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defendant can feel most confident. It’s odd, but true, that
people feel more confidence in this time than they do after
they’ve been acquitted. There’s no particular exertion need-
ed now. When he has the document asserting the defendant’s
innocence, guaranteed by a number of other judges, the
judge can acquit you without any worries, and although
there are still several formalities to be gone through there’s
no doubt that that’s what he’ll do as a favour to me and sev-
eral other acquaintances. You, however, walk out the court
and you’re free.” “So, then I’ll be free,” said K., hesitantly.
“That’s right,” said the painter, “but only apparently free or,
to put it a better way, temporarily free, as the most junior
judges, the ones I know, they don’t have the right to give the
final acquittal. Only the highest judge can do that, in the
court that’s quite of reach for you, for me and for all of us.
We don’t know how things look there and, incidentally, we
don’t want to know. The right to acquit people is a major
privilege and our judges don’t have it, but they do have the
right to free people from the indictment. That’s to say, if
they’re freed in this way then for the time being the charge
is withdrawn but it’s still hanging over their heads and it
only takes an order from higher up to bring it back into
force. And as I’m in such good contact with the court I can
also tell you how the difference between absolute and ap-
parent acquittal is described, just in a superficial way, in the
directives to the court offices. If there’s an absolute acquittal
all proceedings should stop, everything disappears from
the process, not just the indictment but the trial and even
the acquittal disappears, everything just disappears. With

1 The Trial