and as fast as your legs could carry you.” There was intense rage in these words, but there
was also the insolence of a future official of the Court addressing a displeasing prisoner. K.
stepped up quite close to the student and said with a smile: “I am impatient, that is true, but
the easiest way to relieve my impatience would be for you to leave us. Yet if by any
chance you have come here to study — I hear that you’re a student — I’ll gladly vacate the
room and go away with this woman. I fancy you’ve a long way to go yet in your studies
before you can become a Judge. I admit I’m not very well versed in the niceties of your
legal training, but I assume that it doesn’t consist exclusively in learning to make rude
remarks, at which you seem to have attained a shameless proficiency.” “He shouldn’t have
been allowed to run around at large,” said the student, as if seeking to explain K.’s insulting
words to the woman. “It was a mistake, I told the Examining Magistrate that. He should at
least have been confined to his room between the interrogations. There are times when I
simply don’t understand the Examining Magistrate.” * “What’s the use of talking?” said
K., stretching out his hand to the woman. “Come along.” “Ah, that’s it,” said the student,
“no, no, you don’t get her,” and with a strength which one would not have believed him
capable of he lifted her in one arm and, gazing up at her tenderly, ran, stooping a little
beneath his burden, to the door. A certain fear of K. was unmistakable in this action, and
yet he risked infuriating K. further by caressing and clasping the woman’s arm with his free
hand. K. ran a few steps after him, ready to seize and if necessary to throttle him, when the
woman said: “It’s no use, the Examining Magistrate has sent for me, I daren’t go with you;
this little monster,” she patted the student’s face, “this little monster won’t let me go.” “And you don’t want to be set free,” cried K., laying his hand on the shoulder of the student, who
snapped at it with his teeth. “No,” cried the woman, pushing K. away with both hands.
“No, no, you mustn’t do that, what are you thinking of? It would be the ruin of me. Let him
alone, oh, please let him alone! He’s only obeying the orders of the Examining Magistrate
and carrying me to him.” “Then let him go, and as for you, I never want to see you again,”
said K., furious with disappointment, and he gave the student a punch in the back that
made him stumble for a moment, only to spring off more nimbly than ever out of relief that
he had not fallen. K. slowly walked after them, he recognized that this was the first
unequivocal defeat that he had received from these people. There was no reason, of course,
for him to worry about that, he had received the defeat only because he had insisted on
giving battle. While he stayed quietly at home and went about his ordinary vocations he
remained superior to all these people and could kick any of them out of his path. And he
pictured to himself the highly comic situation which would arise if, for instance, this
wretched student, this puffed-up whippersnapper, this bandy-legged beaver, had to kneel
by Elsa’s bed some day wringing his hands and begging for favors. This picture pleased K.
so much that he decided, if ever the opportunity came, to take the student along to visit
Elsa.
Out of curiosity K. hurried to the door, he wanted to see where the woman was being
carried off to, for the student could scarcely bear her in his arms across the street. But the
journey was much shorter than that. Immediately opposite the door a flight of narrow
wooden stairs led, as it seemed, to a garret, it had a turning so that one could not see the
other end. The student was now carrying the woman up this stairway, very slowly, puffing