All of Oliver's attempts to find her are in vain. After the eight-day waiting period required by law, Mabel writes a suicide letter to her husband and voluntarily suffocates herself using a provided gas mask. As her life fades away, Mabel finds, "something resembling sound or light, something she knew in an instant to be unique, tear across her vision. Then she saw, and understood..." Due to an informer—Cardinal Dolgorovski of Moscow—the President has learned of the new Pope and his plans for a secret meeting of remaining Cardinals in Nazareth. The President demands the British Cabinet to join in a volor-bombing attack to wipe out the Church, while allowing the inhabitants of the village to escape. He further suggests that Cardinal Dolgorovski should be executed to prevent him from "relapse" and taking over the remnants of the Catholic Church. Oliver Brand and the Cabinet give the President their unanimous assent. In Nazareth, Pope Sylvester is told that Cardinal Dolgorovski has refused a direct order to attend. He realizes that Dolgorovski has been turned and that Nazareth is about to be destroyed. He gives orders to warn the city's residents to flee and then offers Mass followed by Eucharistic Adoration. As Felsenburgh personally flies in the volor-squadron, the narration states, "He was coming now, swifter than ever, the heir of temporal ages and exile of eternity, the final piteous Prince of rebels, the creature against God, blinder than the sun which paled and the earth which shook; and, as He came, passing even then through the last material stage to the thinness of a spirit fabric, the floating circle swirled behind Him, tossing like phantom birds in the wake of a phantom ship.... He was coming, and the earth, rent once again in its allegiance, shrank and reeled in the agony of divided homage...." As volor firebombs begin to rain down on Nazareth, Pope Sylvester and the Cardinals calmly continue to chant the Pange Lingua before a Host exposed in a Monstrance on the altar. The last words of the novel are: "Then this world passed, and the glory of it." (Sic transit gloria mundi). Influences Monsignor Benson drew upon history, other works of science fiction, and current events to create a fictional universe. Literature Frederick Rolfe's anti-Modernist satirical novel Hadrian VII inspired numerous aspects of Lord of the World, including the introductory first chapter. According to his biographer, Fr.