The Man Who Wanted His Head Cut Off

It's time to confront myself - though not yet my published self. I decided, at a late stage, to omit two stories from my collection The Crystalline Piazza (published last year); one of them because I thought the ideas were commonplace (it was cast in the form of a mock-treatise), the other, The Man Who Wanted His Head Cut Off, because it had a botched ending. (It was also written in a mock-style, though that was not necessarily an objection). I was satisfied with Part I, which I reproduce here, and it seemed a pity that it should go to waste.