“Thank you, old man,” said K., apparently calm now.  “To tell the truth you seemed very strange to me at first; your face is so venerable, but your eyes.  Have you murdered anybody, old man?”

I deliberately quote the malicious and careless phrase to show how in the eyes of lightminded and shallow people the stamp of a terrible accusation is transformed into the stamp of the crime itself.  Controlling my feeling of bitterness, I remarked calmly to the impertinent youth: 

“You are an artist, my child; to you are known the mysteries of the human face, that flexible, mobile and deceptive masque, which, like the sea, reflects the hurrying clouds and the azure ether.  Being green, the sea turns blue under the clear sky and black when the sky is black, when the heavy clouds are dark.  What do you want of my face, over which hangs an accusation of the most cruel crime?”

But, occupied with his own thoughts, the artist apparently paid no particular attention to my words and continued in a broken voice: 

“What am I to do?  You saw my drawing.  I destroyed it, and it is already a whole week since I touched my pencil.  Of course,” he resumed thoughtfully, rubbing his brow, “it would be better to break the slate; to punish me they would not give me another one—­”

“You had better return it to the authorities.”

“Very well, I may hold out another week, but what then?  I know myself.  Even now that devil is pushing my hand:  ’Take the pencil, take the pencil.’”

At that moment, as my eyes wandered distractedly over his cell, I suddenly noticed that some of the artist’s clothes hanging on the wall were unnaturally stretched, and one end was skilfully fastened by the back of the cot.  Assuming an air that I was tired and that I wanted to walk about in the cell, I staggered as from a quiver of senility in my legs, and pushed the clothes aside.  The entire wall was covered with drawings!

The artist had already leaped from his cot, and thus we stood facing each other in silence.  I said in a tone of gentle reproach: 

“How did you allow yourself to do this, my friend?  You know the rules of the prison, according to which no inscriptions or drawing on the walls are permissible?”

“I know no rules,” said K. morosely.

“And then,” I continued, sternly this time, “you lied to me, my friend.  You said that you did not take the pencil into your hands for a whole week.”

“Of course I didn’t,” said the artist, with a strange smile, and even a challenge.  Even when caught red-handed, he did not betray any signs of repentance, and looked rather sarcastic than guilty.  Having examined more closely the drawings on the wall, which represented human figures in various positions, I became interested in the strange reddish-yellow colour of an unknown pencil.

“Is this iodine?  You told me that you had a pain and that you secured iodine.”