Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
you know.
THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live
three hundred years! I--
CONFUCIUS [_interrupting him_] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years
if you have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three
hundred years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy
tale, Mr Archbishop.
BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [_To the Archbishop_] He has you there. I
don't see how you can get over that.
THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and
how it was likely to come about.
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