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.