laid on the accused himself. A reasonable enough point of view, yet nothing could be more
erroneous than to deduce from this that accused persons had no need of defending counsel
when appearing before this Court. On the contrary, in no other Court was legal assistance
so necessary. For the proceedings were not only kept secret from the general public, but
from the accused as well. Of course only so far as this was possible, but it had proved possible to a very great extent. For even the accused had no access to the Court records,
and to guess from the course of an interrogation what documents the Court had up its
sleeve was very difficult, particularly for an accused person, who was himself implicated
and had all sorts of worries to distract him. Now here was where defending counsel
stepped in. Generally speaking, he was not allowed to be present during the examination,
consequently he had to cross-question the accused immediately after an interrogation, if
possible at the very door of the Court of Inquiry, and piece together from the usually
confused reports he got anything that might be of use for the Defense. But even that was
not the most important thing, for one could not elicit very much in that way, though of
course here as elsewhere a capable man could elicit more than others. The most important
thing was counsel’s personal connection with officials of the Court; in that lay the chief
value of the Defense. Now K. must have discovered from experience that the very lowest
grade of the Court organization was by no means perfect and contained venal and corrupt
elements, whereby to some extent a breach was made in the water-tight system of justice.
This was where most of the petty lawyers tried to push their way in, by bribing and
listening to gossip, in fact there had actually been cases of purloining documents, at least
in former times. It was not to be gainsaid that these methods could achieve for the moment
surprisingly favorable results for the accused, on which the petty lawyers prided
themselves, spreading them out as a lure for new clients, but they had no effect on the
further progress of the case, or only a bad effect. Nothing was of any real value but
respectable personal connections with the higher officials, that was to say higher officials
of subordinate rank, naturally. Only through these could the course of the proceedings be
influenced, imperceptibly at first, perhaps, but more and more strongly as the case went on.
Of course very few lawyers had such connections, and here K.’s choice had been a very
fortunate one. Perhaps only one or two other lawyers could boast of the same connections
as Dr. Huld. These did not worry their heads about the mob in the lawyers’ room and had
nothing whatever to do with them. But their relations with the Court officials were all the
more intimate. It was not even necessary that Dr. Huld should always attend the Court,
wait in the Ante-room of the Examining Magistrates till they chose to appear, and be
dependent on their moods for earning perhaps a delusive success or not even that. No, as
K. had himself seen, the officials, and very high ones among them, visited Dr. Huld of
their own accord, voluntarily providing information with great frankness or at least in
broad enough hints, discussing the next turn of the various cases; more, even sometimes
letting themselves be persuaded to a new point of view. Certainly one should not rely too
much on their readiness to be persuaded, for definitely as they might declare themselves
for a new standpoint favorable to the Defense, they might well go straight to their offices
and issue a statement in the directly contrary sense, a verdict far more severe on the
accused than the original intention which they claimed to have renounced completely.
Against that, of course, there was no remedy, for what they said to you in private was
simply said to you in private and could not be followed up in public, even if the Defense
were not obliged for other reasons to do its utmost to retain the favor of these gentlemen.