"Does your highness accuse God of injustice, then?"

"What boots it, since I am a lost soul? Do you expect the damned to
acknowledge the justice of the decree which has consigned them to eternal
woe?"

"No doubt it is a difficult matter, but I should have thought that a
sense of the justice of your doom would have mitigated the pains of it."

"Perhaps so, but a damned soul must be without consolation for ever."

"In spite of that there are some philosophers who call you happy in your
death by virtue of its suddenness."

"Not philosophers, but fools, for in its suddenness was the pain and
woe."

"Well said; but may I ask your highness if you admit the possibility of a
happy eternity after an unhappy death, or of an unhappy doom after a
happy death?"

"Such suppositions are inconceivable. The happiness of futurity lies in
the ecstasy of the soul in feeling freed from the trammels of matter, and
unhappiness is the doom of a soul which was full of remorse at the moment
it left the body. But enough, for my punishment forbids my farther
speech."

"Tell me, at least, what is the nature of your punishment?"