The Third Flight of Beelzebub to the Planet Earth

“It then became clear that the number of those who chewed had increased still more because many of the three-brained beings who had never previously chewed now began chewing merely out of what is called ‘curiosity,’ which is one of the peculiarities of the psyche of the three-brained beings of that planet which has taken your fancy, that is to say, curiosity to find out what effect those seeds had, the chewing of which was prohibited and punished by the king with such insistence and relentless severity.

“I must emphasize here, that though the said particularity of their psyche began to be crystallized in your favorites immediately after the loss of Atlantis, yet in none of the beings of former epochs did it function so blatantly as it does now in the contemporary three-brained beings there; they have more of it perhaps, than there are hairs on a ‘Toosook.’

“So, my boy . . .

“When the wise King Konuzion finally became quite convinced that it was not possible by the described measures to extirpate the passion for chewing the seeds of Gulgulian, and saw that the only result of his measures was the death of several who were punished, he abrogated all the measures he had previously taken and again began to think seriously about a search for some other real means for destroying this evil, lamentable for his community.

“As I learned much later—owing to a very ancient surviving monument—the great King Konuzion then returned to his chamber and for eighteen days neither ate nor drank but only very seriously thought and thought.

“It must in any case be noticed here, that those latest researches of mine showed that King Konuzion was then particularly anxious to find a means of uprooting this evil, because all the affairs of his community were going from bad to worse.

215