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CONFUCIUS. More than that. They have made the momentous discovery that they are not alone in the world. BURGE-LUBIN. You think there are others? CONFUCIUS. There must be many others. Each of them believes that he or she is the only one to whom the miracle has happened. But the Archbishop knows better now. He will advertise in terms which only the longlived people will understand.
BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that calculation correct, Confucius? CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks on population. BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. Let us keep sane. THE ARCHBISHOP. No. Nothing of the kind.
BURGE-LUBIN. Do? BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence. Are you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to do, and crowd us off the face of the earth? What harm are they doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them? BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters. They are poison to me.
Since you ask me, more well, not more attractive: I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance but I will say, richer. More Venetian. Tropical. 'The shadowed livery of the burnished sun. MRS LUTESTRING. Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin already to talk about men with golden complexions. BURGE-LUBIN. Well, what of it, madam?
And will you think me very rude if I say that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find the black woman more sympathetic? MRS LUTESTRING. And more attractive in color, perhaps? BURGE-LUBIN. Yes.
But it is ten times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid you. BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children. CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy. Your maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be governed by races which are mature at forty.
Have some oxygen. BARNABAS. I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have. BURGE-LUBIN. Seen what? BARNABAS. Seen the Archbishop of York. BURGE-LUBIN. Well, why shouldn't they see the Archbishop of York? What are they fainting for? Has he been murdered?
Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my memory. I have had several careers since I began this routine of life and death. I have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded the authorities to knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the foundations, or move them, I went into the artillery, and became a general. I have been President. BURGE-LUBIN. Dickenson?
My only regret now is that I shall die when I am three hundred or thereabouts. There was only one thing that made life hard; and that is gone now. CONFUCIUS. May we ask what that was? MRS LUTESTRING. Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you. BURGE-LUBIN. Offended!
I'll talk to the scoundrel. BURGE-LUBIN. If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall be two to one. The Archbishop enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black boots that button high up on his calves.
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