"Well, I wish I too had never entered here, and now you must assist me to get out of this murky place."
"And why must I assist you?"
"Because," said Jurgen, and he drew out the cantrap of the Master
Philologist, "because at the death of Adrian the Fifth, Pedro
Juliani, who should be named John the Twentieth, was through an
error in the reckoning elevated to the papal chair as John the
Twenty-first. Do you not find my reason sufficient?"
"No," said Grandfather Satan, after thinking it over, "I cannot say that I do. But, then, popes go to Heaven. It is considered to look better, all around, and particularly by my countrymen, inasmuch as many popes have been suspected of pro-Celestialism. So we admit none of them into Hell, in order to be on the safe side, now that we are at war. In consequence, I am no judge of popes and their affairs, nor do I pretend to be."
And Jurgen perceived that again he had employed his cantrap
incorrectly or else that it was impotent to rescue people from
Satan. "But who would have thought," he reflected, "that Grandfather
Satan was such a simple old creature!"
"How long, then, must I remain here?" asks Jurgen, after a dejected pause.
"I do not know," replies Satan. "It must depend entirely upon what your father thinks about it—"
"But what has he to do with it?"
"—Since I and all else that is here are your father's absurd notions, as you have so frequently proved by logic. And it is hardly possible that such a clever fellow as you can be mistaken."
"Why, of course, that is not possible," says Jurgen. "Well, the matter is rather complicated. But I am willing to taste any drink once: and I shall manage to get justice somehow, even in this unreasonable place where my father's absurd notions are the truth."