words should have merited applause of some kind, yet all was still, the audience were
clearly waiting intently for what was to follow; perhaps in that silence an outbreak was
preparing which would put an end to the whole thing. K. was annoyed when the door at the
end of the hall opened at that moment, admitting the young washerwoman, who seemed to
have finished her work; she distracted some of the audience in spite of all the caution with
which she entered. But the Examining Magistrate himself rejoiced K.’s heart, for he
seemed to be quite dismayed by the speech. Until now he had been on his feet, for he had
been surprised by K.’s speech as he got up to rebuke the gallery. In this pause he resumed
his seat, very slowly, as if he wished his action to escape remark. Presumably to calm his
spirit, he turned over the notebook again.
“That won’t help you much,” K. continued, “your very notebook, Sir, confirms what I
say.” Emboldened by the mere sound of his own cool words in that strange assembly, K.
simply snatched the notebook from the Examining Magistrate and held it up with the tips
of his fingers, as if it might soil his hands, by one of the middle pages, so that the closely
written, blotted, yellow-edged leaves hung down on either side. “These are the Examining
Magistrate’s records,” he said, letting it fall on the table again. “You can continue reading it
at your ease, Herr Examining Magistrate, I really don’t fear this ledger of yours though it is
a closed book to me, for I would not touch it except with my finger tips and cannot even
take it in my hand.” It could only be a sign of deep humiliation, or must at least be
interpreted as such, that the Examining Magistrate now took up the notebook where it had
fallen on the table, tried to put it to rights again, and once more began to read it. The eyes of the people in the first row were so tensely fixed upon K. that for a while
he stood silently looking down at them. They were without exception elderly men, some of
them with white beards. Could they possibly be the influential men, the men who would
carry the whole assembly with them, and did they refuse to be shocked out of the
impassivity into which they had sunk ever since he began his speech, even although he had
publicly humiliated the Examining Magistrate?
“What has happened to me,” K. went on, rather more quietly than before, trying at the
same time to read the faces in the first row, which gave his speech a somewhat
disconnected effect, “what has happened to me is only a single instance and as such of no
great importance, especially as I do not take it very seriously, but it is representative of a
misguided policy which is being directed against many other people as well. It is for these
that I take up my stand here, not for myself.”
He had involuntarily raised his voice. Someone in the audience clapped his hands
high in the air and shouted: “Bravo! Why not? Bravo! And bravo again!” A few men in the
first row pulled at their beards, but none turned round at this interruption. K., too, did not
attach any importance to it, yet felt cheered nevertheless; he no longer considered it
necessary to get applause from everyone, he would be quite pleased if he could make the
audience start thinking about the question and win a man here and there through
conviction.
“I have no wish to shine as an orator,” said K., having come to this conclusion, “nor
could I if I wished. The Examining Magistrate, no doubt, is much the better speaker, it is
part of his vocation. All I desire is the public ventilation of a public grievance. Listen to
me. Some ten days ago I was arrested, in a manner that seems ridiculous even to myself,
though that is immaterial at the moment. I was seized in bed before I could get up, perhaps –
– it is not unlikely, considering the Examining Magistrate’s statement — perhaps they had