“Lucifer describes woman—to disabuse your mind of the impression that I have held converse with his Satanic Highness, I will state that I am quoting Marie Corelli, his press agent—Lucifer describes woman as a frivolous doll of pink and white with long hair frequently not her own. He hates women, for they have made him what he is and keep him so, according to Marie. ‘Women,’ he says, ‘are much less sensitive than men and infinitely more heartless. They are mothers of the human race and the faults of the race are chiefly due to them.’ Considering that the eternal feminine is so fond of him, I am surprised that the Evil One does not reciprocate, but then Lucifer was once an angel and we all know that however angelic she of infinite variety may appear, she is not an angel. I have heard men of moods and appetite talk of women in the same strain as Lucifer and so have ceased to wonder that each woman knows one particular man—usually her husband—whom she describes as a devil. “Lucifer had found out the truth of the Latin proverb which says ‘Trust not a woman, even when dead,’ and as he didn’t want any divided skirt rule, he had planned to have Capt. Kidd take them to Paris or to Italy, which Robert Burton says is a hell for women. Satan thought he was well rid of them until after the day of judgment, so you can imagine his burning rage when, following Bangs’ orders, I brought them safely back to Hades. When the humorist leaves the earth it will be jumping out of the frying pan of a vivid imagination into a very hot fire of reality.” “And Marie Corelli? I thought her ‘Sorrows of Satan’—” “That’s just it. Through all the centuries Lucifer lacked a champion until Marie Corelli sat in judgment on the world and gave it fits after reading ‘Paradise Lost’ and losing her heart as well as her head—as many another girl has done—to the angel who ‘fell, never to rise again.’ Lucifer would have had no attraction for most women if he had not fallen. Milton made him a hero, many persons have embraced him, but no one ever fully understood him except Marie, and great shall be her reward.” “How can there be rewards in Hades?” “Oh, we have our society here just as in the upper region, only the world asks who a man is; here the Smart Set asks who he was. Caste is as strong here as in your Four Million and in our upper Ten Thousand.” “But even yet I do not understand how the champion of His Satanic Majesty is to be rewarded.” “Lucifer has long wanted a wife. Marie Corelli alone pleases his fancy, besides possessing the necessary qualifications for the position. Here she will be supreme; she will rule even the arch fiend himself. To her kings will bow and princes kneel. Won’t she make it hot for some of the reviewers who ‘roasted’ her on earth! There is only one place where reviews live—in Hell. There is a torridness of climate here which agrees with them. After all, Hades is no more than a caricature of your world and the doings of men.