Several times a week he received a large batch of mail. Being a conscientious official, he classified all letters carefully. The inspectorate was housed in the local government office, in a wing of the court, in a small, darkish room. There Eibenschütz sat, behind a narrow green table, opposite a young clerk, a so-called contracts clerk, who was very fair, quite provocatively fair, and very ambitious. His name was Josef Nowak and Eibenschütz disliked him partly on account of his name. For it was exactly the same name as that of a hated schoolmate, on whose account Eibenschütz had had to leave the high school in Nikolsburg. It was on his account that he had enlisted so early in the army. It was on his account too – this, the Inspector only imagined – that he had married, and – more particularly – married this Frau Regina. The contracts clerk, of course, was not to blame for Eibenschütz’s fate. He was not only provocatively fair and ambitious, but also vindictive. Behind compliant and wheedling manners he concealed a desire – but one of which Inspector Eibenschütz was well aware – to injure his superior.

Among the letters that came for the inspectorate there were also some that he had written, in a disguised hand. They were threatening and denunciatory letters. They disconcerted Inspector Eibenschütz. For his excessively cautious nature impelled him to investigate every report and to notify the gendarmerie squad of every threat. Privately, he acknowledged to himself that he was not cut out to be an official and certainly not in this district. He should have stayed in the barracks, yes, in the barracks. In the army, everything was prescribed. One received no threatening letters and no denunciations. The responsibility for everything a soldier did and for everything he neglected to do lay somewhere high above him, somewhere quite beyond him. How free and easy life in the barracks had been!

One day he took a few threatening letters home in his briefcase, although he had the feeling that he was committing an irregularity. But he felt compelled to show the letters to his wife and he could not withstand this compulsion. So he arrived for lunch, punctually, as he did only on those days on which he did not go on journeys to the villages of the district. The nearer he came to his little house, which stood on the outskirts of the town, next to that of the sergeant of gendarmerie, Slama, the hotter his anger became until, by the time he had nearly reached his own door, it had grown into a burning rage.