B881 <=> B883 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 882]

“’After this decision I got up and, having received his blessing, went home.

“’Having returned home, I sat down and thought very seriously for a long time; and the result of all my thinking was that I decided to make an ordinary zimbal and to devise with the help of my friend the dervish Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran such a mechanism of little hammers that their striking should produce the corresponding sounds.

“’And that same evening I went to this friend of mine, the dervish Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran.

“’Although this dervish friend of mine was regarded by his comrades and acquaintances as rather a queer sort, nevertheless they all respected and esteemed him, as he was very sensible and learned and often talked of such questions that everyone, willy-nilly, had to ponder about them seriously.

“’Before his initiation into the dervishes, he had been a real professional, namely, a watchmaker.

“’And in the monastery also, he devoted all his free time to this favorite craft of his.

“’My friend this dervish Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran had by the way recently become much enthused over a certain “freakish idea,” namely, he was trying to make a mechanical watch which would show the time very exactly without the aid of any spring whatsoever.

“’This freakish idea of his he explained in the following brief and very simple formulation:

“’”Nothing on the Earth is absolutely still, because the Earth itself moves. On the Earth only gravity is still and then only in half the space occupied by its volume. I wish to get such an absolute equilibrium of levers that their movement which must necessarily proceed from the tempo of the movement of the Earth, should exactly correspond to the required movement of the hands of a clock, and so on and so forth.”