THE DAUGHTER [trembling] Are we really going to see a woman who has lived three hundred years?
ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it hard enough to stand her.
THE DAUGHTER [piteously] Oh! [she falls on her knees].
THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
The two men kneel.
The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous folds of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural about her terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces. Her outline flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and again vague and shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not enough to be measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to affect them with a dreadful sense of her supernaturalness.
ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it is impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and knees.
ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait here all day for you, you know.