Why should he remember him? What did being remembered mean to him? That highway robber was no sentimentalist. Did he perhaps mean that in the ditch where they would surely throw him after his death, graces and prayers might pour down on him? And what did grace and prayer mean? And then in what aspect would his friend remember him? As a bloodthirsty malefactor with his knife at his victim's throat and his hand on his purse? Or as he was now, hanging next to him, with his ugly blood-stained face and his great hairy belly? He didn't know and it didn't concern him. All he wanted was a little corner in Christ's memory – “remember me”. If he'd had some little portrait he'd have shown it to him - as simple people do who strike up warm friendships on railway journeys.

The other thief was cursing, like the people down below. He was a furious blasphemer, but with a trace of cunning (“If you're the Christ, save yourself and us.”). Perhaps - you never knew - if he abused that gentleman who had worked miracles, a miracle would result. Abuse - that was what was needed. And then the good thief rediscovered his violence--he'd have knifed him well and truly if his hands had been free, and addressed a last attack to his former accomplice: “Aren't you even afraid of God, though you're undergoing the same punishment? It's only justice that we should suffer for our crimes, but he hasn't done any harm.”

Yes, the one crucified between them was Christ. But the good thief didn't ask for a miracle, he didn't feel he had any right to be saved. He, who had lived on greed and robbery, was a crystal of total disinterestedness within himself.

Jesus answered: “Today you'll be with me in paradise.” The hardened evil-doer was accustomed to long years of waiting: five years condemned to the galleys, ten to the mines. But now those long periods were over. Jesus wasn't satisfied with wiping out all that man's stains. He hastened to assure him that immediately, today, he'd enter that garden without policemen where you sleep on warm streets.

“Forgive them because they don't know what they're doing”, Christ prayed for those who crucified him. But the good thief could be absolved more easily: he knew what he was doing.

He gave paradise to a dying man weighed down by crime. But when all’s said and done, it’s easy to give paradise to a heart that’s stopping, to eyes that are closing. When the world wipes itself out and removes its claws from us, the soul that freely goes back to its dream is already in paradise.