“Because you are mad! With the itching palm! Look at you! You can’t stand still on your feet! Rub, rub! Want in the midst of plenty! Scratch, scratch! Some with too little and some with too much! Rub, rub! And enough for everybody in reason! Scratch, scratch! All mad, all mad! Rub, rub! Look at me—have I itching palms?” He held up his hands, palms outward.
“No!” exclaimed several in the crowd.
“Tell me why! Tell me why! Because I touch not the dead leaves! Isn’t it so?”
No one answered.
“Give ear, madmen, and I will reveal to you how to cure the itching palm! Bring the dead orange leaves here to the square! Pile them up! Burn them, burn them, burn them, every one! That’s it! Will you give up the dead leaves?”
“No!” roared the people as if with one voice.
“Then farewell, madmen!” cried the Fool, and he jerked the monkey from his shoulder and descended from the platform.
The people, still rubbing their hands together and dancing, but laughing withal, rapidly left the square, and my sister and myself started to go; and as we started, the dwarf appeared before us with his monkey, and cocked his eye up at us waggishly.
“What, ho!” said the Fool. “Strangers, by the ears of a donkey! Greeting, strangers, what do you among my mad subjects?”
“To tell you the truth, my lord,” said I, making up my mind on the spur of the moment, “I have come here with my sister from a distant land, to cure the people and their King of the itching palm.”