“Once when I went as usual into this said laboratory of his, I saw that he was pounding something in a mortar, and, as is usually done there on these occasions, I inquired what he was doing. BTG XXXI

“From the information I obtained, I learned that in order to set up such a laboratory there, it was obligatorily required first of all to have a permit from the local power-possessing beings, and that is why I quickly began to take steps to get this permit. BTG XXXIV

“The first steps I took showed me that on account of the laws which had been so long before fixed in the process of existence of this community, a permit to have the right to have one’s own chemical laboratory had to be issued there by a certain what is called ‘department’ of one of their what are called ‘ministries’. BTG XXXIV

“But as to what I said, namely, that nobody applied for a permit to the staff of the mentioned department, this by no means happened because none of the inhabitants of this chief place of existence needed a chemical laboratory; no, on the contrary, never had there been in that town so many similar chemical laboratories as at this very period of the flow of time, and doubtless all the owners of the necessary permits had procured them from somewhere or other in some or other way. BTG XXXIV

“They could not help having them. It was just for this that there existed in this chief place of their existence, as in general there exists in all large and small communities in times of peace, a particular as they say ‘administrative body’, which comprises the ‘basic-hope-of-a-complete-bliss-for-power-possessors’, which they themselves call the ‘gendarmerie’ and ‘police’, one of the chief obligations of the representatives of which is to see that everyone, for every kind of enterprise there, should have a corresponding permit, and indeed, it must not be supposed that the what are called ‘lynx-eyed’ beings representatives of the said ‘basic-hope-of-a-complete-bliss-for-power-possessors’, would ‘let anything slip by’ and allow anywhere any laboratory whatever without the corresponding permit from the power-possessors. BTG XXXIV

“In one department I had to sign a certain paper; in another to answer questions having nothing to do with chemistry; while in a third it was explained to me and I was advised how I must manage with the equipment of the laboratory so as not to be poisoned, and so on and so forth. BTG XXXIV

“But the most amusing of all was that, for obtaining this permit it was necessary in turn to apply to those official servants who had not even the remotest notion of what in general a laboratory was. BTG XXXIV

“According to the rules of all these senseless dillydallyings, I had to get among others a ‘paper’ from a doctor, official also, certifying that no danger would menace my personal health from my occupation in this laboratory. BTG XXXIV

“That is why I went from this doctor without the ‘paper’ necessary for me, and from that time I threw up everything and no longer tried to obtain a permit to set up my own laboratory. BTG XXXIV

“And so, my boy, as long as I did not yet know that to be occupied with ‘intrigues’ and dodges, or, as sometimes they themselves still express it, ‘mutually-to-get-rid-of-each-other’, is already unavoidably inherent in power-possessing beings of this community, I still hoped for and patiently awaited that time when eventually the corresponding conditions would give me the possibility of actualizing my fundamental aim, namely, the possibility of proceeding with the ‘elucidatory experiments’ on the psyche of the terrestrial beings en masse. But when it became definitely clear to me that here in this community under the existing conditions of reciprocal relationships it would be impossible for me to succeed in this, and I also became convinced that it was impossible to get one’s own chemical laboratory there honestly, i.e., strictly according to the laws fixed in this community, I decided to remain there no longer, but to depart, in order to seek suitable conditions for my said aim, to some other European community. BTG XXXIV

“The same evening the chief of that department to which I had first of all applied, himself personally brought me to my house that unfortunate permit, giving me the right to have my own laboratory, and to receive which I had languished for three months waiting on the doorsteps of every kind of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial establishment. And on the second day I received yet four other permits for this from various departments of other ministries into whose province it did not at all enter to issue such permits, but to whom on account of this same dillydallying of theirs I had had to apply during my senseless hustlings. BTG XXXIV