It seemed to K. as if at last those people had broken off all relations with him, and as if now in reality he were freer than he had ever been, and at liberty to wait here in this place usually forbidden to him as long as he desired, and had won a freedom such as hardly anybody else had ever succeeded in winning, and as if nobody could dare touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him, but -- this conviction was at least equally as strong -- as if at the same time there was nothing more senseless, more hopeless, than this freedom, this waiting, this inviolability.