imagine what a nuisance that is. For instance, if I bring a lady here whom I want to paint, I
unlock the door with my own key and find, say, the hunchback over there at the table, reddening her lips with my paint brushes, while her little sisters, who she’s supposed to
keep an eye on, are scampering over the whole place and messing up every corner of the
room. Or, and this actually happened last night, I come home very late — by the way, that’s
why I’m in this state of disrepair, and the room too, please excuse it — I come home late,
then, and start climbing into bed and something catches me by the leg; I look under the bed
and haul out another of these pests. Why they should make such a set at me I don’t know,
you must have noticed yourself that I don’t exactly encourage them. And, of course, all this
disturbs me in my work. If it hadn’t been that I have free quarters in this studio I should
have cleared out long ago.” Just then a small voice piped behind the door with anxious
cajolery: “Titorelli, can we come in now?” “No,” replied the painter. “Not even me?” the
voice asked again. “Not even you,” said the painter, and he went to the door and locked it.
Meanwhile K. had been looking round the room; it would never have occurred to him
that anyone could call this wretched little hole a studio. You could scarcely take two
strides in any direction. The whole room, floor, walls, and ceiling, was a box of bare
wooden planks with cracks showing between them. Opposite K., against a wall, stood a
bed with a variegated assortment of coverings. In the middle of the room an easel
supported a canvas covered by a shirt whose sleeves dangled on the floor. Behind K. was
the window, through which in the fog one could not see farther than the snow-covered roof
of the next house.
The turning of the key in the lock reminded K. that he had not meant to stay long.
Accordingly he fished the manufacturer’s letter from his pocket, handed it to the painter,
and said: “I heard of you from this gentleman, an acquaintance of yours, and have come
here at his suggestion.” The painter hastily read the letter through and threw it on the bed.
If the manufacturer had not so explicitly claimed acquaintance with Titorelli as a poor man
dependent on his charity, one might actually have thought that Titorelli did not know the
manufacturer or at least could not remember him. On top of this he now asked: “Have you
come to buy pictures or to have your portrait painted?” K. stared at him in amazement.
What could have been in the letter? He had assumed as a matter of course that the
manufacturer would tell Titorelli that he had come for no other purpose than to inquire
about his case. He had been altogether too rash and reckless in rushing to this man. But he
must make a relevant reply of some kind, and so he said with a glance at the easel: “You’re
working on a painting just now?” “Yes,” said Titorelli, stripping the shirt from the easel
and throwing it on the bed after the letter. “It’s a portrait. A good piece of work, but not
quite finished yet.” K. was apparently in luck, the opportunity to mention the Court was
being literally thrown at his head, for this was obviously the portrait of a Judge. Also it
strikingly resembled the portrait hanging in the lawyer’s office. True, this was quite a
different Judge, a stout man with a black bushy beard which reached far up on his cheeks
on either side; moreover the other portrait was in oils, while this was lightly and
indistinctly sketched in pastel. Yet everything else showed a close resemblance, for here
too the Judge seemed to be on the point of rising menacingly from his high seat, bracing
himself firmly on the arms of it. “That must be a Judge,” K. felt like saying at once, but he checked himself for the time being and approached the picture as if he wished to study the