You go through one door opening out onto some kind of boudoir. Inside, on four chairs, you see four strangely dressed people... strangely enough in respect to the place where you are supposed to be, that is Hell.

You understand very well what is going on here. The room where you stand is a waiting room where the clownish guys await their turns. To perform in front of who ?... You will know soon enough, for the voice resounds again :

" Next !"

And you get the frightful premonition that you too will have your part to play. Yes, that's it ! On some coat pegs are hanging some gaudy coloured costumes, some flowered hats and frilled puffy trousers.
The voice calls for the next one ! Only three to go and it is your turn !

Apparently disappointed with the effect produced, the pathetic chap goes back to his wall. Suddenly a voice calls from behind a door at the opposite end to the one you got through to enter the place :

" NEXT ! "

Then, obviously contrite, one of the guys who was sitting stands up, opens the door and goes into the other room.

 

The performances of your predecessors seem awfully short. It leaves you to figure out how lenient the jury you will have to entertain next door is ! You do not have much time left. 30 seconds at most, considering how fast the others are following one another.

You pull out a costume from a peg and put it on as well as you can... Let's say as badly as can be.

Call for the next one. In vain you try to remember a few jokes. But you can't. The urgency of the situation has left you totally useless. And what if you had to entertain Satan himself out there ? You can not even think about it. Yet the door opens up : you are expected. You walk forward with the genuine feeling of your future failure.

The throne is in the middle of a huge room of which walls are tightened with Bruges and Douais tapestries showing the torments of Hell : while most damned are roasting in inextinguishable fires, one of them is beaten with an iron bar on a wheel. Another is skinned alive... Is that what is awaiting you if you fail to cheer up the Nun ? This makes your spine shiver.

" Shall we start ?" the Nun says annoyed.

Bloody hell ! Your lips can not manage to give out a single sound ! You thought that you could at least improvise an excuse. But the words are not coming. They have gone. You feel a frustrating helplessness in expressing what you would like.

You have never felt so embarrassed in your entire life. But humiliation will not last for long. For the verdict is about to fall. It is as imminent as a guillotine blade that has just been released.

The moment is critical and less than ever you want to laugh. Therefore, how could you make someone else laugh ?

They ask you to be a buffoon, a court jester. Something you have never been before. Never in your life you have been a monarch or head of department's minion. You are not a hypocrite and you are not used to sharing the complicity of a good laugh with somebody who wishes you no good or to whom you wish harm. You would not even have done it to serve your own interest. It would have been prostitution, you said at the time.

But you have to believe that in the weird environment that is Hell, such a position does not stand. You must be either a valet or a master... Unless rebellion is possible. But it would be worth as much as a farce in the locked up feudal logic.

You also feel that making the Religious impatient is not a good tactic either. Her cold face shows annoyance. This obviously means disgrace. A trapdoor is going to open up under your feet ! Or the two armed keepers who guard the Throne of vice are going to seize you !

But then, from your thoughts straying about, a short, cleaver and captivating joke comes back to your mind. Even the worst fundamentalist would laugh at it. Saved !