B284

B283 <=> B285 [BTG XXIII Beelzebub’s fourth sojourn, p. 284]

“One of them has in one of the large cities, an ‘undertaker’s business’; the second, in another large city, has a bureau for what are called matchmaking and divorce; and the third is the proprietor of many offices founded by himself in various cities for what is called ‘money exchange.’

“However, my boy, owing to this etherogram, I have wandered a long way from my original tale.

“Let us go back to our former theme.

“Well, then, upon this the fourth flight of mine to the planet Earth, our ship Occasion descended on to the sea called the ‘Red Sea.’

“And we descended upon this Sea because it washed the Eastern shores of that continent where I wished to go, namely, to that continent then called Grabontzi and now called Africa, on which those ape-beings I needed then bred more than on any other of the terra firma parts of the surface of that planet of yours; and also because this sea was at that period particularly convenient for the mooring of our ship Occasion; but what was still more important was that on one of its sides that country was situated which was then called ‘Nilia’ and now is called Egypt, where those beings of our tribe then existed who wished to remain on that planet and with whose help I intended to collect the apes.

“Well, then, having descended upon the Red Sea, we sailed from the ship Occasion on ‘Epodrenekhs’ to the shore; and afterwards, on camels we came to that town where our beings existed and which was then the capital of the future Egypt.

“This capital city was then called Thebes.

“On the very first day of my arrival in the city of Thebes, one of the beings of our tribe existing there told me among other things, in the course of our conversation, that the beings of the Earth of that locality had devised a new system for observing other cosmic concentrations from their planet, and that they were then constructing what was required in order to carry it into effect; and also, as everybody there said, that the convenience and possibilities of this new system were excellent and until then unparalleled on the Earth.

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