B885 <=> B887 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 886]

“This section which we came upon this time, was in addition to its formation by Nature Herself also artificially constructed so originally – according to the Reason of your contemporary favorites – that I wish to describe its construction to you as detailedly as possible.

“The walls of this section, the ceiling, and even the floor were lined with several layers of very thick felt. As it was afterwards explained to me, this accidentally natural formation was utilized and adapted so that there should not penetrate there, from the other sections or from the outside in general, the slightest vibration from any manifestations whatsoever, either from any movement, rustling, shuffling, or even from vibrations produced by the breathing anywhere nearby of various large or small ‘creatures.’

“In this unusual interior were several ‘experimental apparatuses’ of strange form and among them was a specimen of the sound-producing-instrument which I brought with me from the surface of your planet, the type of contemporary terrestrial sound-producing instrument which your favorites call a grand piano.

“The cover of this grand piano was open, and to each series of the strings visible beneath it were fitted independent little apparatuses which served as measures of the ‘degree of vivifyingness of the variously sourced vibrations’ and were called ‘vibrometers.’

“When I saw the large number of these vibrometers, the being-impulse of astonishment in my common presence increased to such an intensity as that which our Mullah Nassr Eddin expresses by the following words: ‘The limit of full satiety is bursting.’

“This impulse of astonishment had arisen and progressively increased in me from the moment when I saw, in the passages of the cave, the gas and electric lighting.

“I had already then wondered whence and how all this was present here.