leading into the square from a low-lying side-street. It was not quite certain that it was she,
but the resemblance was close enough. Whether it were really Fräulein Bürstner or not,
however, did not matter to K.; the important thing was that he suddenly realized the futility
of resistance. There would be nothing heroic in it were he to resist, to make difficulties for
his companions, to snatch at the last appearance of life by struggling. He set himself in
motion, and the relief his warders felt was transmitted to some extent even to himself.
They suffered him now to lead the way, and he followed the direction taken by the girl
ahead of him, not that he wanted to overtake her or to keep her in sight as long as possible,
but only that he might not forget the lesson she had brought into his mind. “The only thing
I can do now,” he told himself, and the regular correspondence between his steps and the
steps of the other two confirmed his thought, “the only thing for me to go on doing is to
keep my intelligence calm and analytical to the end. I always wanted to snatch at the world
with twenty hands, and not for a very laudable motive, either. That was wrong, and am I to
show now that not even a year’s trial has taught me anything? Am I to leave this world as a
man who has no common sense? Are people to say of me after I am gone that at the
beginning of my case I wanted to finish it, and at the end of it I wanted to begin it again? I
don’t want that to be said. I am grateful for the fact that these half-dumb, senseless
creatures have been sent to accompany me on this journey, and that I have been left to say
to myself all that is needed.”
Fräulein Bürstner meanwhile had gone round the bend into a side-street, but by this
time K. could do without her and submitted himself to the guidance of his escort. In
complete harmony all three now made their way across a bridge in the moonlight, the two
men readily yielded to K.’s slightest movement, and when he turned slightly toward the
parapet they turned, too, in a solid front. The water, glittering and trembling in the
moonlight, divided on either side of a small island, on which the foliage of trees and
bushes rose in thick masses, as if bunched together. Beneath the trees ran gravel paths,
now invisible, with convenient benches on which K. had stretched himself at ease many a
summer. “I didn’t mean to stop,” he said to his companions, shamed by their obliging
compliance. Behind K.’s back the one seemed to reproach the other gently for the mistaken
stop they had made, and then all three went on again. * They passed through several steeply rising streets, in which policemen stood or
patrolled at intervals; sometimes a good way off, sometimes quite near. One with a bushy
mustache, his hand on the hilt of his saber, came up as of set purpose close to the not quite
harmless-looking group. The two gentlemen halted, the policeman seemed to be already
opening his mouth, but K. forcibly pulled his companions forward. He kept looking round
cautiously to see if the policeman were following; as soon as he had put a corner between
himself and the policeman he started to run, and his two companions, scant of breath as
they were, had to run beside him.
So they came quickly out of the town, which at this point merged almost without
transition into the open fields. A small stone quarry, deserted and desolate, lay quite near
to a still completely urban house. Here the two men came to a standstill, whether because
this place had been their goal from the very beginning or because they were too exhausted
to go farther. Now they loosened their hold of K., who stood waiting dumbly, took off the
top hats and wiped the sweat from their brows with pocket handkerchiefs, meanwhile
surveying the quarry. The moon shone down on everything with that simplicity and