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opening up to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because you do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred, whose flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor tortured humanity has ever groaned under. The Envoy Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out? Zozim What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to last out forever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves. Were you any happier then? The Elderly Gentleman As President of the Baghdad Historical Society I am in a position to inform you that the communities which took this monstrous pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have any record. My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of the father of history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his account of what was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and the attempt made to reproduce it in the northern part of these islands by Jonhobsnoxius, called the Leviathan? Those misguided people sacrificed the fragment of life that was granted to them to an imaginary immortality. They crucified the prophet who told them to take no thought for the morrow, and that here and now was their Australia: Australia being a term signifying paradise, or an eternity of bliss. They tried to produce a condition of death in life: to mortify the flesh, as they called it. Zozim Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a mortified air. The Elderly Gentleman Naturally we are not absolutely insane and suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations for a length of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one against my ever attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys and freedoms of my life by this dream to which the existence of these islands and their oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization. I curse the day when long life was invented, just as the victims of Jonhobsnoxius cursed the day when eternal life was invented. Zozim Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose. The Elderly Gentleman That is what the fortunate always say to the unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten years. If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy, with goodwill: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its honor and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for me, because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of my years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live as long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the moment far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I am your equal before that eternity in which the difference between your lifetime and mine is as the difference between one drop of water and three in the eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both proceeded. Zozim Impressed. You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldn’t talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies. To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple. The Elderly Gentleman Passing from exaltation to distress. It means nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has become the ridiculous. Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim. “Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee.” Running to him. The Wife Poppa, Poppa: don’t look like that. The Daughter Oh, granpa, what’s the matter? Zozim With a shrug. Discouragement! The Elderly Gentleman Throwing off the women with a superb gesture. Liar! Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his hat and bowing, I beg your pardon, sir; but I am not discouraged. A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway. Zoo Come. The oracle is ready. Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in the portico, alone. Zozim Taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his arm. Ouf! He goes home.

Act III

Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray vanishes.

Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy’s daughter, his wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to pray into them at a moment’s notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her example. They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind called sacred in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The violet ray, now a diffused mist, rises again from the abyss.

The Wife	To Zoo, in a reverent whisper. Shall we kneel?