im as what you call a great man.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what
you tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the
private life of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a
dumping place for your failures.

ZOO. I admit that.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of
colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will
you do with your undesirables?

ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!

ZOO [_glancing up at the sun_] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and you
have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising_] Galway! Shall I at last be able to
boast of having seen that magnificent city?

ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of
the oracle: that is all.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two
long-cherished dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See
Galway and die.' The other was to contemplate the ruins of London.

ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any
importance?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] What! London! It was the mightiest city
of antiquity. [_Rhetorically_] Situate just where the Dover Road crosses
the Thames, it--

ZOO [_curtly interrupting_] There is nothing there now. Why should
anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the
water. [_She goes down the steps_].

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!

ZOO [_from below_] What did you say?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_despairingly_] Nothing. You would not
understand. [_He goes down the steps_].

ACT II

_A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door
is in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic
carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the
opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and
self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand
in his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his
eye. She stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his
audacity. He is on her right: she on his left._

NAPOLEON [_impr