JARJAYE IN PARADISE
Jarjaye, a street-porter of Tarascon, having just died, with closed eyes fell into the other world. Down and down he fell! Eternity is vast, pitch-black, limitless, lugubrious. Jarjaye knew not where to set foot, all was uncertainty, his teeth chattered, he beat the air. But as he wandered in the vast space, suddenly he perceived in the distance, a light, it was far off, very far off. He directed himself towards it; it was the door of the good God.
Jarjaye knocked, bang, bang, on the door.
“Who is there?” asked Saint Peter.
“It’s me!” answered Jarjaye.
“Who—thou?”
“Jarjaye.”
“Jarjaye of Tarascon?”
“That’s it—himself!”
“But you good-for-nothing,” said Saint Peter, “how have you the face to demand entrance into the blessed Paradise, you who for the last twenty years have never said your prayers, who, when they said to you, ‘Jarjaye, come to Mass,’ answered ‘I only go to the afternoon Mass!’ thou, who in derision calledst the thunder, ‘the drum of the snails;’ thou did’st eat meat on Fridays, saying, ‘What does it matter, it is flesh that makes flesh, what goes into the body cannot hurt the soul;’ thou who, when they rang the Angelus, instead of making the sign of the cross like a good Christian, cried mocking, ‘A pig is hung on the bell’; thou who, when thy father admonished thee, ‘Jarjaye, God will surely punish thee,’ answered, ‘The good God, who has seen him? Once dead one is well dead.’ Finally, thou who didst blaspheme and deny the holy oil and baptism, is it possible that thou darest to present thyself here?”