leads to hell, the other is narrow and rough, and leads to heaven.” “I
should be a fool,” thought Brother Lustig, “if I were to take the
narrow, rough road.” So he set out and took the broad and pleasant
road, and at length came to a great black door, which was the door of
Hell. Brother Lustig knocked, and the door-keeper peeped out to see who
was there. But when he saw Brother Lustig, he was terrified, for he was
the very same ninth devil who had been shut up in the knapsack, and had
escaped from it with a black eye. So he pushed the bolt in again as
quickly as he could, ran to the devil’s lieutenant, and said, “There is
a fellow outside with a knapsack, who wants to come in, but as you
value your lives don’t allow him to enter, or he will wish the whole of
hell into his knapsack. He once gave me a frightful hammering when I
was inside it.” So they called out to Brother Lustig that he was to go
away again, for he should not get in there! “If they won’t have me
here,” thought he, “I will see if I can find a place for myself in
heaven, for I must be somewhere.” So he turned about and went onwards
until he came to the door of Heaven, where he knocked. St. Peter was
sitting hard by as door-keeper. Brother Lustig recognised him at once,
and thought, “Here I find an old friend, I shall get on better.” But
St. Peter said, “I really believe that thou wantest to come into
Heaven.” “Let me in, brother; I must get in somewhere; if they would
have taken me into Hell, I should not have come here.” “No,” said St.
Peter, “thou shalt not enter.” “Then if thou wilt not let me in, take
thy knapsack back, for I will have nothing at all from thee.” “Give it
here, then,” said St. Peter. Then Brother Lustig gave him the knapsack
into Heaven through the bars, and St. Peter took it, and hung it beside
his seat. Then said Brother Lustig, “And now I wish myself inside my
knapsack,” and in a second he was in it, and in Heaven, and St. Peter
was forced to let him stay there.
82 Gambling Hansel
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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