cried amid the laughter of the children, which from now on never stopped: “Slept well?” and as K. paid no attention—seeing that after all it was not a real question—but began to clear up the washstand, she asked: “What have you been doing to my cat?” A huge, fat old cat was lying lazily outstretched on the table, and the teacher was examining one of its paws which was evidently a little hurt. So Frieda had been right after all, this cat had not of course leapt on her, for it was past the leaping stage, but it had crawled over her, had been terrified by the presence of people in the empty house, had concealed itself hastily, and in its unaccustomed hurry had hurt itself. K. tried to explain this quietly to the lady teacher, but the only thing she had eyes for was the injury itself and she replied: “Well, then it’s your fault through coming here. Just look at this,” and she called K. over to the table, showed him the paw, and before he could get a proper look at it, gave him a whack with the tawse over the back of his hand; the tails of the tawse were blunted, it was true, but, this time without any regard for the cat, she had brought them down so sharply that they raised bloody weals. “And now go about your business,” she said impatiently, bowing herself once more over the cat. Frieda, who had been looking on with the assistants from behind the parallel bars, cried out when she saw the blood. K. held up his hand in front of the children and said: “Look, that’s what a sly, wicked cat has done to me.” He said it, indeed, not for the children’s benefit, whose shouting and laughter had become continuous, so that it needed no further occasion or incitement, and could not be pierced or influenced by any words of his. But seeing that the lady teacher, too, only acknowledged the insult by a brief side-glance, and remained still occupied with the cat, her first fury satiated by the drawing of blood, K. called Frieda and the assistants, and the work began.
When K. had carried out the pail with the dirty water, fetched fresh water and was beginning to turn out the classroom, a boy of about twelve stepped out from his desk, touched K. ’s hand, and said something which was quite lost in the general uproar. Then suddenly