were instructed to hold themselves ready for the plans and measurements necessary for his work. This order obviously couldn’t have concerned you, for it was many years ago, and I shouldn’t have remembered it if I weren’t ill just now and with ample time in bed to think of the most absurd things⁠—Mizzi,” he said suddenly interrupting his narrative, to the woman who was still flitting about the room in incomprehensible activity, “please have a look in the cabinet, perhaps you’ll find the order.” “You see it belongs to my first months here,” he explained to K. , “at that time I still filed everything away.” The woman opened the cabinet at once. K. and the Superintendent looked on. The cabinet was crammed full of papers. When it was opened two large packages of papers rolled out, tied in round bundles, as one usually binds firewood; the woman sprang back in alarm. “It must be down below, at the bottom,” said the Superintendent, directing operations from the bed. Gathering the papers in both arms the woman obediently threw them all out of the cabinet so as to read those at the bottom. The papers now covered half the floor. “A great deal of work is got through here,” said the Superintendent nodding his head, “and that’s only a small fraction of it. I’ve put away the most important pile in the shed, but the great mass of it has simply gone astray. Who could keep it all together? But there’s piles and piles more in the shed.” “Will you be able to find the order?” he said turning again to his wife, “you must look for a document with the word Land Surveyor underlined in blue pencil.” “It’s too dark,” said the woman, “I’ll fetch a candle,” and she stamped through the papers to the door. “My wife is a great help to me,” said the Superintendent, “in these difficult official affairs, and yet we can never quite keep up with them. True, I have another assistant for the writing that has to be done, the teacher; but all the same it’s impossible to get things shipshape, there’s always a lot of business that has to be left lying, it has been put away in that chest there,” and he pointed to another cabinet. “And just now, when I’m laid up, it has got the upper hand,” he said, and lay back with a weary yet proud air. “Couldn’t I,” asked K. ,