"Oh, as you like," said they, "so long as you do not criticize the exigencies of war-time. But certainly we are sorry to see you going into a country where the benighted people put up with an autocrat Who was not duly elected to His position. And why need you continue seeking your wife's society when it is so much pleasanter living in Hell?" And Jurgen shrugged. "One has to do the manly thing sometimes." So the fiends told him the way to Heaven's frontiers, pitying him. "But the crossing of the frontier must be your affair." "I have a cantrap," said Jurgen; "and my stay in Hell has taught me how to use it." Then Jurgen followed his instructions, and went into Meridie, and turned to the left when he had come to the great puddle where the adders and toads are reared, and so passed through the mists of Tartarus, with due care of the wild lightning, and took the second turn to his left--"always in seeking Heaven be guided by your heart," had been the advice given him by devils,--and thus avoiding the abode of Jemra, he crossed the bridge over the Bottomless Pit and the solitary Narakas. And Brachus, who kept the toll-gate on this bridge, did that of which the fiends had forewarned Jurgen: but for this, of course, there was no help. 40. The Ascension of Pope Jurgen The tale tells how on the feast of the Annunciation Jurgen came to the high white walls which girdle Heaven. For Jurgen's forefathers had, of course, imagined that Hell stood directly contiguous to Heaven, so that the blessed could augment their felicity by gazing down upon the tortures of the damned. Now at this time a boy angel was looking over the parapet of Heaven's wall. "And a good day to you, my fine young fellow," says Jurgen. "But of what are you thinking so intently?" For just as Dives had done long years before, now Jurgen found that a man's voice carries perfectly between Hell and Heaven. "Sir," replies the boy, "I was pitying the poor damned." "Why, then, you must be Origen," says Jurgen, laughing. "No, sir, my name is Jurgen." "Heyday!" says Jurgen: "well, but this Jurgen has been a great many persons in my time. So very possibly you speak the truth." "I am Jurgen, the son of Coth and Azra." "Ah, ah! but so were all of them, my boy." "Why, then, I am Jurgen, the grandson of Steinvor, and the grandchild whom she loved above her other grandchildren: and so I abide forever in Heaven with all the other illusions of Steinvor. But who, messire, are you that go about Hell unscorched, in such a fine looking shirt?" Jurgen reflected. Clearly it would never do to give his real name, and thus raise the question as to whether Jurgen was in Heaven or Hell. Then he recollected the cantrap of the Master Philologist, which Jurgen had twice employed incorrectly. And Jurgen cleared his throat, for he believed that he now understood the proper use of cantraps.