B450 <=> B452 [BTG XXX Art, p. 451]

Having said this and having with the tip of his tail wiped off the drops of sweat which had formed on his forehead, Ahoon became silent and adopted his usual attentive posture.

With an affectionate glance, Beelzebub looked at him and said:

“Thank you, old man, for reminding me of this. It is true that I have scarcely even mentioned that indeed harmful factor – created also by them themselves – for the final atrophy even of those data for their being-mentation which by chance have still survived.

“All the same, old man, though it’s true that I have not so far once referred to it, that does not mean that I have not considered it at all. Having still a good deal of time before us during the period of our traveling, I should in all probability, in the course of my subsequent tales to our common favorite Hassein, have remembered in its time about that of which you have reminded me.

“However, perhaps it will be very opportune to speak just now about this contemporary terrestrial art because, as you said, during our fifth stay there in person, I was really a witness of the events which gave rise to the causes of this contemporary evil there and which arose, thanks, as always, to the same learned beings there who assembled in the city of Babylon from almost the whole of the surface of that ill-fated planet.”

Having said this, Beelzebub then turned to Hassein and spoke as follows:

“This same already definite idea there, now existing there under the denomination art is, at the present time for those unhappy favorites of yours, one of those automatically acting data the totality of which of itself gradually, and though almost imperceptibly yet very surely, converts them – that is, beings having in their presences every possibility for becoming particles of a part of Divinity – merely into what is called ‘living flesh.’