ore significant that I hardly understand
it myself except when I am in specially good form. When it goes down,
millions of men perish.

ERMYNTRUDE. You know, if I had a moustache like that, it would turn my
head. I should go mad. Are you quite sure the Inca isn't mad?

THE INCA. How can he be mad, madam? What is sanity? The condition of the
Inca's mind. What is madness? The condition of the people who disagree
with the Inca.

ERMYNTRUDE. Then I am a lunatic because I don't like that ridiculous
brooch.

THE INCA. No, madam: you are only an idiot.

ERMYNTRUDE. Thank you.

THE INCA. Mark you: It is not to be expected that you should see eye to
eye with the Inca. That would be presumption. It is for you to accept
without question or demur the assurance of your Inca that the brooch is
a masterpiece.

ERMYNTRUDE. MY Inca! Oh, come! I like that. He is not my Inca yet.

THE INCA. He is everybody's Inca, madam. His realm will yet extend to
the confines of the habitable earth. It is his divine right; and let
those who dispute it look to themselves. Properly speaking, all those
who are now trying to shake his world predominance are not at war with
him, but in rebellion against him.

ERMYNTRUDE. Well, he started it, you know.

THE INCA. Madam, be just. When the hunters surround the lion, the lion
will spring. The Inca had kept the peace of years. Those who attacked
him were steeped in blood, black blood, white blood, brown blood, yellow
blood, blue blood. The Inca had never shed a drop.

ERMYNTRUDE. He had only talked.

THE INCA. Only TALKED! ONLY talked! What is more glorious than talk? Can
anyone in the world talk like him? Madam, when he signed the declaration
of war, he said to his foolish generals and admirals, 'Gentlemen, you
will all be sorry for this.' And they are. They know now that they had
better have relied on the sword of the spirit: in other words, on their
Inca's talk, than on their murderous cannons. The world will one day do
justice to the Inca as the man who kept the peace with nothing but his
tongue and his moustache. While he talked: talked just as I am talking
now to you, simply, quietly, sensibly, but GREATLY, there was peace;
there was prosperity; Perusalem went from success to success. He has
been silenced for a year by the roar of trinitrotoluene and the bluster
of fools; and the world is in ruins. What a tragedy! [He is convulsed
with grief.]

ERMYNTRUDE. Captain Duval, I don't want to be