THE END OF TIME. Ahasuerus, sitting on a rock, stares out at the distant horizon, across which two eagles are flying. He meditates, then dreams. The day draws slowly to a close.

AHASUERUS: And so I reach the end of time, for here lies the very threshold of eternity. The earth is deserted and forsaken; no other man breathes the air of life. I am the last; now I can die. Death! What a wonderful thought! For centuries upon centuries have I lived, weary and tormented, ever the wanderer, but behold, the centuries have come to an end, and with them, I, too, will die. Farewell, old nature! Blue sky, reborn clouds, roses of a single day and every day, everlasting waters, enemy earth who would not eat my bones, farewell! The wanderer will wander no more. God will forgive me, if he so wishes, but death consoles me. Jagged as my pain rises yonder mountain; the hunger of those passing eagles must be as desperate as my despair. Will ye, divine eagles, die too?

PROMETHEUS: All mankind must have died; the earth is bare of them.

AHASUERUS: And yet I hear a voice . . . A man’s voice? Merciless heavens, am I not the last? Here, he approaches. Who are you? In your wide eyes there is something of the mysterious light of the archangels of Israel; you are not a man . . .

PROMETHEUS: No.

AHASUERUS: Are you, then, one of the divine race?

PROMETHEUS: You said it, not I.

AHASUERUS: I do not know you, but what does that matter? You are not a man and so I can still die; for I am the last, and behind me I close the door of life.

PROMETHEUS: Life, like ancient Thebes, has a hundred doors. You close one, others will open. You say you are the last of your species? Another species will come, a better one, made not from the same clay, but from the same light. Yes, O last of mankind, the plebeian element will perish forever, and the elite will be what returns to reign over the earth. The times will be set right. Evil will end; the winds will no longer scatter the germs of death, nor the weeping and wailing of the oppressed, but only the song of everlasting love and the blessing of universal justice . . .

AHASUERUS: What do all these posthumous delights matter to the species that will die with me? Believe me, you who are immortal, to bones that rot in the earth, all the purple of Sidon is worthless. What you are telling me is even better than the world dreamed of by Campanella, in whose ideal city there was crime and sickness; yours excludes all moral and physical injuries. May the Lord hear you! But let me go now and die.

PROMETHEUS: Go, then, go. But why such haste to end your days?