k a grossly overrated monarch.

ERMYNTRUDE [shocked]. Oh, Captain! Take care! Incadisparagement.

THE INCA. I repeat, grossly overrated. Strictly between ourselves, I
do not believe all this about Providence entrusting the care of sixty
million human beings to the abilities of Chips and the Piffler and Jack
Johnson. I believe in individual genius. That is the Inca's secret. It
must be. Why, hang it all, madam, if it were a mere family matter, the
Inca's uncle would have been as great a man as the Inca. And--well,
everybody knows what the Inca's uncle was.

ERMYNTRUDE. My experience is that the relatives of men of genius are
always the greatest duffers imaginable.

THE INCA. Precisely. That is what proves that the Inca is a man of
genius. His relatives ARE duffers.

ERMYNTRUDE. But bless my soul, Captain, if all the Inca's generals are
incapables, and all his relatives duffers, Perusalem will be beaten in
the war; and then it will become a republic, like France after 1871, and
the Inca will be sent to St Helena.

THE INCA [triumphantly]. That is just what the Inca is playing for,
madam. It is why he consented to the war.

ERMYNTRUDE. What!

THE INCA. Aha! The fools talk of crushing the Inca; but they little know
their man. Tell me this. Why did St Helena extinguish Napoleon?

ERMYNTRUDE. I give it up.

THE INCA. Because, madam, with certain rather remarkable qualities,
which I should be the last to deny, Napoleon lacked versatility. After
all, any fool can be a soldier: we know that only too well in Perusalem,
where every fool is a soldier. But the Inca has a thousand other
resources. He is an architect. Well, St Helena presents an unlimited
field to the architect. He is a painter: need I remind you that St
Helena is still without a National Gallery? He is a composer: Napoleon
left no symphonies in St Helena. Send the Inca to St Helena, madam,
and the world will crowd thither to see his works as they crowd now to
Athens to see the Acropolis, to Madrid to see the pictures of Velasquez,
to Bayreuth to see the music dramas of that egotistical old rebel
Richard Wagner, who ought to have been shot before he was forty, as
indeed he very nearly was. Take this from me: hereditary monarchs are
played out: the age for men of genius has come: the career is open to
the talents: before ten years have elapsed every civilized country from
the Carpathians to the Rocky Mountains will be a Republic.

ERMYNTRUDE. Then goodbye