"If, on the contrary, it does not persist in those impenitent sentiments, a part of the repression will no doubt be removed; and consequently is not devoted to a continual gehenna, as that which deliberately, while there is yet time, will not return to amendment, refuses in fact to lay aside its sins.
"Let us add that according to the saint, God does not even make the soul empty to be never polluted by sin, for it goes there of itself; it is led there by the very nature of its sins, it flings itself in as into its own good; is, if one may say so, naturally engulfed there.
"In fact we may imagine to ourselves a very small hell, and a very large purgatory; may imagine that hell is scantily peopled, is only reserved for cases of rare wickedness, that in reality the crowd of disincarnate souls presses into Purgatory and there endures punishments proportioned to the misdeeds it has willed here below. These ideas have nothing which cannot be sustained, and they have the advantage of being in accord with the ideas of mercy and justice."
"Exactly," replied the voice in railing tones. "Man then will do well to constrain himself; he may steal, rob, kill his father, and violate his daughter; the price is the same; provided he repent at the last minute, he is saved!"
"But no, contrition takes away the eternity of punishment only, and not punishment itself; everyone must be punished or rewarded according to his works. He who will be soiled by a parricide or an incest will bear a chastisement different in pain and length to him who has not committed them; equality in expiatory suffering, in reparative pain, does not exist.
"Moreover this idea of a purgative life after death is so natural, so certain, that all religions assume it. All consider the soul is a sort of air balloon, which cannot mount and attain its last end in space except by throwing away its ballast. In the religions of the East, the soul is re-incarnistic; in order to purify itself it rubs itself against a new body, like a blade in sandstone troughs, to brighten it. For us Catholics it undergoes no terrestrial avatar, but it lightens and scours itself, clears itself in the Purgatory, where God transforms it, draws it out, extracts it little by little from the dross of its sins, till it can raise itself and lose itself in Him.
"To have done with this irritating question of a perpetual hell, why not conceive that divine justice hesitates in the majority of cases to pronounce inexorable decrees? Humanity is for the most part composed of unconscious rascals and fools, who do not take any count of the reach of their faults. These are saved by their complete want of comprehension. As for others who rot, knowing what they do, they are evidently more blameworthy, but society which hates superior beings takes on itself their punishment, humiliates and persecutes them; and it is therefore allowed us to hope that our Lord will pity these poor souls so miserably pelted during their stay upon earth by a horde of fools."
"Then there is every advantage in being imbecile, since one is spared both on earth and in heaven?"
"Ah! certainly, and yet ... and yet.... What is the good of discussion, since we cannot frame for ourselves the least idea of the infinite justice of a God?"
"Moreover, this is enough, these debates overwhelm me." He tried to distract his thoughts from these subjects, and would feign to break the obsession, betake himself to Paris; but five minutes had not passed before his double returned to the charge.