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: thats why.	307
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.	308
THE STATUE. I dont wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of heaven.	309
THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is a question of temperament. I dont admire the heavenly temperament: I dont understand it: I dont 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.	310
DON JUAN. But—pardon my frankness—could you really go back there if you desired to; or are the grapes sour?	311
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?	312
ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.	313
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 allow 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.	314
ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.	315
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 these 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.	316
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.	317
THE STATUE. In short, my daughter, if you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.	318
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.	319
THE DEVIL [offended] As you please, Señora. I should have expected better taste from you.	320
ANA. Father: I shall expect you to come with me. You cannot stay here. What will people say?	321
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.	322
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.	323
DON JUAN. I think, Ana, you had better stay here.	324
ANA [jealously] You do not want me to go with you.	325
DON JUAN. Surely you do not want to enter Heaven in the company of a reprobate like me.	326
ANA. All souls are equally precious. You repent, do you not?	327
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.	328
ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite enough of reality on earth.	329
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 heroes 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 this 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!	330
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.	331
DON JUAN. I beg your pardon.	332
THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you.	333
THE STATUE. You were going to say something.	334
DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen.	335
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.	336
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—	337
THE STATUE. Ugh!	338
DON JUAN. Señor 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.	339
THE STATUE. You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts to fence but for my foot slipping, my friend.	340
DON JUAN. Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.	341
THE STATUE. Ha ha! Do you remember how I frightened you when I said something like that to you from my pedestal in Seville? It sounds rather flat without my trombones.	342
DON JUAN. They tell me it generally sounds flat with them, Commander.	343
ANA. Oh, do not interrupt with these frivolities, father. Is there nothing in Heaven but contemplation, Juan?	344
DON JUAN. In the Heaven I seek, no other joy. But there is the work of helping Life in its struggle upward. Think of how it wastes and scatters itself, how it raises up obstacles to itself and destroys itself in its ignorance and blindness. It needs a brain, this irresistible force, lest in its ignorance it should resist itself. What a piece of work is man! says the poet. Yes; but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of organization yet attained by life, the most intensely alive thing that exists, the most conscious of all the organisms; and yet, how wretched are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and cruel by the realities learnt from toll and poverty: Imagination resolved to starve sooner than face these realities, piling up illusions to hide them, and calling itself cleverness, genius! And each accusing the other of its own defect: Stupidity accusing Imagination of folly, and Imagination accusing Stupidity of ignorance: whereas, alas! Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.	345
THE DEVIL. And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between them. Did I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust’s, that all Man’s reason has done for him is to make him beastlier than any beast. One splendid body is worth the brains of a hundred dyspeptic, flatulent philosophers.	346
DON JUAN. You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings. Where are they now? Fossils in museums, and so few and imperfect at that, that a knuckle bone or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the lives of a thousand soldiers. These things lived and wanted to live; but for lack of brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose, and so destroyed themselves.	347
THE DEVIL. And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man’s wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing;