"Mr. Samsa," called out the middle lodger to the father, and pointed his index finger, without uttering a further word, at Gregor as he was moving slowly forward.

The violin fell silent. The middle lodger smiled, first shaking his head once at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more.

Rather than driving Gregor back again, the father seemed to consider it of prime importance to calm down the lodgers, although they were not at all upset and Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin recital.

The father hurried over to them and with outstretched arms tried to push them into their own room and simultaneously to block their view of Gregor with his own body.

At this point they became really somewhat irritated, although one no longer knew whether that was because of the father's behaviour or because of knowledge they had just acquired that they had had, without knowing it, a neighbour like Gregor.

They demanded explanations from his father, raised their arms to make their points, tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved back towards their room quite slowly.

In the meantime, the isolation which had suddenly fallen upon his sister after the sudden breaking off of the recital had overwhelmed her.

She had held onto the violin and bow in her limp hands for a little while and had continued to look at the sheet music as if she was still playing.

All at once she pulled herself together, placed the instrument in her mother's lap (the mother was still sitting in her chair having trouble breathing and with her lungs labouring) and had run into the next room, which the lodgers, pressured by the father, were already approaching more rapidly.

One could observe how under the sister's practiced hands the sheets and pillows on the beds were thrown on high and arranged.