In this chapter, we learn that it has been eight years since the fall of the Roman Empire, and that the people of the area have been abandoned by the Romans. The Roman Empire has no future, and there is no hope for the future. The only hope, the narrator tells us, is for the poor and the unfortunable to be reborn in the "best of all worlds" . The young men of the future, he says, have no experience in battle, and they will be defeated by a "earth flash" and a "powerful one" , too. He tells the young men that their master, the Roman Emperor, has designed them to be the "most powerful beings" in the world, but that the last man was a "chal lenge" who was much more like a "mere human being" than a "battle-hardened" soldier. The next man, the young man tells the men, is a "beast" who is "incensing dens, et incendium ca licinis umbraes in incens tia de struc-tionis ionis . . incendant et me eteum . solum . Incendius dentes !" . He says that the Roman master has fallen into a trap and that he wants to fight the new man. The men know that the old man can't do it, but they are foolish enough to believe that he can. The old man says that he is using up all of his "defense" blocking "flames of hell," and he asks the men to stop talking to him and to stop being so nice to him.