Chapter 26 - Page 2

existed. Here was the truth.

"I was on the point of sobbing, but straightway the demon whispered in
my ear: 'Weep and be sentimental, and they will separate quietly, and
there will be no proofs, and all your life you will doubt and suffer.'
And pity for myself vanished, and there remained only the bestial need
of some adroit, cunning, and energetic action. I became a beast, an
intelligent beast.

"'No, no,' said I to Gregor, who was about to announce my arrival. 'Do
this, take a carriage, and go at once for my baggage. Here is the check.
Start.'

"He went along the hall to get his overcoat. Fearing lest he might
frighten them, I accompanied him to his little room, and waited for him
to put on his things. In the dining-room could be heard the sound of
conversation and the rattling of knives and plates. They were eating.
They had not heard the ring. 'Now if they only do not go out,' I
thought.

"Gregor put on his fur-collared coat and went out. I closed the door
after him. I felt anxious when I was alone, thinking that directly I
should have to act. How? I did not yet know. I knew only that all was
ended, that there could be no doubt of his innocence, and that in an
instant my relations with her were going to be terminated. Before, I had
still doubts. I said to myself: 'Perhaps this is not true. Perhaps I am
mistaken.' Now all doubt had disappeared. All was decided irrevocably.
Secretly, all alone with him, at night! It is a violation of all duties!
Or, worse yet, she may make a show of that audacity, of that insolence
in crime, which, by its excess, tends to prove innocence. All is clear.
No doubt. I feared but one thing,--that they might run in different
directions, that they might invent some new lie, and thus deprive me of
material proof, and of the sorrowful joy of punishing, yes, of executing
them.

"And to surprise them more quickly, I started on tiptoe for the
dining-room, not through the parlor, but through the hall and the
children's rooms. In the first room slept the little boy. In the second,
the old nurse moved in her bed, and seemed on the point of waking, and
I wondered what she would think when she knew all. And pity for myself
gave me such a pang that I could not keep the tears back. Not to wake
the children, I ran lightly through the hall into my study. I dropped
upon the sofa, and sobbed. 'I, an honest man, I, the son of my parents,
who all my life long have dreamed of family happiness, I who have never
betrayed! . . . And here my five children, and she embracing a musician
because he has red lips! No, she is not a woman! She is a bitch, a dirty
bitch! Beside the chamber of the children, whom she had pretended to
love all her life! And