“That’s the proper way to speak, and now I shall answer you. I am Wullem Drikus Bloemstein, President of the Independent Republic of Altenet.”
“And where do you live?”
“Well, I should have thought you had no need to ask. At Altenet, the capital of the Republic of Altenet.”
“Thank you.”
One of the inspectors was immediately despatched to Altenet to make inquiries on the spot as to the personality of the prisoner.
“THERE HE IS!”
The officer returned the same day, with the tidings that all Altenet was one great lunatic asylum; that every human being he had met and spoken to there was even madder than the one who had been caught; everything he had seen and heard was sheer nonsense and delirium, and so he had been obliged to return as he came.
Medical aid was summoned, but all in vain; the gentlemen were unable to agree, one asserting that the patient was suffering from aberratio mentalis, while another thought things were not so bad as that.
“After all, what business is it of ours?” said one at last. “Send him back to his home, and let them settle it among themselves.”