businessman, and I was much more of a businessman then than now, I wanted to see
palpable results, the whole negotiation should be coming to a finish, I thought, or taking a
regular upward course. Instead of that there were only ceremonial interviews, one after
another, mostly of the same tenor, where I could reel off the responses like a litany; several
times a week Court messengers came to my place of business or to my house or wherever I
was to be found, and that, of course, was a nuisance (today I’m much better off in that
respect, for telephone calls bother me less) ; and besides all that, rumors about my case
began to spread among my business friends, but especially among my relatives, so that I
was being injured on all sides without the slightest sign of any intention on the part of the
Court to begin legal proceedings in the near future. So I went to the lawyer and made my
complaint. He treated me to a lengthy explanation, but refused utterly to take action in my
sense of the word, saying that nobody could influence the Court to appoint a day for
hearing a case, and that to urge anything of the kind in a petition — as I wanted him to do —
was simply unheard of and would only ruin myself and him. I thought: what this lawyer
won’t or can’t do, another will and can. So I looked round for other lawyers. I may as well
tell you now that not one of them ever prayed the Court to fix a day for the trial of my
case, or managed to obtain such a trial; it is really an impossibility — with one qualification
that I shall explain later — and the lawyer had not misled me there, although I found no
cause for regretting having called in the other lawyers. I suppose Dr. Huld has told you
plenty of things about the pettifogging lawyers, he has probably described them as
contemptible creatures, and so they are, in a sense. All the same, in speaking of them and
contrasting himself and his colleagues with them he always makes a small mistake, which
I may as well call your attention to in passing. He always refers to the lawyers of his own
circle as the `great lawyers,’ by way of contrast. Now that’s untrue; any man can call
himself `great,’ of course, if he pleases, but in this matter the Court tradition must decide.
And according to the Court tradition, which recognizes both small and great lawyers
outside the hole-and-corner lawyers, our lawyer and his colleagues rank only among the
small lawyers, while the really great lawyers, whom I have merely heard of and never
seen, stand as high above the small lawyers as these above the despised pettifogging
lawyers.” “The really great lawyers ?” asked K. “Who are they, then? How does one get at
them?” “So you’ve never heard of them,” said Block. “There’s hardly an accused man who
doesn’t spend some time dreaming of them after hearing about them. Don’t you give way to
that temptation. I have no idea who the great lawyers are and I don’t believe they can be
got at. I know of no single instance in which it could be definitely asserted that they had
intervened. They do defend certain cases, but one cannot achieve that oneself. They only
defend those whom they wish to defend, and they never take action, I should think, until
the case is already beyond the province of the lower Court. In fact, it’s better to put them
out of one’s mind altogether, or else one finds interviews with ordinary lawyers so stale
and stupid, with their niggling counsels and proposals — I have experienced it myself —
that one feels like throwing the whole thing up and taking to bed with one’s face to the
wall. And of course that would be stupider still, for even in bed one wouldn’t find peace.”
“So you didn’t entertain the thought of going to the great lawyers?” asked K. “Not for long,” said Block, smiling again; “unfortunately one can never quite forget about them,