THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he was talking excellent sense when you interrupted him. THE DEVIL. [warmly shaking the statue's hand] Thank you, my friend: thank you. You have always understood me: he has always disparaged and avoided me. DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy. 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-- DON JUAN. You are making me ill. 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! THE STATUE. I can't complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me right to be sent to heaven. 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? 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. THE DEVIL. [again grasping his hand] Ah, what an honor for me! 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? THE STATUE. [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make himself dull and uncomfortable. 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! THE STATUE. [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter tenor] Sostegno a gloria D'umanita. THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now. 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? THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts! DON JUAN. [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman fawning on a fiddler. 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, Senor 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! DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.