B618 <=> B620 (BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 619)

“The manifestation of the mentioned ‘Vietro-yretznel’ personally in relation to my person began to have their action already from the very morning of the following day, in this sense that every data for ‘being-notion’ about my personality which had been before this already soundly fixed in the presences of all the beings there who knew me, suddenly sharply changed, thanks only to this ‘objectively maleficent’ official presentation of me to their highest power-possessing beings.

“My personal significance and their notions about all my qualities and merits also changed for their individuality; I suddenly became for all ‘important’ and ‘wise,’ ‘extraordinary’ and ‘interesting,’ and so on and so forth; that is, the possessor of all kinds of abnormal being-qualities thought out by themselves.

“As a very characteristic example which will well make clear to you what I have just said, the following illustration may serve:

“The proprietor of that shop where, before going to my business, I bought the provisions for my kitchen, wished on the first morning after this, as is sometimes said there, ‘royal audience’ of mine, to bring, happen what may, my purchases home to me himself. All the police standing at the street corners in that district in which I temporarily dwelt, and who already knew me well as a newcomer physician, began at the sight of me, while still standing some way off, to salute just as they saluted that important general of theirs.

“The same evening the chief of that department to which I had first of all applied, himself personally brought me to my house that unfortunate permit, giving me the right to have my own laboratory, and to receive which I had languished for three months waiting on the doorsteps of every kind of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ establishment. And on the second day I received yet four other permits for this from various departments of other ministries into whose province it did not at all enter to issue such permits, but to whom on account of this same dilly-dallying of theirs I had had to apply during my senseless hustlings.