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shouldn’t speak to me like that, that’s not allowed. Why are
you insulting me? Especially here in front of the lawyer,
where both of us, you and me, we’re only tolerated because
of his charity. You not a better person than me, you’ve been
accused of something too, you’re facing a charge too. If, in
spite of that, you’re still a gentleman then I’m just as much a
gentleman as you are, if not even more so. And I want to be
spoken to as a gentleman, especially by you. If you think be-
ing allowed to sit there and quietly listen while I creep on all
fours as you put it makes you something better than me,
then there’s an old legal saying you ought to bear in mind: If
you’re under suspicion it better to be moving than still, as if
you’re still you can be in the pan of the scales without know-
ing it and be weighed along with your sins.” K. said nothing.
He merely looked in amazement at this distracted being, his
eyes completely still. He had gone through such changes in
just the last few hours! Was it the trial that was throwing
him from side to side in this way and stopped him knowing
who was friend and who was foe? Could he not see the law-
yer was deliberately humiliating him and had no other
purpose today than to show off his power to K., and perhaps
even thereby subjugate K.? But if Block was incapable of see-
ing that, or if he so feared the lawyer that no such insight
would even be of any use to him, how was it that he was ei-
ther so sly or so bold as to lie to the lawyer and conceal from
him the fact that he had other lawyers working on his be-
half? And how did he dare to attack K., who could betray
his secret any time he liked? But he dared even more than
this, he went to the lawyer’s bed and began there to make