Fifty.
BURGE-LUBIN. You don't look it. Forty-five; and young for your age.
THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three.
BARNABAS [_morosely triumphant_] Hmp! Mad, am I?
BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting
a bit--well--
THE ARCHBISHOP [_to Confucius_] Mr Chief Secretary: will you, to oblige
me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a hypothesis?
BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis?
CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. I understand. [To _the Archbishop_] Am I
to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis--
BURGE-LUBIN. Met--Emp--Sy--Good Lord! What a brain, Confucius! What a
brain!
THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that
I was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one
profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief?
CONFUCIUS. I do not know. Was that one of your professions?
THE ARCHBISHOP. No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a
President, and a General.
BARNABAS. Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or
six incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that.
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