"What a question!" said Emilius in the greatest indignation. "To make a caricature of yourself, and drown your senses in dissipation, is just the sort of thing you most enjoy." "Because you do not like dancing," said the other, "and take it to be a pernicious invention, no one else is to amuse himself. How ridiculous it is when a man is made up of nothing but whims and fancies!" "Yes, indeed," replied his irritated friend, "I am sure I have reason enough to remark it too of you. I had hoped that, as you promised, you would give this one evening to me, but----" "But it is the carnival," said Roderick, "and all my friends and a number of ladies are expecting me at the great ball to-night. Really, my dear friend, if you will but think of it, you will see it is mere disease in you to feel such extreme dislike to these things." "Which of us two is most diseased," answered Emilius, "is a point I will not attempt to decide. Your astonishing levity, your craving for dissipation, your restless hunting after pleasures which do not reach the heart, but only leave it sick and weary, does not seem to me to indicate a very healthy frame of mind. Granted, however, if you will, that my feeling is mere weakness, you would do better in some things to let it take its way; and there is nothing in the whole world which drives me more frantic than a ball with its fearful music. Some one has said that to a deaf man, who cannot hear the music, a ball-room must look like Bedlam let loose; but to me this terrible music itself, these infernal tunes whirling and whizzing round with inconceivable swiftness faster and faster, seizing all one's thoughts, saturating one's body and soul, and haunting one like so many spectres,--is not this the very jubilee of frenzy and madness itself? If dancing is ever to be endurable to me, it must be to the tune of silence." "Well done, Mr. Paradox," said his friend; "you have got to this, have you? to find the innocentest, naturalest, pleasantest thing in the world a horrid, unnatural monster." "I cannot help my feelings," said he very seriously; "as long as I can remember, these tunes have made me miserable, have often driven me to despair. To me they are the fiends and furies of the world of sound; they squeak and gibber round my head, and grin at me with hideous laughter." "Mere nervousness," answered the other; "it is just like your ridiculous horror of spiders, and a number of other innocent creatures."