For instance, this interminable effort to make the universe safe for democracy, this continual warring against Heaven because Heaven clung to a tyrannical form of autocratic government, sounded both logical and magnanimous, and was, of course, the only method of insuring any general triumph for democracy: yet it seemed rather futile to Jurgen, since, as he knew now, there was certainly something in the Celestial system which made for military efficiency, so that Heaven usually won. Moreover, Jurgen could not get over the fact that Hell was just a notion of his ancestors with which Koshchei had happened to fall in: for Jurgen had never much patience with antiquated ideas, particularly when anyone put them into practice, as Koshchei had done. "Why, this place appears to me a glaring anachronism," said Jurgen, brooding over the fires of Chorasma: "and its methods of tormenting conscientious people I cannot but consider very crude indeed. The devils are simple-minded and they mean well, as nobody would dream of denying, but that is just it: for hereabouts is needed some more pertinacious and efficiently disagreeable person--" And that, of course, reminded him of Dame Lisa: and so it was the thoughts of Jurgen turned again to doing the manly thing. And he sighed, and went among the devils tentatively looking and inquiring for that intrepid fiend who in the form of a black gentleman had carried off Dame Lisa. But a queer happening befell, and it was that nowhere could Jurgen find the black gentleman, nor did any of the devils know anything about him. "From what you tell us, Emperor Jurgen," said they all, "your wife was an acidulous shrew, and the sort of woman who believes that whatever she does is right." "It was not a belief," says Jurgen: "it was a mania with the poor dear." "By that fact, then, she is forever debarred from entering Hell." "You tell me news," says Jurgen, "which if generally known would lead many husbands into vicious living." "But it is notorious that people are saved by faith. And there is no faith stronger than that of a bad-tempered woman in her own infallibility. Plainly, this wife of yours is the sort of person who cannot be tolerated by anybody short of the angels. We deduce that your Empress must be in Heaven." "Well, that sounds reasonable. And so to Heaven I will go, and it may be that there I shall find justice." "We would have you know," the fiends cried, bristling, "that in Hell we have all kinds of justice, since our government is an enlightened democracy." "Just so," says Jurgen: "in an enlightened democracy one has all kinds of justice, and I would not dream of denying it. But you have not, you conceive, that lesser plague, my wife; and it is she whom I must continue to look for."