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BURGE-LUBIN. Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a job for Confucius. Put me through to the Chief Secretary. CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. You are speaking to him. BURGE-LUBIN. An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don't understand. Come and help us out. THE ARCHBISHOP. May I ask how the question has arisen? BARNABAS. Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you?
Yet I forgot all about it, and married and drudged as a poor man's wife, and brought up children, and looked twenty years older than I really was, until one day, long after my husband died and my children were out in the world working for themselves, I noticed that I looked twenty years younger than I really was. The truth came to me in a flash. BURGE-LUBIN. An amazing moment.
In your place I should not believe. BURGE-LUBIN. But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he couldn't be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad dog. THE ARCHBISHOP. Perhaps Mr Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of that. CONFUCIUS. To keep your secret, you had to die.
We cannot in our souls really want to stop it: the vital force that has produced this change would paralyse our opposition to it, if we were mad enough to oppose. But we will not oppose. You and I may be of the elect, too. BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: thats what gets us every time. What the deuce ought we to do? Something must be done about it, you know.
Whats wrong now? BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the grossest want of consideration. BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now? BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show.
It was this in the woman's face that convinced you. Their new departure in the history of the race is no fraud. It does not even surprise me. BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, come! Not surprise you! It's your pose never to be surprised at anything; but if you are not surprised at this you are not human.
What does it matter if your permanent officials are honest and competent? BURGE-LUBIN. You do not know the history of this country. What would my ancestors have said to the menagerie of degenerates that is still called the House of Commons?
BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if you go back to the dark ages, I have nothing more to say. But we did not perish. We extricated ourselves from that chaos. We are now the best governed country in the world. How did we manage that if we are such fools as you pretend? CONFUCIUS. You did not do it until the slaughter and ruin produced by your anarchy forced you at last to recognize two inexorable facts.
Frankly, I do not recognize the parlor maid. BURGE-LUBIN. Whats a parlor maid? MRS LUTESTRING. An extinct species. A woman in a black dress and white apron, who opened the house door when people knocked or rang, and was either your tyrant or your slave. You really don't look it. I am convinced. It's true. Now call up the Lunatic Asylum, Confucius; and tell them to send an ambulance for me.
Forty-five; and young for your age. THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three. Mad, am I? BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting a bit well As a hypothesis? BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis? CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. BURGE-LUBIN. Met Emp Sy Good Lord! What a brain, Confucius! What a brain! THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind.
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