The Nuts | Page 3

no matter, and evil would befall me if I were to
chatter."
At this point the colonel was interrupted by many expressions of
disappointment, but he was resolute, and continued in a peremptory
tone:
"That will do. Description indeed is forbidden to me; but there are
certain of my experiences about which I may tell you. So listen! That
Hell lies underneath Heaven you have doubtless heard from some one
or other. Naturally the holy dead see and hear nothing of the pains of
the lost, for that would entirely spoil the joys of Paradise for them; but
now and then--I believe once a year--it is given to the blessed to look
down into Hell. There is, however, one condition in particular attached
to this privilege. When the dome which conceals Hell from the sight of
the angels is opened, it is for the relief of the condemned. God in his
mercy has decreed that the saints shall look down into the abyss in
order to tell St. Peter if they see among the damned any one from
whom they have received any benefit, or of whom they have even
heard any good. If the keeper of Heaven's gate is pleased with the

generous action which the lost soul performed while on earth, he has
the power of shortening the time of punishment, or can even pardon it
altogether, and bid it enter into Paradise.
"As for me, I arrived in Paradise on a day when Hell was open to view,
and came to know, thereby, many strange things. Ah! That was the
hardest part of my story; I trust that you have understood it?"
The narrator's glance sought the children's eyes once more; but this
time questioningly rather than peremptorily. When the young lips all
cried "yes," and "of course," he smiled, nodded his massive head
amiably, and continued:
"That the angels are full of pity, and glad to relieve the misery of the
unfortunate, whoever they are, and wherever they may be, goes without
saying, and it will not be necessary to tell you how diligently they
sought to remember some one good deed that might redound to the
credit of one of the lost. But St. Peter is a mild and just judge, and the
gleaning yielded but a small return, for only a few of the angels could
recall any act that was worth mentioning. It was also granted to me to
look into the place of torment, and the things I saw there were too
awful. Picture it to yourself as you will! When I recovered from the
horror that fell upon me, I recognized many men and women whom I
had known on earth. Among them were many whom I had been
accustomed to consider pious and virtuous, and whom I had expected
to find in a high place in Heaven, rather than there below, and yet of
those very persons the Elect could recall the fewest deeds that had been
done from purely generous motives. An act was mentioned of this one
or that, which on the surface seemed good, sometimes even great,--but
there on high the springs of human actions are open to view, as well as
the real end, which the author had in mind, and these were always such
that those who had performed the best deeds could be accredited with
the least charitable intention. Their pious works had always been
executed in order to make them conspicuous in the eyes of men, or to
attain for themselves some distinction, or to flatter their vanity, or to
arouse the envy of their neighbours, or to contribute in some indirect
way to the increase of their riches. Perhaps you may not altogether
understand what I mean; but no matter, your mother may explain as
much as she thinks good for you.
"The poor things who were disappointed, as well as the unfortunate

ones for whom no voice was raised, made me very unhappy; but I
could do nothing for them.
"Among the latter I noticed a woman whom I had known well on earth,
and who deserved to be among the lost, I thought. I had never
anticipated any other sentence for her. You do not understand, children,
what a cold heart is; but hers had been either ice or stone. Although she
had possessed more than was needed to gratify her own wants, she
could never be moved by the most touching appeals of the poorest to
relieve their distress. She had used other people to satisfy her selfish
desires and then discarded them ruthlessly. She had gone through life
without loving one single soul--of that I felt convinced--and no one had
loved her, and she had died unregretted. She must have been as
wretched on earth as she was there in