“The same,” replied the tall old man, with a sigh:—“Caddy Caddy, sir, of Caddy Castle.”
“And how the nipperkins did you break loose?” cried Cuddle, rising from the chair, and advancing two or three steps.
“Where now, where now, sir?” said Caddy Caddy, taking a gentle hold of Cuddle's arm:—“Where now, friend Cuddle?”
“Where?—why, to the door, doubtless!—Am I doomed to do nothing but alarm the castle?”
“Alarm the castle!” exclaimed Caddy Caddy; “are you out of your senses? why, they'd lock me up, man, if you did.”
“To be sure they would, and that's precisely what I want them to do.—My dear sir, I beg pardon; I wouldn't give offence I'm sure,—neither to you nor the people of the Castle; but I can't help it.—You must allow me to give the alarm.—I cannot submit to be shut up with a madman.”
“So, then, you join in the slander, do you?” said Caddy Caddy; “Cuddle, you hurt me to the soul!”
“Well, well,—my dear friend,—my respected friend,—I am sorry I said so;—it was but in joke.”
“Cuddle,” replied Caddy, “I was ruined by a joke:—somebody called me a madman, in jest; the rest of the world joined in the cry, though it was a fool who gave tongue; and, at last, they ran me down; proved, to their own satisfaction, that I was out of my wits, for being in a passion with, and turning upon, those who were hunting me. Nothing is more easy than to prove a man mad:—begin, by throwing a slur upon his mental sanity; watch him narrowly; view all he does with a jaundiced eye; rake up a score of facts, which occurred a year apart,—facts that are really frolics, freaks, whims, vagaries, or what you will, of the like nature; place them all together, and the business is done; you make as fine a picture of lunacy as a man would wish to look at. I assure you, Caddy Cuddle, I am no more a lunatic than you are,—take my word for it; so sit down and tune the fiddle.”
“Fiddle! what?—where?—which fiddle?”