B894 <=> B896 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 895]

“When Hadji-Asvatz-Troov ascertained this, he immediately leaped from his place like a young man and cried out very excitedly, ‘It cannot be!’ and began to stare fixedly at my left leg with the eyes of a madman.

“Almost five minutes passed in this manner. I confess that for the first time on that planet I was at a loss and could not immediately hit upon a way out of the situation.

“At last he came closely up to me and was about to speak, but just then, from his agitation, his legs began to tremble very violently, and he therefore sat down on the floor and motioned me to sit down also.

“And when we were seated he gazed at me with very sorrowful eyes and in a penetrating manner spoke to me as follows:

“’Friend of my friend! In my youth I was a very rich man, so rich that no fewer than ten of my caravans, each with no fewer than a thousand camels, were constantly moving in all directions over our great Asia.

“’My harem was considered by all who knew it to be the richest and best on the Earth, and everything else was on the same scale; in short, I had in superabundance everything that our ordinary life can give.

“’But all this gradually so wearied and surfeited me that when at night I lay down to sleep, I thought with horror that the same would be repeated on the next day and that I would again have to drag along the same wearisome “burden.”

“’Finally it became unendurable for me to live with such an inner state.

“’And then, once, when I felt the emptiness of ordinary life particularly strongly, the idea first arose in me of ending my life by suicide.