Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

24 Beelzebub’s Flight to the Planet Earth for the Fifth Time

24.325

“Clearly to represent and to substantiate in yourself the understanding just why such a peculiar craze arose in the individuality of that Persian king and became proper only to him, you must know that at the period of the Tikliamish civilization, in the town called ‘Chiklaral’ a three-brained learned being by name Harnahoom—whose essence later became crystallized into what is called an ‘Eternal-Hasnamussian-individual’—invented that any old metal you like, abundant on the surface of that planet, could easily be turned into the rare metal ‘gold’ and all it was necessary to know for this was just one very small ‘secret.’

24.326

“And as at that period to which my tale relates, this Persian king needed for some or other of his undoubtedly Hasnamussian aims, a great deal of this metal, rare on the surface of the Earth, called ‘gold,’ and as the notion concerning this method that had been invented by the then existing ‘Hasnamussian-individual,’ Harnahoom, had also reached his presence, he was eager to get gold by so easy a means.