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. DON JUAN. I beg your pardon. THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you. THE STATUE. You were going to say something. DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen. 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. 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-- THE STATUE. Ugh! DON JUAN. Senor 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. THE STATUE. You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts to fence but for my foot slipping, my friend. DON JUAN. Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning. 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. DON JUAN. They tell me it generally sounds flat with them, Commander. ANA. Oh, do not interrupt with these frivolities, father. Is there nothing in Heaven but contemplation, Juan?