ZOO.  What does that mean?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I withdraw what I said.

ZOO.  How can you withdraw what you said?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I can say no more than that I am sorry.

ZOO.  You have reason to be.  That hideous sensation you gave me is subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape.  Do not attempt to kill me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you dead.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I attempt to kill you!  What a monstrous accusation!

ZOO [frowns]!

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [prudently correcting himself] I mean misunderstanding.  I never dreamt of such a thing.  Surely you cannot believe that I am a murderer.

ZOO.  I know you are a murderer.  It is not merely that you threw words at me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me.  It was the instinct to kill that you roused in me.  I did not know it was in my nature:  never before has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be killed.  I must now reconsider my whole political position.  I am no longer a Conservative.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [dropping his hat] Gracious Heavens! you have lost your senses.  I am at the mercy of a madwoman:  I might have known it from the beginning.  I can bear no more of this. [Offering his chest for the sacrifice] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!

ZOO.  It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed at the same time.  Besides, it is a measure which should be taken politically and constitutionally, not privately.  However, I am prepared to discuss it with you.

ZOO.  What good have our counsels ever done you?  You come to us for advice when you know you are in difficulties.  But you never know you are in difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that led to them; and then it is too late.  You cannot understand our advice:  you often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been left to your own childish devices.  If you were not childish you would not come to us at all:  you would learn from experience that your consultations of the oracle are never of any real help to you.  You draw wonderful imaginary pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems about our beneficent operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice, our mercy:  stories in which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your prayers and sacrifices; but you do it only to conceal from yourselves the truth that you are incapable of being helped by us.  Your Prime Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived:  we know quite well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable ones.  He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle.