B606 <=> B608 [BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 607]

“Besides this, one of these departments, why I don’t know, required that a certificate issued by another department should be stamped by a third.

“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.

“It turned out as I later elucidated, that I had been, without at all suspecting it at the time, with an official among whose obligations was that of dissuading from this ‘abominable’ intention those who wished to set up chemical laboratories.

“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.

“I do not know how all this would have finished, if, having wasted almost two months, I had not myself in the end thrown up all these foolish hustlings around.

“I threw them all up for a reason which was not without its humor.

“According to the rules of all these senseless dilly-dallyings, 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.

“I went to this official doctor; but when he first of all desired to sound me thoroughly and for this requested me to undress entirely so that he might tap me all over with his little hammer, I could not of course in any way consent. And I could not consent to this, because, if I had bared myself, I should inevitably have betrayed my tail which there on your planet I skillfully hid under the folds of my dress.