But I foresee that if I go on to the end it will leave me execrated, dethroned, imprisoned, perhaps executed.  Yet if I stop fighting I commit suicide as a great man and become a common one.  How am I to escape the horns of this tragic dilemma?  Victory I can guarantee:  I am invincible.  But the cost of victory is the demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors no less than of the vanquished.  How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting until I die? that is my question to you.

THE ORACLE.  Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with such a question on your lips?  Warriors are not popular here, my friend.

NAPOLEON.  If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam, he would no longer be a soldier.  Besides [he produces a pistol], I have not come unarmed.

THE ORACLE.  What is that thing?

NAPOLEON.  It is an instrument of my profession, madam.  I raise this hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against my forefinger; and you fall dead.

THE ORACLE.  Shew it to me [she puts out her hand to take it from him].

NAPOLEON [retreating a step] Pardon me, madam.  I never trust my life in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.

THE ORACLE [sternly] Give it to me [she raises her hand to her veil].

NAPOLEON [dropping the pistol and covering his eyes] Quarter!  Kamerad!  Take it, madam [he kicks it towards her]:  I surrender.

THE ORACLE.  Give me that thing.  Do you expect me to stoop for it?

NAPOLEON [taking his hands from his eyes with an effort] A poor victory, madam [he picks up the pistol and hands it to her]:  there was no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his humiliation] But enjoy your triumph:  you have made me—­ME!  Cain Adamson Charles Napoleon!  Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.

THE ORACLE.  The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very simple.

NAPOLEON [eagerly] Good.  What is it?

THE ORACLE.  To die before the tide of glory turns.  Allow me [she shoots him].

He falls with a shriek.  She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily into the temple.

NAPOLEON [scrambling to his feet] Murderess!  Monster!  She-devil!  Unnatural, inhuman wretch!  You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken on the wheel, burnt alive.  No sense of the sacredness of human life!  No thought for my wife and children!  Bitch!  Sow!  Wanton! [He picks up the pistol].  And missed me at five yards!  Thats a woman all over.

He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him at the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly Gentleman, the Envoy’s wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen.  The envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal disguised by a good tailor.  The dress of the ladies is coeval with that of the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siecle.