knee, you come out with this fine trump card that once you had the chance of getting a bed from Barnabas. That’s by way of showing me that you’re independent of me. I assure you, if you had slept in that house you would be so independent of me that in the twinkling of an eye you would be put out of this one.”
“I don’t know what sins the family of Barnabas have committed,” said K. , carefully raising Frieda—who drooped as if lifeless—setting her slowly down on the bed and standing up himself, “you may be right about them, but I know that I was right in asking you to leave Frieda and me to settle our own affairs. You talked then about your care and affection, yet I haven’t seen much of that, but a great deal of hatred and scorn and forbidding me your house. If it was your intention to separate Frieda from me or me from Frieda it was quite a good move, but all the same I think it won’t succeed, and if it does succeed—it’s my turn now to issue vague threats—you’ll repent it. As for the lodging you favour me with—you can only mean this abominable hole—it’s not at all certain that you do it of your own free will, it’s much more likely that the authorities insist upon it. I shall now inform them that I have been told to go—and if I am allotted other quarters you’ll probably feel relieved, but not so much as I will myself. And now I’m going to discuss this and other business with the Superintendent, please be so good as to look after Frieda at least, whom you have reduced to a bad enough state with your so-called motherly counsel.”
Then he turned to the assistants. “Come along,” he said, taking Klamm’s letter from its nail and making for the door. The landlady looked at him in silence, and only when his hand was on the latch did she say: “There’s something else to take away with you, for whatever you say and however you insult an old woman like me, you’re after all Frieda’s future husband. That’s my sole reason for telling you now that your ignorance of the local situation is so appalling that it makes my head go round to listen to you and compare your ideas and opinions with the real state of things. It’s a