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important news, that I will never be induced to pay any sort
of bribe through any stratagem of theirs and I’m sure they
have many stratagems at their disposal. There is no pros-
pect of that, you can tell them that quite openly. And what’s
more, I expect they have already noticed themselves, or
even if they haven’t, this affair is really not so important to
me as they think. Those gentlemen would only save some
work for themselves, or at least some unpleasantness for me,
which, however, I am glad to endure if I know that each
piece of unpleasantness for me is a blow against them. And
I will make quite sure it is a blow against them. Do you ac-
tually know the judge?” “Course I do,” said the woman, “he
was the first one I thought of when I offered to help you. I
didn’t know he’s only a minor official, but if you say so it
must be true. Mind you, I still think the report he gives to
his superiors must have some influence. And he writes so
many reports. You say these officials are lazy, but they’re
certainly not all lazy, especially this examining judge, he
writes ever such a lot. Last Sunday, for instance, that session
went on till the evening. Everyone had gone, but the exam-
ining judge, he stayed in the hall, I had to bring him a lamp
in, all I had was a little kitchen lamp but he was very satis-
fied with it and started to write straight away. Meantime my
husband arrived, he always has the day off on Sundays, we
got the furniture back in and got our room sorted out and
then a few of the neighbours came, we sat and talked for a
bit by a candle, in short, we forgot all about the examining
judge and went to bed. All of a sudden in the night, it must
have been quite late in the night, I wakes up, next to the bed,