to be achieved by forming into a group, only sometimes an individual will achieve something in secret; and it’s only when that’s been done the others learn about it; nobody knows how it was done. So there’s no sense of togetherness, you meet people now and then in the waiting rooms, but we don’t talk much there. The superstitious beliefs were established a long time ago and they spread all by themselves.» «I saw those gentlemen in the waiting room,» said K., «it seemed so pointless for them to be waiting in that way.» «Waiting is not pointless,» said the businessman, «it’s only pointless if you try and interfere yourself. I told you just now I’ve got five lawyers besides this one. You might think—I thought it myself at first—you might think I could leave the whole thing entirely up to them now. That would be entirely wrong. I can leave it up to them less than when I had just the one. Maybe you don’t understand that, do you?» «No,» said K., and to slow the businessman down, who had been speaking too fast, he laid his hand on the businessman’s to reassure him, «but I’d like just to ask you to speak a little more slowly, these are many very important things for me, and I can’t follow exactly what you’re saying.» «You’re quite right to remind me of that,» said the businessman, «you’re new to all this, a junior. Your trial is six months old, isn’t it. Yes, I’ve heard about it. Such a new case! But I’ve already thought all these things through countless times, to me they’re the most obvious things in the world.» «You must be glad your trial has already progressed so far, are you?» asked K., he did not wish to ask directly how the businessman’s affairs stood, but received no clear answer anyway. «Yes, I’ve been working at my trial for five years now,» said the businessman as his head sank, «that’s no small achievement.» Then he was silent for a while. K. listened to hear whether Leni was on her way back. On the one hand he did not want her to come back too soon as he still had many questions to ask and did not want her to find him in this intimate discussion with the businessman, but on the other hand it irritated him that she stayed so long with the lawyer when K. was there, much longer than she needed to give him his soup. «I still remember it exactly,» the businessman began again, and K. immediately gave him his full attention, «when my case was as old as yours is now. I only had this one lawyer at that time but I wasn’t very satisfied with him.» Now I’ll find out everything, thought K., nodding vigorously as if he could thereby encourage the businessman to say everything worth knowing. «My case,» the businessman continued, «didn’t move on at all, there were some hearings that took place and I went to every one of them, collected materials, handed all my business books to the court—which I later found was entirely unnecessary—I ran back and forth to the lawyer, and he submitted various documents to the court too….» «Various documents?» asked K. «Yes, that’s right,» said the businessman. «That’s very important for me,» said K., «in my case he’s still working on the first set of documents. He still hasn’t done anything. I see now that he’s been neglecting me quite disgracefully.» «There can be lots of good reasons why the first documents still aren’t ready,» said the businessman, «and anyway, it turned out later on that the ones he submitted for me were entirely worthless. I even read one of them myself, one of the officials at the court was very helpful. It was very learned, but it didn’t actually say anything. Most of all, there was lots of Latin, which I can’t understand, then pages and pages of general appeals to the court, then lots of flattery for particular officials, they weren’t named, these officials, but anyone familiar with the court must have been able to guess who they were, then there was self-praise by the lawyer where he humiliated himself to the court in a way that was downright dog-like, and then endless investigations of cases from the past which were supposed to be similar to mine. Although, as far as I was able to follow them, these investigations had been carried out very carefully. Now, I don’t mean to criticise the lawyer’s work with all of this, and the document I read was only one of many, but even so, and this is something I will say, at that time I couldn’t see any progress in my trial at all.» «And what sort of progress had you been hoping for?» asked K. «That’s a very sensible question,» said the businessman with a smile, «it’s only very rare that you see any progress in these proceedings at all. But I didn’t know that then. I’m a businessman, much more in those days than now, I wanted to see some tangible progress, it should have all been moving to some conclusion or at least should have been moving on in some way according to the rules. Instead of which there were just more hearings, and most of them went through the same things anyway; I had all the answers off pat like in a church service; there were messengers from the court coming to me at work several times a week, or they came to me at home or anywhere else they could find me; and that was very disturbing of course (but at least now things are better in that respect, it’s much less disturbing when they contact you by telephone), and rumours about my trial even started to spread among some of the people I do business with, and especially my relations, so I was being made to suffer in many different ways but there was still not the slightest sign that even the first hearing would take place soon. So I went to the lawyer and complained about it. He explained it all to me at length, but refused to do anything I asked for, no-one has any influence on the way the trial proceeds, he said, to try and insist on it in any of the documents submitted—like I was asking—was simply unheard of and would do harm to both him and me. I thought to myself: What this lawyer can’t or won’t do another lawyer will. So I looked round for other lawyers. And before you say anything: none of them asked for a definite date for the main trial and none of them got one, and anyway, apart from one exception which I’ll talk about in a minute, it really is impossible, that’s one thing this lawyer didn’t mislead me about; but besides, I had no reason to regret turning to other lawyers. Perhaps you’ve already heard how Dr. Huld talks about the petty lawyers, he probably made them sound very contemptible to you, and he’s right, they are contemptible. But when he talks about them and compares them with himself and his colleagues there’s a small error running through what he says, and, just for your interest, I’ll tell you about it. When he talks about the lawyers he mixes with he sets them apart by calling them the ‘great lawyers’. That’s wrong, anyone can call himself ‘great’ if he wants to, of course, but in this case only the usage of the court can make that distinction. You see, the court says that besides the petty lawyers there are also minor lawyers and great lawyers. This one and his colleagues are only minor lawyers, and the difference in rank between them and the great lawyers, who I’ve only ever heard about and never seen, is incomparably greater than between the minor lawyers and the despised petty lawyers.» «The great lawyers?» asked K. «Who are they then? How do you contact them?» «You’ve never heard about them, then?» said the businessman. «There’s hardly anyone who’s been accused who doesn’t spend a lot of time dreaming about the great lawyers once he’s heard about them. It’s best if you don’t let yourself be misled in that way. I don’t know who the great lawyers are, and there’s probably no way of contacting them. I don’t know of any case I can talk about with certainty where they’ve taken any part. They do defend a lot of people, but you can’t get hold of them by your own efforts, they only defend those who they want to defend. And I don’t suppose they ever take on cases that haven’t already got past the lower courts. Anyway, it’s best not to think about them, as if you do it makes the discussions with the other lawyers, all their advice and all that they do manage to achieve, seem so unpleasant and useless, I had that experience myself, just wanted to throw everything away and lay at home in bed and hear nothing more about it. But that, of course, would be the stupidest thing you could do, and you wouldn’t be left in peace in bed for very long either.» «So you weren’t thinking about the great lawyers at that time?» asked K. «Not for very long,» said the businessman, and smiled again, «you can’t forget about them entirely, I’m afraid, especially in the night when these thoughts come so easily. But I wanted immediate results in those days, so I