B616 <=> B618 [BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 617]

“From this moment, I had, in the sense of my ‘outer manifestations,’ as our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin would say, to ‘dance in everything to his tune.’

“As soon as we had left the station and were seated in the carriage, he immediately began to show me and to prompt me as to what and how I had to act and speak and what I had not to do or say.

“And when later, in that hall where the celebrated presentation took place, he further showed and directed my presence . . . about this we can neither speak now in the language of a Scheherazade, nor describe it with the pen of a Mr. Canineson.

“In the hall every movement, every step I made, even to the blinking of my eyelids, were seen in advance, and prompted to me by this important general.

“However, in spite of all the absurdity of this procedure, if one takes into account that the perfection of a being depends on the quality and quantity of his inner experiencings, then objective justice demands that due must be given for this to your favorites, that on that day they compelled me, of course, unconsciously, to undergo and to feel perhaps more than I had undergone and felt during all the centuries of my personal sojourn there among them.

“However that may be, I must yet say that having agreed to this ‘famous presentation’ for the purpose of observation and investigation of the peculiar and such a ‘contorted’ psyche of your favorites, and after all the great ‘agitation’ which I had lived through on that day, I finally breathed freely only in the carriage of the train after my tormentors, particularly that important general, had left me alone by myself.