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?  You thought yourself pretty safe.  You—­

BURGE-LUBIN.  Steady, Barnabas.  Dont be in a hurry.

Confucius enters.

THE ARCHBISHOP [rising] Good morning, Mr Chief Secretary.

BURGE-LUBIN [rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop] Honor us by taking a seat, O sage.

CONFUCIUS.  Ceremony is needless. [He bows to the company, and takes the chair at the foot of the table].

The President and the Archbishop resume their seats.

BURGE-LUBIN.  We wish to put a case to you, Confucius.  Suppose a man, instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of life, were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the Accountant General be justified in calling him a thief?

CONFUCIUS.  No.  He would be justified in calling him a liar.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  I think not, Mr Chief Secretary.  What do you suppose my age is?

CONFUCIUS.  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.

CONFUCIUS.  Certainly not.  The hypothesis is that he has worked continuously since 1910.  We are now in the year 2170.  What is the official lifetime?

BARNABAS.  Seventy-eight.  Of course it’s an average; and we don’t mind a man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming a centenarian.  But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler.