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officials are always ready to seek revenge. Never attract at-
tention to yourself! Stay calm, however much it goes against
your character! Try to gain some insight into the size of the
court organism and how, to some extent, it remains in a
state of suspension, and that even if you alter something in
one place you’ll draw the ground out from under your feet
and might fall, whereas if an enormous organism like the
court is disrupted in any one place it finds it easy to provide
a substitute for itself somewhere else. Everything is con-
nected with everything else and will continue without any
change or else, which is quite probable, even more closed,
more attentive, more strict, more malevolent. So it’s best to
leave the work to the lawyers and not to keep disturbing
them. It doesn’t do much good to make accusations, espe-
cially if you can’t make it clear what they’re based on and
their full significance, but it must be said that K. caused a
great deal of harm to his own case by his behaviour towards
the office director, he was a very influential man but now he
might as well be struck off the list of those who might do
anything for K. If the trial is mentioned, even just in pass-
ing, it’s quite obvious that he’s ignoring it. These officials are
in many ways just like children. Often, something quite
harmless although K.’s behaviour could unfortunately not
be called harmless will leave them feeling so offended that
they will even stop talking with good friends of theirs, they
turn away when they see them and do everything they can
to oppose them. But then, with no particular reason, sur-
prisingly enough, some little joke that was only ever
attempted because everything seemed so hopeless will

1 The Trial