B615 <=> B617 [BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 616]

“This former mama’s darling, when he arrived and began to speak to me, manifested himself at first towards me quite automatically according to the data fixed in his common presence by the rules enforcedly inculcated into him of what are called bon ton; and when a little later it became clear to his being-rumination that I belonged neither to his own caste nor to a higher one, but appeared to be one of those beings who according to the abnormal understanding of the beings of that community are considered little higher than what are called ‘savages,’ he immediately changed his tone and again quite automatically began to manifest himself towards me according to the data for ‘commanding’ and ‘ordering about,’ data also already fixed in the common presences of the beings of that community of that period who belonged to that caste, and he began to point out how I must ‘enter,’ ‘leave,’ and ‘move,’ and when and what words must be spoken.

“Besides the fact that in the course of two hours he had shown me by his own example how, namely, one had to manifest, he declared to me that he would return on the morrow and he ordered me to practice, so that, as he expressed himself, no misunderstanding at all might arise which might lead to where even ‘Makar did not drive his goats.’

“When on the day of my, as they call it, ‘supreme presentation’ I arrived there where the chief of this large community had the place of his residence, I was met at the railway station itself by ‘His High Excellency’ in person, who had arrived there accompanied by five or six of his adjutants, and from that moment he himself began – of course quite without the participation of, as it is called, his ‘personal-subjective-initiative,’ but guided only by automatic habit acquired by him, thanks to the doing of always one and the same thing – to subjugate all my separate spiritualized parts and all the self-manifestations of my common presence, taking it as it were under the directive of his own ‘I.’