“No.  It is blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yes.”

I must say frankly that I even liked him at that moment.

“How did you get it?”

“From my hand.”

“From your hand?  But how did you manage to hide yourself from the eye that is watching you?”

He smiled cunningly, and even winked.

“Don’t you know that you can always deceive if only you want to do it?”

My sympathies for him were immediately dispersed.  I saw before me a man who was not particularly clever, but in all probability terribly spoiled already, who did not even admit the thought that there are people who simply cannot lie.  Recalling, however, the promise I had made to the Warden, I assumed a calm air of dignity and said to him tenderly, as only a mother could speak to her child: 

“Don’t be surprised and don’t condemn me for being so strict, my friend.  I am an old man.  I have passed half of my life in this prison; I have formed certain habits, like all old people, and submitting to all rules myself, I am perhaps overdoing it somewhat in demanding the same of others.  You will of course wipe off these drawings yourself—­although I feel sorry for them, for I admire them sincerely—­and I will not say anything to the administration.  We will forget all this, as if nothing had happened.  Are you satisfied?”

He answered drowsily: 

“Very well.”

“In our prison, where we have the sad pleasure of being confined, everything is arranged in accordance with a most purposeful plan and is most strictly subjected to laws and rules.  And the very strict order, on account of which the existence of your creations is so short lived, and, I may say, ephemeral, is full of the profoundest wisdom.  Allowing you to perfect yourself in your art, it wisely guards other people against the perhaps injurious influence of your productions, and in any case it completes logically, finishes, enforces, and makes clear the meaning of your solitary confinement.  What does solitary confinement in our prison mean?  It means that the prisoner should be alone.  But would he be alone if by his productions he would communicate in some way or other with other people outside?”

By the expression of K.’s face I noticed with a sense of profound joy that my words had produced on him the proper impression, bringing him back from the realm of poetic inventions to the land of stern but beautiful reality.  And, raising my voice, I continued: 

“As for the rule you have broken, which forbids any inscription or drawing on the walls of our prison, it is not less logical.  Years will pass; in your place there may be another prisoner like you—­and he may see that which you have drawn.  Shall this be tolerated?  Just think of it!  And what would become of the walls of our prison if every one who wished it were to leave upon them his profane marks?”

“To the devil with it!”