“Ran into you,” said he; “you mean, of course, were assigned to you.” “All right then, were assigned to me,” said K. , “but they might as well have fallen from the sky, for all the thought that was spent in choosing them.” “Nothing here is done without taking thought,” said the Superintendent, actually forgetting the pain in his foot and sitting up. “Nothing!” said K. , “and what about my being summoned here then?” “Even your being summoned was carefully considered,” said the Superintendent; “it was only certain auxiliary circumstances that entered and confused the matter, I’ll prove it to you from the official papers.” “The papers will not be found,” said K. “Not be found?” said the Superintendent. “Mizzi, please hurry up a bit! Still I can tell you the story even without the papers. We replied with thanks to the order that I’ve mentioned already, saying that we didn’t need a Land Surveyor. But this reply doesn’t appear to have reached the original department⁠—I’ll call it A⁠—but by mistake went to another department, B. So Department A remained without an answer, but unfortunately our full reply didn’t reach B either; whether it was that the order itself was not enclosed by us, or whether it got lost on the way⁠—it was certainly not lost in my department, that I can vouch for⁠—in any case all that arrived at Department B was the covering letter, in which was merely noted that the enclosed order, unfortunately an impractical one, was concerned with the engagement of a Land Surveyor. Meanwhile Department A was waiting for our answer, they had, of course, made a memorandum of the case, but as, excusably enough, often happens and is bound to happen even under the most efficient handling, our correspondent trusted to the fact that we would answer him, after which he would either summon the Land Surveyor, or else if need be write us further about the matter. As a result he never thought of referring to his memorandum and the whole thing fell into oblivion. But in Department B the covering letter came into the hands of a correspondent, famed for his conscientiousness, Sordini by name, an Italian; it is incomprehensible even to me, though I am one of the initiated, why a man of his capacities is left in an almost