"It was not a belief," says Jurgen: "it was a mania with the poor dear."
"By that fact, then, she is forever debarred from entering Hell."
"You tell me news," says Jurgen, "which if generally known would lead many husbands into vicious living."
"But it is notorious that people are saved by faith. And there is no faith stronger than that of a bad-tempered woman in her own infallibility. Plainly, this wife of yours is the sort of person who cannot be tolerated by anybody short of the angels. We deduce that your Empress must be in Heaven."
"Well, that sounds reasonable. And so to Heaven I will go, and it may be that there I shall find justice."
"We would have you know," the fiends cried, bristling, "that in Hell we have all kinds of justice, since our government is an enlightened democracy."
"Just so," says Jurgen: "in an enlightened democracy one has all kinds of justice, and I would not dream of denying it. But you have not, you conceive, that lesser plague, my wife; and it is she whom I must continue to look for."
"Oh, as you like," said they, "so long as you do not criticize the exigencies of war-time. But certainly we are sorry to see you going into a country where the benighted people put up with an autocrat Who was not duly elected to His position. And why need you continue seeking your wife's society when it is so much pleasanter living in Hell?"
And Jurgen shrugged. "One has to do the manly thing sometimes."
So the fiends told him the way to Heaven's frontiers, pitying him.
"But the crossing of the frontier must be your affair."