“I’m coming to that too,” said the Superintendent, “but you couldn’t understand it without my giving a few more preliminary details. My mentioning the Control Officials just now was premature. So I must turn back to the discrepancies with Sordini. As I said, my defence gradually weakened. But whenever Sordini has in his hands even the slightest hold against anyone, he has as good as won, for then his vigilance, energy and alertness are actually increased and it’s a terrible moment for the victim, and a glorious one for the victim’s enemies. It’s only because in other circumstances I have experienced this last feeling that I’m able to speak of him as I do. All the same I have never managed yet to come within sight of him. He can’t get down here, he’s so overwhelmed with work; from the descriptions I’ve heard of his room every wall is covered with columns of documents tied together, piled on top of one another; those are only the documents that Sordini is working on at the time, and as bundles of papers are continually being taken away and brought in, and all in great haste, those columns are always falling on the floor, and it’s just those perpetual crashes, following fast on one another, that have come to distinguish Sordini’s workroom. Yes, Sordini is a worker and he gives the same scrupulous care to the smallest case as to the greatest.”
“Superintendent,” said K. , “you always call my case one of the smallest, and yet it has given hosts of officials a great deal of trouble, and if, perhaps, it was unimportant at the start, yet through the diligence of officials of Sordini’s type it has grown into a great affair. Very much against my will, unfortunately, for my ambition doesn’t run to seeing columns of documents, all about me, rising and crashing together, but to working quietly at my drawing-board as a humble Land Surveyor.”
“No,” said the Superintendent, “it’s not at all a great affair, in that respect you’ve no ground for complaint—it’s one of the least important among the least important. The importance of a case is not determined by the amount of work it involves, you’re far from understanding the