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Also by Thomas AMlann

FICTION

The Beloved Returns ( Lotte in Weimar )

Buddenbrooks

Doctor Faustus

Joseph and His Brothers

THE TALES OF JACOB
YOUNG JOSEPH
JOSEPH IN EGYPT
JOSEPH THE PROVIDER

Royal Highness
Stories of Three Decades
The Tables of the Law
The Transposed Heads

NON-FICTION

Essays of Three Decades
An Exchange of Letters
Listen, Germany!

Order of the Day , Political Essays and Speeches
of Two Decades

These are Borzoi Books
published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

THE

| MAGIC MOUNTAIN*

[DER ZAUBERBERG]

Translated from the German by

H. T. LOWE-PORTER

.FRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK
1 9 4-9

ORIGINALLY ISSUED AS

Per ^auberberg

COP YRIGHXC& 9 2 4, BY S. FISCHER VERLAG
BERLIN

& THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,

& PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be
printed in a magazine or newspaper.

First Published May 6, 1927 in Two Volumes
Reset and Printed from New Plates, February, 1944
Second Printing, April 1945
Third Printing, June 1946
Fourth Printing, December 1947
Fifth Printing, October 1948
Sixth Printing, June 1949

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The translator wishes to thank, in this place, a number of scholars,
authorities in the various special fields entered by The Magic
Mountain , without whose help the version in all humility here
offered to English readers, lame as it is, nTtlst have been more lack-
ing still. That they gave so generously is not to be interpreted
otherwise than as a tribute to a work of genius. But with all their
help, the great difficulty remained: the violet had to be cast into
the crucible, the organic work of art to be remoulded in another
tongue. Shelley’s figure is perhaps not entirely apt here. Yet, since
in the creative act word and thought are indivisible, the task was
seen to be one before which artists would shrink and logical minds
recoil.

But of the author of The Magic Mountain it can be said in a
special sense that he has looked into the seeds of Time. It was in-
dispensable that we should read his book; intolerable that English
readers should be barred from a work whose spirit, whatever its
vehicle, is universal. It seemed better that an English version should
be done ill than not done at all.

H. T. L.-P.

Foreword

The story of Hans Castorp, which we would here set forth, not
on his own account, for in him the reader will make acquaintance
with a simple-minded though pleasing young man, but for the
sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth telling —
though it must needs be borne in mind, in Hans Castorp’s behalf,
that it is his story, and not every story happens to everybody —
this story, we say, belongs to the long ago; is already, so to speak,
covered with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented
in the tense best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past.

That should be no drawback to a story, but rather the reverse.
Since histories must be in the past, then the more past the better,
it would seem, for them in their character as histories, and for him,
the teller of them, rounding wizard of times gone by. With
this story, moreover, it stands as it does to-day with human beings,
not least among them writers of tales: it is far older than its vears;
its age may not be measured by length of days, nor the weight of
time on its head reckoned by the rising or setting of suns. In a
word, the degree of its antiquity has noways to do with the pas-
sage of time — in which statement the author intentionally touches
upon the strange and questionable double nature of that riddling
element.

But we would not wilfully obscure a plain matter. The exag-
gerated pastness of our narrative is due to its taking place before
the epoch when a certain crisis shattered its wav through life and
consciousness and left a deep chasm behind. It takes place — or,
rather, deliberately to avoid the present tense, it took place, and
had taken place — in the long ago, in the old days, the days of the
world before the Great War, in the beginning of which so much
began that has scarcely yet left off beginning. Yes, it took place
before that; yet not so long before. Is not the pastness of the past
the profounder, the completer, the more legendary, the more im-
mediately before the present it falls? More than that, our story
has, of its own nature, something of the legend about it now and
again.

VI

FOREWORD

We shall tell it at length, thoroughly, in detail — for when did
a narrative seem too long or too short by reason of the actual time
or space it took up? We do not fear being called meticulous, in-
clining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly
interesting.

Not all in a minute, then, will the narrator be finished with the
story of our Hans. The seven days of a week will not suffice, no,
nor seven months either. Best not too soon make too plain how
much mortal time must pass over his head while he sits spun round
in his spell. Heaven forbid it should be seven years!

And now we begin.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ARRIVAL 3

NUMBER 34 IO

IN THE RESTAURANT I 3

CHAPTER II

OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN, AND OF GRANDFATHER IN HIS TWO-
FOLD GUISE 19

AT TIENAPPELS’, AND OF YOUNG HANS’S MORAL STATE 28

CHAPTER III

DRAWING THE VEIL 38

BREAKFAST 40

BANTER. VIATICUM. INTERRUPTED MIRTH 47

SATANA 5 *

MENTAL GYMNASTIC 65

A WORD TOO MUCH JO

OF COURSE, A FEMALE! 74

HERR ALBIN 78

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS THAT TOUCH OUR HONOUR 8 1

CONTENTS

viii

CHAPTER IV

NECESSARY PURCHASES 93

EXCURSUS ON THE SENSE OF TIME 102

HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH IO5

POLITICALLY SUSPECT I IO

HIPPE I I 5

ANALYSIS I24

DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS I 3 I

TABLE-TALK 1 34

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS. OF THE TWO GRANDFATHERS, AND THE

BOAT-RIDE IN THE TWILIGHT 141

THE THERMOMETER l6l

CHAPTER V

SOUP-EVERLASTING 1 8 3

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT 203

FREEDOM 219

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS 225

ENCYCLOPEDIC 236

HUMAN IORA 25 I

RESEARCH 26 7

THE DANCE OF DEATH 286

WALPURGIS-NIGHT 3 2 2

CHAPTER VI

CHANGES 344

367

A NEW-COMER

CONTENTS

IX

OF THE CITY OF GOD, AND DELIVERANCE BY EVIL 386

CHOLER. AND WORSE 413

AN ATTACK, AND A REPULSE 425

OPERA T 1 ONES SPIRITUALES 44O

SNOW 469

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 498

CHAPTER VII

BY THE OCEAN OF TIME 54 1

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 548

VINGT ET UN 556

mynheer peeperkorn ( Continued ) 574

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN ( C07iclusi07l ) 6 12

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS 624

FULLNESS OF HARMONY 635

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 653

HYSTERICA PASSIO 68 1

THE THUNDERBOLT J06

The Magic Mountain

CHAPTER I

Arrival

An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from
his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the
Grisons, on a three weeks’ visit.

From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey — too long, indeed,
for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country; goes up hill and
down dale, descends from the plateau of Southern Germany to the
shore of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across
marshes once thought to be bottomless.

At this point the route, which has been so far over trunk-lines,
gets cut up. There are stops and formalities. At Rorschach, in
Swiss territory, you take train again, but only as far as Landquart,
a small Alpine station, where you have to change. Here, after a
long and windy wait in a spot devoid of charm, you mount a nar-
row-gauge train; and as the small but very powerful engine gets
under way, there begins the thrilling part of the journey, a steep
and steady climb that seems never to come to an end. For the sta-
tion of Landquart lies at a relatively low altitude, but now the wild
and rocky route pushes grimly onward into the Alps themselves.

Hans Castorp — such was the young man’s name — sat alone in
his little grey-upholstered compartment, with his alligator-skin
hand-bag, a present from his uncle and guardian, Consul Tienappel
— let us get the introductions over with at once — his travelling-
rug, and his winter overcoat swinging on its hook. The window
was down, the afternoon grew cool, and he, a tender product of
the sheltered life, had turned up the collar of his fashionably cut,
silk-lined summer overcoat. Near him on the seat lay a paper-
bound volume entitled Ocean Steamships ; earlier in the journey
he had studied it off and on, but now it lay neglected, and the
breath of the panting engine, streaming in, defiled its cover with
particles of soot.

Two days’ travel separated the youth — he was still too young
to have thrust his roots down firmly into life — from his own

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

4

world, from all that he thought of as his own duties, interests, cares
and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he
sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space, rolling and re-
volving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded
the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it
worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a
way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness;
but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and
giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in
the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the
pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is
a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more
quickly.

Such was the experience of young Hans Castorp. He had not
meant to take the journey seriously or commit himself deeply to
it; but to get it over quickly, since it had to be made, to return as
he had gone, and to take up his life at the point where, for the mo-
ment, he had had to lay it down. Only yesterday he had been en-
compassed in the wonted circle of his thoughts, and entirely taken
up by two matters: the examination he had just passed, and his
approaching entrance into the firm of Tunder and Wilms, ship-
builders, smelters, and machinists. With as much impatience as lay
in his temperament to feel, he had discounted the next three weeks;
but now it began to seem as though present circumstances required
his entire attention, that it would not be at all the thing to take
them too lightly.

This being carried upward into regions where he had never be-
fore drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living condi-
tions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty
— it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern.
Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms
deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised
between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was
going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was
a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great
heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in be-
tween. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there
he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be re-
minded by this continual climbing of the incongruous situation he
found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along
the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring
engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke,
that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the

ARRIVAL

5

left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky.
The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight
came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their
depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow
defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were
halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important
ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one
lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas
opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical
world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed
itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding
of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above
the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon
he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a
slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand
over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they
had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train
rolled smoothly along the level valley floor.

It was about eight o’clock, and still daylight. A lake was visible
in the distant landscape, its waters grey, its shores covered with
black fir-forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out,
and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a
small station. Hans Castorp heard the name called out: it was
“ Davos-Dorf.” Soon he would be at his journey’s end. And sud-
denly, close to him, he heard a voice, the comfortable Hamburg
voice of his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, saying: “ Hullo, there you
are! Here’s where you get out! ” and peering through the window
saw his cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown
ulster, bare-headed, and looking more robust than ever in his life
before. He laughed and said again: “ Come along out, it’s all
right! ”

“ But I’m not there yet! ” said Hans Castorp, taken aback, and
still seated.

“ Oh, yes, you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sana-
torium from here. I have a carriage. Just give us your things.”

And laughing, confused, in the excitement of arrival and meet-
ing, Hans Castorp reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick and
umbrella, and finally Ocean Steamships out of the window. Then
he ran down the narrow corridor and sprang out upon the plat-
form to greet his cousin properly. The meeting took place with-
out exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and re-
serve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each
other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of

6

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

showing too much feeling. And, as they could not well address
each other by their last names, they confined themselves, by estab-
lished custom, to the thou.

A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook
hands, quickly, not without embarrassment, young Ziemssen in
military position, heels together. Then he came forward to ask for
Hans Castorp ’s luggage ticket; he was the concierge of the Inter-
national Sanatorium Berghof, and would fetch the guest’s large
trunk from the other station while the gentlemen drove directly
up to supper. This man limped noticeably; and so, curiously
enough, the first thing Hans Castorp said to his cousin was: “ Is
that a war veteran? What makes him limp like that? ”

“ War veteran! No fear! ” said Joachim, with some bitterness.
“ He’s got it in his knee — or, rather, he had it — the knee-pan has
been removed.”

Hans Castorp bethought himself hastily.

“ So that’s it? ” he said, and as he walked on turned his head and
gave a quick glance back. “ But you can’t make me believe you’ve
still got anything like that the matter with you! Why, you look as
if you had just come from manoeuvres! ” And he looked sidelong
at his cousin.

Joachim was taller and broader than he, a picture of youthful
vigour, and made for a uniform. He was of the very dark type
which his blond-peopled country not seldom produces, and his
already nut-brown skin was tanned almost to bronze. With his
large, black eyes and small, dark moustache over the full, well-
shaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears
had not stood out. Up to a certain period they had been his only
trouble in life. Now, however, he had others.

Hans Castorp went on: “ You’re coming back down with me,
aren’t you? I see no reason why not.”

“ Back down with you? ” asked his cousin, and turned his large
eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five
months they had taken on a tired, almost sad expression.
“ When? ”

“ Why, in three weeks.”

“ Oh, yes, you are already on the way back home, in your
thoughts,” answered Joachim. “ Wait a bit. You’ve only just come.
Three weeks are nothing at all, to us up here — they look like a lot
of time to you, because you are only up here on a visit, and three
weeks is all you have. Get acclimatized first — it isn’t so easy,
you’ll see. And the climate isn’t the only queer thing about us.
You’re going to see some things you’ve never dreamed of — just

ARRIVAL

7

wait. About me — it isn’t such smooth sailing as you think, you
with your 4 going home in three weeks.’ That’s the class of ideas
you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly
snow-burning. It doesn’t mean much, as Behrens always says; he
told me at the last regular examination it would take another half
year, pretty certainly.”

“ Half a year? Are you crazy? ” shouted Hans Castorp. They
had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved
square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown
horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions.
“ Half a year! You’ve been up here half a year already! Who’s got
so much time to spend ”

“ Oh, time — ! ” said Joachim, and nodded repeatedly, straight
in front of him, paying his cousin’s honest indignation no heed.
“ They make pretty free with a human being’s idea of time, up
here. You wouldn’t believe it. Three weeks are just like a day to
them. You’ll learn all about it,” he said, and added: “ One’s ideas
get changed.”

Hans Castorp regarded him earnestly as they drove. “ But seems
to me you’ve made a splendid recovery,” he said, shaking his head.

“ You really think so, don’t you? ” answered Joachim; “ I think
I have too.” He drew himself up straighter against the cushions,
but immediately relaxed again. “ Yes, I am better,” he explained,
“ but I am not cured yet. In the left lobe, where there were rales,
it only sounds harsh now, and that is not so bad; but lower down
it is still very harsh, and there are rhonchi in the second intercostal
space.”

“ How learned you’ve got,” said Hans Castorp.

“ Fine sort of learning! God knows I wish I’d had it sweated out
of my system in the service,” responded Joachim. “ But I still have
sputum,” he said, with a shoulder-shrug that was somehow indif-
ferent and vehement both at once, and became him but ill. He half
pulled out and showed to his cousin something he carried in the
side pocket of his overcoat, next to Flans Castorp. It was a flat,
curving bottle of bluish glass, with a metal cap.

“ Most of us up here carry it,” he said, shoving it back. “ It even
has a nickname; they make quite a joke of it. You are looking at
the landscape? ”

Hans Castorp was. “ Magnificent! ” he said.

“ Think so? ” asked Joachim.

They had driven for a space straight up the axis of the valley,
along an irregularly built street that followed the line of the rail-
way; then, turning to the left, they crossed the narrow tracks and

8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

a watercourse, and now trotted up a high-road that mounted
gently toward the wooded slopes. Before them rose a low, pro-
jecting, meadow-like plateau, on which, facing south-west, stood
a long building, with a cupola and so many balconies that from a
distance it looked porous, like a sponge. In this building lights were
beginning to show. It was rapidly growing dusk. The faint rose-
colour that had briefly enlivened the overcast heavens was faded
now, and there reigned the colourless, soulless, melancholy transi-
tion-period that comes just before the onset of night. The popu-
lous valley, extended and rather winding, now began to show
lights everywhere, not only in the middle, but here and there on
the slopes at either hand, particularly on the projecting right side,
upon which buildings mounted in terrace formation. Paths ran up
the sloping meadows to the left and lost themselves in the vague
blackness of the pine forest. Behind them, where the valley nar-
rowed to its entrance, the more distant ranges showed a cold, slaty
blue. A wind had sprung up, and made perceptible the chill of
evening.

“ No, to speak frankly, I don’t find it so overpowering,” said
Hans Castorp. “ Where are the glaciers, and the snow peaks, and
the gigantic heights you hear about? These things aren’t very high,
it seems to me.”

“ Oh, yes, they are,” answered Joachim. “ You can see the tree
line almost everywhere, it is very sharply defined; the fir-trees leave
off, and after that there is absolutely nothing but bare rock. And
up there to the right of the Schwarzhorn, that tooth-shaped peak,
there is a glacier — can’t you see the blue? It is not very large, but
it is a glacier right enough, the Skaletta. Piz Michel and Tinzen-
horn, in the notch — you can’t see them from here — have snow all
the year round.”

“ Eternal snow,” said Hans Castorp.

“ Eternal snow, if you like. Yes, that’s all very high. But we are
frightfully high ourselves: sixteen hundred metres above sea-level.
That’s why the peaks don’t seem any higher.”

“ Yes, what a climb that was! I was scared to death, I can tell
you. Sixteen hundred metres — that is over five thousand feet, as
I reckon it. I’ve never been so high up in my life.” And Hans Ca-
storp took in a deep, experimental breath of the strange air. It was
fresh, and that was all. It had no perfume, no content, no humidity;
it breathed in easily, and held for him no associations.

“ Wonderful air,” he remarked, politely.

“ Yes, the atmosphere is famous. But the place doesn’t look its
best to-night. Sometimes it makes a much better impression — es-

ARRIVAL

9

pecially when there is snow. But you can get sick of looking at it.
All of us up here are frightfully fed up, you can imagine,” said
Joachim, and twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust that
was as unlike him as the shoulder-shrug. It looked irritable, dis-
proportionate.

“You have such a queer way of talking,” said Hans Castorp.

“ Have I? ” said Joachim, concerned, and turned to look at his
cousin.

“ Oh, no, of course I don’t mean you really have — I suppose it
just seemed so to me for the moment,” Hans Castorp hastened to
assure him. It was the expression “ all of us up here,” which Joa-
chim had used several times, that had somehow struck him as
strange and given him an uneasy feeling.

“ Our sanatorium is higher up than the village, as you see,” went
on Joachim. “ Fifty metres higher. In the prospectus it says a hun-
dred, but it is really only fifty. The highest of the sanatoriums is
the Schatzalp — you can’t see it from here. They have to bring
their bodies down on bob-sleds in the winter, because the roads
are blocked.”

“ Their bodies? Oh, I see. Imagine! ” said Hans Castorp. And
suddenly he burst out laughing, a violent, irrepressible laugh,
which shook him all over and distorted his face, that was stiff with
the cold wind, until it almost hurt. “ On bob-sleds! And you can
tell it me just like that, in cold blood! You’ve certainly got pretty
cynical in these five months.”

“ Not at all,” answered Joachim, shrugging again. “ Why not?
It’s all the same to them, isn’t it? But maybe we do get cynical up
here. Behrens is a cynic himself — but he’s a great old bird after
all, an old corps-student. He is a brilliant operator, they say. You
will like him. Krokowski is the assistant — • devilishly clever article.
They mention his activities specially, in the prospectus. He psy-
cho-analyses the patients.”

“ He what? Psycho-analyses — how disgusting! ” cried Hans
Castorp; and now his hilarity altogether got the better of him. He
could not stop. The psycho-analysis had been the finishing touch.
He laughed so hard that the tears ran down his cheeks; he put up
his hands to his face and rocked with laughter. Joachim laughed
just as heartily — it seemed to do him good; and thus, in great good
spirits, the young people climbed out of the wagon, which had
slowly mounted the steep, winding drive and deposited them be-
fore the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof.

IO

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Number 34

On their right as they entered, between the main door and the
inner one, was the porter’s lodge. An official of the French type,
in the grey livery of the man at the station, was sitting at the tele-
phone, reading the newspaper. He came out and led them through
the well-lighted halls, on the left of which lay the reception-rooms.
Hans Castorp peered in as he passed, but they were empty. Where,
then, were the guests, he asked, and his cousin answered: “ In the
rest-cure. I had leave to-night to go out and meet you. Otherwise
I am always up in my balcony, after supper.”

Hans Castorp came near bursting out again. “ What! You lie out
on your balcony at night, in the damp? ” he asked, his voice shak-
ing.

“ Yes, that is the rule. From eight to ten. But come and see your
room now, and get a wash.”

They entered the lift — it was an electric one, worked by the
Frenchman. As they went up, Hans Castorp wiped his eyes.

“ I’m perfectly worn out with laughing,” he said, and breathed
through his mouth. “ You’ve told me such a lot of crazy stuff —
that about the psycho-analysis was the last straw. I suppose I am
a bit relaxed from the journey. And my feet are cold — are yours?
But my face burns so, it is really unpleasant. Do we eat now? I
feel hungry. Is the food decent up here? ”

They went noiselessly along the coco matting of the narrow
corridor, which was lighted by electric lights in white glass shades
set in the ceiling. The walls gleamed with hard white enamel paint.
They had a glimpse of a nursing sister in a white cap, and eye-
glasses on a cord that ran behind her ear. She had the look of
a Protestant sister — that is to say, one working without a real vo-
cation and burdened with restlessness and ennui. As they went
along the corridor, Hans Castorp saw, beside two of the white-
enamelled, numbered doors, certain curious, swollen-looking, bal-
loon-shaped vessels with short necks. He did not think, at the
moment, to ask what they were.

“ Here you are,” said Joachim. “ I am next you on the right. The
other side you have a Russian couple, rather loud and offensive,
but it couldn’t be helped. Well, how do you like it? ”

There were two doors, an outer and an inner, with clothes-
hooks in the space between. Joachim had turned on the ceiling
light, and in its vibrating brilliance the room looked restful and
cheery, with practical white furniture, white washable walls, clean

II

NUMBER 34

linoleum, and white linen curtains gaily embroidered in modem
taste. The door stood open; one saw the lights of the valley and
heard distant dance-music. The good Joachim had put a vase of
flowers on the chest of drawers — a few bluebells and some yarrow,
which he had found himself among the second crop of grass on
the slopes.

“ Awfully decent of you,” said Hans Castorp. “ What a nice
room! I can spend a couple of weeks here with pleasure.”

“ An American woman died here day before yesterday,” said
Joachim. “ Behrens told me directly that she would be out before
you came, and you might have the room. Her fiance was with her,
an English officer of marines, but he didn’t behave very well. He
kept coming out in the corridor to cry, just like a little boy. He
rubbed cold cream on his cheeks, because he was close-shaven and
the tears smarted. Night before last she had two first-class haemor-
rhages, and that was the finish. But she has been gone since yester-
day morning, and after they took her away of course they fumi-
gated the room thoroughly with formalin, which is the proper
thing to use in such cases.”

Hans Castorp took in this information with a sprightly, yet half-
distraught air. He was standing with his sleeves pushed back be-
fore the roomy wash-hand-basin, the taps of which shone in the
electric light, and gave hardly a glance at the white metal bed with
its fresh coverlet.

“ Fumigated it, eh? That’s ripping,” he said loquaciously and
rather absurdly, as he washed and dried his hands. “ Methyl
aldehyde; yes, that’s too much for the bacteria, no matter how
strong they are. H 2 CO. But it’s a powerful stench. Of course, per-
fect sanitation is absolutely essential.” He spoke with more of a
Hamburg accent than his cousin, who had broken himself of it
since his student days. Hans Castorp continued volubly. “ But
what I was about to say was, probably the officer of marines used
a safety-razor; one makes oneself sore with those things easier than
with a well-sharpened blade — at least, that is my experience, and
I use them both by turns. Well, and salt water would naturally
make a tender skin smart, so he got in the way, in the service, of
rubbing in cold cream. I don’t see anything strange about that
. . .” He rattled on: said that he had two hundred Maria Man-
cinis (his cigar) in his trunk, the customs officers had been very
courteous; and gave his cousin greetings from various people at
home. “ Don’t they heat the rooms here? ” he broke off to inquire,
and ran to put his hands on the radiator.

12

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

“No, they keep us pretty cool,” answered Joachim. “The
weather would have to be different from this before they put on
the heat in August.”

“ August, August! ” said Hans Castorp. “ But I am cold, abom-
inably cold; I mean in my body, for my face bums shockingly —
just feel it! ”

This demand was entirely foreign to the young man’s nature —
so much so that he himself was disagreeably impressed as he heard
himself make it. Joachim did not take up the offer, but merely said:
“ That is the air — it doesn’t mean anything; Behrens himself is
purple in the face all day long. Some people never get used to it.
Come along now, do, or we shan’t get anything to eat.”

Outside they saw the nursing sister again, peering short-sight-
edly and inquisitively after them. But in the first storey Hans
Castorp suddenly stopped, rooted to the spot by a perfectly
ghastly sound coming from a little distance off round a bend in
the corridor. It was not a loud sound, but so distinctly horrible
that Hans Castorp made a wry face and looked wide-eyed at his
cousin. It was coughing, obviously, a man coughing; but cough-
ing like to no other Hans Castorp had ever heard, and compared
with which any other had been a magnificent and healthy mani-
festation of life: a coughing that had no conviction and gave no
relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms, but was just a
feeble, dreadful welling up of the juices of organic dissolution.

“ Yes,” said Joachim. “ That’s a bad case. An Austrian aristo-
crat, you know, very elegant. He’s a born horseman — a gentle-
man rider. And now he’s come to this. But he still gets about.”

As they went, Hans Castorp discoursed earnestly upon the
gentleman rider’s cough.

“You must realize,” he said, “that I’ve never heard anything
like it before. It is entirely new to me, and naturally it makes a
great impression. There are different kinds of cough, dry and
loose, and people always say the loose one is better than the other,
the barking kind. When I had croup, in my youth ” (he actually
said “ in my youth ”!), “ I bayed like a wolf, and I can still re-
member how glad everybody was when it got looser. But a cough
like this — I didn’t know there was such a cough! It isn’t a human
cough at all. It isn’t dry and yet isn’t loose either — that is very far
from being the right word for it. It is just as if one could look right
into him when he coughs, and see what it looks like: all slime and
mucous ”

“ Oh,” said Joachim, “ I hear it every day, you don’t need to
describe it to me.”

IN THE RESTAURANT

*3

But Hans Castorp could not get over the coughing he had heard.
He kept repeating that he could see right into the gentleman rider’s
vitals; when they reached the restaurant his travel-weary eyes had
an excited glitter.

In the Restaurant

It was charming in the restaurant, elegantly appointed and well
lighted. The room lay to the right of the hall, opposite the salons,
and was, Joachim explained, used chiefly by new arrivals, and by
guests eating out of the usual meal hours or entertaining company.
But it also served for birthday feasts, farewell parties, even to cele-
brate a favourable report after a general examination. There were
lively times here in the restaurant on occasion, Joachim said, and
champagne flowed freely. Now, no one was here but a solitary
lady of some thirty years, reading a book and humming; she kept
tapping the table-cloth lightly with the middle finger of her left
hand. After the young people had taken their places, she changed
hers, in order to sit with her back to them. Joachim explained in a
low voice that she suffered from shyness as from a disease, and ate
all her meals in the restaurant, with a book. It was said that she had
entered her first tuberculosis sanatorium as a young girl, and had
never lived in the world since.

“ So compared with her, you are only a novice, with your five
months; and still will be when you have a year on your back,” said
Hans Castorp to his cousin; whereat Joachim, with his newly ac-
quired shoulder-shrug, took up the menu.

They had sat down at the raised table in the window, the pleas-
antest spot in the room, facing each other against the cream-col-
oured hangings, their faces lighted by the red-shaded table-lamp.
Hans Castorp clasped his freshly washed hands and rubbed them
together in agreeable anticipation — a habit of his when he sat
down to table, perhaps because his ancestors had said grace before
meat. They were served by a friendly maid in black frock and
white apron. She had a pleasant, throaty voice, and her broad face
was indisputably healthy-coloured. To his great amusement, Hans
Castorp learned that the waitresses here were called “ dining-room
girls.” They ordered a bottle of Gruaud Larose, and Hans Castorp
sent it back to have it warmed. The food was excellent: asparagus
soup, stuffed tomatoes, a roast with vegetables, an exceedingly
well-prepared sweet, cheese, and fruit. Hans Castorp ate heartily,
though his appetite did not turn out quite so stout as he had
thought. But he always ate a good deal, out of pure self-respect,
even when he was not hungry.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

14

Joachim paid scant honour to the meal. He was tired of the
cooking, he said; they all were, up here, and it was customary to
grumble at the food. If one had to sit up here for ever and a

day ! But, on the other hand, he partook of the wine with

gusto, not to say abandon; and repeatedly, though with careful
avoidance of emotional language, expressed his joy at having some-
body here with whom one could have a little rational conversa-
tion.

“ Yes, it’s first-rate you’ve come,” he said, and his gentle voice
betrayed some feeling. “ I must say it is really an event for me — it
is certainly a change, anyhow, a break in the everlasting monot-
ony.”

“ But time must go fast, living up here,” was Hans Castorp’s
view.

“ Fast and slow, as you take it,” answered Joachim. “ It doesn’t
go at all, I tell you. You can’t call it time — and you can’t call it
living either! ” he said with a shake of the head; and fell to his glass
again.

Hans Castorp drank too, though his face was like fire. Yet he
was still cold, and felt a curious restlessness in his limbs, at once
pleasurable and troubling. His words fell over each other, he often
mis-spoke and passed it over with a deprecating wave. Joachim
too was in a lively humour, and their conversation continued in a
still freer and more convivial vein after the humming, tapping lady
had got up suddenly and left the room. They gesticulated with
their forks as they ate, nodded, shrugged their shoulders, talked
with their mouths full. Joachim wanted to hear about Hamburg,
and brought the conversation round to the proposed regulation of
the Elbe.

“ Epoch-making,” said Hans Castorp. “ Epoch-making for the
development of our shipping. Can’t be over-estimated. We’ve
budgeted fifty millions for immediate expenditure and you may be
sure we know what we’re about.”

But notwithstanding all the importance he attached to the pro-
jected improvement, he jumped away from the theme and de-
manded that Joachim tell him more about life “ up here ” and
about the guests — which the latter straightway did, being only
too pleased to be able to unbosom himself. He had to repeat the
story of the corpses sent down by bob-sleigh, and vouch for its
truth. Hans Castorp being taken by another fit of laughing, his
cousin laughed too, with hearty enjoyment, and told other funny
things to add fuel to their merriment. There was a lady sitting at
his table, named Frau Stohr, the wife of a Cannstadt musician; a

IN THE RESTAURANT

15

rather serious case, she was, and the most ignorant creature he had
ever seen. She said diseased for deceased, quite seriously, and she
called Krokowski the Asst. And you had to take it all in without
cracking a smile. She was a regular gossip — most people were, up
here — and published it broadcast that another lady, a certain Frau
litis, carried a “ steriletto ” on her person. “ That is exactly what
she called it, isn’t that priceless? ” They lolled in their chairs, they
flung themselves back and laughed so hard that they shook; and
they began to hiccup at nearly the same time.

Now and then Joachim’s face would cloud over and he would
remember his lot.

“ Yes, we sit here and laugh,” he said, with a long face, his words
interrupted by the heaving of his diaphragm, “ we sit here and
laugh, but there’s no telling when I shall get away. When Behrens
says half a year, you can make up your mind it will be more. It is
hard, isn’t it? — you just tell me if you don’t think it is pretty hard
on me. I had already been accepted, I could have taken my exams
next month. And now I have to drool about with a thermometer
stuck in my mouth, and count the howlers of this ignorant Frau
Stohr, and watch the time slipping away. A year is so important
at our age. Down below, one goes through so many changes, and
makes so much progress, in a single year of life. And I have to stag-
nate up here — yes, just stagnate like a filthy puddle; it isn’t too
crass a comparison.”

Strange to say, Hans Castorp’s only reply to all this was a query
as to whether it was possible to get porter up here; when Joachim
looked at him, in some astonishment, he perceived that his cousin
was overcome with sleep, that in fact he was actually nodding.

“ But you are going to sleep! ” said Joachim. “ Come along, it is
time we both went to bed.”

“ ‘ You can’t call it time,’ ” quoth Hans Castorp, thick-tongued.
He went with his cousin, rather bent and stiff in the knees, like a
man bowed to the earth with fatigue. However, in the dimly
lighted corridor he pulled himself sharply together on hearing his
cousin say: “ There’s Krokowski sitting there. I think I’ll just have
to present you, as briefly as possible.”

Dr. Krokowski sat in the bright light at the fire-place of one of
the reception-rooms, close to the folding doors. He was reading
a paper, and got up as the young people approached.

Joachim, in military position, heels together, said: “ Herr Doc-
tor, may I present my cousin Castorp from Hamburg? He has just
arrived.”

Dr. Krokowski greeted the new inmate with a jovial and robust

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

16

heartiness, as who should say that with him all formality was
superfluous, and only jocund mutual confidence in place. He was
about thirty-five years old, broad-shouldered and fleshy, much
shorter than either of the youths before him, so that he had to tip
back his head to look them in the face. He was unusually pale, of
a translucent, yes, phosphorescent pallor, that was further ac-
centuated by the dark ardour of his eyes, the blackness of his
brows, and his rather long, full whisker, which ended in two
points and already showed some white threads. He had on a black
double-breasted, somewhat worn sack suit; black, open-worked
sandal-like shoes over grey woollen socks, and a soft turn-down
collar, such as Hans Castorp had previously seen worn only by
a photographer in Danzig, which did, in fact, lend a certain
stamp of the studio to Dr. Krokowski’s appearance. Smiling
warmly and showing his yellow teeth in his beard, he shook the
young man by the hand, and said in a baritone voice, with rather
a foreign drawl: “ Wel-come to our midst, Herr Castorp! May
you get quickly acclimatized and feel yourself at home among us!
Do you come as a patient, may I ask? ”

It was touching to see Hans Castorp labour to master his drowsi-
ness and be polite. It annoyed him to be in such bad form, and
with the self-consciousness of youth he read signs of indulgent
amusement in the warmth of the Assistant’s manner. He replied,
mentioning his examinations and his three weeks’ visit, and ended
by saying he was, thank God, perfectly healthy.

“ Really? ” asked Krokowski, putting his head teasingly on one
side. His smile grew broader. “ Then you are a phenomenon
worthy of study. I, for one, have never in my life come across a
perfectly healthy human being. What were the examinations you
have just passed, if I may ask? ”

“ I am an engineer, Herr Doctor,” said Hans Castorp with
modest dignity.

“ Ah, an engineer! ” Dr. Krokowski’s smile retreated as it were,
lost for the moment something of its genial warmth. “ A splendid
calling. And so you will not require any attention while you are
here, either physical or psychical? ”

“ Oh, no, thank you ever so much,” said Hans Castorp, and al-
most drew back a step as he spoke.

At that Dr. Krokowski’s smile burst forth triumphant; he
shook the young man’s hand afresh and cried briskly: “Well,
sleep well, Herr Castorp, and rejoice in the fullness of your per-
fect health; sleep well, and auf Wiedersehen! ” With which he
dismissed the cousins and returned to his paper.

IN THE RESTAURANT

l 7

The lift had stopped running, so they climbed the stairs; in si-
lence, somewhat taken aback by the encounter with Dr. Kro-
kowski. Joachim went with his cousin to number thirty-four,
where the lame porter had already deposited the luggage of the
new arrival. They talked for another quarter-hour while Hans
Castorp unpacked his night and toilet things, smoking a large, mild
cigarette the while. A cigar would have been too much for him
this evening — a fact which impressed him as odd indeed.

“ He looks quite a personality,” he said, blowing out the smoke.
“ He is as pale as wax. But dear me, what hideous footgear he
wears! Grey woollen socks, and then those sandals! Was he really
offended at the end, do you think? ”

“ He is rather touchy,” admitted Joachim. “You ought not to
have refused the treatment so brusquely, at least not the psychical.
He doesn’t like to have people get out of it. He doesn’t take much
stock in me because I don’t confide in him enough. But every now
and then I tell him a dream I’ve had, so he can have something to
analyse.”

“ Then I certainly did offend him,” Hans Castorp said fretfully,
for it annoyed him to give offence. His weariness rushed over him
with renewed force at the thought.

“ Good-night,” he said; “ I’m falling over.”

“ At eight o’clock I’ll come fetch you to breakfast,” Joachim
said, and went.

Hans Castorp made only a cursory toilet for the night. Hardly
had he put out the bedside light when sleep overcame him; but he
started up again, remembering that in that bed, the day be-
fore yesterday, someone had died. “ That wasn’t the first time
either,” he said to himself, as though the thought were reassur-
ing. 44 It is a regular death-bed, a common death-bed.” And he
fell asleep.

No sooner had he gone off, however, than he began to dream,
and dreamed almost without stopping until next morning. Prin-
cipally he saw his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, in a strange, dislo-
cated attitude on a bob-sled, riding down a steep course. He had
a phosphorescent pallor like Dr. Krokowski, and in front of him
sat the gentleman rider and steered. The gentleman rider was in-
distinct, like someone one has heard cough, but never seen.

“ It’s all the same to us up here,” remarked the dislocated Joa-
chim; and then it was he and not the gentleman rider who was
coughing in that horribly pulpy manner. Hans Castorp wept bit-
terly to hear, and then perceived that he must run to the chemist’s
to get some cold cream. But Frau litis, with a pointed snout, sat

i8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

by the road-side with something in her hand, which must be her
“ steriletto,” but was obviously nothing else than a safety-razor.
This made Hans Castorp go from tears to laughing; and thus he
was tossed back and forth among varying emotions, until the dawn
came through his half-open balcony door and wakened him.

CHAPTER II

Of the Christening Basin , and of Grandfather in His Two-
fold Guise

Hans Castorp retained only pale memories of his parental home.
His father and mother he had barely known; they had both
dropped away in the brief period between his fifth and seventh
birthdays; first the mother, quite suddenly, on the eve of a con-
finement, of an arterial obstruction following neuritis — an em-
bolus, Dr. Heidekind had called it — which caused instantaneous
cardiac arrest. She had just been laughing, sitting up in bed, and
it looked as though she had fallen back with laughter, but really
it was because she had died. The father, Hermann Castorp, could
not grasp his loss. He had been deeply attached to his wife, and
not being of the strongest himself, never quite recovered from her
death. His spirit was troubled; he shrank within himself; his be-
numbed brain made him blunder in his business, so that the firm
of Castorp and Son suffered sensible financial losses; and the next
spring, while inspecting warehouses on the windy landing-stage,
he got inflammation of the lungs. The fever was too much for his
shaken heart, and in five days, notwithstanding all Dr. Heidekind’s
care, he died. Attended to his rest by a respectable concourse of
citizens, he followed his wife to the Castorp family vault, a charm-
ing site in St. Katherine’s churchyard, with a view of the Botanical
Gardens.

His father the Senator survived him a short time; then he too
passed away, likewise of inflammation of the lungs. His death
agony was sore, for unlike his son, Hans Lorenz Castorp had been
a man of tough constitution, and firmly rooted in life. Before his
death, for the space of a year and a half, the grandfather harboured
the orphaned Hans Castorp in his home, a mansion standing in a
narrow lot on the Esplanade, built in the early years of the last
century, in the northern-classic style of architecture. It was
painted a depressing weather-colour, and had pilasters on either

20

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

side the entrance door, which was approached by a flight of five
steps. Besides the parterre, which had windows going down to the
floor and furnished with cast-iron grilles, there were two upper
storeys.

In the parterre were chiefly reception-rooms, and a very light
and cheerful dining-room, with walls decorated in stucco. Its
three windows, draped with wine-coloured curtains, looked out
on the back garden. In this room, daily, at four o’clock, for the
space of eighteen months, grandfather and grandson dined to-
gether, served by old Fiete, who had ear-rings in his ears and
silver buttons on his livery, also a batiste neckcloth like his mas-
ter’s, in which he buried his shaven chin just as Hans Lorenz Ca-
storp did in his. Grandfather said thou to him and addressed him
in dialect — not with any humorous intent, for he had no bent
that way, but in all seriousness, and because it was his custom so to
do in his dealings with the common people — the warehouse
hands, postmen, coachmen, and servants. Hans Castorp liked to
hear it, and very much he liked to hear Fiete reply, in dialect too,
bending over as he served and speaking into his master’s left ear,
for the Senator could hear much better on that side. The old man
would listen and nod and go on eating, sitting erect between the
table and the high back of his mahogany chair, and scarcely at all
bending over his plate. And his grandson, opposite, watched in
silence, with deep, unconscious concentration, Grandfather’s
beautiful, thin, white old hands, with their pointed nails, and, on
the right forefinger, the green seal ring with the crest; watched
the small, deft, practised motions with which they arranged a
mouthful of meat, vegetable, and potato on the end of his fork,
and with a slight inclination of the head conveyed it to his mouth.
Then he would look at his own hands, and their still clumsy
movements, and see in them the hope foreshadowed of one day
holding and using his knife and fork as Grandfather did.

Again, he would wonder whether he should ever bury his chin
in such another neck-band as that which filled the wide space inside
Grandfather’s extraordinary collar, with its sharp points brushing
the old man’s cheeks. He doubted it. One would have to be as old
as Grandfather for that; in these days, save for him and his old
Fiete, nobody, far and wide, wore such collars and neckcloths.
It was a pity; little Hans Castorp liked the way Grandfather’s
chin nestled in the high, snow-white band. Even after he was
grown, he recalled it with pleasure; something in the depth of his
being responded to it.

When they had done, they folded their table-napkins and put

OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN

21

them in their silver rings— -a job at which Hans Castorp never
acquitted himself very well, for they were the size of small table-
cloths. Then the Senator got up from his chair, which Fiete drew
away behind him, and went with shuffling steps into his “ office ”
to get a cigar. Sometimes the grandson followed him in.

This office had come to exist because of a peculiarity in the
arrangement of the lower floor — namely, that the dining-room
had been planned with three windows instead of two, and ran the
whole width of the house; which left space for only two drawing-
rooms, instead of the usual three, and gave to one of them, at right
angles to the dining-room, with a single window on the street, a
quite disproportionate depth. Of this room, therefore, some quar-
ter of the length had been cut off, and turned into a cabinet. It
was a strip of a room, with a skylight; twilighted, and not much
furnished — there was an etagere , on which stood the Senator’s
cigar case; a card-table, the drawer of which held whist cards,
counters, little marking-boards with tiny teeth that clapped open
and shut, a slate and slate-pencil, paper cigar-holders, and other
such attractions; and finally, in the comer, a rococo case in pali-
sander-wood, with yellow silk stretched behind its glass doors.

“ Grandpa,” little Hans Castorp might say, standing on tiptoes
to reach the old man’s ear, “ please show me the christening
basin.”

And the grandfather, who had already pulled back the skirts of
his long cashmere frock-coat and taken the bunch of keys from
his trouser pocket, forthwith opened the door of the glass case,
whence floated odours odd and pleasant to the boy’s sense. Inside
were all manner of disused and fascinating objects: a pair of silver-
branched candlesticks, a broken barometer in a wooden case with
allegorical carving, an album of daguerreotypes, a cedar-wood
case for liqueurs, a funny little Turk in flowing silk robes, under
which was a hard body with a mechanism inside. Once, when you
wound him up, he had been able to leap about all over the table,
but he was long since out of repair. Then there was a quaint old
model of a ship; and right at the bottom a rat-trap. But from one
of the middle shelves Grandfather took a much-tarnished, round
silver dish, with a tray likewise of silver, and showed them both
to the boy, lifting them separately and turning them about in his
hands as he told the story he had so often told before.

Plate and basin, one could see, and as the little one heard once
again, had not originally belonged together; but, Grandfather said,
they had been in use together for a round hundred years, or since
the time when the basin was made. The latter was very beautiful,

22

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

of simple and elegant form, in the severe taste of the early nine-
teenth century. It rested, plain and solid, on a round base, and had
once been gilt within, but the gilding had faded with time to a
yellow shimmer. Its single decoration was a chaste garland of roses
and serrated leaves about the brim. As for the plate, its far greater
antiquity could be read on the inside: the date 1650 was engraved
there in ornamental figures, framed in curly engraved lines exe-
cuted in the “ modern manner ” of the period, florid and capricious
devices and arabesques that were something between star and
flower. On the back, engraved in a variety of scripts, were the
names of its successive owners, seven in number, each with the
date when it had passed into his hands. The old man named each
one to his grandson, pointing with beringed index finger. There
was Hans Castorp’s father’s name, there was Grandfather’s own,
there was Great-grandfather’s; then the “ great ” came doubled,
tripled, quadrupled, from the old man’s mouth, whilst the little
lad listened, his head on one side, the eyes full of thought, yet fixed
and dreamy too, the childish lips parted, half with awe, half sleep-
ily. That great-great-great-great — what a hollow sound it had,
how it spoke of the falling away of time, yet how it seemed the
expression of a piously cherished link between the present, his own
life, and the depth of the past! All that, as his face showed, made
a profound impression. As he listened to the great-great-great, he
seemed to smell the cool, earthy air of the vault of St. Michael’s
or Saint Katherine’s; the breath of regions where one went hat in
hand, the head reverently bowed, walking weavingly on the tips
of one’s toes; seemed, too, to hear the remote and set-apart hush
of those echoing places. Religious feeling mingled in his mind
with thoughts of death and a sense of history, as he listened to the
sombre syllable; he received therefrom an ineffable gratification —
indeed, it may have been for the sake of hearing the sound that he
so often begged to see the christening basin.

Grandfather set the vessel back on the tray, and let the boy look
into the smooth, faintly golden inside, which caught the light from
the window in the ceiling.

“ Yes,” he said, “ it will soon be eight years since we held you
over it, and the water flowed into it from your baptism. Lassen,
the sexton of St. Jacob’s, poured it into our good Pastor Bugen-
hagen’s hand, and it ran out over your little topknot and into the
basin. We had warmed it, so it should not frighten you and make
you cry, and you did not; you cried beforehand, though, so loud
that Bugenhagen could hardly get on with the service, but you
stopped when you felt the water — and that, let us hope, was out

OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN

23

of respect for the Holy Sacrament. A few days from now it will
be forty-four years since your blessed father was a baby at the
baptismal font, and it was over his head the water flowed into the
basin. That was here in this house, where he was born, in front of
the middle dining-room window, and old Pastor Hezekiel was still
alive. He was the man the French nearly shot when he was young,
because he preached against their burning and looting. He has been
with God these many years. Then, five-and-seventy years ago, I
was the youngster whose head they held over this selfsame basin;
that was in the dining-room too, and the minister spoke the very
words that were spoken when you and your father were baptized,
and the clear, warm water flowed over my head precisely the same
way — there wasn’t much more hair than there is now — and fell
into this golden bowl just as it did over yours.”

The little one looked up at Grandfather’s narrow grey head,
bending over the basin as it had in the time he described. A familiar
feeling pervaded the child: a strange, dreamy, troubling sense: of
change in the midst of duration, of time as both flowing and per-
sisting, of recurrence in continuity — these were sensations he had
felt before on the like occasion, and both expected and longed for
again, whenever the heirloom was displayed.

As a young man he was aware that the image of his grandfather
was more deeply and clearly imprinted on his mind, with greater
significance, than those of his own parents. The fact might rest
upon sympathy and physical likeness, for the grandson resembled
the grandfather, in so far, that is, as a rosy youth with the down
on his chin might resemble a bleached, rheumatic septuagenarian.
Yet it probably spoke even more for that which was indeed' the
truth, that the grandfather had been the real personality, the pic-
turesque figure of the family.

Long before Hans Lorenz Castorp’s passing, his person and the
things for which he stood had ceased to be representative of his
age. He had been a typical Christian gentleman, of the Reformed
faith, of a strongly conservative cast of mind, as obstinately con-
vinced of the right of the aristocracy to govern as if he had been
born in the fourteenth century, when the labouring classes had be-
gun to make head against the stout resistance of the free patriciate
and wrest from it a place and voice in the councils of the ancient
city. He had little use for the new. His active years had fallen in a
decade of rapid growth and repeated upheavals, a decade of prog-
ress by forced marches, which had made continual demands on the
public capacity for enterprise and self-sacrifice. Certainly he had
no part or lot, old Castorp, in the brilliant triumph of the modem

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

2 4

spirit that followed hard upon. It was not his fault; he had held far
more with ancestral ways and old institutions than with ruinous
schemes for widening the harbour, or godless and rubbishing plans
for a great metropolis. He had put on the brakes; he had whittled
things down wherever he could; and if matters had gone to his
liking, the administration would have continued to wear the same
old-fashioned, idyllic guise as, in his time, his own office did.

Such, in his lifetime and afterwards, was the figure the old man
presented to the eye of his fellow burghers; and such, in essentials,
was he also to the childish gaze of little Hans Castorp, who knew
naught of affairs of state, and whose formless, uncritical judgments
were rather the fruit of mere lively perceptions. Yet they persisted
into later life, as the elements of a perfectly conscious memory-

f )icture, which defied expression or analysis, but was none the
ess positive for all that. We repeat that natural sympathy was in
play here too, the close family tie and essential intimacy which not
infrequently leaps over an intervening generation.

Senator Castorp was tall and lean. The years had bent his back
and neck, but he tried to counteract the curvature by pressure in
another direction; drawing down his mouth with sedulous dignity,
though the lips were shrunken against the bare gums, for he had
lost all his teeth, and put in the false ones only to eat. It was this
posture also which helped to steady an incipient shaking of the
head, gave him his look of being sternly reined up, and caused him
to support his chin on his neckcloth in the manner so congenial
to little Hans Castorp ’s taste.

He loved his snuff-box — it was a longish, gold-inlaid tortoise-
shell one — and on account of his snuff-taking, used a red pocket-
handkerchief, the corner of which always hung out of the back
pocket of his coat. If this foible added a quaint touch to his appear-
ance, yet the effect was only of a slight negligence or licence due
to age, which length of days either consciously and cheerfully
permits itself, or else brings in its train without the victim’s being
aware. If weakness it were, it was the only one the sharp eye of the
child ever noted in his grandfather’s exterior. But the old man’s
everyday appearance was not his real and authentic one, either to
the seven-year-old child, or to the memory of the grown man in
after years. That was different, far finer and truer; it was Grand-
father as he appeared in a life-size portrait which had once hung
in the house of Hans Castorp ’s own parents, had moved over with
him to the Esplanade on their death, and now hung above the great
red satin sofa in the reception-room.

The painting showed Hans Lorenz Castorp in his official garb as

OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN

25

Councillor: the sober, even godly, civilian habit of a bygone cen-
tury, which a commonwealth both self-assertive and enterprising
had brought with it down the years and retained in ceremonial
use in order to make present the past and make past the present,
to bear witness to the perpetual continuity of things, and the per-
fect soundness of its business signature. Senator Castorp stood at
full length on a red-tiled floor, in a perspective of column and
pointed arch. His chin was dropped, his mouth drawn down, his
blue, musing eyes, with the tear ducts plain beneath them, directed
toward the distant view. He wore the black coat, cut full like a
robe, more than knee-length, with a wide trimming of fur all
round the edge; the upper sleeves were wide and puffed and fur-
trimmed too, while from beneath them came the narrow under-
sleeves of plain cloth, then lace cuffs, which covered the hands to
the knuckles. The slender, elderly legs were cased in black silk
stockings; the shoes had silver buckles. But about his neck was the
broad, starched ruff, pressed down in front and swelling out on
the sides, beneath which, for good measure, a fluted jabot came
out over the waistcoat. Under his arm he held the old-fashioned,
broad-brimmed hat, that tapered to a point at the top.

It was a capital painting, by an artist of some note, in an old-
masterish style that suited the subject and was reminiscent of much
Spanish, Dutch, late Middle Ages work. Little Hans Castorp had
often looked at it; not, of course, with any knowledge of art, but
with a larger, even a fervid comprehension. Only once — and then
only for a moment — had he ever seen Grandfather as he was here
represented, on the occasion of a procession to the Rathaus. But
he could not help feeling that this presentment was the genuine,
the authentic grandfather, and the everyday one merely subsid-
iary, not entirely conformable — a sort of interim grandfather, as
it were. For it was clear that the deviations and idiosyncrasies pre-
sented by his everyday appearance were due to incomplete, per-
haps even unsuccessful adaptation; they were the not quite eradi-
cate vestiges of Grandfather’s pure and genuine form. The
choker collar and band, for instance, were old-fashioned; an ad-
jective it would have been impossible to apply to that admirable
article of apparel whose interim representative they were: namely,
the ruff. The same was true of the outlandish top-hat Grandfather
wore, with the bell-shaped crown, to which the broad-brimmed
felt in the painting corresponded, only with a higher degree of
actuality; and of the voluminous frock-coat, whose archetype and
original was for little Hans Castorp the lace- and fur-trimmed
ceremonial garment.

26

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thus he was glad from his heart that it should be the authentic,
the perfect grandfather who lay there resplendent on that day
when he came to take last leave of him. It was in the room where
so often they had sat facing each other at table; and now, in the
centre, Hans Lorenz Castorp was lying in a silver-mounted coffin,
upon a begarlanded bier. He had fought out the attack on his
lungs, fought long and stoutly, despite his air of being at home in
the life of the day only by dint of his powers of adaptability. One
hardly knew whether he had won or lost in the struggle; but in
any case there he lay, with a stern yet satisfied expression, on his
bed of state. He had altered with the illness, his nose looked sharp
and thin; the lower half of his body was hidden by a coverlet on
which lay a palm branch; the head was lifted high by the silken
pillow, so that his chin rested beautifully in the front swell of the
ruff. Between the hands, half-shrouded in their lace cuffs, their
visibly cold, dead fingers artfully arranged to simulate life, was
stuck an ivory cross. He seemed to gaze, beneath drooping lids,
steadfastly down upon it.

Hans Castorp had probably seen his grandfather several times
at the beginning of this last illness, but not toward the end. They
had spared him the sight of the struggle, the more easily that it
had been mostly at night; he had only felt it through the sur-
charged atmosphere of the house, old Fiete’s red eyes, the coming
and going of the doctors. What he gathered as he stood now by
the bier in the dining-room, was that Grandfather had finally and
formally surmounted his interim aspect and assumed for all time
his true and adequate shape. And that was a gratifying result, even
though old Fiete continually wept and shook his head, even
though Hans Castorp himself wept, as he had at sight of the mother
he had abruptly been bereft of, and the father who, so little time
after her, lay in his turn still and strange before the little boy’s
eyes.

Thus for the third time in so short a space and in such young
years did death play upon the spirit and senses — but chiefly on
the senses — of the lad. The sight was no longer strange, it was al-
ready right familiar; and as on those earlier occasions, only in still
greater degree, he bore himself in the presence of death with a
responsible air, quite self-controlled, showing no nervous weak-
ness, if some natural dejection. He was unaware of the practical
result the loss would mean to his own life, or else with childlike
indifference was instinctively confident that he would be taken
care of somehow; thus, at the bier, he displayed both an uncom-
prehending coolness and a detached alertness of observation, to

OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN

2 7

which were added, on this third occasion, a feeling and expression
of connoisseurship. And something more, a peculiar, precocious
variation: he seemed no longer to think of tears — either the fre-
quent outburst of grief or the contagion from the grief of others —
as a natural reaction. In three or four months after nis father’s pass-
ing he had forgotten about death; but now he remembered, and all
the impressions of that time recurred, precise, immediate, and
piercing in their transcendent strangeness.

Reduced to order and put into words, they would have been
something like the following. In one aspect death was a holy, a
pensive, a spiritual state, possessed of a certain mournful beauty.
In another it was quite different. It was precisely the opposite, it
was very physical, it was material, it could not possibly be called
either holy, or pensive, or beautiful — not even mournful. The
solemn, spiritual side expressed itself in the ceremonial lying-in-
state of the corpse, in the fan-leaved palm and the wealth of flow-
ers, all which symbolized the peace of God and the heavenly king-
dom, as did even more explicitly the ivory cross stuck between the
dead fingers of what was once Grandfather, and the bust of Christ
by Thorwaldsen at the head of the bier, with towering candelabra
on either side. It was these last that gave a churchly air to the scene.
All such arrangements had their more precise justification in the
fact that Grandfather was now clothed for ever in his true and
proper guise. But over and above that raison d'etre they had an-
other, of a more profane kind, of which little Hans Castorp was
distinctly aware, though without admitting it in so many words.
One and all of them, but expressly the flowers, and of these more
expressly the hosts of tuberoses, were there to palliate the other
aspect of death, the side which was neither beautiful nor exactly
sad, but somehow almost improper — its lowly, physical side —
to slur it over and prevent one from being conscious of it.

It was this other aspect of death- that made Grandfather himself
look so strange; not like Grandfather at all, more like a life-size
wax doll, which death had put in his place to be the centre of all
this pious and reverent spectacle. He who lay there — or, more
correctly, that which lay there — was not Grandfather himself,
but a shell, made, as Hans Castorp was aware, not of wax, but of
its own substance, and only of that. Therein, precisely, was the
impropriety. It was scarcely sad at all — as things are not which
have to do with the body and only with it. Little Hans Castorp
regarded that substance, waxy yellow, and fine-grained like cheese,
of which the life-size figure was made, the face and hands of what
had been Grandfather. A fly had settled on the quiet brow, and

28

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

began to move its proboscis up and down. Old Fiete shooed it
cautiously away, taking care not to touch the forehead of the dead,
putting on a seemly air of absent-mindedness — of obscurantism, as
it were — as though he neither might nor would take notice of
what he was doing. This correctness of demeanour obviously had
to do with the fact that Grandfather was now no longer anything
but body. But the fly, after a circling flight, came to rest on Grand-
father’s fingers, close to the ivory cross. And Hans Castorp, watch-
ing, thought he detected, more plainly than ever before, a familiar,
strange exhalation, faint, yet oddly clinging — he blushed to find
that it made him think of a former schoolfellow, who was avoided
by his class-mates because he suffered from a certain unpleasant
affection — for the drowning out of which the tuberoses were
there, and which, with all their lovely luxuriance and the strong-
ness of their scent, they yet failed to overpower.

He stood three times by his Grandfather’s bier. Once alone with
old Fiete; once with Great-uncle Tienappel, the wine merchant,
and his two uncles, James and Peter; the third and last time when
a group of harbour hands in their Sunday clothes came to take
leave of the head of the house of Castorp and Son. Then came the
funeral. The room was full of people, and Pastor Bugenhagen of
St. Michael’s, the same who had baptized little Hans, preached
the sermon in a ruff. He was most friendly with the boy as they
drove out together to the cemetery, in the first carriage behind
the hearse. Thus did another epoch in the life of Hans Castorp
come to an end, and again he moved to a new home and new sur-
roundings, for the second time in his young life.

At Tienappels\ and of Young Hans’s Moral State

The change was no loss to him; for he entered the home of his
appointed guardian. Consul Tienappel, where he wanted for noth-
ing. Certainly this was true so far as his bodily needs were con-
cerned, and not less in the sense of safe-guarding his interests —
about which he was still too young to know anything at all. For
Consul Tienappel, an uncle of Hans’s deceased mother, was ad-
ministrator of the Castorp estate; he put up the property for sale,
took in hand the business of liquidating the firm of Castorp and
Son, Importers and Exporters, and realized from the whole nearly
four hundred thousand marks, the inheritance of young Hans.
This sum Consul Tienappel invested in trust funds, and took unto
himself two per cent or the interest every quarter, without im-
pairment of his kinsmanly feeling.

at tien Appels’ 29

The Tienappel house lay at the foot of a garden in Harveste-
huderstrasse; the windows looked out on a plot of lawn in which
not the tiniest weed was suffered to flourish, then upon public
rose-borders, and then upon the river. The Consul went on foot
every morning to his business in the Old Town — although he
possessed more than one fine equipage — in order to get a little
exercise, for he sometimes suffered from cerebral congestion. He
returned in the same way at five in the afternoon, at which time
the Tienappels dined, with due and fitting ceremony. He was a
weighty man, whose suits were always of the best English cloths;
his eyes were watery blue and prominent behind his gold-rimmed
glasses, his nose was ruddy, and his square-cut beard was grey; he
wore a flashing brilliant on the stubby little finger of his left hand.
His wife was long since dead. He had two sons, Peter and James,
of whom one was in the navy and seldom at home, the other occu-
pied in the paternal wine trade, and destined heir to the business.
The housekeeping, for many years, had been the care of an Altona
goldsmith’s daughter, named Schalleen, who wore starched white
ruffles at her plump, round wrists. Hers it was to see to it that the
table, morning and evening, was richly laden with cold meats, with
crabs and salmon, eel and smoked breast of goose, with tomato
ketchup for the roast beef. She kept a watchful eye on the hired
waiters when Consul Tienappel gave a gentlemen’s dinner; and
she it was who, so far as in her lay, took the place of a mother to
little Hans Castorp.

So he grew up; in wretched weather, in the teeth of wind and
mist, grew up, so to say, in a yellow mackintosh, and, generally
speaking, he throve. A little anaemic he had always been, so Dr.
Heidekind said, and had him take a good glass of porter after third
breakfast every day, when he came home from school. This, as
everyone knows, is a hearty drink — Dr. Heidekind considered it
a blood-maker — and certainly Hans Castorp found it most sooth-
ing to his spirits and encouraging to a propensity of his, which his
Uncle Tienappel called “ dozing namely, sitting staring into
space, with his jaw dropped and his thoughts fixed on just nothing
at all. But on the whole he was sound and fit, an adequate tennis
player and rower; though actually handling the oars was less to his
taste than sitting of a summer evening on the terrace of the Uhlen-
horst ferry-house, with a good drink before him and the sound of
music in his ears, while he watched the lighted boats, and the
swans mirrored in the bright water. Hear him talk, sedate and sen-
sible, in a rather low, monotonous voice, just tinged with dialect;
observe him in his blond correctness, with his well-shaped head,

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

3 °

which had about it some stamp of the classic, and his self-possessed,
indolent bearing, the fruit of innate, inherited, perfectly uncon-
scious self-esteem — you would swear that this young Castorp
was a legitimate and genuine product of the soil in which he flour-
ished, and strikingly at home in his environment. Nor would he,
had he ever put such a question to himself, have been for a single
second doubtful of the answer.

Yes, he was thoroughly in his element in the atmosphere of this
great seaboard city: this reeking air, compact of good living and
a retail trade that embraced the four corners of the earth. It had
been the breath of his father’s nostrils, and the son drew it in with
profound acquiescence and a sense of well-being. The exhalations
from water, coals, and tar, the sharp tang in the nostrils from
heaped-up stacks of colonial produce; the huge steam-cranes at
the dock-side, imitating the quiet, the intelligence, and the giant
strength of elephants at work, as they hoisted tons of sacks, bales,
chests, vats, and carboys out of the bowels of seagoing ships and
conveyed them into waiting trains and scales; the business men, in
yellow rubber coats like his own, streaming to the Bourse at mid-
day, where, as he knew, there was oftentimes pretty sharp work,
and a man might have to strengthen his credit at short notice by
giving out invitations to a big dinner — all this he felt, saw, heard,
knew. Besides it all, there was the field in which later was to lie
his own particular interest: the confusion of the yards, the mam-
moth bodies of great ships, Asiatic and African liners, lying in dry-
dock, keel and propeller bare, supported by props as thick as tree-
trunks, lying there in monstrous helplessness, swarmed over by
troops of men like dwarfs, scouring, whitewashing, hammering;
there were the roofed-over ways, wrapped in wreaths of smoke-
like mist, holding the towering frames of rising ships, among
which moved the engineers, blue-print and loading scale in hand,
directing the work-people. All these were familiar sights to Hans
Castorp from his youth upwards, awaking in him only the agree-
able, homely sensations or “ belonging,” which were the preroga-
tive of his years. Such sensations would reach their height when
he sat of a Sunday forenoon with James Tienappel or his cousin
Ziemssen — Joachim Ziemssen — in the pavilion at Alster, break-
fasting on hot cuts and smoked meat, with a glass of old port; or
when, having eaten, he would lean back in his chair and give him-
self up to his cigar. For therein especially was he true to type, that
he liked good living, and notwithstanding his thin-bloodedness
and look of over-refinement clung to the grosser pleasures of life
as a greedy suckling to its mother’s breast.

AT TIENAPPELS

3 *

Comfortably, not without dignity, he carried the weight of cul-
ture with which the governing upper class of the commercial city
endowed its children. He was as clean as a well-cared-for baby,
and dressed by the tailor in whom the young men of his social
sphere felt most confidence. Schalleen took beautiful care of his
small stock of carefully marked linen, which was bestowed in a
dressing-chest on the English plan. When he studied away from
home, he regularly sent back his laundry to be washed and mended,
for it was a saying of his that outside Hamburg nobody in the
kingdom knew how to iron. A rough spot on the cuff of his dainty
coloured shirts filled him with acute discomfort. His hands, though
not particularly aristocratic in shape, were well tended and fresh-
skinned, and he wore a platinum chain ring as well as the seal ring
inherited from Grandfather. His teeth were rather soft and defec-
tive and he had a number of gold fillings.

Standing and walking, he rather stuck out his abdomen, which
hardly made an athletic impression; but his bearing at table was
beyond cavil. Sitting very erect, he would turn the whole upper
part of his body to speak to his neighbour (with self-possession,
of course, and a little platt ) and he kept his elbows well in as he
dismembered his piece of fowl, or deftly, with the appointed tool,
drew the rosy flesh from a lobster’s shell. His first requirement
after a meal was the finger-bowl of perfumed water, his second
the Russian cigarette — which paid no duty, as he had a convenient
way of getting them smuggled in. After the cigarette the cigar;
he favoured a Bremen brand called Maria Mancini, of which we
shall hear more hereafter; the fragrant narcotic blended so sooth-
ingly with the coffee. Hans Castorp protected his supply of to-
bacco from the injurious effects of steam-heating by keeping it in
the cellar, whither he would betake himself every morning to load
his case with his stock for the day. It went against his grain to eat
butter served in the piece instead of in little fluted balls.

It will be seen that we mean to say everything that may be said
in Hans Castorp’s favour, yet without fulsomeness, not making
him out as better, or worse, than he was. He was neither genius nor
dunderhead; and if, in our description of him, we have avoided the
use of the word mediocre, it has been for reasons quite uncon-
nected with his intelligence, hardly even with any bearing upon
his whole simple personality, but rather out of regard for his lot
in life, to which we incline to ascribe a certain importance above
and beyond personal considerations. His head-piece sustained
without undue strain the demands made upon it by the course at
the Real-gymnasium — strain, indeed, was something to which he

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

3 2

was quite definitely disinclined, whatever the circumstances or the
object of his effort; less out of fear of hurting himself than because
he positively saw no reason, or, more precisely, saw no positive
reason, for exertion. This then, perhaps, is why we may not call
him mediocre: that, somehow or other, he was aware of the lack
of such a reason.

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also,
consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contem-
poraries. He may regard the general, impersonal foundations of his
existence as definitely settled and taken for granted, and be as far
from assuming a critical attitude toward them as our good Hans
Castorp really was; yet it is quite conceivable that he may none the
less be vaguely conscious of the deficiencies of his epoch and find
them prejudicial to his own moral well-being. All sorts of personal
aims, ends, hopes, prospects, hover before the eyes of the indi-
vidual, and out of these he derives the impulse to ambition and
achievement. Now, if the life about him, if his own time seem, how-
ever outwardly stimulating, to be at bottom empty of such food
for his aspirations; if he privately recognize it to be hopeless, view-
less, helpless, opposing only a hollow silence to all the questions
man puts, consciously or unconsciously, yet somehow puts, as to
the final, absolute, and abstract meaning in all his efforts and activi-
ties; then, in such a case, a certain laming of the personality is
bound to occur, the more inevitably the more upright the charac-
ter in question; a sort of palsy, as it were, which may even extend
from his spiritual and moral over into his physical and organic
part. In an age that affords no satisfying answer to the eternal
question of “ Why? ” “ To what end? ” a man who is capable of
achievement over and above the average and expected modicum
must be equipped either with a moral remoteness and single-
mindedness which is rare indeed and of heroic mould, or else with
an exceptionally robust vitality. Hans Castorp had neither the one
nor the other of these; and thus he must be considered mediocre,
though in an entirely honourable sense.

All this that we have said has reference to the inward state of
the young man not only during his school years, but also in those
that followed, after he had made choice of his civil profession. On
his way through his forms at school, he had now and again to take
one for the second time. But in the main his origin, his good breed-
ing, and also a pretty if unimpassioned gift for mathematics got
him forward; and when he received his one-year service certifi-
cate, he made up his mind to continue at school, principally, it
must be said, because he thus prolonged a situation he was used to,

AT TIENAPPELS*

33

in which no definite decisions had to be taken, and in which he had
further time to think matters over and decide what he really
wanted to do, which he was far from knowing after he had arrived
at the top form. Even when it was finally decided — to say when
Hans Castorp finally decided it would be saying too much — he
had the feeling that it might quite as well have been decided some
other way.

So much, however, was true, that he had always liked ships. As
a small boy he had filled the pages of his note-books with drawings
of fishing-barks, five-masters and vegetable-barges. When he was
fifteen, he had had a front seat at the christening ceremony of the
new double-screw steamer Hansa . He had watched her leave the
ways at Blohm and Voss’s, and afterwards made quite a happy
water-colour of the graceful ship, done with a good deal of atten-
tion to detail, and a loving and not unskilful treatment of the glassy
green, rolling waves. Consul Tienappel hung it in his private office,
and somebody told him that it showed talent, that the artist might
develop into a good marine painter — a remark which the Consul
could safely repeat to his ward, for Hans Castorp only laughed
good-humouredly, and not for a moment considered letting him-
self in for a career of being eccentric and not getting enough
to eat.

“ You haven’t so much, you know,” his Uncle Tienappel would
say to him. “ James and Peter will get most of what I have; that is
to say, it stops in the business, and Peter will draw his interest.
What belongs to you is well invested, and brings you in something
safe. But it’s no joke living on your interest to-day, unless one has
at least five times what you have; and if you want to be somebody
here in this town and live as you have been brought up to, you’ll
have to earn a good bit more to put with it, you mark my words,
my son.”

Hans Castorp marked them. He looked about for a profession
suitable in his own eyes and those of his fellow citizens. And when
he had once chosen — it came about at the instance of old Wilms,
of the firm of Tunder and Wilms, who said to Consul Tienappel
at the Saturday whist-table that young Castorp ought to study
ship-building; it would be a good idea, he could come into his
office and he would keep an eye on him — when he had once
chosen, he thought very highly of his calling. It was, to be sure,
confoundedly complicated and fatiguing, but all the same it was
very first-rate, very solid, very important. And certainly, being
peaceful in his tastes, he preferred it to that of his cousin Ziemssen,
the son of his mother’s half-sister, who was bent on being an

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

34

officer. But Joachim Ziemssen was rather weak in the chest, and
for that reason a calling which would keep him in the open, and
in which there was no mental strain or fatigue to speak of, might
be quite the right thing for him, Hans Castorp thought with easy
condescension. He had the greatest respect for work — though
personally he found that he tired easily.

And here we revert to our suggestion of a few pages back: the
idea that an unfavourable influence exerted upon a man’s personal
life by the times in which he lives may even extend to his physical
organism. Hans Castorp respected work — as how should he not
have? It would have been unnatural. Work was for him, in the
nature of things, the most estimable attribute of life; when you
came down to it, there was nothing else that was estimable. It was
the principle by which one stood or fell, the Absolute of the time;
it was, so to speak, its own justification. His regard for it was thus
religious in its character, and, so far as he knew, unquestioning.
But it was another matter, whether he loved it; and that he could
not do, however great his regard, the simple reason being that it
did not agree with him. Exacting occupation dragged at his nerves,
it wore him out; quite openly he confessed that he liked better to
have his time free, not weighted with the leaden load of effort;
lying spacious before him, not divided up by obstacles one had to
grit one’s teeth and conquer, one after the other. These conflicting
sentiments on the subject of work had, strictly speaking, to be
reconciled. Is it, perhaps, possible, if he had been able to believe in
work as a positive value, a self- justifying principle, believe in it in
the very depth of his soul, even without being himself conscious
of doing so, that his body as well as his spirit — first the spirit and
through it the body as well — would have been able to devote itself
to his task with more of joy and constancy, would have been able
to find peace therein? Here again is posed the question of Hans
Castorp’s mediocrity or more than mediocrity, to which we would
give no hard and fast answer. For we do not set up as the young
man’s encomiast, and prefer to leave room for the other view:
namely, that his work stood somewhat in the way of his un-
clouded enjoyment of his Maria Mancini.

To military service he was not inclined. His being revolted
against it, and found ways of making difficulties. It may be, too,
that Staff Medical Officer Dr. Eberding, who visited at Harveste-
huderstrasse, heard from Consul Tienappel, in the course of con-
versation, that young Castorp was leaving home to begin his tech-
nical studies, and would find a call to the colours a very sensible
interruption to his labours.

AT TIENAPPELS

Working slowly and deliberately — he kept up his soothing
habit of porter breakfasts while he was away — he filled his brain
with analytic and descriptive geometry, differential calculus, me-
chanics, projection, hydrostatic; reckoned full and empty dis-
placement, stability, trim moment, and metacentre; and sometimes
he got very sick of it. His technical drawings, the draughts and
designs of frames, waterlines and longitudinal projections, were
not quite so good as the picturesque representation of the Hansa
on the high seas; but wherever it was in place to call in the sense
perceptions to help out the intellectual, wherever he could
wash in the shadows and lay on the cross-sections in the con-
ventional colours, there Hans Castorp showed more dexterity
than most.

When he came home for the holidays, very clean, very well
dressed, with a little red-blond moustache that became his sleepy,
young patrician face, obviously en route to a considerable position
in life, people looked at him, the people who concerned them-
selves with the affairs of the community and made it their busi-
ness to know all about family and social relations — and that, in a
self-governing city-state, meant most of the population — they
looked him well over, his fellow citizens, and asked themselves
what public role young Castorp was destined to fill. He had tradi-
tions, his name was old and good, they would certainly have to
reckon with him one day, as a political factor. Some day he would
sit in the Assembly, or on the Board of Directors, he would help
make the laws, he would occupy some honourable office and share
the burdens of sovereignty. He would belong to the executive
branch, perhaps, or the Finance or Building Commission. His voice
would be listened to, his vote would count. It would be interesting
to see what party he would choose. Appearances were deceiving,
but he did not look as a man does whom the democrats can count
on; and his likeness to his grandfather was unmistakable. Would
he take after him, and be a drag, a conservative element? It was
quite possible — but so was the opposite. He was an engineer,
studying ship-building; on the technical side, in touch with world
commerce. He might turn out to be a radical, a reckless spender,
a profane destroyer of old buildings and landscape beauties. He
might be as unfettered as a Jew, as irreverent as an American; he
might prefer a ruthless break with tradition to a considered de-
velopment of natural resources; he might incline to plunge the
state into foolhardy experimentation. All that was conceivable.
Was it in his blood to feel that their Worships in the Senate, be-
fore whom the double sentry at the Rathms presented arms, were

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

36

likely to know best in all contingencies; or would he side with the
opposition in the Assembly? In his blue eyes, under their reddish-
brown brows, his fellow citizens read no answer to their curious
questioning. And he probably knew none himself, Hans Castorp,
this still unwritten page.

When he took the journey upon which we have encountered
him, he was in his twenty-third year. He had spent four semesters
at the Dantzig Polytechnic, four more at the technical schools of
Braunschweig and Karlsruhe, and had just previously passed his
first final, quite respectably, if without any fanfare of trumpets.
And now he was preparing to enter the firm of Tunder and Wilms,
as volunteer apprentice, in order to get his practical training in the
ship-yards.

But at this point his life took the following turn. He had had to
work hard and steadily for his examination, and came home look-
ing rather paler than a man of his blond, rosy type should do. Dr.
Heidekind scolded, and insisted on a change of air; a complete
change, not a stay at Norderney or Wyk on Fohr — that would
not mend matters this time, he said; if they wanted his advice, it
was that Hans Castorp should go for a few weeks to the high
mountains before he took up his work in the yards.

Consul Tienappel told his nephew and foster-son he approved
of the plan, only that in that case they would part company for
the summer, for wild horses couldn’t drag him into the high moun-
tains. They were not for him; he required a reasonable atmos-
pheric pressure, else he might get an attack. Hans Castorp would
be good enough to go by himself — let him pay his cousin Ziemssen
a visit.

It was an obvious suggestion. Joachim Ziemssen was ill — not ill
like Hans Castorp, but in all seriousness, critically. There had been
a great scare, in fact. He had always been subject to feverish ca-
tarrh, and one day he actually spat blood; whereupon he had been
rushed off to Davos, heels over head, to his great distress and
affliction, for he had just then arrived within sight of the goal of
all his hopes. Some semesters long, he had complied with the wish
of his family and studied law; then, yielding to irresistible inward
urging, he had changed over, presented himself as ensign and been
accepted. And now, for the past five months, he had been stuck in
the International Sanatorium Berghof (directing physician Hof rat
Behrens) and was bored half sick, as he wrote home on postcards.
If Hans Castorp wanted to do himself a good turn before he en-
tered his post at Tunder and Wilms’s, what more natural than that

AT TIENAPPELs’

37

he should go up to Davos and keep his poor cousin company for a
while — it would be agreeable on both sides.

It was midsummer before he made up his mind to go. Already
the last week in July.

He left for a stay of three weeks.

CHAPTER III

Drawing the Veil

He had been so utterly weary, he had feared to oversleep; but he
was on his legs rather earlier than usual, and had a superfluity of
leisure in which to perform the accustomed ritual of his morning
toilet, in which a rubber tub, a wooden bowl of green lavender
soap, and the accompanying little brush played the principal parts.
He had even time to do some unpacking and moving in. As he
covered his cheeks with scented lather and drew over them the
blade of his silver-plated “ safety,” he recalled his confused dreams
and shook his head indulgently over so much nonsense, with the
superior feeling a man has when shaving himself in the clear light
of reason. He did not feel precisely rested, yet had a sense of morn-
ing freshness.

With powdered cheeks, in his Scotch-thread drawers and red
morocco slippers, he walked out on the balcony, drying his hands.
The balcony ran across the house and was divided into small sepa-
rate compartments by opaque glass partitions, which did not quite
reach to the balustrade. The morning was cool and cloudy. Trails
of mist lay motionless in front of the heights on one side and the
other, while great cloud-masses, grey and white, hung down over
the distant peaks. Patches and bands of blue showed here and
there; now and then a gleam of sunshine lighted up the village
down in the valley, till it glistened whitely against the dark fir-
covered slopes. Somewhere there was music, very likely in the
same hotel where there had been a concert the evening before.
The subdued chords of a hymn floated up; after a pause came a
march. Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon
him in much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply
soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze. He listened well
pleased, his head on one side, his eyes a little bloodshot.

He could see below him the winding road up to the sanatorium,
by which he had come the night before. Among the dewy grass of
the sloping terrace short-stemmed, star-shaped gentians stood out.
Part of the level ground had been enclosed for a garden, with

DRAWING THE VEIL

39

flower-beds, gravel paths, and an artificial grotto under a stately
silver fir. A hall, with reclining-chairs and a galvanized roof,
opened towards the south; near it stood a flag-pole, painted red-
dish-brown, on which the flag fluttered open now and then on its
cord. It was a fancy flag, green and white, with the caduceus, the
emblem of healing, in the centre.

A woman was walking in the garden, an elderly lady, of melan-
choly, even tragic aspect. Dressed all in black, a black veil wound
about her dishevelled grey-black hair, with wrinkled brow and
coal-black eyes that had hanging pouches of skin beneath them,
she moved with rapid, restless step along the garden paths, staring
straight before her, her knees a little bent, her arms hanging stiffly
down. The ageing face in its southern pallor, with the large, wried
mouth drawn down on one side, reminded Hans Castorp of a por-
trait he had once seen of a famous tragic actress. And strange it
was to see how the pale, black-clad woman unconsciously matched
her long, woeful pace to the music of the march.

He looked down upon her with pensive sympathy; it seemed to
him the sad apparition darkened the morning sunshine. But in the
same instant he became aware of something else, something audi-
ble: certain noises penetrating to his hearing from the room on the
left of his own, which was occupied, Joachim had said, by a Rus-
sian couple. Again he felt a discrepancy; these sounds no more
suited the blithe freshness of the morning than had the sad sight
in the garden below — rather they seemed to befoul the air, make
it thick, sticky. Hans Castorp recalled having heard similar sounds
the evening before, though his weariness had prevented him from
heeding them: a struggling, a panting and giggling, the offensive
nature of which could not long remain hidden to the young man,
try as he good-naturedly did to put a harmless construction on
them. Perhaps something more or other than good nature was in
play, something to which we give a variety of names, calling it
now purity of soul, which sounds insipid; again by that grave,
beautiful name of chastity; and yet again disparaging it as hy-
pocrisy, as “ hating to look facts in the face ”; even ascribing it to
an obscure sense of awe and piety — and, in truth, something of
all these was in Hans Castorp’s face and bearing as he listened. He
seemed to be practising a seemly obscurantism; to be mentally
drawing the veil over these sounds that he heard; to be telling him-
self that honour forbade his taking any cognizance of them, or
even hearing them at all — it gave him an air of propriety which
was not quite native, though he knew how to assume it on occa-
sion.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

40

With this mien, then, he drew back from the balcony into his
room, in order not to listen further to proceedings which, for all
the giggling that went with them, were plainly in dead earnest,
even alarming. But from indoors the noise could be heard even
more plainly. He seemed to hear a chase about the room; a chair
fell over; someone was caught and seized; loud kissing ensued —
and the music below had changed to a waltz, a popular air whose
hackneyed, melodious phrases accompanied the invisible scene.
Hans Castorp stood towel in hand and listened, against his better
judgment. And he began to blush through the powder; for what he
had all along seen coming was come, and the game had passed quite
frankly over into the bestial. “ Good Lord! ” he thought. He
turned away and made as much noise as possible while he con-
cluded his toilet. “ Well, at least they are married, as far as that
goes,” he said to himself. “ But in broad daylight — it’s a bit thick!
And last night too, I’m sure. But of course they are ill, or at least
one of them, or they wouldn’t be here — that may be some excuse.
The scandalous part of it is, the walls are so thin one can’t help
hearing everything. Simply intolerable. The place is shamefully
jerry-built, of course. What if I should see them, or even be intro-
duced? I simply couldn’t endure it! ” Here Hans Castorp re-
marked with surprise that the flush which had mounted in his
freshly shaven cheek did not subside, nor its accompanying
warmth: his face glowed with the same dry heat as on the evening
before. He had got free of it in sleep, but the blush had made it
set in again. He did not feel the friendlier for this discovery to-
wards the wretched pair next door; in fact he stuck out his lips and
muttered a derogatory word in their direction, as he tried to cool
his hot face by bathing it in cold water — and only made it glow
the more. He felt put out; his voice vibrated with ill humour as he
answered to his cousin’s knock on the wall; and he appeared to
Joachim on his entrance like anything but a man refreshed and
invigorated by a good night’s sleep.

Breakfast

“ Morning,” Joachim said. “ Well, that was your first night up
here. How did you find it? ”

He was dressed for out-of-doors, in sports clothes and stout
boots, and carried his ulster over his arm. The outline of the flat
bottle could be seen on the side pocket. As yesterday, he wore
no hat.

“ Thanks,” responded Hans Castorp, “ it was well enough, I

BREAKFAST

41

won’t try to judge yet. I’ve had all sorts of mixed-up dreams, and
this building seems to possess the disadvantage of being porous —
the sound goes straight through it. It’s annoying. — Who is that
dark woman down in the garden? ”

Joachim knew at once whom he meant.

“ Oh,” he said, “ that’s Tous-les-deux. We all call her that up
here, because it’s the only thing she says. Mexican, you know;
doesn’t know a word of German and hardly any French, just a
few scraps. She has been here for five weeks with her eldest son,
a hopeless case, without much longer to go. He has it all over,
tubercular through and through, you might say. Behrens says it is
much like typhus, at the end — horrible for all concerned. Well,
two weeks ago the second son came up, to see his brother before
the end — handsome as a picture; both of them were that, with
eyes like live coals — they fluttered the dovecots, I can tell you. He
had been coughing a bit down below, but otherwise quite lively.
Well, he no sooner gets up here than he begins to run a tempera-
ture, high fever, you know, 103. i°. They put him to bed — and if
he gets up again, Behrens says, it will be more good luck than good
management. But it was high time he came, in any case, Behrens
says. — Well, and since then the mother goes about — whenever
she is not sitting with them — and if you speak to her, she just says:

6 T ous les deux ! ’ She can’t say any more, and for the moment
there is no one up here who understands Spanish.”

“ So that’s it,” Hans Castorp said. “ Will she say it to me, when
I get to know her, do you think? That will be queer — funny and
weird at the same time, I mean.” His eyes looked as they had yes-
terday, they felt hot and heavy, as if tired with weeping, and yet
brilliant too, with the gleam that had been kindled in them yester-
day at the sound of that strange, new cough on the part of the
gentleman rider. He had the feeling that he had been out of touch
with yesterday since waking, and had only now picked up the
threads again where he laid them down. He told his cousin he was
ready, sprinkling a few drops of lavender-water on his handker-
chief as he spoke and dabbing his face with it, on the brow and
under the eyes. “ If you like, we can go to breakfast, tous les
deux” he recklessly joked. Joachim looked with mildness at him,
then smiled his enigmatic smile of mingled melancholy and mock-
ery — or so it seemed, for he did not express himself otherwise.

After looking to his supply of cigars Hans Castorp took coat
and stick, also, rather defiantly, his hat — he was far too sure of
himself and his station in life to alter his ways and acquire new
ones for a mere three weeks’ visit — and they went out and down

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

42

the steps. In the corridor Joachim pointed to this and that door
and gave the names of the occupants — there were German names,
but also all sorts of foreign ones — with brief comments on them
and the seriousness of their cases.

They met people already coming back from breakfast, and
when Joachim said good-morning, Hans Castorp courteously
lifted his hat. He was tense and nervous, as a young man is when
about to present himself before strangers — when, that is, he is
conscious that his eyes are heavy and his face red. The last, how-
ever, was only true in part, for he was rather pale than otherwise.

“ Before I forget it,” he said abruptly, “ you may introduce me
to the lady in the garden if you like, I mean if it happens that way,
I have no objection. She would just say: 4 Tous les deux ’ to me,
and I shouldn’t mind it, being prepared, and knowing what it
means — I should know how to look. But I don’t wish to know
the Russian pair, do you hear? I expressly- don’t wish it. They are
a very ill-behaved lot. If I must live for three weeks next door to
them, and nothing else could be arranged, at least I needn’t know
them. I am justified in that, and I simply and explicitly decline.”

“ Very good,” Joachim said. “ Did they disturb you? Yes, they
are barbarians, more or less; uncivilized, I told you so before. He
comes to the table in a leather jacket, very shabby, I always won-
der Behrens doesn’t make a row. And she isn’t the cleanest in this
world, with her feather hat. You may make yourself quite easy,
they sit at the 4 bad ’ Russian table, a long way off us — there is a
4 good ’ Russian table, too, you see, where the nicer Russians sit
— and there is not much chance of you coming into contact with
them, even if you wanted to. It is not very easy to make acquaint-
ance here, partly from the fact that there are so many foreigners.
Personally, as long as I’ve been here, I know very few.”

44 Which of the two is ill? ” Hans Castrop asked . 44 He or she? ”

44 The man I think. Yes, only the man,” Joachim answered, ab-
sently. They passed among the hat- and coat-racks and entered the
light, low-vaulted hall, where there was a buzzing of voices, a
clattering of dishes, and a running to and fro of waitresses with
steaming jugs.

There were seven tables, all but two of them standing length-
wise of the room. They were good-sized, seating each ten persons,
though not all of them were at present full. A few steps diagonally
into the room, and they stood at their places; Hans Castorp’s was
at the end of a table placed between the two crosswise ones. Erect
behind his chair, he bowed stiffly but amiably to each table-mate
in turn, as Joachim formally presented him; hardly seeing them,

BREAKFAST

43

much less having their names penetrate his mind. He caught but a
single name and person — Frau Stohr, whom he perceived to have
a red face and greasy ash-blond hair. Looking at her he could
quite credit the malapropisms Joachim told of. Her face expressed
nothing but ill-nature and ignorance. He sat down, observing as
he did so that early breakfast was taken seriously up here.

There were pots of marmalade and honey, basins of rice and
oatmeal porridge, dishes of cold meat and scrambled eggs; a pleni-
tude of butter, a Gruyere cheese dropping moisture under a glass
bell. A bowl of fresh and dried fruits stood in the centre of the
table. A waitress in black and white asked Hans Castorp whether
he would drink coffee, cocoa or tea. She was small as a child, with
a long, oldish face — a dwarf, he realized with a start. He looked
at his cousin, who only shrugged indifferently with brows and
shoulders, as though to say: “ Well, what of it? ” So he adjusted
himself as speedily as possible to the fact that he was being served
by a dwarf, and put special consideration into his voice as he asked
for tea. Then he began eating rice with cinnamon and sugar, his
eyes roving over the table full of other inviting viands, and over
the guests at the six remaining tables, Joachim’s companions and
fellow victims, who were all inwardly infected, and now sat there
breakfasting.

The hall was done in that modem style which knows how to
give just the right touch of individuality to something in reality
very simple. It was rather shallow in proportion to its length, and
opened in great arched bays into a sort of lobby surrounding it,
in which serving-tables were placed. The pillars were faced half-
way up with wood finished to look like sandalwood, the upper
part white-enamelled, like the ceiling and upper half of the walls.
They were stenciled in gay-coloured bands of simple and lively
designs which were repeated on the girders of the vaulted ceiling.
The room was further enlivened by several electric chandeliers in
bright brass, consisting of three rings placed horizontally one over
the other and held together by delicate woven work, the lowest
ring set with globes of milky glass like little moons. There were
four glass doors, two on the opposite wall, opening on the veran-
dah, a third at the bottom of the room on the left, leading into the
front hall, and a fourth, by which Hans Castorp had entered
through a vestibule, as Joachim had brought him down a different
stair from the one they had used yesterday evening.

He had on his right a plain-looking woman in black, with a
dull flush on her cheeks, the skin of which was downy-looking,
as an older person’s often is. She looked to him like a seamstress

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

44

or home dressmaker, the idea being suggested by the fact that she
took only coffee and buttered rolls for breakfast; since his child-
hood he had always somehow associated dressmakers with coffee
and buttered rolls. On his left sat an English spinster, also well on
in years, very ugly, with frozen, withered-looking fingers. She sat
reading her home letters, which were written in round hand, and
drinking tea the colour of blood. Next her was Joachim, and then
Frau Stohr, in a woollen blouse of Scotch plaid. She held her left
hand doubled up in a fist near her cheek as she ate, and drew her
upper lip back from her long, narrow, rodent-like teeth when she
spoke, obviously trying to make an impression of culture and re-
finement. A young man with thin moustaches sat next beyond.
His facial expression was of one with something bad-tasting in his
mouth, and he ate without a word. He had come in after Hans
Castorp was already seated, with his chin sunk on his breast; and
sat down so, without even lifting his head in greeting, seeming
by his bearing plumply to decline being made acquainted with
the new guest. He was, perhaps, too ill to have thought of or care
for appearances, or even to take any interest in his surroundings.
Opposite him there had sat for a short time a very lean, light-
blonde girl who emptied a bottle of yogurt on her plate, ladled
it up with a spoon, and took herself off.

The conversation at table was not lively. Joachim talked po-
litely with Frau Stohr, inquired after her condition and heard
with proper solicitude that it was unsatisfactory. She com-
plained of relaxation. “ I feel so relaxed/' she said with a drawl
and an underbred, affected manner. And she had had 99. 1 0 when
she got up that morning — what was she likely to have by after-
noon? The dressmaker confessed to the same temperature, but
she on the contrary felt excited, tense, and restless, as though
some important event were about to happen, which was cer-
tainly not the case; the excitation was purely physical, quite
without emotional grounds. Hans Castorp thought to himself that
she could not be a dressmaker after all; she spoke too correctly,
even pedantically. He found her excitation, or rather the expres-
sion of it, somehow unsuitable, almost offensive, in so homely
and insignificant a creature. He asked her and Frau Stohr, one
after the other, how long they had been up here, and found that
one had five, the other seven months to her credit. Then he mus-
tered his English to inquire of his neighbour on the right what
sort of tea she was drinking (it was made of rose-hips) and if
it tasted good, which she almost passionately affirmed; then he
watched people coming and going in the room; the first break-

BREAKFAST

45

fast, it appeared, was not regarded as a regular meal, in any
strict sense.

He had been a little afraid of unpleasant impressions, but found
himself agreeably disappointed. The room was lively, one had
not the least feeling of being in a place of suffering. Tanned young
people of both sexes came in humming, spoke to the waitresses,
and fell to upon the viands with robust appetite. There were older
people, married couples, a whole family with children, speaking
Russian, and half-grown lads. The women wore chiefly close-
fitting jackets of wool or silk— the so-called sweater — in white
or colours, with turnover collars and side pockets; they would
stand with hands thrust deep in these pockets, and talk — it looked
very pretty. At some tables photographs were being handed about

— amateur photography, no doubt — at another stamps were be-
ing exchanged. The talk was of the weather, of how one had
slept, of what one had “ measured in the mouth ” on rising. Nearly
everybody seemed in good spirits, probably on no other grounds
than that they were in numerous company and had no immediate
cares. Here and there, indeed, sat someone who rested his head on
his hand and stared before him. They let him stare, and paid
no heed.

Hans Castorp gave a sudden angry start. A door was slammed

— it was the one on the left, leading into the hall, and someone
had let it fall shut, or even banged it, a thing he detested; he had
never been able to endure it. Whether from his upbringing, or
out of a natural idiosyncrasy, he loathed the slamming of doors,
and could have struck the guilty person. In this case, the door
was filled in above with small glass panes, which augmented the
shock with their ringing and rattling. “ Oh, come,” he thought
angrily, “ what kind of damned carelessness was that? ” But at the
same time the seamstress addressed him with a remark, and he
had no time to see who the transgressor had been. Deep creases
furrowed his blond brows, and his face was contorted as he
turned to reply to his neighbour.

Joachim asked whether the doctors had come through. Yes,
someone answered, they had been there once and left the room
just as the cousins entered. Then it would be better not to wait,
Joachim thought. An opportunity for introducing his cousin
would surely come in the course of the day. But at the door they
nearly ran into Hofrat Behrens, as he entered with hasty steps,
followed by Dr. Krokowski.

“ Hullo-ullo there! Take care, gentlemen! That might have
been rough on all of our corns! ” He spoke with a strong low-

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46

Saxon accent, broad and mouthingly. “ Oh, so here you are,”
he addressed Hans Castorp, whom Joachim, heels together, pre-
sented. “ Well, glad to see you.” He reached the young man a
hand the size of a shovel. He was some three heads taller than
Dr. Krokowski; a bony man, his hair already quite white; his
neck stuck out, his large, goggling bloodshot blue eyes were
swimming in tears; he had a snub nose, and a close-trimmed little
moustache, which made a crooked line because his upper lip
was drawn up on one side. What Joachim had said about his
cheeks was fully borne out; they were really purple, and set off
his head garishly against the white surgeon’s coat he wore, a
belted smock of more than knee-length, beneath which showed
striped trousers and a pair of enormous feet in rather worn yellow
laced boots. Dr. Krokowski too was in professional garb; but
his smock was of some shiny black stuff and made like a shirt,
with elastic bands at the wrists. It contrasted sharply with the
pallor of his skin. His manner suggested that he was present
solely in his capacity as assistant; he took no part in the greeting,
but a certain expression at the comers of his mouth betrayed the
fact that he felt the strain of his subordinate position.

“ Cousins? ” the Hofrat asked, motioning with his hand from
one to the other of the two young men and looking at them with
his bloodshot eyes. “ Is he going to follow the drums like you? ”
he addressed Joachim, jerking his head at Hans Castorp. “God
forbid, eh? I could tell as soon as I saw you” — he spoke now
directly to the young man — “ that you were a layman; there’s
something civilian and comfortable about you, not like our sabre-
rattling corporal here! You’d be a better patient than he is, I’ll
wager. I can tell by looking at people, you know, whether they’ll
make good patients or not; it takes talent, everything takes talent
— and this myrmidon here hasn’t a spark. Maybe he shows up
on the parade-ground, for aught I know; but he’s no good at
being ill. Will you believe it, he’s always wanting to clear out!
Badgers me all the time, simply can’t wait to get down there and
be skinned alive. There’s doggedness for you! Won’t give us even
a measly half-a-year! And yet it’s quite pretty up here; I leave
it to you if it isn’t, Ziemssen, what? . . . Well, your cousin will
appreciate us, even if you don’t. He’ll get some fun out of it.
There’s no shortage in the lady market here, either; we have the
most charming females. At least, some of them are very pictur-
esque on the outside. But you ought to have better colour your-
self, you know, if you want to please the sex. ‘ The golden tree
of life is green,’ as the poet says — but it’s a poor colour for the

BANTER

47

complexion, all the same. Totally anaemic, of course,” he broke
off, and without more ado put up his index and middle fingers and
drew down Hans Castorp’s eyelid. “ Precisely! Totally anaemic,
as I was saying. You know it wasn’t such a bad idea of yours
to let your native Hamburg shift for itself awhile. Great insti-
tution, Hamburg — simply revels in humidity — sends us a tidy
contingent every year. But if I may take the occasion to give
you the benefit of my poor opinion — sine pecunia, you under-
stand, quite sine pecunia — I would suggest that you do just as
your cousin does, while you are up here. You couldn’t turn a
better trick than to behave for the time as though you had
a slight tuberculosis pulmonum y and put on a little flesh. It’s curi-
ous about the metabolism of protein with us up here. Although
the process of combustion is heightened, yet the body at the same
time puts on flesh. — Well, Ziemssen, slept pretty well, what? . . .
Splendid! Then get on with the out-of-doors exercise — but not
more than half an hour, you hear? And afterwards stick the quick-
silver cigar in your face, eh? And be good and write it down,
Ziemssen! That’s a conscientious lad! Saturday I’ll look at the
curve. Your cousin better measure too. Measuring can’t hurt any-
body. Morning, gentlemen. Have a good time — morning — morn-
ing — ” Krokowski joined him as he sailed off down the hall,
swinging his arms palms backward, directing to right and left
the question about sleeping well, which was answered on all sides
in the affirmative.

Banter . Viaticum . Interrupted Mirth

“ Very nice man,” Hans Castorp said, as after a friendly nod to
the lame concierge, who was sorting letters in his lodge, they
passed out into the open air. The main entrance was on the
south-west side of the white building, the central portion of
which was a storey higher than the wings, and crowned by a
turret with a roof of slate-coloured tin. You did not issue from
this side into the hedged-in garden, but were immediately in
the open, in sight of the steep mountain meadows, dotted with
single fir-trees of moderate size, and writhen, stunted pines. The
way they took — it was the only one they could take, outside
the drive going down to the valley — rose by a gentle ascent to
the left, behind the sanatorium, past the kitchen and domestic
offices, where huge dustbins stood at the area rails. Thence it
led in the same direction for a goodish piece, then made a sharp
bend to the right and mounted more rapidly along the thinly

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

48

wooded slopes. It was a reddish path, firm and yet ratter moist
underfoot, with boulders here and there along the edge. The
cousins were by no means alone upon it: guests who had finished
breakfast not long after them followed hard upon their steps,
and groups of others, already returning, approached with the
stalking gait of people descending a steep incline.

“ Very nice man,” repeated Hans Castorp. “ He has such a
flow of words I enjoy listening to him. 4 Quicksilver cigar ’ was
capital, I got it at once. — But I’ll just light up a real one,” he
said, pausing, “ I can’t hold out any longer. I haven’t had a proper
smoke since yesterdav after luncheon. Excuse me a minute.”
He opened his automobile-leather case, with its silver monogram,
and drew out a Maria Mancini, a beautiful specimen of the first
layer, flattened on one side as he particularly liked it; he cut off
the tip slantingly with a sharp little tool he wore on his watch-
chain, then, striking a tiny flame with his pocket apparatus, puffed
with concentration at the long, blunt-ended cigar until it was
alight. “ There! ” he said. “ Now, as far as I’m concerned, we can
get on with the exercise. You don’t smoke — out of sheer dog-
gedness, of course.”

“ I never do smoke,” answered Joachim; 44 why should I begin
up here? ”

44 1 don’t understand it,” Hans Castorp said. 44 1 never can under-
stand how anybody can not smoke — it deprives a man of the
best part of life, so to speak — or at least of a first-class pleasure.
When I wake in the morning, I feel glad at the thought of being
able to smoke all day, and when I eat, I look forward to smoking
afterwards; I might almost say I only eat for the sake of being
able to smoke — though of course that is more or less of an ex-
aggeration. But a day without tobacco would be flat, stale, and
unprofitable, as far as I am concerned. If I had to say to myself
to-morrow: 4 No smoke to-day ’ — I believe I shouldn’t find the
courage to get up — on my honour, I’d stop in bed. But when a
man has a good cigar in his mouth — of course it mustn’t have a
side draught or not draw well, that is extremely irritating — but
with a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing
can touch him — literally. It’s just like lying on the beach: when
you lie on the beach, why, you lie on the beach, don’t you? — you
don’t require anything else, in the line of work or amusement
either. — People smoke all over the world, thank goodness; there
is nowhere one could get to, so far as I know, where the habit
hasn’t penetrated. Even polar expeditions fit themselves out with
supplies of tobacco to help them carry on. I’ve always felt a thrill

BANTER

49

of sympathy when I read that. You can be very miserable: I
might be feeling perfectly wretched, for instance; but I could
always stand it if I had my smoke.”

“ But after all,” Joachim said, “ it is rather flabby-minded of
you to be so dependent on it. Behrens is right, you are certainly
a civilian. He meant it for a sort of compliment, I dare say; but
the truth is, you are a civilian — incurable. But then, you are
healthy, you can do what you like,” he added, and his eyes took
on their tired look.

“ Yes, healthy except for the anaemia,” said Hans Castorp.
“That was certainly straight from the shoulder, his telling me
I look green. But it is true — I’ve noticed myself that I look green
in comparison with the rest of you up here, though it never
struck me down home. And it was nice of him to give me advice
gratis like that — ‘ sine pecimia as he put it. I’ll gladly undertake
to do as he says, and live just as you do. After all, how else should
I do while I’m up here? And it can’t do me any harm; suppose I
do put on a little flesh, then, in God’s name — though it sounds a
bit disgusting, you will admit.”

Joachim coughed slightly now and then as they walked, it
seemed to strain him to go uphill. When he did so for the third
time, he paused and stood still with a frown. “ Go on ahead,”
he said. Hans Castorp hastened to do so, without looking round.
Then he slackened his pace, and finally almost stopped, as it
seemed to him he must have got a good distance ahead or Joachim.
But he did not look round.

A troop of guests of both sexes approached him. He had seen
them coming along the level path half-way up the slope; now they
were stalking downhill directly towards him; he heard their
voices. They were six or seven persons of various ages: some in
the bloom of youth, others rather older. He took a good look at
them, from the side, as he walked with bent head, thinking about
Joachim. They were tanned and bare-headed, the women in
sweaters, the men mostly without overcoats or even walking-
sticks, all of them like people who have just gone casually out
for a turn in the open. Going downhill involves no sustained
muscular effort, only an agreeable process of putting on the brakes
in order not to finish by running and tripping head over heels;
it is really nothing more than just letting yourself go; and thus
the gait of these people had something loose- jointed and flighty
about it, which communicated itself to the appearance of the
whole group and made one almost wish to be of their lively party.

They came close up to him, he saw their faces clearly. No,

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50

they were not all brown: two of the ladies were, on the contrary,
distinctly pale; one of them thin as a lath, and ivory-white of
complexion, the other shorter and plump, disfigured by freckles.
They all looked at him, smiling rather boldly. A tall young girl
in a green sweater, with untidy hair and foolish, half-open eyes,
brushed past Hans Castorp, nearly touching him with her arm.
And as she did so she whistled — oh, impossible! Yes, she did
though; not with her mouth, indeed, for she did not pucker the
lips, but held them firmly closed. She whistled from somewhere
inside, and looked at him with her silly, half-shut eyes — it was
an extraordinarily unpleasant whistle, harsh and penetrating, yet
hollow-sounding; a long-drawn-out note, falling at the end, like
the sound made by those rubber pigs one buys at fairs, that give
out the air in a wailing key as they collapse. The sound issued,
inexplicably, from her breast — and then, with her troop, she
had passed on.

Hans Castorp stood and stared. In a moment he turned round,
understanding at least so much, that the atrocious thing must
have been a joke, a put-up job; for he saw over his shoulder that
they were laughing as they went, that a stodgy, thick-lipped
youth, whose coat was turned up in an unseemly way about him
so that he could put both hands in his trouser pockets, turned
his head and laughed quite openly. Joachim approached. He had
greeted the group with his usual punctiliousness, almost pausing,
and bowing with heels together; now he came mildly up to his
cousin.

“ Why are you making such a face? ” he asked.

“ She whistled,” answered Hans Castorp. “ She whistled out
of her inside as she passed. Will you have the goodness to ex-
plain to me how? ”

“ Oh! ” Joachim said, and laughed curtly. “ Nonsense, she
didn’t do it with her inside. That was Hermine Kleefeld, she
whistles with her pneumothorax.”

“ With her what? ” Hans Castorp demanded. He felt wrought
up, without knowing why. His voice was between laughter and
tears as he added: “ You can’t expect me to understand your
lingo.”

“ Oh, come along,” Joachim said. “ I can explain it to you as
we go. You looked rooted to the spot! It’s a surgical operation,
they often perform it up here. Behrens is a regular aab at it.
When one of the lungs is very much affected, you understand,
and the other one fairly healthy, they make the bad one stop
functioning for a while, to give it a rest. That is to say, they

BANTER

51

make an incision here, somewhere on the side, I don’t know the
precise place, but Behrens has it down fine. Then they fill you
up with gas — nitrogen, you know — and that puts the cheesy part
of the lung out of operation. The gas doesn’t last long, of course;
it has to be renewed every two weeks; they fill you up again,
as it were. Now, if that keeps on a year or two, and all goes well,
the lung gets healed. Not always, of course; it’s a risky business.
But they say they have had a good deal of success with it. Those
people you saw just now all have it. That was Frau litis, with the
freckles, and the thin, pale one was Fraulein Levi, that had to lie
so long in bed, you know. They have formed a group, for of
course a thing like the pneumothorax brings people together.
They call themselves the Half-Lung Club; everybody knows
them by that name. And Hermine Kleefeld is the pride of the
club, because she can whistle with hers. It is a special gift, by no
means everybody can do it. I can’t tell you how it is done, and
she herself can’t exactly describe it. But when she has been walk-
ing rather fast, she can make it whistle, and of course she does it
to frighten people, especially when they are new to the place.
Also, I believe she uses up nitrogen when she does it, for she has
to be refilled once a week.”

Then it was that Hans Castorp laughed. His excitement, while
Joachim was speaking, had fixed for its outlet upon laughter
rather than tears; and he laughed as he walked, his hand over
his eyes, his shoulders bent, shaken by a succession of subdued
chuckles.

“ Are they incorporated? ” he asked as soon as he could
speak. His voice sounded weak and tearful with suppressed
laughter. “ Have they any by-laws? Pity you aren’t a member,
you could get me in as a guest, as — as associate half-lunger. —
You ought to ask Behrens to put you out of commission, then
perhaps you could learn to whistle too; it must be something
one could learn — well, that’s the funniest thing ever I heard in
my life! ” he finished, heaving a deep sigh. “ I beg your pardon
for speaking of it like this, but they seem very jolly over it them-
selves, your pneumatic friends. The way they were coming along
— and to think that was the Half-Lung Club. Tootle-ty-too, she
went at me — she must be out of her senses! It was utter cheek —
will you tell me why they behave so cheekily? ”

Joachim sought for a reply. “ Good Lord,” he said, “ they are
so free — ■ I mean, they are so young, and time is nothing to them,
and then they may die — perhaps — why should they make a long
face? Sometimes I think being ill and dying aren’t serious at all.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

5 2

just a sort of loafing about and wasting time; life is only serious
down below. You will get to understand that after a while, but
not until you have spent some time up here.”

“ Surely, surely,” Hans Castorp said. “ I’m sure I shall. I al-
ready feel great interest in the life up here, and when one is
interested, the understanding follows. — But what is the matter
with me — it doesn’t taste good,” he said, and took his cigar out of
his mouth to look at it. “ I’ve been asking myself all this time
what the matter was, and now I see it is Maria. She tastes like
papier mache, I do assure you — precisely as when one has a
spoilt digestion. I can’t understand it. I did eat more than usual
for breakfast, but that cannot be the reason, for she usually tastes
particularly good after a too hearty meal. Do you think it is be-
cause I had such a disturbed night? Perhaps that is how I got
out of order. No, I really can’t stick it,” he said, after another
attempt. “ Every pull is a disappointment, there is no sense in
forcing it.” And after a hesitating moment he tossed the cigar off
down the slope, among the wet pine-boughs. “Do you know
what I think it has to do with? ” he asked. “ I feel convinced it
is connected with this damned heat I feel all the time in my face.
I have suffered from it ever since I got up. I feel as though I were
blushing the whole time, deuce take it! Did you have anything
like that when you first came? ”

“ Yes,” said Joachim. “ I was rather queer at first. Don’t think
too much of it. I told you it isn’t so easy to accustom oneself to
the life up here. But you will get right again after a bit. Look, that
bench is in a pretty place. Let’s sit down awhile and then go
home. I must take my cure.”

The path had become level. It ran now in the direction of
Davos-Platz, some third of the height, and kept a continuous
view, between high, sparse, wind-blown pines, of the settlement
below, gleaming whitely in the bright air. The bench on which
they sat leaned against the steep wall of the mountain-side, and
near them a spring in an open wooden trough ran gurgling and
plashing to the valley.

Joachim was for instructing his cousin in the names of the
mist-wreathed Alpine heights which seemed to enclose the valley
on the south, pointing them out in turn with his alpenstock. But
Hans Castorp gave the mountains only a fleeting glance. He
sat bent over, tracing figures on the ground with the ferrule of
his cityish silver-mounted walking-stick. There were other things
he wanted to know.

“ What I meant to ask you,” he began, “ the case in my room

BANTER 53

had died just before I got here; have there been many deaths
since you came? ”

“ Several, certainly,” answered Joachim. “ But they are very
discreetly managed, you understand; you hear nothing of them,
or only by chance afterwards; everything is kept strictly private
when there is a death, out of regard for the other patients, espe-
cially the ladies, who might easily get a shock. You don’t notice
it, even when somebody dies next door. The coffin is brought
very early in the morning, while you are asleep, and the person
in question is fetched away at a suitable time too — for instance,
while we are eating.”

“ H’m,” said Hans Castorp, and continued to draw. “ I see.
That sort of thing goes on behind the scenes, then.”

“ Yes — for the most part. But lately — let me see, wait a minute,
it might be possibly eight weeks ago — ”

“Then you can hardly say lately,” Hans Castorp pounced
on him crisply.

“ What? Well, not lately, then, since you’re so precise. I was
just trying to reckon. Well, then, some time ago, it was, I got
a glimpse behind the scenes — purely by chance — and I remem-
ber it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought the
Sacrament to little Hu jus, Barbara Hu jus — she was a Catholic —
the Last Sacrament, you know, Extreme Unction. She was still
about when I first came up here, and she could be wildly hilar-
ious, regularly giggly, like a little kid. But after that it went
pretty fast with her, she didn’t get up any more — her room was
three doors off mine — and then her parents arrived, and now
the priest was coming to her. It was while everybody was at tea,
not a soul in the passages. But I had gone to sleep in the after-
noon rest and overslept myself, I hadn’t heard the gong and was
a quarter of an hour late. So that at the decisive moment I wasn’t
where all the others were, but behind the scenes, as you call it;
as I go along the corridor, they come toward me, in their lace
robes, with the cross in front, a gold cross with lanterns — it made
me think of the Schellenbaum they march with, in front of the
recruits.”

“ What sort of comparison is that? ” Hans Castorp asked,
severely.

“ It looked like that to me — I couldn’t help thinking of it.
But listen. They came towards me, marching, quick step, three
of them, so far as I remember: the man with the cross, the priest,
with glasses on his nose, and a boy with a censer. The priest was
holding the Sacrament to his breast, it was covered up, and he had

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

54

his head bent on one side and looked very sanctified — k is their
holy of holies, of course.”

“Exactly,” Hans Castorp said. “And just for that reason I
wonder at your making the comparison you did.”

“Yes, but wait a bit — if you had been there, you wouldn’t
have known what kind of face you would make remembering it
afterwards. It was the sort of thing to give you bad dreams — ”

“How?”

“ Like this: I ask myself how I am supposed to behave, under
the circumstances. I had no hat to take off — ”

“ There, you see, don’t you? ” Hans Castorp interrupted him
again. “ You see now, one ought to wear a hat. Naturally I’ve
noticed that none of you do up here; but you should, so you
can have something to take off when it is proper to do so. Well,
but what then? ”

“ I stood against the wall,” Joachim went on, “ as respectfully
as I could, and bent over a little when they were by me — it was
just at little Hujus’s door, number twenty-eight. The priest
seemed to be pleased that I saluted; he acknowledged very courte-
ously and took off his cap. But at the same time they came to a
stop, and the ministrant with the censer knocks, and lifts the latch,
and makes way for his superior to enter. Just try to imagine my
sensations, and how frightened I was! The minute the priest sets
his foot over the threshold, there begins a hullabaloo from inside,
a screaming such as you never heard the like of, three or four
times running, and then a shriek — on and on without stopping,
at the top of her lungs: Ah-h-h-h! So full of horror and rebellion,
and anguish, and — well, perfectly indescribable. And in between
came a gruesome sort of begging. Then it suddenly got all dulled
and hollow-sounding, as though it had sunk down into the earth,
or were coming out of a cellar.”

Hans Castorp had turned with violence to face his cousin.
“ Was that the Hujus? ” he asked abruptly. “ And how do you
mean — out of a cellar? ”

“ She had crawled down under the covers,” said Joachim. “ Im-
agine how I felt! The priest stood on the threshold and spoke sooth-
ingly, I can see now just how he stuck his head out and drew
it back again while he talked. The cross-bearer and the acolyte
hesitated, and couldn’t get in. I could see between them into the
room. It was just like yours and mine, the bed on the side wall
left of the door, and people were standing at the head, the rela-
tives of course, the parents, talking soothingly at the bed, where

BANTER 55

you could see nothing but a formless mass that was begging and
protesting horribly, and kicking about with its legs.”

44 You say she kicked? ”

“ With all her might. But it did her no good, she had to take
the Sacrament. The priest went up to her, and the two others
went inside the room, and the door closed. But first I saw little
Hujus’s head come up for a second, a shock of blond hair, and
look at the priest with staring eyes, that were without any colour,
and then with a wail go down under the sheet again.”

“ And you tell me all that now for the first time? ” Hans Castorp
said, after a pause. “ I can’t understand how you came not to
speak of it yesterday evening. But, good Lord, she must have
had strength, to defend herself like that. That takes strength.
They ought not to fetch the priest before one is quite weak.”

“ She was weak,” responded Joachim. — “ Oh, there’s so much
to tell, one doesn’t have time to pick and choose. She was weak
enough! It was only the fright gave her so much strength. She was
in a fearful state when she saw she was going to die; and she was
such a young girl, it was excusable, after all. But grown men
behave like that too, sometimes, and it’s deplorably feeble of
them, of course. Behrens knows how to treat them, he takes
just the right tone in such cases.”

44 What kind of tone? ” Hans Castorp asked with drawn brows.

“ 4 Don’t behave like that,’ he tells them,” Joachim answered.
“ At least, that is what he told somebody lately — we heard it from
the Directress, who was present and helped to hold the man.
He was one of those who make a regular scene at the end, and
simply won’t die. So Behrens brought him up with a round turn:

4 Do me the favour not to behave like that,’ he said to him; and the
patient became quite calm and died as quietly as you please.”

Hans Castorp slapped his thigh and threw himself back against
the bench, looking up at the sky.

“ I say, that’s pretty steep,” he cried. 44 Goes at him like that,
and simply tells him not to behave that way! To a dying man!
But after all, a dying man has something in a way — sacred about
him. One can’t just — perfectly coolly, like that — a dying man
is sort of holy, I should think! ”

44 1 don’t deny it,” said Joachim. 44 But when one behaves as
feebly as that — ”

44 No,” persisted Hans Castorp, with a violence out of propor-
tion to the opposition he met, 44 1 insist that a dying man is above
any chap that is going about and laughing and earning his living

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

and eating his three meals a day. It isn’t good enough — ” his voice
quavered “ — it isn’t good enough, for one to calmly — just
calmly — ” his words trailed off in a fit of laughter that seized
and overcame him, the laughter of yesterday, a profound, illimita-
ble, body-shaking laughter, that shut up his eyes and made tears
well from beneath their lids.

“ Sh-h! ” went Joachim, suddenly. “ Keep quiet,” he whis-
pered, and nudged his uncontrollably hilarious cousin in the side.
Hans Castorp looked up through tears.

A stranger was approaching them from the left, a dark man of
graceful carriage, with curling black moustaches, wearing light-
coloured check trousers. He exchanged a good-morning with
Joachim in accents agreeable and precise, and then remained
standing before them in an easy posture, leaning on his cane, with
his legs crossed.

Satana

His age would have been hard to say, probably between thirty
and forty; for though he gave an impression of youthfulness, yet
the hair on his temples was sprinkled with silver and gone quite
thin on his head. Two bald bays ran along the narrow scanty
parting, and added to the height of his forehead. His clothing,
loose trousers in light yellowish checks, and too long, double-
breasted pilot coat, with very wide lapels, made no slightest claim
to elegance; and his stand-up collar, with rounding corners, was
rough on the edges from frequent washing. His black cravat
showed wear, and he wore no cuffs, as Hans Castorp saw at once
from the lax way the sleeve hung round the wrist. But despite all
that, he knew he had a gentleman before him: the stranger’s easy,
even charming pose and cultured expression left no doubt of that.
Yet by this mingling of shabbiness and grace, by the black eyes
and softly waving moustaches, Hans Castorp was irresistibly re-
minded of certain foreign musicians who used to come to Ham-
burg at Christmas to play in the streets before people’s doors.
He could see them rolling up their velvet eyes and holding
out their soft hats for the coins tossed from the windows. “ A
hand-organ man,” he thought. Thus he was not surprised at the
name he heard, as Joachim rose from the bench and in some em-
barrassment presented him: “ My cousin Castorp, Herr Settem-
brini.”

Hans Castorp had got up at the same time, the traces of his
burst of hilarity still on his face. But the Italian courteously bade
them both not to disturb themselves, and made them sit down

SATANA

57

again, while he maintained his easy pose before them. He smiled,
standing there and looking at the cousins, in particular at Hans
Castorp; a smile that was a fine, almost mocking deepening and
crisping of one corner of the mouth, just at the point where the
full moustache made its beautiful upward curve. It had upon the
cousins a singular effect: it somehow constrained them to mental
alertness and clarity; it sobered the reeling Hans Castorp in a
twinkling, and made him ashamed.

Settembrini said: “You are in good spirits — and with reason
too, with excellent reason. What a splendid morning! A blue sky,
a smjiling sun ” — with an easy, adequate motion of the arm he
raised a small, yellowish-skinned hand to the heavens, and sent
a lively glance upward after it — “ one could almost forget where
one is.”

He spoke without accent, only the precise enunciation be-
trayed the foreigner. His lips seemed to take a certain pleasure
in forming the words. It was most agreeable to hear him.

“ You had a pleasant journey hither, I hope? ” he turned to
Hans Castorp. “ And do you already know your fate — I mean
has the mournful ceremony of the first examination taken place? ”
Here, if he had really been expecting a reply he should have
paused; he had put his question, and Hans Castorp prepared to
answer. But he went on: “ Did you get off easily? One might
put — ” here he paused a second, and the crisping at the corner of
his mouth grew crisper — “ more than one interpretation upon
your laughter. How many months have our Minos and Rhada-
manthus knocked you down for? ” The slang phrase sounded
droll on his lips. “ Shall I guess? Six? Nine? You know we are
free with the time up here — ”

Hans Castorp laughed, astonished, at the same time racking his
brains to re member who Minos and Rhadamanthus were. He
answered: “Not at all — no, really, you are under a misappre-
hension, Herr Septem — ”

“ Settembrini,” corrected the Italian, clearly and with empha-
sis, making as he spoke a mocking bow.

“ Herr Settembrini — I beg your pardon. No, you are mistaken.
Really I am not ill. I have only come on a visit to my cousin
Ziemssen for a few weeks, and shall take advantage of the oppor-
tunity to get a good rest — ”

“ Zounds! You don’t say? Then you are not one of us? You
are well, you are but a guest here, like Odysseus in the kingdom
of the shades? You are bold indeed, thus to descend into these
depths peopled by the vacant and idle dead — ”

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

58

“ Descend, Herr Settembrini? I protest. Here I have climbed
up some five thousand feet to get here — ”

“ That was only seeming. Upon my honour, it was an illusion,”
the Italian said, with a decisive wave of the hand. “We are sunk
enough here, aren’t we, Lieutenant? ” he said to Joachim, who,
no little gratified at this method of address, thought to hide his
satisfaction, and answered reflectively:

“ I suppose we do get rather one-sided. But we can pull our-
selves together, afterwards, if we try.”

“ At least, you can, I’m sure — you are an upright man,” Set-
tembrini said. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, repeating the word three
times, with a sharp s , turning to Hans Castorp again as he spoke,
and then, in the same measured way, clucking three times with
his tongue against his palate. “ I see, I see, I see,” he said again,
giving the s the same sharp sound as before. He looked the new-
comer so steadfastly in the face that his eyes grew fixed in a
stare; then, becoming lively again, he went on: “ So you come
up quite of your own free will to us sunken ones, and mean to
bestow upon us the pleasure of your company for some little
while? That is delightful. And what term had you thought of
putting to your stay? I don’t mean precisely. I am merely inter-
ested to know what the length of a man’s sojourn would be when
it is himself and not Rhadamanthus who prescribes the limit.”

“Three weeks,” Hans Castorp said, rather pridefully, as he
saw himself the object of envy.

“ O dio! Three weeks! Do you hear, Lieutenant? Does it not
sound to you impertinent to hear a person say: 4 1 am stopping for
three weeks and then I am going away again ’? We up here are not
acquainted with such an unit of time as the week — if I may be
permitted to instruct you, my dear sir. Our smallest unit is the
month. We reckon in the grand style — that is a privilege we
shadows have. We possess other such; they are all of the same
quality. May I ask what profession you practise down below?
Or, more probably, for what profession are you preparing your-
self? You see we set no bounds to our thirst for information —
curiosity is another of the prescriptive rights of shadows.”

“ Pray don’t mention it,” said Hans Castorp. And told him.

“ A ship-builder! Magnificent! ” cried Settembrini. “ I assure
you, I find that magnificent — though my own talents lie in quite
another direction.”

“ Herr Settembrini is a literary man,” Joachim explained,
rather self-consciously. “ He wrote the obituary notices of Car-
ducci for the German papers — Carducci, you know.” He got

SATANA

59

more self-conscious still, for his cousin looked at him in amaze-
ment, as though to say: “ Carducci? What do you know about
him? Not any more than I do, I’ll wager.”

“ Yes,” the Italian said, nodding. “ I had the honour of tell-
ing your countrymen the story of our great poet and free-
thinker, when his life had drawn to a close. I knew him, I can
count myself among his pupils. I sat at his feet in Bologna. I may
thank him for what culture I can call my own — and for what
joyousness of life as well. But we were speaking of you. A ship-
builder! Do you know you have sensibly risen in my estimation?
You represent now, in my eyes, the world of labour and practi-
cal genius.”

“ Herr Settembrini, I am only a student as yet, I am just
beginning.”

“ Certainly. It is the beginning that is hard. But all work is hard,
isn’t it, that deserves the name? ”

“ That’s true enough, God knows — or the Devil does,” Hans
Castorp said, and the words came from his heart.

Settembrini’s eyebrows went up.

“ Oh,” he said, “ so you call on the Devil to witness that senti-
ment— the Devil incarnate, Satan himself? Did you know that
my great master wrote a hymn to him? ”

“ I beg your pardon,” Hans Castorp said, “ a hymn to the
Devil? ”

“ The very Devil himself, and no other. It is sometimes sung,
in my native land, on festal occasions. ‘ O salute , O Satana , O
ribellione, O forza vindice della ragione! . . .’ It is a magnificent
song. But it was hardly Carducci’s Devil you had in mind when
you spoke; for he is on the very best of terms with hard work;
whereas yours, who is afraid of work and hates it like poison, is
probably the same of whom we are told that we may not hold
out even the little finger to him.”

All this was making the very oddest impression on our good
Hans Castorp. He knew no Italian, and the rest of it sounded no
less uncomfortable, and reminded him of Sunday sermons, though
delivered quite casually, in a light, even jesting tone. He looked
at his cousin, who kept his eyes cast down; then he said: “ You
take my words far too literally, Herr Settembrini. When I spoke
of the Devil, it was just a manner of speaking, I assure you.”

“ Somebody must have some esprit” Settembrini said, looking
straight ahead, with a melancholy air. Then recovering himself,
he skilfully got back to their former subject, and went on
blithely: “ At all events, I am probably right in concluding from

6o

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your words that the calling you have embraced is as strenuous as
it is honourable. As for myself, I am a humanist, a homo hmnamcs .
I have no mechanical ingenuity, however sincere my respect for
it. But I can well understand that the theory of your craft re-
quires a clear and keen mind, and its practice not less than the
entire man. Am I right? ”

“ You certainly are, I can go all the way with you there,” Hans
Castorp answered. Unconsciously he made an effort to reply with
eloquence. “ The demands made to-day on a man in my profession
are simply enormous. It is better not to have too clear an idea
of their magnitude, it might take away one's courage: no, it’s no
joke. And if one isn’t the strongest in the world — It is true that
I am here only on a visit; but I am not very robust, and I cannot
with truth assert that my work agrees with me so wonderfully
well. It would be a great deal truer to say that it rather takes it
out of me. I only feel really fit when I am doing nothing at all.”

“ As now, for example? ”

“ Now? Oh, now I am so new up here, I am still rather be-
wildered — you can imagine.”

“ Ah — bewildered.”

“ Yes, and I did not sleep so very well, and the early breakfast
was really too solid. — I am accustomed to a fair breakfast, but
this was a little too rich for my blood, as the saying goes. In
short, I feel a sense of oppression — and for some reason or other,
my cigar this morning hasn’t the right taste, something that as
good as never happens to me, or only when I am seriously upset —
and to-day it is like leather. I had to throw it away, there was no
use forcing it. Are you a smoker, may I ask? No? Then you cannot
imagine the annoyance and disappointment it is for anyone like
me, who have smoked from my youth up, and taken such pleasure
in it.”

“ I am without experience in the field,” Settembrini answered,
“ but I find that my lack of it is in no poor company. So many
fine, self-denying spirits have refrained. Carducci had no use for
the practice. But you will find our Rhadamanthus a kindred spirit.
He is a devotee of your vice.”

“ Vice, Herr Settembrini? ”

“Why not? One must call things by their right names; life
is enriched and ennobled thereby. I too have my vices.”

“ So Hofrat Behrens is a connoisseur? A charming man.”

“ You find him so? Then you have already made his acquaint-
ance? ”

“ Yes, just now, as we came out. It was almost like a profes-

SATANA

6 1

sional visit — but gratis, you know — sine pecimia. He saw at
once that I am anaemic. He advised me to follow my cousin’s
regimen entirely: to lie out on the balcony a good deal — he
even said I should take my temperature.”

“ Did he indeed? ” Settembrini cried out. “ Capital! ” He
laughed and threw back his head. “ How does it go, that opera
of yours? ‘ A fowler bold in me you see, forever laughing mer-
rily! ’ Ah, that is most amusing! And you will follow his advice?
Of course, why shouldn’t you? He’s a devil of a fellow, our
Rhadamanthus! ‘ Forever laughing ’ — even if it is rather forced at
times. He is inclined to melancholia, you know. His vice doesn’t
agree with him — of course, else it would be no vice. Smoking
gives him fits of depression; that is why our respected Frau Direc-
tress has taken charge of his supplies, and only deals him out daily
rations. It even happens sometimes that he yields to the tempta-
tion to steal it, ana then he gets an attack of melancholia. A
troubled spirit, in short. Do you know your Directress already,
too? No? You have made a mistake. You must remedy it at the
earliest opportunity. My dear sir, she comes of the noble race of
von Mylendonk. And she is distinguished from the Medici Venus
by the fact that where the goddess has a bosom, she has a cross.”

“ Ah, ha ha! — capital! ” Hans Castorp laughed.

“ Her Christian name is Adriatica.”

“ Adriatica! ” shouted Hans Castorp. “ Priceless! Adriatica von
Mylendonk! Isn’t that splendid! Sounds as though she had been
dead a very long time. It is positively mediaeval.”

“ My dear sir,” Settembrini answered him, “ there is a good
deal up here that is positively mediaeval, as you express it. Per-
sonally, I am convinced that Rhadamanthus was actuated simply
and solely by artistic feeling when he made this fossil head over-
seer of his Chamber of Horrors. You know he is an artist, by the
bye. He paints in oils. Why not? There’s no law against it — any-
body can paint that likes. Frau Adriatica tells all who will listen
to her, not counting those who won’t, that a Mylendonk was
abbess of a cloister at Bonn on the Rhine, in the thirteenth cen-
tury. It can’t have been long after that she herself saw the light
of day.”

“ Ha ha! Why, Herr Settembrini, I find you are a mocker! ”

“ A mocker? You mean I am malicious? Well, yes, perhaps
I am, a little,” said Settembrini. “ My great complaint is that it
is my fate to spend my malice upon such insignificant objects.
I hope, Engineer, you have nothing against malice? In my eyes,
it is reason’s keenest dart against the powers of darkness and

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ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism;
and criticism is the beginning of progress and enlightenment.”
And he began to talk about Petrarch, whom he called the father
of the modern spirit.

“ I think,” Joachim said thoughtfully, “ that we ought to be
going to lie down.”

The man of letters had been speaking to an accompaniment of
graceful gestures, one of which he now rounded off in Joachim’s
direction and said: “ Our lieutenant presses on to the service. Let
us go together, our way is the same: the 4 path on the right that
shall lead to the halls of the mightiest Dis ’ — ah, Virgil, Virgil!
He is unsurpassable. I am a believer in progress, certainly, gentle-
men; but Virgil — he has a command of epithet no modern can
approach.” And on their homeward path he recited Latin verse
with an Italian pronunciation; interrupting himself, however,
as he saw coming towards them a young girl — a girl of the vil-
lage, as it seemed, and by no means remarkable for her looks —
whom he laid himself out to smile at and ogle most killingly: “ O
la, la, sweet, sweet, sweet! ” he chirruped. “ Pretty, pretty, pretty!

4 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,’ ” he quoted as they
passed, and kissed his hand at the poor girl’s embarrassed back.

44 What a windbag it is,” Hans Castorp thought. He remained
of that opinion still, after the Italian had recovered from his
attack of gallantry and begun to scoff again. His animadversions
were chiefly directed upon Herr Hofrat Behrens: he jeered at the
size of his feet, and at the title he had received from a certain
prince who suffered from tuberculosis of the brain. Of the scan-
dalous courses of that royal personage the whole neighbourhood
still talked; but Rhadamanthus had shut his eye — both eyes, in
fact — and behaved every inch a Hofrat. Did the gentlemen know
that he — the Hofrat — had invented the summer season? He it
was, and no other. One must give the devil his due. There had
been a time when only the faithfullest of the faithful had spent
the summer in the high valley. Then our humourist, with his
unerring eye, had perceived that this neglect was simply the re-
sult of unfortunate prejudice. He got up the idea that, so far at
least as his own sanatorium was concerned, the summer cure was
not only not less to be recommended than the winter one, it was,
on the contrary, of great value, really quite indispensable. And
he knew how to get this theory put about, to have it come to
people’s ears; he wrote articles on the subject and launched them
m the press — since when the summer season had been as flourish-
ing as the winter one.

SATANA

63

“ Genius! ” said Settembrini. “ In-tu-ition! ” He went on to
criticize the proprietors of all the other sanatoria m the place,
praising their acquisitive talents with mordant sarcasm. There
was Professor Kafka. Every year, at the critical moment, when
the snow began to melt, and several patients were asking leave
to depart, he would suddenly find himself obliged to be away
for a week, and promise to take up all requests on his return.
Then he would stop away for six weeks, while the poor wretches
waited for him, and while, incidentally, their bills continued to
mount. Kafka was once sent for to go to Fiume for a consulta-
tion, but he would not go until he was guaranteed five thousand
good Swiss francs; and thus two weeks were lost in pourparlers .
Then he went; but the day after the arrival of the great man, the
patient died. Dr. Salzmann asserted that Kafka did not keep his
hypodermic syringes clean, and his patients got infected one from
the other. He also said he wore rubber soles, that his dead might
not hear him. On the other hand, Kafka told it about that Dr.
Salzmann’s patients were encouraged to drink so much of the
fruit of the vine — for the benefit of Dr. Salzmann’s pocket-book
— that they died off like flies, not of phthisis but cirrhosis of
the liver.

Thus he went on, Hans Castorp laughing with good-natured
enjoyment at this glib and prolific stream of slander. It was, in-
deed, great fun to listen to, so eloquent was it, so precisely ren-
dered, so free from every trace of dialect. The words came,
round, clear-cut, and as though newly minted, from his mobile
lips, he tasted his own wdl-turned, dexterous, biting phrases with
obvious and contagious relish, and seemed to be far too clear-
headed and self-possessed ever to mis-speak.

“ You have such an amusing way of talking, Herr Settem-
brini,” Hans Castorp said. “ So lively, so — I don’t quite know
how to characterize it.”

“ Plastic? ” responded the Italian, and fanned himself with
his handkerchief, though it was far from warm. “ That is proba-
bly the word you seek. You mean I have a plastic way of speaking.
But look! ” he cried, “ what do my eyes behold? The judges of
our infernal regions! What a sight! ”

The walkers had already put behind them the turn in the path.
Whether thanks to Settembrini’s conversation, the fact that they
were walking downhill, or merely that they were much nearer
the sanatorium than Hans Castorp had thought — for a path is
always longer the first time we traverse it — at all events, the
return had been accomplished in a surprisingly short time. Settem-

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

64

brini was right, it was the two physicians who were walking along
the free space at the back of the building; the Hofrat ahead, in
his white smock, his neck stuck out and his hands moving like
oars; on his heels the black-shirted Dr. Krokowski, who looked
the more self-conscious that medical etiquette constrained him
to walk behind his chief when they made their rounds together.

“ Ah, Krokowski,” Settembrini cried. “ There he goes — he
w r ho knows all the secrets in the bosoms of our ladies — pray ob-
serve the delicate symbolism of his attire: he wears black to indi-
cate that his proper field of study is the night. The man has but
one idea in his head, and that a smutty one. How does it happen,
Engineer, that we have not spoken of him until now? You have
made his acquaintance? ”

Hans Castorp answered in the affirmative.

“ Well? I am beginning to suspect that you like him, too.”

“ I don’t know, really, Herr Settembrini. I’ve seen him only
casuallv. And I am not very quick in my judgments. I am in-
clined to look at people and say: 4 So that’s you, is it? Very
good.’ ”

“ That is apathetic of you. You should judge — to that end you
have been given your eyes and your understanding. You felt that
I spoke maliciously, just now. If I did, perhaps it was not without
intent to teach. We humanists have all of us a pedagogic itch. Hu-
manism and schoolmasters — there is a historical connexion be-
tween them, and it rests upon psychological fact: the office of
schoolmaster should not — cannot — be taken from the humanist,
for the tradition of the beauty and dignity of man rests in his
hands. The priest, who in troubled and inhuman times arrogated
to himself the office of guide to youth, has been dismissed; since
when, my dear sirs, no special type of teacher has arisen. The
humanistic grammar-school — you may call me reactionary, En-
gineer, but in abstractor generally speaking, you understand, I
remain an adherent — ”

He continued in the lift to expatiate upon this theme, and left
off only when the cousins got out as the second storey was
reached. He himself went up to the third, where he had, Joachim
said, a little back room.

“ He hasn’t much money, I suppose,” Hans Castorp said, enter-
ing Joachim’s room, which looked precisely like his own.

“ No, I suppose not,” Joachim answered, “ or only so much
as just makes his stay possible. His father was a literary man too,
you know, and, I believe, his grandfather as well.”

“ Yes, of course,” Hans Castorp said. “ Is he seriously ill? ”

MENTAL GYMNASTIC

65

“ Not dangerously, so far as I know, but obstinate, keeps com-
ing back. He has had it for years, and goes away in between, but
soon has to return again.”

“ Poor chap! So frightfully keen on work as he seems to be!
Enormously chatty, goes from one thing to another so easily.
Rather objectionable, though, it seemed to me, with that girl.
I was quite put off, for the moment. But when he talked about
human dignity, afterwards, I thought it was great — sounded like
an address. Do you see much of him? ”

Mental Gymnastic

Joachim’s reply came impeded and incoherent. He had taken a
small thermometer from a red leather, velvet-lined case on his
table, and put the mercury-filled end under his tongue on the
left side, so that the glass instrument stuck slantingly upwards out
of his mouth. Then he changed into indoor clothes, put on shoes
and a braided jacket, took a printed form and pencil from his
table, also a book, a Russian grammar — for he was studying Rus-
sian with the idea that it would be of advantage to him in the
service — and, thus equipped, took his place in the reclining-chair
on his balcony, throwing his camel’s-hair rug lightly across
his feet.

It was scarcely needed. During the last quarter-hour the layer of
cloud had grown steadily thinner, and now the sun broke through
in summerlike warmth, so dazzlingly that Joachim protected his
head with a white linen shade which was fastened to the arm of
his chair, and furnished with a device by means of which it could
be adjusted to the position of the sun. Hans Castorp praised this
contrivance. He wished to await the result of Joachim’s measure-
ment, and meanwhile looked about to see how everything was
done: observed the fur-lined sleeping-sack that stood against the
wall in a corner of the loggia, for Joachim to use on cold days;
and gazed down into the garden, with his elbows on the balus-
trade. The general rest-hall was populated by reclining patients,
reading, writing, or conversing. He could see only a part of the
interior, some four or five chairs.

“ How long does that go on? ” he asked, turning round.

Joachim raised seven fingers.

“ Seven minutes! But they must be up! ”

Joachim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer
out of his mouth, looked at it, and said: “ Yes, when you watch it,
the time, it goes very slowly. I quite like the measuring, four times

66

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a day; for then you know what a minute — or seven of them —
actually amounts to, up here in this place, where the seven days
of the week whisk by the way they do! ”

“ You say ‘ actually,’ ” Hans Castorp answered. He sat with one
leg flung over the balustrade, and his eyes looked bloodshot.
“ But after all, time isn't ‘ actual.’ When it seems long to you, then
it is long; when it seems short, why, then it is short. But how
long, or how short, it actually is, that nobody knows.” He was
unaccustomed to philosophize, yet somehow felt an impulse to
do so.

Joachim gainsaid him. “How so? —we do measure it. We
have watches and calendars for the purpose; and when a month
is up, why, then up it is, for you, and for me, and for all of us.”

“ Wait,” said Hans Castorp. He held up his forefinger, close
to his tired eyes. “ A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you
when you measure yourself? ”

“ A minute is as long — it lasts as long — as it takes the second
hand of my watch to complete a circuit.”

“ But it takes such a varied length of time — to our senses! And
as a matter of fact — I say taking it just as a matter of fact,” he
repeated, pressing his forefinger so hard against his nose that
he bent the end of it quite round, “ it is motion, isn’t it, motion
in space? Wait a minute! That means that we measure time by
space. But that is no better than measuring space by time, a thing
only very unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is
twenty hours — that is, by train. But on foot how long is it? And
in the mind, how long? Not a second! ”

“ I say,” Joachim said, “ what’s the matter with you? Seems
to me it goes to your head to be up here with us! ”

“ Keep quiet! I’m very clear-headed to-day. Well, then, what
is time? ” asked Hans Castorp, and bent the tip of his nose so
far round that it became white and bloodless. “ Can you answer
me that? Space we perceive with our organs, with our senses of
sight and touch. Good. But which is our organ of time — tell
me that if you can. You see, that’s where you stick. But how
can we possibly measure anything about which we actually know
nothing, not even a single one of its properties? We say of time
that it passes. Very good, let it pass. But to be able to measure it —
wait a minute: to be susceptible of being measured, time must
flow evenly, but who ever said it did that? As far as our con-
sciousness is concerned it doesn’t, we only assume that it does,
for the sake of convenience; and our units of measurement are
purely arbitrary, sheer conventions — ”

MENTAL GYMNASTIC

67

“ Good,” Joachim said. “ Then perhaps it is pure convention
that I have five points too much here on my thermometer. But
on account of those lines I have to drool about here instead of
joining up, which is a disgusting fact.”

“ Have you 99.3 °? ”

“ It’s going down already,” and Joachim made the entry on his
chart. “Last night it was almost ioo° — that was your arrival.
A visit always makes it go up. But it is a good thing, notwith-
standing.”

“ I’ll go now,” said Hans Castorp. “ I’ve still a great many ideas
in my head about the time — a whole complex, if I may say so.
But I won’t excite you with them now, you’ve too many degrees
as it is. I’ll keep them all and return to them later, perhaps after
breakfast. You will call me when it is time, I suppose. I’ll go now
and lie down; it won’t hurt me, thank goodness.” With which he
passed round the glass partition into his loggia, where stood his
own reclining-chair and side-table. He fetched Ocean Steam-
ships and his beautiful, soft, dark-red and green plaid from within
the room, which had already been put into perfect order, and
sat himself down.

Soon he too had to put up the little sunshade; the heat became
unbearable as he lay. But he was uncommonly comfortable, he
decided, with distinct satisfaction. He did not recall in all his
experience so acceptable an easy-chair. The frame — a little old-
fashioned, perhaps, a mere matter of taste, for the chair was
obviously new — was of polished red-brown wood, and the mat-
tress was covered in a soft cotton material; or rather, it was not a
mattress, but three thick cushions, extending from the foot to the
very top of the chair-back. There was a head-roll besides, neither
too hard nor too yielding, with an embroidered linen cover,
fastened on by a cord to the chair, and wondrously agreeable
to the neck. Hans Castorp supported his elbow on the broad,
smooth surface of the chair-arm, blinked, and reposed himself,
The landscape, rather severe and sparse, though brightly sunny,
looked like a framed painting as viewed through the arch of the
loggia. Hans Castorp gazed thoughtfully at it. Suddenly he
thought of something, and said aloud in the stillness: “ That was
a dwarf, wasn’t it, that waited on us at breakfast? ”

“Sh-h,” went Joachim. “Don’t speak loud. Yes, a dwarf.
Why? ”

“ Nothing. We hadn’t mentioned it.”

He mused on. It had been ten o’clock when he lay down. An
hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, not long, not short. At its

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close a bell sounded through the house and garden, first afar, then
near, then from afar again.

“ Breakfast,” Joachim said and could be heard getting up.

Hans Castorp too finished with his cure for the time ana went
into his room to put himself to rights a little. The cousins met in
the corridor and descended the stair.

Hans Castorp said: “ Well, the lying-down is great! What sort
of chairs are they? If they are to be had here, I’ll buy one and take
it to Hamburg with me; they are heavenly to lie in. Or do you
think Behrens had them made to his design? ”

Joachim did not know. They entered the dining-room, where
the meal was again in full swing.

At every place stood a large glass, probably a half litre of milk;
the room shimmered white with it.

“ No,” Hans Castorp said, when he was once more in his seat
between the seamstress and the Englishwoman, and had docilely
unfolded his serviette, though still heavy with the earlier meal;
“ no, God help me, milk I never could abide, and least of all now!
Is there perhaps some porter? ” He applied himself to the dwarf
and put his question with the gentlest courtesy, but alas, there was
none. She promised to bring Kulmbacher beer, and did so. It was
thick, dark, and foaming brownly; it made a capital substitute for
the porter. Hans Castorp drank it thirstily from a half-litre glass,
and ate some cold meat and toast. Again there was oatmeal por-
ridge and much butter and fruit. He let his eyes dwell upon them,
incapable of more. And he looked at the guests as well; the groups
began to break up for him, and individuals to stand out.

His own table was full, except the place at the top, which, he
learned, was “ the doctor’s place.” For the doctors, when their
work allowed, ate at the common table, sitting at each of the seven
in turn; at each one a place was kept free. But just now neither was
present; they were operating, it was said. The young man with
the moustaches came in again, sank his chin once for all on his
breast, and sat down, with his self-absorbed, care-worn mien. The
lean, light blonde was in her seat, and spooned up yogurt as
though it formed her sole article of diet. Next her appeared a
lively little old dame, who addressed the silent young man in Rus-
sian; he regarded her uneasily, and answered only by nodding his
head, looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. Opposite
him, on the other side of the elderly lady, there was another young
girl — pretty, with a blooming complexion and full bosom, chest-
nut hair that waved agreeably, round, brown, childlike eyes, and a
little ruby on her lovely hand. She laughed often, and spoke Rus-

MENTAL GYMNASTIC

69

sian. Hans Castorp learned that her name was Marusja. He noticed
further that when she laughed and talked, Joachim sat with eyes
cast sternly down upon his plate.

Settembrini appeared through the side door, and, curling his
moustaches, strode to his place at the end of the table diagonally
in front of that where Hans Castorp sat. His table-mates burst
out in peals of laughter as he sat down; he had probably said some-
thing cutting. Hans Castorp recognized the members of the Half-
Lung Club. Hermine Kleefeld, heavy-eyed, slid into her place at
the table in front of one of the verandah doors, speaking as she did
so to the thick-lipped youth who had worn his coat in the un-
seemly fashion that had struck Hans Castorp. The ivory-coloured
Levi and the fat, freckled litis sat side by side at a table at right
angles to Hans Castorp — he did not know any of their table-
mates.

“ There are your neighbours,” Joachim said in a low voice to
his cousin, bending forward as he spoke. The pair passed close be-
side Hans Castorp to the last table on the right, the “ bad ” Russian
table, apparently, where there already sat a whole family, one of
whom, a very ugly boy, was gobbling great quantities of porridge.
The man was of slight proportions, with a grey, hollow-cheeked
face. He wore a brown leather jacket; on his feet he had clumsy
felt boots with buckled clasps. His wife, likewise small and slender,
walked with tripping steps in her tiny, high-heeled Russia leather
boots, the feathers swaying on her hat. Around her neck she wore
a soiled feather boa. Hans Castorp looked at them with a ruthless
stare, quite foreign to his usual manner — he himself was aware
of its brutality, yet at the same time conscious of relishing that
very quality. His eyes felt both staring and heavy. At that moment
the glass door on the left slammed shut, with a rattle and ringing of
glass; he did not start as he had on the first occasion, but only made
a grimace of lazy disgust; when he wished to turn his head, he
found the effort too much for him — it was really not worth while.
And thus, for the second time, he was unable to fix upon the per-
son who was guilty of behaving in that reckless way about a door.

The truth was that the breakfast beer, as a rule only mildly ob-
fuscating to the young man’s sense, had this time completely
stupefied and befuddled him. He felt as though he had received a
blow on the head. His eyelids were heavy as lead; his tongue
would not shape his simple thoughts when out of politeness he
tried to talk to the Englishwoman. Even to alter the direction
of his gaze he was obliged to conquer a great disinclination; and,
added to all this, the hateful burning in his face had reached the

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

7 °

same height as yesterday, his cheeks felt puffy with heat, he
breathed with difficulty; his heart pounded dully, like a hammer
muffled in cloth. If all these sensations caused him no high degree
of suffering, that was only because his head felt as though he had
inhaled a few whiffs of chloroform. He saw as in a dream that Dr.
Krokowski appeared at breakfast and took the place opposite to
his; the doctor, however, repeatedly looked him sharply in the
eye, while he conversed in Russian with the ladies on his right. The
young girls — the blooming Marusja and the lean consumer of
yogurt — cast down their eyes modestly as the doctor spoke. Hans
Castorp did not, of course, bear himself otherwise than with dig-
nity. In silence, since his tongue refused its office, but managing
his knife and fork with particular propriety. When his cousin
nodded to him and got up, he rose too, bowed blindly to the rest
of the table, and with cautious steps followed Joachim out.

“ When do we lie down again? ” he asked, as they left the house.
“ It’s the best thing up here, so far as I can see. I wish I were back
again in my comfortable chair. Do we take a long walk? ”

A Word Too Much

“ No,” answered Joachim. “ I am not allowed to go far. At this
period I always go down below, through the village as far as the
Platz if I have time. There are shops and people, and one can buy
what one needs. Don’t worry, we rest for an hour again before
dinner, and then after it until four o’clock.”

They went down the drive in the sunshine, crossed the water-
course and the narrow track, having before their eyes the moun-
tain heights of the western side of the valley: the Little Schiahom,
the Green Tower, and the Dor fberg — Joachim mentioned their
names. The little walled cemetery or Davos-Dorf lay up there, at
some height; Joachim pointed it out with his stick. They reached
the high road, that led along the terraced slope a storey higher than
the valley floor.

It was rather a misnomer to speak of the village, since scarcely
anything but the word remained. The resort had swallowed it up,
extending further and further toward the entrance of the valley,
until that part of the settlement which was called the “ Dorf ”
passed imperceptibly into the “ Platz.” Hotels and pensions, amply
equipped with covered verandahs, balconies, and reclining-halls,
lay on both sides of their way, also private houses with rooms to
let. Here and there were new buildings, but also open spaces,
which preserved a view toward the valley meadows.

A WORD TOO MUCH

7 *

Hans Castorp, craving his familiar and wonted indulgence, had
once more lighted a cigar; and, thanks probably to the beer that
had gone before, he succeeded now and then in getting a whiff of
the longed-for aroma — to his inexpressible satisfaction. But only
now and then, but only faintly; the anxious receptivity of his atti-
tude was a strain on the nerves, and the hateful leathery taste dis-
tinctly prevailed. Unable to reconcile himself to his impotence, he
struggled awhile to regain the enjoyment which either escaped
him wholly, or else mocked him by its brief presence; finally,
worn out and disgusted, he flung the cigar away. Despite his be-
numbed condition he felt it incumbent upon him to be polite, to
make conversation, and to this end he sought to recall those bril-
liant ideas he had previously had, on the subject of time. Alas,
they had fled, the whole “ complex ” of them, and left not a trace
behind: on the subject of time not one single idea, however insig-
nificant, found lodgment in his head. He began, therefore, to talk
of ordinary matters, of the concerns of the body — what he said
sounded odd enough in his mouth.

“ When do you measure again? ” he asked. “ After eating? Yes,
that’s a good time. When the organism is in full activity, it must
show itself. Behrens must have been joking when he told me to
take my temperature — Settembrini laughed like anything at the
idea; there’s really no sense in it. I haven’t even a thermometer.”

“ Well,” Joachim said, “ that is the least of your difficulties. You
can get one anywhere — they sell them in almost every shop.”

“ Why should 1? No, the lying-down is very much the thing.
I’ll gladly do it; but measuring would be rather too much for a
guest; I’ll leave that to the rest of you. If I only knew,” Hans Ca-
storp went on, and laid his hands like a lover on his heart, “ if I
only knew why I have palpitations the whole time — * it is very
disquieting; I keep thinking about it. For, you see, a person or-
dinarily has palpitation of the heart when he is frightened, or
when he is looking forward to some great joy. But when the heart
palpitates all by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own
accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny, you understand, as if the
body was going its own gait without any reference to the soul,
like a dead body, only it is not really dead — there isn’t any such
thing, of course — but leading a very active existence all on its
own account, growing hair and nails and doing a lively business in
the physical and chemical line, so I’ve been told — ”

“ What kind of talk is that? ” Joachim said, with serious re-
proach. “ ‘ Doing a lively business ’! ” And perhaps he recalled the
reproaches he had called down on his own head earlier in the day

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72

“ It’s a fact — it is very lively! Why do you object to that? ”
Hans Castorp asked. “ But I only happened to mention it. I only
meant to say that it is disturbing and unpleasant to have the body
act as though it had no connexion with the soul, and put on such
airs — by which I mean these senseless palpitations. You keep try-
ing to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for
them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify
them. At least, it is that way with me — but I can only speak for
myself.”

“ Yes, yes,” Joachim said, sighing. “ It is the same thing, I sup-
pose, as when you have fever — there are pretty lively goings-on
in the system then too, to talk the way you do; it may easily be
that one involuntarily tries to find an emotion which would ex-
plain, or even half-way explain the goings-on. But we are talking
such unpleasant stuff,” he said, his voice trembling a little, and he
broke off; whereupon Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders —
with the very gesture, indeed, which had, the evening before, dis-
pleased him in his cousin.

They walked awhile in silence, until Joachim asked: “ Well,
how do you like the people up here? I mean the ones at our table.”

Hans Castorp put on a judicial air. “ Dear me,” he said, “ I don’t
find them so very interesting. Some of the people at the other
tables look more so, but that may be only seeming. Frau Stohr
ought to have her hair shampooed, it is so greasy. And that Ma-
zurka — or whatever her name is — seemed rather silly to me. She
keeps giggling and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth.”

Joachim laughed loudly at the twist his cousin had given the
name.

“ ‘ Mazurka ’ is capital,” he said. “ Her name is Marusja, with
your kind permission — it is the same as Marie. Yes, she really is
too undisciplined, and after all, she has every reason to be serious,”
he said, “ for her case is by no means light.”

“ Who would have thought it? ” said Hans Castorp. “ She looks
so very fit. Chest trouble is the last thing one would accuse her
of.” He tried to catch his cousin’s eye, and saw that Joachim’s sun-
burnt face had gone all spotted, as a tanned complexion will when
the blood leaves it with suddenness; his mouth too was pitifully
drawn, and wore an expression that sent an indefinable chill of fear
over Hans Castorp and made him hasten to change the subject. He
hurriedly inquired about others of their table-mates and tried to
forget Marusja and the look on Joachim’s face — an effort in
which he presently succeeded.

The Englishwoman with the rose tea was Miss Robinson. The

A WORD TOO MUCH

73

seamstress was not a seamstress but a schoolmistress at a lycee in
Konigsberg — which accounted for the precision of her speech.
Her name was Fraulein Engelhart. As for the name of the lively
little old lady, Joachim, as long as he had been up here, did not
know it. All he knew was that she was great-aunt to the young
lady who ate yogurt, and lived with her permanently in the sana-
torium. The worst case at their table was Dr. Blumenkohl, Leo
Blumenkohl, from Odessa, the young man with the moustaches
and the absorbed and care-worn air. He had been here years.

They were now walking on the citypavement, the main street,
obviously, of an international centre. They met the guests of the
cure, strolling about, young people for the most part: gallants in
“ sporting,” without their hats; white-skirted ladies, also hatless.
One heard Russian and English. Shops with gay show-windows
were on either side of the road, and Hans Castorp, his curiosity
struggling with intense weariness, forced himself to look into
them, and stood a long time before a shop that purveyed fashion-
able male wear, to decide whether its display was really up to the
mark.

They reached a rotunda with covered galleries, where a band
was giving a concert. This was the Kurhaus. Tennis was being
played on several courts by long-legged, clean-shaven youths in
accurately pressed flannels and rubber-soled shoes, their arms
bared to the elbow, and sunburnt girls in white frocks, who ran
and flung themselves high in the sunny air in their efforts to strike
the white ball. The well-kept courts looked as though coated with
flour. The cousins sat down on an empty bench to watch and
criticize the game.

“ You don’t play here? ” Hans Castorp asked.

“I am not allowed,” Joachim answered. “We have to lie —
nothing but lie. Settembrini says we live horizontally — he calls us
horizontallers; that’s one of his rotten jokes. Those are healthy
people, there — or else they are breaking the rules. But they don’t
play very seriously anyhow — it’s more for the sake of the cos-
tume. As far as breaking the rules goes, there are more forbidden
things besides tennis that get played here — poker, and petits -
chevaux , in this and that hotel. At our place there is a notice about
it; it is supposed to be the most harmful thing one can do. Even so,
there are people who slip out after the evening visit and come
down here to gamble. That prince who gave Behrens his title al-
ways did it, they say.”

Hans Castorp barely attended. His mouth was open, for he
could not have breathed through his nose without sniffing; he felt

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74

with dull discomfort that his heart was hammering out of time
with the music; and with this combined sense of discord and dis-
order he was about to doze off when Joachim suggested that they
go home.

They returned almost in silence. Hans Castorp stumbled once
or twice on the level street and grinned ruefully as he shook his
head. The lame man took them up in the lift to their own storey.
They parted, with a brief “ See you later ” at the door of number
thirty-four; Hans Castorp piloted himself through his room to the
balcony, where he dropped just as he was upon his deck-chair and,
without once shifting to a more comfortable posture, sank into a
dull half-slumber, broken by the rapid beating of his unquiet heart.

Of Course , A Female!

How long it lasted he could not have told. When the moment
arrived, the gong sounded. But it was not the gong for the meal,
it was only the dressing-bell, as Hans Castorp knew, and so he still
lay, until the metallic drone rose and died away a second time.
When Joachim came to fetch him, Hans Castorp wanted to
change, but this Joachim would not allow. He hated and despised
unpunctuality. Would he be likely, he asked, to get on, and get
strong enough for the service, if he was too feeble to observe the
hours for meals? Wherein he was, of course, quite right, and Hans
Castorp could only say that he was not ill at all, but only utterly
and entirely sleepy. He confined himself to washing his hands; and
then for the third time they went down together to the dining-
hall.

The guests streamed in through both entrances, they even came
through the open verandah door. Soon they all sat at their several
tables as though they had never risen. Such at least was Hans Ca-
storp’s impression — a dreamy and irrational impression, of course,
but one which his muddled brain could not for an instant get rid
of, in which it even took a certain satisfaction, so that several times
in the course of the meal he sought to call it up again and was al-
ways perfectly successful in reproducing the illusion. The gay old
lady continued to talk in her semifluid tongue at the care-worn
Dr. Blumenkohl, diagonally opposite; her lean niece actually at
last ate something else than yogurt; namely, the thick cream of
barley soup, which was handed round in soup-plates by the wait-
resses. Of this she took a few spoonfuls and left the rest. Pretty
Marusja giggled, then stuffed her dainty handkerchief in her
mouth — it gave out a scent of oranges. Miss Robinson read the

OF COURSE, A FEMALE!

75

same letters, in the same round script, which she had read at break-
fast. Obviously she knew not a word of German, nor wished to do
so. Joachim, preux chevalier , said something to her in English,
which she answered in a monosyllable without ceasing to chew,
and relapsed again into silence. Frau Stohr, sitting there in her
woollen blouse, gave the table to know she had been examined
that forenoon; she went into particulars, affectedly drawin g back
her upper lip from the rodent-like teeth. There were rhonchi to
be heard in the upper right side, and under the left shoulder-blade
the breathing was still very limited; the “ old man ” said she would
have to stop another five months. It sounded very common to
hear her refer thus to Herr Hofrat Behrens. She displayed, more-
over, a feeling of injury because the “ old man ” was not sitting at
her table to-day, where he should by rights be sitting if he had
taken them “ a la tournee ” — by which she presumably meant in
turn — instead of going to the next table again. (There, in fact, he
really was sitting, his great hands folded before his place.) But of
course that was Frau Salomon’s table, the fat Frau Salomon from
Amsterdam, who came decolletee to table even on week-days, a
sight which the “ old man ” liked to see, though for her part —
Frau Stohr’s — she never could understand why, since he could see
all he wanted of Frau Salomon at every examination. She related,
in an excited whisper, that last night, in the general rest-hall up
under the roof, somebody had put out the light, for purposes
which she designated as “ transparent.” The “ old man ” had seen
it, and stormed so you could hear it all over the place. He had not
discovered the culprit, of course, but it didn’t take a university
education to guess that it was Captain Miklosich from Bucharest,
for whom, when in the society of ladies, it could never be dark
enough: a man without any and all refinement — though he did
wear a corset — and, by nature, simply a beast of prey — a perfect
beast of prey, repeated Frau Stohr, in a stifled whisper, beads of
perspiration on her brow and upper lip. The relations between
him and Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt from Vienna were
known throughout Dorf and Platz — it was idle any longer to
speak of them as clandestine. Not merely did the captain go into
the Frau Consul-General’s bedroom while she was still in bed, and
remain there throughout her toilet; last Thursday he had not left
the Wurmbrandt ’s room until four in the morning; that they
knew from the nurse who was taking care of young Franz in
number nineteen — his pneumothorax operation had gone wrong.
She had, in her embarrassment, mistaken her own door, and
burst suddenly into the room of Herr Paravant, a Dortmund law-

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76

yer. Lastly Frau Stohr held forth for some time on the merits of
a “ cosmic ” establishment down in the village, where she bought
her mouth-wash. Joachim gazed stonily downwards at his plate.

The meal was as faultlessly prepared as it was abundant. Count-
ing the hearty soup, it consisted of no less than six courses. After
the fish followed an excellent meat dish, with garnishings, then a
separate vegetable course, then roast fowl, a pudding, not in-
ferior to yesterday evening’s, and lastly cheese and fruit. Each
dish was handed twice and not in vain. At all seven tables they
filled their plates and ate: they ate like wolves; they displayed a
voracity which would have been a pleasure to see, had there not
been something else about it, an effect almost uncanny, not to
say repulsive. It was not only the light-hearted who thus laced
into the food — those who chattered as they ate and threw pellets
of bread at each other. No, the same appetite was evinced by the
silent, gloomy ones as well, those who in the pauses between
courses leaned their heads on their hands and stared before them.
A half-grown youth at the next table on the left, by his years a
schoolboy, with his wrists coming out of his jacket sleeves, and
thick, round eye-glasses, cut all the heaped-up food on his plate
into a sort of mash, then bent over and gulped it down; he reached
with his serviette behind his glasses now and then and dried his
eyes — whether it was sweat or tears he dried one could not tell.

There were two incidents during the course of the meal of
which Hans Castorp took note, so far as his condition permitted.
One was the banging of the glass door, which occurred while
they were having the fish course. Hans Castorp gave an ex-
asperated shrug and angrily resolved that this time he really must
find out who did it. He said this not only within himself, his lips
formed the words. “ I must find out,” he whispered with ex-
aggerated earnestness. Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress both
looked at him in surprise. He turned the whole upper half of his
body to the left and opened wide his bloodshot blue eyes.

It was a lady who was passing through the room; a woman,
or rather girl, of middle height, in a white sweater and coloured
skirt, her reddish-blond hair wound in braids about her head.
Hans Castorp had only a glimpse of her profile. She moved, in
singular contrast to the noise of her entrance, almost without
sound, passing with a peculiarly gliding step, her head a little
thrust forward, to her place at the furthest table on the left, at
right angles to the verandah door: the “ good ” Russian table,
in fact. As she walked, she held one hand deep in the pocket of
her close-fitting jacket; the other she lifted to the back of her

OF COURSE, A FEMALE!

77

head and arranged the plaits of her hair. Hans Castorp looked
at the hand. He was habitually observant and critical of this
feature, and accustomed when he made a new acquaintance to
direct his attention first upon it. It was not particularly lady-
like, this hand that was putting the braids to rights; not so re-
fined and well kept as the hands of ladies in Hans Castorp’s own
social sphere. Rather broad, with stumpy fingers, it had about it
something primitive and childish, something indeed of the school-
girl. The nails, it was plain, knew nothing of the manicurist’s art;
they were cut in rough-and-ready schoolgirl fashion, and the
skin at the side looked almost as though someone were subject
to the childish vice of finger biting. But Hans Castorp sensed
rather than saw this, owing to the distance. The laggard greeted
her table-mates with a nod, and took her place on the inner side
of the table with her back to the room, next to Dr. Krokowski,
who was sitting at the top. As she did so, she turned her head, with
the hand still raised to it, toward the dining-room and surveyed
the public; Hans Castorp had opportunity for the fleeting ob-
servation that her cheek-bones were broad and her eyes narrow. —
A vague memory of something, of somebody, stirred him slightly
and fleetingly as he looked.

“ Of course, a female! ” he thought, or rather he actually
uttered, in a murmur, yet so that the schoolmistress, Fraulein
Engelhart, understood. The poor old spinster smiled in sympathy.

“ That is Madame Chauchat,” she said. “ She is so heedless.
A charming creature.” And the downy flush on her cheek grew
a shade darker — as it did whenever she spoke.

“ A Frenchwoman? ” Hans Castorp asked, with severity.

“ No, she is a Russian,” was the answer. “ Her husband is very
likely French or of French descent, I am not sure.”

Hans Castorp asked, still irritated, if that was he — pointing to
a gentleman with drooping shoulders who sat at the “ good ”
Russian table.

“ Oh, no,” the schoolmistress answered, “ he isn’t here; he has
never been here, no one knows him.”

“ She ought to learn how to shut a door,” Hans Castorp said.
“ She always lets it slam. It is a piece of ill breeding.”

And on the schoolmistress’s meekly accepting this reproof as
though she herself had been the guilty party, there was no more
talk of Madame Chauchat.

The second event was the temporary absence of Dr. Blumen-
kohl from the room — nothing more. The mildly disgusted facial
expression suddenly deepened, he looked with sadder fixity into

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78

space, then unobtrusively moved back his chair and went out.
Whereupon Frau Stohr’s essential ill breeding showed itself in
the clearest light; probably out of vulgar satisfaction in the fact
that she was less ill than Dr. Blumenkohl. She accompanied his
exit with comments half pitying, half contemptuous.

“ Poor creature,” she said. “ He’ll soon be at his last gasp. He
had to go out for a talk with his ‘ Blue Peter.’ ”

Quite stolidly, without repulsion, she brought out the grotesque
phrase — Hans Castorp felt a mixture of repugnance and desire
to laugh. Presently Dr. Blumenkohl came back in the same un-
obtrusive way, took his place, and went on eating. He too ate a
great deal, twice of every dish, always in silence, with the same
melancholy, preoccupied air.

Thus the midday meal came to an end. Thanks to the skilled
service — the dwarf at Hans Castorp’s table was one of the
quickest on her feet — it had lasted only a round hour. Breathing
heavily, and not quite sure how he got upstairs, Hans Castorp
lay once more in his capital chair upon his loggia; after this meal
there was rest-cure until tea-time — the most important and
rigidly adhered-to rest period of the day. Between the opaque
glass walls that divided him on the one side from Joachim, on
the other from the Russian couple, he lav and idly dreamed, his
heart pounding, breathing through his mouth. On using his hand-
kerchief he discovered it to be red with blood, but had not enough
energy to think about the fact, though he was rather given to
worrying over himself and by nature inclined to hypochondria.
Once more he had lighted a Maria Mancini, and this time he
smoked it to the end, no matter how it tasted. Giddy and op-
pressed, he considered as in a dream how very odd he had felt
since he came up here. Two or three times his breast was shaken
by inward laughter at the horrid expression which that ignorant
creature, Frau Stohr, had used.

Herr Albin

Below in the garden the fanciful banner with the caduceus lifted
itself now and again in a breath of wind. The sky was once more
evenly overcast. The sun was gone, the air had grown almost
inhospitably cool. The general rest-hall seemed to be full; talking
and laughter went on below.

“ Herr Albin, I implore you, put away your knife; put it in
your pocket, there will be an accident with it,” a high, uncer-
tain voice besought. Then: “ Dear Herr Albin, for heaven’s sake,

HERR ALBIN 79

spare our nerves, and take that murderous tool out of our sight,
a second voice chimed in.

A blond young man, with a cigarette in his mouth, sitting in
the outside easy-chair, responded pertly: “ Couldn’t think of it!
I’m sure the ladies haven’t the heart to prevent me from amus-
ing myself a little! I bought that knife in Calcutta, of a blind
wizard. He could swallow it, and then have his boy dig it up
fifty paces from where he stood. Do look — it is sharper than
a razor. You only need to touch the blade; it goes into your flesh
like cutting butter. Wait a minute, I’ll show it you close by.”
And Herr Albin stood up. A shriek arose. “ Or rather,” said he,
“ I’ll fetch my revolver; that will be more interesting. Piquant little
tool — useful too. Send a bullet through anything. — I’ll go up
and get it.”

“ No, no, don’t, pray don’t, Herr Albin! ” in a loud outcry
from many voices. But Herr Albin had already come out to go
up to his room: very young and lanky, with a rosy, childish face,
and little strips of side-whisker close to his ears.

“ Herr Albin,” cried a lady’s voice from within, “ do fetch
your greatcoat instead, and put it on; do it just to please me!
Six weeks long you have lain with inflammation of the lungs, and
now you sit here without an overcoat, and don’t even cover
yourself, and smoke cigarettes! That is tempting Providence;
on my word it is, Herr Albin! ”

He only laughed scornfully as he went off, and in a few
minutes returned with the revolver in his hand. The silly geese
squawked worse than before, and some of them even made as
if they would spring from their chairs, wrap their blankets round
them, and flee.

“ Look how little and shiny he is,” said Herr Albin. “ But when
I press him here, then he bites.” Another outcry. “ Of course, he
is loaded— to the hilt,” he continued. “In this disk here are the
six cartridges. It turns one hole at each shot. But I don’t keep
him merely for a joke,” he said noticing that the sensation was
wearing off. He let the revolver slip into his breast pocket, sat
down again, flung one leg over the other, and lighted a fresh
cigarette. * Certainly not for a joke,” he repeated, and compressed
his lips.

“ What for, then — what for? ” they asked, their voices
trembling.

“ Horrible! ” came a sudden cry, and Herr Albin nodded.

“ I see you begin to understand,” he said. “ In fact, you are
right, that is what I keep it for,” he went on airily, inhaling,

8o

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

despite the recent inflammation of the lungs, a mass of smoke and
breathing it slowly out again. “ I keep it in readiness for the day
when I can’t stand this farce any longer, and do myself the honour
to bid you a respectful adieu. It is all very simple. I’ve given the
matter some study, and I know precisely how to do it.” Another
screech at the word. “ I eliminate the region of the heart, the aim
is not very convenient there. I prefer to annihilate my conscious-
ness at its very centre by introducing my charming little foreign
body direct into this interesting organ.” — Herr Albin indicated
with his index finger a spot on his close-cropped blond pate. “ You
aim here — ” he drew the nickel-plated revolver out of his pocket
once more and tapped with the barrel against his skull — “ just
here, above the artery; even without a mirror the thing is
simple — ”

A chorus of imploring protest arose, mingled with heavy sob-
bing. “ Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put it away, take it from your
temple, it is dreadful to see you! Herr Albin, you are young, you
will get well, von will return to the world, everybody will love
you! But put on vour coat and lie down, cover yourself, go on
with your cure. Don’t drive the bathing-master away next time
he comes to rub you down with alcohol. And stop smoking
cigarettes — Herr Albin, we implore you, for the sake of your
young, your precious life! ”

But Herr Albin was inexorable. “ No, no,” he said “ let me alone,
I’m all right, thanks. I’ve never refused a lady anything yet; but
you see it’s no good trying to put a spoke in the wheel of fate.
I am in my third year up here — I’m sick of it, fed up, I can’t
play the game any more — do you blame me for that? Incurable,
ladies, as I sit here before you, an incurable case; the Hofrat him-
self is hardly at the pains any longer to pretend I am not. Grant
me at least the freedom which is all I can get out of the situation.
In school, when it was settled that someone was not to move up
to the next form, he just stopped where he was; nobody asked
him any more questions, he did not have to do any more work.
It’s like that with me; I am in that happy condition now. I need
do nothing more, I don’t count, I can laugh at the whole thing.
Would you like some chocolate? Da take some — no, you won’t
be robbing me, I have heaps of it in my room, eight boxes, and
five tablets of Gala-Peter and four pounds of Lindt. The ladies
of the sanatorium gave it to me when I was ill with my inflamma-
tion of the lungs — ”

From somewhere a bass voice was audible, commanding quiet.
Herr Albin gave a short laugh, a ragged, wavering laugh; then

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS

8l

stillness reigned in the rest-hall, a stillness as of a vanished dream,
a disappearing wraith. Afterwards the voices rose again, sound-
ing strange in the silence. Hans Castorp listened until they were
quite hushed. He had an indistinct notion that Herr Albin was a
puppy, yet could not resist a certain envy. In particular, the
school-days comparison made an impression on him; he himself
had stuck in the lower second and well remembered this situation,
of course rather to be ashamed of and yet not without its funny
side. In particular he recalled the agreeable sensation of being
totally lost and abandoned, with which, in the fourth quarter, he
gave up the running — he could have “ laughed at the whole
thing.” His reflections were dim and confused, it would be diffi-
cult to define them; but in effect it seemed to him that, though
honour might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others,
and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless
in their scope. He tried to put himself in Herr Albin’s place and
see how it must feel to be finally relieved of the burden of a
respectable life and made free of the infinite realms of shame;
and the young man shuddered at the wild wave of sweetness
which swept over him at the thought and drove on his labouring
heart to an even quicker pace.

Satana Makes Proposals T hat T ouch Our Honour

After a while he lost consciousness. It was half past three by
his watch when he was roused by voices behind the left-hand
glass partition. Dr. Krokowski at this hour made the rounds
alone, and he was talking in Russian with the unmannerly pair
on the next balcony, asking the husband how he did, it seemed,
and inspecting the fever chart. He did not, however, continue
his route by the balconies, but skirted Hans Castorp ’s section,
passing along the corridor and entering Joachim's room by the
door. Hans Castorp felt rather hurt to have Krokowski circle
round and leave him out — even though a tete-a-tete with the
gentleman was something he was far from hankering after. Of
course he was healthy, he was not included with the other in-
mates; up here, he reflected, it was the sound and healthy person
who did not count, who got no attention — and this the young
man found vastly annoying.

Dr. Krokowski stopped with Joachim two or three minutes;
then he went on down the row of balconies, and Hans Castorp
heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and make ready
for tea.

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“ Good,” he answered, and rose. But he was giddy from long
lying, and the unrefreshing half-slumber had made his face burn
anew; yet he felt chilly; perhaps he had not been well enough
covered as he lay.

He washed his eyes and hands, brushed his hair, put his cloth-
ing to rights, and met Joachim outside in the corridor.

“ Did you hear that Herr Albin? ” he asked, as they went down
the steps.

“ I should say I did,” his cousin answered. “ The man ought
to be disciplined — disturbing the whole rest period with his
gabble, and exciting the ladies so that it puts them back for weeks.
A piece of gross insubordination. But who is there to denounce
him? On the contrary, that sort of thing makes quite a welcome
diversion.”

“ Do you think he would really do it — put a bullet into him-
self? It's a ‘ very simple matter,’ to use his own words.”

“ Oh,” answered Joachim, “ it isn’t so out of the question,
more’s the pity. Such things do happen up here. Two months
before I came, a student who had been here a long time hanged
himself down in the wood, after a general examination. It was
a good deal talked about still, in the early days after I came.”

Hans Castorp gaped excitedly. “ Well,” he declared, “ I am
certainly far from feeling fit up here. I couldn’t say I did. I think
it’s quite possible I shan’t be able to stop, that I’ll have to leave —
you wouldn’t take it amiss, would you? ”

“ Leave? What is the matter with you? ” cried Joachim.
“ Nonsense! You’ve just come. You can’t judge from the first
day! ”

“ Good Lord, is it still only the first day? It seems to me I’ve
been up here a long time — ages.”

“ Don’t begin to philosophize again about time,” said Joachim.
“ You had me perfectly bewildered this morning.”

“No, don’t worry, I’ve forgotten all of it,” answered Hans
Castorp, “ the whole ‘ complex.’ I’ve lost all the clear-headedness
I had — it’s gone. Well, ana so it’s time for tea.”

“ Yes; and after that we walk as far as the bench again, like
this morning.”

“ Just as you say. Only I hope we shan’t meet Settembrini again.
I’m not up to any more learned conversation. I can tell you that
beforehand.”

At tea all the various beverages were served which it is possi-
ble to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew
made of rose-hips, the grand-niece spooned up her yogurt. There

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS

83

were milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bouillon ; and on every
hand the guests, newly arisen from some two hours’ repose after
their heavy luncheon, were busily spreading huge slices of raisin
cake with butter.

Hans Castorp chose tea, and dipped zwieback in it; he also
tasted some marmalade. The raisin cake he contemplated with an
interested eye, but literally shuddered at the thought of eating
any. Once more he sat here in his place, in this vaulted room with
its gay yet simple decorations, its seven tables. It was the fourth
time. Later, at seven o’clock, he sat there again for the fifth time,
and that was supper. In the brief and trifling interval the cousins
had taken a turn as far as the bench on the mountain-side, beside
the little watercourse. The path had been full of patients; Hans
Castorp had often to lift his hat. Followed a last period of rest
on the balcony, a fugitive and empty interlude 01 an hour and
a half.

He dressed conscientiously for tne evening meal, and, sitting
in his place between Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, he
ate: julienne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompani-
ments, two pieces of a tart made of macaroons, butter-cream,
chocolate, jam and marzipan, and lastly excellent cheese and
pumpernickel. As before, he ordered a bottle of Kulmbacher. But,
by the time he had half emptied his tall glass, he became clearly
and unmistakably aware that bed was the best place for him.
His head roared, his eyelids were like lead, his heart went like a
set of kettledrums, and he began to torture himself with the
suspicion that pretty Marusja, who was bending over her plate
covering her face with the hand that wore the ruby ring, was
laughing at him — though he had taken enormous pains not to
give occasion for laughter. Out of the far distance he heard Frau
Stohr telling, or asserting, something which seemed to him such
utter nonsense that he was conscious of a despairing doubt as to
whether he had heard aright, or whether he had turned her words
to nonsense in his addled brain. She was declaring that she knew
how to make twenty-eight different sauces to serve with fish;
she would stake her reputation on the fact, though her own hus-
band had warned her not to talk about it: “ Don’t talk about it,”
he had told her; “ nobody will believe it, or, if they do, they will
simply laugh at you! ” And yet she would say it, say once and
for all, that it was twenty-eight fish-sauces she could make. All
of which, to our good Hans Castorp, seemed too mad for words;
he clutched his brow with his hand, and in his amazement quite
forgot that he had a bite of pumpernickel and Cheshire still to be

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84

chewed and swallowed. When he rose from table, he had it still
in his mouth.

They went out through the left-hand glass door, that fatal door
which always slammed, and which led directly to the front hall.
Nearly all the guests went out the same way; it appeared that
after dinner a certain amount of social intercourse took place in
the hall and the adjoining salons. Most of the patients stood about
in little groups chatting. Games were begun at two green
extension-tables: at the one, dominoes; at the other, bridge, and
here only the young folk played, among them Hermine Kleefeld
and Herr Albin. In the first salon were some amusing optical
diversions: the first a stereoscope, behind the lenses of which one
inserted a photograph — for instance, there was one of a Venetian
gondolier — and on looking through, you saw the figure stand-
ing out in the round, lifelike, though bloodless; another was a
kaleidoscope — you put your eye to the lens and slightly turned
a wheel, when all sorts of gay-coloured stars and arabesques
danced and juggled before it with the swift changefulness of
magic. A third was a revolving drum, into which you inserted a
strip of cinematographic film and then looked through the open-
ings as it whirled, and saw a miller fighting with a chimney-sweep,
a schoolmaster chastising a boy, a leaping rope-dancer and a
peasant pair dancing a folk-dance. Hans Castorp, his cold hands
on his knees, gazed a long time into each of these contrivances.
He paused awhile by the card-table, where Herr Albin, the in-
curable, sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and
handled the cards with a supercilious, man-of-the-worldly air.
In a comer sat Dr. Krokowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty
conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Frau Stohr,
Frau litis, and Fraulein Levi. The occupants of the “ good ” Rus-
sian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, sep-
arated from the card-room by a portiere, where they formed a
small and separate coterie, consisting, in addition to Madame
Chauchat, of a languid, blond-bearded youth with a hollow chest
and prominent eyeballs; a young girl of pronounced brunette
type, with a droll, original face, gold ear-rings, and wild woolly
hair; besides these, Dr. Blumenkohl, who had joined their circle,
and two other youths with drooping shoulders. Madame Chauchat
wore a blue frock with a white lace collar. She sat, the centre
of her group, on the sofa behind the round table, at the bottom
of the small salon, her face turned toward the card-room. Hans
Castorp, who could not look at the unmannerly creature without

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 85

disapproval, said to himself: “ She reminds me of something, but
I cannot tell what.”

A tall man of some thirty years, growing bald, played the wed-
ding march from the Midsummer Night's Dream three times on
end, on the little brown piano, and on being urged by some of
the ladies, began the melodious piece for the fourth time, gazing
deep and silently into their eyes, one after the other.

“ May I be permitted to ask after the state of your health,
Engineer? ” inquired Settembrini, who had lounged up among
the other guests, hands in pockets, and now presented himself
before Hans Castorp. He still wore his pilot coat and check
trousers. He smiled as he spoke, and Hans Castorp felt again the
sobering effect of that fine and mocking curl of the lip beneath
the waving black moustaches. He looked rather stupidly at the
Italian, with lax mouth and red-veined eyes.

“ Oh, it’s you! ” he said. “ The gentleman we met this morning
on our walk — at that bench up there — near the — yes, I knew
you at once. Can you believe it,” he went on, though conscious
of saying something gauche , “ can you believe it, I took you for
an organ-grinder when I first saw you? Of course, that’s all utter
rot,” he added, seeing a coolly inquiring expression on Settem-
brini’s face. “ Perfectly idiotic. I can’t comprehend how in the
world I — ”

“ Don’t disturb yourself, it doesn’t matter,” responded Settem-
brini, after fixing the young man with a momentary intent regard.
“ Well, and how have you spent your day, the first of your
sojourn in this gay resort? ”

“ Thanks very much — quite according to the rules,” answered
Hans Castorp. “ Prevailingly ‘ horizontal,’ as I hear you
to call it.”

Settembrini smiled. “ I may have taken occasion to express my-
self thus,” he said. “ Well, and you found it amusing, this manner
of existence? ”

u Amusing or dull, whichever you like,” responded Hans Ca-
storp. “ It isn’t always so easy to decide which, you know. At
all events, I haven’t been bored; there are far too lively goings-on
up here for that. So much that is new and unusual to hear and
see — and yet, in another way, it seems as though I had been here
a long time, instead of just a single day — as if I had got older and
wiser since I came — that is the way I feel.”

“ Wiser, too? ” Settembrini asked, and raised his eyebrows.

Will you permit me to ask how old you are? ”

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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

And behold, Hans Castorp could not tell! At that moment he
did not know how old he was, despite strenuous, even desperate
efforts to bethink himself. In order to gain time he had the ques-
tion repeated, and then answered: “ I? How old I am? In my
twenty-fourth year, of course. I’ll soon be twenty-four. I beg
your pardon, but I am very tired,” he went on. “ Tired isn’t the
word for it. Do you know how it is when you are dreaming, and
know that you are dreaming, and try to awake and can’t? That
is precisely the way I feel. I certainly must have some fever;
otherwise I simply cannot explain it. Imagine, my feet are cold
all the way up to my knees. If one may put it that way, of course
one’s knees aren’t one’s feet — do excuse me, I am all in a muddle,
and no wonder, considering I was whistled at in the morning
with the pn — the pn — eumothorax, and in the afternoon had to
listen to this Herr Albin — in the horizontal, on top of that! It
seems to me I cannot any more trust my five senses, and that I
must confess disturbs me more than my cold feet and the heat
in my face. Tell me frankly: do you think it is possible Frau
Stohr knows how to make twenty-eight different kinds of fish-
sauces? I don’t mean if she actually can make them — that I should
consider out of the question — I mean if she said at table just now
she could, or if I only imagined she did — that is all I want to
know.”

Settembrini looked at him. He seemed not to have been listen-
ing. His eyes were set again, they had taken on a fixed stare, and
he said: “ Yes, yes, yes,” and “ I see, I see, I see,” each three times,
just as he had done in the morning, in a considering, deriding
tone, and giving a sharp sound to the s’ s.

“ Twenty-four? ” he asked after a while.

“No, twenty-eight,” Hans Castorp said. “Twenty-eight fish-
sauces. Not sauces in general, special sauces for fish — that is the
monstrous part of it.”

“ Engineer,” Settembrini said sharply, almost angrily, “ pull
yourself together and stop talking this demoralized rubbish. I
know nothing about it, nor do I wish to. You are in your twenty-
fourth year, you say? H’m. Permit me to put another question, or
rather, with your kind permission, make a suggestion. As your
stay up here with us does not appear to be conducive, as you
don’t feel comfortable, either physically or, unless I err, mentally,
how would it be if you renounced the prospect of growing older
on this spot — in short, what if you were to pack to-night, and
be up and away with the first suitable train? ”

“ You mean I should go away? ” Hans Castorp asked; “ when

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 87

IVe hardly come? No, why should I try to judge from the first
day? ”

He happened, as he spoke, to direct his gaze into the next room,
and saw Frau Chauchat’s full face, with its narrow eyes and
broad cheek-bones. “ What is it, what or whom in all the world
does she remind me of? ” But his weary brain, despite the effort
he made, refused an answer.

“ Of course,” he went on, “ it is true it is not so easy for me
to get acclimatized up here. But that was to be expected. I’d be
ashamed to chuck it up and go away like that, just because I
felt upset and feverish for a few days. I’d feel a perfect coward.
It would be a senseless thing to do, you admit it yourself, don’t
you? ”

He spoke with a sudden insistence, jerking his shoulders ex-
citedly— he seemed to want to make the Italian withdraw his
suggestion in form.

“ I pay every homage to reason,” Settembrini answered. “ I
pay homage to valour too. What you say sounds well; it would
be hard to oppose anything convincing against it. I myself have
seen some beautiful cases of acclimatization. There was Fraulein
Kneifer, Ottilie Kneifer, last year. She came of a good family —
the daughter of an important government official. She was here
some year and a half and had grown to feel so much at home
that when her health was quite restored — it does happen, up
here; people do sometimes get well — she couldn’t bear to leave.
She implored the Hofrat to let her stop; she could not and would
not go; this was her home, she was happy here. But the place was
full, they wanted her room, and so all her prayers were in vain;
they stood out for discharging her cured. Ottilie was taken with
high fever, her curve went well up. But they found her out by
exchanging her regular thermometer for a ‘silent sister.’ You
aren’t acquainted as yet with the term; it is a thermometer without
figures, which the physician measures with a little rule, and plots
the curve himself. Ottilie, my dear sir, had 98.4°; she was normal.
Then she went bathing in the lake — it was the beginning of May;
we were having frost at night; the water was not percisely ice-
cold, say a few degrees above. She remained some time in the
water, trying to contract some illness or other — alas, she was,
and remained, quite sound. She departed in anguish and despair,
deaf to all the consolations her parents could give. ‘ What shall
I do down there? ’ she kept crying. ‘ This is my home! ’ I never
heard what became of her. — But you are not listening, Engineer.
Unless I am much mistaken, simply remaining on your legs costs

88

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

you an effort. Lieutenant! ” he addressed himself to Joachim, who
was just coming up. “ Take your cousin and put him to bed. He
unites the virtues of courage and moderation — but just now he
is a little groggy.”

“ No, really, I understood everything you said,” protested Hans
Castorp. u The 4 silent sister ’ is a mercury thermometer without
figures — you see, I got it all.”

But he went up in the lift with Joachim and several other
patients as well, for the conviviality was over for the evening;
the guests were separating to seek the halls and loggias for the
evening cure. Hans Castorp went into his cousin’s room. The
corridor floor, with its strip of narrow coco matting, billowed
beneath his feet, but this, apart from its singularity, was not un-
pleasant. He sat down in Joachim’s great flowered arm-chair —
there was one just like it in his own room — and lighted his Maria
Mancini. It tasted like glue, like coal, like anything but what
it should taste like. Still he smoked on, as he watched Joachim
making ready for his cure, putting on his house jacket, then an
old overcoat, then, armed with his night-lamp and Russian primer,
going into the balcony. He turned on the light, lay down with
his thermometer in his mouth, and began, with astonishing dex-
terity, to wrap himself in the two camel’s-hair rugs that were
spread out over his chair. Hans Castorp looked on with honest
admiration for his skill. He flung the covers over him, one after
the other: first from the left side, all their length up to his
shoulders, then from the feet up, then from the right side, so that
he formed, when finished, a neat compact parcel, out of which
stuck only his head, shoulders, and arms.

“ How well you do that! ” Hans Castorp said.

44 That’s the practice I’ve had,” Joachim answered, holding the
thermometer between his teeth in order to speak. 44 You’ll learn.
To-morrow we must certainly get you a pair of rugs. You can
use them afterwards at home, and up here they are indispensable,
particularly as you have no sleeping-sack.”

44 1 shan’t lie out on the balcony at night,” Hans Castorp de-
clared. 44 1 can tell you that at once. It would seem perfectly weird
to me. Everything has its limits. I must draw the line somewhere,
since I’m really only up here on a visit. I will sit here awhile and
smoke my cigar in the regular way. It tastes vile, but I know it’s
good, and that will have to do me for to-day. It is close on nine —
it isn’t even quite nine yet, more’s the pity — but when it is half
past, that is late enough for a man to go to bed at least half-way
decently.”

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS

89

A shiver ran over him, then several, one after the other. Hans
Castorp sprang up and ran to the thermometer on the wall, as
if to catch it in flagrante . According to the mercury, there were
fifty degrees of heat in the room. He clutched the radiator; it
was cold and dead. He murmured something incoherent, to the
effect that it was a scandal to have no heating, even if it was
August. It wasn’t a question of the name of the month, but of the
temperature that obtained, which was such that actually he was
as cold as a dog. Yet his face burned. He sat down, stood up again,
and with a murmured request for permission fetched Joachim’s
coverlet and spread it out over himself at he sat in the chair. And
thus he remained, hot and cold by turns, torturing himself with
his nauseous cigar. He was overcome by a wave of wretchedness;
it seemed to him he had never in his life before felt quite so
miserable.

44 1 feel simply wretched,” he muttered. And suddenly he was
moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and sus-
pense, of which he was so conscious that he sat motionless waiting
for it to come again. It did not — only the misery remained. He
stood up at last, flung Joachim’s coverlet on the bed, and got
something out that sounded like a good-night: 44 Don’t freeze to
death; call me again in the morning,” his lips hardly shaping the
words; then he staggered along the corridor to his own room.

He sang to himself as he undressed — certainly not from excess
of spirits. Mechanically, without the care which was their due,
he went through all the motions that made up the ritual of his
nightly toilet; poured the pink mouth-wash and discreetly gar-
gled, washed his hands with his mild and excellent violet soap,
and drew on his long batiste night-shirt, with H.C. embroidered
on the breast pocket. Then he lay down and put out the light,
letting his hot and troubled head fall upon the American woman’s
dying-pillow.

He had thought to fall asleep at once, but he was wrong. His
eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to hold up, now declined
to close; they twitched rebeliiously open whenever he shut them.
He told himself that it was not his regular bed-time; that during
the day he had probably rested too much. Someone seemed to
be beating a carpet out of doors — which was not very probable,
and proved not to be the case, for it was the beating or his own
heart he heard, quite outside of himself and away in the night, ex-
actly as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker
beater.

It had not yet grown entirely dark in the room; the light from

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90

the little lamps in the loggias, Joachim’s and the Russian pair’s,
fell through the open balcony door. As Hans Castorp lay there
on his back blinking, he recalled an impression amongst the host
received that day, an observation he had made, and then, with
shrinking and delicacy, sought to forget. It was the look on
Joachim’s face when they spoke of Marusja and her physical char-
acteristics — an oddly pathetic facial distortion, and a spotted
pallor on the sun-browned cheeks. Hans Castorp saw and under-
stood what it meant, saw and understood in a manner so new, so
sympathetic, so intimate, that the carpet-beater outside redoubled
the swiftness and severity of its blows and almost drowned out
the sound of the evening serenade down in the Platz — for there
was a concert again in the same hotel as before, and they were
playing a symmetrically constructed, insipid melody that came
up through the darkness. Hans Castorp whistled a bar of it in a
whisper — one can whistle in a whisper — and beat time with his
cold feet under the plumectu .

That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and
now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had under-
stood in that new, penetrating sense why Joachim had changed
colour, the whole world seemed altered to him, he felt pierced
for the second time by that feeling of extravagant joy and sus-
pense. And he waited for, expected something, without asking
himself what. But when he heard his neighbours to right and left
conclude their evening cure and re-enter their rooms to exchange
the horizontal without for the horizontal within, he gave utter-
ance to the conviction that at least this evening the barbaric pair
would keep the peace.

“ I can surely go to sleep without being disturbed; they will
behave themselves,” he said. But they did not, nor had Hans Ca-
storp been sincere in his conviction that they would. For his
part, to tell the truth, he would not have understood it if they
had. Notwithstanding which, he indulged in soundless expres-
sions of utter astonishment as he listened.

“ Unheard of,” he whispered. “ It’s incredible — who would
have believed it? ” And between such exclamations joined again
in the insipid music that swelled insistently up from the Platz.

Later he went to sleep. But with sleep returned the involved
dreams, even more involved than those of the first night — out
of which he often started up in fright, or pursuing some con-
fused fancy. He seemed to see Hofrat Behrens walking down
the garden path, with bent knees and arms hanging stiffly in front
of him, adapting his long and somehow solitary-looking stride

SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS

9 *

to the time of distant march-music. As he paused before Hans
Castorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of glasses with
thick, round lenses. He was uttering all sorts of nonsense. “ A
civilian, of course,” he said, and without saying by your leave,
drew down Hans Castorp’s eyelid with the first and middle fingers
of his huge hand. “ Respectable civilian, as I saw at once. But not
without talent, not at all without talent for a heightened degree
of oxidization. Wouldn’t grudge us a year, he wouldn’t, just one
little short year of service up here. Well, hullo-ullo! gentlemen,
on with the exercise,” he shouted, and putting his two enormous
first fingers in his mouth, emitted a whistle of such peculiarly
pleasing quality that from opposite directions Miss Robinson and
the schoolmistress, much smaller than life-size, came flying
through the air and perched themselves right and left on the
Hofrat’s shoulders, just as they sat right and left of Hans Castorp
in the dining-room. And the Hofrat skipped away, wiping his
eyes behind his glasses with a table-napkin — but whether it was
tears or sweat he wiped could not be told.

Then it seemed to the dreamer that he was in the school court-
yard, where for so many years through he had spent his recesses,
and was in the act of borrowing a lead-pencil from Madame
Chauchat, who seemed to be there too. She gave him a half-length
red pencil in a silver holder, and warned him in an agreeable,
husky voice to be sure to return it to her after the hour. And as
she looked at him — with her narrow, blue-grey eyes above the
broad cheek-bones — he tore himself by violence away from his
dream, for now he had it fast and meant to hold it, of what and
whom she so vividly reminded him. Hastily he fixed this occur-
rence in his mind, to have it fast for the morrow. Then sleep
and dream once more overpowered him, and he saw himself in
the act of flight from Dr. Krokowski, who had lain in wait for
him to undertake some psychoanalysis. He fled from the doctor,
but his feet were leaden; past the glass partitions, along the bal-
conies, into the garden; in his extremity he tried to climb the red-
brown flagstaff — and woke perspiring at the moment when the
pursuer seized him by his trouser-leg.

Hardly was he calm when slumber claimed him once more.
The content of his dream entirely changed, and he stood trying
to shoulder Settembrini away from the spot where they stood,
the Italian smiling in his subtle, mocking way, under the full,
upward-curving moustaches — and it was precisely this smile
which Hans Castorp found so injurious.

“ You are a nuisance,” he distinctly heard himself say. “ Get

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92

away, you are only a hand-organ man, and you are in the way
here.” But Settembrini would not let himself be budged; Hans
Castorp was still standing considering what was to be done when
he was unexpectedly vouchsafed a signal insight into the true
nature of time; it proved to be nothing more or less than a “ silent
sister,” a mercury column without degrees, to be used by those
who wanted to cheat. He awoke with the thought in his mind
that he must certainly tell Joachim of this discovery on the
morrow.

In such adventures, among such discoveries, the night wore
away. Hermine Kleefeld, as well as Herr Albin and Captain Mik-
losich, played fantastic roles — the last carried off Frau Stohr in
his fury, and was pierced through and through with a lance by
Lawyer Paravant. One particular dream, however, Hans Castorp
dreamed twice over during the night, both times in precisely the
same form, the second time toward morning. He sat in the dining-
hall with the seven tables when there came a great crashing of
glass as the verandah door banged, and Madame Chauchat en-
tered in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket, the other at the
back of her head. But instead of going to the “ good ” Russian
table, the unmannerly female glided noiselessly to Hans Castorp’s
side and without a word reached him her hand — not the back,
but the palm — to kiss. Hans Castorp kissed that hand, which was
not overly well kept, but rather broad, with stumpy fingers, the
skin roughened next the nails. And at that there swept over him
anew, from head to foot, the feeling of reckless sweetness he had
felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the
burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joys of shame.
This feeling he experienced anew in his dream, only a thousand-
fold stronger than in his waking hour.

CHAPTER IV

Necessary Purchases

“ Is your summer over now? ” Hans Castorp ironically asked his
cousin, on the third day.

There had come a violent change of scene.

On the visitor’s second full day up here, the most brilliant sum-
mer weather prevailed. Above the aspiring lance-shaped tips of
the fir-trees the sky gleamed deepest blue, the village down in
the valley glared white in the heat, and the air was filled
with the sound, half gay, half pensive, of bells, from the cows that
roamed the slopes, cropping the short, sun-warmed meadow
grass. At early breakfast the ladies appeared in lingerie blouses,
some with open-work sleeves, which did not become them all
alike. In particular it did not suit Frau Stohr, the skin of whose
arms was too porous; such a fashion was distinctly not for her.
The masculine population too had in various ways taken
cognizance of the nne weather: they sported mohair coats and
linen suits — Joachim Ziemssen had put on white flannel trou-
sers with his blue coat, and thus arrayed looked more military
than ever.

As for Settembrini, he had more than once announced his in-
tention of changing. “ Heavens, how hot the sun is! ” he said, as
he and the cousins strolled down to the village after luncheon.
“ I see I shall have to put on thinner clothes.” Yet after this ex-
plicit expression of his intentions, he continued to appear in his
check trousers and pilot coat with the wide lapels. They were
probably all his wardrobe could boast.

But on the third day it seemed as though nature suffered a sud-
den reserve; everything turned topsyturvy. Hans Castorp could
scarcely trust his eyes. It happened when they were lying in their
balconies, some twenty minutes after the midday meal. Swiftly
the sun hid its face, ugly turf-coloured clouds drew up over the
south-western ridge, and a wind from a strange quarter, whose
chill pierced to the marrow, as though it came out of some un-

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known icy region, swept suddenly through the valley; down went
the thermometer — a new order obtained.

“ Snow,” said Joachim’s voice, behind the glass partition.

u What do you mean, snow? ” Hans Castorp asked him. “ You
don’t mean to say it is going to snow now? ”

“ Certainly,” answered Joachim. “ We know that wind. When
it comes, it means sleighing.”

“ Rubbish! ” Hans Castorp said. “ If I remember rightly, it is
the beginning of August.”

But Joachim, versed in the signs of the region, knew whereof
he spoke. For in a few minutes, accompanied by repeated claps
of thunder, a furious snow-storm set in, so heavy that the land-
scape seemed wrapped in white smoke, and of village and valley
scarcely anything could be seen.

It snowed away all the afternoon. The heat was turned on.
Joachim availed himself of his fur sack, and was not deterred
from the service of the cure; but Hans Castorp took refuge in
his room, pushed up a chair to the hot pipes, ana remained there,
looking with frequent head-shakings at the enormity outside.
By next morning the storm had ceased. The thermometer showed
a few degrees above freezing, but the snow lay a foot deep, and
a completely wintry landscape spread itself before Hans Castorp’s
astonished eyes. They had turned off the heat. The temperature
of the room was 45 °.

“ Is your summer over now? ” Hans Castorp asked his cousin,
in bitter irony.

“ You can’t tell,” answered the matter-of-fact Joachim. “ We
may have fine summer weather yet. Even in September it is very
possible. The truth is, the seasons here are not so distinct from
each other; they run in together, so to speak, and don’t keep to
the calendar. The sun in winter is often so strong that you take
off your coat, and perspire as you walk. And in summer — well,
you see for yourself! And then the snow, that puts out all one’s
calculations. It snows in January, but in May not much less, and,
as you observe, it snows in August too. On the whole, one may
say there is never a month without snow; you may take that for
a rule. In short, there are winter days and summer days, spring
and autumn days; but regular seasons we don’t actually have
up here.”

“ A fine mixed-up state of affairs,” said Hans Castorp. In over-
coat and galoshes he went with his cousin down to the village,
to buy himself blankets for the out-of-doors cure, since it was
plain his plaid would not suffice. For the moment he even weighed

NECESSARY PURCHASES 95

the thought of purchasing a fur sack as well, but gave it up, in-
deed, felt a certain revulsion from the idea.

“ No, no,” he said, “ we’ll stop at the covers. I’ll have use for
them down below, and everybody has covers; there’s nothing
strange or exciting about them. But a fur sack is altogether too
special — if I buy one, it is as if I were going to settle down here,
as if I belonged, understand what I mean? No, for the present we’ll
let it go at that; it would absolutely not be worth while to buy a
sack for the few weeks I’m up here.”

Joachim agreed, and they acquired two camel’s-hair rugs like
his own, in a fine and well-stocked shop in the English quarter.
They were in natural colour, long, broad, and delightfully soft,
and were to be sent at once to the International Sanatorium Berg-
hof, Room 34: Hans Castorp looked forward to using them that
very afternoon.

This, of course, was after second breakfast, for otherwise the
daily programme left no time sufficient to go down into the
Platz. It was raining now, and the snow in the streets had turned
to a slush that spattered as they walked. They overtook Settem-
brini on the road, climbing up to the sanatorium under an um-
brella, bare-headed. The Italian looked sallow; his mood was ob-
viously elegiac. In well-chosen, clearly enunciated phrases he
complained of the cold and damp from which he suffered so
bitterly. If they would only heat the building! But the ruling
powers, in their penuriousness, had the fire go out directly it
stopped snowing — an idiotic rule, an insult to human intelligence.
Hans Castorp objected that presumably a moderate temperature
was part of the regimen of the cure; it would certainly not do to
coddle the patients. But Settembrini answered with embittered
scorn. Oh, of course, the regimen of the cure! Those august and
inviolate rules! Hans Castorp was right in referring to them, as
he did, with bated breath. Yet it was rather striking (of course
only in the pleasantest sense) that the rules most honoured in the
observance were precisely those which chimed with the financial
interest of the proprietors of the establishment; whereas, on the
other hand, to those less favourable they were inclined to shut an
eye. The cousins laughed, and Settembrini began to speak of his
deceased father, who had been brought to his mind in connexion
with the talk about heated rooms.

“ My father,” he said slowly, in tones replete with filial piety,
“ my father was a most delicately organized man, sensitive in
body as in soul. How he did love his tiny, warm little study! In
winter a temperature of twenty degrees Reaumur must always

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96

obtain there, by means of a small red-hot stove. When you entered
it from the corridor on a day of cold and damp, or when the
cutting tramontana blew, the warmth of it laid itself about you
like a shawl, so that for very pleasure your eyes would fill with
tears. The little room was stuffed with books and manuscripts,
some of them of great value; he stood among them, at his narrow
desk, in his blue flannel night-shirt, and devoted himself to the
service of letters. He was small and delicately built, a good head
shorter than I — imagine! — but with great tufts of grey hair on
his temples, and a nose — how long and pointed it was! And what
a Romanist, my friends! One of the first of his time, with a rare
mastery of our own tongue, and a Latin stylist such as no
longer exists — ah, a ‘ uomo letterato ’ after Boccaccio’s own
heart! From far and wide scholars came to converse with him —
one from Haparanda, another from Cracow — they came to our
city of Padua, expressly to pay him homage, and he received them
with dignified friendliness. He was a poet of distinction too, com-
posing in his leisure tales in the most elegant Tuscan prose — he
was a master of the idioma gentile ” Settembrini said, rolling his
native syllables with the utmost relish on his tongue and turning
his head from side to side. “ He laid out his little garden after
Virgil’s own plan — and all that he said was sane and beautiful.
But warm, warm he must have it in his little room; otherwise he
would tremble with cold, and he could weep with anger if they
let him freeze. And now imagine, Engineer, and you, Lieutenant,
what I, the son of my father, must suffer in this accursed and bar-
barous land, where even at summer’s height the body shakes with
cold, and the spirit is tortured and debased by the sights it sees. —
Oh, it is hard! What types about us! This frantic devil of a Hof rat,
Krokowski ” — Settembrini pretended to trip over the name —
“ Krokowski, the father-conressor, who hates me because I’ve too
much human dignity to lend myself to his papish practices. — And
at my table — what sort of society is that in which I am forced to
take my food? At my right sits a brewer from Halle — Magnus
by name — with a moustache like a bundle of hay. ‘ Don’t talk
to me about literature,’ says he. 4 What has it to offer? Anything
but beautiful characters? What have I to do with beautiful char-
acters? I am a practical man, and in life I come into contact with
precious few.’ That is the idea he has of literature — beautiful
characters! Mother of God! His wife sits there opposite him,
losing flesh all the time, and sinking further and further into
idiocy. It is a filthy shame.”

Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this

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97

talk of Settembrini’s: they found it querulous and seditious in
tone, if also highly entertaining and “ plastic ” in its verbal pun-
gency and animus. Hans Castorp laughed good-humouredly over
the “ bundle of hay,” likewise over the “ beautiful characters ”—
or, rather, the drolly despairing way Settembrini spoke of them.

Then he said: “ Good Lord, yes, the society is always mixed
in a place like this, I suppose. One’s not allowed to choose one’s
table-mates — that would lead to goodness knows what! At our
table there is a woman of the same sort, a Frau Stohr — I think
you know her? Ghastly ignorant, I must say — sometimes when
she rattles on, one doesn’t know where to look. But she complains
a lot about her temperature, and how relaxed she feels, and I’m
afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to
me: diseased and stupid both — I don’t exactly know how to ex-
press it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling, when somebody
is so stupid, and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most
melancholy thing in life. One doesn’t know what to make of it;
one wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course — after
all there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such
asininity comes on top of it — ‘ cosmic ’ for 4 cosmetic,’ and other
howlers like that — one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to
weep. It is a regular dilemma for the human feelings — I find it
more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it’s not con-
sistent, it doesn’t hang together; I can’t get used to the idea. One
always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and
ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and un-
usual. At least as a rule — or I don’t know, perhaps I am saying
more than I could stand for,” he finished. “ It was only because
we happened to speak of it — ” He stopped in confusion.

Joachim too looked rather uncomfortable, and Settembrini
lifted his eyebrows and said not a word, with an air of waiting
politely for the end of his speech. He was, in fact, holding off
until Hans Castorp should break down entirely before he an-
swered. But now he said: “ Sapristi, Engineer! You are display-
ing a most unexpected gift of philosophy! By your own theory,
you must be yourself more ailing than you look, you are so
obviously possessed of esprit. But, if you will permit me to say
so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions; I must deny them;
my position is one of absolute dissent. I am, as you see, rather
intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect; I would
rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pass unchallenged
a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours.”

“ But, Herr Settembrini, I — ”

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98

“ Per — mit me. I know what you would say: that the views
you represent are not, of necessity, your own; that you have
only chanced upon that one of all the possible ones there are, as it
were, in the air, and you try it on, without personal responsi-
bility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled con-
victions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a
variety of points of view. Placet experiri” he quoted, giving the
Italian pronunciation to the c. “ That is a good saying. But what
troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this
direction. I doubt it it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the
presence of a general tendency, which threatens to crystallize
into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. I feel
it my duty, therefore, to correct you. You said that the sight
of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most
melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that. I too prefer an
intelligent ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue
where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a
sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of
nature, a 4 dilemma for the human feelings,’ as you were pleased
to express yourself. When you professed to regard disease as
something so refined, so — what did you call it? — possessing a
‘ certain dignity ’ — that it doesn’t 4 go with ’ stupidity. That was
the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing re-
fined about it, nothing dignified. Such a conception is in itself
pathological, or at least tends in that direction. Perhaps I may
best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly
this conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with
superstition, in which the idea of humanity had degenerated and
deteriorated into sheer caricature; a past full of fears, in which
well-being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating
from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pass
to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest
of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man — nor entirely, for
even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear
sirs, means work, earthly labour, labour for the earth, for the
honour and the interests of mankind; and by that conflict daily
steeled anew, the powers of reason and enlightenment will
in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of
progress and civilization toward an even brighter, milder, and
purer light.”

44 Lord bless us,” thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced conster-
nation. 44 What a homily! How, I wonder, did I call all that down
on my head? I must say, I find it rather prosy. And why does he

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99

talk so much about work all the time? It is his constant theme;
not a very pertinent one up here, one would think.” Aloud he
said: “ How beautifully you do talk, Herr Settembrini! What you
say is very well worth hearing — and could not be more — more
plastically expressed, I should think.”

“ Backsliding,” continued Settembrini, as he lifted his umbrella
away above the head of a passer-by, “ spiritual backsliding in the
direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me, Engineer,
is disease — a disease already sufficiently studied, to which vari-
ous names have been given: one from the terminology of aesthetics
and psychology, another from the domain of politics — all of them
academic terms which are not to the point, and which I will
spare you. But as in the spiritual life everything is interrelated, one
thing growing out of another, and since one may not reach out
one’s little finger to the Devil, lest he take the whole hand, and
therewith the whole man; since, on the other side, a sound prin-
ciple can produce only sound results, no matter which end one
begins at — so disease, far from being something too refined, too
worthy of reverence, to be associated with dullness, is, in itself,
a degradation of mankind, a degradation painful and offensive to
conceive. It may, in the individual case, be treated with consider-
ation; but to pay it homage is — mark my words — an aberration,
and the beginning of intellectual confusion. This woman you
have mentioned to me — you will pardon me if I do not trouble
to recall her name — ah, thank you, Frau Stohr — it is not, it seems
to me, the case of this ridiculous woman which places the human
feelings in the dilemma to which you refer. She is ill, and she
is limited; her case is hopeless, and the matter is simple. There is
nothing left but to pity and shrug one’s shoulders. The dilemma,
my dear sir, the tragedy, begins where nature has been cruel
enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by im-
prisoning a noble and ardent spirit within a body not nt for the
stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you,
Lieutenant? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ail-
ing man, bom with a great soul, which his sufferings were con-
stantly humiliating and dragging down into the depths of irony —
its lamentations rend the heart to hear.”

And Settembrini began to recite in Italian, letting the beauti-
ful syllables melt upon his tongue, as he closed his eyes and
swayed his head from side to side, heedless that his hearers
understood not a syllable. Obviously it was all done for the
sake of impressing his companions with his memory and his
pronunciation.

IOO

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“ But you don’t understand; you hear the words, yet without
grasping their tragic import. My dear sirs, can you comprehend
what it means when I tell you that it was the love of woman
which the crippled Leopardi was condemned to renounce; that
this it principally was which rendered him incapable of avoid-
ing the embitterment of his soul? Fame and virtue were shadows
to him, nature an evil power — and so she is, stupid and evil both,
I agree with him there — he even despaired, horrible to say, he
even despaired of science and progress! Here, Engineer, is the
true tragedy. Here you have your ‘ dilemma for the human feel-
ings,’ here, and not in the case of that wretched woman, with
whose name I really cannot burden my memory. Do not, for
heaven’s sake, speak to me of the ennobling effects of physical
suffering! A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a
body without a soul — though the latter is the rule and the former
the exception. It is the body, as a rule, which flourishes exceed-
ingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the pre-
dominant place and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul.
A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body; therein lies
his inhumanity and his debasement. In most cases he is little better
than a carcass — ”

“ Funny,” Joachim said, bending forward to look at his cousin,
on Herr Settembrini’s farther side. “ You were saying something
quite like that just lately.”

“ Was I? ” said Hans Castorp. “ Yes, it may be something of
the kind went through my head.”

Settembrini was silent a few paces. Then he said: “ So much
the better. So much the better if that is true. I am far from claim-
ing to expound an original philosophy — such is not my office.
If our engineer here has been making observations in harmony
with my own, that only confirms my surmise that he is an in-
tellectual amateur and up to the present, as is the wont of gifted
youth, still experimenting with various points of view. The young
man with parts is no unwritten page, he is rather one upon which
all the writing has already been done, in sympathetic ink, the
good and the bad together; it is the schoolmaster’s task to bring
out the good, to obliterate for ever the bad, by the methods of his

E rofession. — You have been making purchases? ” he asked, in a
ghter tone.

“ No,” Hans Castorp said. “ That is, nothing but — ”

“ We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin,” Joachim an-
swered unconcernedly.

“ For the afternoon cure — it’s got so beastly cold; and I am

NECESSARY PURCHASES

IOI

supposed to do as the Romans do, up here,” Hans Castorp said,
laughing and looking at the ground.

“Ah ha! Blankets — the cure,” Settembrini said. “Yes, yes.
In fact: placet experiri” he repeated, with his Italian pronun-
ciation, and took his leave, for their conversation had brought
them to the door of the sanatorium, where they greeted the lame
concierge in his lodge. Settembrini turned off into one of the
sitting-rooms, to read the newspapers before luncheon. He evi-
dently meant to cut the second rest period.

“ Bless us and keep us! ” Hans Castorp said to Joachim, as they
stood in the lift. “ What a pedagogue it is! He said himself that
he had the 4 pedagogic itch.’ One has to watch out with him,
not to say more than one means, or he is down on you at once
with all his doctrines. But after all, it is worth listening to, he
talks so well; the words come jumping out of his mouth so round
and appetizing — when I listen to him, I keep seeing a picture
of fresh hot rolls in my mind’s eye.”

Joachim laughed. “ Better not tell him that. He’d be very put
out I’m sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your
mind.”

“ Think so? I’m not so sure. I get the impression that it is not
simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks; per-
haps that’s only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel
sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes his words roll out, so
resilient, just like a lot of rubber balls! He is very pleased when
you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather
stupid, after all, with his 4 beautiful characters ’; but I do think
Settembrini might have said what the point really is in literature.
I did not like to ask, for fear of putting my foot in it; I am not
just clear about it, and this is the first time I have ever known a
literary man. But if it isn’t the beautiful characters, then ob-
viously it must be the beautiful words, and that is the impression
I get from being in Settembrini’s society. What a vocabulary!
and he uses the word virtue just like that, without the slightest em-
barrassment. What do you make of that? I’ve never taken the
word in my mouth as long as I’ve lived; in school, when the book
said 4 virtus] we always just said 4 valour ’ or something like that.
It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him.
And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and
Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about
pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once,
down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impres-
sion that the person is spoilt — I can’t help it.”

102

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“ You say that,” Joachim answered consideringly, “ and yet
he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether dif-
ferent impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself,
or for humanity in general; and I like that about him; it has some-
thing good, in my eyes.”

“ You are right, there,” Hans Castorp answered. “ He’s even
austere; he makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were
— well, shall I say as if you were being taken to task? That’s not
such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it, I had the feel-
ing he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets? He had
something against it, and he kept dwelling on it.”

“ Oh, no,” Joachim said after reflecting, in some surprise.
“ How could he have? I shouldn’t think so.” And then, ther-
mometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while
Hans Castorp began at once to wash and change for dinner —
which was rather less than an hour away.

Excursus on the Sense of Time

When they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing
the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorp’s room; and that after-
noon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced
Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up, as

E ractised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each new-comer
ad to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other,
over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot.
Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you:
first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from
the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the folded-over
end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to
fit it neatly into the length, in order to ensure the greatest pos-
sible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same
thing with the outer blanket — it was somewhat more difficult
to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped
and stretched out his arms to practise the grips his cousin showed
him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both
blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self-
assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which
belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack
as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair
with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny
in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally
laughed too.

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103

“ There,” he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and
cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his
neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; “ there,
nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten
below zero.” He withdrew behind the partition, to do himself
up in his turn.

That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was
even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatedly as he lay look-
ing out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp
outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow.
It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned
with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an over-heated room.
He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs;
actually, as he held up Ocean Steamships to read it, the book shook
in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not — and totally anaemic,
as Hof rat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so
susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were out-
weighed by the great comfort of his position, the unanalysable,
the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he
had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which re-
asserted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to
it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the
inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height
of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck
roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for re-
laxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this ex-
cellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed
fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him,
dedicated by the rules of the house to the principal cure of the
day; he felt it — though himself but a guest up here — to be a most
suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament
passive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as
we know, to see time spacious before him, and not to have the
sense of its passing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic
activity. At four o’clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake
and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest
again, then supper — which, like all the other meal-times, afforded
a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain;
after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereo-
scope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might be still too
much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to the life up here;
but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers’ ends.

There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habit-

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

IO4

uating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and
getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set
purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long
thereafter, and to return to one’s former state. It is an interval, an
interlude, inserted, with the object of recreation, into the tenor of
life’s main concerns; its purpose the relief of the organism, which is
perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal, and which was in dan-
ger, almost in process, of being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by
the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is
the cause of this relaxation, this slowing-down that takes place
when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so
much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the
case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather
something psychical; it means that the perception of time tends,
through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away; the percep-
tion of time, so closely bound up with the consciousness of life
that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a
sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning
the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interesting-
ness and novelty of the time-content are what “ make the time
pass ”; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness
check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations.
Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out
the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they
are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large
time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And
conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the
hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a
weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years
to flow far more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones over
which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call te-
dium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent
upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uni-
formity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop
beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are
all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem
short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habitu-
ation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which ex-
plains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself
faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercala-
tion of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which
we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejuve-
nate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is

EXCURSUS

105

the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns at
cures and bathing resorts; it is the secret of the healing power of
change and incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a
youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping, flow, persisting for
some six or eight days. Then, as one “ gets used to the place,” a
gradual shrinkage makes itself felt. He who clings or, better ex-
pressed, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days
grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until
the last week, of some four, perhaps, is uncannily fugitive and
fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will
flow out beyond the interval and reassert itself after the return to
ordinary existence: the first days at home after the holiday will be
lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully — but only the
first few, for one adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to
the exception; and if the sense of time be already weakened by
age, or — and this is a sign of low vitality — it was never very well
developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life, and after
four-and-twenty hours it is as though one had never been away,
and the journey had been but a watch in the night.

We have introduced these remarks here only because our young
Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days
later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes:
“ I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so
slowly in a new place. I mean — of course it isn’t a question of my
being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally enter-
tained. But when I look back — in retrospect, that is, you under-
stand — it seems to me I’ve been up here goodness only knows how
long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived, and did
not quite understand that I was there, and you said: ‘ Just get out
here ’ — don’t you remember? — That has nothing whatever to do
with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is
purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me
to say: 4 1 feel I have been up here two months ’ — it would be
silly. All I can say is 4 very long.’ ”

“ Yes,” Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, “ I profit by
it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it
were.” Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite
.simply, without explanation.

He Practises His French

No, after all, he was by no means, even yet, adjusted to his sur-
roundings. Neither in familiarity with the features peculiar to life

io 6

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

as lived up here — a familiarity impossible to achieve in so few
days, which, as he was quite aware, and had even said to Joachim,
he could hardly hope to acquire in the three weeks of his stay —
nor in the adaptation of his physical organism to the prevailing
peculiar atmospheric conditions. For this adaptation was bitterly
hard; so hard, indeed, that it looked as though it would never be
a success.

The daily routine was clearly articulated, carefully organized;
one fell quickly into step and, by yielding oneself to the general
drift, was soon proficient. After that, indeed, within the weekly
round, and also within other larger divisions of time, one dis-
covered the existence of certain regular variations of the pro-
gramme, which showed themselves, one at a time, a second one
sometimes appearing only after the first had repeated itself. But
even the phenomena of everyday life held much that Hans Ca-
storp had still to learn: faces and facts already noted had to be
conned, new ones to be absorbed with youth’s receptivity.

Those great-bellied vessels, for example, with the short necks,
which he had noticed the first evening standing in the corridors
before certain doors. They contained oxygen; he had asked, and
Joachim informed him. That was pure oxygen, six francs the con-
tainer. The reviving gas was given the dying in a last effort to
kindle or reinforce their strength. They drew it up through a tube.
For behind those doors where such vessels were placed lay the
dying — the “ moribundi as Herr Hofrat Behrens called them
when Hans Castorp met him one day in the first storey. Purple of
cheek, in his white smock-frock, he rowed along the corridor, and
they went down the steps together.

“ Well, and how are you, you disinterested spectator, you? ”
said Behrens. “ Are we finding favour in your critical eye, what?
Thanks so much. Yes, yes, our summer season, it’s not too bad,
there’s something to be said for it. I’ve spent a little money myself
to push it. But it’s a pity you won’t be here in the winter — you’re
stopping only eight weeks, I hear? Ah, three? That’s nothing but
a week-end! — won’t pay you to take off your hat. Oh well, just
as you think. Only it is a pity you won’t be here for the winter;
that’s when the nobs come,” he said comically, “ the international
nobs, down in the Platz; they don’t come except in winter — you
ought to see them, if only for the sake of your education. Regular
high-flyers. You ought to see the jumps they make with those
skis of theirs. And then the ladies! O Lord, the ladies! Birds of
paradise, I tell you, and regularly out for adventure. Well, I must
go in here, to my moribundus , number twenty-seven. Last stage.

HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH

107

you know — off centre. Five dozen fiascos of oxygen he’s had all
together, yesterday and to-day, the soak! But he will be going to
his own place by middle-day. Well, my dear Reuter,” he was
saying as he entered, “ what do you say — shall we break the neck
of another bottle? ” The sound of his words died away as he
closed the door. But Hans Castorp had had a moment’s glimpse
into the background of the room, where on the pillow lay the
waxen profile of a young man with a little chin beard, who slowly
rolled his great eyeballs toward the open door.

This was the nrst dying man Hans Castorp had ever seen; for
his father and mother, and his grandfather too had died, so to
speak, behind his back. How full of dignity the young man’s head,
with the little beard thrust upward, had lain upon his pillow! How
speaking the glance those unnaturally great eyes had slowly turned
upon the door! Hans Castorp, still quite absorbed by that glimpse,
instinctively tried to make his own eyes as large, as slowly gazing
and meaningful as those of the dying man, walking on as he did
so, toward the stairs, and encountering a lady who came out of a
room behind him and overtook him at the landing. He did not at
once realize that it was Madame Chauchat; she, on her side, smiled
at the eyes he was making at her, put her hands to the braids at the
back of her head, and passed before him down the stairs, soundless,
supple, with her head somewhat thrust out.

Acquaintances he made scarcely any in these early days, nor for
a long time afterwards. The daily routine was not favourable.
Hans Castorp, too, was of a retiring disposition, felt himself very
much the “ disinterested spectator,” as Hofrat Behrens had called
him, and was in general content with the society and conversation
of his cousin Joachim. The corridor nurse, indeed, continued to
crane her neck after them, until Joachim, who had already fa-
voured her with a little converse now and then, introduced his
cousin. She wore the ribbon of her pince-nez tucked behind her
ear, and spoke with excruciating affectation. On closer acquaint-
ance, indeed, one got the impression that her reason had suffered
on the rack of continual boredom. It was hard to get away from
her, she showed such evident distress whenever the conversation
gave signs of languishing; when the cousins seemed about to go on
their way, she sought to hold them by a stream of words, by
glances and despairing smiles, until, for very pity, they refrained.
She spoke at random, of her papa, who was a jurist, and of her
cousin, who was a physician — obviously with the idea of present-
ing herself in a good light and impressing them with her cultured

io8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

origin. Her present charge, she said, was the son of a Coburg doll-
manufacturer, named Rotbein; the disease had attacked young
Fritz’s intestinal tract. That was hard for all concerned; the gentle-
men could understand how hard it was, for one who came from
cultured surroundings and had the delicacy of feeling of the upper
classes. And one couldn’t turn one’s back a minute. A little time
ago she had just gone out a few minutes — to get some tooth-
powder, in fact; when she came back, there sat her patient in bed,
with a glass of stout, a salame, a thick wedge of rye bread, and a
pickle before him. All these clandestine dainties his family had sent
to give him strength. The next day, of course, he was more dead
than alive. He was himself hastening his own end. But that would
be only a mercy for him, a blessed relief. For her, Sister Berta,
however — whose real name was Alfreda Schildknecht — it would
mean little or nothing; she would just go on to another case, in a
more or less advanced stage, either here or elsewhere; such was the
prospect that opened before her — and there was no other.

Yes, Hans Castorp said, her calling was a hard one, but satisfy-
ing, he should think.

Of course, she answered, it was. Satisfying, but very hard.

Well, kind regards to the patient — and the cousins tried to take
leave.

But she so hung upon them, with words and looks, that it was
painful to see, putting forth all her powers to hold them only a
little longer — it would have been cruel not to have vouchsafed
her another few minutes.

“ He is asleep,” she said. “ He does not need me. I came out here
for a second or so.” She began complaining about Hofrat Behrens,
whose manner with her was altogether too free, considering her
origin. She much preferred Dr. Krokowski, she found him so full
of soul. Then she returned to her papa and her cousin, her mental
resources being exhausted. In vain she struggled to hold the young
men, letting her voice rise until it was almost a shriek as she saw
them moving. They escaped her finally and went; she kept on
looking after them awhile, her body bent forward, her gaze so
avid it seemed as though she would fairly suck them back with
her eyes. Her breast was wrung with a sigh as she turned and went
into her patient’s room.

Hans Castorp made but one other acquaintance in these days:
the pale, black-clad Mexican lady he had seen in the garden, whose
nickname was Tous-les-deux. It came to pass that he heard from
her own lips the tragic formula; and being forearmed, preserved a
suitable demeanour and was satisfied with himself afterwards. The

HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH

IO9

cousins met her before the front door, as they were setting forth
on their prescribed walk after early breakfast. She was restlessly
ranging there, with her pacing step, her legs bent at the knee-
joints, wrapped in a black cashmere shawl, a black veil wound
about her disordered silver hair and tied under her chin, her ageing
face, with the large writhen mouth, gleaming dead-white against
her mourning. Joachim, bare-headed as usual, greeted her with a
bow, which she slowly acknowledged, the furrows deepening in
her narrow forehead as she looked at him. Then, seeing a new face,
she paused and waited, nodding gently as they came up to her;
obviously she found it of importance to learn if the stranger was
acquainted with her sad case, and to hear what he would say about
it. Joachim presented his cousin. She drew her hand out of her
shawl and gave it to him, a veined, emaciated, yellowish hand, with
many rings, as she continued to gaze in his face.

Then it came: “ Tons les de , monsieur ” she said. “ Tous les
de> vous servez .”

“ Je le sais , madame” Hans Castorp answered gently, “ et je le
regrette beaucoup .”

The lax pouches of skin under her jet-black eyes were larger
and heavier than he had ever seen. She exhaled a faint odour as of
fading flowers. A mild and pensive feeling stole about his heart.

“ Merci ” she said, with a loose, clacking pronunciation, oddly
consonant with her broken appearance. Her large mouth drooped
tragically at one corner. She drew her hand back beneath her
mantle, inclined her head, and turned away.

But Hans Castorp said as they walked on: “ You see, I didn’t
mind it at all, I got on with her quite well; I always do with such
people; I understand instinctively how to go at them — don’t you
think so? I even think, on the whole, I get on better with sad peo-
ple than with jolly ones — goodness knows why. Perhaps it’s be-
cause I’m an orphan, and lost my parents early; but when people
are very serious, or down in the mouth, or somebody dies, it
doesn’t deject or embarrass me; I feel quite in my element, a good
deal more so than when everything is going on greased wheels. I
was thinking just lately that it is pretty flat of the women up here
to take on as they do about death and things connected with death,
so that they take such pains to shield them from contact with
it, and bring the Eucharist at meal-times, and that. I call it very
feeble of them. Don’t you like the sight of a coffin? I really do. I
find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty; when someone
is lying in it, then, in my eyes, it is positively sublime. Funerals
have something very edifying; I always think one ought to go to

I IO

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

a funeral instead of to church when one feels the need of being
uplifted. People have on good black clothes, and they take off
their hats and look at the coffin, and behave serious and reverent,
and nobody dares to make a bad joke, the way they do in ordinary
life. It’s good for people to be serious, once in a way. I’ve some-
times asked myself if I ought not to have become a clergyman —
in a certain way it wouldn’t have suited me so badly. — I hope I
didn’t make any mistake in my French? ”

“ No,” Joachim answered, “ 4 Je le regrette beaucoup ’ was per-
fectly right as far as it went.”

Politically Suspect

Regular variations in the daily routine began to discover them-
selves. The first was Sunday, Sunday with a band on the terrace,
which, it appeared, played there once a fortnight. Hans Castorp
had arrived in the latter half of one of these periods. He had come
on a Tuesday, and thus the Sunday was his fifth day up here — a
day whose springlike character contrasted with the late extraor-
dinary change and relapse into winter. It was mild and fresh, with
pure white clouds in a pale blue sky, and gentle sunshine over vale
and slopes, which displayed once more the green proper to the
season, for the recent snow had been fated to speedy melting.

All hands, it was plain, took pains to observe Sunday and dis-
tinguish it from the rest of the week, management and guest sec-
onding each other in their efforts to this end. At early breakfast
there was seed-cake, and each guest had before his place a small
glass with a few flowers, mountain pinks and even Alpine roses,
which the gentlemen stuck in their buttonholes. Lawyer Para-
vant from Dortmund had put on a black frock-coat with a spotted
waistcoat, and the ladies’ toilets were suitably festal and diapha-
nous. Frau Chauchat appeared in a flowing lace matinee, with open
sleeves. As she entered and the glass door crashed into its lock be-
hind her, she paused a second facing the room and gracefully as it
were presented herself before she glided to her table. The garment
so became her that Hans Castorp’s neighbour, the Danzig school-
mistress, was quite ravished. Even the barbaric pair at the “ bad ”
Russian table had taken notice of the day: he by exchanging his
leather jacket for a short coat, and the felt boots for leather shoes;
she, though she still wore the soiled feather boa, by putting on a
green silk blouse with a neck-ruche. Hans Castorp wrinkled his
brows when he saw them, and coloured — he seemed, since he had
been up here, to blush so easily.

POLITICALLY SUSPECT

I 1 1

Directly after second breakfast the concert began on the ter-
race; there were all kinds of horns and wood wind, and they
played by turns sprightly and sostemito , until nearly luncheon-
time. The morning rest, during the concert, was not obligatory.
A few guests did regale themselves with this feast for the ears, at
the same time lying on their balconies; in the garden rest-hall
a few chairs were occupied. But the majority sat at the small,
white tables on the covered platform, while the more frivolous
spirits, finding it too prim to sit upon chairs, encamped on the
stone steps that led down into the garden, where they presently
gave evidence of their high spirits. These were youthful patients
of both sexes, most of whose names or faces Hans Castorp knew
by now. There were Hermine Kleefeld, and Herr Albin — who
carried about a great flowered box of chocolates, and offered them
to all the guests, he himself eating none, but with a benevolent,

f >aternal air smoking gold-tipped cigarettes; there were the thick-
ipped youth who belonged to the Half-Lung Club, the thin and
ivory-coloured Fraulein Levi, an ash-blond young man who an-
swered to the name of Rasmussen and carried his hands breast-high,
with the wrists relaxed, like a pair of flippers; Frau Salomon from
Amsterdam, a woman of full bodily habit, in a red frock, who had
attached herself to the group of young folk; the tall, thin-haired
young man who could play out of the Midsummer Night's Dream
sat on the step behind her, his arms about his bony knees, and
gazed steadfastly down on the tanned back of her neck. There
was a red-haired Greek girl, another of unknown origin with a
face like a tapir’s; the voracious lad with the thick eye-glasses, and
another fifteen- or sixteen-year-old youth, with a monocle stuck
in his eye, who carried his little finger, with its abnormally long
nail shaped like a salt-spoon, to his mouth when he coughed,
and was manifestly a first-class donkey — these, and numerous
others.

The person with the finger-nail, Joachim related in a low voice,
had been only a light case when he came. He had had no fever and
had been sent up merely as a precautionary measure, by his father,
who was a physician. The Hofrat had advised a stay of three
months. The three months had passed, and now he had ioo to
100.5 degrees of fever and was seriously ill. But he lived so wide
of all common sense that he needed his ears boxed.

The cousins sat at a table by themselves, rather apart from the
others, for Hans Castorp was smoking with his dark beer, which
he had brought out from breakfast. From time to time his cigar
gave him a little pleasure. Rendered torpid, as often, by the beer

1 1 2

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

and the music, he sat with his head on one side and his mouth
slightly open, watching the gay, resortish scene, feeling, not as a
disturbing influence, but rather as heightening the general singu-
larity, and lending it one mental fillip the more, the fact that all
these people were inwardly attacked by well-nigh resistless decay,
and that most of them were feverish. They sat at the little tables
drinking effervescent lemonade; the group on the steps were photo-
graphing each other. Postage stamps were exchanged. The red-
haired Greek girl sketched Herr Rasmussen’s portrait on a draw-
ing-pad, but would not let him see it. She turned this way and
that, laughing with wide-open mouth, showing her broad far-
apart teeth — it was long before he could snatch it from her. Her-
mine Kleefeld perched on her step, eyes half open, beating time
to the music with a rolled-up newspaper; she permitted Herr
Albin to fasten a bunch of wild flowers on the front of her blouse.
The youth with the voluptuous lips, sitting at Frau Salomon’s feet,
turned his head upwards to talk with her, while behind them the
thin-haired pianist directed his unchanging gaze down the back of
her neck.

The physicians came and mingled with the guests of the cure,
Hofrat Behrens in his white smock, Krokowski in his black. They
passed along the row of tables, the Hofrat letting fall a pleasantry
at nearly every one, till a wave of merriment followed in his wake;
and so down the steps among the young folk, the female element
of which straightway trooped up sidling and becking about Dr.
Krokowski, while the Hofrat honoured the sabbath by perform-
ing a “ stunt ” with his bootlaces before the gentlemen’s eyes. He
rested one mighty foot upon a step, unfastened the laces, gripped
them with practised technique in one hand, and without employ-
ing the other, hooked them up again crosswise, with such speed
and agility that the beholders marvelled, and many of them tried
to emulate him, but in vain.

Somewhat later Settembrini appeared on the terrace. He came
out of the dining-room leaning on his cane, dressed as usual in his
pilot coat and yellow check trousers, looked about him with his
critical, alert, and elegant air, and approached the cousins’ table.
“ Bravo! ” he said, and asked permission to sit with them.

“ Beer, tobacco, and music,” he went on. “ Behold the Father-
land! I rejoice to see you in your element, Engineer — you have
a feeling for national atmosphere, it seems. May I bask in the sun-
shine of your well-being? ”

Hans Castorp looked lowering — his features took on that ex-
pression directly he set eyes on the Italian. He said: “ You are late

POLITICALLY SUSPECT 1 1 3

for the concert, Herr Settembrini; it must be nearly over. You
don’t care for music? ”

“ Not to order,” responded Settembrini. “ Not by the calendar
week. Not when it reeks of the prescription counter and is doled
out to me by the authorities for the good of my health. I cling to
my freedom — or rather to such vestiges of freedom and personal
dignity as remain to the likes of us. At these affairs I play the guest,
as you do up here: I come for a quarter-hour and go away — it
gives me the illusion of independence. That it is more than an illu-
sion I do not claim — enough if it please me! It is different with
your cousin. For him it all belongs to the service — that is the
light, is it not. Lieutenant, in which you regard it? Ah, yes, I
know, you have the trick of hugging your pride, even in a state of
slavery. A puzzling trick; not everybody in Europe understands it.
Music? You were asking if I profess to be an amateur of music?
Well, when you say amateur ” (Hans Castorp could not recall say-
ing anything of the sort), “ the word is perhaps not ill chosen; it
has a slight suggestion of superficiality — yes, very well, I am an
amateur of music — which is not to say that I set great store by it;
not as I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the
tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress. — Music? It is the half-
articulate art, the dubious, the irresponsible, the insensible. Perhaps
you will object that she can be clear when she likes. But so can
nature, so can a brook — what good is that to us? That is not true
clarity, it is a dreamy, inexpressive, irresponsible clarity, without
consequences and therefore dangerous, because it betrays one into
soft complacence. — Let music play her loftiest role, she will
thereby but kindle the emotions, whereas what concerns us is to
awaken the reason. Music is to all appearance movement itself —
yet, for all that, I suspect her of quietism. Let me state my point
by the method of exaggeration: my aversion from music rests on
political grounds.”

Hans Castorp could not refrain from slapping his knee as he
exclaimed that never in all his life before had he heard the like.

“ Pray do not, on that account, refuse to entertain it,” Settem-
brini said with a smile. “ Music, as a final incitement to the spirit
of men, is invaluable — as a force which draws onward and up-
ward the spirit she finds prepared for her ministrations. But litera-
ture must precede her. By music alone the world would get no
further forward. Alone, she is a danger. For you, personally, En-
gineer, she is beyond all doubt dangerous. I saw it in your face as
I came up.”

Hans Castorp laughed.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

1 14

“ Oh, you shouldn't look at my face, Herr Settembrini. You
can’t believe how the air up here sets me on fire. It is harder than
I thought to get acclimatized.”

“ I fear you deceive yourself.”

“ How so? I know, at least, how deucedly hot and tired I am all
the time.”

“ It seems to me we should be grateful to the management for
the concert,” Joachim said reflectively. “I wouldn’t contradict
you, Herr Settembrini, because you look at the question from a
higher point of view, so to speak, as an author. But I find one ought
to be grateful, up here, for a bit of music. I am far from being
particularly musical, and then the pieces they play are not exactly
elevating, neither classic nor modern, but just ordinary band-
music. Still, it is a pleasant change. It takes up a couple of hours
very decently; I mean it breaks them up and fills them in, so there
is something to them, by comparison with the other days, hours,
and weeks that whisk by like nothing at all. You see an unpreten-
tious concert-number lasts perhaps seven minutes, and those seven
minutes amount to something; they have a beginning and an end,
they stand out, they don’t so easily slip into the regular humdrum
round and get lost. Besides they are again divided up by the figures
of the piece that is being played, and these again into beats, so
there is always something going on, and every moment has a cer-
tain meaning, something you can take hold of, whereas usually —
I don’t know whether I am making myself — ”

“Bravo! ” cried Settembrini. “Bravo, Lieutenant! You are de-
scribing very well indeed an aspect of music which has indubitably
a moral value: namely, that her peculiarly life-enhancing method
of measuring time imparts a spiritual awareness and value to its
passage. Music quickens time, she quickens us to the finest enjoy-
ment of time; she quickens — and in so far she has moral value. Art
has moral value, in so far as it quickens. But what if it does the op-
posite? What if it dulls us, sends us to sleep, works against action
and progress? Music can do that too; she is an old hand at using
opiates. But the opiate, my dear sirs, is a gift of the Devil; it makes
for lethargy, inertia, slavish inaction, stagnation. There is some-
thing suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by
her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once
that she is politically suspect.”

He went on in this vein, and Hans Castorp listened without pre-
cisely following; first on account of his fatigue, and second be-
cause his attention was distracted by the proceedings of the light-
headed young folk on the steps. Did his eyes deceive him, or was

HIPPE 1 1 5

the tapir-faced girl really occupied in sewing on a button for the
monocled youth — and, forsooth, on the knee-band of his knicker-
bockers? She breathed asthmatically as she sewed, and he coughed
and carried his little finger, with the salt-spoon-shaped nail, to his
mouth. Of course they were ill — but, after all, these young folk
up here did have peculiar social standards! The band played a
polka.

Hippe

Thus Sunday passed. The afternoon was marked by drives under-
taken by various groups; several times after tea a carriage and pair
drove up the winding road and halted before the portal to receive
its occupants — these being, for the most part, Russian ladies.

“ Russians drive a great deal,” Joachim said to Hans Castorp, as
they stood before the entrance and amused themselves with watch-
ing the carriages move off. “ They will be going to Clavadel, or
into the valley of the Fliiela, or as far as Klosters. Those are the
usual objectives. We might have a drive too while you are up here,
if you like. But for the present I think you have enough to do to
get used to things, and don’t require more diversion.”

To which Hans Castorp agreed. He had a cigarette in his mouth,
and his hands in his trouser pockets; and stood so to watch the
lively little old Russian lady, as she, with her lean grand-niece and
two other ladies, took their seats in a carriage. The ladies were
Madame Chauchat and Marusja. Madame Chauchat had put on a
thin dust-cloak belted in at the back, but wore no hat. She sat
down beside the old dame in the body of the carriage, while the
two girls took their places behind. All four were in lively vein
and chattered without stopping in their soft, spineless tongue.
They chattered about the top of the carriage, which was hard for
them all to get underneath, about the Russian comfits the great-
aunt had brought for them to munch, in a little wooden box
lined with cotton-wool and lace paper, and was already handing
round. — Hans Castorp distinguished with interest Frau Chauchat’s
slightly husky voice. As always whenever he set eyes on that heed-
less creature, the likeness reasserted itself which had puzzled him
for a while and then been revealed in a dream. But Marusja’s laugh,
the expression of her round, brown eyes, staring childlike above
the tiny handkerchief she held over her mouth, the full bosom,
which was yet so ailing within, reminded him of something else,
something which gave him a sudden thrill and made him glance
cautiously at his cousin without turning his head. No, thank good-

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

1 16

ness, Joachim had not gone mottled, like that other time; his lips
were not so painfully compressed. But he was gazing at Marusja,
and his bearing, the expression in his eyes, was anything but mili-
tary. Indeed that absorbed and yearning look could only have
been characterized as typically civilian. However, he pulled him-
self quickly together and stole a glance at Hans Castorp, which the
latter had only just time to avoid, by turning his own eyes away
and staring up into the sky. He felt his heart give a sudden beat —
without rhyme or reason, of its own accord, as it had taken to
doing up here.

The Sunday was not further remarkable, except perhaps for the
meals, which, since they could not well be more abundant than
they already were, displayed greater refinement in the menu. At
luncheon there was a chaud-froid of chicken, garnished with cray-
fish and stoned cherries; with the ices came pastry served in bas-
kets of spun sugar, and fresh pineapple besides. In the evening,
after he had drunk his beer, Hans Castorp felt heavier in the limbs
and more chilled and exhausted than on the day before; toward
nine o’clock he bade his cousin good-night, drew his plumeau up
to his chin, and slept like the dead.

But next day, the first Monday spent by the guest up here, there
came another regularly recurring variation in the daily routine:
the lectures, one of which Dr. Krokowski delivered every other
Monday morning in the dining-room, before the entire adult
population of the sanatorium, with exception of the “ moribund ”
and those who could not understand the language. The course,
Hans Castorp learned from his cousin, consisted of a series of
popular-scientific lectures, under the general title: “ Love as a
force contributory to disease.” These instructive entertainments
took place after second breakfast; it was not permissible, Joachim
reiterated, to absent oneself from them — or, at least, absence was
frowned upon. It was thus very daring of Settembrini, who surely
must have more command of the language than anyone else, not
only never to appear, but to refer to the entertainment in most
disparaging terms. For Hans Castorp’s part, he straightway re-
solved to be present, in the first place out of courtesy, but also
with unconcealed curiosity as to what he should hear. Before the
appointed hour, however, he did something quite perverse and ill-
judged, which proved worse for him than one could possibly have
guessed: he went out for a long, solitary walk.

“ Now listen to me,” had been his first worls, when Joachim
entered his room that morning. “ I can see that it can’t go on with
me like this. I’ve had enough of the horizontal for the present;

HIPPE

117

one’s very blood goes to sleep. Of course it is different with you;
you are a patient, and I have no intention of tempting you. But I
mean to take a proper walk after breakfast, if you don’t mind, just
walking at random for a couple of hours. I’ll stick a little some-
thing in my pocket for second breakfast; then I shall be inde-
pendent. We shall see if I am not quite a different chap when I
come back.”

Joachim warmly agreed, as he saw his cousin was in earnest in
his desire and his project. “ But don’t overdo it,” he said; “ that’s
my advice. It’s not the same thing up here as at home. And be sure
to come back in time for the lecture.”

In reality young Hans Castorp had more ground than the phys-
ical for his present resolve. His over-heated head, the prevailing
bad taste in his mouth, the fitful throbbing of his heart, were, or
so he felt, less evil accompaniments to the process of acclimatiza-
tion than such things as the goings-on of the Russian pair next
door, the table-talk of the stupid and afflicted Frau Stohr, the
gentleman rider’s pulpy cough daily heard in the corridor, the
utterances of Herr Albin, the impression he received of the man-
ners and morals of the ailing young folk about him, the expression
on Joachim’s face when he looked at Marusja — these and a hun-
dred observations more made him feel it would be good to escape
awhile from the Berghof circle, to breathe the air deep into his
lungs, to get some proper exercise — and then, when he felt tired
at night, he would at least know why. He took leave of Joachim
in a spirit of enterprise, when his cousin addressed himself, after
breakfast, to the usual round as far as the bench by the water-
course; then, swinging his walking-stick, he took his own way
down the road.

It was about nine o’clock of a cool morning, with a covered
sky. According to programme, Hans Castorp drew in deep
draughts of the pure morning air, the fresh, light atmosphere that
breathed in so easily, that held no hint of damp, that was without
associations, without content. He crossed the stream and the nar-
row-gauge road to the street, with its scattered buildings; but left
this again soon to strike into a meadow path, which went only a
short way on the level and then slanted steeply up to the right.
The climbing rejoiced Hans Castorp’s heart, his chest expanded,
he pushed his hat back on his forehead with the crook of his stick;
having gained some little height he looked back, and, seeing in the
distance the mirror-like lake he had passed on his journey hither,
he began to sing.

He sang what songs he had at his command, all kinds of send-

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

1 1 8

mental folk-ditties, out of collections of national ballads and stu-
dents’ song-books; one of them, that went:

Let poets all of love and wine,

Yet oft of virtue sing the praises,

he sang at first softly, in a humming tone, then louder, finally at
the top of his voice. His baritone lacked flexibility, yet to-day he
found it good, and sang on with mounting enthusiasm. When he
found he had pitched the beginning too high, he shifted into fal-
setto, and even that pleased him. When his memory left him in the
lurch, he helped himself out by setting to the melody whatever
words and syllables came to hand, heedless of the sense, giving
them out like an operatic singer, with arching lips and strong pala-
tal r. He even began to improvise both words and music, accom-
panying his performance with theatrical gesturings. It is a good
deal of a strain to sing and climb at the same time, and Hans Ca-
storp found his breath growing scant, and scanter. Yet for sheer
pleasure in the idea, for the joy of singing, he forced his voice and
sang on, with frequent gasps for breath, until he could no more,
and sank, quite out of wind, half blind, with coloured sparks be-
fore his eyes and racing pulses, beneath a sturdy pine. His exalta-
tion gave way on the sudden to a pervading gloom; he fell a prey
to dejection bordering on despair.

When, his nerves being tolerably restored, he got to his feet
again to continue his walk, he found his neck trembling; indeed
his head shook in precisely the same way now, at his age, in which
the head of old Hans Lorenz Castorp once had shaken. The phe-
nomenon so freshly called up to him the memory of his dead
grandfather that, far from finding it offensive, he took a certain
pleasure in availing himself of that remembered and dignified
method of supporting the chin, by means of which his grandfather
had been wont to control the shaking of his head, and to which the
boy had responded with such inward sympathy.

He mounted still higher on the zigzag path, drawn by the sound
of cow-bells, and came at length upon the herd, grazing near a hut
whose roof was weighted with stones. Two bearded men ap-
proached him, with axes on their shoulders. They parted, a little
way off him, and “ Thank ye kindly, and God be with ye,” said
the one to the other, in a deep guttural voice, shifted his axe to the
other shoulder, and began breaking a path through crackling pine-
boughs to the valley. The words sounded strange in this lonely
spot: they came dreamlike to Hans Castorp’s senses, strained and

HIPPE

ll 9

benumbed. He repeated them, softly, trying to reproduce the gut-
tural, rustically formal syllables of the mountain tongue, as he
climbed another stretch higher, above the hut. He had in mind to
reach the height where the trees left off, but on glancing at his
watch resisted.

He took the left-hand path in the direction of the village. It ran
level for some way, then led downhill, among tall-trunked pines,
where, as he went, he once more began to sing, tentatively, and
despite the fact that he felt his knees to tremble more than they
had during the ascent. On issuing from the wood he paused, struck
by the charm of the small enclosed landscape before him, a scene
composed of elements both peaceful and sublime.

A mountain stream came flowing in its shallow, stony bed down
the right-hand slope, poured itself foaming over the terraced
boulders lying in its path, then coursed more calmly toward the
valley, crossed at this point by a picturesque railed wooden foot-
bridge. The ground all about was blue with the bell-like blossoms
of a profusely growing, bushy plant. Sombre fir-trees of even,
mighty growth stood in the bed of the ravine and climbed its sides
to the height. One of them, rooted in the steep bank at the side of
the torrent, thrust itself aslant into the picture, with bizarre effect.
The whole remote and lovely spot was wrapped in a sounding
solitude by the noise of the rushing waters. Hans Castorp re-
marked a bench that stood on the farther bank of the stream.

He crossed the foot-bridge and sat down to regale himself with
the sight of the foaming, rushing waterfall and the idyllic sound
of its monotonous yet modulated prattle. For Hans Castorp loved
like music the sound of rushing water — perhaps he loved it even
more. But hardly had he settled himself when he was overtaken
by a bleeding at the nose, which came on so suddenly he had
barely time to save his clothing from soilure. The bleeding was
violent and persistent, taking to stanch it nearly half an hour of
going to and fro between bench and brook, snuffing water up his
nostrils, rinsing his handkerchief and lying flat on his back upon
the wooden seat with the damp cloth on his nose. He lay there,
after the blood at length was stanched, his knees elevated, hands
folded behind his head, eyes closed, and ears full of the noise of
water. He felt no unpleasant sensation, the blood-letting had had
a soothing effect, but he found himself in a state of extraordinarily
reduced vitality, so that when he exhaled the air, he felt no need
to draw it in again, and lay there moveless, for the space of
several quiet heart-beats, before taking another slow ana super-
ficial breath.

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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Quite suddenly he found himself in the far distant past, trans-
ported to a scene which had come back to him in a dream some
nights before, summoned by certain impressions of the last few
days. But so strongly, so resistlessly, to the annihilation of time
and space, was he rapt back into the past, one might have said it
was a lifeless body lying here on the bench by the waterside, while
the actual Hans Castorp moved in that far-away time and place —
in a situation which was for him, despite its childishness, vibrant
with daring and adventure.

It happened when he was a lad of thirteen, in knee-breeches,
in the lower third form at school. He stood in the school yard in
talk with another boy of like years, from a higher form. The con-
versation had been begun, rather arbitrarily, by himself and, deal-
ing as it did with a narrowly circumscribed subject of a practical
nature, could in no case be prolonged; yet it gave him the greatest
satisfaction. It took place in the break between the last two periods,
a history and a drawing hour for Hans Castorp’s form; the pupils
were walking up and down, or standing about in groups, or loung-
ing against the glazed abutments of the school-building wall. A
murmur of voices filled the red-tiled court-yard, which was shut
off from the street by a wall topped with shingles and provided
with two entrance gates. Supervision was exercised by a master in
a slouch hat, who munched a ham sandwich the while.

He with whom Hans Castorp spoke was called Hippe, Pribislav
Hippe. A peculiarity of this given name was that you were to

J jronounce it as though it were spelled Pschibislav; and the singu-
arity of the appellation suited the lad’s appearance, which did
indeed have something exotic about it. Hippe was the son of a
scholar and history professor in the gymnasium. He was, by conse-
quence, a notorious model pupil, and, though not much older than
Hans Castorp, already a form higher up. He came from Mecklen-
burg and was in his person obviously the product of an ancient
mixture of races, a grafting of Germanic stock with Slavic, or the
reverse. True, his close-shorn round pate was blond; but the eyes
were a grey-blue, or a blue-grey — an indefinite, ambiguous col-
our, like the hue of far-distant mountain ranges — and of an odd,
narrow shape; were even, to be precise, a little slanting, with
strongly marked, prominent cheek-bones directly under them. It
was a type of face which in this instance, far from seeming an
abnormality, was distinctly pleasing, though odd enough to have
won for him the nickname of “ the Kirghiz ” among his school-
mates. Hippe already wore long trousers, and a blue jacket belted

HIPPE

1 2 I

in at the back and closed to the throat, the collar of which was
usually whitened by a few scales of dandruff.

Now, the thing was that Hans Castorp, for a long time, had had
his eye upon this Pribislav; had chosen him out of the whole host,
known and unknown, in the court-yard of the school, taken an
interest in him, followed him with his eyes — shall we say admired
him? — at all events observed him with peculiar sympathy. Even
on the way to school he looked forward with pleasure to watch-
ing him among his fellows, seeing him speak and laugh, singling
out his voice from the others by its pleasantly veiled, husky qual-
ity. Granted that there was no sufficient ground for his preference,
unless one might refer it to Hippe’s heathenish name, his character
as model pupil — this latter was, of course, out of the question —
or to the “ Kirghiz ” eyes, whose grey-blue glance could some-
times melt into a mystery of darkness when one caught it musing
sidewise; whichever it might be, or none of these, Hans Castorp
troubled not a whit to justify his feelings, or even to question by
what name they might suitably be called. For, since he did not
“ know ” Hippe, the relation could hardly be one of friendship.
But in the first place there was not the faintest need of calling it
anything; it could never be a subject of discussion; that would
be out of place, and he had no desire for it; and, in the second,
giving a thing a name implies, if not passing judgment on it, at least
defining it; that is to say, classifying it among the familiar and
habitual; whereas Hans Castorp was penetrated by the uncon-
scious conviction that an inward good of this sort was above all
to be guarded from definition and classification.

But whether well or ill founded, and however far from being
the subject of conversation, or even from being touched on in
Hans Castorp ’s own mind, these feelings of his flourished there in
great strength, as they had done for almost a year now — or a
year as nearly as one could fix the time, for it was hard to be pre-
cise about their beginnings. For about a year, then, he had carried
them about in secret, which spoke for the loyalty and constancy
of his character, when one reflects what a great space of time a
year is at that age. But alas, every characterization of this kind
involves a moral judgment, whether favourable or unfavourable
— though, to be sure, each trait of character has its two sides. Thus
Hans Castorp’s “ loyalty ” — upon which, be it said, he was not
prone to plume himself — consisted, baldly, in a certain tempera-
mental heaviness, sluggishness, and quiescence, a fundamental
tendency to feel respect for conditions of duration and stability;

122

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

and the more respect, the longer they lasted. He inclined to be-
lieve in the permanence of the particular state or circumstances in
which he for the moment found himself; prized it for that very
quality, and was not bent on change. Thus he had grown used to
his silent and remote relation to Pribislav Hippe, and considered it
a regular feature of his life; loved the emotions it brought in its
train, the suspense as to whether he was likely to meet him that
day, whether Pribislav would pass close by him, even look at him;
loved the subtle and wordless satisfaction imparted by his secret,
loved even the disappointments inseparable from it — the greatest
of which was Pribislav’s absence from school. When this hap-
pened, the school yard became a desert, the day lacked all charm,
hope alone lingered.

The affair had lasted a year, up to that intrepid and culminating
moment; after which, thanks to Hans Castorp’s constancy of
spirit, it lasted another. Then it was over. And it is a fact that he
marked no more the loosening and dissolving of the bond which
united him to Pribislav than he had previously marked its begin-
nings. Moreover, in consequence or his father’s taking another
position, Pribislav left the school and the city; but that was all one
to Hans Castorp; he had already forgotten him before he went.
One may put it that the figure of the “ Kirghiz ” had glided out
of the mist into Hans Castorp’s life, and slowly grown vivid and
tangible there, up to that moment of the greatest nearness and
corporeity, in the school court; had stood awhile thus in the fore-
ground, then slowly receded, and, with no pain of parting, dis-
solved again into the mist.

But that moment, that bold, adventurous situation, into which
Hans Castorp found himself transported after all these years, the
conversation — an actual conversation with Pribislav Hippe —
came about thus. The drawing-lesson was the next period, and
Hans Castorp found himself without a pencil. His classmates
needed their own, but he had among the other pupils this and that
acquaintance, of whom he might have sought a loan. Yet he found
it was Pribislav who after all stood nearest to him, with whom,
in secret, he had had to do; and with a joyous impulse of his entire
being he determined to seize the opportunity — for so he called it
— and ask Pribislav for a pencil. It was rather an odd thing to do,
since he did not, in reality, “ know ” Pribislav at all; but this aspect
of the affair escaped him in his recklessness, or he chose to disre-
gard it. So there he stood before Pribislav Hippe, among the
bustling crowd that filled the tiled court-yard; and he said to him:
“ Excuse me, can you lend me a pencil? ”

HIPPE

l2 }

And Pribislav looked at him, with his “ Kirghiz ” eyes above
the prominent cheek-bones, and spoke, in his pleasantly husky
voice, without any surprise, or, at least, without showing any.

“ With pleasure,” he said. “ But you must be sure to give it me
back, after the period.” And drew his pencil out of his pocket,
a silver pencil-holder with a ring in the end, which one screwed
in order to make the red lead-pencil come out. He displayed the
simple mechanism, their two heads bent over it together.

“ Only be careful not to break it,” he added.

What made him say that? As if Hans Castorp had been intend-
ing to handle it carelessly or keep it after the hour!

They looked at each other, and smiled; then, as there re-
mained nothing more to say, they turned, first their shoulders and
then their backs, and went.

That was all. But never in his life had Hans Castorp felt so su-
premely content as in this drawing hour, drawing with Pribislav
Hippe’s pencil, in the immediate prospect of giving it back into
the owner’s hand — which followed as a matter of course out of
what had gone before. He took the liberty of sharpening the
pencil a little, and cherished three of the red shavings nearly a
year, in an inner drawer of his desk — no one seeing them there
could have guessed what significance they possessed. The return
of the pencil was of the simplest formality, quite after Hans Ca-
storp’s heart — indeed, he prided himself on it no little, in the
vainglorious state his intimacy with Hippe produced.

“ There,” he said. “ And thanks very much.”

And Pribislav said nothing at all, only hastily tried the screw
and stuck the pencil in his pocket.

Never again did they speak to each other; but this one time,
thanks to the enterprise of Hans Castorp, they had spoken.

He wrenched his eyes open, amazed at the depths of the trance
in which he had been sunk. “ I’ve been dreaming,” he thought.
“ Yes, that was Pribislav. It’s a long time since I thought of him.
I wonder what became of the shavings. My desk is in the attic
at Uncle Tienappel’s; they must be there yet, in the little inner
back drawer. I never took them out, never thought enough about
them to throw them away! That was certainly Pribislav, his very
own self. I shouldn’t have thought I could remember him so
clearly. How remarkably like her he looked — like this girl up
here! Is that why I feel interested in her? Or was that why I
felt so interested in him? What rubbish! Anyhow, I must be
stirring, and pretty fast, too.” But he lay another moment, mus-
ing and recalling, before he got up. “ Then thank ye kindly, and

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

I24

God be with ye,” he said — the tears came to his eyes as he smiled.
And with that he would have been off, but instead sat suddenly
down again with his hat and stick in his hand, being forced to the
realization that his knees would not support him. “ Hullo,” he
thought, “ this won’t do. I am supposed to be back in the dining-
room punctually at eleven, for the lecture. Taking walks up here
is very beautiful — but appears to have its difficult side. Well,
well, I can’t stop here. I must have got stiff from lying; I shall be
better as I move about.” He tried again to get on his legs and,
by dint of great effort, succeeded.

But the return home was lamentable indeed, after the high
spirits of his setting forth. He had repeatedly to rest by the way,
feeling the colour recede from his face, and cold sweat break
out on his brow; the wild beating of his heart took away his
breath. Thus painfully he fought his way down the winding path
and reached the bottom in the neighbourhood of the Kurhaus.
But here it became clear that his own powers would never take
him over the stretch between him and the Berghof; and accord-
ingly, as there was no tram and he saw no carriages for hire, he
hailed a driver going toward the Dorf with a load of empty
boxes and asked permission to climb into his wagon. Back to back
with the man, his legs hanging down out of the end, swaying
and nodding with fatigue and the jolting of the vehicle, regarded
with surprise and sympathy by the passers-by, he got as far as
the railway crossing, where he dismounted and paid for his ride,
whether much money or little he did not heed, and hurried
headlong up the drive.

“ Depechez-vous , monsieur said to him the French concierge.

La conference de M. Krokcnvski vient de commencerT Hans
Castorp tossed hat and stick on the stand and squeezed himself
with much precaution, tongue between his teeth, through the
partly open glass door into the dining-room, where the society of
the cure sat in rows on their chairs, and on the right-hand narrow
side of the room, behind a covered table adorned with a water-
bottle, Dr. Krokowski, in a frock-coat, stood and delivered his
lecture.

Analysis

Luckily there was a vacant seat in the comer, near the door.
He slipped into it and assumed an air of having been here from
the beginning. The audience, hanging rapt on Dr. Krokowski’s
lips, paid him no heed — which was as well, for he looked rather
ghastly. His face white as a sheet, his coat spotted with blood —

ANALYSIS

“5

he might have been a murderer stealing from his crime. The lady
in front of him did, indeed, turn her head as he sat down, and
measured him with narrow eyes. With a sense of exasperation
he recognized Madame Chauchat. Deuce take it — was he never
to have a moment’s peace? He had thought that, having arrived at
his goal, he could sit here quietly and rest a little; and now he
had to have her under his nose. In other circumstances he might
conceivably have found her nearness rather pleasant than other-
wise. But now, worn out and harassed as he felt, what was it to
him? It could only make new demands on his heart and keep him
from drawing a long breath during the whole lecture. With
Pribislav’s very eyes she had looked at him, and at the spots of
blood on his coat; her look had been rather bold and ruthless
too, as a woman’s would be who let doors bang behind her. How
badly she held herself! Not like the ladies of Hans Castorp’s
social sphere, who sat erect at their tables, turned their heads
towards their lords and masters, and spoke with mincing correct-
ness. Frau Chauchat sat all relaxed, with drooping shoulders and
round back; she even thrust her head forward until the vertebra
at the base of the neck showed prominently above the rounded
decolletage of her white blouse. Pribislav had held his head like
that. But he had been a model pupil and full of honours (which
was not the reason why Hans Castorp had borrowed his pencil),
whereas it was abundantly clear that Frau Chauchat’s bad car-
riage, her door-slamming, and the directness of her gaze all had
to do with her physical condition; yes, were even expressive of
that want of restraint in which young Herr Albin rejoiced,
which was not honourable at all, yet possessed boundless advan-
tages all its own.

Hans Castorp’s thoughts, as he sat and looked at Frau Chau-
chat’s flaccid back, began to blur; they ceased to be thoughts at
all and began to be a reverie, into which Dr. Krokowski’s drawl-
ing baritone, with the soft-sounding r, came as from afar. But
the stillness of the room, the profound attention that rapt all the
rest of the audience, had the effect of rousing him too. He looked
about. Near him sat the thin-haired pianist, with bent head and
folded arms, listening with his mouth open. Somewhat farther
on was Fraulein Engelhart, avid-eyed, with a dull red spot on each
cheek; Hans Castorp saw the same signal flame on the faces of
other ladies — on Frau Salomon’s, and Frau Magnus’s, the same
who was wife to the brewer and lost flesh persistently. Frau Stohr
sat somewhat farther back, an expression of ignorant credulity
painted on her face, truly painful to behold; while the ivory-com-

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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

E lexioned Levi, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes,
er hands lying open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse
had not her breast risen and fallen with such profound and
rhythmical breaths as to remind Hans Castorp of a mechanical
waxwork he had once seen. Many of the guests had their hands
curved behind their ears; some even held the hand in the air
half-way thither, as though arrested midway in the gesture by the
strength of their concentration. Lawyer Paravant, a sunburnt man
who looked to have had the strength of a bull, even flicked his
ear with his forefinger to make it hear better, then turned it again
to catch the words that flowed from Dr. Krokowski’s lips.

And what was Dr. Krokowski saying? What was his line of
thought? Hans Castorp summoned his wits to discover, not im-
mediately succeeding, however, since he had not heard the be-
ginning and lost still more while musing on Frau Chauchat’s
flabby back. It was about a power, the power which — in short, it
was about the power of love. Yes, of course; the subject was
already given out in the general title of the whole course, and,
moreover, this was Dr. Krokowski’s special field; of what else
should he be talking? It was a bit odd, to be sure, listening to a
lecture on such a theme, when previously Hans Castorp’s courses
had dealt only with such matters as geared transmission in ship-
building. No, really, how did one go about to discuss a subject of
this delicate and private nature, in broad daylight, before a mixed
audience? Dr. Krokowski did it by adopting a mingled termi-
nology, partly poetic and partly erudite; ruthlessly scientific, yet
with a vibrating, singsong delivery, which impressed young Hans
Castorp as being unsuitable, but may have been the reason why
the ladies looked flushed and the gentlemen flicked their ears to
make them hear better. In particular the speaker employed the
word love in a somewhat ambiguous sense, so that you were never
quite sure where you were with it, or whether he had reference
to its sacred or its passionate and fleshly aspect — and this doubt
gave one a slightly seasick feeling. Never in all his life had Hans
Castorp heard the word uttered so many times on end as he was
hearing it now. When he reflected, it seemed to him he had never
taken it in his own mouth, nor ever heard it from a stranger’s.
That might not be the case, but whether it were or no, the word
did not seem to him to repay such frequent repetition. The slip-
pery monosyllable, with its lingual and labial, and the bleating
vowel between — it came to sound positively offensive; it sug-
gested watered milk, or anything else that was pale and insipid;
the more so considering the meat for strong men Dr. Krokowski

ANALYSIS

127

was in fact serving up. For it was plain that when one set about
it like that, one could go pretty far without shocking anybody.
He was not content to allude, with exquisite tact, to certain mat-
ters which are known to everybody, but which most people are
content to pass over in silence. He demolished illusions, he was
ruthlessly enlightened, he relentlessly destroyed all faith in the
dignity of silver hairs and the innocence of the sucking babe.
And he wore, with the frock-coat, his neglige collar, sandals, and
grey woollen socks, and, thus attired, made an impression pro-
foundly otherworldly, though at the same time not a little start-
ling to young Hans Castorp. He supported his statements with a
wealth of illustration and anecdote from the books and loose
notes on the table before him; several times he even quoted poetry.
And he discussed certain startling manifestations of the power
of love, certain extraordinary, painful, uncanny variations, which
the majestic phenomenon at times displayed. It was, he said, the
most unstable, the most unreliable of man’s instincts, the most
prone of its very essence to error and fatal perversion. In the
which there was nothing that should cause surprise. For this
mighty force did not consist of a single impulse, it was of its
nature complex; it was built up out of components which, how-
ever legitimate they might be in composition, were, taken each
by itself, sheer perversity. But — continued Dr. Krokowski —
since we refuse, and rightly, to deduce the perversity of the whole
from the perversity of its parts, we are driven to claim, for the
component perversities, some part at least, though perhaps not
all, of the justification which attaches to their united product.
We were driven by sheer force of logic to this conclusion; Dr.
Krokowski implored his hearers, having arrived at it, to hold it
fast. Now there were psychical correctives, forces working in the
other direction, instincts tending to conformability and regularity
— he would almost have liked to characterize them as bourgeois;
and these influences had the effect of merging the perverse com-
ponents into a valid and irreproachable whole: a frequent and
gratifying result, which, Dr. Krokowski almost contemptuously
added, was, as such, of no further concern to the thinker and the
physician. But on the other hand, there were cases where this re-
sult was not obtained, could not and should not be obtained; and
who, Dr. Krokowski asked, would dare to say that these cases
did not, psychically considered, form a higher, more exclusive
type? For in these cases the two opposing groups of instincts —
the compulsive force of love, and the sum of the impulses urging
in the other direction, among which he would particularly men-

128

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tion shame and disgust — both exhibited an extraordinary and ab-
normal height and intensity when measured by the ordinary
bourgeois standards; and the conflict between them which took
place in the abysses of the soul prevented the erring instinct from
attaining to that safe, sheltered, and civilized state which alone
could resolve its difficulties in the prescribed harmonies of the
love-life as experienced by the average human being. This con-
flict between the powers of love and chastity — for that was what
it really amounted to — what was its issue? It ended, apparently,
in the triumph of chastity. Love was suppressed, held in dark-
ness and chains, by fear, conventionality, aversion, or a tremu-
lous yearning to be pure. Her confused and tumultuous claims
were never allowed to rise to consciousness or to come to proof
in anything like their entire strength or multiformity. But this
triumph of chastity was only an apparent, a pyrrhic victory; for
the claims of love could not be crippled or enforced by any such
means. The love thus suppressed was not dead; it lived, it laboured
after fulfilment in the darkest and secretest depths of the being.
It would break through the ban of chastity, it would emerge — if
in a form so altered as to be unrecognizable. But what then was
this form, this mask, in which suppressed, unchartered love would
reappear? Dr. Krokowski asked the question, and looked along the
listening rows as though in all seriousness expecting an answer.
But he had to say it himself, who had said so much else already.
No one knew save him, but it was plain that he did. Indeed, with
his ardent eyes, his black beard setting off the waxen pallor of
his face, his monkish sandals and grey woollen socks, he seemed
to symbolize in his own person that conflict between passion and
chastity which was his theme. At least so thought Hans Castorp,
as with the others he waited in the greatest suspense to hear in
what form love driven below the surface would reappear. The
ladies barely breathed. Lawyer Paravant rattled his ear anew, that
the critical moment might find it open and receptive. And Dr.
Krokowski answered his own question, and said: “ In the form
of illness. Symptoms of disease are nothing but a disguised mani-
festation of the power of love; and all disease is only love trans-
formed.”

So now they knew — though very probably not all of them
were capable of an opinion on what they heard. A sigh passed
through the assemblage, and Lawyer Paravant weightily nodded
approbation as Krokowski proceeded to develop his theme. Hans
Castorp for his part sat with bowed head, trying to reflect on

ANALYSIS

I2 9

what had been said and test his own understanding of it. But he
was unpractised in such exercises, and rendered still further in-
capable of mental exertion by the unhappy effect of the walk he
had taken. His thoughts were soon drawn off again by the sight of
Frau Chauchat’s back, and the arm appertaining, which was lift-
ing and bending itself, close before Hans Castorp’s eyes, so that
the hand could hold the braids of hair.

It made him uncomfortable to have the hand so close beneath
his eye, to be forced to look at it whether he wished or no, to
study it in all its human blemishes and imperfections, as though
under a magnifying-glass. No, there was nothing aristocratic about
this stubby schoolgirl hand, with the badly cut nails. He was even
not quite sure that the ends of the fingers were perfectly clean;
and the skin round the nails was distinctly bitten. Hans Castorp
made a face; but his eyes remained fixed on Madame Chauchat’s
back, as he vaguely recalled what Dr. Krokowski had been saying,
about counteracting influences of a bourgeois kind, which set
themselves up against the power of love. — The arm, in its gentle
upward curve, was better than the hand; it was scarcely clothed,
for the material of the sleeve was thinner than that of the blouse,
being the lightest gauze, which had the effect of lending the arm
a sort of shadowed radiance, making it prettier than it might other-
wise have been. It was at once both full and slender — in all prob-
ability cool to the touch. No, so far as the arm went, the idea about
counteracting bourgeois influences did not apply.

Hans Castorp mused, his gaze still bent on Frau Chauchat’s arm.
The way women dressed! They showed their necks and bosoms,
they transfigured their arms by veiling them in “ illusion ”; they
did so, the world over, to arouse our desire. O God, how beautiful
life was! And it was just such accepted commonplaces as this that
made it beautiful — for it was a commonplace that women dressed
themselves alluringly, it was so well known and recognized a fact
that we never consciously realized it, but merely enjoyed it with-
out a thought. And yet he had an inward conviction that we ought
to think about it, ought to realize what a blessed, what a well-nigh
miraculous arrangement it was. For of course it all had a certain
end and aim; it was by a definite design that women were per-
mitted to array themselves with irresistible allure: it was for the
sake of posterity, for the perpetuation of the species. Of course.
But suppose a woman were inwardly diseased, unfit for mother-
hood— what then? What was the sense of her wearing gauze
sleeves and attracting male attention to her physical parts if these

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x 3°

were actually unsound? Obviously there was no sense; it ought to
be considered immoral, and forbidden as such. For a man to take
an interest in a woman inwardly diseased had no more sense than
— well, than the interest Hans Castorp had once taken in Pribislav
Hippe. The comparison was a stupid one; it roused memories
better forgotten; he had not meant to make it, it came into his
head unbidden. But at this point his musings broke off, largely
because Dr. Krokowski had raised his voice and so drawn atten-
tion once more upon himself. He was standing there behind his
table, with his arms outstretched and his head on one side — al-
most, despite the frock-coat, he looked like Christ on the cross.

It seemed that at the end of his lecture Dr. Krokowski was
making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he sum-
moned all and sundry to come unto him. “ Come unto me,” he was
saying, though not in those words, “ come unto me, all ye who
are weary and heavy-laden.” And he left no doubt of his convic-
tion that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke
of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power
of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the uncon-
scious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamor-
phosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confi-
dence; he promised relief. Then he let fall his arms, raised his head,
gathered up his notes and went out by the corridor door, with his
head in the air, and the bundle of papers held schoolmaster fashion,
in his left hand, against his shoulder.

His audience rose, pushed back its chairs, and slowly began to
move towards the same door, as though converging upon him
from all sides, without volition, hesitatingly, yet with one accord,
like the throng after the Pied Piper. Hans Castorp stood in the
stream without moving, his hand on the back of his chair. I am
only a guest up here, he thought. Thank God I am healthy, that
business has nothing to do with me; I shan’t even be here for the
next lecture. He watched Frau Chauchat going out, gliding along
with her head thrust forward. Did she have herself psycho-ana-
lysed, he wondered. And his heart began to thump. He did not
notice Joachim, coming toward him among the chairs, and started
when his cousin spoke.

“ You got here at the last minute,” Joachim said. “ Did you go
very far? How was it? ”

“ Oh, very nice,” Hans Castorp answered. “ Yes, I went rather
a long way. But I must confess, it did me less good than I thought
it would. I won’t repeat it for the present.”

Joachim did not ask how he liked the lecture; neither did Hans

DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS I 3 I

Castorp express an opinion. By common consent they let the sub-
ject rest, both then and thereafter.

Doubts and Considerations

Tuesday was the last day of our hero’s week up here, and accord-
ingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return from the
morning walk. It was a clear and businesslike document, in a
green envelope, with a picture of the Berghof building at the top,
and extracts from the prospectus carried in a narrow column
down the left-hand side of the sheet. “ Psycho-analytic treatment,
by the most modern methods ” was called attention to by means
of spaced type. The items, set down in a calligraphic hand, came
to one hundred and eighty francs almost exactly: eight francs a
day for his chamber, twelve for board and medical attendance, en-
trance fee twenty, disinfection of room ten, while small charges
for laundry, beer, and the late dinner of the first evening made up
the sum.

Hans Castorp went over the bill with Joachim and found naught
to object to. “ Of course I made no use of the medical attendance,”
he said, “ but that was my own affair. It is included in the price of
pension, and I couldn’t expect them to make any deduction; how
could they? As regards the disinfection, they must show a neat
profit there, they never could have used ten francs’ worth of
H l ,CO to smoke the American woman out. But on the whole I
must say I find it cheap rather than dear, considering what they
offer.” And before second breakfast they went down to the man-
agement in order that Hans Castorp might acquit himself of his
debt.

The management was on the ground-floor. You reached it after
passing the hall, the garderobe, the kitchens and domestic offices;
you could not miss the door, it had a porcelain shield. Hans Ca-
storp took an interest in this glimpse into the business side of the
enterprise. There was a neat little office, with a typist busy at her
machine and three clerks bending over desks. In an adjoining office
a man who looked like a head or director was working at a desk
in the middle of the room; he flung a cool and calculating glance
at the clients over the top of his glasses. Their affair was dispatched
at the cashier’s window, a note changed, money received, the bill
receipted; the cousins preserving throughout these transactions
the solemn, discreet, almost overawed bearing which the young
German’s respect for authority leads him to assume in the presence
of pens, ink, and paper, or anything else which bears to his mind

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132

an official stamp. But on the way to breakfast, and later in the
course of the day, they talked about the direction of the Berghof
sanatorium, and Joachim, in his character as inmate, answered his
cousin’s questions.

Hofrat Behrens was not — though he gave the impression of
being — owner and proprietor of the establishment. Above and
behind him stood invisible powers, which to a certain extent mani-
fested their existence in the office they had just visited. They con-
sisted of a supervisory head and a stock company — in which it
was not a bad thing to hold shares, according to Joachim, since the
members of it divided a fat dividend each year. The Hofrat was a
dependent, he was merely an agent, a functionary, an associate of
higher powers; the first and highest, of course, and the soul of the
enterprise, with a well-defined influence upon it and upon the man-
agement itself — though of course as directing physician he was re-
lieved of all preoccupation with the business side. He was a native
of north-western Germany, and it was common knowledge that
when he took the position, years ago, he had done so contrary to his
previous intention and plans. He had come here on account of his
wife — whose remains had long reposed in the village churchyard,
that picturesque churchyard of Dorf Davos, which lay high up on
the right-hand slope, nearer the entrance of the valley. She had been
a charming person, to judge from her likenesses, though too large-
eved and asthenic-looking. Photographs of her stood about every-
where in the Hofrat’s house; even oil portraits by his own amateur
hand hung on the walls. Two children, a son and a daughter, had
been born; then they had brought her up here, the fragile body
alreadv fever-smitten; a few months had seen the completion of the
wasting-away process. Behrens, they said, had adored her. He was
brought so low by the blow that he got very odd and melancholy;
people saw him gesturing, sniggering, and talking to himself, on the
street. He did not go back to his original place, but remained where
he was — in part, no doubt, because he could not tear himself away
from her grave, but also for the less sentimental reason that he was
himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually
belonged here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who
are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do
not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal se-
curity, but who themselves bear her mark — an odd, but by no
means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad
side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and
a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can
be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet — can true spirit-

DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS

133

ual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among
her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing
physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable
phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded
and confused by his own participation, rather than enriched and
morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-evcd hostility
to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all
due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs
among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as
can a man who is himself entirely sound.

Hans Castorp expressed some of these doubts and speculations,
as he and Joachim gossiped about the Berghof and its professional
head. But Joachim answered that nobody knew whether the Hof-
rat was still a patient — he was probably long since cured. It was
ages ago that he had first begun to practise here; independently at
first, and early winning a name for himself as an extraordinarily
gifted auscultator and skilful surgeon. Then the Berghof had se-
cured him; it would soon be ten years that he had been in intimate
association with it. His private residence was in the end of the
north-west wing of the building (Dr. Krokowski’s was not far
ofiF), and that lady of the lofty lineage, the nursing sister and direc-
tress of the establishment, of whom Settembrini had made such
utter fun, and whom thus far Hans Castorp had scarcely seen, pre-
sided over the small household. The Hofrat was otherwise alone,
for his son was at the university and his daughter already married,
to a lawyer in one of the French cantons. Young Behrens some-
times visited his father in the holidays; he had done so once during
Joachim’s time up here. The ladies, he related, had been quite
thrilled; their temperatures had gone up, petty jealousies had led
to bickering and quarrels in the rest-hall and an increase of visits
to Dr. Krokowski’s private office.

The assistant had his own office hours, in a special room, which,
together with the large examination-rooms, the laboratory, the
operating-rooms and x-ray studio, was in the well-lighted base-
ment of the building. We call it the basement, for the stone steps
leading down to it from the ground-floor created the impression
that it was such — an erroneous impression, for not only was the
ground-floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on
a sidehill, part way up the mountain, and these “ basement ” rooms
faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circum-
stance negatived to some extent by the fact of the steps leading
down to them. One descended, as one supposed, from the ground-
floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically

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134

so. Hans Castorp amused himself with this illusion when he ac-
companied his cousin one afternoon down to the “ bathing-mas-
ter, n that Joachim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance
and spotlessness reigned in this sphere. Everything was as white
as white; the doors gleamed with white enamel; the one leading to
Dr. Krokowski’s receiving-room, with the doctor’s visiting-card
tacked on it, was reached by two more steps down from the cor-
ridor, which gave the room behind it an air of being more spacious
and withdrawn than the rest. This door was at the end of tne cor-
ridor, on your right as you came downstairs. Hans Castorp kept
his eye on it as he walked up and down waiting for his cousin. He
saw a lady come out, a recent arrival, whose name he did not
know: a small, dainty person, with curls on her forehead, and gold
ear-rings. She bent over as she mounted the stairs, and held up her
frock with one beringed hand, while with the other she pressed her
tiny handkerchief to her lips and, all stooped as she was, stared up
over it into nothing, with great blue, distracted eyes. She hurried
with small tripping steps, her petticoat rustling, to the stairs, paused
suddenly as though something had occurred to her, then went on
tripping upward, and disappeared, still bending over and holding
her handkerchief to her mouth.

Behind her, when she opened the office door, it had been much
darker than in the white corridor. Obviously the brilliant lighting
of these lower regions did not extend so far; Hans Castorp re-
marked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight, prevailed in
Dr. Krokowski’s private sanctum.

Table-Talk

Young Hans Castorp noticed that the ancestral tremor brought on
by his ill-advised walk continued to trouble him — he found it
rather an embarrassment when in the dining-room. Almost as a
regular thing now, his head would begin shaking at table; he found
this impossible to prevent and hard to dissemble. He tried various
devices to disguise the weakness, for he could not continually sup-
port his chin on his collar; he would keep his head in action, turn-
ing it to the right and left in conversation, or bear hard against the
table with the left forearm when he carried a spoonful of soup to
his mouth, and support his head with his hand. In the pauses he
even rested his elbow on the table, this although it was in his own
eyes a piece of ill breeding, which would not pass in any society
save the lax abnormal one where he now found himself. But the
weakness was burdensome too and went far to spoil the meal hours

TABLE-TALK I 3 5

for him, which he had otherwise continued to find diverting and
full of interesting episode.

But the truth was — and Hans Castorp was entirely aware of
it — that the absurd manifestation against which he struggled was
not solely physical in its origin, not wholly to be accounted for by
the air up here and the efforts his system made to adjust itself.
Rather was it the outward expression of his inner stimulation, and
bore directly upon those very episodes and diversions.

Madame Chauchat almost invariably came late to meals. Until
she came, Hans Castorp could not sit and keep his feet still, but
must wait in suspense for the crashing of the glass door; he knew
it would make him start and that his face would feel cold all over,
and this was what regularly happened. At first he had jerked round
his head infuriated and followed the offender with angry eyes to
her seat at the “ good ” Russian table. He may even have muttered
some abusive epithet between his teeth, some outraged cry of pro-
test. But now he only bent over his plate, bit his lips, or deliber-
ately turned his head away. It seemed to him that anger was no
longer in place; he even had an obscure feeling that he was partly
responsible, that he shared the blame with her before the others.
In short, it would be no longer so true to say he was ashamed of
Frau Chauchat as that he was ashamed for her — a feeling he might
well have spared himself, for not a soul in the room troubled
either over Frau Chauchat’s misconduct or Hans Castorp’s sensi-
tiveness to it — with the possible exception of the schoolmistress,
Fraulein Engelhart, on his right.

This poor creature had perceived that, thanks to his sensibility
in the matter of slamming doors, a certain emotional attitude
toward the Russian lady was come to subsist in her young neigh-
bour’s mind. Further, that the grounds of the attitude were of little
moment compared to the fact of its existence; and, finally, that his
assumed indifference — very poorly assumed, for Hans Castorp
had neither talent nor training as an actor — did not mean a de-
crease of interest, but on the contrary indicated that the affair was
passing into a higher phase. Fraulein Engelhart was for her own
person quite without hopes or pretensions. She therefore launched
out into extravagant enthusiasm over Frau Chauchat — about which
quite the most extraordinary thing was that Hans Castorp saw per-
fectly how she was egging him on — not all at once, perhaps, but
in the course of time — saw through it and even felt disgusted at
it, yet without being the less willingly led on by her and made a
fool of.

“ Slam — bang! ” the old spinster said. “ That was she . No need

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136

to look up to tell who just came in. Of course, there she goes —
like a kitten to a saucer of milk — how pretty it is! I wish we might
change places, so you could look at her as much as you liked.
Naturally you don’t care to keep turning your head — that would
flatter her far too much. She is greeting her table — you really
ought to look, it is so refreshing to see her! When she smiles and
talks as she is doing now, a dimple comes in one cheek, but not
always, only when she likes. What a love of a woman! A spoilt
child, that is why she is so heedless. Creatures like that one has to
love, whether one will or no; they vex you with their heedlessness,
but that is only one reason the more for loving them; it makes you
so* happy to have to care for them in spite of yourself.”

She whispered on, behind her hand, for his ear alone; the flush
that mantled on her downy old cheek bespoke a rising tempera-
ture, and the suggestiveness of her talk pierced Hans Castorp to
the very marrow 7 . It did him good to hear someone else confirm his
view’ that Madame Chauchat was an enchanting creature. He was
a* young man of not very independent judgments, and glad to be
encouraged in certain feelings he had, upon which both reason and
conscience united to frown.

But Fraulein Engelhart, however much she would have liked
to, could tell him practically nothing about Frau Chauchat. She
knew 7 no more than the whole sanatorium knew, and his conver-
sations w 7 ith her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know
the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaint-
ance. Her only title to importance was that she lived in Konigs-
berg, not very far from the Russian border; also that she knew a
few scraps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions; yet
Hans Castorp w 7 as prepared to see in them something resembling
an extensive personal connexion with Frau Chauchat.

“ I see that she wears no ring, no wedding-ring,” he said. “ Why
is that? She is a married woman, I think you told me? ”

The schoolmistress was quite perturbed; she seemed to feel
driven into a corner and sought for words to talk herself out again,
so very responsible did she feel for Frau Chauchat.

“ You must not attach importance to that,” she finally said.
“ I’m positive she is married. There is no doubt of it. Of course
I know some foreigners do use the Madame when they are getting
a little on in years, for the sake of the greater respect people pay a
married woman. But it is not the case here. Everyone knows she
really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was
not French but Russian, something in anow or ukov — I did know
it, but I have forgotten. I will ask if you like; there must be several

TABLE-TALK

137

people here who know it. No, she wears no ring, I have noticed it
myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too
broad. Or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a
plain gold wedding-ring. She might as well carry a key basket.
No, she is built on broader lines than that — Russian women all
have something free and large about them. And then, a wedding-
ring seems so»prosaic, it is almost repellent! It is a symbol of posses-
sion; it is always saying ‘ Hands off ’; it turns every woman into a
nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Frau Chauchat
thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth — why
should she, every time she gives a man her hand to kiss, tell him
straightway that she is bound in wedlock? ”

“ Good Lord,” thought Hans Castorp, “ how she does run on! ”
He looked into her face, quite alarmed. But she countered his gaze
with her embarrassed, half-frightened one. They were both silent
awhile and sought to recover themselves. Hans Castorp ate his
luncheon and supported his chin.

At length he said: “ And her husband? He doesn’t trouble him-
self about her? Does he never visit her up here? Do you know
what he does? ”

“ Official. Russian government official, in some distant province,
Daghestan, you know, out beyond the Caucasus, he was ordered
there. No, as I tell you, no one has ever seen him up here. And this
time she has been here going on three months.”

“ She was here before, then? ”

“ This is the third time. And between times she goes to other
places — other sanatoriums. But it is she who sometimes visits him;
not often, once in the year for a little while. One may say they live
separated, and she visits him now and again.”

“ Well, of course, she is ill — ”

“ Yes, of course — but not so ill. Not so ill as to have to live all
her life in sanatoriums and apart from her husband. There must be
other reasons for that. Everyone up here thinks there must be
other reasons. Perhaps she does not like to live out there in Dag-
hestan, the other side of the Caucasus; it would not be strange —
such a wild, remote place! But there must be something about the
man too, if she can’t bear to be with him. He has a French name,
but after all he is a Russian official, and that is a very rough type, I
do assure you. I once saw one of them, with an iron-grey beard
and a red face — they are all frightfully corrupt too, and drink
quantities of vodka, you know. They will eat a little something,
for the look of the thing, a mushroom marine , some caviar, and
then drink out of all measure and call it a light lunch.”

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138

“ You are putting everything off on him/’ Hans Castorp said.
“ But we can’t know if the responsibility is not hers, of their not
living together. One ought to be just. When I look at her and see
the unmannerly way she behaves about the door — I assure you
she’s no angel; excuse me for saying so. I wouldn’t trust her across
the street. But you are so partial. You are blinded by prejudice in
her favour.”

This was the line he sometimes took. With a cunning otherwise
foreign to his nature he would make out that the schoolmistress’s
ravings over Madame Chauchat were not what he very well knew
them to be, but an independent phenomenon, of a quaint and
amusing kind; about which he, Hans Castorp, made free to tease
the old spinster, feeling his own withers unwrung. He risked noth-
ing by this attitude, being confident that his accomplice would
agree to anything he said, no matter how wide of the mark.

“ Good-morning,” he greeted her, “ I hope you slept well and
dreamed of your charmer? Mistress Mary, quite contrary — or
whatever her name is! Upon my word, one has only to speak of
her to make you blush! You have completely lost your head over
her — you can’t deny it.”

And the schoolmistress, who really had blushed and tucked her
head down over her cup, would mumble out of the left-hand cor-
ner of her mouth: “ Shame on you, Herr Castorp! It really is too
bad of you to embarrass me like this. Everyone can see we are
talking about her and that you have said something to make me
get red.”

It was an extraordinary game the two of them were playing;
each perfectly aware that they lied and double-lied, each knowing
that Hans Castorp teased the schoolmistress only in order to be
able to talk about Frau Chauchat. He took a morbid and extrava-
gant pleasure in thus trifling with Fraulein Engelhart, and she on
her side reciprocated; first out of a natural instinct to be the go-
between in a love-affair, secondly because to oblige Hans Castorp
she had actually contrived to fall victim to Frau Chauchars
charms; and finally because she felt a pathetic joy in having him
tease her and make her blush. He well knew, and she well knew,
all this about each other and themselves; each knew that the other
knew and that the whole situation was equivocal and almost ques-
tionable. Equivocal and questionable situations were, in general,
repugnant to Hans Castorp’s taste, and the present one was no ex-
ception. He felt disgusted, yet for all that he went on fishing in
these troubled waters, quieting his conscience with the assurance
that he was only up here on a visit and would soon be leaving. He

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139

pronounced upon the young woman’s charms with the air of a
connoisseur; said she was “ sloppy,” that she looked younger and
prettier full face than profile; that her eyes were too far apart; that
she carried herself in a way that left much to be desired; that her
arms, on the other hand, were pretty and soft-looking. He felt his
head shaking as he talked; he tried to suppress the trembling, and
realized not only that the schoolmistress must see his efforts, but,
with profound disgust, that her head was actually shaking too! But
he went on — he had purposely called Frau Chauchat Mistress
Mary, in order that he might put the question of her name; so now
he said: “ I suppose her name is not Mary at all; do you know what
it is? I mean her given name. You must know it, being as much
smitten as you are! ”

The schoolmistress reflected. “ Wait half a minute,” she said. “ I
knew it, once. Was it Tatiana? No — nor Natascha. Natascha
Chauchat? No, that was not it. Wait, I have it — it was Avdotia.
Or at least something very like that. It was not Katienka or Nin-
otschka, of that I am certain. I can’t quite get it, for the moment.
But I can surely recall it if you would like to know.”

And next day she actually did know the name, and uttered it
the moment the glass door slammed. Frau Chauchat’s name was
Clavdia.

Hans Castorp did not grasp it at first. He had to have her repeat
the name, even to spell it, before he understood. Then he pro-
nounced it twice or thrice, turning his bloodshot eyes in Frau
Chauchat’s direction, in order, as it were, to try if it suited.

“ Clavdia,” he said. “ Yes, that is probably it; it fits her quite
well.” He could not hide his pleasure in the degree of intimacy
thus achieved, and from now on referred always to Frau Chauchat
as Clavdia. “ Your Clavdia appears to be making bread pills. That’s
not very elegant, I should think.”

“ It depends on who does it,” the schoolmistress w ould answer.
44 Clavdia it becomes.”

Yes, unquestionably the meal-times in the hall with the seven
tables had great charm for Hans Castorp. He hated to have one
come to an end, and his consolation was that soon, in two or three
hours, he would be back again. While he was sitting there, it was
as though he had never risen. And for the time in between? It was
nothing. A short turn as far as the watercourse or the Platz, a little
rest on his balcony: no great burden, no serious interruption. Not
as though he had to look forward to some interest or effort, which
would not have been so easy to overleap in spirit. Effort was not
the rule in the well-regulated Berghof life. Hans Castorp, when he

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I40

rose from one meal, could straightway by anticipation begin to
rejoice in the next — if, indeed, rejoicing is not too facile, too pleas-
ant and unequivocal a word for the sentiments with which he
looked forward to another meeting with the afflicted fair one. The
reader, on the other hand, may very likely find such adjectives the
only ones suitable to describe Hans Castorp’s personality or emo-
tions. But we suggest that a young man with a well-regulated con-
science and sense of fitness could not, whatever else he did, simply
“ rejoice in ” Frau Chauchat’s proximity. In fact, we — who must
surely know — are willing to assert that he himself would have
repudiated any' such expression if it had been suggested to him.

It is a small detail, yet worthy of mention, that he was growing
to have a contempt for certain ways of expressing himself. He
went about with that dry flush on his face and hummed contin-
ually under his breath — being in a state of mind when music par-
ticularly appeals. He hummed a ditty heard he knew not where —
in some evening company or charity concert — sung by some
thread of a soprano voice; it turned up now in his memory, a soft
nothing, that went:

One word from thy sweet lips

Can strangely thrill me.

He was about to go on:

Within my heart it slips

And raptures fill me —

but broke off instead, with a disdainful shrug. “ Idiotic! ” he said,
suddenly finding the tender ditty altogether tasteless, wishy-
washy, and sentimental. He put it from him with manly sobriety,
almost with regret. It was the sort of thing to satisfy a young man
who had “ given his heart,” as we say, given it wholly, legiti-
mately, and with quite definite intentions, to some healthy little
goose in the flat-land and thus might be justified in abandoning
himself to his orthodox and gratifying sensations, with all the
consequences they entailed. But for him and for his relations with
Madame Chauchat (we are not responsible for the word relations;
it was the word Hans Castorp used, not we), such songs had noth-
ing to do with them. “ Silly! ” he said sententiously, and put his
nose in the air. But after pronouncing this aesthetic judgment he
lay silent in his deck-chair, not thinking of anything more suitable
to sing in its place.

One thing there was which pleased him: when he lay listening
to the beating of his heart — his corporeal organ — so plainly audi-

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

I 4 1

ble in the ordered silence of the rest period, throbbing loud and
peremptorily, as it had done almost ever since he came, the sound
no longer annoyed him. For now he need not feel that it so beat
of its own accord, without sense or reason or any reference to his
non-corporeal part. He could say, without stretching the truth,
that such a connexion now existed, or was easily induced: he was
aware that he felt an emotion to correspond with the action of his
heart. He needed only to think of Madame Chauchat — and he did
think of her — and lo, he felt within himself the emotion proper
to the heart-beats.

Mounting Misgivings . Of the T wo Grandfathers , and the
Boat-ride in the Twilight

The weather was vile. In this respect Hans Castorp had no luck
during the brief term of his visit. It did not snow, but rained all
day long, a hateful downpour; thick mist wrapped the valley,
while electric storms — an absurd and uncalled-for phenomenon,
considering it was so cold that the heat had been turned on —
rolled and reverberated disagreeably through the valley.

“ Too bad,” Joachim said. “ I thought wc might take our lunch-
eons and climb up to the Schatzalp, or something like that. But it
seems it is not to happen. Let us hope the last week will be better.”

But Hans Castorp answered: “ Let be. I am not so anxious to
undertake anything for the moment. My first excursion was no
great success. I find it does me more good just to take the day as
it comes, without too much variation. I leave that sort of thing to
people who have been up here for years. What do I want of
variety in my three weeks’ time? ”

He did, indeed, find his time well taken up, just as he was. What-
ever his hopes, they would come to fruition — or else they would
not — here on the spot and not on any Schatzalp. Time did not
hang heavy on his hands — rather he began to feel the end of his
stay approach all too near. The second week was passing; soon
two-thirds of his holiday would be gone; the third week would
no sooner begin than it would be time to think of packing. The re-
freshment of his sense of time was long since a thing of the past;
the days rushed on — yes, in the mass they rushed on, though at
the same time each, single day stretched out long and longer to
hold the crowded, secret hopes and fears that filled it to over-
flowing. Ah, time is a riddling thing, and hard it is to expound its
essence!

Must we put plainer name to those inward experiences which

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I 4 2

at once both weighted and gave wings to Hans Castorp’s days?
We all know them; their emotional inanity ran true to type. They
would have taken no different course even had their origin been
such as to make applicable the silly song on which he had pro-
nounced his severe aesthetic judgment.

Impossible that Madame Chauchat should know nothing of the
threads that were weaving between her and a certain table. In-
deed, Hans Castorp definitely, wilfully purposed that she should
know something, or even a good deal. We say wilfully because his
eyes were open, he was aware that reason and good sense were
against it. But when a man is in Hans Castorp’s state — or the state
he was beginning to be in — he longs, above all, to have her of
whom he dreams* aware that he dreams, let reason and common
sense say what they like to the contrary. Thus are we made.

So, after it had happened twice or thrice that Madame Chau-
chat, impelled by chance or magnetic attraction, had turned and
looked in the direction of Hans Castorp’s table and met each time
his eyes fixed upon her, she turned the fourth time with intent —
and met them again. On the fifth occasion she did not catch him
in flagrante; he was not at his post. Yet he straightway felt her
eyes upon him, turned, and gazed so ardently that she smiled* and
looked away. Rapture — and misgiving — filled him at sight of that
smile. Did she take him for a child? Very well, she should see. He
cast about for means to refine upon the position. On the sixth
occasion, when he felt, he divined, an inner voice whispered him,
that she was looking, he pretended to be absorbed in disgusted
contemplation of a pimply dame who had stopped to talk with the
great-aunt. He stuck to his guns for a space of two or three min-
utes, until he was certain the “ Kirghiz ” eyes had been withdrawn
— a marvellous piece of play-acting, which Frau Chauchat not
only might, but was expressly intended to see through, to the end
that she be impressed with Hans Castorp’s subtlety and self-con-
trol. Then came the following episode. Frau Chauchat, between
courses, turned carelessly about and surveyed the dining-room.
Hans Castorp was on guard; their glances met, she peering at him
with a vaguely mocking look on her face, he with a determination
that made him clench his teeth. And as they looked, her serviette
slipped down from her lap and was about to fall to the floor. She
reached after it nervously and he felt the motion in all his limbs,
so that he half rose from his chair and was about to spring wildly
to her aid across eight yards of space and an intervening table —
as though some dire catastrophe must ensue if the serviette were to
touch the floor. She possessed herself of it just in time; then, still

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

*43

stooping, holding it by the corner, and frowning in evident vexa-
tion at the contretemps, for which she seemed to hold him respon-
sible, she looked back once more and saw him with lifted brows,
sitting there poised for a spring! Again she smiled and turned
away.

Hans Castorp was in the seventh heaven over this occurrence.
True, he had to pay for it: for full two days — that is to say, for
the space of ten meal-times, Madame Chauchat never looked his
way. She even intermitted her habit of pausing on her entrance,
to survey the room and, as it were, present herself to it. That was
hard to bear; yet, since it undoubtedly happened on his account,
it preserved the relation between them, if only on its negative side.
That was something.

He saw how right Joachim had been in saying that it was hard
to get acquainted here, except with one’s table companions. For
one brief hour after the evening meal social relations of a sort did
obtain. But they often shrank to twenty minutes’ length; and al-
ways Madame Chauchat spent the time, whether longer or shorter,
with her own circle, in the small salon. Her friends were the hol-
low-chested man, the whimsical girl with the fuzzy hair, the silent
Dr. Blumenkohl, and the youth with the drooping shoulders — the
“ good ” Russian table had, it seemed, pre-empted the room for
its own use. Furthermore, Joachim was always urging an early
withdrawal. He said it was in order to spend full time in the eve-
ning cure — but there were perhaps other disciplinary reasons left
unspecified, which his cousin surmised and respected. We have re-
proached Hans Castorp with being “ wilful ”; but certainly, what-
ever the goal toward which his wishes led, it was not that of social
intercourse with Madame Chauchat. He concurred, generally
speaking, in the circumstances that militated against it. The rela-
tion between him and the young Russian, a tense though tenuous
bond, the product of his assiduous glances, was of an extra-social
sort. It entailed, and could entail, no obligations. It could subsist,
in his mind, along with a degree of distaste for any social approach.
It was one thing for our young friend to call “ Clavdia ” to ac-
count for the beatings of his heart; but quite another for him, the
grandson of Hans Lorenz Castorp, to be shaken in the smallest
degree in the sure inward conviction that this door-slamming,
finger-gnawing, bread-pill-making foreigner — who carried her-
self so badly, who lived apart from her husband, and without a
ring on her finger careered from one resort to another — that this
foreigner was indubitably not a person for him to cultivate; not,
that is, over and above the secret relation we have indicated. A

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I44

deep gulf divided their two existences; he felt, he knew, that he
was not up to defending her in the face of any recognized social
authority. Hans Castorp was, for his own person, quite without
arrogance; yet a larger arrogance, the pride of caste and tradition,
stood written on his brow and in his sleepy-looking eyes, and
voiced itself in the conviction of his own superiority, which came
over him when he measured Frau Chauchat for what she was. It
was this which he neither could, nor wished to, shake off. Strangely
enough, he first became vividly conscious of his conviction on a day
when he heard Frau Chauchat speaking in his native tongue. She
stood in the dining-room after a meal, her hands in the pockets of
her sweater, and charmingly struggled to converse in German with
another patient, probably a rest-hall acquaintance. Hans Castorp
felt an unwonted thrill — never before had he been so proud of
his mother-tongue — yet at the same time experienced a tempta-
tion to offer up his pride on the altar of quite a different feeling —
the rapture which filled him at the sound of her pretty stammer-
ings and manglings of his speech.

In a word, Hans Castorp envisaged in this opening affair be-
tween him and the heedless creature who was a member of the
Berghof society no more than a holiday adventure. Before the
tribunal of reason, conscience, and common sense it could make
no claims to be heard; principally, of course, because when all was
said and done, Frau Chauchat was an ailing woman, feeble, fevered,
and tainted within; her physical condition had much to do with
the questionable life she led, as also with Hans Castorp’s instinc-
tive reservations. No, it simply did not occur to him to seek her
society; while as for the rest — well, however the thing turned
out, it would be over in one way or another inside ten days, when
he would enter upon his apprenticeship at Tunder and Wilms’s.

For the moment, however, he had begun to live in and for the
emotions roused in him by the pretty patient: the up and down
of suspense, fulfilment or disappointment, characteristic of such
a state. He came to regard these feelings as the real meaning and
content of his stay; his mood depended wholly upon their event.
All the circumstances of life up here favoured their development.
For the inviolably daily programme brought the two constantly
together. True, Frau Chauchat’s chamber was on a different storey
from his own, and she performed her cure, so the schoolmistress
said, in the general rest-hall on the roof (the same in which Cap-
tain Miklosich had lately turned off the light). But there were the
five meal-times; and besides them, innumerable occasions in the
daily goings and comings when not only might they meet, but it

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

145

was practically unavoidable they should. And that, Hans Castorp
thought, was all to the good. So was the fact that he had little to
do between one occasion and the next, except think about them.
He found, indeed, something almost breathless about being thus,
as it were, immured with opportunity.

Which did not prevent him from employing all manner of de-
vices to improve the position. His charmer came regularly late to
meals; he did the same, with intent to waylay her. He dallied over
his toilet, was not ready when Joachim knocked, and let his cousin
go on before — he would catch up with him. He would wait until
the intuition proper to his state warned him of the right moment;
then he would hurry down, not by his own stair, but by the one
at the end of the corridor, which would take him past a certain
door — number seven — in the first storey. Every moment of the
way, every step of the stair, offered a chance; any instant the door
might open — and in practice it often did. Out she would slip,
noiselessly, the door would slam behind her, she would glide to
the stairs, she would pass down ahead of him, with her hand up
to her braids of hair — or else he would be in front of her, feel her
gaze in his back, and experience a thrill as from an ant crawling
down it. His bearing, of course, was that of a person unaware of
her presence, leading a free and independent existence of his own:
he would bury his hands in his pockets, walk with a swagger,
cough an entirely unnecessary cough, and strike himself on the
chest — anything to manifest his utter unconcern.

On two occasions he refined yet further. Already seated at the
table, he felt himself with both hands, and said with a fine show
of irritation: “ There, I’ve forgotten my handkerchief. That means
I must trot back again to fetch it.” And went back, to the end that
he and she might meet on the way, since that afforded a keener
throb than when she merely walked in front of or behind him. The
first time he executed this manoeuvre, she measured him with her
eyes from a distance, swept him from head to foot, quite bold and
unblushing. Then approaching nearer, turned away indifferently
and passed him by. So that he got but little out of the demarche .
The second time she stared him in the face without flinching, al-
most forbiddingly, even turning her head as they crossed, to fol-
low him with her look — it went through our poor young friend
like a knife. We need not pity him, for was it not all his own
doing? But the encounter was gripping at the moment and even
more afterwards — for only in retrospect was he clear as to what
had actually happened. He had never seen Frau Chauchat’s face so
close, so clear in all its details. He could have counted the tiny

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146

hairs that stood up from the braid she wore wreathed round her
head — they were reddish-blond, with a metallic sheen. No more
than a hands-breadth or so of space had been between his face and
hers, whose outline and features, peculiar though they were, had
been familiar to him as long as he could remember, and spoke to
his very soul as nothing else could in all the world. It was an un-
usual face, and full of character (for only the unusual seems to us
to have character); its mystery and strangeness spoke of the un-
known north, and it teased the curiosity because its proportions
and characteristics were somehow not very easy to determine. Its
keynote, probably, was the high, bony structure of the prominent
cheek-bones; they seemed to compress the eyes — which were un-
usually far apart and unusually level with the face — and squeeze
them into a slightly oblique position; while at the same time they
appeared responsible for the soft concavity of the cheek, and this,
in turn, to result in the full curve of the slightly pouting lips. Then
there were the eyes themselves: the narrow “ Kirghiz ” eyes,
whose shape was yet to Hans Castorp a simple enchantment and
whose colour was the grey-blue or blue-grey of distant moun-
tains; they had the trick of sidewise, unseeing glance, which could
sometimes melt them into the very hue of mystery and darkness
— these eyes of Clavdia, which had gazed so forbiddingly into his
very face, and which so awfully resembled Pribislav Hippe’s in
shape, expression, and colour that they fairly frightened him.
Resembled was not the word: they were the same eyes. The
breadth, too, of the upper part of the face, the flattened nose,
everything, even to the flush in the white skin, the healthy colour
of the cheek — which in Frau Chauchat’s case, as in so many
others, merely counterfeited health and was a superficial effect of
the open-air cure — everything was precisely Pribislav, and no
differently would he have looked at Hans Castorp were they to
meet again as of old in the school court-yard.

It had been staggering in the extreme. Hans Castorp thrilled at
the encounter, yet experienced a mounting uneasiness like that
he felt when he realized how narrow was the proximity that en-
closed him and the fair Russian. That the long-forgotten Pribislav
Hippe should appear to him in the guise of Frau Chauchat and
look at him with those “ Kirghiz ” eyes — this was to be immured,
not with opportunity, but with the inevitable, the unescapable, to
such an extent as to fill him with conflicting emotions. It was a
situation rich in hope, yet heavy with dread — it gave our young
friend a feeling of helplessness, and set in motion a vague instinct
to cast about, to grope and feel for help or counsel. One after an-

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 1 47

other he mentally summoned up various people, the thought of
whom might serve him as some sort of mental support.

There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock-
yet whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic
shadow, and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he
did so often now. Joachim, with the 44 Blue Peter ” in his pocket,
as Frau Stohr called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought
of her hard, crabbed face it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joa-
chim — who kept constantly at Hofrat Behrens to let him get away
and go down to the longed-for service in the 44 plain ” — the 44 flat-
land,” as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with a
faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Joachim served the cure
single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at his goal
and save some of the time which 44 those up here ” so wantonly
flung away; served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy re-
covery — but also, Hans Castorp detected, for the sake of the cure
itself, which, after all, was a service, like another; and was not duty
duty, wherever performed? Joachim invariably went upstairs
after only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms; and this military
precision of his was a prop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who
would otherwise be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his
eye on the company in the small salon. But Hans Castorp was con-
vinced there was another and private reason why Joachim with-
drew so early; he had known it since the time he saw his cousin’s
face take on the mottled pallor, and his mouth assume the pathetic
twist. He perfectly understood. For Marusja was almost always
there in the evening — laughter-loving Marusja, with the little
ruby on her charming hand, the handkerchief with the orange
scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within — Hans Castorp com-
prehended that it was her' presence which drove Joachim away,
precisely because it so strongly, so fearfully drew him toward her.
Was Joachim too 44 immured ” — and even worse off than him-
self, in that he had five times a day to sit at the same table with
Marusja and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that
might be, it was clear that Joachim was preoccupied with his own
troubles; the thought of him could afford his cousin no mental
support. That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him;
but that he had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Ca-
storp, who even began to feel that Joachim’s good example of
faithful service of the cure and the initiation which he owed to
his cousin’s experience might have also their bad side.

Hans Castorp had not been up here three weeks. But it seemed
longer; and the daily routine which Joachim so piously observed

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I48

had begun to take on, in his eyes, a character of sanctity. When,
from the point of view of “ those up here,” he considered life as
lived down in the flat-land, it seemed somehow queer and un-
natural. He had grown skilled in the handling of his rugs and the
art of making a proper bundle, a sort of mummy, of himself, when
lying on his balcony on cold days. He was almost as skilful as Joa-
chim — and yet, down below, there was no soul who knew aught
of such an art or the practice of it! How strange, he thought; yet
at the same moment wondered at himself for finding it strange —
and there surged up again that uneasy sensation of groping for
support.

He thought of Hofrat Behrens and his professional advice, be-
stowed “ sine pecunia” that he should, while he was up here, order
his life like the other patients, even to the taking of his tempera-
ture. He thought of Settembrini, and of how he had laughed at
that same advice, and quoted something out of The Magic Flute .
Did thinking of either of these two afford him any moral support?
Hofrat Behrens was a white-haired man, old enough to be Hans
Castorp’s father. He was the head of the establishment, the highest
authority. And it was of fatherly authority that the young man
now felt an uneasy need. But no, it would not do: he could not
think with childlike confidingness of the Hofrat. The physician
had buried his wife up here, and been brought so low by grief as
almost to lose his mind; then he had stopped on, to be near her
grave and because he himself was somewhat infected. Was he
sound again? Was he single-mindedly bent on making his patients
whole, so they could go back to service in the world below? His
cheeks had a purple hue, he looked fevered. That might be only
the effect of the air up here; Hans Castorp, without fever, so far
as he could judge without a thermometer, felt the same dry heat
in his face, day in, day out. Of course, when one heard the Hofrat
talk, one might easily conclude he had fever. There was some-
thing not quite right about it; it all sounded very jovial and lively,
but on the whole forced, particularly when one thought of the
purple cheeks and the watery eyes, which seemed to be still weep-
ing for his wife. Hans Castorp recalled what Settembrini had said
about the Hofrat’s vices and chronic depression — that might have
been malicious; it might have been sheer windiness. But he did not
find it sustained or fortified him to think of Hofrat Behrens.

Then there was Settembrini himself, of course — the chronic
oppositionist, the windbag, the “ homo hwmanus as he styled
himself. Hans Castorp thought him well over, with his gift of the
gab, his florid harangue on the combination of dullness and dis-

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

I49

ease, and how he, Hans Castorp, had been taken to task for calling
it a “ dilemma for the human intelligence.” What about him?
Would the thought of him be anyway efficacious? Hans Castorp
recalled how several times, in the extraordinarily vivid dreams
that visited his sleep in this place, he had taken umbrage at the dry
and subtle smile curling the Italian's lip beneath the flowing mous-
tache; how he had railed at him for a hand-organ man, and tried
to shove him away because he was a disturbing influence. But that
was in his dreams — the waking Hans Castorp was no such matter,
but a much less untrammelled person; not disinclined, either, on
the whole, to try out the influence upon himself of this novel
human type, with its critical animus and acumen, despite the fact
that he found the Italian both carping and garrulous. After all,
Settembrini had called himself a pedagogue; obviously he was
anxious to exercise influence; and Hans Castorp, for his part, fairly
yearned to be influenced — though of course, not to an extent
which should cause him to pack his trunk and leave before his
time, as Settembrini had in all seriousness proposed.

“ Placet experiri ” he thought to himself, with a smile. So much
Latin he had, without calling himself a homo hitmanus . The up-
shot was that he kept his eye on Settembrini, listened keenly and
critically to what he had to say when they met on their prescribed
walks to the bench on the mountain-side, or down to the Platz,
or wherever and whenever opportunity offered. Other occasions
there were, too: for instance, at the end of a meal Settembrini
would rise from table before anyone else and saunter across among
the seven tables, in his check trousers, a toothpick between his
lips, to where the cousins sat. He did this in defiance of law and
custom, standing there in a graceful attitude, with his legs crossed,
talking and gesticulating with the toothpick. Or he would draw up
a chair and sit down at the corner of the table, between Hans Ca-
storp and the schoolmistress, or between Hans Castorp and Miss
Robinson, and look on while they ate their pudding, which he
seemed to have forgone.

“ May I beg for admission into this charmed circle? ” he would
say, shaking hands with the cousins, and comprehending the rest
of the table in a sweeping bow. “ My brewer over there — not to
mention the despairing gaze of the breweress! — But, really, this
Herr Magnus! Just now he has been delivering a discourse on
folk-psychology. Shall I tell you what he said? ‘ The Fatherland,
it is true, is one enormous barracks. But all the same it's got a lot
of solid capacity, it’s genuine. I wouldn’t change it for the fine
manners of the rest of them. What good are fine manners to me if

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I’m cheated right and left? ’ And more of the same kind. I am at the
end of my patience. And opposite me I have a poor creature, with
churchyard roses blooming in her cheeks, an old maid from Sieben-
biirgen, who never stops talking about her brother-in-law, a man
we none of us either know or wish to know. I could stand it no
longer, I shook their dust from my feet, I bolted.”

“ You raised your flag and took to your heels,” Frau Stohr
stated.

‘ Pre — cisely,” shouted Settembrini. “ I fled with my flag. Ah,
what an apt phrase! I see I have come to the right place; nobody
else here Knows how to coin phrases like that. — May I be per-
mitted to inquire after the state of your health, Frau Stohr? ”

It was frightful to see Frau Stohr preen herself.

“ Good land! ” she said. “ It is always the same, you know your-
self: two steps forward and three back. When you have been sit-
ting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on an-
other six. It is like the torment of Tantalus: you shove and shove,
and think you are getting to the top — ”

“ Ah, how delightful of you, to give poor old Tantalus a new
job, and let him roll the stone uphill for a change! I call that true
benevolence. — But what are these mysterious reports I have been
hearing of you, Frau Stohr? There are tales going about — tales
about doubles, astral bodies, and the like. Up to now I have lent
them no credence — but this latest story puzzles me, I confess.”

“ I know you are poking fun at me.”

“ Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind at rest about this
dark side of your life; after that it will be time to jest. Last night,
between halt past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the
garden; I looked up at the row of balconies; there was your light
gleaming through the dark; you were performing your cure, led
by the dictates of duty and reason. ‘ Ah/ thought 1, 4 there lies our
charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house, for the sake of an
early return to the arms of her waiting husband.’ — And now
what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kur-
haus, in the cmematograjo ” (Herr Settembrini gave the word the
Italian pronunciation, with the accent on the fourth syllable) “ and
afterwards in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and — ”

Frau Stohr wriggled and giggled into her serviette, nudged Joa-
chim and the silent Dr. Blumenkohl in the ribs, winked with coy
confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous
complacency. She was in the habit or leaving the light burning on
her balcony and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter be-
low. Her husband, meanwhile, in Cannstadt, awaited her return.

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

l 5 1

She was not the only patient who practised this duplicity.

“ And,” went on Settembrini, “ that you were enjoying those
kisses in the company of — whom, do you think? In the company
of Captain Miklosich from Bucharest. They say he wears a corset
— but that is little to the point. I conjure you, madame, to tell me!
Have you a double? Was it your earthly part which lay there
alone on your balcony, while your spirit revelled below, with
Captain Miklosich and his kisses? ”

Frau Stohr wreathed and bridled as though she were being
tickled.

“ One asks oneself, had it not been better the other way about,”
Settembrini went on; “ you enjoying the kisses by yourself, and
the rest-cure with Captain Miklosich — ”

“ Tehee! ” tittered Frau Stohr.

“ Have the ladies and gentlemen heard the latest? ” the Italian
went on, without pausing for breath. “ Somebody has been flown
away with — by the devil. Or, to speak literally, by his mama —
a very determined lady, I quite took to her. It was young Schneer-
mann, Anton Schneermann, who sat at Mademoiselle Kleefeld’s
table. You see, his place is empty. It will soon be filled up again, I
am not worried about that — but Anton is off, on the wings of the
wind, in the twinkling of an eye, rapt away before he knew where
he was. Sixteen years old, and had been up here a year and a half,
with six months to go. But how did it happen? Who knows? Per-
haps somebody dropped a little word to Madame his mother; any-
how, she got wind of his goings-on, in Baccho et ceteris. She ap-
pears unannounced on the scene, some three heads taller than I am,
white-haired and exceeding wroth; fetches Herr Anton a couple
of boxes on the ear, takes him by the collar, and puts him on the
train. ‘ If he is going to the dogs,’ she says, ‘ he can do it just as well
down below.’ And off they go.”

“ Everybody within ear-shot laughed; Herr Settembrini had
such a droll way of telling a story. Despite his contemptuous atti-
tude toward the society of the place, he always knew everything
that went on. He knew the name and circumstances of each pa-
tient. He knew that such and such a person had been operated on
for rib resection; had it on the best authority that from the autumn
onward no one with a temperature of more than 101.3 0 would be
admitted into the establishment. He told them how last night
the little dog belonging to Madame Capatsoulias from Mitylene
stepped on the button of the electric signal on his mistress’s night-
table and occasioned much commotion and running hither and
yon — particularly because Madame Capatsoulias had been found

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* 5 2

not alone, but in the society of Assessor Diistmund from Fried-
richshagen. Even Dr. Blumenkohl had to laugh at that. Pretty
Marusja well-nigh choked in her orange-scented handkerchief,
and Frau Stohr yelled with laughter, holding her breast with both
hands.

But to the cousins Ludovico Settembrini talked of himself and
his early life; whether on the walks they took together, or during
the evening in the salon, or perhaps, in the dining-room itself, after
a meal, when most of the patients had left and the three sat to-
gether at their end of the table, while the waitresses cleared away
and Hans Castorp smoked his Maria Mancini, which in the third
week had regained a little of its savour. He was critical of what he
heard, and often he felt put off; yet he listened receptively to the
Italian’s talk, for it opened to his understanding a world utterly
new and strange.

Settembrini spoke of his grandfather, a Milanese lawyer, but
even more a patriot; with something of the political agitator, and
orator and journalist to boot. He too, like his grandson, had al-
ways been in the opposition; though he had been able to perform
his role upon a larger stage than had Ludovico. The latter re-
marked with some bitterness that his own activities had been con-
fined to heckling and castigating the follies and frailties of the
guests at the International Sanatorium Berghof, and to protesting
against them in the name of the free and joyous human spirit. But
his grandfather had had his finger in the forming of governments;
he had conspired against Austria and the Holy Alliance, which
had dismembered his native land and then held it in the heavy bond
of servitude; he had been a zealous member of certain secret so-
cieties that had spread over Italy — a carbonaro , Settembrini ex-
plained, suddenly dropping his voice, as though it might still be
dangerous to utter the word. In fact, from his grandson’s narrative,
the two hearers got a picture of a dark and tempest-tossed figure,
a ringleader, political agitator, and conspirator; despite all their
pains, they did not quite succeed in hiding a feeling of mistrust,
even repulsion. True, the circumstances had been extraordinary.
What they heard had happened long ago, almost a hundred years.
It was history; and they were familiar in theory — particularly
from ancient history — with the traditional figure of the tyrant-
hater and liberator, such as they now heard of — though they had
never dreamed of being brought into actual human contact with
him, like this! Settembrini’s grandfather, so they were told, united
with his conspiratorial zeal a profound love for his native land,
which it was his dream to see free and united: indeed, it was out

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153

of this very combination, as a natural consequence, that his revo-
lutionary activities flowed — and how strange this mingling of
rebellion and patriotism seemed to the cousins, in whose minds an
abiding sense of order was on an equal footing with their love of
country! But they privately admitted, none the less, that at that
time, and in that situation, it might have been conceivably possible
that rebellion should go paired with civic virtue, and law-abiding-
ness lie down with lazy indifference to the public weal.

But Grandfather Giuseppe had been not only an Italian patriot.
He had been fellow citizen and brother-in-arms to any people
struggling for its liberties. Thus after the shipwreck of a certain
plot hatched in Turin for the overthrow of the military and civil
government, a plot in which he had been deeply involved, he had
escaped by a hair’s breadth the clutches of Metternich’s hirelings,
and spent the time of his exile fighting and bleeding, first in Spain
for the cause of constitutionalism, then in Greece for the inde-
pendence of the Hellenic peoples. It was in Greece that Settem-
brini’s father had seen the light — which probably accounted for
his being a humanist and lover of classical antiquity. His mother
had been of German stock; Settembrini had married her in Switzer-
land and taken her about with him in his further adventurous ca-
reer. He had been allowed, after ten years of exile, to return to
Milan, where he had practised his profession, without for a mo-
ment ceasing to labour, with voice and pen, in verse and prose,
for the establishment of a united republic, and to draw up subver-
sive programmes characterized by dictatorial ardour, in which
were promulgated in the clearest style the unification of the lib-
erated people and the attainment of general felicity. One detail
mentioned by the grandson made a profound impression upon
Hans Castorp: Grandfather Giuseppe, to the day of his death,
wore black — in token, he said, of his mourning for the state of the
fatherland, languishing in misery and servitude. Hans Castorp, at
this piece of information, thought of his own grandfather, as he
had once or twice before during Settembrini’s narrative. He too,
for as long as his grandson had known him, wore black clothes.
But for how different a reason! Hans Lorenz Castorp had worn the
quaint old fashion to indicate his oneness with a bygone time and
his essential lack of sympathy with the present; worn it up to the
end of his days, when he had returned in death to his true and
adequate presentment — with the starched ruff. Certainly these
were two strikingly different kinds of grandfather! Hans Castorp
pondered, his eyes fixed in a stare, cautiously shaking his head in
a way that might as well be taken for a sign of admiration for

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1 54

Giuseppe Settembrini as for the opposite. He honourably refrained
from judging what he did not understand, but simply made mental
note of the contrast and let it go at that. He could see the narrow
head of old Hans Lorenz, as it bent musing over the pale gold rim
of the christening basin, that symbol of the passing and the abiding,
of continuity through change. He had his mouth open; Hans Ca-
storp knew the words great-great-great were about to issue from
it, the sombre syllables which always reminded him of places
where one walked with bent head and reverent gait. And then he
saw Giuseppe Settembrini, with the tricolour on his arm, waving
his sabre and breathing a vow to Heaven with dark gaze flung aloft,
as he stormed the heights of despotism at the head of a liberty-
loving host. Well, he thought, each of them had his fine and splen-
did side — he made the greater effort to be fair, because he knew
himself to be partisan, on personal or partly personal grounds.
For Grandfather Settembrini had fought to obtain political rights;
whereas the other grandfather — or his ancestors — had originally
had all the rights, and the scoundrels had taken them away from
him, in the course of the centuries, by violence or pettifoggery.
So both grandfathers had worn mourning, the one in the north
and the one in the south, and both in the same idea; namely, to put
a great gulf between them and the evil present. But whereas the
one had assumed it in token of his pious reverence for the past and
the dead, to whom he felt himself with his whole being to belong,
the other had worn it as a sign of rebellion, in the name of progress,
and in a spirit of hostility toward the past. Yes, these were two
different worlds. As Herr Settembrini talked, and Hans Castorp
stood, as it were, between them and cast his critical eye upon one
and upon the other, they called back to his conscious mind a scene
from his own past life. He saw himself rowing on a lake in Hol-
stein, one late summer evening; the sun was down, the almost full
moon rising above the bushes that bordered the lake. He rowed
alone and slowly over the quiet waters, gazing to right and left at a
scene fantastic as any dream. In the west it was still broad day, with
a fixed and glassy air; but in the east he looked into a moonlit land-
scape, wreathed in the magic of rising mists and equally convinc-
ing to his bewildered sense. The strange combination lasted some
brief quarter-hour before the balance finally settled in favour of
night and the moon; all that time Hans Castorp’s dazzled eyes went
shifting in lively amazement from one scene to the other: from
day to night and back again to day. The picture returned to him
now.

At the same time the thought crossed his mind that Lawyer

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

1 5S

Settembrini could scarcely have been much of a jurist, consider-
ing his other occupations and the extended sphere of his activities.
His grandson asseverated, however, and Hans Castorp found it
credible, that the grandfather had been from early childhood
down to the last day of his life inspired by the fundamental prin-
ciple of justice. Our hero, all heavy-headed as he was and organ-
ically preoccupied by the six-course Berghof meal he had just
eaten, made an effort to understand what Settembrini meant when
he called this principle “ the source and fount of liberty and prog-
ress.” Progress, up to now, had had to do, in Hans Castorp’s mind,
with such things as the nineteenth-century development of cranes
and lifting-tackle. He was accordingly gratified to learn that
Grandfather Settembrini had not underestimated the importance
of such matters. Of course, his own grandfather hadn’t either. The
Italian paid a tribute to the native land of his two listeners, for the
inventions of gunpowder — whereby the armour of feudalism had
been thrown on the scrap-heap — and the printing-press, which
had made possible the democratic propagation of ideas, and the
propagation of democratic ideas, which were one and the same.
For these good gifts he praised Germany; praised her for her past,
but awarded his own country the palm, because she had been the
first to unfurl the banner of freedom, culture, and enlightenment,
at a time when all other lands were wrapped in the darkness of
superstition and slavery. Yet in paying due honour, as upon their
first meeting, at the bench by the watercourse, to commerce and
technology (Hans Castorp’s own field), Settembrini apparently
did so not for the sake of these forces themselves, but purely with
reference to their significance for the ethical development of man-
kind. For such a significance, he declared, he joyfully ascribed to
them. Technical progress, he said, gradually subjugated nature, by
developing roads and telegraphs, minimizing climatic differences;
and by the means of communication which it created proved it-
self the most reliable agent in the task of drawing together the
peoples of the earth, of making them acquainted with each other,
of building bridges to compromise, of destroying prejudice; of,
finally, bringing about the universal brotherhood of man. Hu-
manity had sprung from the depths of fear, darkness, and hatred;
but it was emerging, it was moving onward and upward, toward a
goal of fellow-feeling and enlightenment, of goodness and joy-
ousness; and upon this path, he said, the industrial arts were the
vehicle conducive to the greatest progress. But all this made a
confused impression on Hans Castorp. Herr Settembrini seemed
to bring together in a single breath categories which in the young

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156

man’s mind had heretofore been as the poles asunder — for ex-
ample, technology and morals! Positively, he made the statement
that Christ had been the first to proclaim the principle of equality
and union, that the printing-press had propagated the doctrine,
and that finally the French Revolution had elevated it into a law!
All which our poor young friend found very muddling, he scarce
knew why — though the feeling was definite enough in all con-
science, and though Herr Settembrini had couched his thought in
the clearest and roundest of periods. Once, the Italian went on,
once only in his life, and that in his early manhood, had his grand-
father known what it was to feel profound joy. That was at the
time of the Paris July Revolution. He had gone about proclaiming
to all and sundry that some day men would place those three days
alongside the six days of creation, and reverence them alike. Hans
Castorp felt utterly dumbfounded — involuntarily he slapped the
table with his hand. To compare those three summer days of the
year 1830 when the Parisians had taken unto themselves a new
constitution, to the six in which God had divided the land from
the water and created the lights in the firmament of heaven, as
well as flowers, trees, birds, and fishes, and all other living things —
that seemed to him to be going too far. He talked it over later with
Cousin Joachim, and gave clear expression to his opinion that it
really was pretty thick, that he, Hans Castorp, for his part, found
it positively offensive.

But still open-minded — at least in the sense that he enjoyed the
experiment he was making — he restrained the objections which his
sense of fitness would have raised against the Settembrinian scheme
of things. Restrained them on the theory that what seemed sedi-
tion to him might to another seem dauntless courage; and what he
called bad taste might have been, in that far-off time and circum-
stance, but a display of the noble excesses of a high-hearted nature
— for instance, when Grandfather Settembrini called the barri-
cades “ the people’s throne,” and talked about “ dedicating the
burgher’s pike on the altar of humanity.”

Hans Castorp knew — without putting it into so many words —
why he lent an ear to Herr Settembrini. Partly it was out of a
sense of duty; though also out of that holiday mood of taking
everything as it came, rejecting nothing, in the knowledge that in
another day or so he would spread his wings and fly back to the
wonted order of things. Yes, he knew it was largely the prompt-
ings of conscience to which he hearkened; to be precise, the
promptings of a conscience not altogether easy — as he sat listen-
ing to the Italian, one leg crossed over the other, drawing at his

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS I 57

Maria Mancini; or when the three of them climbed the hill from
the English quarter.

Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony,
were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and
justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law
of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation is-
suing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second
the European principle; for Europe was the theatre of rebellion,
the sphere of intellectual discrimination and transforming activity,
whereas the East embodied the conception of quiesence and immo-
bility. There was no doubt as to which of the two would finally
triumph: it would be the power of enlightenment, the power that
made for rational advance and development. For human progress
snatched up ever more peoples with it on its brilliant course; it
conquered more and more territory in Europe itself and was al-
ready pressing Asia-wards. Much still remained to be done, sublime
exertions were still demanded from those spirits who had received
the light. Then only the day would come when thrones would
crash and outworn religions crumble, in those remaining countries
of Europe which had not already enjoyed the blessings of eight-
eenth-century enlightenment, nor yet of an upheaval like 1789.
But the day would come, Settembrini said, with his suave smile; it
would come, he repeated, if not on the wings of doves, then on
the pinions of eagles; and dawn would break over Europe, the
dawn of universal brotherhood, in the name of justice, science,
and human reason. It would bring in its train a new Holy Alliance,
the alliance of the democratic peoples of Europe, in opposition to
that other Holy Alliance, the thrice-infamous organ of princes and
cabinets, which Grandfather Giuseppe had personally regarded
as his deadly foe; in a word, it would bring in its train the republic
of the world. But before that could happen, the Asiatic principle
must be met and crushed in its very stronghold and vital centre;
that was to say, in Vienna. Austria must be crushed, crushed and
dismembered, first to take vengeance for the past, and second to
lead in the new law of justice with truth on earth.

Hans Castorp did not care for this last drift in Herr Settem-
brini’s sonorous flow of words. He mistrusted it; it sounded too
much like a personal or national animus. As for Joachim Ziemssen,
whenever the Italian fell into this vein, he scowled and turned
away his head, or sought to create a diversion by saying it was
time for the rest-cure. Neither did Hans Castorp feel obliged to
listen when the conversation took these devious paths; they clearly
fell outside the limits within which his conscience prompted him

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158

to profit by Herr Settembrini’s words. Yet conscience still urged
him to continue in the effort; so clearly that often, as opportunity
arose, he would even invite the Italian to discourse on the subject
of his ideas.

Those ideas, ideals, and efforts of the aspiring will were, Settem-
brini said, traditional in his family. He inherited them. Grand-
father, son, and grandson, each in his turn, had dedicated to them
their entire lives and all their spiritual energy. The father in his
own way had done so no less than Grandfather Giuseppe. True,
he had not been a political agitator or active combatant in the
cause of freedom, but a quiet and sensitive scholar, a humanist
sitting at his writing-desk. But what, after all, was humanism if
not love of human kind, and by that token also political activity,
rebellion against all that tended to defile or degrade our concep-
tion of humanity? He had been accused of exaggerating the im-
portance of form. But he who cherished beauty of form did so
because it enhanced human dignity; whereas the Middle Ages, in
striking contrast, had been sunk not only in superstitious hostility
to the human spirit, but also in a shameful formlessness. From the
very beginning he had defended the right of the human being to
his earthly interests, to liberty of thought and joy in life, and in-
sisted that we could safely leave heaven to take care of itself. Hu-
manism — had not Prometheus been the earliest humanist, and was
he not identical with the Satan hymned by Carducci? Ah, if the
cousins had only heard that arch-enemy of the Church, at Bologna,
pouring the vials of his sarcasm upon the Christian sentimentalism
of the Romanticismo! Upon Manzoni’s lnni Sacri! Upon the
shadows-and-moonlight poetry of the romantic movement, which
he had compared to “ Luna, Heaven’s pallid nun ”! Per Bacco , that
was a joy to listen to! And they ought to have heard Carducci
interpret Dante, celebrating him as the citizen of a great city-
state, who had spoken out against asceticism and the negation of
life, and on the side of the world-transforming and reforming
deed! It was not the sickly and mystagogic figure of Beatrice
which the poet had celebrated under the name of “ donna gentile
e pietosa rather it had been his wife, who represented in the
poem the principle of worldly knowledge and practical work-
aday life.

Thus Hans Castorp came to hear something about Dante, and
certainly from the lips of authority. He was not too much in-
clined to believe implicitly all Settembrini said; he considered him
too much of a windbag for that. Still it was an interesting con-
ception, this of Dante as the wide-awake citizen of a great metrop-

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS

*59

olis. And now Settembrini went on to speak of himself, and to
explain how the tendencies of his immediate forbears, the political
from his grandfather, the humanistic from his father, had united
in his own person to produce the writer and independent man of
letters. For literature was after all nothing else than the combina-
tion of humanism and politics; a conjunction the more immediate
in that humanism itself was politics and politics humanism. Hans
Castorp did his best at this point to listen and comprehend, in the
hope of finally learning wherein had consisted the crass ignorance
of Magnus the brewer, and finding out what else literature actually
was, above and beyond “ beautiful characters.” Settembrini asked
his audience whether they had ever heard of Brunetto, Brunetto
Latini, a Florentine notary, who about the year 1250 had written
a book on the subject of the virtues and the vices. He it was who
had sharpened the wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of
language, and how to guide their state according to the rules of
politics.

“ There you have it, gentlemen, there you have it! ” Settem-
brini cried with ardour, and enlarged upon the cult of the “ word,”
the art of eloquence, which he called the triumph of the human
genius. For the word was the glory of mankind, it alone imparted
dignity to life. Not only was humanism bound up with the word,
and with literature, but so also was humanity itself, man’s ancient
dignity and manly self-respect (“ You heard, didn’t you,” Hans
Castorp said later to his cousin, “ you heard him say that literature
is a question of beautiful words? I spotted it directly”), from
which it followed that politics too is bound up with the word.
Or, rather, it followed directly from the union, the unity that sub-
sisted between humanity and literature, for the beautiful word
begets the beautiful deed.

“ Two hundred years ago,” Settembrini said, “ you had a poet
in your country, a magnificent old chatterbox who set great store
by good handwriting because he thought it must induce a good
style. He should have gone a step further and said that a good style
would lead to good deeds,” Settembrini added. For writing well
was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the
next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection
derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dig-
nity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics.
Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same
idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word.
This word? Ah, it was already familiar to their ears; yet he would
wager the cousins had never before rightly grasped its meaning

i6o

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and its majesty: the word was — civilization! And as Settembrini
brought it out, he flung his small, yellow-skinned right hand in the
air, as though proposing a toast.

Well, all that young Hans Castorp found worth listening to; not
precisely overwhelming, of a value largely experimental, but still
worth listening to. He said as much to Joachim Ziemssen later;
but Joachim had his thermometer in his mouth and could not reply
to his cousin; nor had he afterwards leisure, when, on taking it out,
he read the figure and entered it in his note-book. But Hans Ca-
storp good-naturedly took cognizance of Settembrini’s point of
view and tested by it his own inner experiences; from which self-
examination it principally appeared that the waking man has an
advantage over the sleeping and dreaming one. For whereas the
sleeping Hans Castorp had more than once upbraided the organ-
grinder to his face and done his utmost to drive him away because
he felt him a disturbing influence, the waking one lent him an at-
tentive ear and made an honest effort to minimize the opposition
which his mentor’s ideas and conceptions persistently aroused in
him. For it cannot be denied that there was such opposition; some
of it such as he must always have felt from the very beginning, the
rest arising from the particular situation and his partly vicarious,
partly secret and personal experiences among “ those up here.”

What a creature is man, how idly his conscience betrays him!
How easy it is for him to think he hears, even in the voice of duty,
a licence to passion! Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini
out of a sense of duty and fairness, in the idea of hearing both sides;
with the best of intentions he tested the latter’s views on the sub-
ject of the republic, reason and the hello stile. He was entirely
receptive. And all the while he was finding it more and more per-
missible to give his thoughts and dreams free rein in another and
quite opposite direction. Indeed, to give expression to all that we
suspect or divine, we think it not unlikely that Hans Castorp
hearkened to Herr Settembrini’s discourse in order to get from his
own conscience an indulgence which otherwise might not have
been forthcoming. But what — or who — was it that drew down
the other side of the scales, when weighed over against patriotism-,
belles-lettres, and the dignity of man? It was — Clavdia Chauchat,
“ Kirghiz ’’-eyed, “ relaxed,” and tainted within; when he thought
of her (though thinking is far too tame a word to characterize the
impulse that turned all his being in her direction), it was as though
he were sitting again in his boat on the lake in Holstein, looking
with dazzled eyes from the glassy daylight of the western shore to
the mist and moonbeams that wrapped the eastern heavens.

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161

The Thermometer

Hans Castorp’s week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, for on
a Tuesday he had arrived. Two or three days before, he had gone
down to the office and paid his second weekly bill, a modest ac-
count of a round one hundred and sixty francs, modest and cheap
enough, even without taking into consideration the nature of some
of the advantages of a stay up here — advantages priceless in them-
selves, though for that very reason they could not be included in
the bill — and even without counting extras like the fortnightly
concert and Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, which might conceivably
have been included. The sum of one hundred and sixty francs
represented simply and solely the actual hospitality extended by
the Berghof to Hans Castorp: his comfortable lodgment and his
five stupendous meals.

“ It isn’t much, it is rather cheap than otherwise,” remarked the
guest to the old inhabitant. “ You cannot complain of being over-
charged up here. You need a round six hundred and fifty francs
a month for board and lodging, treatment included. Let us assume
that you spend another thirty francs for tips, if you are decent and
like to have friendly faces about you. That makes six hundred and
eighty. Good. Of course I know there are fixed fees and other sorts
of small expenses: toilet articles, tobacco, drives, and excursions,
now and then a bill for shoes or clothing. Very good. But all that
won’t bring it up to a thousand francs, say what you like. Not
eight hundred even. That isn’t ten thousand francs a year. Cer-
tainly not more. That is what it costs you.”

“ Mental arithmetic very fair,” Joachim said. “ I never knew you
were such a shot at doing sums in your head. And how broad-
minded of you to calculate it by the year like that! You’ve learned
something since you’ve been up here. But your figure is too high.
I don’t smoke, and I certainly don’t expect to buy any suits while
I am here, thank you.”

“ Then it would be lower still,” Hans Castorp answered, rather
confused. Why, indeed, he should have included tobacco and a
new wardrobe in his calculation of Joachim’s expenses is a puzzle.
But for the rest, his brilliant display of arithmetic had simply been
so much dust thrown in his cousin’s eyes; for here, as elsewhere,
his mental processes were rather slow than fast, and the truth is
that a previous calculation with pencil and paper underlay his pres-
ent facility. One night on his balcony (for he even took the eve-
ning cure out of doors now, like the rest) a sudden thought had
struck him and he had got out of his comfortable chair to fetch

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l62

pencil and paper. As the result of some simple figuring, he con-
cluded that his cousin — or, speaking generally, a patient at the
Berghof — would need twelve thousand francs a year to cover the
sum total of his expenses. Thus he amused himself by establishing
the fact that he, Hans Castorp, could amply afford to live up here,
if he chose, being a man of eighteen or nineteen thousand francs
yearly income.

He had, as we have said, paid his second weekly bill three days
before, and accordingly found himself in the middle of the third
and last week of his appointed stay. The coming Sunday, as he re-
marked to himself and to his cousin, would see the performance
of another of the fortnightly concerts, and the Monday another
lecture by Dr. Krokowski; then, on Tuesday or Wednesday, he
would be off, and Joachim would be left up here alone — poor
Joachim, for whom Rhadamanthus would prescribe God knew
how many more months! Already there came a shade over his

f entle black eyes whenever Hans Castorp’s swiftly approaching
eparture was spoken of. Where, in Heaven’s name, had the holi-
day gone? It had rushed past, it had flown — and left one wonder-
ing how. For, after all, three weeks, twenty-one days, is a con-
siderable stretch of time, too long, at least, for one to see the end
at the beginning. And now, on a sudden, there remained of it no
more than a miserable three or four days, nothing worth mention-
ing. They would, it was true, comprehend the lecture and the con-
cert, those two recurrent variations in the weekly programme,
and, thus weighted, might move a little more slowly. But on the
other hand, they would be taken up with packing and leave-tak-
ing. Three weeks up here was as good as nothing at all; they had
all told him so in the beginning. The smallest unit of time was the
month, Settembrini had said; and as Hans Castorp’s stay was less
than that, it amounted to nothing; it was a “ week-end visit,” as
Hofrat Behrens put it. Had the swift flight of time up here any-
thing to do with the uniformly accelerated rate of organic com-
bustion? At any rate, here was a consoling thought for Joachim
during his five remaining months — in case he really got off with
five. But Hans Castorp felt that during these three weeks they
ought to have paid more attention, to have kept better watch, as
Joachim did in his daily measurings, during which the seven min-
utes seemed like a quite considerable stretch of time. Hans Castorp
grieved for his cousin, reading in his eyes his pain at the approach-
ing parting. He felt the strongest possible sympathy at the thought
of the poor chap’s having to stop on up here when he himself was
down in the flat-land, helping bring the nations together through

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163

the development of commerce and communications. His own re-
gret was at times so lively as to burn in his breast and cause him
to doubt whether he would have the heart, when the time came,
to leave Joachim alone; and this vicarious suffering was probably
the reason why he himself referred less and less to his impending
departure. It was Joachim who came back to it; for Hans Castorp,
moved by native tact and delicacy, seemed to wish to forget it up
to the last moment.

“ At least,” Joachim said more than once in these days, “ let us
hope it has done you good to be up here, and that you will feel
the benefit when you are at home again.”

“ I’ll remember you to everybody,” Hans Castorp responded,
“ and say you are coming back in five months at the outside. Done
me good? If it has done me good to be up here? I should like to
think so; some improvement must surely have taken place, even
in this short time. I have received a great many new impressions,
new in every sense of the word; very stimulating, but a good deal
of strain too, physically and mentally. I have not at all the feel-
ing of having really got acclimatized — which would certainly be
the first necessary step toward improvement. Maria, thank good-
ness, is her old self; for several days now, I have been able to get
the aroma. But my handkerchief still becomes red from time to
time when I use it — and this damned heat in my face, and these
idiotic palpitations, I shall apparently have them up to the last
minute. No, it seems I can’t talk about being acclimatized — how
could I, either, in so short a time? It would take longer than this to
overcome the change of atmosphere and adjust oneself perfectly
to the unusual conditions, so that a real recovery could begin and I
should commence to put on flesh. It is too bad. It was certainly a
mistake not to have given myself more time — for of course I
could have had it. I have the feeling that once I am at home again
I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest
I’ve had! That shows you how tired I sometimes feel. And now,
to cap the climax, I get this catarrh — ”

It looked, in fact, as though Hans Castorp would return home
in possession of a first-class cold. He had caught it, probably, in
the rest-cure, and, again probably, in the evening rest-cure —
which for almost a week now he had been taking in the balcony,
despite the long spell of cold, wet weather. He was aware that
weather of this kind was not recognized as bad; such a conception
hardly existed up here, where the most inclement conceivable
went unheeded and had no terrors for anyone. With the easy
adaptability of youth, which suits itself to any environment, Hans

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164

Castorp had begun to imitate this indifference. It might rain in
bucketfuls, but the air was not supposed to be the more damp for
that — nor was it, in all probability, for the dry heat in the face
persisted, as though after drinking wine, or sitting in an over-
heated room. And however cold it got, the radiators were never
heated unless it snowed, so it was of no avail to take refuge in one’s
chamber, since it was quite as comfortable on the balcony, when
one lay in one’s excellent chair, wrapped in a paletot and two good
camel’s-hair rugs put on according to the ritual. As comfortable?
It was incomparably more so. It was, in Hans Castorp’s reasoned
judgment, a state of life which more appealed to him than any in
all his previous experience, so far as he could remember. He did not
propose to be shaken in this view for any carbonaro or quill-driver
in existence, no matter how many malicious and equivocal jokes
he made on the subject of the “ horizontal.” Especially he liked it
in the evening, when with his little lamp on the stand beside him
and his long-lost and now restored Maria alight between his lips
he enjoyed the ineffable excellencies of his reclining-chair. True,
his nose felt frozen, and the hands that held his book — he was still
reading Ocean Steamships — were red and cramped from the cold.
He looked through the arch of his loggia over the darkening val-
ley, jewelled with clustered or scattering lights, and listened to the
music that drifted up nearly every evening for almost an hour.
There was a concert below, and he could hear, pleasantly subdued
by the distance, familiar operatic selections, snatches from Carmen,
II Trovatore , Freischiitz; or well-built, facile waltzes, marches so
spirited that he could not help keeping time with his head, and c^ay
mazurkas. Mazurka? No, Marusja was her name, Marusja of the
little ruby. And in the next loggia, behind the thick wall of milky
glass, lay Joachim, with whom Hans Castorp exchanged a word
now and then, low-toned, out of consideration for the other hori-
zontallers. Joachim was as well off in his loggia as Hans Castorp
in his, though, being entirely unmusical, he could not take the
same pleasure in the concerts. Too bad! He was probably study-
ing his Russian primer instead. But Hans Castorp let Ocean Steam-
ships fall on the coverlet and gave himself up to the music; he con-
templated with such inward gratification the translucent depth of
a muscial invention full of individuality and charm that he thought
with nothing but hostility of Settembrini and the irritating things
he had said about music — that it was politically suspect was the
worst, and little better than the remark of Grandfather Giuseppe
about the July Revolution and the six days of creation.

Joachim, though he could not partake of Hans Castorp’s pleas-

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165

ure in the music, nor the pungent gratification purveyed by Maria,
lay as snugly ensconced as his cousin. The day was at an end. For
the time everything was at an end; there would be no more emo-
tional alarums, no more strain on the heart-muscles. But equally
there was the assurance that to-morrow it would begin all over
again, all the favouring probabilities afforded by propinquity and
the household regimen. And this pleasing combination of snug-
ness and confident hope, together with the music and the restored
charms of Maria, made the evening cure a state almost amounting
to beatification for young Hans Castorp.

All which had not prevented the guest and novice from catch-
ing a magnificent cold, either in the evening rest-cure or else-
where. He felt the onset of catarrh, with oppression in the frontal
sinus, and inflamed uvula; he could not breathe easily through the
passage provided by nature; the air struck cold and painfully as it
struggled through, and caused constant coughing. His voice took
on overnight the tonal quality of a hollow bass the worse for
strong drink. According to him, he had not closed an eye, his
parched throat making him start up every five minutes from his
pillow.

“ Very vexatious,” Joachim said, “ and most unfortunate. Colds,
you know, are not the thing at all, up here; they are not regus .
The authorities don’t admit their existence; the official attitude
is that the dryness of the air entirely prevents them. If you were a
patient, you would certainly fall foul of Behrens, if you went to
him and said you had a cold. But it is a little different with a guest,
— you have a right to have a cold if you want to. It would be
good if we could check the catarrh. There are things to do, down
below, but here — I doubt if anyone would take enough interest
in it. It is not advisable to fall ill up here; you aren’t taken any
notice of. It’s an old story — but you are coming to hear it at the
end. When I was new up here, there was a lady who complained
of her ear for a whole week and told everybody how she suffered.
Behrens finally looked at it. ‘ Make yourself quite easy, madame,’
he said; ‘ it is not tubercular.’ That was an end of the matter!
Well, we must see what can be done. I will speak to the bathing-
master early to-morrow morning, when he comes to my room.
Then it will go through the regular channels, and perhaps some-
thing will come of it.”

Thus Joachim; and the regular channels proved reliable. On
Friday, after Hans Castorp returned from the morning round,
there was a knock at his door, and he was vouchsafed the pleasure
of personal acquaintance with Fraulein von Mylendonk — Frau

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1 66

Director, as she was called. Up to now he had seen this over-occu-
pied person only from a distance, crossing the corridor from one
patient’s room to another, or when she had popped up for a mo-
ment in the dining-room and he had been aware of her raucous
voice. But now he himself was the object of her visit. His catarrh
had fetched her. She knocked a short, bony knock, entered almost
before he had said come in, and then, upon the threshold, bent
round to make sure of the number of the room.

“ Thirty-four,” she croaked briskly. “ Right. Well, young ’un,
cm me dit , que vous avez pris froid. Wy , kas chets ja , prostudilis ] ,
Lei e raffreddato , I hear you have caught a cold. What language
do you speak? Oh, I see, you are young Ziemssen’s guest. I am due
in the operating-room. Somebody there to be chloroformed, and
he has just been eating bean salad. I have to have my eyes every-
where. Well, young ’un, so you have a cold? ”

Hans Castorp was taken aback by this mode of address, in the
mouth of a dame of ancient lineage. In her rapid speech she slurred
over her words, all the time restlessly moving her head about with
a circular action, the nose sniffingly in the air — the motion of a
caged beast of prey. Her freckled right hand, loosely closed with
the thumb uppermost, she held in front of her and waved it to and
fro on the wrist, as though to say: “ Come, make haste, don’t at-
tend to what I say, but say what you have to and let me be off! ”
She was in the forties, of stunted growth, without form or comeli-
ness, clad in a belted pinaforish garment of clinical white, with a
garnet cross on her breast. Sparse, reddish hair showed beneath
the white coif of her profession; her eyes were a waterly blue, with
inflamed lids, and one of them, as a finishing touch, had a stye in a
well-advanced stage of development in the corner. Their glance
was unsteady and flickering. Her nose was turned up, her mouth
like a frog’s, and furnished to boot with a wry and protruding
lower lip, which she used like a shovel to get her words out. Hans
Castorp looked at her, and all the modest and confiding friendli-
ness native to him spoke in his eyes.

“ What sort of cold is it, eh? ” repeated the Directress. She
seemed to try to concentrate her gaze and make it penetrate; but it
slipped aside. “We don’t care for such colds. Are you subject to
them? Your cousin has been too, hasn’t he? How old are you?
Twenty-four? Yes, it’s the age. And so you come up here and get
a cold? There ought not to be any talk about colds up here; that
sort of twaddle belongs down below.” It was fearsome to see how
she shovelled out this word with her lower lip. “ You have a beau-
tiful bronchial catarrh, that is plain — ” again she made that curious

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167

effort to pierce him with her gaze, and again she could not hold
it steady. “ But catarrhs are not caused by cold; they come from
an infection, which one takes from being in a receptive state. So
the question is, are we dealing with a harmless infection or with
something more serious? Everything else is twaddle. It is possible
that your receptivity inclines to the harmless kind,” she went on,
and looked at him with her over-ripe stye, he knew not how.
“ Here, I will give you a simple antiseptic — it may do you good,”
and she took a small packet out of the leather bag that hung from
her girdle. It was formamint. “ But you look flushed — as though
you had fever.” She never stopped trying to fix him with her
gaze, and always the eyes glided off to one side. “ Have you
measured? ”

He answered in the negative.

“ Why not? ” she asked, and her protruding lower lip hung in
the air after she spoke.

He made no answer. The poor youth was still young; he had
never got over his schoolboy shyness. He sat, so to speak, on his
bench, did not know the answer and took refuge in dumbness.

“ Perhaps you never do take your temperature? ”

“ Oh, yes, Frau Director, when I have fever.”

“ My dear child, one takes it in the first instance to see whether
one has fever. According to you, you have none now? ”

“ I can’t tell, Frau Director. I cannot really tell the difference.
Ever since I came up here, I have been a little hot and shivery.”

“ Aha! And where is your thermometer? ”

“ I haven’t one with me, Frau Director. Why should I, I am
not ill; I am only up here on a visit.”

“ Rubbish! Did you send for me because you weren’t ill? ”

“ No,” he laughed politely, “ it was because I caught a
little

“ Cold. We’ve often seen such colds. Here, young ’un,” she said,
and rummaged again in her bag. She brought out two longish
leather cases, one red and one black, and put them on the
table. “ This one is three francs fifty, the other five. The five-
franc one is better, of course. It will last you a lifetime if you take
care of it.”

Smiling he took up the red case and opened it. The glass instru-
ment lay like a jewel within, fitted neatly into its red velvet groove.
The degrees were marked by red strokes, the tenths by black ones;
the figures were in red and the tapering end was full of glittering
quicksilver. The column stood below blood-heat.

Hans Castorp knew what was due to himself and his upbring-

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1 68

ing. “ I will take this one,” he said, not even looking at the other.
“ The one at five francs. May I — ”

“ Then that’s settled,” croaked the Directress. “ I see you don’t
niggle over important purchases. No hurry, it will come on the
bill. Give him to me. We’ll drive him right down — ” She took
the thermometer out of his hand and plunged it several times
through the air, until the mercury stood below 95 °. He’ll soon
climb up again! ” she said. “ Here is your new acquisition. You
know how we do it up here? Straight under the tongue, seven
minutes, four times a day, and shut the lips well over it. Well,
young ’un, I must get on. Good luck! ” And she was out at the
door.

Hans Castorp bowed her out, then stood by the table, staring
from the door through which she had disappeared to the instru-
ment she had left behind. “ So that,” he thought, “ was Directress
von Mylendonk. Settembrini doesn’t care for her, and certainly she
has her unpleasant side. The stye isn’t pretty — but of course she
does not have it all the time. But why does she call me ‘ young ’un,’
like that? Rather rude and familiar, seems to me. So she has sold
me a thermometer — I suppose she always has one or two in her
pocket. They are to be had everywhere here, Joachim said, even
in shops where you would least expect it. But I didn’t need to take
the trouble to buy it; it just fell into my lap.” He took the article
out of its case, looked at it, and walked restlessly up and down the
room. His heart beat strong and rapidly. He looked toward the
open balcony door, and considered seeking counsel of Joachim,
but thought better of it and paused again by the table. He cleared
his throat by way of testing his voice; then he coughed.

“ Yes,” he said. “ I must see if I have the fever that goes with
the cold.” Quickly he put the thermometer in his mouth, the mer-
cury beneath the tongue, so that the instrument stuck slantingly
upwards from his lips. He closed them firmly, that no air might
get in. Then he looked at his wrist-watch. It was six minutes after
the half-hour. And he began to wait for the seven minutes to pass.

“ Not a second too long,” he thought, “ and not one too short.
They can depend on me, in both directions. They needn’t give me
a ‘ silent sister,’ like that Ottilie Kneifer Settembrini told us of.”
He walked about, pressing down the thermometer with his tongue.

The time crept on; the term seemed unending. When he looked
at his watch, two and a half minutes had passed — and he had feared
the seven minutes were already more than up. He did a thousand
things: picked up objects about the room and set them down
again, walked out on the balcony — taking care that his cousin

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169

should not notice his presence — and looked at the landscape of
this high valley, now so familiar to him in all its phases; with its
horns, its crests and walls, with the projecting wing of the “ Brem-
biihl,” the ridge of which sloped steeply down to the valley, its
flanks covered with rugged undergrowth, with its formations on
the right side of the valley, whose names were no less familiar than
the others, and the Alteinwand, which from this point appeared to
close in the valley on the south. He looked down on the garden
beds and paths, the grotto and the silver fir; he listened to the mur-
mur that rose from the rest-hall; and he returned to his room,
settling the thermometer under his tongue. Then, with a motion
of the arm which drew away the sleeve from his wrist, he brought
the forearm before his eyes and found that by dint of pushing and
shoving, pulling and hauling, he had managed to get rid of full
six minutes. The last one he spent standing in the middle of the
room — but then, unfortunately, he let his thoughts wander and
fell into a “ doze,” so that the sixty seconds flew by on the wings
of the wind; and, when he looked again, the eighth minute was
already past its first quarter. “ It doesn’t really matter, so far as the
result is concerned,” he thought, and tearing the instrument out
of his mouth, he stared at it in confusion.

He was not immediately the wiser. The gleam of the quick-
silver fell with the reflection of the glass case where the light struck
it, and he could not tell whether the mercury had ascended the
whole length of the column, or whether it was not there at all.
He brought the instrument close to his eyes, turned it hither and
thither — all to no purpose. But at last a lucky turn gave him a
clearer view; he hastily arrested his hand and brought his intelli-
gence to bear. Mercurius, in fact, had climbed up again, just as the
Frau Directress said. The column was perceptibly lengthened; it
stood several of the black strokes above normal. Hans Castorp had
99.6°.

Ninety-nine and six tenths degrees in broad daylight, between
ten and half past in the morning. That was too much; it was “ tem-
perature.” It was fever consequent on an infection, for which his
system had been eager. The question was now, what kind of in-
fection? 99.6° — why, Joachim had no more, nor anyone else up
here, except the moribund and bedridden. Not Fraulein Kleefeld
with her pneumothorax, nor — nor Madame Chauchat. Naturally,
in his case it was not the same kind, certainly not; he had what
would have been called at home a feverish cold. But the distinction
was not such a simple one to make. Hans Castorp doubted whether
the fever had only come on when the cold did, and he regretted

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not having consulted a thermometer at the outset, when the Hofrat
suggested it. He could see now that this had been very reasonable
advice; Settembrini had been wrong to sneer at it as he had — Set-
tembrini, with his republic and his bello stile . Hans Castorp loathed
and contemned the republic and the bello stile as he stood there
consulting his thermometer; he kept on losing the mark and turn-
ing the instrument this way and that to find it again. Yes, it regis-
tered 99.6° — and this in the early part of the day!

He was thoroughly upset. He walked the length of the room
twice or thrice, the thermometer held horizontally in his hand,
so as not to jiggle it and make it read differently. Then he carefully
deposited it on the wash-hand-stand, and went with his overcoat
and rugs into the balcony. Sitting down, he threw the covers about
him, with practised hand, first from one side, then from the other,
and lay still, waiting until it should be time for Joachim to fetch
him for second breakfast. Now and then he smiled — it was pre-
cisely as though he smiled at somebody. And now and then his
breast heaved as he caught his breath and was seized with his
bronchial cough.

Joachim found him still lying when he entered at eleven o’clock,
at sound of the gong for second breakfast.

“ Well? ” he asked in surprise, coming up to his cousin’s chair.

Hans Castorp sat awhile without answering, looking in front
of him. Then he said: “ Well, the latest is that I have some fever.”

“ What do you mean? ” Joachim asked. “ Do you feel fever-
ish? ”

Again Hans Castorp let him wait a little for the answer, then
delivered himself airily as follows: “ Feverish, my dear fellow, I
have felt for a long time — all the time I have been up here,
in fact. But at the moment it is not a matter of subjective emo-
tion, but of fact. I have taken my temperature.”

“ You’ve taken your temperature? What with? ” Joachim cried,
startled.

“ With a thermometer, naturally,” answered Hans Castorp, not
without a caustic tinge to his voice. “ Frau Director sold me one.
Why she should call me young ’un I can’t imagine. It is distinctly
not comrne il faut . But she lost no time in selling me an excellent
thermometer; if you would like to convince yourself, you can;
it is there on the wash-hand-stand. It is only slight fever.”

Joachim turned on his heel and went into the bedroom. When
he came back, he said hesitatingly: “ Yes, it is 99 .5% °.”

“ Then it has gone down a little,” his cousin responded hastily.
“ It was six.”

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171

“ But you can’t call that slight fever,” Joachim said. “ Certainly
not for the forenoon. This is a pretty how-d’ye-do! ” And he stood
by his cousin’s side as one stands before a how-d’ye-do, arms
akimbo and head dropped. “ You’ll have to go to bed.”

Hans Castorp had his answer ready. “ I can’t see,” he remarked,
“ why I should go to bed with a temperature of 99.6° when the
rest of you, who haven’t any less, can run about as you like.”

“ But that is different,” Joachim said. “ Your fever is acute and
harmless, the result of a cold.”

“ In the first place,” said Hans Castorp, speaking with dignity
and dividing his remarks into categories, “ I cannot comprehend
why, with a harmless fever — assuming for the moment, that there
is such a thing — one must keep one’s bed, while with one that is
not harmless you needn’t. And secondly, I tell you the fever has
not made me hotter than I was before. My position is that 99.6°
is 99.6°. If you can run about with it, so can I.”

“ But I had to lie for four weeks when I first came,” objected
Joachim, “ and they only let me get up when it was clear that the
fever persisted even after I had lain in bed.”

Hans Castorp smiled. “ Well, and — ? ” he asked. “ I thought it
was different with you. It seems to me you are contradicting your-
self; first you say our cases are different; then you say they are
alike. That seems sheer twaddle to me.”

Joachim made a right-about turn. When he turned round again,
his sun-tanned visage showed an even darker shade.

“ No,” he said, “ I am not saying they are alike; you’re getting
muddled. I only mean that you’ve a very nasty cold. I can hear
it in your voice, and you ought to go to bed, to cut it short, if
you mean to go home next week. But if you don’t want to — I
mean go to bed — why, don’t. I am not prescribing for you. Any-
how, let’s go to breakfast. Make haste, we are late already.”

“ Right-oh! ” said Hans Castorp, and flung off his covers. He
went into his room to run the brush over his hair, and Joachim
looked again at the thermometer on the wash-hand-stand. Hans
Castorp watched him. They went down, silently, and took their
places in the dining-room, which, as always at this hour, shim-
mered white with milk.

The dwarf waitress brought Hans Castorp his Kulmbacher beer,
as usual, but he put on a long face and waved it away. He would
drink no beer to-day; he would drink nothing at all, or at most a
swallow of water. The attention of his table-mates was attracted;
they wanted to know the cause of his caprice. Hans Castorp said
carelessly that he had a little fever — really minimal: 99.6°.

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172

Then how altogether ludicrous it was to see them! They shook
their fingers at him, they winked maliciously, they put their heads
on one side, crooked their forefingers beside their ears and wag-
gled them in a pantomime suggestive of their delight at having
found him out, who had played the innocent so long.

“ Aha,” said the schoolmistress, the flush mounting in her an-
cient cheek, “ what sort of scandal is this? ”

And “ Aha, aha! ” went Frau Stohr too, holding her stumpy
finger next her stumpy nose. “ So our respected guest has some
temperament too! Foxy-loxy is in the same boat with the rest
of us after all! ”

Even the great-aunt, when the news travelled up to her end
of the table, gave him a meaningful glance and smile; pretty Ma-
rusja, who had barely looked at him up to now, leaned over and
stared, with her round brown eyes, her handkerchief to her lips —
and shook her finger too. Frau Stohr whispered the news to Dr.
Blumenkohl, who could hardly do otherwise than join in the
game, though without looking at Hans Castorp. Only Miss Robin-
son sat as she always did and took no share in what was going on.
Joachim kept his eyes on the table-cloth.

It flattered Hans Castorp’s vanity to be taken so much notice of;
but he felt that modesty required him to disclaim their atten-
tions. “ No, no,” he said. “ You are all mistaken, my fever is the
most harmless thing in the world; I simply have a cold, my eyes
run, and my chest is stopped up. I have coughed half the night;
it is thoroughly unpleasant of course.” — But they would not
listen; they laughed and flapped their hands at him.

“ Yes, of course, we know all about it — we know these colds;
they are all gammon — you can’t fool us! ” and with one accord
they challenged Hans Castorp to an examination on the spot. The
news excited them. Throughout the meal their table was the liveli-
est among the seven. Frau Stohr became almost hysterical. Her
peevish face looked scarlet above her neck-ruche, and tiny pur-
ple veins showed in the cheeks. She began to talk about how
fascinating it was to cough. It was a solid satisfaction, when you
felt a tickling come in your chest, deep down, and grow and grow,
to reach down after it, and get at it, so to say. Sneezing was much
the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply
couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy;
you drew a couple of breaths; then out it came, and you forgot
everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the ex-
plosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of

THE THERMOMETER

pleasure life gave you free of charge. Another one was the joy
of scratching your chilblains in the spring, when they itched
so gorgeously; you took a furious pleasure in scratching till the
blood came; and if you happened to look in the glass you would
be astonished to see the ghastly face you made.

The coarse creature regaled the table with these repulsive de-
tails throughout the brief but hearty meal. When it was over, the
cousins walked down to the Platz; Joachim seemed preoccupied;
Hans Castorp was in an agony of snuffles and cleared his rasping
throat continually.

On the way home Joachim said: “I’ll make you a suggestion.
To-morrow, after midday meal, I have my regular monthly ex-
amination. It is not the general; Behrens just auscultates a little
and has Krokowski make some notes. You might come along and
ask them to listen to you a bit. It is too absurd — if you were at
home, you would send for Heidekind, and up here, with two
specialists in the house, you run about and don’t know where you
are, nor how serious it is, and if it would not be better for you
to go to bed.”

“ Very good,” said Hans Castorp. “ It’s as you say, of course.
I can do that. And it will be interesting to see an examination.”

Thus it was settled between them, and it fell out that as they
arrived before the sanatorium, they met the Hofrat himself, and
took the occasion to put their request at once.

Behrens came out of the vestibule, tall and stooped, a bowler
hat on the back of his head, a cigar in his mouth; purple-cheeked,
watery-eyed, in the full flow of his professional activities. He had
just come from the operating-room, so he said, and was on his
way to private practice in the village.

“ Morning, gentlemen, morning,” he said. “ Always on the
jump, eh? How’s everything in the big world? I’ve just come
from an unequal duel with saw and scalpel — great thing, you
know, resection of ribs. Fifty per cent of the cases used to be
left on the table. Nowadays we have it down finer than that;
but even so it’s a good plan to get the mortis causa fixed up
beforehand. The chap to-day knew how to take the joke — put
up a good fight for a minute or so. — Crazy thing, a human
thorax that’s all gone; pulpy, you know, nothing to catch hold
of — slight confusion of ideas, so to speak. Well, well — and how
are your constitutionalities? Sanctified metabolisms functioning
O.K., doing their duty in the sight of the Lord? The walks go
better in company, Ziemssen, old fellow, what? Hello, what are

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*74

you crying about, Mr. Tripper? ” He suddenly turned on Hans
Castorp. “ It’s against the rules to cry in public — they might all
start! ”

“It’s only my cold, Herr Hofrat,” answered Hans Castorp.
“ I don’t know how I did it, but I’ve a simply priceless catarrh.
It’s right down on my chest, and I cough a good deal too.”

“Indeed! ” Behrens remarked. “You ought to consult a re-
liable physician.”

Both cousins laughed, and Joachim answered, heels together:
“We were just going to, Herr Hofrat. I have my examination
to-morrow, and we wanted to ask if you would be so kind as to
look my cousin over as well. The question is whether he will be
well enough to travel on Tuesday.”

“ A. Y. S.,” said Behrens. “ At your service. With all the pleas-
ure in life. Ought to have done it long ago. Once you are up here,
why not? But one doesn’t like to seem forth-putting. Very good
then, to-morrow at two — directly after grub.”

“ I have a little fever too.” Hans Castorp further observed.

“You don’t say! ” Behrens cried out. “I suppose you think
you are telling me news? Do you think I’ve no eyes in my
head? ” He pointed with his great index finger to his goggling,
bloodshot, watery eyes. “ Well, and how much? ”

Hans Castorp modestly mentioned the figure.

“ Forenoon, eh? H’m, that’s not so bad. Not bad at all, for a
beginner — shows talent. Very good then, the two of you, to-
morrow at two. Very much honoured. Well, so long — enjoy
yourselves! ” He paddled away downhill, his knees bent, leaving
a long streamer of cigar smoke behind him.

“ Well, that came out just as you wanted it to,” Hans Castorp
said. “ We couldn’t have struck it luckier, and now I am in for
it. He won’t be able to do much, of course — he may prescribe
some sort of pectoral syrup or some cough lozenges. How-
ever, it is good to have a little encouragement when you feel
the way I do. But for heaven’s sake what makes him rattle on
so? It struck me as funny at first, but in the long run I can’t
say I like it. ‘ Sanctified metabolism ’ — what sort of gibberish is
that? If I understand what he means by metabolism, it is nothing
but physiology, and to talk about its being sanctified — irreverent,
I call it. I don’t enjoy seeing him smoke, either; it distresses
me, because I know it is not good for him and gives him melan-
cholia. Settembrini said his joviality is forced, and one must
admit that Settembrini has his own views and knows whereof
he speaks. I probably ought to have more opinions of my own.

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l 75

as he says, and not take everything as it comes, the way I do. But
sometimes one starts out with having an opinion and feeling right-
eous indignation and all that, and then something comes up that
has nothing to do with judgments and criticism, and then it is all
up with your severity, and you feel disgusted with the republic
and the bello stile — ”

He rambled on incoherently, not clear himself as to what he
wanted to say. His cousin merely gave him a side glance, then
turned away with an ctu revoir , and each betook him to his
own balcony.

“ How much? ” asked Joachim softly, after a while — as though
he had seen Hans Castorp consult his thermometer.

And the latter answered indifferently: “ Nothing new.”

He had in fact, directly he entered, taken up his new acquisi-
tion from the wash-hand-stand and plunged it repeatedly through
the air, to obliterate the morning’s record. Then he went into the
balcony with the glass cigar in his mouth, like an old hand. But
contrary to some rather exaggerated expectations, Mercurius
climbed no further than before — though Hans Castorp kept the
instrument under his tongue eight minutes for good measure.
But after all, 99.6° was unquestionably fever, even though no
higher than the earlier record. In the afternoon the gleaming col-
umn mounted up as far as 99.7 °, but declined to 99.5 0 by evening,
when the patient was weary with the excitement of the day.
Next morning it showed 99.6°, climbing during the morning to
the same level as before. And so arrived the hour for the main meal
of the day, bringing the examination in its wake.

Hans Castorp later recalled that Madame Chauchat was wear-
ing that day a golden-yellow sweater, with large buttons and em-
broidered pockets. It was a new sweater, at least new to Hans
Castorp, and when she made her entrance, tardily as usual, she
had paused an instant and, in the way he knew so well, presented
herself to the room. Then she had glided to her place at the table,
slipped softly into it, and begun to eat and chatter to her table-
mates. All this was as it happened every day, five times a day;
Hans Castorp observed it as usual, or perhaps even more poign-
antly than usual, looking over at the “ good ” Russian table past
Settembrini’s back, as he sat at the crosswise table between. He
saw the turn of her head in conversation, the rounded neck, the
stooping back. Frau Chauchat, for her part, never once turned
round during the whole meal. But when the sweet had been
handed, and the great clock on the wall above the “ bad ” Russian
table struck two, it actually happened, to Hans Castorp’s amaze-

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176

ment and mystification, that precisely as the hour struck, one,
two, the fair patient turned her head and a little twisted her body
and looked over her shoulder quite openly and pointedly at Hans
Castorp’s table. And not only at his table. No, she looked at
himself, unmistakably and personally, with a smile about the
closed lips and the narrow, Pribislav eyes, as though to say: “ Well,
it is time: are you going? ” And the eyes said thou, for that is the
language of the eyes, even when the tongue uses a more formal
address. This episode shook and bewildered Hans Castorp to
the depths of his being. He hardly trusted his senses, and at first
gazed enraptured in Frau Chauchat’s face, then, lifting his eyes,
stared into vacancy over the top of her head. Was it possible she
knew he was to be examined at two o’clock? It looked like it;
but that was as impossible as that she should be aware of the
thought that had visited his mind in the last minute; namely, that
he might as well send word to the Hofrat, through Joachim, that
his cold was better, and he considered an examination superfluous.
This idea had presented itself to him in an advantageous light, but
now withered away under that searching smile, transmuted into
a hideous sense of futility. The second after, Joachim had laid
his rolled-up serviette beside his plate, signalled to his cousin by
raising his eyebrows, and with a bow to the company risen from
the table. Whereat Hans Castorp, inwardly reeling, though out-
wardly firm in step and bearing, rose too, and feeling that look
and smile upon his back, followed Cousin Joachim out of the
room.

Since the previous morning they had not spoken of what lay
before them, and silently now they moved down the corridor to-
gether. Joachim hastened his steps, for it was already past the
appointed hour, and Hofrat Behrens laid stress on punctuality.
They passed the door of the office and went down the clean
linoleum-covered stairs to the “ basement.” Joachim knocked at
the door facing them; it bore a porcelain shield with the word
Consulting-room.

“ Come in,” called Behrens, stressing the first word. He was
standing in the middle of the room, in his white smock, holding
the black stethoscope in his hand and tapping his thigh with it.

“ Tempo , tempo ” said he, directing his goggling gaze to the
clock on the wall. “ Un poco piu presto , signori! We are not
here simply and solely for the honourable gentlemen’s con-
venience.”

Dr. Krokowski was sitting at the double-barrelled writing-table
by the window. He wore his usual black alpaca shirt, setting off

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177

the pallor of his face; his elbows rested on the table, in one hand
a pen, the other fingering his beard; while before him lay various
papers, probably the documents in reference to the patients to
be examined. He looked at the cousins as they entered, but it was
with the idle glance of a person who is present only in an auxiliary
capacity.

“ Well, give us your report card,” the Hofrat answered to Joa-
chim’s apologies, and took the fever chart out of his hand. He
looked it over, while the patient made haste to lay off his upper
garments down to the waist and hang them on the rack by the
door. No one troubled about Hans Castorp. He looked on awhile
standing, then let himself down in a little old-fashioned easy-
chair with bob-tassels on the arms, beside a small table with a
carafe on it. Bookcases lined the walls, full of pamphlets and
broad-backed medical works. Other furniture there was none,
except an adjustable chaise-longue covered with oilcloth. It had
a paper serviette spread over the pillow.

“ Point 7, point 9, point 8,” Behrens said running through the
weekly card, whereon were entered the results of Joachim’s five
daily “ measurings.” “ Still a little too much lighted up, my dear
Ziemssen. Can’t exactly say you’ve got more robust just lately ” —
by the lately he meant during the past four weeks. — “ Not free
from infection,” he said. “ Well, that doesn’t happen between one
day and the next; we’re not magicians.”

Joachim nodded and shrugged his bare shoulders. He refrained
from saying that he had been up here since a good deal longer
than yesterday.

“ How about the stitches in the right hilum, where it always
sounded so sharp? Better? eh? Well, come along, let me thump
you about a bit.” And the auscultation began.

The Hofrat stood leaning backwards, feet wide apart, his stetho-
scope under his arm, and tapped from the wrist, using the power-
ful middle finger of his right hand as a hammer, and the left as
a support. He tapped first high up on Joachim’s shoulder-blade
at the side of the back, above and below — the well-trained Joa-
chim lifting his arm to let himself be tapped under the arm-pit.
Then the process was repeated on the left side; then the Hofrat
commanded: “Turn! ” and began tapping the chest; first next
the collar-bone, then above and below the breast, right and left.
When he had tapped to his satisfaction, he began to listen, setting
his stethoscope on Joachim’s chest and back, and putting his ear
to the ear-piece. Then Joachim had to breathe deeply and cough
— which seemed to strain him, for he got out of breath, and tears

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178

came in his eyes. And everything that the Hofrat heard he an-
nounced in curt, technical phrases to his assistant over at the
writing-table, in such a way that Hans Castorp was forcibly re-
minded of the proceedings at the tailor’s when a very correctly
groomed gentleman measures you for a suit, laying the tape about
your trunk and limbs and calling off the figures in the order
hallowed by tradition for the assistant to take them down in his
book. “ Faint,” “ diminished,” dictated Hofrat Behrens. “ Vesicu-
lar,” and then again “vesicular” (that was good, apparently).
“ Rough,” he said, and made a face. “ Very rough.” “Rhonchi.”
And Dr. Krokowski entered it all in his book, just like the tailor’s
assistant.

Hans Castorp followed the proceedings with his head on one
side, absorbed in contemplation of his cousin’s torso. The ribs —
thank Heaven, he had them all! — rose under the taut skin as he
took deep inhalations, and the stomach fell away. Hans Castorp
studied that youthful figure, slender, yellowish-bronze, with a
black fell along the breastbone and the powerful arms. On one
wrist Joachim wore a gold chain-bracelet. “ Those are the arms
of an athlete,” thought Hans Castorp. “ I never made much of
gymnastics, but he always liked them, and that is partly the reason
why he wanted to be a soldier. He has always been more in-
clined than I to the things of the body — or inclined in a different
way. I’ve always been a civilian and cared more about warm
baths and good eating and drinking, whereas he has gone in for
manly exertion. And now his body has come into the foreground
in another sense and made itself important and independent of the
rest of him — namely, through illness. He is all ‘ lit up ’ within and
can’t get rid of the infection and become healthy, poor Joachim,
no matter how much he wants to get down to the valley and be
a soldier. And yet look how he is developed, like a picture in
a book, a regular Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair. But the
disease makes him ailing within and fevered without; disease makes
men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body ” — his own
thought startled him, and he looked quickly at Joachim with a
questioning glance, that travelled from the bared body up to the
large, gentle black eyes. Tears stood out in them, from the
effort of the forced breathing and coughing, and they gazed
into space with a pathetic expression as the examination went on.

But at last Hofrat Behrens had come to an end. “ Very good,
Ziemssen,” he said. “ Everything in order, so far as possible. Next
time ” (that would be in four weeks) “ it is bound to show further
improvement.”

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179

“ And Herr Hofrat, how much longer do you think — ”

“ So you are going to pester me again? How do you expect to
give your lads the devil down below, in the lit-up state you are
in? I told you the other day to call it half a year; you can reckon
from then if you like, but you must regard it as minimal. Have
a little ordinary politeness! It’s a decent enough life up here, after
all; it’s not a convict prison, nor a Siberian penal settlement! Or
perhaps you think it is? Very good, Ziemssen, be off with you!
Next! Step lively! ” He stretched out his arm and handed the
stethoscope to Dr. Krokowski, who got up and began some super-
numerary tapping on Joachim’s person.

Hans Castorp had sprung up. With his eyes fixed on the Hofrat,
standing there with his legs apart and his mouth open, lost in
thought, the young man began in all haste to make ready, with
the result that he defeated his own purpose and fumbled in getting
out of his shirt. But finally he stood there, blond, white-skinned,
and narrow-chested, before Hofrat Behrens. Compared with Joa-
chim, he looked distinctly the civilian type.

The Hofrat, still lost in thought, let him stand. Dr. Krokowski
had finished and sat down, and Joachim was dressing before
Behrens finally decided to take notice.

“ Oh-ho! ” he said, “ so that’s you, is it? ” He gripped Hans
Castorp on the upper arm with his mighty hand, pushed him
away, and looked at him sharply — not in the face, as one man
looks at another, but at his body; turned him round, as one would
turn an inanimate object, and looked at his back. “ H’m,” he
said. “ Well, we shall see.” And began tapping as before.

He tapped all over, as he had with Joachim, and several times
went back and tapped again. For some while, for purposes of
comparison, he tapped by turns on the left-hand side near the
collar-bone, and then somewhat lower down.

“ Hear that? ” he asked Dr. Krokowski. And the other, sitting
at the table five paces off, nodded to signify that he did. He sunk
his head on his' chest with a serious mien, and the points of his
whiskers stuck out.

“ Breathe deep! Cough! ” commanded the Hofrat, who had
taken up the stethoscope again; and Hans Castorp worked hard
for eight or ten minutes, while the Hofrat listened. He uttered
no word, simply set the instrument here or there and listened
with particular care at the places he had tapped so long. Then he
stuck the stethoscope under his arm, put his hands on his back,
and looked at the floor between himself and Hans Castorp.

“Yes, Castorp,” he said — this was the first time he had called

i8o

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

the young man simply by his last name — “ the thing works out
pr<eter propter as I thought it would. I had my suspicions — I can
tell you now — from the first day I had the undeserved honour of
making your acquaintance; I made a pretty shrewd guess that
you were one of us and that you would find it out, like many
another who has come up here on a lark and gone about with his
nose in the air, only to discover, one fine day, that it would be
as well for him — and not only as well, mark that — to make a more
extended stay, quite without reference to the beauties of the
scenery.”

Hans Castorp had flushed; Joachim, in act to button his braces,
paused as he stood, and listened.

“ You have such a kind, sympathetic cousin over there,” went
on the Hofrat, motioning with his head in Joachim’s direction
and balancing himself on his heels. “ Very soon, we hope, we
will be able to say that he has been ill; but even when he gets that
far, it will still be true that he has been ill — and the fact — a priori ,
as the philosophers say — casts a certain light upon yourself, my
dear Castorp.”

“ But he is only my step-cousin, Herr Hofrat.”

“ Tut! You won’t disown him, will you? Even a step-cousin is
a blood relation. On which side? ”

“ The mother’s, Herr Hofrat. He is the son of a step — ”

“And your mother — she’s pretty jolly? ”

“ No, she is dead. She died when I was little.”

“ And of what? ”

“ Of a blood-clot, Herr Hofrat.”

“ A blood-clot, eh? Well, that’s a long time ago. And your
father? ”

“ He died of pneumonia,” Hans Castorp said; “ and my grand-
father too,” he added.

“ Both of them, eh? Good. So much for your ancestors. Now
about yourself — you have always been rather chlorotic, haven’t
you? But you didn’t tire easily at physical or mental work. Or
did you — what? A good deal of palpitation? Only of late? Good.
And a strong inclination to catarrhal and bronchial trouble?
— Did you know you have been infected before now? ”

“I?”

“ Yes, you — I have you personally in mind. Can you hear
any difference? ” The Hofrat tapped by turns on Hans Castorp’s
left side, first above and then lower down.

“ It sounds rather duller there,” said Hans Castorp.

“ Capital. You ought to be a specialist. Well, that is a dullness,

THE THERMOMETER

1 8 1

and such dullnesses are caused by the old places, where fibrosis has
supervened. Scars, you know. You are an old patient, Castorp,
but we won’t lay it up against anybody that you weren’t found
out. The early diagnosis is very difficult — particularly for my
colleagues down below; I won’t say we have better ears — though
the regular practice does do something. But the air helps us, helps
us hear, if you understand what I mean, this thin, dry air up here.”

“ Certainly, of course,” Hans Castorp said.

“ Very good, Castorp. And now listen, young man, to my
words of wisdom. If that were all the trouble with you, if it was
a case of nothing but the dullness and the scars on your bagpipe
in there, I should send you back to your lares and penates and
not trouble my head further about you. But as things stand, and
according to what we find, and since you are already up here —
well, there is no use in your going down, for you’d only have to
come up again.”

Hans Castorp felt the blood rush back to his heart; it ham-
mered violently; and Joachim still stood with his hands on his
back buttons, his eyes on the floor.

“ For besides the dullness,” said the Hofrat, “ you have on the
upper left side a rough breathing that is almost bronchial and
undoubtedly comes from a fresh place. I won’t call it a focus of
softening, but it is certainly a moist spot, and if you go down
below and begin to carry on, why, you’ll have the whole lobe at
the devil before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Hans Castorp stood motionless. His mouth twitched fearfully,
and the hammering of his heart against his ribs was plain to see.
He looked across at Joachim, but could not meet his cousin’s eye;
then again in the Hofrat’s face, with its blue cheeks, blue, goggling
eyes, and little, crooked moustache.

“ For independent confirmation,” Behrens continued, “ we
have your temperature of 99 .6° at ten o’clock in the morning,
which corresponds pretty well to the indications given by the
auscultation.”

“ I thought,” Hans Castorp said, “ that the fever came from
my cold.”

“ And the cold,” rejoined the Hofrat, “ where does that come
from? Listen, Castorp, let me tell you something, and mark my
words — for so far as I can tell, you’ve all the cerebral convolu-
tions a body needs. Now: our air up here is good for the disease —
I mean good against the disease, you understand — you think so,
don’t you? Well, it is true. But also it is good for the disease; it
begins by speeding it up, in that it revolutionizes the whole body;

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it brings the latent weakness to the surface and makes it break out.
Your catarrh, fortunately for you, is a breaking-out of that kind.
I can’t tell if you were febrile down below; but it is certainly my
opinion that you have been from your first day up here, and not
merely since you had your catarrh.”

“ Yes,” Hans Castorp said, “ I think so too.”

“You were probably fuddled right from the start, in my
opinion,” the Hofrat confirmed him. “ Those were the soluble
toxins thrown off by the bacteria; they act like an intoxicant upon
the central nervous system and give you a hectic flush. Now,
Castorp, we’ll stick you into bed and see if a couple of weeks’
rest will sober you up. What follows will follow. We’ll take a
handsome x-ray of you — you’ll enjoy seeing what goes on in your
own inside. But I tell you straightaway, a case like yours doesn’t
get well from one day to the next: it isn’t a question of the miracle
cures you read about in advertisements. I thought when I first
clapped eyes on you that you would be a better patient than your
cousin, with more talent for illness than our brigadier-general
here, who wants to clear out directly he has a couple of points
less fever. As if ‘ lie down ’ isn’t just as good a word of command
as ‘ stand up ’! It is the citizen’s first duty to be calm, and im-
patience never did any good to anyone. Now, Castorp, watch out
you don’t disappoint me and give the lie to my knowledge of
human nature! Get along now, into the caboose with you —
march! ”

With that Hofrat Behrens closed the interview and sat down
at the writing-table; this man of many occupations began to fill
in his time with writing until the advent of the next patient. But
Dr. Krokowski arose from his place and strode up to Hans Ca-
storp. With his head tipped back sideways, and one hand on the
young man’s shoulder, smiling so heartily that the yellowish
teeth showed in his beard, he shook him warmly by the hand.

CHAPTER V

Soup-Everlasting

And now we are confronted by a phenomenon upon which the
author himself may well comment, lest the reader do so in his
stead. Our account of the first three weeks of Hans Castorp’s
stay with “ those up here ” — twenty-one midsummer days, to
which his visit, so far as human eye could see, should have been
confined — has consumed in the telling an amount of time and
space only too well confirming the author’s half-confessed ex-
pectations; while our narrative of his next three weeks will
scarcely cost as many lines, or even words and minutes, as the
earlier three did pages, quires, hours, and working-days. We
apprehend that these next three weeks will be over and done with
in the twinkling of an eye.

Which is perhaps surprising; yet quite in order, and conform-
able to the laws that govern the telling of stories and the listen-
ing to them. For it is in accordance with these laws that time
seems to us just as long, or just as short, that it expands or con-
tracts precisely in the way, and to the extent, that it did for young
Hans Castorp, our hero, whom our narrative now finds visited
with such an unexpected blow from the hand of fate. It may
even be well at this point to prepare the reader for still other
surprises, still other phenomena, bearing on the mysterious ele-
ment of time, which will confront us if we continue in our hero’s
company.

For the moment we need only recall the swift flight of time —
even of a quite considerable period of time — which we spend in
bed when we are ill. All the days are nothing but the same day
repeating itself — or rather, since it is always the same day, it is
incorrect to speak of repetition; a continuous present, an identity,
an everlastingness — such words as these would better convey the
idea. They bring you your midday broth, as they brought it yes-
terday and will bring it to-morrow; and it comes over you — but
whence or how you do not know, it makes you quite giddy to see

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the broth coming in — that you are losing a sense of the demarca-
tion of time, that its units are running together, disappearing; and
what is being revealed to you as the true content of time is merely
a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you the
broth. But in such a connexion it would be paradoxical to speak
of time as passing slowly; and paradox, with reference to such a
hero, we would avoid.

Hans Castorp, then, went to bed on the Saturday afternoon,
as it had been ordained by Hofrat Behrens, the highest authority
in our little world. There he lay, in his night-shirt with the em-
broidered monogram on the pocket, his hands clasped at the back
of his head, in his cleanly white bed, the death-bed of the Ameri-
can woman and in all probability of many another person; lay
there with his confiding blue eyes, somewhat glassy with his cold,
directed toward the ceiling, and contemplated the singularity
of his fate. This is not to say that, if he had not had a cold, his
gaze would have been any clearer or more single-minded. No,
just as it was, it accurately mirrored his inner state, and that, what-
ever its simplicity, was full of troubled, involved, dubious, not
quite ingenuous thoughts. For as he lay, he would be shaken from
deep within him by a frantic burst of triumphant laughter, while
his heart stood still with an anguish of extravagant anticipation
like nothing he had ever known before; again, he would feel such
a shudder of apprehension as sent the colour from his cheek, and
then it was conscience itself that knocked, in the very throbs of
his heart as it pulsed against his ribs.

On that first day Joachim left him to his rest, avoiding all dis-
cussion. He went two or three times tactfully into the sickroom,
nodded to the patient, and inquired if he could do anything.
It was easy for him to understand and respect Hans Castorp’s
reserve — the more in that he shared it, even feeling his own posi-
tion to be more difficult than the other’s.

But on Sunday forenoon, when he came back from the walk
which for the first time in weeks had been solitary, there was no
putting it off any longer; they must take counsel together over
the necessary next step.

He sat down by the bed and said, with a sigh: “ Yes, it’s no
good; we must act — they are expecting you down home.”

“ Not yet,” Hans Castorp answered.

“ No, but inside the next few days, Wednesday or Thursday.”

“ Oh, they aren’t expecting me so precisely on a particular
day,” Hans Castorp said “ They have other things to do besides
counting the days until I get back. I’ll be there when I get there,

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and Uncle Tienappel will say: ‘ Oh, there you are again,’ and
Uncle James: ‘ Well, had a good time? ’ And if I don’t arrive, it
will be some time before they notice it, you may be sure of that.
Of course, after a while we’d have to let them know.”

“ You can see how unpleasant the thing is for me,” Joachim said,
sighing again. “ What is to happen now? I feel in a way respon-
sible. You come up here to pay me a visit, I take you in, and here
you are, and who knows when you can get away and go into your
position down below? You must see how extremely painful that
is to me.”

“Just a moment,” said Hans Castorp, without removing his
hands from their clasped position behind his neck. “ Surely it is
unreasonable for you to break your head over it. Did I come up
here to visit you? Well, of course in a way I did; but after all, the
principal reason was to get the rest Heidekind prescribed. Well,
and now it appears I need more of a rest than he or any of us
dreamed. I am not the first who thought of making a flying visit
up here for whom it fell out differently. Remember about Tous-
les-deux’s second son, and how it turned out with him — I don’t
know whether he is still alive or not; perhaps they have fetched
him away already, while we were sitting at our meal. That I am
somewhat infected is naturally a great surprise to me; I must get
used to the idea of being a patient and one of you, instead of just
a guest. And yet in a way I am scarcely surprised, for I never have
been in such blooming health, and when I think how young both
my parents were when they died, I realize that it was natural I
shouldn’t be particularly robust! We can’t deny that you had a
weakness that way; we make no bones of it, even if it is as good as
cured now, and it may easily be that it runs a little in the family, as
Behrens suggested. Anyhow, I have been lying here since yester-
day thinking it all over, considering what my attitude has been,
how I felt toward the whole thing, to life, you know, and the de-
mands it makes on you. A certain seriousness, a sort of disinclina-
tion to rough and noisy ways, has always been a part of my nature;
we were talking about that lately, and I said I sometimes should
have liked to be a clergyman, because I took such an interest in
mournful and edifying things — a black pall, you know, with a sil-
ver cross on it, or R. I. P . — requiescat in pace , you know. That
seems to me the most beautiful expression — I like it much better
than ‘ He’s a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy. I think
all that comes from the fact that I have a weakness myself, and
always felt at home with illness — the way I do now. But things
being as they are, I find it very lucky that I came here, and that I

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was examined. Certainly you have no call to reproach yourself.
You heard what he said: if I were to go down and continue as I
have been, I should have the whole lobe at the devil before I could
say Jack Robinson.”

“ You can’t tell,” Joachim said. “ That is just what you never
can tell. They said you had already had places, of which nobody
took any notice and they healed of themselves, and left nothing
but a few trifling dullnesses. It might have been the same way with
the moist spot you are supposed to have now, if you hadn’t come
up here at all. One can never know.”

“ No, as far as knowing goes, we never can. But just for that
reason, we have no right to assume the worst — for instance with
regard to how long I shall be obliged to stop here. You say nobody
knows when I shall be free to go into the ship-yard; but you say
it in a pessimistic sense, and that I find premature, since we cannot
know. Behrens did not set a limit; he is a long-headed man, and
doesn’t play the prophet. There are the x-ray and the photo-
graphic plate yet to come before we can definitely know the facts;
who knows whether they will show anything worth talking about,
and whether I shall not be free of fever before that, and can say
good-bye to you. I am all for our not striking before the time and
crying wolf to the family down below. It is quite enough for the
present if we write and say — I can do it myself with the fountain-
pen if I sit up a little — that I have a severe cold and am febrile,
that I am stopping in bed, and shall not travel for the present. The
rest will follow.”

“ Good,” said Joachim. “ We can do that for the present. And
for the other matters we can wait and see.”

“ What other matters? ”

“ Don’t be so irresponsible! You only came for three weeks, and
brought a steamer trunk. You will need underwear and linen, and
winter clothes — and more footwear. And anyhow, you will want
money sent.”

“ If,” said Hans Castorp, “ if I need it.”

“ Very well, we’ll wait and see. But we ought not ” — Joachim

E aced up and down the room as he spoke, “ we ought not to be-
ave like ostriches. I have been up here too long not to know how
things go. When Behrens says there is a rough place, almost
rhonchi — oh well, of course, we can wait and see.”

There, for the time, the matter rested; and the weekly and fort-
nightly variations of the normal day set in. Hans Castorp could
partake of them even in his present state, if not at first hand, then

SOUP-EVERLASTING I 8 J

through the reports Joachim gave when he came and sat by the
bedside for fifteen minutes.

His Sunday morning breakfast-tray was adorned with a vase of
flowers; and they did not fail to send him his share of the Sunday
pastries. After luncheon the sounds of social intercourse floated up
from the terrace below, and with tantara and squealing of clarinets
the fortnightly concert began. During its progress Joachim en-
tered, and sat down by the open balcony door; his cousin half re-
clined in his bed, with his head on one side, and his eyes swimming
with pious enjoyment as he listened to the mounting harmonies,
and bestowed a momentary metaphorical shoulder-shrug upon
Settembrini’s twaddle about music being “ politically suspect.”

And, as we have said, he had Joachim post him upon the sights
and events of the sanatorium life. Had there, he asked, been any
toilets made in honour of the day, lace matinees or that sort of
thing? — though for lace matinees the weather was too cold.
Whether there were people going driving (certain expeditions had
in fact been undertaken, among others by the Half-Lung Club,
which had gone in a body to Clavadel). On the next day, Monday,
he demanded to hear all about Dr. Krokowski’s lecture, when Joa-
chim came from it and looked in upon his cousin on his way to
the rest-cure. Joachim did not feel like talking, he appeared dis-
inclined to make a report. He would have let the subject drop, as
it had after the previous lecture, had not Hans Castorp persisted,
and demanded to hear details.

“ I am lying up here,” he said, “ paying full pension. I am en-
titled to have all that is going.” He recalled the Monday of two
weeks ago, and his solitary walk, which had done him so little
good; and committed himself to the view that it was that walk
which had revolutionized his system and brought to the surface
the latent infection. “ But what a stately and solemn way the peo-
ple hereabout have of talking,” he said, “ I mean the common
people; almost like poetry. ‘ Then thank ye kindly and God be
with ye,’ ” he repeated, giving the words the woodman’s intona-
tion. “ I heard that up in the woods, and I shall remember it all my
life. You get to associate a thing like that with other memories and
impressions, you know, and you never forget it as long as you live.
— Well, so Krokowski held forth again on the subject of love, did
he? What did he say about it to-day? ”

“ Oh, nothing in particular. You know from the other time how
he talks.”

“ But what did he offer that was new? ”

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“ Nothing different. — Oh, well, the stuff to-day was pure
chemistry,” Joachim unwillingly condescended to enlighten his
cousin. It seemed there was a sort of poisoning, an auto-infection
of the organisms, so Dr. Krokowski said; it was caused by the dis-
integration of a substance, of the nature of which we were still
ignorant, but which was present everywhere in the body; and the
products of this disintegration operated like an intoxicant upon
the nerve-centres of the spinal cord, with an effect similar to that
of certain poisons, such as morphia, or cocaine, when introduced
in the usual way from outside.

“ And so you get the hectic flush,” said Hans Castorp. “ But
that’s all worth hearing. What doesn’t the man know! He must
have simply lapped it up. You just wait, one of these days he will
discover what that substance is that exists everywhere in the body
and sets free the soluble toxins that act like a narcotic on the nerv-
ous system; then he will be able to fuddle us all more than ever.
Perhaps in the past they were able to do that very thing. When I
listen to him, I could almost think there is some truth in the old
legends about love potions and the like. — Are you going? ”

“ Yes,” Joachim said, “ I must go lie down. My curve has been
rising since yesterday. This affair of yours has had its effect on
me.

That was the Sunday, and the Monday. The evening and the
morning made the third day of Hans Castorp’s sojourn in the
“ caboose.” It was a day without distinction, an ordinary week-
day, that Tuesday — but after all, it was the day of his arrival in
this place, he had been here a round three weeks, and time pressed;
he would have to send a letter home and inform his uncle of the
state of affairs, even though cursorily and without reference to
their true inwardness. He stuffed his down quilt behind his back,
and wrote upon the note-paper of the establishment, to the effect
that his departure was being delayed beyond the appointed time.
He was in bed with a feverish cold, which Hofrat Behrens — over-
conscientious as he probably was — refused to take lightly; insist-
ing on regarding it as immediately connected with his (Hans Ca-
storp’s) constitution and general state of health. The physician
had perceived directly he saw him that he was decidedly anaemic;
and take it all in all, it seemed as though the limit he had originally
set for his stay was not regarded by the authorities as long enough
for a full recovery. He would write again as soon as he could. —
That’s the idea, thought Hans Castorp; not too much or too little;
and whatever the issue, it will satisfy them for a while. The letter
was given to the servant, with instructions that it be taken direct

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to the station and sent off by the earliest possible train, instead of
being posted in the usual way in the house letter-box, with con-
sequent delays.

Our adventurous youth felt much relieved to have set affairs in
such good train — if likewise a good deal plagued by his cough
and the heavy-hcadedness caused by his catarrh — and now he
began to live each day as it came — a day which never varied,
which was always broken up into a number of sections, and which,
in its abiding uniformity, could not be said either to pass too fast
or to hang too heavy on the hands. In the morning the bathing-
master would give a mighty thump on the door and enter — a
nervous individual named Turnherr, who wore his sleeves rolled
up, and had great standing veins upon his forearms, and a gurgling,
impeded speech. He addressed Hans Castorp, as he did all the pa-
tients, by the number of his room, and rubbed him with alcohol.
Not long after he left, Joachim would appear ready dressed, to
greet his cousin, inquire after his seven o’clock temperature, and
communicate his own. While he breakfasted below, Hans Castorp
did the same above, his down quilt tucked behind his back, in en-
joyment of the good appetite a change engenders. He was scarcely
disturbed by the bustling and businesslike entrance of the two
physicians, whojit this hour made a hurried round of the dining-
hall and the rooms of the bedridden and moribund. Hans Castorp,
with his mouth full of jam, announced himself to have slept “ splen-
didly ” and looked over the rim of his cup at the Hofrat, who
leaned with his fists on the centre table, and hastily scanned the
fever chart. Both physicians wished him good-morning, and he
responded in an unconcerned drawl as they went out. Then he
lighted a cigarette, and beheld Joachim returning from the morn-
ing walk, almost before he realized his departure. Again they
chatted of this and that; Joachim went to lie down until second
breakfast, and the interval seemed so short that even the emptiest-
headed could hardly have felt bored. Hans Castorp, indeed, had so
much food for thought in the events of the past three weeks, so
much to ponder in his present state and what might come of it,
that although two bound volumes of an illustrated periodical from
the Berghof library lay upon his night-table, he had no need to
resort to them.

It was no different with the brief hour during which Joachim
took his regular walk down to the Platz. He came in to Hans Ca-
storp afterwards, told him whatever of interest he had seen, and
sat or stood a few minutes by the sick-bed before he withdrew to
his own balcony for the midday rest. And how long did that

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last? Again, only a brief hour. It seemed to Hans Castorp he had
barely settled to commune a little with his own thoughts, hands
folded behind his head and eyes directed upon the ceiling, before
the gong droned through the house, summoning all those not bed-
ridden or moribund to prepare for the principal meal of the day.

Joachim went down, and the “ midday broth ” was brought —
“ broth ” in a symbolic sense merely, considering in what it con-
sisted. Hans Castorp was not on sick-diet. He lay there and paid
full pension, and what they brought him in the abiding present
of that midday hour was by no means broth, it was the full six-
course Berghof dinner, in all its amplitude, with nothing left out.
Even on week-days this was a sumptuous meal; on Sundays it was
a gala banquet and “ gaudy,” prepared by a cosmopolitan chef in
the kitchens of the establishment, which were precisely those of a
European hotel de luxe . The “ dining-room girl ” whose duty it
was to serve the bedridden brought it to him in dainty cook-
pots under nickel-plated dish-covers. She produced an invalid-
table, a marvel of one-legged equilibrium, adjusted it across his
bed, and Hans Castorp banqueted like the tailor’s son in the
fairy-story.

As he finished, Joachim would return, and it might be as late as
half past two before the latter went into his loggia, and the hush
of the main rest period fell upon the Berghof. Not quite, perhaps;
perhaps it would be nearer the truth to call it a quarter after, but
these odd quarter-hours outside the round figures do not count,
they are swallowed up unregarded, in places where one reckons
time in large units — on long train journeys of many hours on end,
or wherever one is in a state of vacant suspense, with all one’s being
concentrated on pulling the time behind one. A quarter past two
will pass for half past, will even pass for three, on the theory that
it is already well on the way toward it. The thirty minutes are
taken as a sort of onset to the full hour from three to four, and
inwardly discounted. In this wise the duration of the main rest

E eriod was finally reduced to no more than an hour; and even this
our was lopped off at its latter end, elided, as it were. Dr. Kro-
kowski played the part of apostrophe.

Yes, nowadays when Dr. Krokowski went his independent af-
ternoon round, he no longer made a circle round Hans Castorp;
our young man was no longer an interval and hiatus, he counted
as much as the others, he too was a patient. He was questioned,
not ignored, as had so long been the case, to his slight and con-
cealed but daily recurring annoyance. It was on Monday that Dr.
Krokowski for the first time manifested himself in the room —

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manifested being the only proper word for the phenomenon as
Hans Castorp, with an involuntary start, perceived it. He lay
in half — or quarter — slumber, and became aware that the As-
sistant was beside him, having entered not through the door, but
approaching from outside. His round at this time lay not through
the corridor, but along the balconies, and he had come through
the open door of the loggia with an effect of having flown
through the air. There he stood at Hans Castorp’s bedside, in all
his pallor and blackness, broad-shouldered and squat, his lips
parted in a manly smile that showed the yellowish teeth through
his beard — the apostrophe!

“ You seem surprised to see me, Herr Castorp,” he said, mildly
baritone, drawling, unquestionably rather affected: he gave the r
a foreign, palatal sound, not rolled, but pronounced with a single
impact of the tongue against the upper front teeth. “ But I am
only performing my pleasant duty, in seeing after your welfare.
Your relations with us have entered upon a new phase. Overnight
the guest has become the comrade.” His patient was rather alarmed
by the word comrade. — “ Who would have thought it? ” he
jested fraternally. “ Who would have thought it on that evening
when I had the honour of making your acquaintance, and you
replied to my mistaken supposition — at that time mistaken — with
the explanation that you were perfectly healthy? I believe I ex-
pressed some doubt, but I assure you I did not mean it in that sense.
I will not pretend to being more sharp-sighted than I am. I was
not thinking of a moist spot. My remark was meant only in the
general, philosophical sense, as a doubt whether the two concep-
tions, man and perfect health, were after all consistent one with
the other. Even to-day, after the examination, I confess that I per-
sonally, as distinguished from my honoured chief, cannot regard
the moist spot as the most important factor in the situation. It is,
for me, a secondary phenomenon — the organic is always second-
ary — ”

Hans Castorp drew a short breath.

“ — and thus your catarrh is, in my view, a third-line phe-
nomenon,” Dr. Krokowski concluded, very softly. “ How is it?
The rest in bed will undoubtedly be efficacious, in this respect.
What have you measured to-day? ” And from then on the Assist-
ant’s visit was in the key of an ordinary professional call, to which
it kept during the following days and weeks. Dr. Krokowski would
enter by the open balcony door at a quarter to four or earlier,
greet the patient with manly readiness, put the usual professional
questions, with perhaps a little personal touch as well, a jest or two

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— and if all this had a slight aura of the questionable about it, yet
one can get used even to the questionable, provided it keeps within
bounds. It was not long before Hans Castorp forgot any feeling
he may have had about Dr. Krokowski’s visits. They took their
place in the programme of the normal day, and performed, as it
were, an elision in the latter end of the main rest period.

The Assistant would return along the balconies at four o’clock
or thereabouts, that is to say mid-afternoon. Yes, thus suddenly,
before one realized it, there one was, in the very deep of the after-
noon, and steadily still deepening on toward twilight. Before tea
was finished drinking, up above and down below, it was well on
the way toward five o’clock; and by the time Joachim returned
from his third daily round and looked in on his cousin, it would
be near enough to six to reduce the remaining rest period to no
more than a single hour — reckoned always in round numbers. It
was an easy matter to kill that much time, if one had ideas in one’s
head, and a whole or bis pictus on the table to boot.

Joachim, on his way to the evening meal, stopped to say good-
bye. Hans Castorp’s tray was brought. The valley had long since
filled with shadow, and darkened apace as he ate. When he had
done, he leaned back against his down quilt, with the magic table
cleared before him, and looked into the growing dusk, to-day’s
dusk, yet scarcely distinguishable from the dusk of yesterday or
last week. It was evening — and had just been morning. The day,
artificially shortened, broken into small bits, had literally crumbled
in his hands and was reduced to nothing: he remarked it to him-
self with a start — or, at any rate, he did at least remark; for to
shudder at it was foreign to his years. It seemed to him that from
the beginning of time he had been lying and looking thus.

One day — some ten or twelve had passed since Hans Castorp
retired to bed — there was a knock on his door at about this hour,
before Joachim had returned from dinner and the social half-hour.
Upon Hans Castorp’s inquiring “ Come in,” it opened, and Ludo-
vico Settembrini appeared — and lo, on the instant the room was
flooded with light. For the visitor’s first motion, while still on the
threshold, had been to turn on the electric light, which filled the
room in a trice with vibrating brilliance, and reverberated from
the gleaming white ceiling and furniture.

The Italian had been the only one of the guests after whom Hans
Castorp had expressly asked in these days. Joachim indeed, when
he stood or sat by his cousin for ten or fifteen minutes — and that
happened ten times in the course of the day — would relate what-
ever there was of interest or variation in the daily life of the com-

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munity; and Hans Castorp’s questions, whenever he put any, had
been of a general nature. The exile wished to know whether there
were new guests, or if any of the familiar faces were absent; it
seemed to gratify him that only the former was the case. There
was one new-comer, a hollow-cheeked, green-complexioned
young man, who had been given a place at the next table on the
right with Frau litis and the ivory-skinned Levi. Hans Castorp
might look forward to the pleasure of seeing him. So no one had
left? Joachim answered in a curt negative, his eyes on the ground.
But he had to reply to this question every day or so, until at last
he became restive and sought to answer once for all by saying that,
so far as he knew, no one was purposing to leave — nobody did
leave very much, up here, as a matter of fact.

But Hans Castorp had asked after Settembrini by name, and de-
sired to hear what he had “ said to it.” To what? “ Why, that I
am in bed and supposed to be ill.” Settembrini, it seemed, had ex-
pressed himself on the subject, though briefly. On the very day of
Hans Castorp’s disappearance he had come to find out his where-
abouts of Joachim, obviously prepared to hear that the guest had
departed; and on learning the explanation had responded only in
Italian: first “ Ecco! ” and then “ Poveretto! ” — as much as to say:
“ There you are, poor chap! ” — It needed no more Italian than the
cousins could boast to understand the sense in which he uttered
the words. “ Why 4 poveretto ’? ” Hans Castorp inquired. “ He
sits up here with his literature made of politics and humanism and
he is very little good for the ordinary interests of life. He needn’t
look down his nose and pity me like that, I shall get down to the
flat-land before he does.”

And now Herr Settembrini stood here in the suddenly illumi-
nated room — Hans Castorp, who had raised himself on his elbow
and turned blinking toward the door, recognized him and flushed.
Settembrini wore, as usual, his thick coat with the wide lapels, a
frayed turnover collar, and the check trousers. As he came from
supper, he was armed with the usual wooden toothpick. The cor-
ner of his mouth, beneath the beautiful curve of his moustache,
displayed the familiar fine, dry, critical smile.

“ Good-evening, Engineer! May I be permitted to look in on
you? If so, I need light — you will pardon my taking it upon my-
self — ” and he waved his small hand toward the lamp in the ceil-
ing. 44 You were absorbed in contemplation, I should not wish to
disturb you. A tendency to meditate is surely natural under the
circumstances, and if you want to talk, you have your cousin. You
see, I am well aware that I am superfluous. But even so — we live

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here close together, a sympathy springs up between man and man,
intellectual and emotional sympathy. — It has been a full week that
we have not seen you. I began to think you had left, as I saw your
place empty down in the refectory. The Lieutenant told me better
— or should we say worse, if that would not sound impolite? Well,
and how are you? How do you feel? Not too much cast down, I
hope? ”

“Ah, that is you, Herr Settembrini! How friendly of you!
Refectory — oh, I say, that is good! Always at your jokes — but
do sit down. You are not disturbing me in the least. I was lying
there musing — no, musing is too much to say. I was simply too
lazy to turn on the light. Thanks very much, I am subjectively as
good as normal, and my cold is much better from lying in bed. But
it was a secondary phenomenon, so everybody tells me. My tem-
perature is still not what it should be, I have 99.5 0 to 99.7 °, all the
time.”

“ You take your temperature regularly? ”

“ Yes, six times a day, like the rest of you. Pardon me, I am still
laughing at your calling our dining-hall a refectory. That is what
they are called in a cloister, isn’t it? After all, there is some resem-
blance — not that I have been in a cloister, but I imagine they are
something like this. And I have the ‘ Rule ’ at my fingers’ ends, and
observe it faithfully.”

“ As a pious brother should. One might say that your noviciate
is at an end and you have made your profession. My formal con-
gratulations. You even say ‘ our 5 dining-hall. But, without mean-
ing to affront your manly dignity, you remind me more of a young
nun than a monk, a regular new-shorn, innocent bride of Christ,
with great martyrlike eyes. I have seen such lambs, here and there
about the world; never without a certain — a certain access of
sensibility. Yes, your cousin has told me about it. So you had your-
self examined after all, at the eleventh hour.”

“ Since I was febrile — of course, Herr Settembrini. What do
you want? If I had been at home, I should have consulted a physi-
cian. And here, at the source and fount so to speak, with two
specialists in the house — it would have been very strange — ”

“ Of course, of course. And you took your temperature, too,
before they told you to. But they did recommend it, from the be-
ginning. And the Mylendonk slipped you the thermometer? ”

“ Slipped me — ? Since the occasion arose, I bought one from
her.”

“ I understand. An irreproachable transaction. And how many
months did the chief knock you down for? Good heavens, I have

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asked you that before! Do you remember? You had just come.
You answered with such assurance — ”

“ Of course I remember. I have had many new experiences since
that time, but that I remember as though it were yesterday. You
were so amusing, and spoke of Behrens as the judge of the lower
regions — Radames, was it? No, wait, that is something else.”

“ Rhadamanthus? Yes, I may have called him that. I am afraid
I do not remember every phrase that happens to well up to my
lips.”

“ Rhadamanthus, of course. Minos and Rhadamanthus. And you
spoke to us of Carducci at the same time — ”

“ Pardon me, my dear young friend, we will, if you please, leave
him out. The name, at this moment, sounds too strange upon your
tongue.”

“ That’s good too,” laughed Hans Castorp. “ But I have learned
a good deal about him through you. — Yes, at that time I had not
the faintest suspicion, I answered you that I was here for three
weeks, I did not know any different. The Kleefeld girl had just
been whistling at me with her pneumothorax, I hardly knew where
I was. But I was feeling febrile even then — for the air up here is
not only good against the illness, you know, it is also good for it,
it sometimes brings it to the surface — which is of course a neces-
sary step in the cure.”

“ An alluring hypothesis. And has Hofrat Behrens also told
you about the German-Russian woman we had here last year —
no, year before last — for five months? He did not? He should
have. A charming woman, of Russo-German origin, married, a
young mother. She came from the Baltic provinces somewhere —
lymphatic, anaemic, but probably some more serious trouble as
well. She spent a month here and complained that she felt ill all
the time. They told her to be patient. Another month passes, she
continues to assert that she is actually worse instead of better.
They point out to her that only the physician can judge how she
is — she herself only knows how she feels; which does not signify.
They are satisfied with the condition of her lung. Good. She says
no more, she goes on with the cure, and loses weight by the week.
The fourth month she faints during the examination. That is noth-
ing, says Behrens, her lung is perfectly satisfactory. But by the
fifth month she cannot get about, she goes to bed and writes to
her husband, out in the Baltic provinces; Behrens gets a letter from
him marked ‘ personal ’ and ‘ urgent ’ in a very firm hand — I saw
it myself. Yes, says Behrens, and shrugs his shoulders, it seems to
be indicated that she certainly cannot stand the climate up here.

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196

The woman was beside herself. He ought to have said that before,
she had felt it from the beginning, she declared — they had killed
her among them. Let us hope she recovered her strength when she
went back to her husband.’’

“ Oh, that’s good, that’s very good! You do tell stories capitally,
Herr Settembrini; every word is so plastic. And that story about
the girl that went bathing in the lake, the one they gave the ‘ silent
sister ’ to take her temperature with — I have often laughed at it,
all by myself. Yes, what strange things do happen. One lives and
learns. But my own case is still quite uncertain. The Hofrat is
supposed to have discovered a trifling weakness, places where I
was infected long ago, I heard them myself when he tapped me,
and some fresh places he can hear now — what a funny word fresh
is to use in such a connexion! But so far there are only the acoustic
indications; real diagnostic certainty we shall only arrive at when
I am about again, and the x-ray and photography have taken place.
Then we shall have positive knowledge.”

“ You think so? You know that the photographic plate often
shows spots that are taken for cavities when there are none there?
And that, sometimes, it shows no spots although there is some-
thing there? Mado?ina — the photographic plate! There was a
young numismatician up here, with fever; and since he had fever,
there were cavities plain to be seen on the plate. They could even
hear them. They treated him for phthisis, and he died. The post-
mortem showed his lung to be sound; the cause of his death was
some coccus or other.”

“ Oh, come, Herr Settembrini. Talking about post-mortems al-
ready. I haven’t got that far yet, I assure you.”

“ Engineer, you are a wag.”

“ And you are an out-and-out critic and sceptic, I must say. You
do not even believe in science. Can you see spots on your plate,
Herr Settembrini? ”

“ Yes, it shows some spots.”

“ And you really are ill too? ”

“ Yes, I am unfortunately rather ill,” replied Settembrini, and
his head drooped. There was a pause, in which he gave a little
cough. Hans Castorp, from his bed, regarded his guest, whom he
had reduced to silence. It seemed to him that with his two simple
inquiries he had refuted Settembrini’s whole position, even the
republic and the hello stile . And he did nothing on his side to re-
sume the conversation.

After a while Herr Settembrini straightened himself, with a
smile.

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“ Tell me, Engineer,” he said, “ how have your family taken the
news? ”

“ What news do you mean? Of my delayed return? Oh, my
family, you know, consists of three uncles, a great-uncle and his
two sons, who are more like my cousins. Other family I have none,
I was doubly orphaned when I was very small. As to how they
took it — they know as much, and as little, as I myself. At first,
when I had to go to bed, I wrote that I had a severe cold, and
could not travel. Yesterday, as it seemed rather long after all, I
wrote again, saying that my catarrh had drawn Hofrat Behren’s
attention to the condition of my chest, and that he insisted I should
remain until he is clear what the condition is. You may be per-
fectly sure they took it calmly — it didn’t upset them.”

“ And your position? You spoke of a sphere of practical activ-
ity, where you were intending to enter shortly on certain duties.”

“ Yes, as volunteer apprentice. I have asked them to excuse me
for the present. You must not imagine they are in despair over my
defection. They can carry on indefinitely without an assistant.”

“ Good. Everything is in order, then, in that direction. Perfect
equanimity all along the line. It is a phlegmatic race of people in
your part of the country, is it not? But energetic, certainly? ”

“ Oh, yes, very energetic,” said Hans Castorp. He mentally
assayed the temper of his native city, and found that his inter-
locuter had characterized it justly. “ Phlegmatic and energetic,
yes, I should say they are.”

“ I assume,” continued Herr Settembrini, “ in case your stay is
prolonged, we shall make the acquaintance of your uncle — I mean
your great-uncle — shall we not? He will undoubtedly come up to
ascertain your condition.”

“ Out of the question,” cried Hans Castorp. “ Under no con-
ceivable circumstances. Wild horses could not drag him up here.
My uncle is apoplectic, you understand; he has almost no neck at
all. No, he has to have a reasonable atmospheric pressure; it would
be worse for him up here than it was for your lady from the Baltic
provinces — he would be in a dreadful way.”

“ I am disappointed. And apoplectic? Energy and phlegm are
not much use under those circumstances. — Your uncle is rich, I
suppose? You are all rich down your way? ”

Hans Castorp smiled at Herr Settembrini’s literary generaliza-
tions. And again, from his distant couch, he cast a metaphorical
eye upon the sphere from which he had been snatched. He called
up memories, he made an effort to judge objectively, and found
that distance enabled him to do so.

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198

He answered: “ One is rich — or else one isn’t. And if not, so
much the worse. I myself am no millionaire, but what I have is
secured to me, I have enough to live on and be independent. But
personalities aside — well, if you had said one must be rich, I should
have agreed with you. If you aren’t rich, or if you leave off being,
then woe be unto you. ‘ Oh, he? 9 they will say about this or that
person. ‘ He hasn’t any money, has he? 9 Literally that, and making
just such a face; I have often heard them, and I see now it made an
impression on me — which it would not have done, of course, un-
less it had struck me as strange. Or don’t you think that follows?
No, I don’t think you, for instance, as homo humanus , would feel
very comfortable down there; it often struck me that it was pretty
strong, as I can see now, though I am a native of the place and
for myself have never had to suffer from it. If a man does not serve
the best and dearest wines at his dinners, people don’t go, and his
daughters are left on his hands. That is what they are like. Lying
here and looking at it from this distance, I find it pretty gross.
What were the words you used — phlegmatic and — and energetic.
That’s very good. But what does it mean? It means hard, cold.
And what do hard and cold mean? They mean cruel. It is a cruel
atmosphere down there, cruel and ruthless. When you lie here and
look at it, from a distance, it makes you shudder.”

Settembrini listened, and nodded; nodded after Hans Castorp
had come to an end, for the present, of his pronouncement and
fallen silent.

Then he took a breath and said: “ I will not seek to extenuate
the specific forms which life’s normal cruelty assumes in your
native sphere. It is all one — for the reproach of cruelty rests upon
somewhat sentimental grounds. You would scarcely even have
levelled it, while you were in that atmosphere, for fear of being
ridiculous in your own eyes. You left it to the drones to make, and
rightly. That you make it now bears witness to a certain estrange-
ment, which I should be sorry to see increase; since he who falls
in the habit of making it is in danger of being lost to life, to the
manner of life to which he was born. Do you know, Engineer,
what I mean by being lost to life? I, I know it, I see it here every
day. Six months at most after they get here, these young people
— and they are mostly young who come — have lost every idea
they had, except flirtation and temperature. And if they remain a
year, they will have lost the power of grasping any other; they
will find any other ‘ cruel ’ — or, more precisely, ignorant and in-
adequate. You are fond of anecdote — I could serve your turn. I
could tell you of a young man I know, a husband and son, who

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was up here for eleven months. He was a little older than you, yes,
rather older. They let him go home, provisionally, as much im-
proved; he returned to the bosom of his family — not uncles, you
understand, but his wife and his mother. The whole day he lay
with the thermometer in his mouth, he took no interest in any-
thing else. ‘ You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘ No one understands
who has not lived up there. Down here the fundamental concep-
tion is lacking.’ In the end it was the mother who settled it. ‘ Go
back,’ she said. 4 There is nothing to be done with you any more.’
He went back, went back 4 home ’ — you know, don’t you, that
they call this home when they have once lived here? He was en-
tirely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the fundamental
conception, and she gave up trying to get it. It was borne in upon
her that he would find a mate up here who had it, and that he
would stop with her.”

Hans Castorp seemed to be only half listening. He went on
staring into the incandescent brilliance of his white room, as into
far space.

He laughed belatedly, and said: “ He called it home? That is
sentimental, as you say. You know no end of stories. I was still
thinking of what we said about hardness and cruelty; the same
idea has gone through my head a number of times in these days.
You see, a person has to have a rather thick skin to find it natural,
the way they have of thinking and talking down there, the 4 has
he got any money? ’ and the face they make when they say it. It
never came quite natural to me, though I am no homo hmnanus.
I can see, now I look back, that I always struck by it. Perhaps that
had to do with my tendency to illness, though I did not know
about it at the time — those old places which I heard myself the
other day. And now Behrens has found a fresh place. That, I must
say, was a surprise to me — and yet, in a way, I don’t know that it
was, after all. I never have felt myself as firm as a rock, and my
parents, both of them, dying so young — for I have been doubly
orphaned from youth up, you know — ”

Herr Settembrini described a single gesture, with head, hand,
and shoulders. Pleasantly, courteously, it put the question: “ Well,
and what of it? ”

“ You are an author,” Hans Castorp said, “ a literary man. It
must be easy for you to understand a thing like that; you can feel
how under those circumstances a man might not be of tough
enough fibre to find that sort of cruelty quite natural, the cruelty
of ordinary people, who go about joking and making money and
filling their bellies. — I don’t know if I am expressing myself — ”

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Settembrini bowed. “ You mean,” he interrupted, “ that the
early and repeated contact with death developed in you a tend-
ency which made you sensitive to the harshness and crudity, let
us say the cynicism, of our everyday, worldly existence.”

“ Precisely! ” cried Hans Castorp, in honest enthusiasm. “ You
have expressed it to a T, Herr Settembrini. Contact with death!
I was sure that you, as a literary man — ”

Settembrini put out his hand, laid his head on one side, and
closed his eyes. It was a mild and beautiful gesture, a plea for
silence and further hearing. He held it some seconds, even after
Hans Castorp had ceased to speak and was waiting in suspense
for what was to come. But at length he opened his black eyes,
organ-grinder eyes, and spoke: “Permit me. Permit me, Engi-
neer, to say to you, and to bring it home to you, that the only
sane, noble — and I will expressly add, the only religious way to
think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the
understanding and with the emotions, as the inviolable condition
of life. It is the very opposite of sane, noble, reasonable, or religious
to divorce it in any way from life, or to play it off against it. The
ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and
procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of
antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together.
These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy
of homage, as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis. Sev-
ered from life, it becomes a spectre, a distortion, and worse. For
death, as an independent power, is a lustful power, whose vicious
attraction is strong indeed; to feel drawn to it, to feel sympathy
with it, is without any doubt at all the most ghastly aberration to
which the spirit of man is prone.”

Herr Settembrini left off speaking. He finished with this gen-
eralization, and made it the definite period of his discourse. He
had spoken in a very serious vein and by no means with conver-
sational intent; he even refrained from giving Hans Castorp the
opportunity for a rejoinder; but simply dropped his voice at this
point and concluded his remarks. He sat now with his lips closed,
his hands folded in his lap, one leg in its check trouser flung over
the other, slightly swinging the foot, which he regarded with an
austere expression.

Hans Castorp too preserved silence. He leaned back in his plu-
meau , turned his head to the wall, and drummed with his finger-
ends on the coverlet. He felt set to rights, chidden, corrected; in his
silence there was no little childish obstinacy. The pause lasted
some time.

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At length Herr Settembrini lifted his head, and said with a
smile: “ You very likely recall, Engineer, that we have had a
similar discussion once before — one might say the same discussion.
We were talking about disease and dullness — I think we were
taking a walk — and you found the combination a paradox, on the
ground of your reverence for ill health. I called that reverence a
dismal fancy which dishonoured human thought; and I was grati-
fied to find you not disinclined to entertain my plea. We spoke
of the neutrality and the intellectual indecision of youth, of its
liberty of choice, of its inclination to play with all possible points
of view, and that one should not — or need not — regard these ex-
perimentations as final and definite elections. Will you permit
me ” — Herr Settembrini smiled and bent forward as he sat, his
feet close together on the floor, his hands between his knees, his
head stretched out and a little on one side — “ will you permit
me ” — and his voice had the faintest tremor in it — “ to be beside
you in your essays and experiments, and to exercise a corrective
influence when there appears to be danger of your taking up a
destructive position? ”

“ Why, certainly, Herr Settembrini ” — Hans Castorp hastened
to abandon his forced and even peevish attitude, stop drumming
on the bed-cover, and turn to his guest with friendliness, even
with contrition. “ It is uncommonly kind of you — I must ask my-
self if I really — that is, if there is anything — ”

“ Sine pecuma , of course,” quoted Herr Settembrini, as he rose.
“ I can’t let myself be outdone! ” They both laughed. The outer
door opened, next moment the inner one as well. It was Joachim,
returned from “ society.” When he saw the Italian he flushed, as
Hans Castorp had done; the deep bronze of his face deepened by
another shade.

“ Oh, you have company,” he said. “ How nice for you! I was
detained, they made me make one of a table of bridge. They call
it bridge,” he said, shaking his head, “ as they do outside, but it
was really something else entirely. I won five marks — ”

“ Only so it doesn’t become a vice with you,” Hans Castorp
laughed. “ Ahem! Herr Settembrini has beguiled the time for me
— no, that is not the proper expression, though it may be all right
for your mock bridge. Herr Settembrini has filled the time for
me, and given it content, ^whereas when mock bridge breaks out
in our midst, a respectable man feels he has to fight his way
through. And yet to have the privilege of listening to Herr Settem-
brini, to get the benefit of his good counsel, I could almost wish to
keep my fever, and stop up here with you indefinitely. They

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would have to give me a ‘ silent sister ’ to measure with.”

“ I repeat, Engineer, you are a wag,” said the Italian. He took
leave gracefully and went. Alone with his cousin, Hans Castorp
heaved a sigh.

“ Oh, what a schoolmaster! ” he said. “ A humanistic one, of
course. He never leaves off setting you right — first by means of
anecdote, then by abstractions. And the things one gets to talk
about with him, things you would never have thought you could
talk about, or even understand! And if I had met him down be-
low,” he added, “ I never should have understood.”

At this hour Joachim would remain with him for a while, sacri-
ficing a half or three-quarters of an hour of the evening cure.
Sometimes they played chess on Hans Castorp’s magic table; Joa-
chim had brought a set of chess-men from below. Then he would
take his wrappings and go into the balcony, thermometer in
mouth, and Hans Castorp too took his temperature for the last
time, while soft music, near or far, stole up from the dark valley.
The cure ended at ten. He heard Joachim, he heard the pair from
the “ bad ” Russian table; he turned on his side and invited slumber.

The night was the harder half of the day, for Hans Castorp
woke often, and lay not seldom hours awake; either because his
slightly abnormal temperature kept him stimulated, or because
his horizontal manner of life detracted from the power, or the
desire, to sleep. To make up for their briefness, his hours of slum-
ber were animated by extremely lively and varied dreams, which
he could ponder on awaking. And if the hours of the day were
shortened by their frequent division into small sections, it was the
blurred monotony of the marching hours of the night which
operated with the like effect. Then as dawn came on, he found it
diverting to watch the gradual grey, the slow emergence of the
room and the objects in it, as though by the drawing of veils; to
see day kindling outside, with smouldering or with lively glow;
and it was always a surprise when the moment came round again
and the thump of the bathing-master on his door announced to
Hans Castorp that the daily programme was again in force.

He had brought no calendar with him on his holiday, and did
not always find himself sure of the date. Now and then he asked
his cousin; who, in turn, was not always quite sure either. True,
the Sundays, particularly the fortnightly one with the concert —
it was the second Hans Castorp had spent in this situation — gave
him a fixed point. So much was certain, that by little and little they
had now got well on in September, close on to the middle. Since
he went to bed, the cold and cloudy weather had given place to

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203

a succession of wonderful midsummer days. Every morning Joa-
chim appeared arrayed in white flannel trousers, to greet his
cousin, and Hans Castorp felt a pang of regret, in which both heart
and youthful muscles joined, at the loss of all this splendid weather.
He murmured that it was “ a shame,” but added to console himself
that even if he were up and about he would hardly know how to
take advantage of it, since it seemed it did not answer for him to
exert himself much. And the wide-open balcony door did afford
him some share of the warm shimmer outside.

But toward the end of his prescribed term of lying, the weather
veered again. It grew misty and cold overnight, the valley was hid
by gusts of wet snow, and the dry heat of the radiator filled the
room. Such was the day on which Hans Castorp reminded the
doctor, on his morning round, that the three weeks were out, and
asked leave to get up.

“ What the deuce — you don’t say! ” said Behrens. “ Time’s up,
is it? Let’s see: yes, you’re right — good Lord, how fast we grow
old! Things haven’t changed much with you, in the mean time.
Normal yesterday? Yes, up to six o’clock in the afternoon. Well,
Castorp, I won’t grudge you human society any longer. Up with
you, man, and get on with your walks — within the prescribed
limits, of course. We’ll take a picture of the inside of you — make
a note of it,” he said as he went out, jerking his great thumb over
his shoulder at Hans Castorp, and looking at the pallid assistant
with his bloodshot, watery blue eyes. Hans Castorp left the “ ca-
boose.”

In galoshes, with his collar turned up, he accompanied his cousin
once more to the bench by the watercourse and back. On the way
he raised the question of how long the Hofrat might have let him
lie had he not been reminded. And Joachim, looking worried,
opened his mouth to emit a single pessimistic syllable, spread out
his hands in an expressive gesture, and gave it up.

Sudden Enlightenment

A week passed before Hans Castorp received, through the Direc-
tress von Mylendonk, the summons to present himself in the x-ray
laboratory. He had not liked to press matters. The Berghof was a
busy place, doctors and assistants had their hands full. New guests
had recently come in: two Russian students with shocks of hair
and black blouses closed to the throat, showing not a vestige of
linen; a Dutch married couple, who were given places at Settem-
brini’s table; and a hunch-backed Mexican, who frightened his table

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by fearful attacks of asthma, when he would clutch his neigh-
bour, whether man or woman, in an iron grip like a vice, and draw
him, as it were, struggling and crying for help, into the circle of
his own extremity. The dining-room was nearly full, though the
winter season did not actually begin until October. And Hans Ca-
storp’s case was scarcely of such severity as to give him any special
claim to attention. Frau Stohr, for all her stupidity and ill breed-
ing, was unquestionably worse off than he — not to mention Dr.
Blumenkohl. One must have lacked all discrimination not to have
behaved retiringly, in Hans Castorp’s place — particularly since
discrimination was in the atmosphere of the house. The mild cases
were of no great account, that he had often heard. They were
slightingly spoken of, looked at askance, not only by the more
serious and the very serious cases, but even by each other. Log-
ically, of course, each mild case was thus driven to think slight-
ingly of itself; yet preserved its individual self-respect by merging
it with the general, as was natural and human.

“ Oh,” they would say, of this or that patient, “ there’s not
much amiss with him. He hardly even ought to be up here, he has
no cavities at all.” Such was the spirit — it was aristocratic in its
own special sense, and Hans Castorp deferred to it, out of an
inborn respect for law and order of every sort. It was natural to
him to conform to the proverb which bids us, when in Rome, do
as the Romans do. And indeed travellers show small breeding
when they jeer at the customs and standards of their hosts, for of
characteristics that do honour to their possessors there are all
sorts and kinds. Even toward Joachim Hans Castorp felt a certain
deference — not so much because he was the older inhabitant, his
guide and cicerone in these new surroundings, as because he was
unquestionably the more serious case of the two. Such being the
attitude, it was easy to understand that each patient inclined to
make the most he could of his individual case, even exaggerating
its seriousness, so as to belong to the aristocracy, or come as close
to it as possible. So Hans Castorp, when asked at table, might add
a couple of tenths to his temperature, and could never help feeling
flattered when they shook their fingers at him and called him an
artful dodger. But even when he laid it on a little, he still remained
a member of the lower orders, in whom an attitude of unassum-
ing diffidence was only right and proper.

He took up the life of his first three weeks, that familiar, regu-
lar, well-regulated life with Joachim, and it went as pat as though
he had never left it off. The interruption, indeed, had been insig-
nificant, as he saw when he resumed his seat at table. Joachim,

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

205

who laid deliberate stress on such occasions, had decorated his
place with a few flowers; but there was no great ceremony about
the greetings of the other guests, these were almost what they
would have been after a separation of three hours instead of three
weeks. This was not due to indifference toward his simple and
sympathetic personality, nor to preoccupation with their own ab-
sorbing physical state; but merely because they had actually not
been conscious of the interval. And Hans Castorp could readily
follow them in this; since sitting there in his place at the end of the
table, between the schoolmistress and Miss Robinson, it was as
though he had sat here no longer ago than yesterday at the
furthest.

If, even at his own table, the end of his retirement caused no
stir, how should it have been remarked in the rest of the dining-
room? And literally no soul had taken notice of it save Settem-
brini, who strolled over at the end of the meal to exchange a lively
greeting. Hans Castorp, indeed, would have made a mental reser-
vation, in which he may or may not have been justified: he told
himself that Clavdia Chauchat had noticed his return, that she had
no sooner made her tardy entrance, and let the glass door slam
behind her, than she rested her narrow gaze upon him — which he
had met with his own — and that even after she sat down, she had
turned and looked toward him, smiling over her shoulder, as she
had three weeks before, on the day of his examination. The move-
ment had been so open, so regardless — regardless of both himself
and the other guests — that he did not know whether to be in
ecstasies over it or to take it as a mark of contempt and feel angry.
At all events, his heart had contracted beneath this glance, which
so markedly and intoxicatingly gave the lie to the lack of social
relations subsisting between him and the fair patient. It had con-
tracted almost painfully at the moment when the glass door
slammed, for to that moment he had looked forward with his
breath coming thick and fast.

It must be said that Hans Castorp’s sentiments toward the pa-
tient of the “ good ” Russian table had made distinct progress
during his retirement. The sympathy he entertained in his mind
and his simple heart for this medium-sized person with the glid-
ing gait and the “ Kirghiz ” eyes, as good as amounted to being
“ in love ” — we shall let the word stand, although in strictness
it is a conception of “ down below,” a word of the plains, capa-
ble of giving rise to a misconception: namely, that the tender
ditty beginning “ One word from thy sweet lips ” w r as to some
extent applicable to his state. Her picture had hovered before

20 6

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

him in those early hours when he had lain awake and watched
the dawn unveil his chamber; or at evening when the twilight
thickened. It had been vividly present the night Settembrini had
suddenly entered his room and turned on the light; was the rea-
son why he had coloured under the humanistic eye. In each hour
of his diminished day he had thought of her: her mouth, her
cheek-bones, her eyes, whose colour, shape, and position bit into
his very soul; her drooping back, the posture of her head, her
cervical vertebra above the rounding of her blouse, her arms
enhanced by their thin gauze covering. Possessed of these
thoughts, his hours had sped on soundless feet; if we have con-
cealed the fact, we did so out of sympathy for the turmoil of his
conscience, which mingled with the terrifying joy his visions im-
parted. Yes, he felt both terror and dread; he felt a vague and
boundless, utterly mad and extravagant anticipation, a nameless
anguish of joy which at times so oppressed the young man’s
heart, his actual and corporeal heart, that he would lay one hand
in the neighbourhood of that organ, while he carried the other
to his brow and held it like a shield before his eyes, whispering:
“ Oh, my God! ”

For behind that brow were thoughts — or half-thoughts —
which imparted to the visions their perilous sweetness. Thoughts
that had to do with Madame Chauchat’s recklessness and aban-
don, her ailing state, the heightening and accentuation of her
physical parts by disease, the corporealization, so to speak, of
all her being as an effect of disease — an effect in which he,
Hans Castorp, by the physician’s verdict, was now to share. He
comprehended the grounds of her audacity, her total disregard
in smile and glance of the fact that no social relation existed
between them, that they did not even know each other; it was
as though they belonged to no social system, as though it were
not even necessary that they should speak to each other! Pre-
cisely this it was that frightened Hans Castorp; for frightened
he was, in the same sense as when, in the consulting-room, he
had looked from Joachim’s nude body with panic-stricken search-
ing up to his eyes — only that then the grounds of his fear had
been pity and concern, whereas here something quite different
was in play.

But now the Berghof life, that wonderfully favoured and well-
regulated existence, was once more in full swing on its narrow
stage. Hans Castorp, whilst awaiting his x-ray examination, con-
tinued to enjoy its measured course, together with good Cousin
Joachim, and to do, hour for hour, precisely as he did. No ques-

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

207

tion but his cousin’s society was beneficial to our young man.
For though Joachim’s were but a companionship in suffering, yet
he suffered, as it were, conformably with military etiquette; eveq,
though unconsciously, to the point of finding satisfaction in the
service of the cure, of substituting it for the service down below
and making of it an interim profession. Hans Castorp was not so
dull as not to perceive all this, yet at the same time he was aware
of its corrective and restraining influence upon his more civilian
temper. It may have been this companionship, its example and
the control it exercised, which held him back from overt steps and
rash undertakings. For he saw all that Joachim had to endure from
the daily assaults of an orange-scented atmosphere, commingled
of such elements as round brown eyes, a little ruby, a great deal
of unwarranted laughter, and a bosom fair to outward eyes. The
honour and good sense which made Joachim flee these entice-
ments gripped Hans Castorp, kept him under control, and pre-
vented him from “ borrowing a lead-pencil ” so to speak — from
the narrow-eyed one, a thing which he otherwise, from what we
know of him, might well have been ready to do.

Joachim never spoke of the laughter-loving Marusja, and thus
Hans Castorp could not mention Clavdia Chauchat. He made
up for this by his stolen commerce with the schoolmistress at
table, when he would sit supporting his chin after the manner of
old Hans Lorenz, and tax the spinster with her weakness for the
charming invalid, until her face positively flamed. He pressed her
to find out new and interesting facts about Madame Chauchat’s
personal affairs, her origin, her husband, her age, the particulars
of her illness. He wanted to know if she had children. Oh, no,
she had none; what should a woman like her do with children?
Probably she was strictly forbidden to have any, and if she did,
what kind of children would they be? Hans Castorp was forced
to acquiesce. And now it was probably late in the day, he threw
out, with prodigious objectivity. Madame Chauchat’s profile, at
times, seemed to him already a little sharp. She must be over thirty.
Fraulein Engelhart rejected the idea with scorn. Thirty? At worst
not more than twenty-eight. She forbade her neighbour to use
such words about Clavdia’s profile. It was the softest, sweetest,
most youthful profile in the world, and at the same time inter-
esting — of course it was not the profile of any ordinary healthy
bread-and-butter miss. To punish him, she went on to say that she
knew Frau Chauchat entertained a male visitor, a certain fellow-
countryman who lived down in the Platz. She received him after-
noons in her chamber.

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It was a good shot. Hans Castorp’s face changed in spite of
himself; he tried to react, saying: ‘Well, well! You don’t say
so! ” but the words sounded strained. He was incapable of treat-
ing lightly the existence of this fellow-countryman of Frau Chau-
chat, much as he wished to appear to do so, and came back to
it again and again, his lips twitching. A young man? Young and
good-looking, according to all accounts, the schoolmistress an-
swered; she could not say from her own observation. Was he
ill? Only a light case, at most. “ Let us hope,” Hans Castorp re-
marked with scorn, “ that he displays more linen than the other
two, at the ‘ bad ’ Russian table.” Fraulein Engelhart, on punish-
ment intent, said she could vouch for that. He gave in, and ad-
mitted that .it was a matter for concern. He earnestly charged her
to find out all she could about this young man who came and
went between the Platz and Frau Chauchat’s room. A few days
later she brought him, not information about the young Russian,
but a fresh and startling piece of news. She knew that Clavdia
Chauchat was having her portrait painted, and asked Hans Ca-
storp if he knew it too. If not, he might be assured she had it on
the best authority. She had been sitting for some time, to a per-
son here in the house, and the person was — the Hof rat! Yes, Herr
Hofrat Behrens, no less, and he received her for the purpose al-
most daily in his private dwelling.

This intelligence affected Hans Castorp even more than the
other. He made several forced jokes about it. Why, certainly, the
Hofrat was known to occupy himself with oil-painting. Why
not? It wasn’t a crime, anybody was free to paint. And the sittings
took place in the widower’s own house — he hoped, at least, that
Fraulein von Mylendonk was present! The schoolmistress ob-
jected that the Directress was probably too busy. No busier than
the doctor ought to be, Hans Castorp severely rejoined. The re-
mark sounded final; but he was far from letting the subject drop.
He exhausted himself in questions: about the picture, what size
it was, and whether it was a head or a knee-length; about the
hours of the sitting — but Fraulein Engelhart could not gratify
him with these particulars, and had to put him off until she could
make further inquiry.

Hans Castorp measured 99.7 0 as a result of this communication.
The visits Frau Chauchat received upset him far less than these
she made. Her personal and private life — quite aside from what
went on in it — had begun to be a source of anguish and unrest;
how much keener, then, were his feelings when he heard such
questionable things about the way she spent her time! Speaking

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

209

generally, it was altogether possible that her relations with the
Russian visitor had a disinterested and harmless character. But
Hans Castorp had been for some, time now inclined to reject
harmless and disinterested explanations as being in the nature of
“ twaddle nor could he regard in any other light this oil-
painting, considered as a bond of interest between a widower
with a robust vocabulary and a narrow-eyed, soft-stepping young
female. The taste displayed by the Hofrat in his choice of a
model was too like Hans Castorp’s own for him to put great
faith in the disinterested character of the affair, and the thought
of the Hofrat’s purple cheeks and bloodshot, goggling eyes only
strengthened his scepticism.

An observation which he made in these days, of his own ac-
cord and quite by chance, had a different effect upon him,
though here again what he saw confirmed his own taste. There
sat, at the same table with Frau Salomon and the greedy schoolboy
with the glasses, at the cousins’ left, near the side door, a patient
who was, so Hans Castorp had heard, a native of Mannheim. He
was some thirty years old; his hair was thin, his teeth poor, and
he had a self-depreciating manner of speech. He it was who played
the piano evenings, usually the wedding march from Midsimrmer
Night's Dream . He was said to be very religious — as “ those up
here ” naturally often were. Every Sunday he went to service
down in the Platz, and in the rest-cure he read devotional books
with a chalice or palm branch on the front cover. This man’s
eyes, so Hans Castorp one day observed, travelled the same road
as his own: they hung upon Madame Chauchat’s lissom person
with timid, doglike devotion. Once Hans Castorp had remarked
this, he could not forbear corroborating it again and again. He
saw him stand, of an evening, in the card-room, among the other
guests, quite lost in gazing at the lovely, contaminate creature on
the sofa in the small salon, in talk with the whimsical, fuzzy-haired
Tamara, Dr. Blumenkohl, and the hollow-chested, stooping young
men who were her table-mates. He saw him turn away, then twist
his head, with a piteous expression of the upper lip, and roll his
eyes back over his shoulder in her direction. He saw him colour
and not look up, but then gaze avidly as with a crash the glass
door fell to, and Frau Chauchat slipped to her place. And more
than once he saw how the poor soul would place himself, after
the meal, between the “good” Russian table and the exit, in
order that she might pass close by him; she gave him neither
glance nor thought, while he devoured her at close range with
eyes full of sadness to their very depths.

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This discovery of his affected young Hans Castorp no little,
though the plaintive, devouring gaze of the Mannheimer did not
trouble his rest like the thought of Clavdia Chauchat’s private rela-
tions with Hofrat Behrens, a man so much his superior in age,
person, and position. Clavdia took no interest in the Mannheimer
— had she done so, it would not have escaped Hans Castorp’s per-
ception; in this case it was not the dart of jealousy he felt pierce
his soul. But he did have all the sensations which the drunkenness
of passion knows, when it sees its own case duplicated in the outer
world, and which form a most fantastic mixture of disgust and
fellow-feeling. To explore and lay open all the windings of his
emotions would keep us far too long; suffice it to say that his ob-
servation of the Mannheimer gave our poor young friend enough
to think on and to suffer.

In this wise passed the week before his x-ray examination. He
had not known it was so long. But one morning at early breakfast
he received the order through the Directress (she had a fresh
stye, so this harmless though disfiguring ailment was clearly con-
stitutional) to present himself in the laboratory that afternoon;
and behold, when he came to think of it, a week had passed. He
and his cousin were to go together, a half-hour before tea; the oc-
casion would serve for Joachim to have another x-ray taken, as
the old one was by now out of date.

They shortened the main rest period by thirty minutes and,
promptly as the clock struck half past three, descended the stairs
to the so-called basement, and sat down in the small antechamber
between the consulting-room and the laboratory. Joachim was
quite cool, this being for him no new experience, Hans Castorp
rather feverishly expectant, as no one, up to the present, had ever
had a view into his organic interior. They were not alone. Several
other patients were already sitting when they entered, with
tattered illustrated magazines on their laps, and they all waited
together: a young Swede, of heroic proportions, who sat at Set-
tembrini’s table; of whom one heard that, when he entered, the
previous April, he had been so ill they had almost refused to take
him, but he had put on nearly six stone, and was about to be
discharged cured. There was also a mother from the “ bad ” Rus-
sian table, herself a lamentable case, with her long-nosed, ugly
boy, named Sascha, whose case was more lamentable still. These
three had been waiting longer than the cousins and would there-
fore go in before them — evidently there had been some sort of
hitch in the laboratory, and a cold tea was on the cards.

They were busy in there. The voice of the Hofrat could be

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

2 I I

heard, giving directions. It was somewhat past the half-hour when
the door was opened by the technical assistant to admit the
Swedish giant and fortune’s minion. His predecessor had evidently
gone out by another door. But now matters moved more rapidly.
After no more than ten minutes they heard the Scandinavian
stride off down the corridor, a walking testimonial to the estab-
lishment and the health resort; and the Russian mother was ad-
mitted with her Sascha. Both times, as the door opened, Hans
Castorp observed that it was half dark in the x-ray room; an arti-
ficial twilight prevailed there, as in Dr. Krokowski’s analytic
cabinet. The windows were shrouded, daylight shut out, and two
electric lights were burning. But as Sascha and his mother went
in, and Hans Castorp gazed after them, the corridor door opened,
and the next patient entered the waiting-room — she was, of
course, too early, on account of the delay in the laboratory. It was
Madame Chauchat.

It was Clavdia Chauchat who appeared thus suddenly in the
little waiting-room. Hans Castorp recognized her, staring-eyed,
and distinctly felt the blood leave his cheeks. His jaw relaxed, his
mouth was on the point of falling open. Her entrance had taken
place so casually, so unforeseen, she had not been there, and then,
all at once, there she was, and sharing these narrow quarters with
the cousins. Joachim flung a quick glance at Hans Castorp, after-
wards not only casting down his eyes, but taking up again the
illustrated sheet he had laid aside, and burying his Face in it. Hans
Castorp could not summon resolution to do the same. He grew
very red, after his sudden pallor, and his heart pounded.

Frau Chauchat seated herself by the laboratory door, in a little
round easy-chair with stumpy, as it were rudimentary arms. She
leaned back, crossed one leg lightly over the other, and stared
into space. She knew she was being looked at, and her Pribislav
eyes shifted their gaze nervously, almost squinting. She wore a
white sweater and blue skirt, and had a book from the lending-
library in her lap. She tapped softly with the sole of the foot that
rested on the floor.

After a minute and a half she changed her position; looked
round, stood up, with an air of not knowing what she was to do
or where to go — and began to speak. She was asking some-
thing, she addressed a question to Joachim, though he sat there
apparently deep in his magazine, while Hans Castorp was do-
ing nothing at all. She shaped the words with her lips and gave
them voice out of her white throat; it was the voice, not deep,
but with the slightest edge, and pleasantly husky, that Hans Ca-

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storp knew — had known so long ago and yet heard so lately,
saying: “ With pleasure, only you must be sure to give it me back
after the lesson.” Those words had been uttered clearly and flu-
ently; these came rather hesitatingly and brokenly, the speaker
had no native right to them, she only borrowed them, as Hans Ca-
storp had heard her do before, when he experienced the mingled
feeling of superiority and ecstasy we have described. One hand in
her sweater pocket, the other at the back of her head, Frau Chau-
chat asked: “ May I ask for what time you had an appointment? ”

And Joachim, with a quick look at his cousin, answered, draw-
ing his heels together as he sat: “ For half past three.”

She spoke again: “ Mine was for a quarter to four. What is it
then — it is nearly four. Some people just entered, did they not? ”

“ Yes, two people. They were ahead of us. There seems to be
some delay, everything is a half-hour late.”

“ It is disagreeable,” she said, nervously touching her hair.

“ Rather,” responded Joachim. “ We have been waiting nearly
half an hour already.”

Thus they conversed, and Hans Castorp listened as in a dream.
For his cousin to speak to Frau Chauchat was almost the same as
his doing it himself — and yet how altogether different! That
“ Rather ” had affronted him, it sounded odd and brusque, if not
worse, in view of the circumstances. To think that Joachim could
speak to her like that — to think that he could speak to her at all!

— and very likely he prided himself on his pert “ Rather ” — much
as Hans Castorp had played up before Joachim and Settembrini
when he was asked how long he meant to stay, and answered:
4 ‘ Three weeks.” It was to Joachim, though he had the paper in
front of his nose, that she had turned with her question; because
he was the older inhabitant of course, whom she had known longer
by sight; but perhaps for another reason as well, because they
two might meet on a conventional footing and carry on an ordi-
nary conversation in articulate words; because nothing wild and
deep, mysterious and terrifying, held sway between them. Had it
been somebody brown-eyed, with a ruby ring and orange per-
fume, who sat here waiting with them, it would have been his,
Hans Castorp’s, part to lead the conversation and say: “ Rather ”

— in the purity and detachment of his sentiments. “ Yes, madame,
certainly rather unpleasant,” he would have said; and might have
taken his handkerchief out of his breast pocket with a flourish,
and blown his nose. “ Have patience, our case is no better than
yours.” How surprised Joachim would have been at his fluency —
but without seriously wishing himself in Hans Castorp’s place.

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

2I 3

No, and Hans Castorp was not jealous of Joachim for being able
to talk to Frau Chauchat. He was satisfied that she should have ad-
dressed herself to his cousin; it showed that she recognized the
situation for what it was. — His heart pounded.

After Joachim’s cavalier treatment of Madame Chauchat — in
which Hans Castorp seemed to savour something almost like faint
hostility on his cousin’s part toward their fair fellow-patient, a
hostility at which he could not help smiling, despite the commo-
tion in his mind — “ Clavdia ” tried a turn up and down the room.
Then, finding the space too confined, she too took up an illustrated
paper, and returned to the easy-chair with the rudimentary arms.
Hans Castorp looked at her, with his chin in his collar, like his
grandfather — it was laughable to see how like the old man he
looked. Frau Chauchat had crossed one leg over the other again,
and her knee, even the whole slender line of the thigh, showed be-
neath the blue skirt. She was only of middle height — a thoroughly
proper and delightful height, in Hans Castorp’s eyes — but rela-
tively long-legged, and narrow in the hips. She sat leaning for-
ward, with her crossed forearms supported on her knee, her shoul-
ders drooping, and her back rounded, so that the neck-bone stuck
out prominently, and nearly the whole spine was marked out
under the close-fitting sweater. Her breasts, which were not high
and voluptuous like Marusja’s, but small and maidenly, were
pressed together from both sides. Hans Castorp recalled, suddenly,
that she too was sitting here waiting to be x-rayed. The Hofrat
painted her, he reproduced her outward form with oil and colours
upon the canvas. And now, in the twilighted room, he would
direct upon her the rays which would reveal to him the inside of
her body. When this idea occurred to Hans Castorp, he turned
away his head and put on a primly detached air; a sort of seemly
obscurantism presented itself to him as the only correct attitude
in the presence of such a thought.

The waiting together in the little room did not last for long.
They evidently gave rather short shrift to Sascha and his mother
in there, in their effort to make up for lost time. The technician
in his white smock once more appeared, Joachim stood up and
tossed his paper back on to the table, and Hans Castorp, not with-
out inward hesitation, followed him to the open door. He was
struggling with chivalrous scruples, also with the temptation to
put himself, after all, upon conventional terms with Frau Chau-
chat, to speak to her and offer her precedence — in French, if he
could manage. Hastily he sought to muster the words, the sentence
structure. But he did not know if such courtesies were practised

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

2I 4

up here; probably the established order was more powerful than
the rules of chivalry. Joachim must know, and as he made no
motion to defer to sex, even though Hans Castorp looked at him
imploringly, the latter followed his cousin past Frau Chauchat,
who merely glanced up from her stooping posture as they went
through the door into the laboratory.

He was too much possessed by the events of the last ten minutes,
and by what he left behind, for his mind to pass immediately with
his body over the threshold of the x-ray laboratory. He saw noth-
ing, or only vaguely, in the artificially lighted room; he still heard
Frau Chauchat’s pleasantly veiled voice, with which she had said:
“ What is it, then? . . . Some people have just gone in. . . . It is
disagreeable ” — the sound of it still shivered sweetly down his
back. He saw the shape of her knee under the cloth skirt, saw the
bone of her neck, under the short reddish-blond hairs that were
not gathered up into the braids — and again the shiver ran down
his back. Then he saw Hofrat Behrens, with his back to them,
standing before a sort of built-in recess, looking at a black plate
which he held at arm’s length toward the dim light in the ceiling.
They passed him and went on into the room, followed by the as-
sistant, who made preparations to dispatch their affair. It smelled
very odd in here, the air was filled with a sort of stale ozone. The
built-in structure, projecting between the two black-hung win-
dows, divided the room into two unequal parts. Hans Castorp
could distinguish physical apparatus. Lenses, switch-boards, tower-
ing measuring-instruments, a box like a camera on a rolling stand,
glass diapositives in rows set in the walls. Hard to say whether this
was a photographic studio, a dark-room, or an inventor’s work-
shop and technological witches’ kitchen.

Joachim had begun, without more ado, to lay bare the upper
half of his body. The helper, a square-built, rosy-cheeked young
native in a white smock, motioned Hans Castorp to do the same.
It went fast, and he was next in turn. As Hans Castorp took off
his waistcoat, Behrens came out of the smaller recess where he
had been standing into the larger one.

“ Hallo,” said he. “ Here are our Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.
If you feel any inclination to blub, kindly suppress it. Just wait,
we shall soon see through you both. I expect, Castorp, you feel a
little nervous about exposing your inner self to our gaze? Don’t
be alarmed, we preserve all the amenities. Look here, have you
seen my picture-gallery? ” He led Hans Castorp by the arm be-
fore the rows of dark plates on the wall, and turned on a Jight
behind them. Hans Castorp saw various members: hands, feet,

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

2I 5

knee-pans, thigh- and leg-bones, arms, and pelvises. But the
rounded living form of these portions of the human body was
vague and shadowy, like a pale and misty envelope, within which*
stood out the clear, sharp nucleus — the skeleton.

“ Very interesting,” said Hans Castorp.

“ Interesting sure enough,” responded the Hofrat. “ Useful
object-lesson for the young. X-ray anatomy, you know, triumph
of the age. There is a female arm, you can tell by its delicacy.
That’s what they put around you when they make love, you
know.” He laughed, and his upper lip with the close-cropped
moustache went up still more on one side. The pictures faded.
Hans Castorp turned his attention to the preparations for
Joachim’s x-ray.

It was done in front of that structure on the other side of which
Hofrat Behrens had been standing when they entered. Joachim
had taken his place on a sort of shoe-maker’s bench, in front of a
board, which he embraced w r ith his arms and pressed his breast
against it, while the assistant improved the position, massaging his
back with kneading motions, and putting his arms further for-
ward. Then he went behind the camera, and stood just as a pho-
tographer would, legs apart and stooped over, to look inside. He
expressed his satisfaction and, going back to Joachim, warned him
to draw in his breath and hold it until all was over. Joachim’s
rounded back expanded and so remained; the assistant, at the
switch-board, pulled the handle. Now, for the space of two sec-
onds, fearful powers were in play — streams or thousands, of a
hundred thousand of volts, Hans Castorp seemed to recall — which
w^ere necessary to pierce through solid matter. They could hardly
be confined to their office, they tried to escape through other
outlets: there were explosions like pistol-shots, blue sparks on the
measuring apparatus; long lightnings crackled along the walls.
Somewhere in the room appeared a red light, like a threatening
eye, and a phial in Joachim’s rear filled with green. Then every-
thing grew quiet, the phenomena disappeared, and Joachim let out
his breath with a sigh. It was over.

“ Next delinquent,” said the Hofrat, and nudged Hans Castorp
with his elbow. “ Don’t pretend you’re too tired. You will get a
free copy, Castorp; then you can project the secrets of your bosom
on the wall for your children and grandchildren to see! ”

Joachim had stepped down; the technician changed the plate.
Hofrat Behrens personally instructed the novice how to sit and
hold himself.

“ Put your arms about it,” he said. “ Embrace the board — pre-

21 6

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

tend it’s something else, if you like. Press your breast against it, as
though it filled you with rapture. Like that. Draw a deep breath.
Hold it! ” he commanded. “ Now, please! ” Hans Castorp waited,
blinking, his lungs distended. Behind him the storm broke loose:
it crackled, lightened, detonated — and grew still. The lens had
looked into his inside.

He got down, dazed and bewildered, notwithstanding he had
not been physically sensible of the penetration in the slightest
degree.

“ Good lad,” said the Hofrat. “ Now we shall see.” The ex-
perienced Joachim had already moved over toward the entrance
door and taken position at a stand; at his back was the lofty
structure of the apparatus, with a bulb half full of water, and
distillation tubes; in front of him, breast-high, hung a framed
screen on pulleys. On his left, between switch-board and in-
strumentarium, was a red globe. The Hofrat, bestriding a stool
in front of the screen, lighted the light. The ceiling light went
out, and only the red glow illumined the scene. Then the master
turned this too off, with a quick motion, and thick darkness en-
veloped the laboratory.

44 We must first accustom the eyes,” the Hofrat was heard to
say, in the darkness. 44 We must get big pupils, like a cat’s, to see
what we want to see. You understand, our everyday eyesight
would not be good enough for our purposes. We have to banish
the bright daylight and its pretty pictures out of our minds.”

44 Naturally,” said Hans Castorp. He stood at the Hofrat’s
shoulder, and closed his eyes, since the darkness was so profound
that it did not matter whether he had them open or shut. 44 First
we must wash our eyes with darkness to see what we want to see.
That is plain. I find it quite right and proper, as a matter of fact,
that we should collect ourselves a little, beforehand — in silent
prayer, as it were. I am standing here with my eyes shut, and have
quite a pleasant sleepy feeling. But what is it I smell? ”

44 Oxygen,” said the Hofrat. 44 What you notice in the air is
oxygen. Atmospheric product of our little private thunderstorm,
you know. Eyes open! ” he commanded. 44 The magicking is
about to begin.” Hans Castorp hastened to obey.

They heard a switch go on. A motor started up, and sang furi-
ously higher and higher, until another switch controlled and
steadied it. The floor shook with an even vibration. The little red
light, at right angles to the ceiling, looked threateningly across
at them. Somewhere lightening flashed. And with a milky gleam
a window of light emerged from the darkness: it was the square

SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT

217

hanging screen, before which Hofrat Behrens bestrode his stool,
his legs sprawled apart with his fists supported on them, his blunt
nose close to the pane, which gave him a view of a man’s interior
organism.

“ Do you see it, young man? ” he asked. Hans Castorp leaned
over his shoulder, but then raised his head again to look toward
the spot where Joachim’s eyes were presumably gazing in the
darkness, with the gentle, sad expression they had worn during
the other examination. “ May I? ” he asked.

“ Of course,” Joachim replied magnanimously, out of the dark.
And to the pulsation of the floor, and the snapping and cracking
of the forces at play, Hans Castorp peered through the lighted
window, peered into Joachim Ziemssen’s empty skeleton. The
breastbone and spine fell together in a single dark column. The
frontal structure of the ribs was cut across by the paler structure
of the back. Above, the collar-bones branched off on both sides,
and the framework of the shoulder, with the joint and the be-
ginning of Joachim’s arm, showed sharp and bare through the soft
envelope of flesh. The thoracic cavity was light, but blood-vessels
were to be seen, some dark spots, a blackish shadow.

“ Clear picture,” said the Hofrat, “ quite a decent leanness —
that’s the military youth. I’ve had paunches here — you couldn’t
see through them, hardly recognize a thing. The rays are yet to
be discovered that will go through such layers of fat. This is
nice clean work. Do you see the diaphragm? ” he asked, and
indicated with his finger the dark arch in the window, that rose
and fell. “ Do you see the bulges here on the left side, the little
protuberances? That was the inflammation of the pleura he had
when he was fifteen years old. Breathe deep,” he commanded.
“ Deeper! Deep, I tell you! ” And Joachim’s diaphragm rose
quivering, as high as it could; the upper parts of the lungs could
be seen to clear up, but the Hofrat was not satisfied. “ Not good
enough,” he said. “ Can you see the hilus glands? Can you see
the adhesions? Look at the cavities here, that is where the toxins
come from that fuddle him.” But Hans Castorp’s attention was
taken up by something like a bag, a strange, animal shape, darkly
visible behind the middle column, or more on the right side of
it — the spectator’s right. It expanded and contracted regularly,
a little after the fashion of a swimming jelly-fish.

“ Look at his heart,” and the Hofrat lifted his huge hand again
from his thigh and pointed with his forefinger at the pulsating
shadow. Good God, it was the heart, it was Joachim’s honour-
loving heart, that Hans Castorp saw!

2l8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

“ I am looking at your heart,” he said in a suppressed voice.

“ Go ahead,” answered Joachim again; probably he smiled
politely up there in the darkness. But the Hofrat told him to be
quiet and not betray any sensibility. Behrens studied the spots
and the lines, the black festoon in the intercostal space; while
Hans Castorp gazed without wearying at Joachim’s graveyard
shape and bony tenement, this lean memento mori , this scaffold-
ing for mortal flesh to hang on. “ Yes, yes! I see, I see! ” he said,
several times over. “ My God, I see! ” He had heard of a woman,
a long-dead member of the Tienappel connexion, who had been
endowed or afflicted with a heavy gift, which she bore in all
humility: namely, that the skeletons of persons about to die would
appear before her. Thus now Hans Castorp was privileged to
behold the good Joachim — but with the aid and under the aus-
pices of physical science; and by his cousin’s express permission,
so that it was quite legitimate and without gruesome significance.
Yet a certain sympathy came over him with the melancholy des-
tiny of his clairvoyant relative. He was strongly moved by what
he saw — or more precisely, by the fact that he saw it — and felt
stirrings of uneasy doubt, as to whether it was really permissible
and innocent to stand here in the quaking, crackling darkness
and gaze like this; his itch to commit the indiscretion conflicted
in his bosom with religious emotion and feelings of concern.

But a few minutes later he himself stood in the pillory, in the
midst of the electrical storm, while Joachim, his body closed up
again, put on his clothes. Again the Hofrat peered through the
milky glass, this time into Hans Castorp’s own inside; and from
his half-utterances, his broken phrases and bursts of scolding,
the young man gathered that what he saw corresponded to his
expectations. He was so kind as to permit the patient, at his
request, to look at his own hand through the screen. And Hans
Castorp saw, precisely what he must have expected, but what it
is hardly permitted man to see, and what he had never thought
it would be vouchsafed him to see: he looked into his own grave.
The process of decay was forestalled by the powers of the light-
ray, the flesh in which he walked disintegrated, annihilated, dis-
solved in vacant mist, and there within it was the finely turned
skeleton of his own hand, the seal ring he had inherited from his
grandfather hanging loose and black on the joint of his ring-
finger — a hard, material object, with which man adorns the body
that is fated to melt away beneath it, when it passes on to another
flesh that can wear it for yet a little while. With the eyes of his
Tienappel ancestress, penetrating, prophetic eyes, he gazed at

FREEDOM 219

this familiar part of his own body, and for the first time in his
life he understood that he would die. At the thought there came
over his face the expression it usually wore when he listened to
music: a little dull, sleepy, and pious, his mouth half open, his
head inclined toward the shoulder.

The Hofrat said: “ Spooky, what? Yes, there’s something dis-
tinctly spooky about it.”

He closed off the current. The floor ceased to vibrate, the
lightnings to play, the magic window was quenched in darkness.
The ceiling light came on. As Hans Castorp flung on his clothes,
the Hofrat gave the two young men the results of his observa-
tions, in non-technical language, out of regard for their lay
minds. It seemed that in Hans Castorp’s case, the test of the eye
confirmed that of the ear in a way to add lustre to science. The
Hofrat had seen the old as well as the fresh spots, and “ strands ”
ran from the bronchial tubes rather far into the organ itself —
“ strands ” with “ nodules.” Hans Castorp would be able to see
for himself later, in the diapositive which they would give him
for his very own. The word of command was calm, patience,
manly self-discipline; measure, eat, lie down, wait, and drink tea.
They left; Hans Castorp, going out behind Joachim, looked over
his shoulder. Ushered in by the technician, Frau Chauchat was
entering the laboratory.

Freedom

How did it seem now to our young Hans Castorp? Was it as
though the seven weeks which, demonstrably and without the
shadow of a doubt, he had spent with them up here, were only
seven days? Or, on the contrary, did they seem much longer than
had actually been the case? He asked himself, inwardly, and also
by way of asking Joachim; but he could not decide. Both were
probably true: when he looked back, the time seemed both un-
naturally long and unnaturally short, or rather it seemed anything
but what it actually was — in saying which we assume that time
is a natural phenomenon, and that it is admissible to associate with
it the conception of actuality.

At all events October was before the door, it might enter any
day. The calculation was an easy one for Hans Castorp to make,
and he gathered the same result from the conversation of his fel-
low-patients. “ Do you know that in five days it will be the first
again? ” he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two of her familiars,

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the student Rasmussen and the thick-lipped young man, whose
name was Ganser. It was after luncheon, and the guests lingered
chatting in the dining-room, though the air was heavy with the
odours of the meal just served, instead of going into the after-
noon rest-cure. “ The first of October, I saw it on the calendar in
the office. That makes the second of its kind I’ve spent in this
pleasure resort. Well, summer is over, in so far as there has been
a summer, that is — it has really been a sell, like life in general.”
She shook her head, fetched a sigh from her one lung, and rolled
up to the ceiling her dull and stolid eyes. “ Cheer up, Rasmussen,”
she said, and slapped her comrade on the drooping shoulder.
“ Make a few jokes! ”

“ I don’t know many,” he responded, letting his hands flap
finlike before his breast, “ and those I do I can’t tell, I’m so tired
all the time.”

“ ‘ Not even a dog,’ ” Ganser said through his teeth, “ ‘ would
want to live longer ’ — if he had to live like this.”

They laughed and shrugged their shoulders.

Settembrini had been standing near them, his toothpick be-
tween his lips. As they went out he said to Hans Castorp: “ Don’t
you believe them, Engineer, never believe them when they grum-
ble. They all do it, without exception, and all of them are only
too much at home up here. They lead a loose and idle life, and
imagine themselves entitled to pity, and justified of their bitter-
ness, irony, and cynicism. ‘ This pleasure resort,’ she said. Well,
isn’t it a pleasure resort, then? In my humble opinion it is, and
in a very questionable sense too. So life is a ‘sell,’ up here at
this pleasure resort! But once let them go down below and their
manner of life will be such as to leave no doubt that they mean
to come back again. Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer,
from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself alto-
gether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not
a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal
to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback
to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice,
and materialism. As the atmosphere in which we live is obviously
very favourable to such miasmic growths, I may hope, or rather,
I must fear, that you understand my meaning.”

Truly the Italian’s words were of the sort that seven weeks
ago, down in the flat-land, would have been empty sound to
Hans Castorp’s ears. But his stay up here had made his mind
receptive to them: receptive in the sense that he comprehended
them with his mind, if not with his sympathies, which would

FREEDOM

22 1

have meant even more. For although he was at bottom glad that
Settembrini, after all that had passed, continued, as he did, still
to talk to him, admonishing, instructing, seeking to establish an
influence upon his mind, yet his understanding had reached the
point where he was critical of the Italian’s words, and at times,
up to a point, withheld his assent. “ Imagine,” he said to himself,
“ he talks about irony just as he does about music, he’ll soon be
telling us that it is politically suspect — that is, from the moment
it ceases to be a 4 direct and classic device of oratory.’ But irony
that is 4 not for a moment equivocal ’ — what kind of irony would
that be, I should like to ask, if I may make so bold as to put in my
oar? It would be a piece of dried-up pedantry! ” Thus ungrateful
is immature youth! It takes all that is offered, and bites the hand
that feeds it.

But it would have seemed too risky to put his opposition into
words. He confined himself to commenting upon what Herr Set-
tembrini had said about Hermine Kleefeld, which he found un-
generous — or rather, had his reasons for wishing to find it so.

44 But the girl is ill,” he said. 44 She is seriously ill, without the
shadow of a doubt — she has every reason for pessimism. What
do you expect of her? ”

44 Disease and despair,” Settembrini said, 44 are often only forms
of depravity.”

44 And Leopardi,” thought Hans Castorp, 44 who definitely de-
spaired of science and progress? And our schoolmaster himself?
He is infected too and keeps coming back here, and Carducci
would have had small joy of him.”

Aloud he said: 44 You are good! Why, the girl may lie down
and die any day, and you call it depravity! You’ll have to make
that a little clearer. If you said that illness is sometimes a conse-
quence of depravity, that would at least be sensible.”

44 Very sensible indeed! ” Settembrini put in. 44 My word! So
if I stopped at that, you would be satisfied? ”

44 Or if you said that illness may serve as a pretext for depravity
— that would be all right, too.”

44 Grazie tanto! ”

44 But illness a form of depravity? That is to say, not origi-
nating in depravity, but itself depravity? That seems to me a
paradox.”

44 1 beg of you, Engineer, not to impute to me anything of the
sort. I despise paradoxes, I hate them. All that I said to you about
irony I would say over again about paradoxes, and more besides.
Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface

222

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all! Moreover, I note
that you are once more defending disease — ”

“ No; what you are saying interests me. It reminds me of things
Dr. Krokowski says in his Monday lectures. He too explains or-
ganic disease as a secondary phenomenon.”

“ Scarcely the pure idealist.”

“ What have you against him? ”

44 Just that.”

“You are down on analysis? ”

“ Not always — I am for it and against it, both by turns.”

“ How am I to understand that? ”

“ Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization
is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent
upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other
words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe
for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the
way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its
roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as
death, with which it may well belong — allied to the grave and its
unsavory anatomy.”

“ Well roared, lion,” Herr Castorp could not help thinking,
as he often did when Herr Settembrini delivered himself of
something pedagogic. Aloud he only said: “We’ve been having
to do with x-ray anatomy in these days, down on the lower-floor.
Behrens called it that, when he x-rayed us.”

“ Oh, so you have made that stage too? Well? ”

“ I saw the skeleton of my hand,” Hans Castorp said, and sought
to call up the feeling that had mounted in him at the sight. “ Did
you get them to show you yours? ”

“ No, I don’t take the faintest interest in my skeleton. But what
was the physician’s verdict? ”

“ He saw ‘ strands ’ — strands with nodules.”

“ The scoundrel! ”

“ I have heard you call Hofrat Behrens that before, Herr Set-
tembrini. What do you mean by it? ”

“ I assure you the epithet was deliberately chosen.”

“ No, Herr Settembrini, there I find you are unjust. I admit
the man has his faults; his manner of speech becomes disagree-
able in the long run, there is something forced about it, espe-
cially when one remembers he had the great sorrow of losing
his wife up here. But what an estimable and meritorious man he
is, after all, a benefactor to suffering humanity! I met him the
other day coming from an operation, resection of ribs, a matter

FREEDOM

223

of life and death, you know. It made a great impression on me,
to see him fresh from such exacting and splendid work, in which
he is so much the master. He was still warm from it, and had
lighted a cigar by way of reward. I envied him.”

“ That was commendable of you. Well, and your sentence? ”

“ He has not set any definite time.”

“ That is good too. And now let us betake us to our cure, Engi-
neer. Each to his own place.”

They parted at the door of number thirty-four.

“ You are going up to the roof now, Herr Settembrini? It must
be more fun to lie in company than alone. Do you talk? Are they
pleasant people? ”

“ Oh, they are nothing but Parthians and Scythians.”

“ You mean Russians? ”

“ Russians, male and female,” said Settembrini, and the comer
of his mouth spanned a little. “ Good-bye, Engineer.”

He had said that of malice aforethought, undoubtedly. Hans
Castorp walked into his own room in confusion. Was Settem-
brini aware of his state? Very likely, like the schoolmaster he
was, he had been spying on him, and seen which way his eyes
were going. Hans Castorp was angry with the Italian and also
with himself, for having by his lack of self-control invited the
thrust. He took up his writing materials to carry them with him
into the balcony — for now it was no more use; the letter home,
the third letter, must be written — and as he did so he went on
whipping up his anger, muttering to himself about this windbag
and logic chopper, who meddled with matters that were no con-
cern of his, and chirruped to the girls in the street. He felt quite
disinclined to the effort of writing, the organ-grinder had put
him off it altogether, with his innuendo. But no matter what his
feelings, he must have winter clothing, money, footwear, linen —
in brief, everything he might have brought with him had he
known he was coming, not for three short summer weeks, but for
an indefinite stay which was certain to last for a piece into the
winter — or rather, considering the notions about time current
up here, was quite likely to last all the winter. It was this he
must let them know at home, even if only as a possibility; he
must tell the whole story, and not put them, or himself, off any
longer with pretexts.

In this spirit, then, he wrote, practising the technique he had
so often seen Joachim practise; with a fountain-pen, in his deck-
chair, with his knees drawn up and the portfolio laid upon them.
He wrote upon the letter-paper of the establishment, of which

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224

he kept a supply in his table drawer, to James Tienappel, who
stood closest to him among the three uncles, and asked him to
pass the news on to the Consul. He spoke of an unfortunate
occurrence, of suspicions that had proved justified, of the medi-
cal opinion that it would be best for him to remain where he
was for a part, perhaps for all of the winter, since cases like his
often proved more obstinate than those that began more alarm-
ingly and it was clearly advisable to go after the infection ener-
getically and root it out once for all. From this point of view,
he considered, it had been a most fortunate circumstance that
he had chanced to come here, and been induced to submit to an
examination, for otherwise he might have remained for some
time in ignorance of his condition, and been apprised of it later
and more alarmingly. As for the length of time which would
probably be required for the cure, they must not be surprised to
hear the whole winter might easily slip away before his return
— in short, that he might come down hardly earlier than Joachim.
Ideas about time were different up here from those ordinarily
held about the length of stay at the baths, or at an ordinary cure.
The smallest unit of time, so to speak, was the month, and a single
month was almost no time at all.

The weather was cool, he sat in his overcoat, with a rug about
him, and his hands were cold. At times he looked up from the
paper which he was covering with these reasonable and sensi-
ble phrases, at the landscape now so familiar he scarcely saw it
any more: this extended valley with its retreating succession of
peaks at the entrance — they looked pale and glassy to-day —
with its bright and populous floor, which glistened when the sun
shone full upon it, and its forest-clad or meadowy slopes, whence
came the sound of cow-bells. He wrote with growing ease, and
wondered why he had dreaded to write. For as he wrote he felt
that nothing could be clearer than his presentation of the matter,
and that there was no doubt it would meet with perfect compre-
hension at home. A young man of his class and circumstances
acted for himself when it seemed advisable; he took advantage
of the facilities which existed expressly for him and his like.
So it was fitting. If he had taken the journey home, they would
have made him come back again on hearing his report. He asked
them to send what things he needed. And at the end he asked to
have money sent: a monthly cheque of eight hundred marks
would cover everything.

He signed his name. It was done. This last letter was exhaus-
tive, it covered the case; not according to the time-conceptions

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS 2 2 5

of down below, but according to those obtaining up here; it as-
serted Hans Castorp’s freedom . This was his own word, albeit
not expressed; he would hardly have shaped the syllables even
in his mind; but he felt the full sense of its meaning, as he had
come to know it during his stay up here — a sense which had
little to do with the Settembrinian significance — and his breast
was shaken with that excited alarm, which swept over him in a
wave, as it had done before.

His head was hot with the blood that had gone to it as he
wrote, his cheeks burned. He took the thermometer from his
lamp-stand and “ measured,” as though to make use of an op-
portunity. Mercurius had gone up to ioo°.

“ Look at that,” he thought; and added a postscript to his letter:
“ It did strain me rather, after all, to write this. My temperature is
ioo°. I see that I must be very quiet, for the present. You must
excuse me if I don’t write often.” Then he lay back, and held up
his hand toward the light, palm outward, as he had held it be-
hind the light-screen. But the light of day did not encroach upon
its living outline; rather it looked more substantial and opaque for
its background of bright air, only its outer edges were rosily il-
luminated. This was his living hand, that he was used to see, to
use, to wash — not that uncanny scaffolding which he had beheld
through the screen. The analytic grave then opened was closed
again.

Whims of Mercurius

October began as months do: their entrance is, in itself, an un-
ostentatious and soundless affair, without outward signs and
tokens; they, as it were, steal in softly and, unless you are keeping
close watch, escape your notice altogether. Time has no divisions
to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of
trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even
when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells
and fire off pistols.

To Hans Castorp the first day of October and the last day of Sep-
tember were as like as two peas; both were equally cold and un-
friendly, and those that followed were the same. In the rest-cure
one used one’s overcoat and both camePs-hair rugs, not only in
the evening, but in the day-time. The fingers that held the book
were stiff and clammy, however the cheeks burned; and Joachim
was strongly tempted to resort to his fur sack, but resisted, in
order not to pamper himself thus early in the season.

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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Some days later, however — that is, between the beginning and
middle of the month — there came another change: a latter sum-
mer set in, with amazing splendour. The praises of this mountain
October, which Hans Castorp had heard, were not idly sung. For
some two and a half weeks all the glories of heaven reigned over
valley and mountain, one day outvied another in blueness and
clarity, and the sun burned down with such immediate power that
everyone felt impelled to don the lightest of wear, muslin frocks
and linen trousers already put aside. The adjustable canvas parasol
without a handle was called into requisition, and fitted by its cun-
ning device of holes and pegs on to the arm of the reclining-chair;
and even its shelter was felt to be insufficient against the midday
glare.

“I’m glad I’m here still, for this,” said Hans Castorp to his
cousin. “ It has been so wretched at times, and now it is as though
we had the winter behind us, and only good weather to look for-
ward to.” He was quite right. There were indeed not many signs
that pointed to the true state of the calendar; and even those there
were did not strike the eye. Aside from the few oak-trees that had
been set out down in the Platz, where they had just managed to
survive, and long before now had despondently shed their leaves,
the whole region held no deciduous trees to give the landscape an
autumnal cast; only the hybrid Alpine alder, which renews its
soft needles as though they were leaves, showed a wintry bald-
ness. The other trees of the region, whether towering or stunted,
were evergreen pines and firs, invincible against the assaults of this
irregular winter, which might scatter its snow-storms through all
the months of the year: only the many-shaded, rust-red tone that
lay over the forest gave notice, despite the glowing sunshine, of a
declining year. Yet, looking closer, there were the wild flowers,
speaking, though softly, yet to the same effect; the meadow
orchis, the bushy aquilegia were no longer in bloom, only the
gentian and the lowly autumn crocus, bearing witness to the inner
sharpness of the superficially heated air, that could pierce one to
the bone as one sat, like a chill in fever, though one glowed out-
wardly from the ardour of the sun.

Hans Castorp did not keep inward count of the time, as does the
man who husbands it, notes its passing, divides and tells and labels
its units. He had not heeded the silent entry of the tenth month,
but he was arrested by its appeal to the senses, this glowing heat
that concealed the frost within and beneath it. It was a sensation
which, to anything like this degree, he had never before experi-
enced, and it aroused him to the culinary comparison which he

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS

22 7

made to Joachim, of an omelette en surprise , holding an ice con-
cealed within the hot froth of the beaten egg. He often made such
comments, talking headlong and volubly, as a man does in a
feverish chill. But between whiles he was silent; we shall not say
self-absorbed, for his attention was presumably directed outwards,
though upon a single point. All else, whether of the animate or
the inanimate world, swam about him in a mist — a mist of his
own making, which Hofrat Behrens and Dr. Krokowski would
doubtless have explained as the product of soluble toxins, as the
befuddled one himself did also, though without having the slight-
est power or even desire to rid himself of the state they induced.

For that is an intoxication, by which one is possessed, under the
influence of which one abhors nothing more than the thought of
sobriety. It asserts itself against impressions that would weaken its
force, it will not admit them, it wards them off. Hans Castorp was
aware, and had even spoken of the fact, that Madame Chauchat’s
profile was not her strong point, that it was no longer quite youth-
ful, was even a little sharp. And the consequence? He avoided
looking at her in profile, he literally closed his eyes when he
caught that view of her, even at a distance; it pained him. Why?
Should not reason have leaped to take advantage of the favour-
able moment to reasert itself? But what do we ask? He grew pale
with rapture when, tempted by the brilliant weather, she appeared
at second breakfast in the white lace matinee which made her look
so ravishing — appeared late, accompanied by the banging of the
door, smiling, her arms raised in a pretty posture, and presented
herself thus to the dining-room before she glided to her seat. But
he was enraptured not so much because she looked so charming,
as because her charm added strength to the sweet intoxication in
his brain, the intoxication that willed to be, that cared only to be
justified and nourished.

An authority of Ludovico Settembrini’s way of thinking might
have characterized as depravity, as a “ form of depravity,” such a
lack of good intention. Hans Castorp sometimes pondered over
the literary things the Italian had said about illness and despair —
which he had found incomprehensible, or at least pretended to
himself to find them so. He looked at Clavdia Chauchat — at the
flaccidity of her back, the posture of her head; he saw her come
habitually late to table, without reason or excuse, solely out of a
lack of order and disciplined energy. He saw the same lack when
she let slam every door through which she passed, when she
moulded bread pellets at the table, when she gnawed her fingers;
and he had a suspicion, which he did not put into words, that if

228

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she was ill — and that she was, probably incurably, since she had
been up here so often and so long — her illness was in good part,
if not entirely, a moral one: as Settembrini had said, neither the
ground nor the consequence of her “ slackness,” but precisely one
and the same thing. He recalled the contemptuous gesture of the
humanist when he spoke of the “ Parthians and Scythians ” in
whose company he was forced to take the rest-cure. It had been a
gesture not only of deliberate, but also of natural and instinctive
disdain; and that feeling was quite comprehensible to Hans Ca-
storp. Had he not once, who always sat so erect at table, loathed
and despised the banging of doors, and never, never was tempted
to gnaw his fingers, because to that end Maria had been given
him instead, had he not once taken deep offence at the unmannerly
behaviour of Frau Chauchat, and felt an unconquerable sense of
superiority when he heard the narrow-eyed one essay to speak his
mother-tongue?

The present state of his feelings, however, had put on one side
any such sentiments as these; it was now the Italian who was the
object of his irritation, because he, in his benightedness, had
spoken of Parthians and Scythians and had not meant thereby the
persons at the “ bad ” Russian table, the shock-headed, linenless
students, who sat there disputing endlessly in their outlandish
tongue, which was obviously the only one they knew, and which,
in its soft, spineless character reminded Hans Castorp of the thorax
without ribs Hofrat Behrens had described to him. True, the man-
ners and customs of such people might readily awaken feelings of
disgust in the breast of a humanist. They ate with their knives,
and unmentionably messed the front of their blouses. Settembrini
asserted that one of them, a medical student well on in his train-
ing, was so ignorant of Latin as not to know, for example, what
the word vacuum meant. As for the married couple in number
thirty-two, Hans Castorp’s own daily experience of them was
such as to render quite credible Frau Stohr’s report, that when the
bathing-master entered their room in the morning for the usual
massage, they received him lying in bed together.

All this might well be true. But after all, the distinction between
“ good ” and “ bad ” was a plain one, it did not exist for nothing.
Hans Castorp assured himself that he felt only contempt for any
propagandist of the republic and the hello stile who went about
witn his nose in the air, and calmly — with particular calm, al-
though at the same time both febrile and fuddled — lumped the
members of both tables together under the title of Parthians and
Scythians. Hans Castorp understood only too well the sense in

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229

which he used it, since he had begun to understand the connexion
between Frau Chauchat’s illness and her “ slackness.” But as he had
one day put it to Joachim: one begins by being angry and dis-
gusted, and then all at once “ something quite different enters in,”
that has “ nothing to do with moral judgment,” and it is all up
with your severity; you are simply not at home to pedagogic in-
fluences, however republican, however eloquent. But, we are im-
pelled to ask, probably again in the spirit of Ludovico Settembrini,
what sort of questionable experience is this, which palsies a man’s
judgment, robs him of all claim to it, or even makes him waive
that claim, and experience in so doing the abandonment of ecstasy?
We do not ask its name — for that everyone knows. Our question
rather refers to its moral quality; and we confess that we do not
anticipate any very self-confident reply. In Hans Castorp’s case
its nature was evident in the extent to which he not only ceased to
exercise his judgment, but even began to experiment for his own
part and upon his own mortal vesture. He tried, for instance, how
it would feel to sit at table with his back all relaxed, and discovered
that it afforded sensible relief to the pelvic muscles. Again, one
day, instead of punctiliously closing a door behind him, he let it
slam; and this too he found both fitting and agreeable. It corre-
sponded to the shoulder-shrug with which Joachim had greeted
him at the station, and which was so habitual among those up here.

In brief, our traveller was now over head and ears in love with
Clavdia Chauchat — we may still use the phrase, since we have
already obviated any possible misunderstanding on the score of it.
We have seen that the essence of his passion was something quite
other than the tender and pensive mood of that oft-quoted ditty:
rather it was a wild and vagrant variation upon the lovesick lute,
it was mingled frost and fire, like the state of a fever patient, or the
October air in these high altitudes. What he actually lacked, in
fact, was an emotional bridge between two extremes. On the one
hand his passion dwelt, with an immediacy that left the young man
pale and staring, upon Frau Chauchat’s knee, the line of her thigh,
her back, her neck-bone, her arms that pressed together her little
breasts — in a word, it dwelt upon her body, her idle, accentuated
body, exaggerated by disease and rendered twice over body. And,
on the other hand, it was something in the highest degree fleeting
and tenuous; a thought, nay, a dream, the frightful, infinitely
alluring dream of a young man whose unspoken, unconscious
questioning of the universe has received no answer save a hollow
silence. We have as much right as the next person to our private
thoughts about the story we are relating; and we would here

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230

hazard the surmise that young Hans Castorp would never have
overstepped so far the limits originally fixed for his stay if to his
simple soul there might have been vouchsafed, out of the depth
of his time, any reasonably satisfying explanation of the meaning
and purpose of man’s life.

For the rest, his lovesick state afforded him all the joy and all
the anguish proper to it the world over. The anguish is acute, it
has, like all anguish, a mortifying element; it shatters the nervous
system to an extent that takes the breath away, and can wring
tears from the eyes of a grown man. As for the joys, to do them
justice., they were manifold, and no less piercing than the anguish,
though their occasion might be trifling indeed. Almost any mo-
ment of the Berghof day might bring one forth. For example,
about to enter the dining-room, Hans Castorp would perceive the
object of his dreams behind him — an experience clear and simple
in anticipation, but inwardly ravishing to the point of tears. Their
eyes meet at close range, his own and her grey-green ones, whose
slightly oriental shape and position pierce him to the very marrow.
He is incapable of connected thought, but unconsciously steps
back to give her precedence through the door. With a half-smile,
a half-audible “ Merci she accepts his conventional courtesy and,
passing him by, enters the room. He stands there, within the aura
of her personality as it sweeps past, idiotic with happiness at the
encounter, and at the word which has been uttered by her mouth
directly for his ear. He follows her, he moves unsteadily to his
own table and, sinking into his chair, becomes aware that Clavdia,
as she too takes her place, has turned to look at him. He thinks
she wears an expression as though musing on their encounter at
the door. Oh, unbelievable adventure! Oh, joy, rapture, and
boundless exaltation! Ah, no, this drunkenness of fantastic bliss
Hans Castorp could never have experienced at the glance of any
healthy little goose down in the flat-land, to whom he might have,
calmly, correctly, and with most definite intentions, “ given his
heart,” and devoted the sentiments described in the song. He
greets the schoolmistress with feverish sprightliness — she has seen
the whole thing, and her downy old cheek wears its dusky signal
— and then bombards Miss Robinson with English conversation,
so absurdly that she, not versed in the ecstatic, fairly recoils, and
measures him with mistrustful eyes.

Another time, as they sit at the evening meal, the serene rays
of the setting sun fall upon the “ good ” Russian table. The cur-
tains have been drawn over the window and the verandah door,
but somewhere there is a little crack, and through it the red

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231

gleam finds its way, not hot, but dazzling, and falls upon Frau
Chauchat’s face, so that she shields it with her hand as she sits
talking with the concave countryman on her right. It is annoy-
ing but not serious, nobody troubles about it, probably not even
the fair one herself. But across the dining-room Hans Castorp
sees it — quiescent awhile, like the others. He examines the situa-
tion, follows the course of the ray of light, makes up his mind
where it enters. It comes from the bay-window in the right-hand
corner, between the verandah door and the “ bad ” Russian table,
at a goodish distance from Frau Chauchat’s place, and almost
equally far from Hans Castorp’s. Without a word he gets up
and, serviette in hand, crosses over among the tables, draws the
cream-coloured curtains so that they lap well over one another,
convinces himself by a glance over his shoulder that the ray from
the setting sun is shut out and Frau Chauchat relieved, and with
an air of perfect equanimity goes back to his place. An observant
young man, who takes it upon himself to perform a needful
courtesy neglected by others. But few of them even noticed
his act; Frau Chauchat, however, instantly felt the relief, and
turned round, remaining in that position until Hans Castorp had
resumed his place and, sitting down, looked over at her, when
she thanked him, with a friendly, rather surprised smile, and a
bow that was less an inclination than a shoving forward of the head.
He acknowledged by a bow in his turn. His heart stood stock-
still, it seemed not to beat. Only after the whole thing was over
did it begin again, and hammered, and only then did he become
conscious that Joachim had kept his eyes directed upon his plate.
Afterwards, too, he realized that Frau Stohr had nudged Dr.
Blumenkohl in the side, and then looked about at their own and
other tables, trying to catch people’s eyes.

All this is the sheerest commonplace; but the commonplace
becomes remarkable when it springs from remarkable soil. There
were periods of strain and periods when the tension between them
beneficently relaxed — though perhaps the tension existed less be-
tween them than it did in Hans Castorp’s fevered imagination, for
how far Madame Chauchat was affected we can only guess. In
these days of fine weather the majority of the guests betook
themselves to the verandah, after the midday meal, and stood
about in groups, sunning themselves, for a quarter-hour or so,
in a scene much like that on the Sunday afternoons of the fort-
nightly concerts. All these young people, absolutely idle, over-
fed on a meat and sweet diet, and without exception feverish —
chattered and laughed, philandered, made eyes. Frau Salomon

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232

from Amsterdam would perch on the balustrade, hard pressed
on the right by the knees of the thick-lipped Ganser, on the left
by the Swedish minion — who, it appeared, was quite recovered,
but extending his cure for a little space before going home. Frau
litis was apparently a widow; for she had rejoiced only lately
in the visit of a “ fiance ” — a melancholy, inferior-looking per-
son, whose presence had not in the least prevented her from
accepting the attentions of the hook-nosed, fiery-eyed Captain
iMiklosich, him of the waxed mustachios and swelling chest. New
figures turned up on the terrace: ladies of various nationalities
from the general rest-halls, and new arrivals since the first of
October, whom Hans Castorp barely knew by name. Then there
were cavaliers of Herr Albin’s kidney, monocled youths of seven-
teen, a spectacled, rosy-faced young Dutchman with a mania for
collecting postage stamps; certain Greeks, with pomaded hair
and almond-shaped eyes, inclined to overreach at table; and a
pair of young dandies who were nicknamed Max and Moritz, and
bore a great reputation for breaking out of bounds. The hump-
backed Mexican, whose ignorance of any language save his own
lent him the facial expression of a deaf person, took endless photo-
graphs, dragging his tripod from one point to another on the
terrace. Sometimes the Hofrat would appear, and perform his
“ stunt ” with the boot-laces. And somewhere in the thick of the
crowd would lurk solitary the religious devotee from Mann-
heim; Hans Castorp would watch disgustedly to see his great
sad eyes take their secret way.

But to return, by way of example, to some of those strains
and stresses to which Hans Castorp’s state was prone. Our young
man was sitting on a painted garden chair, with his back against
the wall, talking with his cousin, whom he had forced, against
his will, to come outside; in front of him; by the balustrade,
Frau Chauchat stood smoking with her table-mates. He talked
for her benefit; she turned her back. His thirst for conversation
was not satisfied by Joachim; he must needs make an acquaint-
ance— and whose? No other than Hermine Kleefeld’s. He di-
rected a casual word toward that young lady, then presented
himself and his cousin by name, and drew up another chair, in
order to carry on the game. Did she know, he asked, what a
deuce of a fright she had put him in, at their first encounter,
when she had whistled him such an inspiriting welcome? He
did not mind owning that she had accomplished her purpose;
he had felt as though someone had hit him on the head — she

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233

might ask his cousin! He called it an outrage, frightening harm-
less strangers like that, piping at them with her pneumothorax!
And so forth and so on. Joachim, quite aware of the role that
was being forced upon him, sat with his eyes on the ground;
even Fraulein Kleefeld gradually perceived, from Hans Ca-
storp’s distraught and wandering eye, that she was being made
a tool of, and felt piqued accordingly. And still the poor youth
went on smirking and turning phrases and modulating his voice,
until at last he actually succeeded in making Frau Chauchat
turn round and look him in the face. But only for a moment.
Her Pribislav eyes glided rapidly down his figure, as he sat there
one knee over the other, with a deliberate insouciance which
had all the effect of scorn; they paused for a space upon his yellow
boots, and then carelessly, with perhaps a smile in their depths,
withdrew.

It was a bitter, bitter blow. Hans Castorp talked on awhile,
feverishly. Then, inwardly smitten by the power of that gaze
upon his boots, he fell silent almost in the middle of a word,
and lapsed into deep dejection. Fraulein Kleefeld, bored and of-
fended, went her way. Joachim remarked, not without irrita-
tion, that perhaps they might go up to the rest-cure now. And a
broken spirit answered feebly that they might.

Flans Castorp anguished piteously for two days. Nothing oc-
curred in that time to be balsam for his smarting wound. What
had she meant by her look? Why, in the name of reason, had
she visited him with her scorn? Did she regard him merely as a
healthy young noodle from down in the flat-land, whose recep-
tivity was sure to be of the harmless sort; as a guileless, ordi-
nary chap, who went about laughing and earning his daily
bread and filling his belly full; as a model pupil in the school
of life, with no comprehension of anything but the tedious ad-
vantages of a respectable career? Was he, he asked himself, a
mere freckless tourist and three-weeks’ guest, or was he a man
who had made his profession on the score of a moist spot, a
member of the order, one of those up here, with a good two
months to his credit — and had not Mercurius only yesterday
evening climbed up to ioo°? Ah, here, even here, lay the bitter
drop that overflowed his cup: Mercurius had ceased to mount!
The fearful depression of these days had a chilling, sobering,
relaxing effect upon Hans Castorp ’s system, which, to his pro-
found chagrin, displayed itself in a reduced degree of fever,
scarcely higher than normal. He had the cruel experience of

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234

proving to himself that all his anguish, all his dejection, had no
other result than to separate him still further from Clavdia, and
from that which was significant in her existence.

The third day brought the blessed release. It was early upon
a magnificent October morning, sunny and fresh. The meadows
were covered with silvery-grey webs. The sun and the waning
moon both hung high up in a lucent heaven. The cousins were
abroad earlier than usual, meaning to honour the fine weather
by extending their morning walk a little further than the pre-
scribed limits, and continuing the forest path beyond the bench
by the watercourse. Joachim’s curve, too, had lately shown a
gratifying decrease; he had accordingly suggested this refreshing
irregularity, and Hans Castorp had not said no.

“ We seem to be cured,” he said, “ no fever, free of infection,
as good as ripe for the w'orld again. Why shouldn’t we have our
fling? ” They set out with walking-sticks, and hatless — for since
his “ profession ” Hans Castorp had resigned himself to the pre-
vailing custom, despite the original assertion of his own contrary-
minded' conventions. But they had not yet covered the initial
ascent of the reddish path, had arrived only at about that point
where the novice had once encountered the pneumatic crew,
when they saw at some distance ahead of them, slowly mount-
ing, Frau Chauchat; Frau Chauchat in white, a white sweater and
white flannel skirt, even white shoes. Her red-blond hair gleamed
in the morning sun. To be precise, Hans Castorp saw her; Joa-
chim was made aware of her presence by an unpleasant sensa-
tion of being dragged and pulled along by his cousin, who had
started up at a great pace, after having suddenly checked and
almost stood still on the path. Joachim found the compulsion
exceedingly annoying. His breath came shorter, he began to
cough, Hans Castorp, with his eyes on his goal, and his breath-
ing apparatus apparently in splendid trim, gave little heed; and
Joachim, having recognized the situation for what it was, drew
his brows together and kept step for step, feeling it out of the
question to let his cousin go on alone.

The lovely morning made Hans Castorp sprightly. And his
soul, in that period of black depression, had secretly assembled
its powers. He felt a sure intuition that the moment was come
to break the ban. He strode on, dragging the panting and re-
luctant Joachim in his train, and they had as good as overtaken
Frau Chauchat, at the point where the path grew level and
turned to the right along the wooded hillock. Here the young-
man slackened his pace, not to be breathless with exertion in the

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS

2 35

rnoment of carrying out his purpose. And just beyond the bend
in the path, between mountain and precipice, where the sunlight
slipped athwart the boughs of the rust-coloured firs, it actually
fell out, the wonder came to pass, that Hans Castorp, on Joa-
chim’s left, overtook the fragile fair one, he went by her with a
manly stride, and then, at the moment when he was beside her,
on her right, greeted her with a profoundly respectful, hatless
inclination of the head, and a murmured “ good-morning,” to
which she answered by a friendly bow, that showed no trace of
surprise, and a good-morning in her turn. She said it in Hans
Castorp’s mother-tongue, and smiled with her eyes. And all that
was something different, something fundamentally and blessedly
other than that look she had bent upon his boots — it was a gift
of fortune, an unexampled turn in affairs, a joy well-nigh beyond
comprehending, it was the blessed release.

Transported by that word, look, and smile, half blinded by
his senseless joy, Hans Castorp trod on winged feet, hurrying
the misused Joachim with him, who uttered not a word, and
gazed away down the steep. It had been a manoeuvre of a rather
unscrupulous sort; in Joachim’s eyes, as Hans Castorp well knew,
it looked very like treachery. Yet it was not the same thing as
borrowing a lead-pencil of a perfect stranger; one might even
say it would have been ill-bred to pass by a lady with whom
one had been for months under the same roof and not salute
her. They had even been in conversation with her, that time
in the waiting-room. That was why Joachim could say nothing;
but Hans Castorp well knew another reason that made his honour-
loving cousin walk on in silence with averted head, while he
himself was so supremely happy, so glad all over, at the suc-
cess of his manoeuvre. Never a man down in the flat-land who
had “given his heart” to some healthy, commonplace little
goose, been successful in his suit, and experienced all the ortho-
dox and anticipatory gratifications proper to his state, never could
such a man be blissfuller, no, not half so blissful, as Hans Castorp
now over this momentary joy which he had snatched. — And so,
after a while, he clapped his cousin heartily on the shoulder and
said: “ Hullo, what’s the matter with you? Isn’t it magnificent
to-day? Let’s go down to the Kurhaus afterwards, there will
probably be music. Perhaps they’ll play that thing from Carmen . —
What’s the matter? Has anything got under your skin? ”

“ No,” Joachim answered. “ But you look so hot, I’m afraid
your curve has gone up again.”

It had. The greeting he had exchanged with Clavdia Chau-

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236

chat had overcome the mortifying depression; it was at bottom
the consciousness of this which had lain at the root of Hans Ca-
storp’s gratification. Yes, yes, Joachim was right, Mercurius was
mounting again: when Hans Castorp consulted him, on their
return from their walk, he had climbed up to 100.4°.

Encyclopaedic

If certain insinuations on Herr Settembrini’s part had angered
Hans Castorp, the annoyance was quite unjustified, as also his
feeling that the schoolmaster had been spying on him. A blind
man must have seen how it stood with the youth; he himself
did nothing to conceal his state, being prevented by a certain
native and lofty simplicity. He inclined rather to wear his heart
upon his sleeve, in contrast — if you like, favourable contrast — to
the devotee from Mannheim, with his thin hair and furtive mien.
But in general we would emphasize the fact that people in Hans
Castorp ’s state regularly feel a craving for self-revelation, an
impulse to confess themselves, a blind preoccupation with self,
and a thirst to possess the world of their own emotions, which is
the more offensive to the sober onlooker, the less sense, reason-
ableness, or hope there lies in the whole affair.

How people in this state go about to betray themselves is hard
to define; but it seems they can neither do nor leave undone
anything which would not have that effect — doubly so, then,
in a society like that of the Berghof, where, as the critically
minded Herr Settembrini once expressed it, people were pos-
sessed of two ideas, and only two: temperature — and then again
temperature. By the second temperature he meant preoccupa-
tion with such questions as, for instance, with whom Frau Consul-
General Wurmbrandt from Vienna consoled herself for the de-
fection of Captain Miklosich — whether with the Swedish minion,
or Lawyer Paravant from Dortmund, or both. Everybody knew
that the bond between the lawyer and Frau Salomon from Am-
sterdam, after subsisting for several months, had been broken by
common consent, and that Frau Salomon had followed the lean-
ings of her time of life and taken up with callow youth. The
thick-lipped Ganser from Hermine Kleefeld’s table was for the
present under her wing; she had taken him “ to have and to hold,”
as Frau Stohr, in legal parlance, yet not without perspicuity, had
put it — and thus Lawyer Paravant was free either to quarrel or
to compound with the Swede over the favours of the Frau Consul-
General, as seemed to him advisable.

ENCYCLOPEDIC

237

These affairs then — in which, of course, the passage along the
balconies, at the end of the glass partitions, played a considerable
role — were rife in Berghof society, particularly among the
fevered youth. They occupied people’s minds, they were a salient
feature of life up here — and even in saying thus much we are far
from having precisely defined the position with regard to them.
Hans Castorp, on this subject, received a singular impression: it
was that a certain fundamental fact of life, which is conceded
the world over to be of great importance, and is the fertile theme
of constant allusion, both in jest and earnest, that this fundamental
fact of life bore up here an entirely altered emphasis. It was
weighty with a new weight; it had an accent, a value, and a sig-
nificance which were utterly novel — and which set the fact itself
in a light to make it look much more alarming than it had been
before. Thus far, whenever we have referred to any questionable
performances at the Berghof, we have done so in what may have
seemed a light and jesting tone; this without prejudice to our
real opinion as to the levity, or otherwise, of the performances,
and solely for the usual obscure reasons which prompt other peo-
ple to adopt the same. But as a matter of fact, that tone was far
less usual in our present sphere than it is elsewhere in the world.
Hans Castorp had considered himself pretty well-informed on the
subject of the above-named “ fact of life ” which has always and
everywhere been such a favourite target for shafts of wit. And he
may have been right in so considering. But now he found that the
knowledge he had had down in the flat-land had been most inade-
quate, that he had actually been in a state of simple ignorance. For
his personal emotions in the time of his stay up here — upon the
nature of which we have been at some pains to enlighten the
reader, and which had been at moments so acute as to wring from
the young man that cry of “ Oh, my God! ” — had opened his
eyes, had made him capable of hearing and comprehending the
wild, the overstrained, the namelessly extravagant key in which
all the “ affairs ” up here were set. Not that, even up here, they did
not make jests on the subject. But up here, far more than down
below, jests seemed out of place. They made one’s teeth to chat-
ter, and took away one’s breath, they betrayed themselves too
plainly for what they were, a thin and obvious disguise for a hid-
den extremity — or rather, an extremity impossible to hide. Hans
Castorp well remembered the mottled pallor of Joachim’s skin
when, for the first and only time, he had innocently alluded to
Marusja’s physical charms in the light tone he might have assumed
at home. He remembered the chill withdrawal of the blood from

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his own face, the time he had drawn the curtain to shield Madame
Chauchat from the sun; he knew that he had seen the same look
on other faces up here, both before and since — he usually re-
marked it in pairs, as, for example, on the faces of Frau Salomon
and young Ganser, in the beginning of that relation between them
so happily described by Frau Stohr. Hans Castorp, we say, re-
called all this, and realized that under such circumstances it would
not only have been very hard for him not to “ betray himself,” but
that the effort w ould not have been worth his pains. In other
words, not alone the noble simplicity which did him honour, but
also a certain sympathetic something in the air urged him not to
do violence to his feelings or make any secret of his condition.

Joachim had, as we know, early spoken of the difficulty of
forming acquaintances up here. In reality this arose chiefly from
the fact that the cousins formed a miniature group by themselves
in the society of the cure; but also because the soldierly Joachim
was bent on nothing else but speedy recovery, and hence objected
on principle to any closer contact or more social relations with his
fellow sufferers. It was a good deal this attitude of his that pre-
vented his cousin from exposing his feelings more freely to the
world at large. Even so, there came an evening when Joachim
might behold his cousin the centre of a group composed of Her-
mine Kleefeld, Ganser, Rasmussen, and the youth of the monocle
and the finger-nail, making an impromptu speech on the subject
of Frau Chauchat’s peculiar and exotic facial structure, and be-
traying himself by his unsteady voice and the excited glitter of his
eyes, until his listeners exchanged glances, nudged each other, and
tittered.

This was painful for Joachim; but the object of their mirth
seemed insensible to his own self-betrayal; perhaps he felt that his
state, if concealed and unregarded, would never come to any
proof. He might count, however, on a general understanding of
it, and as for the inevitable malice that went with it, he took that
for granted. People, not only at his own table, but at neighbour-
ing ones as well, enjoyed seeing him flush and pale when the glass
door slammed. And even this gratified him; it was like an outward
confirmation and assertion of his inner frenzy, which seemed tc
him calculated to forward his affair, and encourage his vague and
senseless hopes. And so it too made him happy. It came to this:
that people actually stood about in groups to observe the infatu-
ated youth — after dinner, on the terrace, or on a Sunday after-
noon before the porter’s lodge, when the letters were distributed,
for on that day they were not carried to the patients’ rooms. He

ENCYCLOPEDIC

239

was quite generally known to be very far gone, drunk as a lord
and not caring who knew it. Frau Stohr, Fraulein Engelhart, Her-
mine Kleefeld and her friend the tapir-faced girl, Herr Albin, the
young man with the finger-nail, and perhaps others among the
guests — would stand together and watch him, with the corners of
their mouths drawn down, fairly chortling, whilst he, poor wight,
his face aglow with the heat that from the first had never left him,
with the glittering eye the gentleman rider’s cough had kindled,
would gaze, forlornly and frantically smiling, in one certain direc-
tion.

It was really splendid of Herr Settembrini, under these circum-
stances, to go up to Hans Castorp, engage him in conversation,
and ask him how he did. But it is doubtful whether the young man
knew how to value and to be grateful for such benevolence and
freedom from prejudice. One Sunday afternoon the guests were
thronging about the porter’s lodge, stretching out their hands for
letters. Joachim was among the foremost; but Hans Castorp had
stopped in the rear, angling, in the fashion we have described, for a
look from Clavdia Chauchat. She was standing near by, among a
group of her table-mates, waiting until the press about the lodge
should be lightened. It was an hour when all the patients mingled,
an hour rich in opportunity, and for that reason beloved 01 our
young man. The week before, he had stood at the window so
close to Madame Chauchat that she had in fact jostled him, and
then, with a little bow, had said: “ Pardo?i ” Whereat he, with a
feverish presence of mind for which he thanked his stars, had re-
sponded: “ Pas de quoi , madame .”

What a blessed dispensation of providence, he thought, that
there should be a regular Sunday afternoon distribution of letters!
One might say that he spent the week in waiting for the next
week’s delivery. And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means
regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an ob-
struction; it means making their actual content null and void, by
mentally overleaping them. Waiting, we say, is long. We might
just as well — or more accurately — say it is short, since it con-
sumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making
any use of them as such. We may compare him who lives on
expectation to a greedy man, whose digestive apparatus works
through quantities of food without converting it into anything of
value or nourishment to his system. We might almost go so far
as to say that, as undigested food makes man no stronger, so time
spent in waiting makes him no older. But in practice, of course,
there is hardly such a thing as pure and unadulterated waiting.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

24O

Well, the week had been somehow devoured, and the hour for
the Sunday afternoon post came round again, so like the other it
seemed never to have changed. Like to that other, what thrilling
opportunities it offered, what prospects lay concealed within it of
coming into social relations with Frau Chauchat! Prospects that
made the heart of young Hans Castorp leap and contract, yet
without actually issuing in action; for against their doing so lay
certain obstacles of a nature partly military, partly civil. In other
words, they were in part the fruit of Joachim’s presence, in part
the result of Hans Castorp’s own moral compunctions; but also,
in part, they rested upon his sure intuition that social relations with
Frau Chauchat, conventional relations, in which one made bows
and addressed her as madame, and spoke French as far as possible,
were not the thing at all, were neither necessary nor desirable. He
stood and watched her laugh as she spoke, precisely as Pribislav
Hippe had laughed as he spoke, that time in the school yard: she
opened her mouth rather wide, and her slanting, grey-green eyes
narrowed themselves to slits above the cheek-bones. That was, to
be sure, not “ beautiful ”; but when one is in love, the aesthetic
judgment counts for as little as the moral.

“ You are expecting dispatches, Engineer? ”

Only one person could talk like that — and he a disturber of
Hans Castorp’s peace. The young man started and turned toward
Herr Settembrini, who stood there smiling the same fine, human-
istic smile that had sat upon his features when he greeted the new-
comer, at the bench by the watercourse. Now, as then, it mortified
Hans Castorp. We know how often, in his dreams, he had sought
to drive away the organ-grinder as an element offensive to his
peace; but the waking man is more moral than the sleeping, and,
as before, the sight of that smile not only had a sobering effect
upon Hans Castorp, but gave him a sense of gratitude, as though it
had responded to his need.

“ Dispatches, Herr Settembrini? Good Lord, I’m no ambassa-
dor! There might be a postcard there for one of us. My cousin is
just asking.”

“ That devil on two sticks in there has handed mine out to me
already,” Herr Settembrini said, and carried his hand to the side
pocket of the inevitable pilot coat. “ Interesting matter, I must
confess, of literary and social import. It is about an encyclopaedic
publication, to which a philanthropic institution has considered
me worthy to contribute. Beautiful work, in short — ” Herr Set-
tembrini interrupted himself. “ But how about you? ” he asked.
“ How are your affairs going? For instance, how far has the

ENCYCLOPEDIC 24 1

process of acclimatization gone? You have not been so long
among us but that one may still put the question.”

“ Thanks, Herr Settembrini. It still has its difficulties it seems.
It very likely will have, up to the last day. My cousin told me
when I came that many people never got used to it. But one gets
used in time to not getting used.”

“ A complicated process,” laughed the Italian. “ An odd way of
settling down in a place. But of course youth is capable of any-
thing. It doesn’t get used to things, but it strikes roots.”

“ And after all, this isn’t a Siberian penal settlement.”

“ No. Ah, you have a fancy for oriental simile. Natural enough.
Asia surrounds us — wherever one’s glance rests, a Tartar physiog-
nomy.” Herr Settembrini gave a discreet glance over his shoulder.
“ Genghis Khan,” he said. “ Wolves of the steppes, snow, vodka,
the knout, Schlusselburg, Holy Russia. They ought to set up an
altar to Pallas Athene, here in the vestibule — to ward off the evil
spell. Look yonder — there is a species of Ivan Ivanovitch without
a shirt-front, having a disagreement with Lawyer Paravant. Both
of them want to be in the front rank to receive their letters. I can’t
tell which of them is in the right, but, for my part, Lawyer Para-
vant fights under the aegis of the goddess. He is an ass, of course;
but at least he knows some Latin.”

Hans Castorp laughed — a thing Herr Settembrini never did.
One could not imagine him laughing heartily; he never got fur-
ther than the fine, dry crisping of the corner of his mouth. He
looked at the laughing young man, and presently asked: “ Have
you received your diapositive? ”

“ I have received it,” Hans Castorp weightily affirmed. “ Just
the other day. Here it is,” and he felt for it in his inner breast

you carry it in a case. Like a certificate, as it were — a sort
of membership card. Very good. Let me see it.” And Herr Settem-
brini held it against the light, between the thumb and forefinger of
his left hand; a little glass plate framed in strips of black paper. The
gesture was a common one up here, one often saw it. His face,
with the black almond-shaped eyes, displayed a slight grimace as
he did so, but whether this happened in the effort to see more
clearly or for other causes, he did not permit it to appear.

“ Yes, yes,” he said, after a while. “ Here is your identity card.
Thanks very much,” and he handed the plate back to Hans Castorp
over his shoulder, without looking.

“ Did you see the strands? ” asked Hans Castorp. “ And the
nodules? ”

pocket.
“ Ah,

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242

“ You know,” Herr Settembrini answered him very deliber-
ately, “ my opinion of these productions. You know too that those
spots and shadows there are very largely of physiological origin.
I have seen a hundred such pictures, looking very like this of
yours; the decision as to whether they offered definite proof or
not was left more or less to the discretion of the person looking
at them. I speak as a layman, but a layman of a good many years’
experience.”

“ Does your own look much worse than this one? ”

“ Rather worse. I am aware, however, that our lords and mas-
ters do not base any diagnosis on the evidence of these toys alone.
Then you purpose stopping the winter up here with us? ”

“Yes — Lord knows — I am beginning to get used to the idea of
not going back until my cousin does.”

“ Getting used, that is, to not getting used — you put that very
wittily. I hope you have received supplies from home — winter
clothing, stout foot-gear? ”

“ Everything — all in the proper order. I informed my relatives,
and our housekeeper sent me everything by express delivery. I
shall do nicely now.”

“ I am relieved. But hold — you need a bag, a fur sack! What
are we thinking of? This late summer is treacherous — it can turn
to winter inside an hour. You will be spending the coldest months
up here.”

“ Yes, the sleeping-sack,” Hans Castorp said. “ That is a requi-
site, I suppose. It had crossed my mind that we must be going
down to the Platz one of these days soon to buy one. One never
needs the thing again, of course — but even for the five or six
months it is worth while.”

“ It is, it is. — Engineer,” said Herr Settembrini in a low voice,
coming close to the young man as he addressed him, “ don’t you
know there is something frightful in the way you fling the months
about? Frightful because unnatural, inconsistent with your char-
acter; it is due solely to the facility of your time of life. Ah, the
fatal facility of youth! It is the despair of the teacher, for its
proneness to display itself in the wrong direction. I beg you, my
young friend, not to adopt the phrases current up here, but to
speak the language of the European culture native to you. Up here
there is too much Asia. It is not without significance that the place
is full of Muscovite and Mongolian types. These people — ” Herr
Settembrini motioned with his chin over his shoulder — “ do not
put yourself in tune with them, do not be infected with their ideas;
rather set yourself against them, oppose your nature, your higher

ENCYCLOPAEDIC

2 43

nature against them; cling to everything which to you is by nature
and tradition holy, as a son of the godlike West, a son of civiliza-
tion: and, for example, time. This barbaric lavishness with time is
in the Asiatic style; it may be a reason why the children of the East
feel so much at home up here. Have you never remarked that
when a Russian says four hours, he means what we do when we
say one? It is easy to see that the recklessness of these people
where time is concerned may have to do with the space concep-
tions proper to people of such endless territory. Great space, much
time — they say, in fact, that they are the nation that has time and
can wait. We Europeans, we cannot. We have as little time as our
great and finely articulated continent has space, we must be as
economical of the one as of the other, we must husband them, En-
gineer! Take our great cities, the centres and foci of civilization,
the crucibles of thought! Just as the soil there increases in value,
and space becomes more and more precious, so, in the same meas-
ure, does time. Carpe diem! That was the song of a dweller in a
great city. Time is a gift of God, given to man that he might use it
— use it, Engineer, to serve the advancement of humanity.’"

Whatever difficulty, if any, his phrases offered Herr Setterm
brini’s Mediterranean palate, he brought them out with a clarity,
a euphony, one might almost say a plasticity, that was truly re-
freshing. Hans Castorp made no answer save the short, stiff, em-
barrassed bow of a pupil receiving a reprimand. What could he
have said? Herr Settembrini had delivered a private lecture, almost
whispered it into his ear, with his back to the rest of the people in
the room; it had been so pointed, so unsocial, so little conversable
in its nature, that merely to commend its eloquence seemed lack-
ing in tact. One does not tell a schoolmaster that he has expressed
himself well. Hans Castorp, indeed, had done so once or twice in
the early days of their acquaintance, probably from an instinct to
preserve the social equilibrium; but the humanist’s utterances had
never before reached quite such a didactic pitch. There was noth-
ing for it but to pocket the admonition, feeling as embarrassed as
a schoolboy at so much moralizing. Moreover, one could see by
Herr Settembrini’s expression that he had not finished his train of
thought. He still stood so close to Hans Castorp that the young
man was constrained to bend a little backwards; and his black
eyes gazed fixedly into the other’s face.

“You suffer, Engineer,” he went on. “You are like one dis-
traught — who could help seeing it? But your attitude toward suf-
fering can be a European attitude; it should not be the oriental,
which in its soft abandonment inclines so readily to seek this spot.

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244

The oriental attitude toward suffering is one of pity and a bound-
less patience — that cannot, it ought not to be ours, to be yours!
— Look — we were speaking of what the post had brought us, look
at these! Or better, come with me, it is impossible here— let us
withdraw, and I will disclose to you certain matters. Come with
me! ” And turning, he drew Hans Castorp away, and they entered
one of the small reception-rooms, the first on the right next the
vestibule, which stood empty. It was furnished as a reading- and
writing-room, with oak panelling and a light, vaulted ceiling, book-
cases, a centre table covered with newspapers in holders and sur-
rounded with seats, and writing appurtenances arranged in the
bay-windows. Herr Settembrini advanced as far as the neighbour-
hood of one of the windows, Hans Castorp followed. The door re-
mained open.

The Italian sought the baggy side pocket of his pilot coat, and
drew thence with impetuous hand a bundle of papers in a large,
already opened envelope. Its contents — various printed matter,
and a sheet of writing — he ran through his fingers under Hans
Castorp’s eye.

“ These papers,” he said, “ bear the stamp, in French, of the
International League for the Organization of Progress. I have
them from Lugano, where there is an office of a branch of the
League. You inquire after its principles, its scope? I will define
them for you, in two words. The League for the Organization of
Progress deduces from Darwinian theory the philosophic concept
that man’s profoundest natural impulse is in the direction of self-
realization. From this it follows that all those who seek satisfaction
of this impulse must become co-labourers in the cause of human
progress. Many are those who have responded to the call; there is
a considerable membership, in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and
in Germany itself. I myself have the honour of having my name
inscribed on the roll. A comprehensive and scientifically executed
programme has been drawn up, embracing all the projects for
human improvement conceivable at the moment. We are study-
ing the problem of our health as a race, and the means for com-
bating the degeneration which is a regrettable accompanying
phenomenon of our increasing industrialization. The League envis-
ages the founding of universities for the people, the resolution
of the class conflict by means of all the social ameliorations which
recommend themselves for the purpose, and finally the doing
away with national conflicts, the abolition of war through the de-
velopment of international law. You perceive that the objects
toward which the League directs its efforts are ambitious and

ENCYCLOPAEDIC

2 45

broad in their scope. Several international periodicals are evidence
of its activities — monthly reviews, which contain articles in three
or four languages on the subject of the progressive evolution of
civilized humanity. Numerous local groups have been established
in the various countries; it is expected that they will exert an edify-
ing and enlightening influence by means of discussion evenings
and appropriate Sunday observances. Above all, the League will
strive its utmost to aid with the material at its disposal the political
party of progress in every country. You follow me, Engineer? ”

“ Absolutely,” Hans Castorp replied, with precipitation. He
had, as he spoke, the feeling of a man who finds himself slipping,
but for the moment contrives to keep his feet.

Herr Settembrini appeared satisfied. “ I assume that these are
new and surprising ideas to you? ”

“ Yes, I confess this is the first time I have heard of these — these
endeavours.”

“ Ah,” Settembrini murmured, “ ah, if you had only heard of
them earlier! But perhaps it is not yet too late. These circulars —
you would like to know what they say? Listen. Last spring a
formal meeting of the League was called, at Barcelona. You are
aware that that city can boast of a quite special affinity with pro-
gressive political ideas. The congress sat for a week, with ban-
quets and festivities. I wanted to go — good God, I yearned to be
there and take part in the deliberations. But that scurvy rascal of a
Hofrat forbade me on pain of death, so— -well, I was afraid I
should die, and I didn’t go. I was in despair, as you may imagine,
over the trick my unreliable health had played me. Nothing is
more painful than to be prevented by our physical, our animal
nature from being of service to reason. My satisfaction, therefore,
over this communication from Lugano is the more lively. You are
curious to know what it says? I can imagine. But first, a few brief
explanations: the League for the Organization of Progress, mind-
ful of its task of furthering human happiness — in other words, of
combating human suffering by the available social methods, to the
end of finally eliminating it altogether; mindful also of the fact
that this lofty task can only be accomplished by the aid of so-
ciology, the end and aim of which is the perfect State, the League,
in session at Barcelona, determined upon the publication of a series
of volumes bearing the general title: The Sociology of Suffering.
It should be the aim of the series to classify human suffering ac-
cording to classes and categories, and to treat it systematically and
exhaustively. You ask what is the use of classification, arrange-
ment, systematization? I answer you: order and simplification are

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246

the first steps toward the mastery of a subject — the actual enemy
is the unknown. We must lead the human race up out of the primi-
tive stages of fear and patient stupidity, and set its feet on the path
of conscious activity. We must enlighten it upon two points: first,
that given effects become void when one first recognizes and then
removes their causes; and second, that almost all individual suffer-
ing is due to disease of the social organism. Very well; this is the
object of the Sociological Pathology . It will be issued in some
twenty folio volumes, treating every species of human suffering,
from the most personal and intimate to the great collective strug-
gles arising from the conflicting interests of classes and nations; it
will, in short, exhibit the chemical elements whose combination
in various proportions results in all the ills to which our human
flesh is heir. The publication will in every case take as its norm the
dignity and happiness of mankind, and seek to indicate the meas-
ures and remedies calculated to remove the cause of each devia-
tion. Famous European specialists, physicians, psychologists, and
economists will share in the composition of this encyclopaedia of
suffering, and the general editorial bureau at Lugano will act as
the reservoir to collect all the articles which shall flow into it. I
can read in your eyes the question as to what my share is to be in
all these activities. Hear me to the end. This great work will not
neglect the belletrist in so far as he deals with human suffering: a
volume is projected which shall contain a compilation and brief
analysis of such masterpieces of the world’s literature as come into
question by depicting one or other kind of conflict — for the con-
solation and instruction of the suffering. This, then, is the task
entrusted to your humble servant, in the letter you see here.”

“ You don’t say, Herr Settembrini! Allow me to offer you my
heartiest congratulations! That is a magnificent commission, just
in your line, I should think. No wonder the League thought of
you! And what joy you must feel to aid in the elimination of
human suffering! ”

“ It is a work very broad in its scope,” Herr Settembrini said
thoughtfully, “ and will require much consideration and wide
reading. Especially,” he added, and his gaze seemed to lose itself
in the immensity of his task, “ since literature has regularly chosen
to depict suffering, and even second- and third-rate masterpieces
treat of it in one form or another. But what of that? So much the
better! However comprehensive the work may be, it is at least of
a nature that will permit me to carry it on, if needs must, even
in this accursed place — though I hope I need not be here long
enough to bring it to a conclusion. That is something,” he said,

ENCYCLOPEDIC

2 47

moving closer to Hans Castorp, and subduing his voice nearly to
a whisper, “ that is something which can hardly be said of the
duties nature lays upon you, Engineer! This is what I wanted
to bring out, this is the word of warning I have been trying to
utter. You know what admiration I feel for your profession. But
as it is a practical, not an intellectual calling, you are differently
situated from myself, in that you can only pursue it down in the
world — only there can you be a true European, only there can
you actively fight suffering, improve the time, further progress,
with your own weapons and in your own way. If I have told you
of the task that has fallen to my lot, it was only to remind you,
only to recall you to yourself, only to clarify certain conceptions
of yours which the atmospheric conditions up here were obviously
beginning to becloud. I would urge it upon you: hold yourself
upright, preserve your self-respect, do not give ground to the un-
known. Flee from this sink of iniquity, this island of Circe, whereon
you are not Odysseus enough to dwell in safety. You will be going
on all fours — already you are inclining toward your forward
extremities, and presently you will begin to grunt — have a care! ”
The humanist had uttered these admonitions in the same low
voice, shaking his head impressively. He finished with drawn brows
and eyes directed toward the ground. To answer him slightly or
jestingly, as Hans Castorp would once have done, was out of the
question. The young man weighed that possibility for a second,
standing with lowered lids. Then he lifted his shoulders and spoke,
no louder than Herr Settembrini: “ What shall I do? ”

“ What I told you.”

“ You mean — go away? ”

Herr Settembrini was silent.

“ What you mean to say is that I should leave for home? ”

“ It was the advice I gave you on the first evening, Engineer.”

“ Yes — and then I was free to do so, though it seemed to me
silly to throw up the sponge just because the air up here put me
about a bit. But now it is a rather different state of affairs: I have
been examined, and Hofrat Behrens told me in so many words that
it would be no good my going home, I should only have to come
back again; and that if I stopped down there, the whole lobe
would be at the devil before you could say Jack Robinson.”

“ I know; and now you have the evidence in your pocket.”
“You say that so ironically — with the right kind of irony, of
course, that cannot for a moment be misunderstood, the direct
and classic device of oratory — you see, I remember the things
you say. But do you mean that after you have seen this photograph,

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248

after the x-ray and Behrens’s diagnosis, you take it upon your-
self to advise me to go home? ”

Settembrini hesitated for a second. Then he drew himself up,
and directed the gaze of his black eyes full upon Hans Castorp’s
face. He answered, with an emphasis not quite without theatrical
effect: “ Yes, Engineer, I take it upon myself.”

But Hans Castorp’s bearing too had stiffened. He stood with
his heels together, and looked straight at Herr Settembrini in his
turn. This time it was a duel. Hans Castorp stood his ground.
Influences from not far off gave him strength. Here was a school-
master — but yonder was a woman with narrow eyes. He made no
apologies for his words, he did not beg Herr Settembrini not to
take offence; he answered: “ Then you are more prudent for your-
self than for others. You did not go to Barcelona in the face of the
doctor’s orders. You were afraid of death, and you stopped up
here.”

To a certain point Herr Settembrini’s pose was undeniably
shaken; his smile, as he answered, was slightly forced.

“ I know how to value a ready answer — even though your logic
smacks of sophistry. It would disgust me to enter the lists in the
sort of rivalry that is too current up here; otherwise I might reply
that my case is far more serious than yours — so much more, in
fact, that it is only by artificial means, almost by deliberate self-
deception, that I can keep alive the hope of leaving this place and
having sight of the world below before I die. In the moment when
that hope can no longer be decently sustained, in that moment I
shall turn my back on this establishment, and take private lodgings
somewhere in the valley. That will be sad; but as the sphere of my
labours is the freest, the least material in the world, the change
cannot prevent me from resisting the forces of disease and serving
the cause of humanity, up to my latest breath. The difference be-
tween us, in this respect, I have already pointed out to you. En-
gineer, you are not the man to assert your better self in these sur-
roundings. I saw it at our first meeting. You reproach me with not
having gone to Barcelona. I submitted to the prohibition, not to
destroy myself untimely. But I did so with the most stringent
reservations; my spirit protested in pride and anguish against the
dictates of my wretched body. Whether that protest survives in
you, as you comply with the behests of our powers that be —
whether it is not rather the body, the body and its evil propensities,
to which you lend a ready ear — ”

“ What have you against the body? ” interrupted Hans Castorp
suddenly, and looked at him with wide blue eyes, the whites of

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249

which were veined with blood. He was giddy with his own
temerity and showed as much. — Whatever am I saying? he
thought. I’m getting out of my depth. But I won’t give way; now I
have begun, I won’t give him the last word if I can help it. Of course
he will have it anyhow, but never mind, I will make the most of
it while I can. — He enlarged upon his objection; “ But you are a
humanist, are you not? What can you have to say against the

Settembrini’s smile this time was unforced and confident.
“ 4 What have you against analysis? ’ ” he quoted, with his head on
one side. “ 4 Are you down on analysis? ’ You will always find
me ready to answer you, Engineer,” he said, with a bow and a
sweeping downward motion of the hand , 44 particularly when your
opposition is spirited; and you parry not without elegance. Human-
ist — yes, certainly, I am a humanist. You could never convict me
of ascetic inclinations. I affirm, honour, and love the body, as I
protest I affirm, honour, and love form, beauty, freedom, gaiety,
the enjoyment of life. I represent the world, the interest of this
life, against a sentimental withdrawal and negation, classicism
against romanticism. I think my position is unequivocal. But there
is one power, one principle, which commands my deepest assent,
my highest and fullest allegiance and love; and this power, this
principle, is the intellect. However much I dislike hearing that
conception of moonshine and cobwebs people call 4 the soul ’
played off against the body, yet, within the antithesis of body and
mind, the body is the evil, the devilish principle, for the body is
nature, and nature — within the sphere, I repeat, of her antagonism
to the mind, and to reason — is evil, mystical and evil. 4 You are a
humanist? ’ By all means I am a humanist, because I am a friend of
mankind, like Prometheus, a lover of humanity and human no-
bility. That nobility is comprehended in the mind, in the reason,
and therefore you will level against me in vain the reproach of
Christian obscurantism — ”

Hans Castorp demurred.

44 You will,” Herr Settembrini persisted, “ level this reproach
in vain, if humanistic pride one day learns to feel as a debasement
and disgrace the fact that the intellect is bound up with the body
and with nature. Did you know that the great Plotinus is said to
have made the remark that he was ashamed to have a body? ” asked
Settembrini. He seemed eager for a reply, and Hans Castorp was
constrained to confess that this was the first he had heard of it.

“ We have it from Porphyrius. An absurd remark, if you like.
But the absurd is the intellectually honourable; and nothing can

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25O

be more pitiable than the reproach of absurdity, levelled against
the mind as it asserts its dignity against nature, and refuses to
abdicate before her. — Have you heard of the Lisbon earthquake,
Engineer? ”

“ An earthquake? No — I see no newspapers up here — ”

“ You misunderstand me. En passant , let me say it is a pity, and
very indicative of the spirit of this place, that you neglect to read
the papers. But you misunderstand me, the convulsion of nature
to which I refer is not modern. It took place some hundred and
fifty years ago.”

“ I see. Oh, wait — I have it. I have read that Goethe said to his
servant, that night in his bedchamber — ”

“ No, it was not of that I was speaking,” Settembrini interrupted
him, closing his eyes, and shaking his small sallow hand in the
air. “ Besides, you are confusing two catastrophes. You are think-
ing of the earthquake of Messina. I have in mind the one that
visited Lisbon in the year 17 55.”

“ Pardon.”

“ Well, Voltaire was outraged by it.”

“ Outraged? That is — how do you mean? ”

“ He rebelled. Yes. He declined to accept that brutal fatum et
jactum . His spirit refused to abdicate before it. He protested in
the name of reason and the intellect against that scandalous dere-
liction of nature, to which were sacrificed thousands of human
lives, and three-quarters of a flourishing city. You are astonished?
You smile? You may well be astonished; but as for smiling, give
me leave to tell you it is out of place. Voltaire's attitude was that
of a worthy descendant of those old Gauls that shot their arrows
against the heavens. There, Engineer, you have the hostility the
intellect feels against nature, its proud mistrust, its high-hearted in-
sistence upon the right to criticize her and her evil, reason-denying
power. Nature is force; and it is slavish to suffer force, to abdicate
before it — to abdicate, that is, inwardly. And there too you have
the humanistic position which runs not the slightest risk of in-
volving itself in contradictions, or of relapsing into churchly hy-
pocrisy, when it sees in the body the antagonist, the representative
of the evil principle. The contradiction you imagine you see is at
bottom always the same. ‘ What have you against analysis? ’ Noth-
ing — when it serves the cause of enlightenment, freedom, prog-
ress. Everything when it is pervaded by the horrible haitt gout of
the grave. And thus too with the body. We are to honour and
uphold the body when it is a question of emancipation, of beauty,
of freedom of thought, of joy, of desire. We must despise it in so

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251

far as it sets itself up as the principle of gravity and inertia, when
it obstructs the movement toward light; we must despise it in so
far as it represents the principle of disease and death, in so far as
its specific essence is the essence of perversity, of decay, sensuality,
and shame.”

These last words Settembrini had uttered standing close to Hans
Castorp, very rapidly and tonelessly, as though to make an end
of the subject. Succour was nigh for the youth: Joachim entered
the reading-room, with two postcards in his hand. The Italian
broke off; and the dexterity with which he altered his tone for
one in a lighter and fitting social key was not lost upon his pupil —
if so Hans Castorp may be called.

“ There you are, Lieutenant! Have you been looking for your
cousin? I must apologize; we had fallen into conversation — if I
am not mistaken, we have even had a slight disagreement. He is
not a bad reasoner, your cousin, a by no means contemptible an-
tagonist in an argument — when he takes the notion.”

Humaniora

Hans Castorp and Joachim Ziemssen, arrayed in white trousers
and blue blazers, were sitting in the garden after dinner. It was
another of those much-lauded October days: bright without be-
ing heavy, hot and yet with a tang in the air. The sky above the
valley was a deep southern blue and the pastures beneath, with
the cattle tracks running across and across them, still a lively green.
From the rugged slopes came the sound of cowbells; the peaceful,
simple, melodious tintinnabulation came floating unbroken through
the quiet, thin, empty air, enhancing the mood of solemnity that
broods over the valley heights.

The cousins were sitting on a bench at the end of the garden, in
front of a semi-circle of young firs. The small open space lay at the
north-west of the hedged-in platform, which rose some fifty
yards above the valley, and formed the foundations of the Berghof
building. They were silent. Hans Castorp was smoking. He was
also wrangling inwardly with Joachim, who had not wanted to
join the society on the verandah after luncheon, and had drawn
his cousin against his will into the stillness and seclusion of the
garden, until such time as they should go up to their balconies.
That was behaving like a tyrant — when it came to that, they were
not Siamese twins, it was possible for them to separate, if their
inclinations took them in opposite directions. Hans Castorp was
not up here to be company for Joachim, he was a patient himself.

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2 5 2

Thus he grumbled on, and could endure to grumble, for had he not
Maria? He sat, his hands in his blazer pockets, his feet in brown
shoes stretched out before him, and held the long, greyish cigar
between his lips, precisely in the centre of his mouth, and droop-
ing a little. It was in the first stages of consumption, he had not
yet knocked off the ash from its blunt tip; its aroma was peculiarly
grateful after the heavy meal just enjoyed. It might be true that
in other respects getting used to life up here had mainly consisted
in getting used to not getting used to it. But for the chemistry
of his digestion, the nerves of his mucous membrane, which had
been parched and tender, inclined to bleeding, it seemed that the
process of adjustment had completed itself. For imperceptibly, in
the course of these nine or ten weeks, his organic satisfaction in
that excellent brand of vegetable stimulant or narcotic had been
entirely restored. He rejoiced in a faculty regained, his mental
satisfaction heightened the physical. During his time in bed he had
saved on the supply of two hundred cigars which he had brought
with him, and some of these were still left; but at the same time
with his winter clothing from below, there had arrived another
five hundred of the Bremen make, which he had ordered through
Schalleen to make quite sure of not running out. They came in
beautiful little varnished boxes, ornamented in gilt with a globe,
several medals, and an exhibition building with a flag floating
above it.

As they sat, behold, there came Hofrat Behrens through the
garden. He had taken his midday meal in the dining-hall to-day,
folding his gigantic hands before his place at Frau Salomon’s
table. After that he had probably been on the terrace, making
the suitable personal remark to each and everybody, very likely
displaying his trick with the bootlaces for such of the guests as
had not seen it. Now he came lounging through the garden, wear-
ing a check tail-coat, instead of his smock, and his stiff hat on
the back of his head. He too had a cigar in his mouth, a very black
one, from which he was puffing great white clouds of smoke. His
head and face, with the over-heated purple cheeks, the snub
nose, watery blue eyes, and little clipped moustache, looked small
in proportion to the lank, rather warped and stooping figure, and
the enormous hands and feet. He was nervous; visibly started
when he saw the cousins, and seemed embarrassed over the neces-
sity of passing them. But he greeted them in his usual picturesque
and expansive fashion, with “ Behold, behold, Timotheus! ” go-
ing on to invoke the usual blessings on their metabolisms, while

HUMANIORA 253

he prevented their rising from their seats, as. they would have done
in his honour.

“ Sit down, sit down. No formalities with a simple man like
me. Out of place too, you being my patients, both of you. Not
necessary. No objection to the status quo” and he remained stand-
ing before them, holding the cigar between the index and middle
fingers of his great right hand.

“ How’s your cabbage-leaf, Castorp? Let me see, I’m a connois-
seur. That’s a good ash — what sort of brown beauty have you
there? ”

“Maria Mancini, Postre de Bcmquett , Bremen, Herr Hofrat.
Costs little or nothing, nineteen pfennigs in plain colours — but
bouquet you don’t often come across at the price. Sumatra-Havana
wrapper, as you see. I am very wedded to them. It is a medium
mixture, very fragrant, but cool on the tongue. Suits it to leave
the ash long, I don’t knock it off more than a couple of times. She
has her whims, of course, has Maria; but the inspection must be
very thorough, for she doesn’t vary much, and draws perfectly
even. May I offer you one? ”

“ Thanks, we can exchange.” And they drew out their cases.

“There’s a thorough-bred for you,” the Hofrat said, as he
displayed his brand. “ Temperament, you know, juicy, got some
guts to it. St. Felix, Brazil — I’ve always stuck to this sort. Regu-
lar ‘ begone, dull care,’ burns like brandy, has something ful-
minating toward the end. But you need to exercise a little cau-
tion — can’t light one from the other, you know — more than a
fellow can stand. However, better one good mouthful than any
amount of nibbles.”

They twirled their respective offerings between their fingers,
felt connoisseur-like the slender shapes that possessed, or so one
might think, some organic quality of life, with their ribs formed
by the diagonal parallel edges of the raised, here and there porous
wrapper, the exposed veins that seemed to pulsate, the small in-
equalities of the skin, the play of light on planes and edges.

Hans Castorp expressed it: “A cigar like that is alive — it
breathes. Fact. Once, at home, I had the idea of keeping Maria
in an air-tight tin box, to protect her from damp. Would you
believe it, she died! Inside of a week she perished — nothing but
leathery corpses left.”

They exchanged experiences upon the best way to keep cigars
— particularly imported ones. The Hofrat loved them, he would
have smoked nothing but heavy Havanas, but they did not suit

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254

him. He told Hans Castorp about two little Henry Clays he had
once taken to his heart, in an evening company, which had come
within an ace of putting him under the sod.

“ I smoked them with my coffee,” he said, “ and thought no more
of it. But after a while it struck me to wonder how I felt — and I
discovered it was like nothing on earth. I don’t know how I got
home — and once there, well, this time, my son, I said to myself,
you’re a goner. Feet and legs like ice, you know, reeking with cold
sweat, white as a table-cloth, heart going all ways for Sunday —
sometimes just a thread of a pulse, sometimes pounding like a trip-
hammer. Cerebration phenomenal. I made sure I was going to
toddle off — that is the very expression that occurred to me, be-
cause at the time I was feeling as jolly as a sand-boy. Not that I
wasn’t in a funk as well, because I was — I was just one large blue
funk all over. Still, funk and felicity aren’t mutually exclusive,
everybody knows that. Take a chap who’s going to have a girl for
the first time in his life; he is in a funk too, and so is she, and vet
both of them are simply dissolving with felicity. I was nearly dis-
solving too — my bosom swelled with pride, and there I was, on the
point of toddling off; but the Mylendonk got hold of me and per-
suaded me it was a poor idea. She gave me a camphor injection,
applied ice-compresses and friction — and here I am, saved for hu-
manity.”

The Hofrat’s large, goggling blue eyes watered as he told this
story. Hans Castorp, seated in his capacity of patient, looked up at
him with an expression that betrayed mental activity.

“ You paint sometimes, don’t you, Herr Hofrat? ” he asked
suddenly.

The Hofrat pretended to stagger backwards. “ What the deuce!
What do you take me for, youngster? ”

“ I beg your pardon. I happened to hear somebody say so, and
it just crossed my mind.”

u Well, then, I won’t trouble to lie about it. We’re all poor crea-
tures. I admit such a thing has happened. AncW io sono pittore , as
the Spaniard used to say.”

“ Landscape? ” Hans Castorp asked him succinctly, with the
air of a connoisseur, circumstances betraying him to this tone.

“ As much as you like,” the Hofrat answered, swaggering out
of sheer self-consciousness. “ Landscape, still life, animals — chap
like me shrinks from nothing.”

“ No portraits? ”

“ I’ve even thrown in a portrait or so. Want to give me an
order? ”

HUMANIORA 255

“ Ha ha! No, but it would be very kind of you to show us your
pictures some time — we should enjoy it.”

Joachim looked blankly at his cousin, but then hastened to add
his assurances that it would be very kind indeed of the Hofrat.

Behrens was enchanted at the flattery. He grew red with pleas-
ure, his tears seemed this time actually on the point of falling.

“ With the greatest pleasure,” he cried. “ On the spot if you like.
Come on, come along with me, I’ll brew us a Turkish coffee in
my den.”

He pulled both young men from the bench and walked be-
tween them arm in arm, down the gravel path which led, as they
knew, to his private quarters in the north-west wing of the build-
ing-

“ I’ve dabbled a little in that sort of thing myself,” Hans Castorp
explained.

“ You don’t say! Gone in for it properly — oils? ”

“ Oh, no, I never went further than a water-colour or so. A
ship, a sea-piece, childish efforts. But I’m fond of painting, and so
I took the liberty — ”

Joachim in particular felt relieved and enlightened by this ex-
planation of his cousin’s startling curiosity; it was in fact more on
his account than on the Hofrat’s that Hans Castorp had offered it.
They reached the entrance, a much simpler one than the impres-
sive portal on the drive, with its flanking lanterns. A pair of curv-
ing steps led up to the oaken house door, which the Hofrat opened
with a latch-key from his heavy bunch. His hand trembled, he was
plainly in a nervous state. They entered an antechamber with
clothes-racks, where Behrens hung his bowler on a hook, and
thence passed into a short corridor, which was separated by a glass
door from that of the main building. On both sides of this corridor
lay the rooms of the small private dwelling. Behrens called a servant
and gave an order; then to a running accompaniment of whimsical
remarks ushered them through a door on the right.

They saw a couple of rooms furnished in banal middle-class
taste, facing the valley and opening one into another through a
doorway hung with portieres. One was an “ old-German ” din-
ing-room, the other a living- and working-room, with woollen
carpets, bookshelves and sofa, and a writing-table above which
hung a pair of crossed swords and a student’s cap. Beyond was a
Turkish smoking-cabinet. Everywhere were paintings, the work
of the Hofrat. The guests went up to them at once on entering,
courteously ready to praise. There were several portraits of his de-
parted wife, in oil; also, standing on the writing-table, photo-

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256

graphs of her. She was a thin, enigmatic blonde, portrayed in flow-
ing garments, with her hands, their finger-tips just lightly enlaced,
against her left shoulder, and her eyes either directed toward
heaven or else cast upon the ground, shaded by long, thick, ob-
liquely outstanding eyelashes. Never once was the departed one
shown looking directly ahead of her toward the observer. The
other pictures were chiefly mountain landscapes, mountains in
snow and mountains in summer green, mist-wreathed mountains,
mountains whose dry, sharp outline was cut out against a deep-blue
sky — these apparently under the influence of Segantini. Then
there were cowherds’ huts, and dewlapped cattle standing or lying
in sun-drenched high pastures. There was a plucked fowl, w ith its
long writhen neck hanging down from a table among a setting of
vegetables. There were flower-pieces, types of mountain peasantry,
and so on — all painted w r ith a certain brisk dilettantism, the colours
boldly dashed on to the canvas, and often looking as though they
had been squeezed on out of the tube. They must have taken a long
time to dry — but were sometimes effective by way of helping out
the other shortcomings.

They passed as they would along the walls of an exhibition, ac-
companied by the master of the house, who now and then gave a
name to some subject or other, but was chiefly silent, with the
proud embarrassment of the artist, tasting the enjoyment of look-
ing on his own works with the eyes of strangers. The portrait of
Clavdia Chauchat hung on the window wall of the living-room —
Hans Castorp spied it out with a quick glance as he entered, though
the likeness was but a distant one. Purposely he avoided the spot,
detaining his companions in the dining-room, where he affected to
admire a fresh green glimpse into the valley of the Serbi, with ice-
blue glaciers in the background. Next he passed of his own accord
into the Turkish cabinet, and looked at all it had to show, with
praises on his lips; thence back to the living-room, beginning with
the entrance wall, and calling upon Joachim to second his en-
comiums. But at last he turned, with a measured start, and said:

“ But surely that is a familiar face? ”

“ You recognize her? ” the Hofrat wanted to know.

“ It is not possible I am mistaken. The lady at the ‘ good ’ Rus-
sian table, with the French name — ”

“ Right! Chauchat. Glad you think it’s like her.”

“ Speaking,” Hans Castorp lied. He did so less from insincerity
than in the consciousness that, on the face of things, he ought not
to have been able to recognize her. Joachim could never have done
so — good Joachim, who saw the whole affair now in its true light,

HUMANIORA

257

after the false one Hans Castorp had first cast upon it; saw how the
wool had been pulled over his eyes; and with a murmured recog-
nition applied himself to help look at the painting. His cousin had
paid him out for not going into society after luncheon.

It was a bust-length, in half profile, rather under life-size, in a
wide, bevelled frame, black, with an inner beading of gilt. Neck
and bosom were bare or veiled with a soft drapery laid about the
shoulders. Frau Chauchat appeared ten years older than her age, as
often happens in amateur portraiture where the artist is bent on
making a character study. There was too much red all over the
face, the nose was badly out of drawing, the colour of the hair
badly hit off, too straw-colour; the mouth was distorted, the pecu-
liar charm of the features ungrasped or at least not brought out,
spoiled by the exaggeration of their single elements.The whole was
a rather botched performance, and only distantly related to its orig-
inal. But Hans Castorp was not particular about the degree of like-
ness, the relation of this canvas to Frau Chauchat’s person was close
enough for him. It purported to represent her, in these very rooms
she had sat for it, that was all he needed; much moved he reiterated:
“ The very image of her! ”

“ Oh, no,” the Hofrat demurred. “ It was a pretty clumsy piece
of work, I don’t flatter myself I hit her off very well, though we
had, I suppose, twenty sittings. What can you do with a rum sort
of face like that? You might think she would be easy to capture,
with those hyperborean cheek-bones, and eyes like cracks in a
loaf of bread. Yes, there’s something about her — if you get the
detail right, you botch the ensemble. Riddle of the sphinx. Do you
know her? It would probably be better to paint her from memory,
instead of having her sit. Did you say you knew her? ”

“ No; that is, only superficially, the way one knows people up
here.”

“ Well, I know her under her skin — subcutaneously, you see:
blood pressure, tissue tension, lymphatic circulation, all that sort
of thing. I’ve good reason to. It’s the superficies makes the diffi-
culty. Have you ever noticed her walk? She slinks. It’s character-
istic, shows in her face — take the eyes, for example, not to mention
the complexion, though that is tricky too. I don’t mean their
colour, I am speaking of the cut, and the way they sit in the face.
You’d say the eye slit was cut obliquely, but it only looks so. What
deceives you is the epicanthus, a racial variation, consisting in a sort
of ridge of integument that runs from the bridge of the nose to the
eyelid, and comes down over the inside comer of the eye. If you
take your finger and stretch the skin at the base of the nose, the

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258

eye looks as straight as any of ours. Quite a taking little dodge —
but as a matter of fact, the epicanthus can be traced back to an
atavistic vestige — it’s a developmental arrest.”

“ So that’s it.” Hans Castorp said. “ I never knew that — but I’ve
wondered for a long time what it is about eyes like that.”

“ Vanity,” said the Hofrat, “ and vexation of spirit. If you
simply draw them in slanting, you are lost. You must bring about
the obliquity the same way nature does, you must add illusion to
illusion — and for that you have to know about the epicanthus.
What a man knows always comes in handy. Now look at the skin
— the epidermis. Do you find I’ve managed to make it lifelike, or
not? ”

“ Enormously,” said Hans Castorp. “ Simply enormously. I’ve
never seen skin painted anything like so well. You can fairly see
the pores.” And he ran the edge of his hand lightly over the bare
neck and shoulders, the skin of which, especially by contrast with
the exaggerated red of the face, was very white, as though seldom
exposed. Whether this effect was premeditated or not, it was
rather suggestive.

And still Hans Castorp’s praise was deserved. The pale shim-
mer of this tender, though not emaciated, bosom, losing itself in
the bluish shadows of the drapery, was very like life. It was obvi-
ously painted with feeling; a sort of sweetness emanated from it,
yet the artist had been successful in giving it a scientific realism
and precision as well. The roughness of the canvas texture, show-
ing through the paint, had been dexterously employed to suggest
the natural unevennesses of the skin — this especially in the neigh-
bourhood of the delicate collar-bones. A tiny mole, at the point
where the breasts began to divide, had been done with care, and
on their rounding surfaces one thought to trace the delicate blue
veins. It was as though a scarcely perceptible shiver of sensibility
beneath the eye of the beholder were passing over this nude flesh,
as though one might see the perspiration, the invisible vapour
which the life beneath threw off; as though, were one to press
one’s lips upon this surface, one might perceive, not the smell of
paint and fixative, but the odour of the human body. Such, at least,
were Hans Castorp’s impressions, which we here reproduce — and
he, of course, was in a peculiarly susceptible state. But it is none
the less true that Frau Chauchat’s portrait was by far the most
telling piece of painting in the room.

Hofrat Behrens rocked back and forth on his heels and the balls
of his feet, his hands in this trouser pockets, as he gazed at his
work in company with the cousins.

HUMANIORA

259

“ Delighted,” he said. “ Delighted to find favour in the eyes of
a colleague. If a man knows a bit about what goes on under the
epidermis, that does no harm either. In other words, if he can paint
a little below the surface, and stands in another relation to nature
than just the lyrical, so to say. An artist who is a doctor, physi-
ologist, and anatomist on the side, and has his own little way of
thinking about the under sides of things — it all comes in handy
too, it gives you the pas, say what you like. That birthday suit
there is painted with science, it is organically correct, you can ex-
amine it under the microscope. You can see not only the horny
and mucous strata of the epidermis, but I’ve suggested the texture
of the corium underneath, with the oil- and sweat-glands, the
blood-vessels and tubercles — and then under that still the layer of
fat, the upholstering, you know, full of oil ducts, the underpinning
of the lovely female form. What is in your mind as you work
runs into your hand and has its influence — it isn’t really there, and
yet somehow or other it is, and that is what gives the lifelike effect.”

All this was fuel to Hans Castorp’s fire. His brow was flushed,
his eyes fairly sparkled, he had so much to say he knew not where
to begin. In the first place, he had it in mind to remove the picture
of Frau Chauchat from the window wall, where it hung somewhat
in shadow, and place it to better advantage; next, he was eager to
take up the Hofrat’s remarks about the constitution of the skin,
which had keenly interested him; and finally, he wanted to make
some remarks of his own, of a general and philosophical nature,
which interested him no less mightily.

Laying his hands upon the painting to unhook it, he eagerly be-
gan: “ Yes, yes indeed, that is all very important. What I’d like to
say is — I mean, you said, Herr Hofrat, if I understood rightly, you
said: ‘ In another relation.’ You said it was good when there was
some other relation besides the lyric — I think that was the word
you used — the artistic, that is; in short, when one looked at the
thing from another point of view — the medical, for example.
That’s all so enormously to the point, you know — I do beg your
pardon, Herr Hofrat, but what I mean is that it is so exactly and
precisely right, because after all it is not a question of any funda-
mentally different relations or points of view, but at bottom just
variations of one and the same, just shadings of it, so to speak, I
mean: variations of one and the same universal interest, the artistic
impulse itself being a part and a manifestation of it too, if I may say
so. Yes, if you will pardon me, I will take down this picture, there’s
positively no light here where it hangs, permit me to carry it over
to the sofa, we shall see if it won’t look entirely — what I meant to

z6o

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

say was: what is the main concern of the study of medicine? I
know nothing about it, of course — but after all isn’t its main con-
cern with human beings? And jurisprudence — making laws, pro-
nouncing judgment — its main concern is with human beings too.
And philology, which is nearly always bound up with the profes-
sion of pedagogy? And theology, with the care of souls, the office
of spiritual shepherd? All of them have to do with human beings,
all of them are degrees of one and the same important, the same
fundamental interest, the interest in humanity. In other words, they
are the humanistic callings, and if you go in for them you have to
study the ancient languages by way of foundation, for the sake of
formal training, as they say. Perhaps you are surprised at my talk-
ing about them like that, being only a practical man and on the
technical side. But I have been thinking about these questions
lately, in the rest-cure; and I find it wonderful, I find it a simply
priceless arrangement of things, that the formal, the idea of form,
of beautiful form, lies at the bottom of every sort of humanistic
calling. It gives it such nobility, I think, such a sort of disinterested-
ness, and feeling, too, and — and — courtliness — it makes a kind of
chivalrous adventure out of it. That is to say — I suppose I am ex-
pressing myself very ridiculously, but — you can see how the things
of the mind and the love of beauty come together, and that they
always really have been one and the same — in other words, science
and art; and that the calling of being an artist surely belongs with
the others, as a sort of fifth faculty, because it too is a humanistic
calling, a variety of humanistic interest, in so far as its most im-
portant theme or concern is with man — you will agree with me on
that point. When I experimented in that line in my youth, I nevei
painted anything but ships and water, of course. But notwithstand-
ing, in my eyes the most interesting branch of painting is and re-
mains portraiture, because it has man for its immediate object —
that was why I asked at once if you had done anything in that field.
— Wouldn’t this be a far more favourable place for it to hang? ”

Both of them, Behrens no less than Joachim, looked at him
amazed — was he not ashamed of this confused, impromptu ha-
rangue? But no, Hans Castorp was far too preoccupied to feel self-
conscious. He held the painting against the sofa wall, and demanded
to know if it did not get a much better light. Just then the servant
brought a tray, with hot water, a spirit-lamp, and coffee-cups.

Behrens motioned them into the cabinet, saying: “ Then you
must have been more interested in sculpture, originally, than in
painting, I should think. Yes, of course, it gets more light there; if
you think it can stand it. I should suppose so, because sculpture

HUMANIORA 26 1

concerns itself more purely and exclusively with the human form.
But we mustn’t let the water boil away.”

“ Quite right, sculpture,” Hans Castorp said, as they went. He
forgot either to hang up or put down the picture he had been hold-
ing, but tugged it with him into the neighbouring room. “ Cer-
tainly a Greek Venus or athlete is more humanistic, it is probably
at bottom the most humanistic of all the arts, when one comes to
think about it! ”

“ Well, as far as little Chauchat goes, she is a better subject for
painting than sculpture. Phidias, or that other chap with the Mo-
saic ending to his name, would have stuck up their noses at her style
of physiognomy. — Hullo, where are you going with the ham? ”
“ Pardon me, I’ll just lean it here against the leg of my chair,
that will do very well for the moment. The Greek sculptors did
not trouble themselves about the head and face, their interest was
more with the body, I suppose that was their humanism. — And
the plasticity of the female form — so that is fat, is it? ”

“ That is fat,” the Hofrat said concisely. He had opened a hang-
ing cabinet, and taken thence the requisites for his coffee-making:
a cylindrical Turkish mill, a long-handled pot, a double receptacle
for sugar and ground coffee, all in brass. “ Palmitin, stearin, olein,”
he went on, shaking the coffee berries from a tin box into the mill,
which he began to turn. “ You see I make it all myself, it tastes
twice as good. — Did you think it was ambrosia? ”

“ No, of course I knew. Only it sounds strange to hear it like
that,” Hans Castorp said.

They were seated in the corner between door and window, at a
bamboo tabouret which held an oriental brass tray, upon which
Behrens had set the coffee-machine, among the smoking utensils.
Joachim was next Behrens on the ottoman, overflowing with cush-
ions; Hans Castorp sat in a leather arm-chair on castors, against
which he had leaned Frau Chauchat’s picture. A gaily-coloured
carpet was beneath their feet. The Hofrat ladled coffee and sugar
into the long-handled pot, added water, and let the brew boil up
over the flame of the lamp. It foamed brownly in the little onion-
pattern cups, and proved on tasting both strong and sweet.

“ Your own as well,” Behrens said. “ Your ‘ plasticity ’ — so far
as you have any — is fat too, though of course not to the same ex-
tent as with a woman. With us fat is only about five per cent of the
body weight, in females it is one sixteenth of the whole. Without
that subcutaneous cell structure of ours, we should all be nothing
but fungoid growths. It disappears, with time, and then come the
unaesthetic wrinkles in the drapery. The layer is thickest on the fe-

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male breast and belly, on the front of the thighs, everywhere, in
short, where there is a little something for heart and hand to take
hold of. The soles of the feet are fat and ticklish.”

Hans Castorp turned the cylindrical coffee-mill about in his
hands. It w as, like the rest of the set, Indian or Persian rather than
Turkish; the style of the engraving showed that, with the bright
surface of the pattern standing out against the purposely dulled
background. He looked at the design, without immediately seeing
what it w as. When he did, he blushed unawares.

“ Yes, that is a set for single gentlemen,” Behrens said. “ I keep it
locked up, you see, my kitchen queen might hurt her eyes looking
at it. It w on’t do you gentlemen any harm, I take it. It was given
to me by a patient, an Egyptian princess who once honoured us
with a year or so of her presence. You see, the pattern repeats itself
on the w hole set. Pretty roguish, w hat? ”

“ Yes, it is quite unusual,” Hans Castorp answered. “ Ha ha! No,
it doesn’t trouble me. But one can take it perfectly seriously;
solemnly, in fact — only then it is rather out of place on a coffee-
machine. The ancients are said to have used such motifs on their
sarcophagi. The sacred and the obscene w^ere more or less the
same thing to them.”

“ I should say the princess was more for the second,” Behrens
said. “ Anyhow she still sends me the most wonderful cigarettes,
superfinissimos, you know, only sported on first-class occasions.”
He fetched the garish-coloured box from the cupboard and offered
them. Joachim drew his heels together as he received his cigarette.
Hans Castorp helped himself to his; it was unusually large and
thick, and had a gilt sphinx on it. He began to smoke — it was won-
derful, as Behrens had said.

“ Tell us some more about the skin,” he begged the Hofrat;
“ that is, if you will be so kind.” He had taken Frau Chauchat’s
portrait on his knee, and was gazing at it, leaning back in his chair,
the cigarette between his lips. “ Not about the fat-layer, we know
about that now. About the human skin in general, that you know
so well how to paint.”

“ About the skin. You are interested in physiology? ”

“ Very much. Yes, I’ve always felt a good deal of interest in it.
The human body — yes, I’ve always had an uncommon turn for it.
I’ve sometimes asked myself whether I ought not to have been a
physician — it wouldn’t have been a bad idea, in a way. Because
if you are interested in the body, you must be interested in disease
— specially interested, isn’t that so? But it doesn’t signify, I might
have been such a lot of things — for example, a clergyman.”

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263

“ Indeed? ”

“ Yes, I’ve sometimes had the idea I should have been decidedly
in my element there.”

“ How did you come to be an engineer, then? ”

“ I just happened to — it was more or less outward circumstances
that decided the matter.”

“ Well, about the skin. What do you want to hear about your
sensory sheath? You know, don’t you, that it is your outside brain
— ontogenetically the same as that apparatus of the so-called higher
centres up there in your cranium? The central nervous system is
nothing but a modification of the outer skin-layer; among the
lower animals the distinction between central and peripheral
doesn’t exist, they smell and taste with their skin, it is the only
sensory organ they have. Must be rather nice — if you can put
yourself in their place. On the other hand, in such highly differen-
tiated forms of life as you and I are, the skin has fallen from its high
estate; it has to confine itself to feeling ticklish; that is to say, to
being simply a protective and registering apparatus — but devil-
ishly on the qui vive for anything that tries to come too close about
the body. It even puts out feelers — the body hairs, which are noth-
ing but hardened skin cells — and they get wind of the approach of
whatever it is, before the skin itself is touched. Just between our-
selves, it is quite possible that this protecting and defending func-
tion of the skin extends beyond the physical. Do you know what
makes you go red and pale? ”

“ Not very precisely.”

“ Well, neither do we, ‘ very preciselv,’ to be frank — at least, as
far as blushing is concerned. The situation is not quite clear; for the
dilatory muscles which are presumably set in action by the vaso-
motor nerves haven’t yet been demonstrated in relation to the
blood-vessels. How the cock really swells his comb, or any of the
other well-known instances come about, is still a mystery, par-
ticularly where it is a question of emotional influences in play. We
assume that a connexion subsists between the outer rind of the
cerebrum and the vascular centre in the medulla. Certain stimuli —
for instance, let us say, like your being powerfully embarrassed,
set up the connexion, and the nerves that control the blood-vessels
function toward the face, and they expand and fill, and you get a
face like a turkey-cock, all swelled up with blood so you can’t see
out of your eyes. On the other hand, suppose you are in suspense,
something is going to happen — it may be something tremendously
beautiful, for aught I care — the blood-vessels that feed the skin
contract, it gets pale and cold and sunken, you look like a dead

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264

man, with big, lead-coloured eye-sockets and a peaked nose. But
the Sympathicus makes your heart thump away like a good fellow.”

“ So that is how it happens,” Hans Castorp said.

“ Something like that. Those are reactions, you know. But it is
the nature of reactions and reflexes to have a reason for happening;
we are beginning to suspect, we physiologists, that the phenomena
accompanying emotion are really defence mechanisms, protective
reflexes of the system. Goose-flesh, now. Do you know how you
come to have goose-flesh? ”

“ Not very clearly either, Fm afraid.”

“ That is a little contrivance of the sebaceous glands, which se-
crete the fatty, albuminous substance that oils your skin and keeps
it supple, and pleasant to feel of. Not very appetizing, maybe, but
without it the skin would be all withered and cracked. Without
the cholesterin, it is hard to imagine touching the human skin at
all. These sebaceous glands have little erector-muscles that act upon
them, and when they do so, then you are like the lad when the
princess poured the pail of minnows over him. Your skin gets like
a file, ana if the stimulus is very powerful, the hair ducts are erected
too, the hair on your head bristles up and the little hairs on your
body, like quills upon the fretful porcupine — and you can say, like
the youth in the story, that now you know how to shiver and
shake.”

“ Oh,” said Hans Castorp, “ I know how already. I shiver rather
easily, on all sorts of provocation. Only what surprises me is that
the glands are erected for such different reasons. It gives one goose-
flesh to hear a slate-pencil run across a pane of glass; but when you
hear particularly beautiful music you suddenly find you have it
too, and when I was confirmed and took my first communion, I
had one shiver after another, it seemed as though the prickling and
stickling would never leave off. Imagine those little muscles acting
for such different reasons! ”

“ Oh,” Behrens said, “ tickling’s tickling. The body doesn’t give
a hang for the content of the stimulus. It may be minnows, it may
be the Holy Ghost, the sebaceous glands are erected just the same.”

Hans Castorp regarded the picture on his knee.

“ Herr Hofrat,” he said, “ I wanted to come back to something
you said a moment ago, about internal processes, lymphatic action,
and that sort of thing. Tell us about it — particularly about the
lymphatic system, it interests me tremendously.”

“ I believe you,” Behrens responded. “ The lymph is the most
refined, the most rarefied, the most intimate of the body juices. I
dare say you had an inkling of the fact in your mind when you

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265

asked. People talk about the blood, and the mysteries of its com-
position, and what an extraordinary fluid it is. But it is the lymph
that is the juice of juices, the very essence, you understand, ichor,
blood-milk, creme de la creme; as a matter of fact, after a fatty
diet it does look like milk.” And he went on, in his lively and
whimsical phraseology, to gratify Hans Castorp’s desire. And first
he characterized the blood, a serum composed of fat, albumen, iron,
sugar and salt, crimson as an opera-cloak, the product of respira-
tion and digestion, saturated with gases, laden with waste products,
which was pumped at 98.4° of heat from the heart through the
blood-vessels, and kept up metabolism and animal warmth through-
out the body — in other words, sweet life itself. But, he said, the
blood did not come into immediate contact with the body cells.
What happened was that the pressure at which it was pumped
caused a milky extract of it to sweat through the walls of the blood-
vessels, and so into the tissues, so that it filled every tiny interstice
and cranny, and caused the elastic cell-tissue to distend. This dis-
tension of the tissues, or turgor , pressed the lymph, after it had
nicely swilled out the cells and exchanged matter with them, into
the vasa lymphatica , the lymphatic vessels, and so back into the
blood again, at the rate of a litre and a half a day. He went on to
speak of the lymphatic tubes and absorbent vessels; described the
secretion of the breast milk, which collected lymph from legs,
abdomen, and breast, one arm, and one side of the head; described
the very delicately constructed filters called lymphatic glands
which were placed at certain points in the lymphatic system, in the
neck, the arm-pit, and the elbow- joint, the hollow under the knee,
and other soft and intimate parts of the body.

“ Swellings may occur in these places,” Behrens explained. “ In-
durations of the lymphatic glands, let us say, in the knee-pan or the
arm- joint, dropsical tumours here and there, and we base our diag-
nosis on them — they always have a reason, though not always a
very pretty one. Under such circumstances there is more than a
suspicion of tubercular congestion of the lymphatic vessels.”

Hans Castorp was silent a little space.

“ Yes,” he said, then, in a low voice, “ it is true, I might very
well have been a doctor. The flow of the breast milk — the lymph
of the legs — all that interests me very, very much. What is the
body? ” he rhapsodically burst forth. “ What is the flesh? What is
the physical being of man? What is he made of? Tell us this after-
noon, Herr Hofrat, tell us exactly, and once and for all, so that we
may know! ”

“ Of water,” answered Behrens. “ So you are interested in or-

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ganic chemistry too? The human body consists, much the larger
part of it, of water. No more and no less than water, and nothing
to get wrought up about. The solid parts are only twenty-five per
cent of the whole, and of that twenty are ordinary white of egg,
protein, if you want to use a handsomer word. Besides that, a little
fat and a little salt, that’s about all.”

“ But the white of egg — what is that? ”

“ Various primary substances: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxy-
gen, sulphur. Sometimes phosphorus. Your scientific curiosity is
running away with itself. Some albumens are in composition with
carbo-hydrates; that is to say, grape-sugar and starch. In old age
the flesh becomes tough, that is because the collagen increases in
the connective tissue — the lime, you know, the most important
constituent of the bones and cartilage. What else shall I tell you?
In the muscle plasma we have an albumen called fibrin; when death
occurs, it coagulates in the muscular tissue, and causes the rigor
mortis”

“ Right-oh, I see, the rigor mortis” Hans Castorp said blithely.
“ Very good, very good. And then comes the general analysis —
the anatomy of the grave.”

“ Yes, of course. But how well you put it! Yes, the movement
becomes general, you flow away, so to speak — remember all that
water! The remaining constituents are very unstable; without life,
they are resolved by putrefaction into simpler combinations, anor-
ganic.”

“ Dissolution, putrefaction,” said Hans Castorp. “ They are the
same thing as combustion: combination with oxygen — am I
right? ”

“ To a T. Oxidization.”

“ And life? ”

“ Oxidization too. The same. Yes, young man, life too is prin-
cipally oxidization of the cellular albumen, which gives us that
beautiful animal warmth, of which we sometimes have more than
we need. Tut, living consists in dying, no use mincing the matter
— wne destruction organique , as some Frenchman with his native
levity has called it. It smells like that, too. If we don’t think so,
our judgment is corrupted.”

“ And if one is interested in life, one must be particularly in-
terested in death, mustn’t one? ”

“ Oh, well, after all, there is some sort of difference. Life is life
which keeps the form through change of substance.”

“ Why should the form remain? ” said Hans Castorp,

RESEARCH 267

“ Why? Young man, what you are saying now sounds far from
humanistic.”

“ Form is folderol.”

“ Well, you are certainly in great form to-day — you’re regu-
larly kicking over the traces. But I must drop out now,” said the
Hofrat. “ I am beginning to feel melancholy,” and he laid his huge
hand over his eyes. “ I can feel it coming on. You see, I’ve drunk
coffee with you, and it tasted good to me, and all of a sudden it
comes over me that I am going to be melancholy. You gentlemen
must excuse me. It was an extra occasion, I enjoyed it no end — ”

The cousins had sprung up. They reproached themselves for
having taxed the Horrat’s patience so long. He made proper pro-
test. Hans Castorp hastened to carry Frau Chauchat’s portrait into
the next room and hang it once more on the wall. They did not
need to re-traverse the garden to arrive at their own quarters;
Behrens directed them through the building, and accompanied
them to the dividing glass door. In the mood that had come over
him so unexpectedly, his goggling eyes blinked, and the bone of
his neck stuck out, both more than ever; his upper lip, with the
clipped, one-sided moustache, had taken on a querulous expression.

As they went along the corridors Hans Castorp said to his
cousin: “ Confess that it was a good idea of mine.”

“ It was a change, at least,” responded Joachim. “ And you cer-
tainly took occasion to air your views on a good many subjects. It
was a bit complicated for me. It is high time now that we went
in to the rest-cure, we shall have at least twenty minutes before
tea. You probably think it is folderol to pay so much attention to
it, now you’ve taken to kicking over the traces. But you don’t need
it so much as I do, after all.”

Research

And now came on, as come it must, what Hans Castorp had never
thought to experience: the winter of the place, the winter of these
high altitudes. Joachim knew it already: it had been in full blast
when he arrived the year before — but Hans Castorp rather
dreaded it, however well he felt himself equipped. Joachim sought
to reassure him.

“You must not imagine it grimmer than it is,” he said, “not
really arctic. You will feel the cold less on account of the dryness
of the air and the absence of wind. It’s the thing about the change
of temperature above the fog line; they’ve found out lately that it

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gets warmer in the upper reaches, something they did not know be-
fore. I should say it is actually colder when it rains. But you have
your sleeping-bag, and they turn on the heat when they absolutely
must.”

And in fact there could be no talk of violence or surprises; the
winter came mildly on, at first no different from many a day they
had seen in the height of summer. The wind had been two days in
the south, the sun bore down, the valley seemed shrunken, the side
walls at its mouth looked near and bald. Clouds came up, behind
Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn, and drove north-eastwards. It rained
heavily. Then the rain turned foul, a whitish-grey, mingled with
snow-flakes — soon it was all snow, the valley was full of flurry;
it kept on and on, the temperature fell appreciably, so that the fallen
snow could not quite melt, but lay covering the valley with a wet
and threadbare white garment, against which showed black the
pines on the slopes. In the dining-room the radiators were luke-
warm. That was at the beginning of November — All Souls’ —
and there was no novelty about it. In August it had been even so;
they had long left off regarding snow as a prerogative of winter.
White traces lingered after every storm in the crannies of the
rocky Rhatikon, the chain that seemed to guard the end of the
valley, and the distant monarchs to the south were always in snow.
But the storm and the fall in the temperature both continued. A
pale grey sky hung low over the valley; it seemed to dissolve in
flakes and fall soundlessly and ceaselessly, until one almost felt un-
easy. It turned colder by the hour. A morning came when the ther-
mometer in Hans Castorp’s room registered 44 0 , the next morning
it was only 40°. That was cold. It kept within bounds, but it per-
sisted. It had frozen at night; now it rroze in the day-time as well,
and all day long; and it snowed, with brief intervals, through the
fourth, the fifth, and the seventh days. The snow mounted apace,
it became a nuisance. Paths had been shovelled as far as the bench
by the watercourse, and on the drive down to the valley; but these
were so narrow that you could only walk single file, and if you met
anyone, you must step off the pavement and at once sink knee-
deep in snow. A stone-roller drawn by a horse, with a man at his
halter, rolled all day long up and down the streets of the cure, while
a yellow diligence on runners, looking like an old-fashioned post-
coach, plied between village and cure, with a snow-plough attached
in front, shovelling the white masses aside. The world, this narrow,
lofty, isolated world up here, looked now well wadded and uphol-
stered indeed: no pillar or post but wore its white cap; the steps
up to the entrance of the Berghof had turned into an inclined

RESEARCH

269

plane; heavy cushions/ in the drollest shapes, weighed down the
branches of the Scotch firs — now and then one slid off and raised
up a cloud of powdery white dust in its fall. Round about, the
heights lay smothered in snow; their lower regions rugged with the
evergreen growth, their upper parts, beyond the timber line, softly
covered up to their many-shaped summits. The air was dark, the
sun but a pallid apparition behind a veil. Yet a mild reflected bright-
ness came from the snow, a milky gleam whose light became both
landscape and human beings, even though these latter did show red
noses under their white or gaily-coloured woollen caps.

In the dining-room the onset of winter — the “ season ” of the
region — was the subject of conversation at all seven tables. Many
tourists and sportsmen were said to have arrived and taken up resi-
dence at the hotels in the Dorf and the Platz. The height of the
piled-up snow was estimated at two feet; its consistency was said
to be ideal for skiing. The bob-run, which led down from the
north-western slope of the Schatzalp into the valley, was zealously
worked on, it would be possible to open it in the next few days,
unless a thaw put out all calculations. Everyone looked forward
eagerly to the activities of these sound people down below — to the
sports and races, which it was forbidden to attend, but which num-
bers of the patients resolved 'to see, by cutting the rest-cure and
slipping out of the Berghof. Hans Castorp heard of a new sport
that had come from Scandinavia, “ ski-joring it consisted in races
in which the participants were drawn by horses while standing in
their skis. It was to see this that so many of the patients had re-
solved to slip out. — There was talk too of Christmas.

Christmas! Hans Castorp had never once thought of it. To be
sure, he had blithely said, and written, that he must spend the win-
ter up here with Joachim, because of what the doctors had dis-
covered to be the state of his health. But now he was startled to
realize that Christmas would be included in the programme — per-
haps because (and yet not entirely because) he had never spent the
Christmas season anywhere but in the bosom of the family. Well,
if he must he must; he would have to put up with it. He was no
longer a child; Joachim seemed not to mind, or else to have ad-
justed himself uncomplainingly to the prospect; and, after all, he
said to himself, think of all the places and all the conditions in
which Christmas has been celebrated before now!

Yet it did seem to him rather premature to begin thinking about
Christmas even before the Advent season, six weeks at least before
the holiday! True, such an interval was easily overleaped by the
guests in the dining-hall: it was a mental process in which Hans

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270

Castorp had already some facility, though he had not yet learned
to practise it in the grand style, as the older inhabitants did. Christ-
mas, like other holidays in the course of the year, served them for
a fulcrum, or a vaulting-pole, with which to leap over empty inter-
vening spaces. They all had fever, their metabolism was acceler-
ated, their bodily processes accentuated, keyed up — all this per-
haps accounted for the wholesale way they could put time behind
them. It would not have greatly surprised him to hear them dis-
count the Christmas holiday as well, and go on at once to speak of
the New Year and Carnival. But no — so capricious and unstable
as this they were not, in the Berghof dining-room. Christmas gave
them pause, it gave them even matter for concern and brain-rack-
ing. It was customary to present Hofrat Behrens with a gift on
Christmas eve, for which a collection was taken up among the
guests — and this gift was the subject of much deliberation. A meet-
ing was called. Last year, so the old inhabitants said, they had given
him a travelling-trunk; this time a new operating-table had been
considered, an easel, a fur coat, a rocking-chair, an inlaid ivory
stethoscope. Settembrini, asked for suggestions, proposed that they
give the Hofrat a newly projected encyclopaedic work called The
Sociology of Suffering; but he found only one person to agree with
him, a book-dealer who sat at Hermine Kleefeld’s table. In short,
no decision had been reached. There was difficulty about coming
to an agreement with the Russian guests; a divergence of views
arose. The Muscovites declared their preference for making an
independent gift. Frau Stohr went about for days quite outraged
on account of a loan of ten francs which she inadvisedly laid out
for Frau litis at the meeting, and which the latter had “ forgotten ”
to return. She “ forgot ” it. The shades of meaning Frau Stohr con-
trived to convey in this word were many and varied, but one and
all expressive of an entire disbelief in Frau Iltis’s lack of memory,
which, it appeared, had been proof against the hints and proddings
Frau Stohr freely admitted having administered. Several times she
declared she would resign herself, make Frau litis a present of the
sum. “ I’ll pay for both of us,” she said. “ Then my skirts will be
cleared! ” But in the end she hit upon another plan and communi-
cated it to her table-mates, to their great delight: she had the
“ management ” refund her the ten francs and insert it in Frau
Iltis’s weekly bill. Thus was the reluctant debtor outwitted, and at
least this phase of the matter settled.

It had stopped snowing, the sky began to clear. The blue-grey
cloud-masses parted to admit glimpses of the sun, whose rays gave
a bluish cast to the scene. Then it grew altogether fair; a bright

RESEARCH

271

hard frost and settled winter splendour reigned in the middle of
November. The arch of the loggia framed a glorious panorama of
snow-powdered forest, softly filled passes and ravines, white, sun-
lit valleys, and radiant blue heavens above all. In the evening, when
the almost full moon appeared, the world lay in enchanted splen-
dour, marvellous. Crystal and diamond it glittered far and wide,
the forest stood up very black and white, the quarter of the heavens
where the moon was not showed deeply dark, embroidered with
stars. On the flashing surface of the snow, shadows, so strong, so
sharp and clearly outlined that they seemed almost more real than
the objects themselves, fell from houses, trees, and telegraph-poles.
An hour or so after sunset there would be some fourteen degrees
of frost. The world seemed spellbound in icy purity, its earthly
blemishes veiled; it lay fixed in a deathlike, enchanted trance.

Hans Castorp stopped until far into the night in his balcony
above the ensorcelled winter scene — much longer than Joachim,
who retired at ten or a little later. His excellent chair, with the
sectional mattress and the neck-roll, he pulled close to the snow-
cushioned balustrade; at his hand was the white table with the
lighted reading-lamp, a stack of books, and a glass of creamy milk,
the “ evening milk ” which was brought to each of the guests’
rooms at nine o’clock. Hans Castorp put a dash of cognac in his, to
make it more palatable. Already he had availed himself of all his
means of protection against the cold, the entire outfit: lay en-
sconced well up to his chest in the buttoned-up sleeping-sack he
had acquired in one of the well-furnished shops in the Platz, with
the two camel’s-hair rugs folded over it in accordance with the
ritual. He wore his winter suit, with a short fur jacket atop, a
woollen cap, felt boots, and heavily lined gloves, which, however,
could not prevent the stiffening of his fingers.

What held him so late — often until midnight and beyond, long
after the “ bad ” Russian pair had left their loge — was partly the
magic of the winter night, into which, until eleven, were woven
the mounting strains of music from near and far. But even more it
was inertia and excitement, both of these at once, and in combina-
tion: bodily inertia, the physical fatigue which hated any idea of
moving; and mental excitement, the busy preoccupation of his
thoughts with certain new and fascinating studies upon which the
young man had embarked, and which left his brain no rest. The
weather affected him, his organism was stimulated by the cold; he
ate enormously, attacking the mighty Berghof meals, where the
roast goose followed upon the roast beef, with the usual Berghof
appetite, which was always even larger in winter than in summer.

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272

At the same time he had a perpetual craving for sleep; in the day-
time, as well as on the moonlit evenings, he would drop off over
his books, and then, after a few minutes’ unconsciousness, betake
himself again to research. Talk fatigued him. He was more in-
clined than had been his habit to rapid, unrestrained, even reckless
speech; but if he talked with Joachim, as they went on their snowy
walks, he was liable to be overtaken by giddiness and trembling*
would feel dazed and tipsy, and the blood would mount to his head.
His curve had gone up since the oncoming of winter, and Hofrat
Behrens had let fall something about injections; these were usually
given in cases of obstinate high temperature, and Joachim and at
least two-thirds of the guests had them. But he himself felt sure that
the increase in his bodilv heat had to do with the mental activity
and excitation which kept him in his chair on the balcony until
deep into the glittering, frosty night. The reading which held him
so late suggested such an explanation to his mind.

No little reading was done, in the rest-halls and private loggias
of the International Sanatorium Berghof ; largely, however, by the
new-comers and “ short-timers,” for the patients of many months’
or years’ standing had long learned to kill time without mental
effort or means of distraction, by dint of a certain inner virtuosity
they came to possess. They even considered it beginners’ awkward-
ness to glue yourself to a book. It was enough to have one lying in
your lap or on your little table, in case of need. The collection of
the establishment was an amplification of the literature found in a
dentist’s waiting-room — in many languages, profusely illustrated,
and offered free of charge. The guests exchanged volumes from
the loan-library down in the Platz; now and again there would be
a book for which everybody scrambled, even the condescending
old inhabitants reaching out their hands with ill-concealed eager-
ness. At the moment it was a cheap paper-backed volume, intro-
duced by Herr Albin, and entitled The Art of Seduction: a very
literal translation from the French, preserving even the syntax of
that language, and thus gaining in elegance and pungency of pres-
entation. In matter it was an exposition of the philosophy of sen-
sual passion, developed in a spirit of debonair and man-of-the-
worldly paganism. Frau Stohr had read it early, and pronounced it
simply ravishing. Frau Magnus, the same who had lost her albu-
men tolerance, agreed unreservedly. Her husband the brewer pur-
ported to have profited personally by a perusal, but regretted that
his wife should have taken up that sort of thing, because such read-
ing spoiled the women and gave them immodest ideas. His remarks
not a little increased the circulation of the volume. Two ladies of

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the lower rest-hall, Frau Redisch, the wife of a Polish industrial
magnate, and Frau Hessenfeld, a widow from Berlin, both of these
new arrivals since October, claimed the book at the same time, and
a regrettable incident arose after dinner, yes, more than regrettable,
for there was a violent scene, overheard by Hans Castorp, in his
loggia above. It ended in spasms of hysteria on the part of one of
the women — it might have been Frau Redisch, but equally well it
might have been Frau Hessenfeld — and she was borne away be-
side herself to her own room. The youth of the place had got hold
of the treatise before those of riper years; studying it in part in
groups, after supper, in their various rooms. Hans Castorp himself
saw the youth with the finger-nail hand it to Franzchen Oberdank
in the dining-room — she was a new arrival and a light case, a flaxen-
haired young thing whose mother had just brought her to the
sanatorium.

There may have been exceptions; there may have been those
who employed the hours of the rest-cure with some serious in-
tellectual occupation, some conceivably profitable study, either by
way of keeping in touch with life in the lowlands, or in o^der to
give weight and depth to the passing hour, that it might not be
pure time and nothing else besides. Perhaps here and there was one

— not, of course, to mention Herr Settembrini, with his zeal for
■eliminating human suffering, or Joachim with his Russian primer

— yes, there might be one, or two, thus occupied; if not among
the guests in the dining-room, which seemed not very likely, then
among the bedridden and moribund. Hans Castorp inclined to be-
lieve it. He himself, after imbibing all that Ocean Steamships had
to offer him, had ordered certain books from home, some of them
bearing on his profession, and they had arrived with his winter
clothing: scientific engineering, technique of ship-building, and the
like. But these volumes lay now neglected in favour of other text-
books belonging to quite a different field, an interest in which had
seized upon the young man: anatomy, physiology, biology, works
in German, French and English, sent up to the Berghof by the
book-dealer in the village, obviously because Hans Castorp had
ordered them, as was indeed the case. He had done so of his own
motion, without telling anyone, on a solitary walk he took down
to the Platz while Joachim was occupied with the weekly weigh-
ing or injection. His cousin was surprised when he saw the books
in Hans Castorp’s hands. They were expensive, as scientific works
always are: the prices were marked on the wrappers and inside
the front covers. Joachim asked why, if his cousin wanted to read
such books, he had not borrowed them of the Hofrat, who surely

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274

possessed a well-chosen stock. The young man answered that it
was quite a different thing to read when the book was one’s own;
for his part, he loved to mark them and underline passages in pencil.
Joachim could hear, hours on end, the noise made by the paper-
knife going through the uncut leaves.

The volumes were heavy, unhandy. Hans Castorp propped them
against his chest or stomach as he lay; they were heavy, but he
did not mind. Lying there, his mouth half open, he let his eye glide
down the learned page, upon which fell the light from his red-
shaded lamp, though he might have read, if need were, by the bril-
liance of the moonlight alone. He read, following the lines down
the page with his head, until at the bottom his chin lay sunk upon
his breast — and in this position the reader would pause perhaps
for reflection, dozing a little or musing in half-slumber, before
lifting his eyes to the next page. He probed profoundly. While
the moon took its appointed way above the crystalline splendours
of the mountain valley, he read of organized matter, of the proper-
ties of protoplasm, that sensitive substance maintaining itself in
extraordinary fluctuation between building up and breaking down;
of form developing out of rudimentary, but always present, pri-
mordia; read with compelling interest of life, and its sacred, im-
pure mysteries.

What was life? No one knew. It was undoubtedly aware of it-
self, so soon as it -was life; but it did not know what it was. Con-
sciousness, as exhibited by susceptibility to stimulus, was undoubt-
edly, to a certain degree, present in the lowest, most undeveloped
stages of life; it was impossible to fix the first appearance of con-
scious processes at any point in the history of the individual or
the race; impossible to make consciousness contingent upon, say,
the presence of a nervous system. The lowest animal forms had no
nervous systems, still less a cerebrum; yet no one would venture to
deny them the capacity for responding to stimuli. One could sus-
pend life; not merely particular sense-organs, not only nervous
reactions, but life itself. One could temporarily suspend the irrita-
bility to sensation of every form of living matter in the plant as
well as in the animal kingdom; one could narcotize ova and sperma-
tozoa with chloroform, chloral hydrate, or morphine. Conscious-
ness, then, was simply a function of matter organized into life; a
function that in higher manifestations turned upon its avatar and
became an effort to explore and explain the phenomenon it dis-
played— a hopeful-hopeless project of life to achieve self-knowl-
edge, nature in recoil — and vainly, in the event, since she cannot
be resolved in knowledge, nor life, when all is said, listen to itself.

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What was life? No one knew. No one knew the actual point
whence it sprang, where it kindled itself. Nothing in the domain
of life seemed uncausated, or insufficiently causated, from that
point on; but life itself seemed without antecedent. If there was
anything that might be said about it, it was this: it must be so highly
developed, structurally, that nothing even distantly related to it
was present in the inorganic world. Between the protean amoeba
and the vertebrate the difference was slight, unessential, as com-
pared to that between the simplest living organism and that nature
which did not even deserve to be called dead, because it was in-
organic. For death was only the logical negation of life; but be-
tween life and inanimate nature yawned a gulf which research
strove in vain to bridge. They tried to close it with hypotheses,
which it swallowed down without becoming any the less deep or
broad. Seeking for a connecting link, they had condescended to the
preposterous assumption of structureless living matter, unorgan-
ized organisms, which darted together of themselves in the albu-
men solution, like crystals in the mother-liquor; yet organic dif-
ferentiation still remained at once condition and expression of all
life. One could point to no form of life that did not owe its exist-
ence to procreation by parents. They had fished the primeval slime
out of the depth of the sea, and great had been the jubilation — but
the end of it all had been shame and confusion. For it turned out
that they had mistaken a precipitate of sulphate of lime for proto-
plasm. But then, to avoid giving pause before a miracle — for life
that built itself up out of, and fell in decay into, the same sort of
matter as inorganic nature, would have been, happening of itself,
miraculous — they were driven to believe in a spontaneous genera-
tion — that is, in the emergence of the organic from the inorganic
— which was just as much of a miracle. Thus they went on, devis-
ing intermediate stages and transitions, assuming the existence of
organisms which stood lower down than any yet known, but them-
selves had as forerunners still more primitive efforts of nature to
achieve life: primitive forms of which no one would ever catch
sight, for they were all of less than microscopic size, and previous
to whose hypothetic existence the synthesis of protein compounds
must already have taken place.

What then was life? It was warmth, the warmth generated by
a form-preserving instability, a fever of matter, which accom-
panied the process of ceaseless decay and repair of albumen mole-
cules that were too impossibly complicated, too impossibly ingen-
ious in structure. It was the existence of the actually impossible-to-
exist, of a half-sweet, half-painful balancing, or scarcely balancing,

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276

in this restricted and feverish process of decay and renewal,
upon the point of existence. It was not matter and it was not spirit,
but something between the two, a phenomenon conveyed by mat-
ter, like the rainbow on the waterfall, and like the flame. Yet why
not material — it was sentient to the point of desire and disgust,
the shamelessness of matter become sensible of itself, the inconti-
nent form of being. It was a secret and ardent stirring in the frozen
chastity of the universal; it was a stolen and voluptuous impurity
of sucking and secreting; an exhalation of carbonic acid gas and ma-
terial impurities of mysterious origin and composition. It was a pul-
lulation, an unfolding, a form-building (made possible by the over-
balancing of its instability, yet controlled by the laws of growth
inherent within it), of something brewed out of water, albumen,
salt and fats, which was called flesh, and which became form,
beauty, a lofty image, and yet all the time the essence of sensuality
and desire. For this form and beauty were not spirit-borne; nor,
like the form and beauty of sculpture, conveyed by a neutral and
spirit-consumed substance, which could in all purity make beauty
perceptible to the senses. Rather was it conveyed and shaped by
the somehow awakened voluptuousness of matter, of the organic,
dying-living substance itself, the reeking flesh.

As he lay there above the glittering valley, lapped in the bodily
warmth preserved to him by fur and wool, in the frosty night
illumined by the brilliance from a lifeless star, the image of life
displayed itself to young Hans Castorp. It hovered before him,
somewhere in space, remote from his grasp, yet near his sense; this
body, this opaquely whitish form, giving out exhalations, moist,
clammy; the skin with all its blemishes and native impurities, with
its spots, pimples, discolorations, irregularities; its homy, scalelike
regions, covered over by soft streams and whorls of rudimentary
lanugo. It leaned there, set off against the cold lifelessness of the
inanimate world, in its own vaporous sphere, relaxed, the head
crowned with something cool, homy, and pigmented, which was
an outgrowth of its skin; the hands clasped at the back of the neck.
It looked down at him beneath drooping lids, out of eyes made to
appear slanting by a racial variation in the lid-formation. Its lips
were half open, even a little curled. It rested its weight on one
leg, the hip-bone stood out sharply under the flesh, while the other,
relaxed, nestled its slightly bent knee against the inside of the sup-
porting leg, and poised the foot only upon the toes. It leaned thus,
turning to smile, the gleaming elbows akimbo, in the paired sym-
metry of its limbs and trunk. The acrid, steaming shadows of the
arm-pits corresponded in a mystic triangle to the pubic dark-

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277

ness, just as the eyes did to the red, epithelial mouth-opening, and
the red blossoms of the breast to the navel lying perpendicularly
below. Under the impulsion of a central organ and of the motor
nerves originating in the spinal marrow, chest and abdomen func-
tioned, the peritoneal cavity expanded and contracted, the breath,
warmed and moistened by the mucous membrane of the respira-
tory canal, saturated with secretions, streamed out between the
lips, after it had joined its oxygen to the haemoglobin of the blood
in the air-cells of the lungs. For Hans Castorp understood that this
living body, in the mysterious symmetry of its blood-nourished
structure, penetrated throughout by nerves, veins, arteries, and
capillaries; with its inner framework of bones — marrow-filled
tubular bones, blade-bones, vertebrae — which with the addition
of lime had developed out of the original gelatinous tissue and
grown strong enough to support the body weight; with the cap-
sules and well-oiled cavities, ligaments and cartilages of its joints, its
more than two hundred muscles, its central organs that served for
nutrition and respiration, for registering and transmitting stimuli,
its protective membranes, serous cavities, its glands rich in secre-
tions; with the system of vessels and fissures of its highly compli-
cated interior surface, communicating through the body-openings
with the outer world — he understood that this ego was a living unit
of a very high order, remote indeed from those very simple forms
of life which breathed, took in nourishment, even thought, with
the entire surface of their bodies. He knew it was built up out of
myriads of such small organisms, which had had their origin in a
single one; which had multiplied by recurrent division, adapted
themselves to the most varied uses and functions, separated, dif-
ferentiated themselves, thrown out forms which were the condition
and result of their growth.

This body, then, which hovered before him, this individual and
living I, was a monstrous multiplicity of breathing and self-
nourishing individuals, which, through organic conformation and
adaptation to special ends, had parted to such an extent with their
essential individuality, their freedom and living immediacy, had
so much become anatomic elements that the functions of some had
become limited to sensibility toward light, sound, contact, warmth;
others only understood how to change their shape or produce di-
gestive secretions through contraction; others, again, were de-
veloped and functional to no other end than protection, support,
the conveyance of the body juices, or reproduction. There were
modifications of this organic plurality united to form the higher
ego: cases where the multitude of subordinate entities were only

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278

grouped in a loose and doubtful way to form a higher living unit.
The student buried himself in the phenomenon of cell colonies;
he read about half-organisms, algae, whose single cells, enveloped in
a mantle of gelatine, often lay apart from one another, yet were
multiple-cell formations, which, if they had been asked, would
not have known whether to be rated as a settlement of single-celled
individuals, or as an individual single unit, and, in bearing witness,
would have vacillated quaintly between the I and the we. Nature
here presented a middle stage, between the highly social union of
countless elementary individuals to form the tissues and organs of
a superior I, and the free individual existence of these simpler
forms; the multiple-celled organism was only a stage in the cyclic
process, which was the course of life itself, a periodic revolution
from procreation to procreation. The act of fructification, the
sexual merging of two cell-bodies, stood at the beginning of the
upbuilding of every multiple-celled individual, as it did at the
beginning of every row of generations of single elementary forms,
and led back to itself. For this act was carried through many spe-
cies which had no need of it to multiply by means of proliferation;
until a moment came when the non-sexually produced offspring
found themselves once more constrained to a renewal of the copu-
lative function, and the circle came full. Such was the multiple
state of life, sprung from the union of two parent cells, the asso-
ciation of many non-sexually originated generations of cell units;
its growth meant their increase, and the generative circle came
full again when sex-cells, specially developed elements for the pur-
pose of reproduction, had established themselves and found the
way to a new mingling that drove life on afresh.

Our young adventurer, supporting a volume of embryology
on the pit of his stomach, followed the development of the or-
ganism from the moment when the spermatozoon, first among
a host of its fellows, forced itself forward by a lashing motion
of its hinder part, struck with its forepart against the gelatine
mantle of the egg, and bored its way into the mount of concep-
tion, which the protoplasm of the outside of the ovum arched
against its approach. There was no conceivable trick or absurdity
it would not have pleased nature to commit by way of variation
upon this fixed procedure. In some animals, the male was a para-
site in the intestine of the female. In others, the male parent
reached with his arm down the gullet of the female to deposit the
semen within her; after which, bitten off and spat out, it ran away
by itself upon its fingers, to the confusion of scientists, who fol
long had given it Greek and Latin names as an independent form

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279

of life. Hans Castorp lent an ear to the learned strife between
ovists and animalculists: the first of whom asserted that the egg
was in itself the complete little frog, dog, or human being, the male
element being only the incitement to its growth; while the sec-
ond saw in a spermatozoon, possessing head, arms, and legs, the
perfected form of life shadowed forth, to which the egg performed
only the office of “ nourisher in life’s feast.” In the end they agreed
to concede equal meritoriousness to ovum and semen, both of
which, after all, sprang from originally indistinguishable procre-
ative cells. He saw the single-celled organism of the fructified egg
on the point of being transformed into a multiple-celled organism,
by striation and division; saw the cell-bodies attach themselves to
the lamellae of the mucous membrane; saw the germinal vesicle,
the blastula, close itself in to form a cup or basin-shaped cavity,
and begin the functions of receiving and digesting food. That was
the gastrula, the protozoon, primeval form of all animal life, pri-
meval form of flesh-borne beauty. Its two epithelia, the outer and
the inner, the ectoderm and the entoderm, proved to be primitive
organs out of whose foldings-in and -out, were developed the
glands, the tissues, the sensory organs, the body processes. A strip
of the outer germinal layer, the ectoderm, thickened, folded into a
groove, closed itself into a nerve canal, became a spinal column,
became the brain. And as the foetal slime condensed into fibrous
connective tissue, into cartilage, the colloidal cells beginning to
show gelatinous substance instead of mucin, he saw in certain
places the connective tissue take lime and fat to itself out of the
sera that washed it, and begin to form bone. Embryonic man
squatted in a stooping posture, tailed, indistinguishable from em-
bryonic pig; with enormous abdomen and stumpy, formless ex-
tremities, the facial mask bowed over the swollen paunch; the
story of his growth seemed a grim, unflattering science, like the
cursory record of a zoological family tree. For a while he had gill-
pockets like a roach. It seemed permissible, or rather unavoidable,
contemplating the various stages of development through which
he passed, to infer the very little humanistic aspect presented by
primitive man in his mature state. His skin was furnished with
twitching muscles to keep off insects; it was thickly covered with
hair; there was a tremendous development of the mucous mem-
brane of the olfactory organs; his ears protruded, were movable,
took a lively part in the play of the features, and were much better
adapted than ours for catching sounds. His eyes were protected
by a third, nictating lid; they were placed sidewise, excepting the
third, of which the pineal gland was the rudimentary trace, and

28 o

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

which was able, looking upwards, to guard him from dangers from
the upper air. Primitive man had a very long intestine, many
molars, and sound-pouches on the lamyx the better to roar
with, also he carried his sex-glands on the inside of the intestinal
cavity.

Anatomy presented our investigator with charts of human limbs,
skinned and prepared for his inspection; he saw their superficial
and their buried muscles, sinews, and tendons: those of the thighs,
the foot, and especially of the arm, the upper and the forearm.
He learned the Latin names with which medicine, that subdivision
of the humanities, had gallantly equipped them. He passed on to
the skeleton, the development of which presented new points of
view — among them a clear perception of the essential unity of all
that pertains to man, the correlation of all branches of learning.
For here, strangely enough, he found himself reminded of his own
field — or shall we say his former field? — the scientific calling
which he had announced himself as having embraced, introducing
himself thus to Dr. Krokowski and Herr Settembrini on his ar-
rival up here. In order to learn something — it had not much mat-
tered what — he had learned in his technical school about statics,
about supports capable of flexion, about loads, about construction
as the advantageous utilization of mechanical material. It would of
course be childish to think that the science of engineering, the
rules of mechanics, had found application to organic nature;
but just as little might one say that they had been derived from
organic nature. It was simply that the mechanical laws found
themselves repeated and corroborated in nature. The principle
of the hollow cylinder was illustrated in the structure of the
tubular bones, in such a way that the static demands were satis-
fied with the precise minimum of solid structure. Hans Castorp
had learned that a body which is put together out of staves and
bands of mechanically utilizable matter, conformably to the de-
mands made by draught and pressure upon it, can withstand the
same weight as a solid column of the same material. Thus in the
development of the tubular bones, it was comprehensible that,
step for step with the formation of the solid exterior, the inner
parts, which were mechanically superfluous, changed to a fatty
tissue, the marrow. The thigh-bone was a crane, in the construction
of which organic nature, by the direction she had given the shaft,
carried out, to a hair, the same draught- and pressure-curves which
Hans Castorp had had to plot in drawing an instrument serving a
similar purpose. He contemplated this fact with pleasure; he en-
joyed the reflection that his relation to the femur, or to organic

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28l

nature generally was now threefold: it was lyrical, it was medical,
it was technological; and all of these, he felt, were one in being
human, they were variations of one and the same pressing human
concern, they were schools of humanistic thought.

But with all this the achievements of the protoplasm remained
unaccountable: it seemed forbidden to life that it should under-
stand itself. Most of the bio-chemical processes were not only
unknown, it lay in their very nature that they should escape at-
tention. Almost nothing was known of the structure or composi-
tion of the living unit called the “ cell. ,, What use was there in
establishing the components of lifeless muscle, when the living
did not let itself be chemically examined? The changes that took
place when the rigor mortis set in were enough to make worthless
all investigation. Nobody understood metabolism, nobody under-
stood the true inwardness of the functioning of the nervous sys-
tem. To what properties did the taste corpuscles owe their
reaction? In what consisted the various kinds of excitation of cer-
tain sensory nerves by odour-possessing substances? In what, in-
deed, the property of smell itself? The specific odours of man and
beast consisted in the vaporization of certain unknown substances.
The composition of the secretion called sweat was little under-
stood. The glands that secreted it produced aromata which among
mammals undoubtedly played an important role, but whose sig-
nificance for the human species we were not in a position to ex-

E lain. The physiological significance of important regions of the
ody was shrouded in darkness. No need to mention the vermi-
form appendix, which was a mystery; in rabbits it was regularly
found full of a pulpy substance, of which there was nothing to
say as to how it got in or renewed itself. But what about the white
and grey substance which composed the medulla, what of the
optic thalamus and the grey inlay of the pons Varolii? The sub-
stance composing the brain and marrow was so subject to dis-
integration, there was no hope whatever of determining its struc-
ture. What was it relieved the cortex of activity during slumber?
What prevented the stomach from digesting itself — as sometimes,
in fact, did happen after death? One might answer, life: a special
power of resistance of the living protoplasm; but this would be
not to recognize the mystical character of such an explanation.
The theory of such an everyday phenomenon as fever was full
of contradictions. Heightened oxidization resulted in increased
warmth, but why was there not an increased expenditure of
warmth to correspond? Did the paralysis of the sweat-secretions
depend upon contraction of the skin? But such contraction took

282

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

place only in the case of “ chills and fever,” for otherwise, in fever,
the skin was more likely to be hot. Prickly heat indicated the
central nervous system as the seat of the causes of heightened
catabolism as well as the source of that condition of the skin which
we were content to call abnormal, because we did not know how
to define it.

But what was all this ignorance, compared with our utter help-
lessness in the presence of such a phenomenon as memory, or of
that other more prolonged and astounding memory which we
called the inheritance of acquired characteristics? Out of the
question to get even a glimpse of any mechanical possibility of
explication of such performances on the part of the cell-substance.
The spermatozoon that conveyed to the egg countless complicated
individual and racial characteristics of the father was visible only
through a microscope; even the most powerful magnification was
not enough to show it as other than a homogeneous body, or to
determine its origin; it looked the same in one animal as in another.
These factors forced one to the assumption that the cell was in
the same case as with the higher form it went to build up: that
it too was already a higher form, composed in its turn by the
division of living bodies, individual living units. Thus one passed
from the supposed smallest unit to a still smaller one; one was
driven to separate the elementary into its elements. No doubt at
all but just as the animal kingdom was composed of various species
of animals, as the human-animal organism was composed of a
whole animal kingdom of cell species, so the cell organism was
composed of a new and varied animal kingdom of elementary units,
far below microscopic size, which grew spontaneously, increased
spontaneously according to the law that each could bring forth
only after its kind, and, acting on the principle of a division of
labour, served together the next higher order of existence.

Those were the genes, the living germs, bioblasts, biophores
— lying there in the frosty night, Hans Castorp rejoiced to make
acquaintance with them by name. Yet how, he asked himself ex-
citedly, even after more light on the subject was forthcoming,
how could their elementary nature be established? If they were
living, they must be organic, since life depended upon organiza-
tion. But if they were organized, then they could not be ele-
mentary, since an organism is not single but multiple. They were
units within the organic unit of the cell they built up. But if they
were, then, however impossibly small they were, they must them-
selves be built up, organically built up, as a law of their existence;
for the conception of a living unit meant by definition that it was

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built up out of smaller units which were subordinate; that is,
organized with reference to a higher form. As long as division
yielded organic units possessing the properties of life — assimila-
tion and reproduction — no limits were set to it. As long as one
spoke of living units, one could not correctly speak of elementary
units, for the concept of unity carried with it in perpetuity the
concept of subordinated, upbuilding unity; and there was no such
thing as elementary life, in the sense of something that was already
life, and yet elementary.

And still, though without logical existence, something of the
kind must be eventually the case; for it was not possible to brush
aside like that the idea of the original procreation, the rise of life
out of what was not life. That gap which in exterior nature we
vainly sought to close, that between living and dead matter, had
its counterpart in nature's organic existence, and must somehow
either be closed up or bridged over. Soon or late, division must
yield “ units ” which, even though in composition, were not organ-
ized, and which mediated between life and absence of life; molec-
ular groups, which represented the transition between vitalized
organization and mere chemistry. But then, arrived at the mole-
cule, one stood on the brink of another abyss, which yawned yet
more mysteriously than that between organic and inorganic na-
ture: the gulf between the material and the immaterial. For the
molecule was composed of atoms, and the atom was nowhere near
large enough even to be spoken of as extraordinarily small. It was
so small, such a tiny, early, transitional mass, a coagulation of the
unsubstantial, of the not-yet-substantial and yet substance-like, of
energy, that it was scarcely possible yet — or, if it had been, was
now no longer possible — to think of it as material, but rather as
mean and border-line between material and immaterial. The prob-
lem of another original procreation arose, far more wild and mys-
terious than the organic: the primeval birth of matter out of the
immaterial. In fact the abyss between material and immaterial
yawned as widely, pressed as importunately — yes, more impor-
tunately — to be closed, as that between organic and inorganic
nature. There must be a chemistry of the immaterial, there must be
combinations of the insubstantial, out of which sprang the material
— the atoms might represent protozoa of material, by their nature
substance and still not yet quite substance. Yet arrived at the “ not
even small,” the measure slipped out of the hands; for “ not even
small ” meant much the same as “ enormously large ”; and the step
to the atom proved to be without exaggeration portentous in the
highest degree. For at the very moment when one had assisted at

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the final division of matter, when one had divided it into the im-
possibly small, at that moment there suddenly appeared upon the
horizon the astronomical cosmos!

The atom was a cosmic system, laden with energy; in which
heavenly bodies rioted rotating about a centre like a sun; through
whose ethereal space comets drove with the speed of light years,
kept in their eccentric orbits by the power of the central body.
And that was as little a mere comparison as it would be were one
to call the body of any multiple-celled organism a “ cell state.”
The city, the state, the social community regulated according to
the principle of division of labour, not only might be compared to
organic lire, it actually reproduced its conditions. Thus in the in-
most recesses of nature, as in an endless succession of mirrors, was
reflected the macrocosm of the heavens, whose clusters, throngs,
groups, and figures, paled by the brilliant moon, hung over the
dazzling, frost-bound valley, above the head of our muffled adept.
Was it too bold a thought that among the planets of the atomic
solar system — those myriads and milky ways of solar systems
which constituted matter — one or other of these inner-worldly
heavenly bodies might find itself in a condition corresponding to
that which made it possible for our earth to become the abode of
life? For a young man already rather befuddled inwardly, suffering
from abnormal skin-conditions, who was not without all and any
experience in the realm of the illicit, it was a speculation which, far
from being absurd, appeared so obvious as to leap to the eyes,
highly evident, and bearing the stamp of logical truth. The “ small-
ness ” of these inner-worldly heavenly bodies would have been an
objection irrelevant to the hypothesis; since the conception of large
or small had ceased to be pertinent at the moment when the cosmic
character of the “ smallest ” particle of matter had been revealed;
while at the same time, the conceptions of “ outside ” and “ inside ”
had also been shaken. The atom-world was an “ outside,” as, very
probably, the earthly star on which we dwelt was, organically re-
garded, deeply “ inside.” Had not a researcher once, audaciously
fanciful, referred to the “ beasts of the Milky Way,” cosmic mon-
sters whose flesh, bone, and brain were built up out of solar sys-
tems? But in that case, Hans Castorp mused, then in the moment
when one thought to have come to the end, it all began over again
from the beginning! For then, in the very innermost of his nature,
and in the inmost of that innermost, perhaps there was just himself,
just Hans Castorp, again and a hundred times Hans Castorp, with
burning face and stiffening fingers, lying muffled on a balcony,
with a view across the moonlit, frost-nighted high valley, and prob-

RESEARCH 285

ing,, with an interest both humanistic and medical, into the life of
the body!

He held a volume of pathological anatomy in the red ray from
his table-lamp, and conned its text and numerous reproductions.
He read of the existence of parasitic cell- juncture and of infec-
tious tumours. These were forms of tissue — and very luxuriant
forms too — produced by foreign cell-bodies in an organism which
had proved receptive to them, and in some way or other — one
must probably say perversely — had offered them peculiarly fa-
vourable conditions. It was not so much that the parasite took away
nourishment from the surrounding tissues, as that, in the process of
building up and breaking down which went on in it as in every
other cell, it produced organic combinations which were extraor-
dinarily toxic — undeniably destructive — to the cells where it had
been entertained. They had found out how to isolate the toxin from
a number of micro-organisms and produce it in concentrated form;
and it was amazing to see what small doses of this substance, which
simply belonged to a group of protein combinations, could, when
introduced into the circulation of an animal, produce symptoms
of acute poisoning and rapid degeneration. The outward sign of
this inward decay was a growth of tissue, the pathological tumour,
which was the reaction of the cells to the stimulus of the foreign
bacilli. Tubercles developed, the size of a millet-seed, composed
of cells resembling mucous membrane, among or within which the
bacilli lodged; some of these were extraordinarily rich in proto-
plasm, very large, and full of nuclei. However, all this good living
soon led to ruin; for the nuclei of these monster cells began to
break down, the protoplasm they contained to be destroyed by
coagulation, and further areas of tissue to be involved. They were
attacked by inflammation, the neighbouring blood-vessels suffered
by contagion. White blood-corpuscles were attracted to the seat
of the evil; the breaking-down proceeded apace; and meanwhile
the soluble toxins released by the bacteria had already poisoned the
nerve-centres, the entire organization was in a state of high fever,
and staggered — so to speak with heaving bosom — toward dissolu-
tion.

Thus far pathology, the theory of disease, the accentuation of
the physical through pain; yet, in so far as it was the accentuation
of the physical, at the same time accentuation through desire. Dis-
ease was a perverse, a dissolute form of life. And lire? Life itself?
Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that
which one might call the original procreation of matter only a
disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the imma-

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tcrial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was
taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in
the density or the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid
growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration;
this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defence, was the
primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to
the substance. This was the Fall. The second creation, the birth of
the organic out of the inorganic, was only another fatal stage in the
progress of the corporeal toward consciousness, just as disease
m the organism was an intoxication, a heightening and unlicensed
accentuation of its physical state; and life, life was nothing but the
next step on the reckless path of the spirit dishonoured; nothing
but the automatic blush of matter roused to sensation and become
receptive for that which awaked it.

The books lay piled upon the table, one lay on the matting next
his chair; that which he had latest read rested upon Hans Castorp’s
stomach and oppressed his breath; yet no order went from the
cortex to the muscles in charge to take it away. He had read down
the page, his chin had sunk upon his chest, over his innocent blue
eyes the lids had fallen. He beheld the image of life in flower, its
structure, its flesh-borne loveliness. She had lifted her hands from
behind her head, she opened her arms. On their inner side, par-
ticularly beneath the tender skin of the elbow-points, he saw the
blue branchings of the larger veins. These arms were of unspeak-
able sweetness. She leaned above him, she inclined unto him and
bent down over him, he was conscious of her organic fragrance and
the mild pulsation of her heart. Something warm and tender clasped
him round the neck; melted with desire and awe, he laid his hands
upon the flesh of her upper arms, where the fine-grained skin over
the triceps came to his sense so heavenly cool; and upon his lips
he felt the moist clinging of her kiss.

The Dance of Death

Not long after Christmas, the gentleman rider died. — But before
that event the Christmas holidays came and went, the two, or if you
reckoned Holy Night the three feast-days, to which Hans Castorp
had looked forward with some alarm and head-shaking dubiety, as
to what they would really be like, up here. In the event, they came
on and passed like other days, with a morning, an afternoon, and an
evening; only moderately unreasonable in respect of weather — it
thawed a little — and not greatly different from others of their kind.
Outwardly, they had been somewhat garnished and set off; in-

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287

wardly they had held sway in the heads and hearts of men for their
appointed time; then, leaving behind them some deposit of impres-
sions out of the common run, they slipped away into the recent,
then into the distant past.

The Hofrat’s son, Knut by name, came for the holidays and
lived with his father in the wing of the building; a good-looking
young man, save that his cervical vertebra was already too promi-
nent. The presence of young Behrens could be felt in the air: the
ladies showed a proneness to laugh, to bicker, and to adorn their
persons. They boasted in conversation of having met Knut in the
garden, the wood, or the English quarter. He himself had guests:
a number of his fellow students came up to the valley, six or seven
young men who lodged in the village but ate at the Hofrat’s table,
and with others of their corps scoured the region in a body. Hans
Castorp avoided them. He gave them a wide berth with Joachim
whenever necessary; he felt no least desire to meet them. A whole
world divided those up here from these singing, roving, staff-
brandishing youths — he wished neither to see nor to hear anything
of them. They looked, most of them, like northerners, there might
be Hamburgers among them; and Hans Castorp felt very shy of
meeting his fellow townsmen. He had often uncomfortably con-
sidered the possibility that somebody or other from home might
arrive at the Berghof — had not the Hofrat said that Hamburg al-
ways furnished a handsome contingent to the establishment? There
might be some among the bedridden and moribund; but the only
one visible was a hollow-cheeked business man, said to come from
Cuxhaven, who had been sitting for two weeks at Frau Iltis’s table.
Hans Castorp, seeing him, rejoiced in the knowledge that one came
little into touch with guests at other tables than one’s own; and
further, that his native sphere was an extended one. He saw that
the presence of the man from Cuxhaven made no difference to his
happiness, and this went far to relieve his fears about the arrival of
other Hamburgers.

Christmas eve came on apace, one day it was at hand, the next
it was here. When first it had been talked of at table — to Hans
Castorp’s great surprise — it had been yet a good six weeks away,
as much time as his original term up here, plus the three weeks in
bed. But those first six weeks, as he thought of them in retrospect,
seemed a very long time, while the six just passed had been insig-
nificant. His fellow-guests were right to make light of them. Six
weeks, why, that was not so many as the week had days; little in-
deed, when one considered what a small affair a week was, from
Monday to Sunday and then Monday again. One needed %nly to

288

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see how valueless the next smaller time-unit was to realize that not
much could come even of a whole row of them put together.
Rather the total effect was to intensify the process or contraction,
shrinkage, blurring, and effacement. What was one day, taken for
instance from the moment one sat down to the midday meal to the
same moment four-and-twenty hours afterwards? It was, to be
sure, four-and-twenty hours — but equally it was the simple sum
of nothings. Or take an hour spent in the rest-cure, at the dinner-
table, or on the daily walk — and these ways of employing the time-
unit practically exhausted its possibilities — what was an hour?
Again, nothing. And nothing were all these nothings, they were
not serious in the nature of them, taken together. The only unit
it was possible to regard with seriousness was the smallest one of
all: those seven times sixty seconds during which one held the ther-
mometer between one’s lips and continued one’s curve — they,
indeed, were full of matter and tenacious of life; they could ex-
pand into a little eternity; they formed small concretions of high
density within the scurrying shadows of time’s general course.

The holidays disturbed but little the even tenor of the Berghof
ways. A well-grown fir-tree had been set up a few days before-
hand on the right-hand wall of the dining-room, the side wall next
the “ bad ” Russian table; a waft of its fragrance came to the noses
of the diners now and then, above the heavy odours of the food,
and wakened something like pensiveness in the eyes of a few among
the guests seated at the seven tables. When they came to supper on
the twenty-fourth, they found the tree gaily decked with tinsel,
little glass balls, gilded pine-cones, tiny apples in nets, and varied
confections. The coloured wax tapers burned throughout the meal
and afterwards. And a tiny, taper-decked tree burned likewise, it
was said, in the rooms of the bedridden and moribund — each had
his own. The parcel post in the last few days had been very heavy.
Joachim Ziemssen and Hans Castorp received carefully packed
remembrances from their far-away home, and spread them out in
their rooms: judicious gifts of cravats and other articles of cloth-
ing, expensive trifles in leather and nickel, and quantities of Christ-
mas cakes, nuts, apples and marzipan — the cousins looked doubt-
fully at these last supplies, wondering whenever they should have
occasion to consume them. Schalleen, as Hans Castorp knew, had
not only packed his presents, but bought them, after consultation
with the uncles. There was a letter too from James Tienappel,
typescript to be sure, but upon heavy paper with his private letter-
head, communicating his own and his father’s best wishes for the
holidays and for a speedy recovery, and including at once greetings

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289

for the oncoming New Year as well — a sensible and practical pro-
cedure, which followed Hans Castorp’s own: he having sent his
Christmas messages betimes, under cover with the monthly clinical
report.

The tree in the dining-room burned, crackled, and dispensed
its fragrance, waking the minds and hearts of the guests to a realiza-
tion of the day. People had dressed for dinner, the men wore eve-
ning clothes and the women jewels, mayhap presents from loving
husbands down below. Clavdia Chauchat had exchanged the cus-
tomary sweater for a frock with a hint of the fanciful about it,
suggesting a national costume — Russian peasant, or Balkan, per-
haps Bulgarian; a light-coloured, flowing, and girdled arrangement,
embroidered, and set with tiny tinsel ornaments. Such a garment
gave her figure an unwonted softness and fullness, and suited what
Settembrini called her “ Tartar physiognomy,” particularly the
“ prairie-wolfs eyes.” They were gay at the “ good ” Russian table;
there the first champagne cork was heard to pop. It set the example,
which was followed by nearly all the others. At the cousins’ table it
was the great-aunt who dispensed champagne for her niece and
Marusja, and treated the others as well. The menu was choice. It
finished with cheese straws and bon-bons, to which the guests
added coffee and liqueurs. Now and then a twig would flare up on
the Christmas-tree; there would be work to put it out, and shrill,
immoderate panic among the ladies. Toward the end of the meal
Settembrini came to sit for a while at the end of the cousins’ table;
he wore his everyday clothes, and sported his toothpick. He
quizzed Frau Stohr with spirit, and made a few remarks about the
carpenter’s son and rabbi of humanity, whose birthday they fan-
cied they were celebrating to-day. Whether he had actually lived,
Settembrini said, was uncertain; yet his time had given birth to an
idea, which had continued its triumphant course even up to to-day:
the idea of the dignity of the human spirit, the idea or equality —
in a word, they were celebrating the birth of individualistic democ-
racy, and to it he would empty the glass they gave him. Frau
Stohr found his remarks equivoque and unfeeling: she rose under
protest to the toast, and as the other tables were being emptied,
they followed the general movement toward the drawing-rooms.

Hof rat Behrens, with Knut and Fraulein von Mylendonk, at-
tended the social evening for half an hour. The occasion was to
be signalized by the presentation of the gift to the head of the es-
tablishment, which accordingly took place, in the room with the
optical apparatus. The Russians presented their gift, a large round
silver plate, with the Hof rat’s monogram engraved in the middle;

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290

its utter inutility was plain to every eye. He might at least lie on
the chaise-longue which was the gift of the rest of the guests —
though it was at present without cover or cushions, having merely
a cloth drawn over it. The head end was adjustable; Behrens
stretched out full length, with his silver plate under his arm, closed
his eyes, and began to snore like a saw-mill, giving out that he was
Fafnir with the treasure hoard. Much laughter and applause en-
sued; Frau Chauchat laughed so hard that her eyes became two
cracks, and her mouth stood open — precisely, Hans Castorp re-
marked, as had been the case with Pribislav Hippe when he
laughed.

Directly the head went out, the guests sat down to cards, the
Russians occupying, as usual, the small salon. Some of the patients
still stood about the room where the Christmas-tree was, watching
the candle stumps die down in their sockets, and munching the
goodies hanging from the boughs. Here and there at the tables,
which were already laid for breakfast, sat a solitary person, with
his head on his hand, silently brooding.

Christmas-day was damp and misty. These were clouds they
were among, Behrens asserted; mist there was none, up here. But
mist or clouds, the damp was perceptible. The surface of the lying
snow began to thaw, grew soft and porous. In the rest-cure, one’s
face and hands were stiff and red — one suffered far more than in
colder, sunny weather.

The feast-day was marked by an evening concert, a real concert
with rows of chairs and printed programmes, offered to the guests
by House Berghof; consisting of songs by a professional singer
who lived up here and gave lessons. She wore two medals pinned
side by side on her corsage, had arms like sticks, and a voice whose
peculiar toneless quality cast a saddening light upon the grounds
for her stay in these regions. She sang:

Ich trage meine Minne

Mit mir hertmi .

Her accompanist was likewise a resident. Frau Chauchat sat in the
first row, but took advantage of the intermission to go out, leaving
Hans Castorp free to enjoy the music in peace — after all, it ivas
music — and to read the text of the songs, as printed upon the pro-
gramme. Herr Settembrini sat awhile beside him, and made a few
plastic and resilient phrases upon the dull quality of the singer’s
bel canto , expressing also ironic satisfaction over the home talent
displayed in the entertainment. It was so charming, he said, that
they were just among themselves. Then he too went away — to tell

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291

truth, Hans Castorp was not sorry to see the backs of them both,
the narrow-eyed one and the pedagogue; he could the better de-
vote himself to the singing, and draw comfort from the reflection
that all over the world, even in the most extraordinary places, music
was made — very likely even on polar expeditions.

One had a slight differentiating consciousness of the day after
Christmas, something that just made it not quite the same as an
ordinary Sunday or week-day. Then it was over, and the whole
holiday lay in the past — or, equally, it lay in the distant future, a
year away: twelve months would bring it round again, seven more
than the time Hans Castorp had spent up here.

But just after the Christmas season, and before the New Year
broke, the gentleman rider died. The cousins learnt of the death
from Fritz Rotbein’s nurse, Alfreda Schildknecht, called Sister
Berta, who met them in the corridor and discreetly communicated
the sad event. Hans Castorp felt a profound interest; partly because
the signs of life he had heard from the gentleman rider were among
the earliest impressions of his stay up here, those which had first,
or so it seemed to him, called up the flush to his face which since
had never left it; but partly also upon moral, one might almost say
upon spiritual grounds. He detained Joachim long in talk with the
deaconess, who hung with the extreme of pleasure upon their con-
versation. It was a wonder, she said, that the gentleman rider had
lived over the holidays. He had long since shown himself a doughty
cavalier, but what it was he breathed with, at the end, nobody could
tell. For days and days he had lived only by the aid of enormous
quantities of oxygen. Yesterday alone he had consumed forty con-
tainers, at six francs apiece — that mounted up, the gentlemen could
reckon the cost themselves; and his wife, in whose arms he had
died, was left wholly penniless. Joachim expressed disapproval of
the expenditure. Why delay by these torturing and costly artificial
expedients a death absolutely certain to supervene? One could not
blame the man for blindly consuming the precious gas they urged
upon him. But those in charge should have behaved with more
reason, they should have let him go his way, in God’s name, quite
aside from the circumstances, more so when taking them into con-
sideration. The living, after all, had their rights — and so on. Hans
Castorp disagreed emphatically. His cousin, he said, talked almost
like Settembrini, without any regard or reverence for suffering.
The man had died in the end, that finished it; there was no more to
be done to show one’s concern, and it had been due to the dying
to spend what one could. Thus Hans Castorp. He only hoped the
Hofrat had not showed a lack of decent feeling by railing at the

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poor man at the end. There had been no need, Fraulein Schild-
knecht said. Only one little thoughtless effort he had made to es-
cape, to spring out of bed; but the merest hint of the futility of
such a proceeding had been enough to make him desist once and
for all.

Hans Castorp went to view the gentleman rider’s mortal remains.
He did this of set purpose, to show his contempt for the prevailing
system of secrecy, to protest against the egotistic policy of seeing
and hearing nothing of such events; to register by his act his dis-
approval of the others’ practice. He had tried to introduce the
subject of the death at table, but was met with such a flat and
callous rebuff on all sides as both to anger and embarrass him. Frau
Stohr had been downright gruff. What did he mean by introduc-
ing such a subject — what kind of upbringing had he had? The
house regulations protected the patients from having such things
come to their knowledge; and now here was a young whipper-
snapper bringing it up at table, and even in the presence of Dr.
Blumenkohl, whom the same fate might any day overtake (this
behind her hand). If it happened again, she would complain. Then
it was that, thus reproved, Hans Castorp had taken — and expressed
— a resolve: he would visit their departed comrade, and discharge
the last duty of silent respect toward his remains. He persuaded
Joachim to do the same.

Sister Berta arranged that they be admitted to the gentleman
rider’s room, which lay in the first storey beneath their own. The
widow received them — a small, distracted blonde, much reduced
by night watching, with a red nose, her handkerchief before her
mouth, and wearing a plaid cloak, with the collar turned up, as it
was very cold in the room. The heat was turned off, the balcony
door stood open. The young people said what was fitting to say,
in voices respectfully subdued; then, upon a woeful gesture from
the widow, they passed through the room to the bed, walking on
their tiptoes and weaving reverently forward. They stood by the
dead, each after his fashion: Joachim with heels together, half in-
clined in a salute, Hans Castorp relaxed and pensive, with hands
clasped before him and head on one side, much as he often stood to
listen to music. The gentleman rider lay with his head pillowed
high, so that his body, that elongated structure, the outgrowth of
life’s manifold processes, with the elevation of the feet at the end
beneath the sheet, looked very flat, almost like a board. A garland
of flowers lay at about the knees; a palm-leaf outstanding from it
touched the great, yellow, bony hands resting crossed upon the
sunken breast. Yellow and bony was the face too, with its bald skull

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293

and hooked nose, its angular cheek-bones and bushy, reddish-
yellow moustaches, whose full curve gave the grey and stubbly
hollows of the cheeks a yet hollo wer look. The eyes were closed,
with a certain unnatural definiteness — pressed down, not shut,
thought Hans Castorp. That was what they called the last service
of love; but it happened rather as a service to the survivors than to
the dead. And it must be done betimes too, soon after death; for if
the myosin process went far in the muscles, it would be too late,
he would lie there and stare and one could no longer sustain the
illusion of his slumber.

Perfectly at home, in more than one respect in his element, Hans
Castorp stood at the bier, expertly reverential. “ He seems to
sleep,” said he, humanely; though such was far from being the
case. Then, in a voice appropriately subdued, he began a conver-
sation with the widow, eliciting information about the sufferings,
the last days and moments of her departed husband, and the ar-
rangements for transporting the body to Carinthia; displaying a
sympathy and conversance that was in part physicianly, in part
priestly and moralizing. The widow, speaking in her drawling,
nasal, Austrian accent, with now and then a sob, found it remark-
able that young folk should so occupy themselves with a stranger’s
pain. Hans Castorp answered that he and his cousin were them-
selves ill; that he, when still very young, had stood at the death-
bed of near relatives; he was a double orphan, and, if he might say
so, long familiar with the sight of death. She asked what profession
he had chosen; he replied that he “ had been ” an engineer.

“ Had been? ” she queried.

“ Had been,” he replied, in the sense that his illness and a stay
up here of still undetermined length had come between him and
his work; that might mean a considerable interruption, even a
turning-point in his career, he could not tell. Joachim, at this,
searched his face in some alarm. And his cousin? He was a soldier,
was at present in training for an officer.

“ Ah,” she said, “ the trade of a soldier is another serious calling,
one must be prepared to come into close touch with death, it is
well to accustom oneself to the sight beforehand.” She dismissed
the cousins with thanks and expressions of friendliness, which could
not but touch them, considering her distressed state, and the bill
for oxygen her departed husband had left behind him.

They returned to their own storey, Hans Castorp greatly pleased
and edified by the visit.

“ Requiescat in pace ” he said. “ Sit tibi terra levis. Requiem
<etemam dona ei, Domine. You see, when death is in question, when

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one speaks to or of the dead, then the Latin comes in force; it is, so
to say, the official language. So then you see that death is a thing
apart. But it isn’t a humanistic gesture, speaking Latin in honour
of death; and the Latin isn’t what you learn at school, either — the
spirit of it is quite different, one might almost say hostile. It is
ecclesiastical Latin, monkish Latin, mediaeval dialect, a sort of dull,
monotonous, underground chanting. Settembrini has no use for it,
it is nothing for humanists and republicans and suchlike peda-
gogues, it comes from quite another point of the compass. I find
one ought to be clear about these two intellectual trends, or perhaps
it would be better to say states of mind: I mean the devout and the
free-thinking. They both have their good sides; what I have against
Settembrini’s — the free-thinking line — is that he seems to imagine
it has a corner in human dignity. That’s exaggerated, I consider,
because the other has its own kind of dignity too, and makes for a
tremendous lot of decorum and correct bearing and uplifting cere-
mony; more, in fact, than the free-thinking, when you remember
it has our human infirmity and proneness to err directly in mind,
and thoughts of death and decay play such an important role in it.
Have you seen Don Carlos given at the theatre? Do you remember
at the Spanish court, when King Philip comes in, all in black, with
the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and takes off his hat — it looks
pretty much like one of our melons — he lifts it from the top, and
says: ‘ Cover, my lords,’ or something like that? That is the last
degree of formality, I should think; no talk of any free-and-easy
manners there! The Queen herself says: ‘ In my own France how
different! ’ Of course it is too precise for her, too fussy, she would
like it a little gayer and more human. But what is human? Every-
thing is human. I find all that strict punctilio and God-fearing
solemnity of the Spanish is a very dignified kind of humanity;
while on the other hand the word human can be used to cover up
God knows what loose and slovenly ways — you know that your-
self.”

“ I do indeed,” Joachim said. “ Naturally, I can’t abide any kind
of looseness or slovenliness. There must be discipline.”

“ Yes, you say that as a soldier; and I must admit the military
has an understanding of these matters. The widow was right when
she said your trade is a solemn one, that has to reckon on coming
to grips with death. You have your tight-fitting, immaculate uni-
form, with a stiff collar — there’s your bienseance for you; then
your regulations of rank, and military obedience, and all the forms
you preserve toward each other — quite in the Spanish spirit, there
is something reverent about it, I can do with it very well, at bot-

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tom. We civilians ought to show more of the same spirit in our
customs and manners, I should really like it, and find it fitting. I
think the world, and life generally, is such as to make it appropriate
for us all to wear black, with a starched ruff instead of your stand-
up collar; and for all our intercourse with each other to be
subdued and ceremonial, and mindful of death. That would seem
right and moral to me. There is another of Settembrini’s arrogant
ideas; I may tell him so, some time: he thinks he has a monopoly
of morals as well as of human dignity — with his talk about 4 prac-
tical life-work ’ and Sunday services in the name of 4 progress ’ —
as though one hadn’t something else to think about, on Sundays,
besides progress! — and his 4 systematic elimination of suffering ’;
you have not heard anything about that, but he has instructed me
on the subject, and it is to be systematically eliminated by means
of a lexicon. I may find all that positively immoral — but what of
it? I don’t tell him so, naturally. He fairly goes for me, you know,
of course in his plastic way, and says: 4 1 warn you, Engineer.’ But
a person can take leave to think what he pleases, at least: 4 Sire,
grant freedom of thought.’ Let me tell you something,” he went
on — they had by now arrived in Joachim’s room, and Joachim was
making ready for the rest-cure — 44 let me tell you something I pro-
pose to do. We live up here, next door to the dying, close to misery
and suffering; and not only we act as though we had nothing to do
with it, but it is all carefully arranged in order to spare us and pre-
vent our coming into contact with it, or seeing anything at all —
they will take away the gentleman rider while we are at breakfast
or tea — and that I find immoral. The Stohr woman was furious,
simply because I mentioned his death. That’s too absurd for words.
She is ignorant, to be sure, and thinks that 4 Leise , leise, fromrne
Weise ’ comes out of Tcmnhduser , she said so the other day. But
even so, she might have a little human feeling, and the rest of them
too. Well, I have made up my mind to concern myself a bit in
future with the severe cases and the moribund. It will do me good
— I feel our visit just now has done me good already. That poor
chap Reuter in number twenty-five, whom I saw through the door
when I first came, he has most likely long ago been gathered to
his fathers, and been spirited away on the quiet. His eyes were so
enormous even then. But there are more of them, the house is full,
and they keep coming. Sister Alfreda or the Directress, or even
Behrens himself, would most likely be glad to put us in the way
of it. Say that one of the moribund was having a birthday, and we
hear of it — that could easily be brought about. Good. We send
him, or her, whichever it is, a pot of flowers, an attention from

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two fellow-guests, who prefer to remain anonymous, with best
wishes for recovery; it is always polite to say that. Then after-
wards, of course, it is found out who sent it, and he — or she — in
her infirmity, lets us greet her, in a friendly way, through the door-
way; she may even ask us in for a minute, and we have a little hu-
man intercourse with him, before he sinks away. That’s how I
imagine it. Are you agreed? For my part, my mind is made up.”

Joachim had not much to bring up against the plan. “ It is against
the rules of the house,” he said. “ In a certain way you would be
transgressing them. But Behrens would probably be willing to
make an exception, and give permission, if you wanted it, I should
think. You might refer to your interest in the medical side.” #

“Yes, among other things,” Hans Castorp answered: for in
truth somewhat involved motives lay at the bottom of his desire.
His protest against the prevailing egotism was only one of these:
there was also and in particular a spiritual craving to take suffer-
ing and death seriously, and pay them the respect that was their
due. Contact with the suffering and dying would, or so he hoped,
feed and strengthen this craving of the spirit, by counteracting
the manifold woundings to which it was daily and hourly sub-
jected, and which he felt the more keenly on account of the Set-
tembrinian critique. Instances there were only too many: if one had
asked Hans Castorp for them, he would probably have mentioned
certain persons who were admittedly not much ailing, and not
under the smallest compulsion, but who made a pretext of slight
illness to live up here, for their own pleasure, and because the life
suited them. Such was the Widow Hessenfeld, whom we have
mentioned in passing. Her passion was betting; she staked against
the gentlemen every conceivable object upon every conceivable
subject: the weather, the dishes at dinner, the result of the monthly
examination, the prescribed length of stay of this or that person,
the champions in the skating, sleighing, bob-racing, and skiing
competitions, the duration of this or that amour among the guests
of the cure, and a hundred other, often quite indifferent or trifling
subjects. Staked chocolate, champagne, and caviar, which were
then ceremonially partaken of in the restaurant; or money, or
cinematograph tickets, or even kisses, given and received — in brief,
she brought with her passion for betting much life and excitement
into the dining-room; though her proceedings were not such as
could be taken seriously by Hans Castorp, who even felt that her
mere presence was prejudicial to the dignity of a serious cure.

For he was inwardly concerned to protect that dignity and up-
hold it in his own eyes — though now, after nearly half a year

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among those up here, it cost him something to do so. The insight
he gradually won into their lives and activities, their practices and
points of view, was not encouraging. We have mentioned the two
slim young elegants, seventeen and eighteen years old, nicknamed
Max and Moritz, whose exploits were the talk of the cure, and who
were in the habit of climbing out of the window at night in order
to play poker and dissipate down below in female society. Only
lately — that is to say, perhaps a week after the New Year, for we
must bear in mind that while we tell the story, time streams silently
and ceaselessly on — it had been spread abroad at breakfast that the
bathing-master had just caught the pair, in crumpled evening
clothes, lying on their beds. Even Hans Castorp laughed; but this,
however humiliating it was to his better feelings, was nothing
compared to the tales that circulated about a certain lawyer from
Juterbog, Einhuf by name; a man perhaps forty years old, with a
pointed beard and very hairy hands, who had taken the Swede’s
place at Herr Settembrini’s table. It was reported of him not only
that he came home drunk every night, but that recently he had
failed to do even that, having been discovered lying in the meadow.
He passed for a Don Juan: Frau Stohr could point out the damsel
— of whom it was also known that she had an affianced lover down
in the flat-land — who was seen at a certain hour coming out of
Lawyer Einhuf’s room, clad in a fur coat with combinations under-
neath, and nothing more. That was a scandal; not only to the gen-
eral, but even more to Hans Castorp ’s private sense, and deroga-
tory to his spiritual endeavours. It even came to this: that the
thought of Lawyer Einhuf could not enter his mind without call-
ing up there, by an association of ideas, the thought of Franzchen
Oberdank, the little creature with the sleek blond head, whose
mamma, a worthy dame from the provinces, had brought her up
to the Berghof a few weeks before. Franzchen’s case, on her ar-
rival, and even after the examination, had been thought a light
one. But perhaps she had failed in the service of the cure, perhaps
hers was one of those cases in which the air proved in the first in-
stance to be good not against but for the disease. Or perhaps the
child may have become involved in some intrigue, the excitement of
which was seriously bad for her. Four weeks after her arrival she
entered the dining-room fresh from a second examination, tossing
her little hand-bag in the air, and crying out in her fresh young
voice: “ Hurrah, hurrah! I shall have to stop a year! ” — at which
the whole room resounded with Homeric laughter. But two weeks
later the whisper went round that Lawyer Einhuf had behaved
like a blackguard to Franzchen Oberdank. The expression is ours,

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or, rather, Hans Castorp’s; for those who spread the news found it
too old a story to be moved to the use of strong language. They
shrugged their shoulders and gave it out as their view that it took
two to play at such games, and that it was unlikely anything had
happened against the will of either participant. This, at least, was
Frau Stohr’s demeanour, her ethical reaction to the affair in ques-
tion.

Caroline Stohr was dreadful. If anything had power to distract
our young Hans Castorp, in the course of his sincerely felt spiritual
strivings, it was the personality, the very existence of this woman.
Her perpetual malapropisms were quite enough. She said insolvent
when she meant insolent, and uttered the most amazing rubbish
by way of explaining the astronomical phenomena involved in an
eclipse of the sun. One day she almost reduced Herr Settembrini
to permanent stupefaction by telling him that she was reading a
book from the library which would interest him; namely, “ Schil-
ler’s translation of Benedetto Cenelli.” She adored expressions of a
cheap and common stamp, worn threadbare by over-use, which
got on Hans Castorp’s nerves — as, for example, “ you haven’t the
faintest idea! ” or “ how utterly too-too! ” It had for long been
the fashionable jargon to say “ simply gorgeous ” to express the idea
of brilliant, or excellent; this phrase now proved to have outlived
its usefulness. It was entirely prostituted, the juice quite sucked out
of it; and Frau Stohr clutched eagerly at the newest currency:
everything, whether in jest or earnest, was “ devastating,” the bob-
run, the sweet for dinner, her own temperature — and this sounded
equally offensive in her mouth. She had a boundless appetite for
gossip. One day she might relate that Frau Salomon was wearing
the most costly lace underwear in preparation for her examination,
and prided herself very much upon her appearance before the
physicians on these occasions. There* was probably more truth
than poetry in the statement. Hans Castorp himself had the impres-
sion that the examinations, quite aside from their result, had their
pleasurable side for the ladies, and that they adorned themselves
accordingly. But what should one say to Frau Stohr’s assertion
that Frau Redisch, from Posen, who, it was feared, suffered from
tuberculosis of the spine, had to walk up and down entirely naked
before Hofrat Behrens, for ten minutes once a week? This state-
ment was almost as improbable as it was objectionable; but Frau
Stohr swore to it by all that was holy — though it was hard to
understand how the poor creature could expend so much zeal and
energy, and be so dogmatic, upon matters like these, when her own
personal condition gave so much cause for concern. She was some-

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times seized by attacks of panic and whimpering, caused by the
lassitude which seemed to be constantly on the increase, or by her
rising curve; when she would come sobbing to table, the chapped
red cheeks streaming with tears, and wail into her handkerchief:
Behrens wanted to send her to bed, she would like to know what
he had said behind her back was the matter with her, she wanted
to look the truth in the face. One day she had remarked to her
horror that her bed had been placed with the foot in the direction
of the entrance door; the discovery nearly sent her into spasms.
It was not easy to understand her rage and terror; Hans Castorp
did not see at once what she meant, and inquired: “ Well? And
what then? What was there about the bed standing like that? ”

For God’s sake, couldn’t he understand? Feet first! She had made
desperate outcry, and the position of the bed had to be altered at
once, though it caused her to lie with her face to the light, and thus
disturbed her sleep.

But none of this was really serious; it could not meet Hans Ca-
storp’s spiritual needs. A frightful occurrence, which happened at
about this time, during a meal, made a profound impression upon
him. Among the newer patients was a schoolmaster named PopofF,
a lean and silent man, with his equally lean and silent wife. They sat
together at the “ good ” Russian table; and one day, while the meal
was in full swing, the man was seized with a violent epileptic fit,
and with that oft-described demoniac unearthly shriek fell to the
floor, where he lay beside his chair, striking about him with dread-
fully distorted arms and legs. To make matters worse, it was a fish
dish that had just been handed, and there was ground for fear that
Popoff, in his spasm, might choke on a bone. The uproar was in-
describable. The ladies, Frau Stohr in the lead, with Mesdames
Salomon, Redisch, Hessenfeld, Magnus, litis, Levi, and the rest
following hard upon, were taken in a variety of ways, some of them
almost as badly as Popoff. Their yells resounded. Everywhere were
twitching eyelids, gaping mouths, writhing torsos. One of them
elected to faint, silently. There were cases of choking, some of
them having been in the act of chewing and swallowing when the
excitement began. Many of the guests at the various tables fled,
through any available exit, even actually seeking the open, though
the weather was very cold and damp. The whole occurrence, how-
ever, took a peculiar cast, offensive even beyond the horror of it,
through an association of ideas due to Dr. Krokowski’s latest lec-
ture. In the course of his exposition of love as a power making for
disease, the psycho-analyst had touched upon the “ falling sick-
ness.” This affliction, which, in pre-analytic times, he said, men

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had by turns interpreted as a holy, even a prophetic visitation, and
as a devilish possession, he went on to treat of, half poetically, half
in ruthlessly scientific terminology, as the equivalent of love and an
orgasm of the brain. In brief, he had cast such an equivocal light
upon the disease that his hearers were bound to see, in Popoff’s
seizure, an illustration of the lecture, an awful manifestation and
mysterious scandal. The flight on the part of the ladies was, ac-
cordingly, a disguised expression of modesty. The Hofrat himself
had been present at the meal; he, with Fraulein von Mylendonk and
one or two more robust guests, carried the ecstatic from the room,
blue, rigid, twisted, and foaming at the mouth as he was; they put
him down in the hall, where the doctors, the Directress, and other
people could be seen hovering over the unconscious man, whom
they afterwards bore away on a stretcher. But a short time there-
after Herr Popoff, quite happy and serene, with his equally serene
and happy wife, was to be seen sitting at the “ good ” Russian table,
finishing his meal as though nothing had happened.

Hans Castorp was present at this episode, and evinced all the
outward signs of concern and alarm, but at bottom he was not
edified, God help him! True, Popoff might have choked on his
mouthful of fish; but he had not. Perhaps, in all his unconscious
mouthings and goings-on, he had all the while somehow taken
jolly good care not to. Now he was sitting there, eating blithely
away, as though he had never been behaving like a drunken
berserk — very probably he remembered nothing at all about it.
But in his person he was not a man to strengthen Hans Castorp’s
respect for suffering; his wife, too, after her fashion, only added
to those impressions of frivolous irregularity against which Hans
Castorp wrestled and which he sought to counteract by coming
into closer touch, despite the prevailing attitude, with the suffering
and dying in the establishment.

In the same storey with the cousins, not far from their rooms,
lay a young girl named Leila Gerngross. According to Sister
Berta, she was about to die. Inside ten days she had had four
violent haemorrhages, and her parents had come, in the hope to
take her home while she still lived. But it was impossible; the
Hofrat said poor little Gerngross could not stand the journey.
She was sixteen or seventeen years old. Hans Castorp saw here
the opportunity to carry out his plan with the pot of flowers
and the good wishes for speedy recovery. There was, it is true,
no birthday feast to celebrate, in all human probability little
Leila would never see another — it came in the spring, Hans
Castorp learned. But he felt the fact need not prevent his offer-

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ing his respectful sympathy. When he went down with his
cousin for their morning walk, he entered a flower-shop near
the Kurhaus; and breathing in agreeably the moist, earthy, scent-
laden air, he chose with care from the array a charming hortensia,
and ordered it conveyed to the little sufferer’s room, with a
card, upon which he wrote no names, but simply “ From two
house-mates, with best wishes for recovery.” All this was an ex-
quisite activity to Hans Castorp; he enjoyed the fragrant breath
of the plants; the soft warmth of the shop, after the cold outside,
made his eyes fill with tears. His heart beat with a feeling of
adventure and audacity, a conviction of the good sense of his
modest enterprise, to which, privately, he ascribed a certain sym-
bolic value.

Leila Gerngross had no private nursing, she was under the im-
mediate supervision of Fraulein von Mylendonk and the physi-
cians. Sister Berta too went in and out of her room, and it was
she who gave the young people news of the result of their at-
tention. The little one, in her hopeless and circumscribed state,
was as pleased as a child with the strangers’ greeting. The pot
stood at her bedside, she caressed it with eyes and hands, saw
that it was kept watered, and even in her severest fits of cough-
ing rested her tortured gaze upon it. Likewise the parents, re-
tired Major Gerngross and wife, were touched and pleased;
and since it was impossible for them, as complete strangers, to
guess the givers, Fraulein Schildknecht could not — she confessed
it — refrain from revealing the cousins’ identity. She transmitted
the desire of the whole family that they should come and receive
the thanks due their gift; and thus, on the next day but one, the
deaconess ushered the two on tiptoe into Leila’s apartment.

The dying girl was indeed a charming blond creature, with
eyes of true forget-me-not blue. Despite great loss of blood,
and the effort to breathe with an utterly insufficient remnant of
sound lung-tissue, she looked fragile indeed, yet not too dis-
tressing. She thanked them, and talked a little, in a pleasant, though
toneless voice, while a faint rosy glow overspread her cheeks and
lingered there. Hans Castorp suitably explained and excused his
seeming intrusion, speaking in a low, moved voice, with delicate
reverence. He did not lack much — the impulse was present in
him — of falling upon his knees by the bedside; and he clasped
the patient’s hot little hand long and closely in his, despite its
being not moist but actually wet, for the child’s sweat secretion
was so great, she perspired so much, that the flesh must have been
shrivelled, if the transudation had not been counteracted by

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copious draughts of lemonade, a carafe of which stood on the bed-
side table. The parents, afflicted as they were, sustained the brief
colloquy with courteous inquiries as to the state of the cousins’
health, and other conversational devices. The Major was a broad-
shouldered man, with a low forehead and bristling moustaches,
a tower of strength; his organic innocence of his little daughter’s
phthisical tendency was plain to any eye. It was rather the mother
who was responsible for the inherited taint; she was small, and of
a distinctly consumptive type, and her conscience seemed bur-
dened with the knowledge of her fatal bequest. Leila, after ten
minutes’ talk, gave signs of fatigue, or rather of over-excitement;
the flush deepened in her cheek, and her forget-me-not eyes
glittering disquietingly. The cousins, on a sign from the nurse,
made their adieux; and then the poor mother followed them into
the corridor, and broke out into self-reproachings, which affected
Hans Castorp very painfully. From her, from her alone it came,
she said remorsefully, again and again. Her husband had nothing
whatever to do with it. Even she, she assured them, had been only
temporarily affected, only a slight and superficial case, when she
was quite a young girl. She had outgrown it entirely, had been sure
that she was quite cured. For she had wished to marry, she had
so longed to marry and live, and she had done it: healed and
sound she had wedded her dear husband, himself as sound as a
berry, who on his side had no notion at all of such things. But
sound and strong as he was, that had not helped: the dreadful,
hidden, and forgotten thing had come to light in the child, it
would end by destroying her; she, the mother, had escaped and
was entering into a healthy old age, but the poor, lovely darling
would die, the physicians gave them no hope — and she, she alone
was to blame, with her buried past.

The young people sought to console her, to say something about
the possibility of a turn for the better. But the Major’s wife only
sobbed and thanked them for all they had done, for the gift of
the plant, and the diversion and pleasure their visit had brought
her child. She lay there, poor little one, lonely and suffering upon
her bed, while other young creatures were glad of life, and could
dance with fine young men to their heart’s desire — and even the
disease could not kill the desire to dance. They had brought her a
ray of sunshine — my God, it would be the last. The hortensia
had been like homage at a ball, the brief chat with the two fine
young cavaliers a tiny affaire de coewr; she, the mother, had
seen it.

All this impressed Hans Castorp rather painfully — and she had

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pronounced the French badly too, which irritated him beyond
words. He was no fine cavalier, he had visited little Leila only
as a protest against the ruling spirit of egotism in the place, and
in a physicianly and priestly capacity. He was rather put out
over the turn the affair had taken, and the interpretation the
mother had put upon it. But on the other hand, he felt a lively
pleasure at having actually carried out his undertaking. Two
impressions in particular lingered from the enterprise: one, the
earthy odours of the flower-shop; the other, Leila’s wet little
hand — they had sunk into )iis mind and soul. And as thus a
beginning had been made, he arranged on the same day with
Alfreda Schildknecht a visit to her patient, Fritz Rotbein, who
was as bored with life as his nurse, though to him, unless all signs
failed, only a short term still remained.

Nothing for it but that the good Joachim must go along. Hans
Castorp’s charitable impulse was stronger than his cousin’s dis-
taste; which the latter, moreover, could only manifest by silence
and averted eyes, since he could not stand for it except by be-
traying a lack of Christian feeling. Hans Castorp saw that very
well, and drew advantage from it. Equally he perceived the mili-
tary grounds for the distaste; but if he himself felt the happier
and stronger for such undertakings, if they seemed to him con-
ducive to good ends? In that case, he must simply override
Joachim’s silent disapproval. He deliberated with his cousin
whether they might send or bring flowers to Fritz Rotbein, he
being a man. He desired to do so. Flowers, he felt, were proper
to the occasion, and the purchase of the pretty, well-shaped purple
hortensia had greatly pleased him. He came to the conclusion
that Fritz Rotbein’s sex was, so to speak, neutralized by his mortal
state; also that there was no need of a birthday to serve as excuse,
since the dying are to be treated as though in enjoyment of a
permanent birthday. Thus minded, he sought once more with
his cousin the warm, earthy, scent-laden air of the flower-shop,
and brought back a dewy fragrant bunch of roses, wallflowers, and
carnations, with which they entered Herr Rotbein’s room, ushered
by Alfreda Schildknecht.

The sufferer was not more than twenty years old, if so much,
but rather bald and grey. He looked waxen and wasted, with
large hands, nose, and ears; showed himself glad un$o tears for
the kindness of the visit, and the diversion it afforded him, and
indeed, out of weakness, did weep a little as he greeted the two
and received the bouquet. His first words, uttered almost in a
whisper, were with reference to the flowers, and he went on to

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talk about the European flower trade, and its ever-increasing
proportions — about the enormous exportation from the nurseries
of Nice and Cannes, the shipments by train-load and post that
went off daily from these places all over Europe; about the whole-
sale markets of Paris and Berlin, and the supplies for Russia. For he
was a business man; his point of view was the commercial one,
and would be so long as life remained to him. His father, a doll-
manufacturer in Coburg, had sent him to England to be educated,
he told them in a whisper, and there he had fallen ill. They had
taken his fever for typhoid, and treated it accordingly, with
liquid diet, which had much reduced him. Up here they had let
him eat, and eat he had; in the sweat of his brow he had sat in
his bed and tried to build himself up. But it was all too late, the
intestinal tract was already involved. In vain they sent him tongue
and spiced eel from home — he could not digest it. His father,
whom Behrens summoned by telegraph, was now on the way
from Coburg; for decisive action was to be taken, they would
try at least what they could do with rib resection, though the
chances of success diminished daily. Rotbein conveyed all this
in a whisper, and with great objectivity. Even in the matter of
the operation he took a business view, for, so long as he lived,
that would be his angle of approach. The expense, he whispered,
was fixed at a thousand francs, including the anaesthesia of the
spinal cord; practically the whole thoracic cavity was involved,
six or eight ribs, and the question was whether it would pay.
Behrens would like to persuade him; but the doctor’s interest in
the matter was single, whereas his own seemed equivocal; he was
not at all clear that he would not do better just to die in peace,
with his ribs intact.

It was hard to advise him. The cousins thought the Hofrat’s
brilliant reputation as a surgeon should be considered. It was
agreed at length to leave the decision to the elder Rotbein, soon
to arrive. Young Fritz wept again a little as they took their
leave; his tears fell in strange contrast to the dry matter-of-
factness of his thought and speech. He begged the gentlemen to
repeat their visit, and they willingly promised to do so, but it
did not come about. The doll-manufacturer arrived in the eve-
ning, next morning they proceeded to operate, and after that
young Fritz was in no condition to receive callers. Two days
later, passing the room with Joachim, Hans Castorp saw that it
was being turned out. Sister Alfreda had already packed her
little trunk and left the Berghof, to go to another moribundus
in another establishment. Heaving a sigh, her eye-glass ribbon

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behind her ear, she had betaken herself thither, since such and
only such was the prospect life held out to her.

An empty room, a room that had been “ vacated ” — with its
furniture turned topsyturvy, and both doors standing wide, as
one saw it in passing, on the way to the dining-room or one’s
daily walks — was a most significant, and yet withal such an
accustomed sight that one thought little of it, especially when
one had, in one’s time, taken possession of just such a u vacated ”
room, and settled down to feel at home in it. Sometimes you knew
whose room it had been, and that indeed gave you to think. Thus
a week later Hans Castorp passed by and saw Leila Gemgross’s
room in just that condition; and in this instance his understand-
ing rebelled for the moment against what he saw. He stood and
looked, perplexed and startled, and the Hofrat came that way,
to whom he spoke.

“ I see it is being turned out here. Good-morning, Herr Hofrat.
Then little Leila — ”

“ Ay,” answered Behrens, and shrugged his shoulders. After
a pause for the meaning of the gesture to take effect, he added:
“ So you paid court to her in form, just before the doors were
shut? Decent of you, to take an interest in my lungers, consider-
ing you are relatively sound yourself. Shows a pretty trait of
character — no, no, don’t be shy, quite a pretty trait. Shall I
introduce you a bit here and there, what? I have all sorts of
jail-birds in their little cells, if you want to see them. Just now,
for instance, I am on my way to visit my ‘ Overfilled.’ Want to
come? I’ll introduce you as a sympathetic fellow sufferer.”

Hans Castorp replied that the Hofrat had taken the words out
of his mouth, and offered him what he was on the point of asking.
He would gratefully accept the permission to accompany him;
but who was the ‘ Overfilled ’ and how did Hofrat Behrens mean
him to understand the title?

“ Quite literally,” said the Hofrat. “ Quite exactly, no meta-
phors. She’ll tell you about herself.” A few paces brought them
before the room, and the Hofrat entered, bidding his companion
wait.

As the double doors opened, the visitor heard the sound of
clear and hearty laughter, which yet sounded short-winded, as
though the person within were gasping for breath. Then it was
shut away; but he heard it again when, a few minutes later, he
was bidden to enter, and Behrens presented him to the blonde
lady lying there in bed and looking at him with curiosity out of
her blue eyes. She lay half sitting, supported by pillows, and

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seemed very restless; she laughed incessantly, struggling the while
for breath: a high, purling, silver laughter, as though her plight
excited or amused her. She was amused too, very likely, by the
Hofrat’s turns of phrase in introducing the visitor, and called out
repeated thanks and good-byes as he went off; waved her hand
at his departing back; sighed melodiously, with runs of silver
merriment, and pressed her hand against her heaving breast under
the batiste night-gown. Her legs, it seemed, were never still.

The lady’s name was Frau Zimmermann. Hans Castorp knew
her by sight; she had sat for some weeks at the table with Frau
Salomon and the lad who bolted his food; then she had dis-
appeared, and so far as Hans Castorp may have troubled about
it, he supposed that she had gone home. Now he found her again,
under the name of the “ Overfilled,” and awaited an explanation.

“ Ha ha, ha ha! ” she carolled, in high glee, holding her flutter-
ing bosom. “ Frightfully funny man, is Behrens; killingly funny,
makes you die of laughing. But sit down, Herr Kasten, or Carsten,
or whatever your name is; you have such a funny name — ha ha,
ha ha! You must please excuse me; do sit down on that chair near
my feet, but please don’t mind if I thrash about with my legs,
I cannot help it.”

She was almost pretty, with clear-cut, rather too well-defined
though agreeable features, and a tiny double chin. Her lips and
even the tip of her nose were blue, probably from lack of air.
Her hands had an appealing thinness; the laces of the night-
dress set them off; but she could keep them quiet no more than
her feet. Her throat was like a girl’s, with “ salt-cellars ” above the
delicate collar-bones; and her breast, heaving and struggling under
the night-gown with her laughter and gasping breaths, looked
tender and young. Hans Castorp decided to send or bring her
flowers, a bouquet from the nurseries of Nice and Cannes, dewy
and fragrant. With some misgiving he joined in her breathless
and volatile mirth.

“ And so you go round visiting the fever cases? ” she asked.
“ That’s very amusing and friendly of you! But I’m not a fever
case; that is, I wasn’t in the least, until just now — until this
business — listen, and tell me if it isn’t just the funniest thing you
ever heard in all your life! ” And wrestling for air, amid trills and
roulades of laughter, she related her story.

She had come up a little ill — well, ill, of course, for other-
wise she would not have come; perhaps not quite a slight case,
but rather slight than grave. The pneumothorax, that newest
triumph of modem surgical technique, so rapidly become popular,

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307

had been brilliantly successful in her case. She made most grati-
fying progress, her condition was entirely satisfactory. Her hus-
band— for she was married, though childless — might hope to
have her home again in three or four months. Then, to divert
herself, she made a trip to Zurich — there had been no other reason
for her going, save simply to amuse herself — she had amused
herself to her heart’s content, but found herself overtaken by
the need to be “ filled up ” again and entrusted the business to a
physician where she was. A nice, amusing young man — but what
was the result? Here she was overtaken by a perfect paroxysm
of laughter. He had filled her too full! There were no other
words to describe it, that said it all. He had meant too well by
her, he had probably not too well understood the technique; the
long and short of it was, in that condition, not able to breathe,
suffering from cardiac depression, she had come back — ah, ha,
ha, ha! and Behrens, cursing and storming with a vengeance, had
stuck her into bed. For now she was ill indeed, not actually in
high fever, but finished, done, made a mess of — oh, what a face
he was making, how funny he looked, ha, ha, ha! She pointed at
Hans Castorp and laughed so hard that even her brow grew blue.
The funniest thing of all, she said, was the way Behrens raved and
reviled — it had made her laugh, at first, when she discovered that
she was overfilled.

“ You are in absolute danger of your life,” he had bellowed at
her, just like that, without making any bones of it. “What a
bear — ah, ha, ha, ha! — you really must please forgive me.”

It remained unclear what aspect of Behrens’s outburst had
made her laugh; whether his brusqueness, and because she did
not believe what he said, or whether she did believe it — as in-
deed she must, it would seem — and quite simply found the fact
of her imminent danger “ too funny for words.” Hans Castorp got
the impression that it was the latter; and that she was pealing,
trilling, and cascading with laughter only out of childish irre-
sponsibility and the incomprehension of her birdlike brain. He
disapproved. He sent her some flowers, but never again beheld
the laughter-loving lady — who, indeed, after she had sustained
life upon oxygen for some days, expired in the arms of her hur-
riedly summoned husband. “ As big a goose as they make them,”
the Hofrat called her, in telling Hans Castorp of her death.

But the young man had by then made further connexions
among the serious cases, thanks to the Hofrat and the house
nurses; and Joachim had to accompany him on the visits he
made; for instance to the son of Tous-les-deux — the second,

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308

for the room of the first had long since been swept and garnished
and fumigated with H 2 CO. They paid visits as well to Teddy, a
boy who had lately been sent up from the “ Fridericianum ” — as
the school below was called — because his case proved too severe
for the life there; to Anton Karlowitsch Ferge, the Russo-German
insurance agent, a good-natured martyr; and to that unhappy, and
yet so coquettish creature, Frau von Mallinckrodt. She, like all
the foregoing, received flowers, and was even fed more than once
from the hands of Hans Castorp, in the presence of Joachim.
They gradually acquired the name of good Samaritans and
Brothers of Charity; Settembrini thus referred to their activities
one day to Hans Castorp.

“ Sapperlot , Engineer! What is this I am hearing of your activi-
ties? So you have thrown yourself into a career of benevolence?
You are seeking justification through good works? ”

“ Nothing worth mentioning, Herr Settembrini. Nothing to
make a fuss about. My cousin and I — ”

“ Don’t talk to me about your cousin. When the two of you
make yourselves talked about, it is you we are dealing with.
Your cousin’s is a good and simple nature, most worthy of re-
spect; exposed to no intellectual perils, the sort that gives a school-
master not one anxious moment. You’ll not make me believe he
is the moving spirit. No, yours is the more gifted, if also the more
exposed nature. You are, if I may so express myself, life’s deli-
cate child, one has to trouble about you. And moreover you have
given me permission to trouble about you.”

“Certainly, Herr Settembrini — once and for all. Very kind
of you. 4 Life’s delicate child,’ why, that’s very pretty — only an
author would think of it. I don’t know if I’ve to flatter myself
over the title, but I like the sound of it at least, I must say that.
Yes, I do occupy myself rather with the ‘ children of death,’ if
that is what you refer to. I look in here and there among the
serious cases and the dying when I have time, the service of the
cure doesn’t suffer from it. I visit the ones who aren’t here for the
fun of the thing, leading a disorderly life — the ones who are busy
dying.”

“ And yet it is written: 4 Let the dead bury their dead,’ ” said
the Italian.

Hans Castorp raised his arms, to signify that there was so much
written, on both sides, it was hard to know the rights of it. Of
course, the organ-grinder had voiced a disturbing point of view,
that was to be expected. Hans Castorp was ready, now as ever,
of his own free will to lend an ear to Settembrini’s teachings, and

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309

by way of experiment to be influenced by them. But he was far
from being prepared to give up, for the sake of a pedagogic point
of view, enterprises which he vaguely, despite Mother Gerngross
and her phrases, despite the uninspiring young Rotbein and the
cachinnations of the “ Overfilled,” found somehow helpful and
significant.

Tous-les-deux’s son was named Lauro. He too received flowers,
earthy, heavenly-smelling violets from Nice, “ from two sympa-
thetic housemates, with best wishes for recovery and as this
anonymity had by now become purely formal, since everyone
knew the source whence such attentions came, Tous-les-deux
herself thanked the cousins when they chanced to meet in the cor-
ridor. The pale, dark Mexican mother begged them, with a few
incoherent words, and chiefly by means of a pathetic gesture of
invitation, to come and receive in person the thanks of her son —
son seul et dernier fils , qui allait mourir aussi. They went at once.
Lauro proved to be an astonishingly handsome young man, with
great glowing eyes, a nose like an eagle’s beak, quivering nostrils,
and beautiful lips, with a small black moustache sprouting above
them. But his bearing was so theatrical and swaggering that Hans
Castorp, this time no less than Joachim Ziemssen, was glad when
they closed the invalid’s door behind them. Tous-les-deux had
ranged forlornly up and down the room, with her long, bent-
kneed stride, in her black cashmere shawl, with the black scarf
knotted beneath her chin, her forehead crossed with wrinkles,
great pouches of skin under the jet-black eyes, and one comer
of her large mouth pathetically drooping. Sometimes she ap-
proached them as they sat by the bed, to reiterate her parrotlike
speech: “ Toils les de , vous comprenez , me ssies — premier ement
Vun et mcdntenant V autre” And the handsome Lauro delivered
himself of rolling, ranting, intolerably bombastic phrases, also in
French, to the effect that he knew how a hero should die and
meant to do it: comme her os, a Vespagnol , like his young brother,
de meme quo son fier jeune frere Fernando, who likewise had died
like a Spanish hero. He gesticulated, he tore open his shirt to offer
his yellow breast to the stroke of fate; and continued thus, until
an attack of coughing, which forced a thread of red foam to his
lips, quenched his harangue and gave the cousins an excuse to go
out, on tiptoe.

They did not mention the visit to Lauro’s bedside; even to
themselves they refrained from comment on his behaviour. But
both were better pleased with their call upon Anton Karlowitsch
Ferge from St. Petersburg, who lay in bed, with his great good-

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natured beard and his just as good-natured-looking great Adam’s
apple, recovering slowly from the unsuccessful attempt which
had been made to install the pneumothorax in his interior economy,
and which had been within a hair’s breadth of costing Herr Ferge
his life on the spot. He had suffered a frightful shock, the pleura-
shock — a quite frequent occurrence in cases where this fashion-
able technique was applied. But Herr Ferge’s shock had been
exceptionally dangerous, a total collapse and critical loss of con-
sciousness, in a word so severe an attack that the operation had
been broken off at once, and was indefinitely postponed.

Herr Ferge’s good-natured grey eyes grew large and round,
his face went ashen-coloured, when he came to speak of the
operation, which must have been horrible indeed. “ No anaes-
thesia, my dear sir. In this case it doesn’t do, a sensible man
understands that and accepts the situation as it is. But the local
doesn’t reach very far down, it only benumbs the surface flesh,
you feel it when they lay you open, like a pinching and squeez-
ing. I lie there with my face covered, so I can’t see anything: the
assistant holds me on one side and the Directress on the other.
I feel myself being pinched and squeezed, that is the flesh they
are laying back and pegging down. Then I hear the Hofrat say:

1 Very good and then he begins, with a blunt instrument — it
must be blunt, not to pierce through too soon — to go over the
pleura and find the place where he can make an incision and let
the gas in; and when he begins moving about over my pleura with
his instrument — oh, Lord, oh, Lord! I felt like — I felt it was all
up with me — it was something perfectly indescribable. The pleura,
my friends, is not anything that should be felt of; it does not want
to be felt of and it ought not to be. It is taboo. It is covered up with
flesh and put away once and for all; nobody and nothing ought
to come near it. And now he uncovers it and feels all over it.
My God, I was sick at my stomach. Horrible, awful; never in
my life have I imagined there could be such a sickening feeling,
outside hell and its torments. I fainted; I had three fainting-fits
one after the other, a green, a brown, and a violet. And there was
a stink — the shock went to my sense of smell and I got an awful
stench of hydrogen sulphide, the way it must smell in the bad
place; with all that I heard myself laughing as I went oflf — not
the way a human being laughs — it was the most indecent, ghastly
kind of laughing I ever heard. Because, when they go over your
pleura like that, I tell you what it is: it is as though you were
being tickled — horribly, disgustingly tickled — that is just what

THE DANCE OF DEATH 3 1 1

the infernal torment of the pleura-shock is like, and may God
keep you from it! ”

Often, and never without blanching and shuddering, did Anton
Karlowitsch Ferge come back to this infernal experience of his,
and torture himself with it in retrospect. He had from the first
professed himself a simple man; the “ higher things ” of this life,
he said, were utterly beyond him, he expressly stipulated that
no intellectual or emotional demands be made upon him; he, for
his part, made none upon anybody else. This bargain once struck,
he turned out to talk not unentertainingly of his experiences in the
life from which his illness had withdrawn him. He had been in
the employ of a fire-insurance company, and made constant ex-
tended journeys from St. Petersburg up and down the whole
of Russia, visiting insured factory buildings and spying out those
which were financially suspect; for it was a fact supported by
statistics that the larger percentage of fires occurred in just those
factories where business was not going too well. Thus he was
sent out to study a plant, under this or that pretext, and render
an account to his company, so that serious loss could be provided
against betimes, by increased counter-insurance or dividing the
risk. He told of winter journeys through the length and breadth
of Russia, of night travel in extreme cold, in sledges that you lay
down in, under sheepskin covers, and when you roused you
could see the eyes of wolves gleaming like stars across the snow.
He carried his provisions frozen, cabbage soup and white bread,
in boxes; when they stopped to change horses, at a station, these
could be thawed out, as required, and the bread would be as fresh
as on the day it was baked. But when there came a sudden mild
spell, he would find that the soup he had brought with him in
chunks had melted and run away.

Thus Herr Ferge; now and then interrupting his narrative with
a sigh, and the remark that it was all very well — if only they
did not try the pneumothorax again. His talk was devoid of the
“ higher things,” but it was full of facts, and interesting to listen
to, particularly for Hans Castorp, who found it profited him to
hear about Russia and life as it was lived there: about samovars
and pirogues, Cossacks, and wooden churches with so many towers
shaped like onion-tops as to look like a whole colony of mush-
rooms. He led Herr Ferge to talk about the people, the strange
and exotic northern types, with their Asiatic tincture, the promi-
nent cheek-bones and Finnish-Mongolian slant to the eye; listening
with anthropological interest to all that he heard. At his request,

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3 **

Herr Ferge spoke Russian to him; the outlandish, spineless, washed-
out idiom came pouring from under the good-natured moustaches,
out of the good-natured Adam ? s apple; and Hans Castorp enjoyed
it the more, youthlike, because all this was, pedagogically con-
sidered, forbidden fruit he was tasting.

He and Joachim spent many a quarter-hour with Anton Kar-
lowitsch. Also they visited the lad Teddy from the Fridericianum,
a young exquisite of fourteen years, blond and elegant, with a
private nurse, and arrayed in white silk corded pyjamas. He was
rich, he told them, and an orphan. He was here awaiting the mo-
ment for a serious operation they intended to try, for the removal
of certain infected parts. Now and again, when he had a good
day, he would leave his bed and dress in his neat sports attire to
mingle for an hour in the company below. The ladies liked to
dally with him, and he listened to their talk, for example to that
concerning Lawyer Einhuf, the young lady in the combinations,
and Franzchen Oberdank. Then he would return to his bed.
Thus idly and elegantly passed the time for the lad Teddy; and it
was very plain that he expected nothing more from life than just
this which he had.

Then there was Frau Mallinckrodt in number fifty, Natalie by
name, with the black eyes and the gold rings in her ears; coquettish,
fond of dress, but a perfect Lazarus and Job in female form,
whom God had been pleased to afflict with every kind of in-
firmity. Her entire organism seemed infected, and she .suffered
from all possible complaints by turns and simultaneously. The skin
was sympathetically involved, being covered in large tracts by an
itching eczema, with open sores here and there, even on the mouth,
which made feeding difficult. Then she suffered from internal in-
flammations of various kinds — of the pleura, the kidneys, the
lungs, the periosteum, even of the brain, so that she was subject
to loss of consciousness; finally cardiac weakness, the result of
constant pain and fever, gave her the greatest distress and even
made it, at times, impossible for her to swallow, so that a mouth-
ful of food would remain stuck in her throat. The woman’s state
was truly pitiable, and she was alone in the world; for she had
left home and children for the sake of a lover, a mere youth, only
to be forsaken in her turn — all this she herself related to the
cousins — and now was without a home, if not without means, since
her husband saw that she should not want. She accepted with no
false pride the fruits of his charity or his unquenched love, which-
ever it was, seeing herself quite humbly as a dishonoured and sin-
ful creature; and so bore all the plagues of Job with astounding

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313

patience and resilience, with the elementary powers of resistance
of her sex, which triumphed over all the misery of her tawny body,
and even made of the gauze dressings which she had to wear
about her head a becoming personal adornment. She changed her
jewels many times in the day, began with corals in the morning and
ended at night with pearls. Hans Castorp’s flowers greatly de-
lighted her; she obviously regarded them as the expression of gal-
lant rather than charitable sentiments, and invited both young men
to tea in her room. She drank from an invalid cup, all her fingers
decked to the joint with opals, amethysts, and emeralds; in no
long time she had told her guests her story, the golden ear-rings
swaying as she talked. Told of her respectable, tiresome husband,
her no less respectable and tiresome children, who were precisely
like their father, and for whom she had not been able to feel great
warmth of affection; of the half boy, half man with whom she
had fled, whose poetic tenderness she never tired of describing.
But his family had taken him away from her, by guile and force
commingled — and perhaps he too had been revolted by her ill-
ness, which had then suddenly and violently broken out. Perhaps
the gentlemen were revolted too, she asked coquettishly, and her
inborn femininity triumphed even over the eczema that covered
half her face.

Hans Castorp felt only contempt for the revolted lover and
expressed it by a shoulder-shrug. The poetic youth’s defection
was as a spur to himself and he began to take occasion to per-
form what services he could for the unhappy woman, in the
repeated visits he made to her room: services that required no
nursing skill, as, for instance, feeding her the midday broth after
his own meal, giving her to drink when the food stuck in her
throat, helping her to change her position in bed — for to add to
everything else she had a wound from an operation, which made
lying difficult. He practised himself in these acts of benevolence,
looking in on her on his way to the dining-hall, or when returning
from a walk, and telling Joachim to go on ahead, he would stop
for a moment in number fifty, to see after a case; he experienced
a pleasing sense of expanding being, the fruit of his conviction
that what he did was both useful in itself and possessed of a secret
significance. There was also a malicious satisfaction he had in the
blamelessly Christian stamp his activities bore — it was so clear that
on no ground whatever, either the military or the humanistic and
pedagogic, were they open to any serious reproach.

It was some time after this that they took up Karen Karstedt;
and both Hans Castqrp and Joachim felt peculiarly drawn to

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3H

her. She had been up here for years and was an out-patient of
the Hofrat, who had commended her to the cousins’ benevolence.
She was entirely without private means and dependent upon un-
feeling relatives — once, in fact, they had taken her away, since
she was sure to die in any case; and only at the Hofrat’s inter-
cession did they send her back. She lived in a modest pension
in the village; a nineteen-year-old, undersized little person, with
sleek, oily hair, and eyes for ever timidly trying to hide a brilliance
that accorded only too well with the hectic flush on her cheek.
Her voice had the characteristic huskiness, but was sympathetic.
She coughed almost constantly; and all her finger-ends were
plastered up, as they had running sores.

The Hofrat, then, had appealed to the cousins in Karen’s be-
half — they were such kind-hearted chaps — and they made her
their especial ward; beginning with the gift of flowers, follow-
ing on with a visit to the poor child upon her little balcony in
the village; and continuing with various outings which the three
took together, to see a skating race or a bob-sleigh competition.
For the winter sport season was now at its height, there was a
special week overcrowded with “ events ” — those feats and dis-
plays to which the cousins had previously paid only cursory atten-
tion. Joachim was averse from every kind of distraction up here.
He was not here, he said, on their account; he was not here to
enjoy life, and to put up with his sojourn in the measure in which
it furnished him agreeable change and diversion. He was here
solely and simply to get well as quickly as he could, in order to
join the service below, real service, not the service of the cure,
which was but a substitute — though to be sure he grudged any
falling off in the duty he owed it. He was forbidden to join in the
sports, to go and gape at them he did not like. As for Hans Castorp,
he took too seriously, in too stern an inward a sense, his own share
in the life of those up here to have a thought or a glance for the
doings of people who made a sports station of the valley.

But now his benevolent preoccupation with poor Fraulein Kar-
stedt made some change in these views — and Joachim could hardly
dissent without seeming un-Christian. They fetched the patient
at her humble lodging, in glorious, frosty-sunny weather, and
escorted her through the English quarter, so named after the
Hotel d’Angleterre, and along the main street, lined with luxuri-
ous shops. Sleighs were jingling up and down; there were hosts
of people, the idle rich and pleasure-loving from all over the world,
who filled the Kurhaus and the other hotels of the place; all hat-
less, all clad in sports costumes which were the last word in elegance

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315

and beauty of fabric, all bronzed with winter sunburn and the
glaring reflections from snowy slopes. All this world, including
the cousins and their protegee, were betaking themselves to the
rink, which lay in the depth of the valley not far from the Kur-
haus; in summer it was a meadow, used for football. Music was
playing, the Kurhaus band, stationed in the gallery of the wooden
pavilion, above the four-cornered racecourse. Beyond all lay the
mountains, in deep snow, against a dark-blue sky. Our young
people passed through the entrance and the crowd that, seated in
ascending tiers, surrounded the course on three sides; they found
places for themselves, and sat down to look on. The professional
skaters, in close-fitting costumes of black tricot with furred and
braided jackets, cut figures, hovered and balanced, leaped and
spun. A pair of virtuosi, male and female, professionals and hors
concours , performed feats which they alone in all the world could
perform, and evoked storms of applause and fanfares of trum-
pets. Six young men of various nationalities competed for the
speed prize, and laboured six times round the four-sided course,
bent over, with their hands behind their backs, some with hand-
kerchiefs tied round their mouths. A bell rang in the midst of
the music, and the crowd would burst out now and again with
shouts of encouragement and applause.

It was a gay company, in which the three invalids, the cousins
and their protegee, sat and looked about them. There were white-
teethed Englishmen in Scotch caps, talking in French to highly-
scented ladies dressed from head to foot in bright-coloured wool-
lens — some of them even wore knickerbockers; Americans with
small, neat heads, on which the hair was plastered down, pipe in
mouth, and wearing shaggy furs the skin-side out; bearded, ele-
gant Russians, looking barbarically rich, and Malayan Dutch-
men, all these sitting among the German and Swiss population,
as well as a sprinkling of indeterminate types — all speaking French
— perhaps from the Balkans or the Levant. Hans Castorp showed
a certain weakness for this motley semi-barbarous world; but
Joachim put it aside as mongrel and questionable. At intervals there
were events for children, who staggered over the course with a
snow-shoe on one foot and a ski on the other. In one race each boy
pushed a girl before him on a shovel; in another the winner carried
a lighted taper, and must arrive at the goal with it still burning; or
must climb over obstacles in his path, or pick up potatoes with a
tin spoon and deposit them in watering-pots placed along the
course. Everybody was in extravagant spirits. The richest children
were pointed out, the prettiest and those from well-known fami-

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316

lies: there were the little daughter of a Dutch multi-millionaire,
the son of a Prussian prince, and a twelve-year-old lad who bore
the name of a champagne known the world over. Young Karen
was gay with the rest, and coughed persistently as she laughed;
clapping for joy and very gratitude her poor hands with the
running finger-ends.

The cousins took her to see the bob-sleigh races as well. It
was no distance to the terminus, either from Karen’s lodging or
from the Berghof; for the track came down from the Schatzalp
and ended in the village, among the houses on the western slope.
At that point a hut had been erected, where word was received
by telephone of the departures up above.

Then the low sleds would come singly, with long intervals
between, around the curves of the white course, that shone metallic
between frozen barriers of snow. The riders were men and women,
in white woollens, with gay-coloured scarves of all nationalities
wound about them. They were all red and lusty, and it snowed
into their faces as they came on. Sledges would skid and upset, roll-
ing their riders into the snow — and the onlookers would take
photographs of the scene. Here too music played. The spectators
sat in small tribunes, or pressed upon the narrow path that had
been shovelled alongside the course; or thronged the wooden
bridges which spanned it, watching the sleds that from time to time
whizzed beneath. This was the path taken by the corpses from the
sanatorium above, Hans Castorp thought: round these curves, un-
der these bridges they came, down, down, to the valley below. He
spoke of it to the others.

They even took Karen, one afternoon, to the Bioscope Theatre
in the Platz — she loved it all so very much. The bad air they sat
in was offensive to the three, used as they were to breathing the

S urest; it oppressed their breathing and made their heads feel
eavy and dull. Life flitted across the screen before their smart-
ing eyes: life chopped into small sections, fleeting, accelerated; a
restless, jerky fluctuation of appearing and disappearing, per-
formed to a thin accompaniment of music, which set its actual
tempo to the phantasmagoria of the past, and with the narrowest
of means at its command, yet managed to evoke a whole gamut
of pomp and solemnity, passion, abandon, and gurgling sensuality.
It was a thrilling drama of love and death they saw silently reeled
off; the scenes, laid at the court of an oriental despot, galloped
past, full of gorgeousness and naked bodies, thirst of power and
raving religious self-abnegation; full of cruelty, appetite, and
deathly lust, and slowing down to give a full view of the muscular

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development of the executioner’s arms. Constructed, in short, to
cater to the innermost desires of an onlooking international civiliza-
tion. Settembrini, as critic, Hans Castorp thought, and whispered
as much to his cousin, would doubtless have sharply character-
ized what they saw as repugnant to a humanistic sense, and have
scarified with direct and classic irony the prostitution of tech-
nical skill to such a humanly contemptible performance. On the
other hand, Frau Stohr, who was sitting not far from our three
friends, seemed utterly absorbed; her ignorant red face was twisted
into an expression of the hugest enjoyment.

And so were the other faces about them. But when the last
flicker of the last picture in a reel had faded away, when the
lights in the auditorium went up, and the field of vision stood
revealed as an empty sheet of canvas, there was not even applause.
Nobody was there to be applauded, to be called before the cur-
tain and thanked for the rendition. The actors who had assembled
to present the scenes they had just enjoyed were scattered to the
winds; only their shadows had been here, their activity had been
split up into millions of pictures, each with the shortest possible
period of focus, in order to give it back to the present and reel it
off again at will. The silence of the crowd, as the illusion passed,
had about it something nerveless and repellent. Their hands lay
powerless in face of the nothing that confronted them. They
rubbed their eyes, stared vacantly before them, blinking in the
brilliant light and wishing themselves back in the darkness, looking
at sights which had had their day and then, as it were, had been
transplanted into fresh time, and bedizened up with music.

The despot died beneath the knife, with a soundless shriek.
Then came scenes from all parts of the world: the President of
the French Republic, in top-hat and cordon, sitting in a landau
and replying to a speech of welcome; the Viceroy of India, at
the wedding of a rajah; the German Crown Prince in the court-
yard of a Potsdam garrison. There was a picture of life in a New
Mecklenburg village; a cock-fight in Borneo, naked savages blow-
ing on nose-horns, a wild elephant hunt, a ceremony at the court
of the King of Siam, a courtesans’ street in Japan, with geishas
sitting behind wooden lattices; Samoyeds bundled in furs, driv-
ing sledges drawn by reindeer through the snowy wastes of
Siberia; Russian pilgrims praying at Hebron; a Persian criminal
under the knout. They were present at all these scenes; space was
annihilated, the clock put back, the then and there played on
by music and transformed into a juggling, scurrying now and
here. A young Moroccan woman, in a costume of striped silk, with

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

3 l8

trappings in the shape of chains, bracelets, and rings, her swelling
breasts half bared, was suddenly brought so close to the camera
as to be life-sized; one could see the dilated nostrils, the eyes full
of animal life, the features in play as she showed her white teeth
in a laugh, and held one of her hands, with its blanched nails, for
a shade to her eyes, while with the other she waved to the audience,
who stared, taken aback, into the face of the charming apparition.
It seemed to see and saw not, it was not moved by the glances
bent upon it, its smile and nod were not of the present but of the
past, so that the impulse to respond was baffled, and lost in a feel-
ing of impotence. Then the phantom vanished. The screen glared
white and empty, with the one word Finis written across it. The en-
tertainment was over, in silence the theatre was emptied, a new
audience took the place of that going out, and before their eager
eyes the cycle would presently unroll itself again.

Incited by Frau Stohr, who joined them at the exit, they paid
a visit to the cafe at the Kurhaus, Karen clapping her hands in
delighted gratitude. Here too there was music, a small, red-
uniformed orchestra, conducted by a Bohemian or Hungarian
first violin, who stood apart from the others, among the dancing
couples, and belaboured his instrument with frantic wreathings
of his body. Life here was mondaine: strange drinks were handed
at the tables. The cousins ordered orangeade for the refreshment
of their charge and themselves, while Frau Stohr took a brandy and
sugar. The room was hot and dusty. At this hour, she said, the
cafe life was not yet in full swing, the dancing became much
livelier as the evening advanced, and numerous patients from the
sanatoria, as well as dissipated folk from the hotels and the Kur-
haus, many more than were here as yet, came later to join the
fun. More than one serious case had here danced himself into
eternity, tipping up the beaker of life to drain the last drop, and
in dulci jubilo suffering his final haemorrhage. The dulci jubilo
became, on her unlettered lips, something extraordinary. The first
word she pronounced dolce , with some reminiscence of her musical
husband’s Italian vocabulary; but the second suggested jubilee ,
or an attempt to yodel, or goodness alone knew what. The cousins
both devoted themselves assiduously to the straws in their glasses,
when this Latin was given out — but Frau Stohr took no offence.
She began, drawing back her lips and showing her rodent-like
teeth, to drop hints and make insinuations on the subject of the
relations of the three young people. As far as poor Karen was
concerned, it was all pretty obvious, and, as Frau Stohr said, she
could not but enjoy being chaperoned, on her little outings, by

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319

such fine cavaliers. But the other side was not so easy to come at.
However, ignorance and stupidity notwithstanding, the creature’s
feminine intuition helped her to a glimpse, even though a partial
and vulgarized one, or the truth. For she saw, and even teasingly
aimed at the fact, that Hans Castorp was the cavalier, and young
Ziemssen merely in attendance; further — for she was aware of
the state of Hans Castorp’s feeling toward Madame Chauchat —
that he was playing the gallant to poor little Karstedt because he
did not know how to approach the other. It was a simple guess,
lacking profundity and not actually covering all the facts of the
case — in short, it was only too worthy of Frau Stohr, and when
she came out with it, flat-footed, he did not even answer, save
by a faint smile and an impenetrable stare. So much was true, after
all, that poor Karen did afford him a substitute, an intangible yet
real support, as did the rest of his charitable activities. But at the
same time they were an end in themselves too. The inward satisfac-
tion he experienced whenever he fed the afflicted Frau Mallinck-
rodt her broth, or suffered Herr Ferge to tell him once more
the tale of the infernal pleura-shock, or saw poor Karen clapping
her ravaged and mortifying hands in grateful joy, was perhaps
of a vicarious and relative kind; yet it was none the less pure and
immediate. It was rooted in a tradition diametrically opposed to
the one Herr Settembrini, as pedagogue, represented — yet seemed
to him, young Hans Castorp, for all that, not unworthy of having
applied to it the placet experiri.

The little house where Karen Karstedt lived lay near the rail-
way track and the watercourse, on the way to the Dorf, quite
conveniently for the cousins to fetch her after breakfast for the
morning walk. Going thence toward the village, to arrive upon
the main street, one had before one the little Schiahorn, and on its
right three peaks which were called the Green Towers, but were
now covered like the rest with snow that gleamed blindingly in
the sun. Still further to the right came the round summit of the
Dorfberg, and a quarter of the way up its slope was visible the
cemetery of the Dorf, surrounded by a wall, obviously command-
ing a fine view, very likely of the distant lake, and thus sug-
gesting itself naturally as the goal of a promenade. Thither they
went, one lovely morning — indeed, all the days now were lovely;
with a hot sun, a sparkling frost, a deep-blue, windless air, and a
scene that glittered whitely all abroad. The cousins, one of them
brick-red in the face, the other bronzed, walked without over-
coats, which would have been intolerable in this sunshine: young
Ziemssen in sports clothes, with 44 arctics,” Hans Castorp in arctics

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320

as well, but with long trousers, not feeling worldly enough to don
short ones. This was the new year, between the beginning and
middle of February — yes, the last figure in the date had changed
since Hans Castorp came up here, it was written now with the
next higher digit. The minute-hand on time’s clock had moved
one space further on: not one of the large spaces, not one which
measured the centuries or the decades; it was only the year that
had been shoved forward by one figure; though Hans Castorp
had been up here not a whole year yet, but scarcely more than half
a one, it had jerked itself on, as does the minute-hand of certain
large clocks, which only register by five minutes at a time; and
was now pointing motionless, awaiting the moment to move for-
ward again. But the hand that marked the months would have to
move on for ten spaces more, only two more, in fact, than it had
moved since he came up here; for February did not count, being
once begun — as money changed counts as money spent.

To the graveyard then, on the slope of the Dorfberg, the three
wended their way — we tell it to complete the tale of their ex-
cursions. It was Hans Castorp’s idea; Joachim probably had
scruples at first, on the score of poor Karen, but in the end agreed
that it was useless to pretend with her, or to carry out Frau Stohr’s
cowardly policy of shielding her from all that could remind her
of her end. Karen Karstedt was not yet so far on as to display
the self-deception that marks the last stage. She knew quite well
how it stood with her, and what the necrosis of her finger-tips
meant: knew too that her unfeeling relatives would not hear of
the unnecessary expense of having her sent back home, and that
it would be her lot, after her exit, to fill a modest space up
yonder. In short, it might even be said that such an excursion was
more fitting, morally spoken, than many another, than the cine-
matograph or the bob-sleigh races, for example — and surely it
was no more than proper to make those lying up there a visit once
in a way, as a comradely attention, provided one did not regard
it as in the same class with an ordinary walk or excursion to a
point of interest.

Slowly they went, in single file, up the narrow path that had
been made in the snow, leaving the highest villas behind and
below them, and watching the familiar scene unroll in its winter
splendour, a little altered in perspective, and opening out to the
north-west, toward the entrance of the valley. There was the
hoped-for view of the lake, now a frozen and snow-covered round,
bordered with trees; the mountains seemed to slope directly down
to its farther shore, while beyond these again showed unfamiliar

THE DANCE OF DEATH

321

peaks, all in full snow, overtopping each other against the blue
sky. The young folk looked at the view, standing in the snow
before the stone gateway to the cemetery; then they entered
through the ironwork grille, which was on the latch.

Here too they found paths shovelled between the small en-
closures, each of which was surrounded with its railing, each
containing a number of graves. The snow rounded over and built
up each smooth and even elevation, with its cross of stone or
metal, its small monument adorned with medallions and inscrip-
tions. No soul was to be seen or heard, the quiet remoteness and
peace of the spot seemed deep and unbroken in more than one
sense. A little stone angel or cupid, finger on lip, a cap of snow
askew on its head, stood among the bushes, and might have passed
for the genius of the place — the genius of a silence so definite
that it was less a negation than a refutation of speech. The silence
it guarded was far from being empty of content or character.
Here it would have been in place for our two male visitors to take
off their hats, had they had any on. But they were, even Hans
Castorp, bare-headed; and could only walk reverently, then-
weight on the balls of their feet, making instinctive inclinations
on one side and the other, single file in the wake of Karen Karstedt,
as she led the way.

The cemetery was irregular in shape, having begun as a nar-
row rectangle facing the south, and then thrown out other rec-
tangles on both sides. Successive increases in size had evidently
been necessary, and ploughed land had been taken in. Even so,
the present enclosure seemed fairly full, both along the wall and
in the less desirable inner plots; one could hardly see or say just
where another interment was to take place. The three wandered
for some time discreetly along the paths, among the enclosures,
stopping to decipher a name or date here or there. The tablets and
crosses were modest affairs, that must have cost but little. The in-
scriptions bore names from every quarter of the earth, they were
in English or Russian — or other Slavic tongues — also German,
Portuguese, and more. The dates told their own sad story, for the
time they covered was generally a short span indeed, the age
between birth and death averaging not much more than twenty
years. Not crabbed age, but youth peopled the spot; folk not yet
settled in life, who from all corners of the earth had come together
here to take up the horizontal for good and all.

Somewhere in the thick of the graves, near the heart of the
acre, lay a small, flat, levelled place, the length of a man, between
two rounded mounds with wreaths of everlasting hanging on

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322

their headstones. Involuntarily the three paused here, the young
girl first, to read the mournful inscriptions; Hans Castorp stood
relaxed, his hands clasped before him, his eyes veiled and his mouth
somewhat open, young Ziemssen very self-controlled, and not only
erect, but even bending a thought backward; and both the cousins
stole a glance at Karen’s face. She stood there, aware of their
glance, with modest and shamefaced mien, her head bent on her
shoulder, blinking her eyes and smiling a strained little smile.

W alpurgis-Night

Within the next few days it would be seven months since Hans
Castorp’s advent among those up here; while Cousin Joachim,
who had already had five to his credit, would soon be able to look
back upon twelve; that is to say, upon a whole round year. Round,
indeed, in a cosmic sense; for since the doughty little locomotive
had set him down at these heights, the earth had completed one
full course round the sun, and was returned to the point whence it
had then set out. The carnival season was at hand, and Hans Castorp
inquired among the old inhabitants of the Berghof what it would
be like.

“ Magnifique” answered Settembrini, whom the cousins had
again encountered on the morning walk. “ Gorgeous,” he said.
“ Every bit as lively as it is in the Prater. You shall see, Engineer,
4 the gayest gallants of the night, in brilliant rows advancing,’ ”
he quoted, and went on in his most mocking vein, couching his
gibes in sounding phrases, with a telling accompaniment of arm,
shoulder, and head movements. “ What do you expect? Even in
maisons de sante they have their balls for the fools and idiots, I’ve
read; why not up here as well? The programme includes various
danses macabres , as you may imagine; but unfortunately some of
last year’s guests will not be here — the party being over at half
past nine, you perceive — ”

“Do you mean — oh, capital! ” laughed Hans Castorp. “Herr
Settembrini, you are a wretch! Half past nine — I say, did you
get that? ” he turned to his cousin. “ Herr Settembrini means it
would be too early for some of last year’s guests to take part.
Ha ha — spooky! He means the ones that have taken leave of the
flesh and the things of the flesh in the mean time. But I am all
excitement,” he said. “ I think it’s quite proper to celebrate the
feasts up here as they come, and mark off the time in the usual
way. Just a dead level of monotony, without any breaks at all,
would be too awful for words. We have had Christmas already,

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323

we took notice of the beginning of the New Year; and now comes
Shrove Tuesday; after that, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Easter;
then six weeks after that, Whitsunday; then it is almost midsum-
mer, the solstice, and we begin to go toward autumn — ”

“ Stop, stop, stop! ” Settembrini cried, lifting his face to heaven
and pressing his temples with the palms of his hands. “ Be quiet,
I cannot listen to you letting go the reins like that! ”

“ Pardon me, I mean it just the other way. Behrens will finally
have to make up his mind to the injections, to get rid of my
infection; my temperature sticks at 99. 3 0 to four, five, six, and
even seven. I am, and I continue to be, life’s delicate child! I don’t
mean I am a long-termer, Rhadamanthus hasn’t let me in for any
definite number of months; but he did say it would be nonsense
to interrupt the cure, when I’ve been up here so long already, and
invested so much time, so to speak. Even if he did set a term,
what good would it do me? When he says, for instance, half a
year, that is to be taken as the minimum, it is always more. Look
at my cousin; he was to have finished the beginning of the month
— finished in the sense of being healed, cured — and the last time
Behrens saw him, he stuck on four more to make sure he is en-
tirely sound — well, then, where are we? Why, at the summer
solstice, just as I said, without the faintest notion of offending
you, and on the way to winter. Well, well, for the present what
we have before us is Fasching, and as I say, I consider it fit and
proper to celebrate it in the usual way, just as it comes in the
calender. Frau Stohr tells me the concierge sells tin horns in his
lodge, did you know that? ”

And so it fell out. Shrove Tuesday came on apace; before one
had actually seen it on the way, it arrived. All sorts of absurd in-
struments were snarling and squealing in the dining-hall, even at
early breakfast; at midday, paper snakes were launched from the
table where Ganser, Rasmussen, and Fraulein Kleefeld sat. Paper
caps were mounted; they, like the trumpets, were to be had of the
concierge. The round-eyed Marusja was among the first to appear
in one. But in the evening — ah, in the evening there were festivi-
ties in the hall and the reception-rooms, in the course of which —
but we alone know to what, thanks to Hans Castorp’s enterprising
spirit, these carnival gaieties led up in their course; and we do not
mean to let our knowledge betray us into indiscretion. We shall
pay time all the honour due it, and precipitate nothing. Nay, rather,
we shall incline to protract the tale, out of feeling for young Hans
Castorp’s moral compunctions, which have so long prevented him
from crossing his Rubicon.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

3H

Everybody went down to the Platz in the afternoon, to see the
streets in carnival mood, with harlequins and columbines shaking
their rattles, with maskers on foot and in jingling, decorated sleighs,
among whom went forward lively skirmishes, and much confetti
was flung. Spirits were very high at all seven tables when the guests
assembled for the evening meal; there was every indication that the
fun begun abroad would continue in the same key within doors.
The concierge had done a thriving trade in rattles and tin trumpets;
Lawyer Paravant had been the first to go further in the same line,
putting on a lady’s kimono and a braid of false hair belonging to
Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt; he wore his moustaches drawn
down on each side of his mouth with the tongs, and looked the
very picture of a Chinaman, evoking loud applause from all quar-
ters. The management had done its share. Each of the seven tables
was decked with a paper lantern, a coloured moon with a lighted
candle inside; when Settembrini entered, and passed by Hans Ca-
storp’s, he quoted:

“ See the gorgeous tongues of fire —

Club as gay as heart’s desire — ”

He brought out the words with his fine, dry smile, and sauntered
to his place, where he was greeted with a rain of missiles like tiny
pellets, that broke and scattered a spray of perfume where they fell.

Yes, from the first moment the key was high. The bursts of
laughter were unintermitted; paper snakes hung down from the
chandeliers, swaying to and fro; confetti swam in the sauces; very
early the dwarf waitress brought in the first ice-pail, the first bottle
of champagne. Inspired by Lawyer Einhuf, the guests drank it
mixed with burgundy. Toward the end of the meal the ceiling light
went out, and only the colourful twilight of the paper lanterns
illumined the room, making of .the scene an Italian night, and set-
ting the crown upon the mood of the evening. Settembrini passed
over a paper to Hans Castorp’s table, by the hand of Marusja, who
sat nearest him, with a green tissue-paper jockey cap on her head;
on it he had written with a pencil:

44 But mind, the mountain’s magic-mad to-night,

And if you choose a will-o’-the-wisp to light
Your path, take care, ’twill lead you all astray.”

This was received with enthusiasm, though Dr. Blumenkohl,
whose state had now much altered for the worse, muttered some-
thing to himself, with the expression peculiar to him upon his face,
or rather upon his lips; he seemed to be asking what sort of verses

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

325

were these. But Hans Castorp considered that an answer was due,
he felt it incumbent on him to cap the quotation, though it was
unlikely he would have produced anything very striking. He
searched his pockets for a pencil, but found none, nor could Joa-
chim or the schoolmistress supply his need; and his bloodshot eyes
looked to the east for aid, to the farther left-hand corner of the
room — it was plain that his fleeting purpose was dissipated in a
widening circle of associations. He paled a little, and entirely lost
sight of his original intention.

Other good ground there was for paling. Frau Chauchat had
made special toilet for carnival, she wore a new gown, or at least
one new to our hero, of thin, dark silk, probably black, or at most
shot with a golden brown. It was cut with a modest little round
neck like a schoolgirl’s frock, hardly so much as to show the base
of the throat, or the collar-bones, or the slightly prominent bone
at the back of the neck, beneath the soft fringes or her hair. But it
left free to the shoulder Clavdia’s arms, so tender and yet so full,
so cool, so amazingly white, set off against the dark silk of her
frock, with such ravishing effect that it made Hans Castorp close
his eyes, and murmur within himself: “ O my God! ” He had never
seen such a mode before. Ball gowns he had seen, stately and cere-
monial, cut in conformity with a fashion that exposed far more of
the person than this one did, without achieving a jot of its sensa-
tional effect. Poor Hans Castorp! He was reminded of a theory he
had once held about these arms, on making their acquaintance for
the first time, veiled in diaphanous gauze: that it was the gauze
itself, the “ illusion ” as he called it, which had lent them their in-
describable, unreasonable seductiveness. Folly! The utter, accen-
tuated, blinding nudity of these arms, these splendid members of
an infected organism, was an experience so intoxicating, compared
with that earlier one, as to leave our young man no other recourse
than again, with drooping head, to whisper, soundlessly: “ O my
God! ”

Later on, another paper was handed over, on which was written:

“ Society to heart’s desire —

In faith, of brides a party,

And jolly bachelors on fire
With forward hopes and hearty.”

“ Bravo, bravo! ” they shouted. They were drinking coffee by
now, served in little brown earthenware jugs, and some of them
liqueurs as well, for instance Frau Stohr, who adored the sweet and
spirituous. The company began to rise from table, to move about,

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326

to pay visits. Part of the guests had already moved into the recep-
tion-rooms, others remained seated, still faithful to the drink they
had mingled. Settembrini, coffee-cup in hand, sporting his tooth-
pick, crossed over and sat down between Hans Castorp and the
schoolmistress.

“ 4 The Harz,’ ” he said. “ ‘ Near Schierke and Elend.’ Did 1
exaggerate, Engineer? Here’s a bedlam for you! But wait, the fun
is not over so soon; far from leaving off, it has not even reached its
height. From what I hear, there will be more masquerading; certain
people have left the room, we are justified in anticipating almost
anything.”

Even as he spoke, new maskers entered: women dressed as men,
with beards and moustaches of burnt cork, betraying themselves
by their figures and looking like characters in comic opera; men in
women’s clothes, tripping over their skirts. Here was the student
Rasmussen in a black jet-trimmed toilet, displaying a pimpled
decollete and fanning himself front and back with a paper fan;
there was a Pierrot, costumed in white underwear, with a lady’s
felt hat, a powdered face that gave his eyes an unnatural expression,
and lips garish with blood-red pomade — the youth with the finger-
nail. A Greek from the “ bad ” Russian table, who rejoiced in beau-
tiful legs, strutted in tights, with short cloak, paper ruff, and dag-
ger, personating a fairy prince, or a Spanish grandee. All these
costumes had been improvised since the end of the meal. Frau Stohr
could sit still no longer. She too disappeared, and presently re-
turned dressed as a charwoman, with skirt looped up and sleeves
rolled back; a paper cap tied under her chin, armed with pail and
brush; she began scrubbing about under the tables, among the feet
of those still sitting.

“ 4 See beldam Baubo riding now,’ ” quoted Settembrini, as she
appeared; and gave the next line too, in his clear and “ plastic ” de-
livery. She heard it, and retorted by calling him a turkey-cock and
bidding him keep his filthy jokes to himself. With the licence of the
season she addressed him, Herr Settembrini, with the thou. But
indeed this familiarity had become quite general during the meal.
He girded himself to reply, when a fresh stir and laughter in the
hall interrupted him, and those in the dining-room looked up ex-
pectantly.

Followed by a troop of guests, two singular figures entered. One
was dressed like a nurse; but her black uniform was marked off
from head to foot by short white strips close under each other,
with a longer one at regular intervals, like degrees on a thermom-
eter. She had one finger laid to her pallid lips, and in her other

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

327

hand a fever chart. Her companion was all in blue, with blue paint
on lips, brows, throat, cheeks, and chin, and a blue woollen cap
awry over one ear. He was dressed in a “ pull-over ” of glazed blue
linen, tied round the ankles, and stuffed out into a great paunch
round the middle. These were Frau litis and Herr Albin; they wore
cardboard placards, on which were written “ The Silent Sister ”
and “ The Blue Peter together, with sidling gait they moved
through the room.

What applause there was! What ringing shouts! Frau Stohr, her
broom under her arm and her hands on her knees, laughed like the
charwoman she impersonated. Only Settembrini was unmoved. He
cast one glance at the successful maskers and his lips became a fine
thin line beneath the waving moustaches.

Among the troop streaming in the rear of the blue and silent
ones, came Clavdia Chauchat, together with the woolly-haired
Tamara and the man with the hollow chest, named Buligin, who
was dressed in evening clothes. Clavdia brushed Hans Castorp’s
table with the folds of her new gown, and crossed the room to
where young Ganser and the Kleefeld were sitting. Her compan-
ions followed the rout out of the dining-hall after the two alle-
gorical maskers, but she stood there, her hands behind her back,
laughing and chatting, her eyes like narrow slits. She too had
mounted a cap — it was not a bought one, but the kind one makes
for children, a simple cocked hat of white paper, set rakishily on
her head, and suiting her, of course, to a marvel. Her feet showed
beneath the dark golden-brown silk of her frock, whose skirt was
somewhat draped. Of her arms we shall say no more in this place.
They were bare to the shoulder.

“ ‘ Look at her well,’ ” Hans Castorp heard Herr Settembrini
say, as though from a distance, following her with his glance as she
presently left the room. “ 4 The fair one, see! ’Tis Lilith! ’ ”

“ Who? ” asked Hans Castorp.

Herr Settembrini^ literary soul was pleased. He answered:
“ 4 Adam’s first wife is she.’ ”

Besides themselves there was only Dr. Blumenkohl at the table,
sitting in his place at the other end. Everyone else, even Joachim,
was now in the drawing-rooms. Hans Castorp said — and he too
addressed his companion with the licence of the season, and said
thou to him: “ Dear me, you’re full of poetry to-night. What Lily
do you mean? Did Adam marry more tnan once? I didn’t know it.”

44 According to the Hebraic mythus, Lilith became a night-trip-
ping fairy, a 4 belle dame sans merci dangerous to young men es-
pecially, on account of her beautiful tresses.”

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328

“ What the deuce! A hobgoblin with beautiful tresses! You
couldn’t stand that, could you? You would come along and turn
on the electric light and bring the young men back to the path of
virtue — that’s what you do, isn’t it? ” Hans Castorp said whim-
sically. He had drunk rather freely of the mixed burgundy and
champagne.

“ Hark ye, Engineer — and take heed what I say,” Settembrini
answered frowning. “ You will kindly address me with the ac-
cepted form employed in the educated countries of the West, the
third person pluralis , if I may make bold to suggest it.”

“Why? Isn’t this carnival? The other is the accepted form
everywhere to-night.”

“ Yes, it is — and its charm lies in its very abandon. When stran-
gers, who would regularly use the third person, speak to each
other in the second, it is an objectionable freedom, it is wantonly
playing with the roots of things, and I despise and condemn it,
because at the bottom the usage is audaciously and shamelessly
levelled against our civilization and our enlightened humanity. Do
not, for one moment, imagine I addressed you with this form just
now. I was quoting from the masterpiece of your national litera-
ture — I used poetic licence.”

“ So did I. I am using a sort of poetic licence now, because it
seems to me to suit the occasion, and that is why I do it. I don’t say
I find it perfectly natural and easy to say thou to you, on the con-
trary it costs me an effort, I have to poke myself up to it; but I do
so freely, gladly, and with all my heart — ”

“With all your-”

“ Yes, quite sincerely, with all my heart. We have been up here
for some time together — do you realize it is seven months? That
is not much, perhaps, as they reckon time here; but in the ordinary
way it is a good deal, after all. Well, we have spent it with each
other, because life brought us together. We have met almost daily,
and had interesting conversations, in part upon subjects of which,
down below, I should not have had the faintest understanding. But
up here I have, they seem to me very real and pertinent; and I was
always very keen, in our discussions, or rather, when you explained
things to me, as a homo humanns , for of course I was too inexperi-
enced to contribute anything, and could only feel that all you said
was highly worth listening to. It is through you I have learned to
understand such a lot — that about Carducci was the least part of it
— take the republic and the hello stile and how they hang together,
or time with human progress, and how if there was no time there
could be no human progress, and the world would be only a stand-

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329

ing drain and stagnant puddle — what should I have known of all
that if it weren’t for you? So I simply address you as though we
were old and close friends, without further ceremony, and you
must excuse me, because I don’t know any other way. You sit there,
and I speak to you like this, and it is all that’s necessary. For you
are not, to me, just any man, with a name, like another; you are a
representative, Herr Settembrini, an ambassador to this place and
to me. Yes, that is what you are,” Hans Castorp asserted, and struck
the table with the flat of his hand. “ So now I will thank you,” he
went on, and shoved his champagne and burgundy along the table
toward Herr Settembrini’s coffee-cup, as though to touch glasses
with him. “ I thank you for having taken trouble for me in these
seven months, for having lent a hand to a young donkey in all the
new experiences that came to him, and tried to influence him for
his good — sine pecimia , of course — partly by means of anecdote
and partly in abstractions. I distinctly feel the moment has come
to thank you for all you have done, and to beg your pardon for
being a troublesome pupil — a ‘ difficult,’ no, a ‘ delicate child of
life ’ — that was what you called me. It touched me very much to
have you say that; and I feel touched every time I think of it. The
troublesome child — that I have been for you, in your capacity as
pedagogue — you remember, you came to speak of that on the
first day we met, it is one of the associations you have taught me,
the relation between humanism and pedagogy; and there are many
others I shall think of as time goes on. You must forgive me, then,
and not think too hardly of me. I drink your health, Herr Settem-
brini; I drink to those literary endeavours of yours for the elimina-
tion of human suffering.” He ceased speaking, bent over and
drained his glass, hiccupped twice, and stood up. “ Now let us join
the others.”

“ Why, Engineer, what has come over you? ” the Italian asked
in surprise, rising in his turn. “ That sounds like a parting.”

“ A parting? No — why? ” Hans Castorp evaded him — not only
in words, but in action, for he turned as he spoke, describing a
curve with the upper part of his body^ and came to a stop before
Fraulein Engelhart, who had just entered to fetch them. She said
that a carnival punch, contributed by the management, was being
dispensed by no less a person than the Hofrat himself, and bade
them come if they cared for a glass. So they went together.

The little round white-covered table, with Hofrat Behrens be-
hind it, stood the centre of a press of guests, each holding out a
sherbet cup to be filled, into which the dispenser ladled the steam-
ing drink out of a tureen. He too had made concessions to the

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carnival spirit: he wore his usual white surgeon’s coat, for even
to-day his professional activity must go on; but he had added a
genuine Turkish fez, crimson, with a black tassel dangling over
one ear. His appearance, of itself sufficiently striking, needed no
more than this to render it quite outlandish. The long white smock
exaggerated his height; one felt that if he were to stand erect and
hold up his head, he would be more than life-size; and atop was the
small head, with its high colour and unique cast of feature. Never
before had Hans Castorp been so impressed with its oddity as when
he saw it to-day under this absurd head-gear: the flat, snub-nosed,
purple-flushed physiognomy, the watery, goggling blue eyes be-
neath tow-coloured brows, and the blond, close-trimmed mous-
tache mounted crookedly above the full, bow-shaped lips. Turned
away from the steam that wreathed upwards from the bowl, he
held the ladle high and let the sweet arrack punch run in a brown,
flowing stream into the glasses they held toward him, rattling on
the while with his usual flow of whimsical jargon.

“ Herr Urian sits up above,” Settembrini interpreted in a low
voice with a wave of the hand.

Dr. Krokowski was there too, short, stout, solid, with his black
alpaca shirt fastened like a domino on his shoulders, the sleeves
dangling. He was holding his punch-glass with his hand at the level
of his eyes and twisting the wrist round as he talked and jested
with a group of masqueraders. Music was heard; the tapir-faced
lady was playing Handel’s Largo on the violin, and then a drawing-
room sonata by Grieg, characteristically northern in mood. The
Mannheimer accompanied her on the piano. There was good-
natured applause, even from the bridge-tables, which had been set
up and occupied by maskers, with bottles in coolers at their sides.
The doors were all open, and some of the guests stood in the hall
as well. A group about the punch-table watched the Hofrat, who
was introducing a new diversion. Bent over the table with his eyes
closed and his head thrown back in evidence of good faith, he was
sketching with his mighty hand a figure on the back of a visiting-
card, the outline of a pig. It was rather more fanciful than realistic,
yet undoubtably the lineaments of a pig, which under these diffi-
cult conditions, without the help of his eyes, he had managed to
trace. It was a feat, and he could perform it. The little eyes were
almost in the right place, so was the pointed ear, and the tiny legs
under the rounded little belly; the curving line of the back ended
in a small neat ringlet of tail. There was a general “ Ah! ” as he
finished; then everyone was fired with an ambition to emulate the
master. What abortions were brought forth! They lacked all co-

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331

herence. The eyes were outside the head, the legs inside the paunch,
the line of the latter came nowhere near joining, the little tail curled
away by itself without organic connexion with the figure, an in-
dependent arabesque. They nearly split with laughing; the group
increased. The notice of the bridge party was attracted, the players
were drawn by curiosity and came up holding their cards fan-
shaped in their hands. The bystanders watched the performer to
see that he did not wink — which his feeling of powerlessness made
him sometimes do; they giggled and guffawed while he committed
his frantic blunders, and burst out in extravagant mirth when he at
last opened his eyes and looked down upon his ridiculous handi-
work. Blatant self-confidence lured everyone on to try his hand.
The card, a large one, was soon filled on both sides with overlap-
ping failures. The Hof rat contributed a second from his case;
whereon Lawyer Paravant, after taking thought, essayed to draw
a pig without lifting the pencil — and lo, the measure of his un-
success led all the rest: his creation had no faintest likeness either
to a pig or to anything else on the broad earth. It was greeted with
hilarity and boisterous congratulations. Menu cards were fetched
from the dining-room, and now several people could draw at the
same time; each performer having his own circle of onlookers and
aspirants, waiting for the pencil he was using. There were three
pencils, they snatched them out of each other’s hands. The Hofrat,
having set the sport afoot, and seen it thriving, withdrew with his
adjutants.

Hans Castorp stood in the thick of the crowd, at Joachim’s back,
watching. He rested his elbow on his cousin’s shoulder and sup-
ported his chin with all five fingers of that hand, his other arm set
akimbo on his hip. He was talking and laughing, anxious to try his
skill; asked on all sides for a pencil, and at length received a stump
of a thing, hardly to be held between thumb and forefinger. Then
he shut his eyes, lifted his face to the ceiling, and drew, all the time
uttering objurgations against the pencil, some horrible inanity upon
the paper, in his haste spoiling even this, and running off the paper
on to the tablecloth. “ That doesn’t count! ” he cried as his audi-
ence burst out in well-merited jeers. “ What can you do with a
pencil like that — deuce take it! ” and he flung the offending morsel
into the punch-bowl. “ Has anybody a decent one? Who will lend
me a pencil? I must have another try. A pencil, a pencil, who has a
pencil? ” he shouted, leaning with his left hand on the table, and
shaking the other high in the air. There was no answer. Then he
turned and, passing through the room, went straight up to Clavdia
Chauchat, who, as he was well aware, was standing near the door

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332

of the little salon, watching with a smile the throng round the
punch-table.

Behind him he heard someone calling — euphonious words, in a
foreign tongue: “ Eh, Ingegnere! Aspetti! Che cosa fa, lngegnere!
Un po ’ di ragione sal Ma e matto questo ragazzo ! ” But he drowned
out the voice with his own, and Herr Settembrini, flinging up his
hand with a swing of the arm — a gesture common in his own coun-
try, whose meaning it would be hard to put into words — and
giving vent to a long-drawn “ Eh — h! ” turned his back on the
room and the carnival gaieties. — But Hans Castorp was standing
on the tiled court of the school yard, gazing at close quarters into
these blue-grey-green epicanthus eyes, above the prominent cheek -
bones, and saying: “ Do you happen to have a pencil? ”

He was deadly pale, as pale as when he had come back blood-
spattered to the lecture, from that walk of his. The nerves control-
ling the blood-vessels that supplied his face functioned so well that
the skin, robbed of all its blood, went quite cold, the nose looked
peaked, and the hollows beneath the young eyes were lead-col-
oured as any corpse’s. And the Sympathicus caused his heart, Hans
Castorp’s heart, to thump, in such a way that it was impossible to
breathe except in gasps; and shivers ran over him, due to the func-
tioning of the sebaceous glands, which, with the hair follicles,
erected themselves.

She stood there, in her paper cap, and looked him up and down,
with a smile that betrayed no trace of pity, nor any concern for
the ravages written on his brow. The sex knows no such com-
passion, no mercy for the pangs that passion brings; in that element
the woman is far more at home than the man, to whom, by his very
nature, it is foreign. Nor does she ever encounter him in it save
with mocking and malignant joy — compassion, indeed, he would
have none of.

He had used the second person singular. She answered: “ I? Per-
haps I have, let me see.” Her voice and smile did betray an excite-
ment, a consciousness — such as comes when the first word is
uttered in a relationship long secretly sustained — a subtle con-
sciousness, which concentrates all the past in a single moment of
the present. “ You are so eager — you are very ambitious ” — she
continued thus to mock him, in her slightly veiled, pleasantly husky
voice, with her quaint pronunciation, giving a foreign sound to
the r and making the vowels too open, even accenting the word
ambitious on the first syllable, with exotic effect; rummaging and
peering the while in her leather bag, whence she fetched out, first
a handkerchief, and then a little silver pencil, slender and fragile, a

WALPURGIS-NIGHT 333

pretty trinket scarcely meant for use — the other, the first one, had
been something more to take hold of.

“ Voila” she said, and held the toy by its end before his eyes,
between thumb and forefinger, and lightly turned it to and fro.

Since she thus both gave and withheld it, he took it, so to speak,
without receiving it: that is, he held out his hand, with the fingers
ready to grasp the delicate thing, but not actually touching it. His
eyes — in their leaden sockets — went from the little object to
Clavdia’s Tartar physiognomy. His bloodless lips were open, and
so remained, he did not use them to utter the words, as he said:
“ You see, I knew you would have one.”

“ Prenez garde , il est un peu fragile” she said. “ Cest a visser , tu
sais”

Their heads bent over it together, and she showed him the
mechanism — it was quite ordinary, the little needle of hard, prob-
ably worthless lead came down as one loosened the screw.

They stood bent toward each other. The stiff collar of his eve-
ning dress served him to support his chin.

“ A poor thing — but yours ” he said, brow to brow with her,
speaking down upon the pencil, stiff-lipped, so that most of the
labials went unsounded.

“ Ah, so you are even witty,” she answered him, with a short
laugh. She straightened up, and surrendered the pencil. It is a ques-
tion by what means he was witty, since it was plain there was not
a drop of blood in his head. “ Well, away with you, go and draw,
draw yourself out! ” And wittily in her turn, she seemed to drive
him away.

“ But you have not drawn yet, you must draw too,” he said,
without managing the m in must, and drew a step backwards, in-
vitingly.

“ I? ” she said again, with an inflection of surprise which seemed
to have reference to something else than his invitation. She stood
a moment in smiling confusion, then as if magnetized followed him
a few steps toward the punch-table.

But interest in the activity there seemed to have fallen away.
Someone was still drawing, but without an audience. The cards
were covered with futilities, they had all done their worst, and
now the current had set in another direction. Directly the doctors
had left the scene, the word had gone round for a dance, already
the tables were being pushed back; spies were posted at the doors
of the writing- and music-rooms, with orders to give the sign in
case the “ old man,” Krokowski, or the Oberin should show them-
selves. A young Slavic youth attacked con espressione the key-

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334

board of the little nut-wood piano, and the first couple began to
turn about within an irregular circle of chairs and tables, on which
the spectators perched themselves.

Hans Castorp dismissed the departing punch-table with a wave
of the hand, and indicated with his chin two empty seats in a shel-
tered corner of the small salon, near the portieres. He did not
speak, perhaps because the music was too loud. He drew up a seat
— it was a reclining-chair with plush upholstery — for Frau Chau-
chat, in the comer he had indicated, and took for himself a creak-
ing, crackling basket-chair with curling arms, in which he sat
down, bent forward toward her, his own arms on the arms of the
chair, her pencil in his hand and his feet drawn back under his seat.
She lay buried in the plushy slope, her knees brought high; not-
withstanding which, she crossed one leg over the other, and swung
her foot in the air, in its black patent-leather shoe and black silk
stocking spanned over the anklebone. There was a coming and
going in the room, some of the guests standing up to dance, while
others took their places to rest.

“ You’ve a new frock on,” he said, as an excuse for looking at
her; and heard her answer.

“ New? So you are acquainted with my wardrobe? ”

“ Am I right? ”

“ Yes — I had it made here lately; the tailor down in the village,
Luka£ek, did it. He does work for several of the ladies up here. Do
you like it? ”

“ Very much,” he said, surveying her once more and then cast-
ing down his eyes. “ Would you like to dance? ” he added.

“ Would you like to? ” she asked, with lifted brows, yet smiling,
and he answered:

“ I would, if you wished.”

“ That is not so brave as I thought you were,” she said, and when
he laughed deprecatingly, she went on: “ Your cousin has gone up
already.”

“ Yes, he is my cousin,” he confirmed her, unnecessarily. “ I
noticed he had gone, he is probably in the rest-cure by now.”

“ Cest un jeune howme tres etroit , tres honnete y tres allemand .”

“ Etroit? Honnete? ” he repeated. “ I understand French better
than I speak it. You mean he is pedantic. You think we are pedantic,
we Germans — nous autres allemands? ”

“ Nous causons de votre cousin . Mais c'est vrai , you are a little
bourgeois. Vous aimez Pordre mieux que la liberte, toute P Europe
le sait”

“ Aimer , aimer — qu’est-ce que c'est? Ca manque de definition y

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

335

ce mot Id. We love what we have not — that is proverbial,” Hans
Castorp asserted. “ Lately,” he went on, “ I’ve thought very much
about liberty. That is, I’ve heard the word so often. I’ve begun to
think about it. Je te le dirai en frangais , what I have been thinking.
Ce que toute PEurope nomme la liberty c'est peut-etre une chose
assez pedante et assez bourgeoise en comparaison de notre besoin
d’ordre — c'est ga! ”

“ Tiens! Cest amusant! Cest ton cousin d qui tu penses en di -
sant des choses etranges comme ga? ”

“ No, c’est vraiment une bonne ame , a simple nature, not exposed
to intellectual dangers, tu sais. Mats il n'est pas bourgeois , il est
militaire .”

“ Not exposed? ” she repeated his word, not without difficulty.
“ Tu veux dire une nature tout d fait ferme, sur d'elle-meme? Mais
il est serieusement malade , ton pauvre cousin”

“ Who told you so? ”

“ We all know about each other, up here.”

“ Was it Hofrat Behrens? ”

“ Peut-etre en me faisant voir ces tableaux”

“ Cest a dire: en faisant ton portrait! ”

“ Pourquoi pas? Tu Pas trouve reussi , mon portrait? ”

“ Mais oui, extremement. Behrens a tres exactement rendu ta
peau , oh, vraiment tres fidelement. Yaimerais beaucoup etre por-
traitiste, moi aussi, pour avoir P occasion dPetudier ta peau comme
lui .”

“ Parlez allemand, sHl vous plait! ”

“ Oh, I speak German, even in French. Cest une sorte d* etude
artistique et me die ale — en un mot: il s'agit des lettres humaines ,
tu comprends. — What do you say, shall we dance? ”

“ Oh, no, it would be childish — behind their backs! Aussitot
que Behrens reviendra, tout le monde va se precipiter sur les
chaises. Ce sera fort ridicule .”

“ Have you such respect for him as that? ”

“ For whom? ” she said, giving her query a curt, foreign in-
tonation.

“ For Behrens.”

“ Mais va done avec ton Behrens! But there really is not room to
dance. Et puis sur le tapis — Let us look on.”

“ Yes, let’s,” he assented, and gazed beyond her, with his blue
eyes, his grandfather’s musing eyes, in his pale young face, at the
antics of the masked patients in salon and writing-room. There was
the Silent Sister capering with the Blue Peter, there was Frau Salo-
mon as master of ceremonies, dressed in evening clothes with a

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336

white waistcoat and swelling shirt-front; she wore a monocle and a
tiny painted moustache, and twirled upon tiny, high-heeled patent-
leather shoes, that came out oddly beneath her black trousers, as
she danced with the Pierrot, whose blood-red lips stared from his
ghastly white face, with the eyes of an albino rabbit. The Greek
flourished his symmetrical legs in their lavender tights alongside
the darkly glittering Rasmussen in his low-cut gown. Lawyer Para-
vant in his kimono, Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt, and young
Ganser danced all three together, with their arms round each other.
As for Frau Stohr, she danced with her broom, pressing it to her
heart and caressing the bristles as though they were a man’s hair.

“ Yes, let’s,” Hans Castorp repeated, mechanically. They spoke
in low tones, covered by the music. “ Let us sit here, and look on,
as though in a dream. For it is like a dream to me, that we are sit-
ting like this — comme un rive singulierement profond , car il
faut dormir tres profondement pour river comme cela . Je veux
dire — c'est un rive bien connu , rive de tout temps , long , eternel,
oui , etre assis pres de toi comme a present , voild Vetemite”

“ Poete/ ” she said. “ Bourgeois , humaniste , et poete — voild
Pallemand au complet, comme il faut ! ”

“ Je crains que nous ne soy ons pas du tout et nullement comme
il faut” he answered. “ Sous aucun egard. Nous sommes peut-itre
des delicate children of life, tout simplement”

“ Joli mot. Dis-moi done. — Il n'aurait pas ete fort difficile de
river ce r eve-la plus tot. C’est un peu tard , que monsieur se resout
d'adresser la parole a son humble servante”

“ Pourquoi des paroles ? ” he said. “ Pourquoi parler? Parler,
discourir, e’est une chose bien republicaine , je le concede. Mais je
doute, que ce soit poetique au meme degre. Un de nos pension -
naires , qui est un peu devenu mon ami y M. Settembrini — ”

“ Il vient de te lancer quelques paroles.”

“ Eh bien , e'est un grand parleur sans doute , il aime meme beau-
coup a reciter de beaux vers — mais est-ce un poete , cet homme-
Id? ”

“ Je regrette sincerement de 7i avoir jamais eu le plaisir de faire la
connaissance de ce chevalier”

“ Je le crois bien”

“ Ah, tu le crois? ”

“ Comment? Cetait une phrase tout-d-fait mdifferente, ce que
j’ai dit la. Moi, tu le remarques bien, je ne parle guere le frangais.
Pourtant , avec toi je prefere cette langue a la mienne, car pour moi,
parler frangais , e'est parler sans parler, en quelque maniere — sans
responsabilite, ou comme nous par Ions en rive. Tu comprends? ”

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

337

“ A peu pres.”

“ Ca sufjit . — Parler,” went on Hans Castorp, “ pauvre affaire!
Dans Veternite , zze par/e point. Dans Veternite , ft/ mw, <?zz f/iiz
comme en dessinant un petit cochon: on penche la tete en arriere
et on ferme les yeux.”

“ Pas mol , ga! Tu es chez toi dans Veternite , sans aucun doute , ft!
Ze connais a fond. 11 faut avouer , gz/e zzz ^ z/zz peziz r£veur assez
curieux.”

“ Ez puis” said Hans Castorp, “ Vavais parle plus tot , ZZ
vV aurait fallu te dire 1 vous 7 ”

“ £& EzVzz, ejz-^e gz/e zz/ ^ V intention de me tutoyer pour tow
jours? ”

“ Ato <?zz/. /e z’/rz tutoye de tout temps et je te tutoierai eter-
nellement.”

“ C’eft z/zz pra fort, par exemple . En tout cas, tu n' auras pas trop
longtemps V occasion de me dire ‘ tu .’ /e w partir.”

It took time for the words to penetrate his consciousness. Then
he started up, staring about him as though roused out of a dream
The conversation had proceeded rather slowly, for Hans Castorp
spoke French uneasily, feeling for the sense. The piano had been
silent awhile, now it sounded again, under the hands of the man
from Mannheim, who had relieved the Slavic youth. He put some
music in place, and Fraulein Engelhart sat down beside him to turn
the leaves. The party was thinning out; many of the guests had
presumably taken up the horizontal. From where they sat they
could see no one; but there were players at the card-tables in the
writing-room.

“ You are going to — what? ” Hans Castorp asked, quite dashed.

“ I am going away,” she repeated, smiling with pretended sur-
prise at his discomfiture.

“ Impossible,” he said. “ You are jesting.”

“ Not at all. I am perfectly serious. I am leaving.”

“ When? ”

“ To-morrow. Apres diner.”

There took place within him a feeling of general collapse. He
said: “ Where? ”

“ Far away.”

“ To Daghestan? ”

“ Tu n'es pas mal instruit. Peut-etre, pour le moment — ”

“ Are you cured, then? ”

“ Quant hga — non. But Behrens thinks there is not greatly more
to be gained here, for the present. ( Vest pourquoi je vais risquer
un petit changement d'airP

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338

“ Then you are coming back! ”

“ That is the question. Or, rather, the question is when. Quant
d moi y tu sais y faime la liberte avant tout et notamment celle de
choisir mon domicile . Tune comprends guere ce que c'est : d'etre
obsede d'independance. C'est de ma race , peut-etre"

“ Et ton mari au Daghestan te I'accorde — ta liberte ? "

“ C'est la maladie qui me la rend . Me voild a cet endroit pour la
troisieme fois . J'ai passe un an ici, cette fois . Possible que je re -
vienne. Mais alors tu seras bien loin depuis longtemps "

“ You think so, Clavdia? ”

“ Mon prenom aussi! V raiment tu les prends bien au serieux , les
coutumes du carnaval! "

“ Then you know about my case too? ”

u Oui — non — comme on sait ces choses ici . Tu as une petite
tache humide Id dedans et un peu de fievre, riest-ce pas ? ”

“ Tre?ite-sept et huit ou neuf 1'apres-midi " said Hans Castorp.
“ And you? ”

“ Ohy mon cas, tu sais , c'est un peu plus complique — pas tout-d -
fait simple .”

“ II y a quelque chose da?is cette branche de lettres humaines dite
la medecine," Hans Castorp said, “ qu'on appelle bouchement tu -
berculeux des vases de lymphe."

“ Ah! Tu as moucharde , mon chery on le voit bienP
“ Et toi — forgive me! Let me ask you a question — ask it in all
earnestness: six months ago, when I left the table for my first ex-
amination — you looked round after me — do you remember? ”

“ Quelle question! 11 y a six mois! "

“ Did you know where I was going? ”

“ CerteSy c'etait tout-d-fait par hasard — "

“ Behrens had told you? ”

“ Toujour s ce Behrens! "

“ Oh, il a represente ta peau d'une faqon tellement exacte —
D'ailleurSy c'est un veuf aux joues ar dentes et qui possede un service
d cafe tres remarquable . Je crois bien qu'il connait ton corps non
seulement comme medeciny mais aussi comme adepte d'une autre
discipline de lettres humaines .”

“ Tu as decidement raison de dire , que tu paries en reve , mon
ami."

u So it. Laisse-moi rever de nouveaUy apres m' avoir reveille si
cruellement par cette cloche d'alarme de ton depart . Sept mois sous
tes yeux — eta presenty ou en realite j'ai fait ta cormaissance , tu me
paries de depart! "

“ Je te repete , que nous aurions pu causer plus tot"

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

339

“ You would have liked it? ”

“ Moi? Tu ne m'echapperas pas y mon petit . 11 s'agit de tes in -
terets , d toi. Est-ce que tu etais trop timide pour fapprocher d'une
femme d qui tu paries en r-eve maintenant, ou est-ce qu'il y avait
quelqu'un qui fen a empeche? ”

“ Je te Pai dit. Je ne voulais pas te dire ‘ vous? ”

“ Farceur! Reponds done — ce monsieur beau parleur , cet italien -
Id qui a quitte la soiree — qu' est-ce qu'il fa lance tantot? ”

“ Je n'en ai entendu absolument rien . Je me soucie trks peu de ce
monsieur y quand mes yeux te voient. Mais tu oublies — il rf aurait
pas ete si facile du tout de faire ta connaissance dans le monde. II
y avait encore mon cousin , avec qui f etais lie et qui incline tres peu
a s'amuser ici; il ne pense d rien qiCd son retour dans les plaines ,
pour se faire soldat”

“ Pauvre diable! 11 est , en effet , plus malade qu'il ne salt. T on ami
italien du reste ne va pas trop bien non plus”

“ II le dit lui-meme. Mais mon cousin — est-ce vrai? Tu m'ef-
fraies

“ Fort possible qu’il va mourir , s’il essay e d'etre soldat dans les
plaines

“ Qu'il va mourir. La mort . Terrible mot y n' est-ce pas ? Mais
e'est etra?ige y il ne m'impressionne pas tellement aujourd'hui , ce
mot. C'etait une fagon de parler bien conventionnelle y lorsque je
disais: ‘ Tu rn'effraies L'idee de la mort ne m'effraie pas. Elle me
laisse tranquille . Je n'ai pas pitie — ni de mon bon Joachim ni de
moi-meme y en e?itendant qu'il va peut-etre mourir . Si e'est vrai y
son etat ressemble beaucoup au mien et je ne le trouve pas particu-
lierement imposant. 11 est moribond y et moi y je suis amoureux y eh
bien! — Tu as parle a mon cousin d P atelier de photo graphie intime ,
dans Pantichambre y tu te souviens”

“ Je me souviens un peu.”

“ Done ce jour-la Behrens a fait ton portrait transparent! ”

“ Mais oui”

“ Mon dieu! Et Vas-tu sur toi? ”

“ Non y je Pai dans ma chambre”

“ Ah — dans ta chambre. Quant au mien y je Pai toujours dans
mon portefeuille. Veux-tu que je te le fasse voir? ”

“ Mille remer dements. Ma curiosite n'est pas invincible. Ce sera
un aspect tres innocent ”

“ Moi, j'ai vu ton portrait exterieur. J' aimer ais beaucoup mieux
voir ton portrait interieur qui est enferme dans ta chambre. Laisse -
moi demander autre chose! Parfois un monsieur russe qui loge en
ville vient te voir. Qui est-ce? Dans quel but vient-il , cet horrnne? ”

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340

u Tu es joliment fort en espionnage , je Vavoue. Eh bien y je
reponds . Oui, c'est un compatriote souffrant , un ami . fai fait sa
connaissance d une autre station balneaire, il y a quelques annees
dejd. Nos relations? Les voild: nous prenons notre the ensemble 1
nous fumons deux ou trois papiros , et nous bayardons , nous philo-
sophons , nous parlons de Vhomme , de Diew, de /a we, de /a morale ,
de m*7/e choses . F’o/W mow compte rendu. Es-tu satisfait? ”

“ De la morale aussi! Et qu'est-ce que vous avez trouve en fait de
morale , par exemple? ”

“ L# morale? Cela Winter esse? Eh bien y il nous semble ,

chercher la morale non dans la vertu , c'est-d-dire dans la rai-
son , /a discipline y les bonnes moeurs , Vhonnetete , plutot dans le

contraire , je rfzVe dans le peche , ew s’abandonnant au danger,

d ce qui est nuisible, a ce qui nous consume. Il nous semble quHl est
plus moral de se perdre et meme de se laisser deperir , que de se
conserver. Les grands moralistes rtetaient point de vertueux , mais
des aventuriers dans le mal , des vicieux , des grands pecheurs qui
nous enseignent d nous incliner chyetiennement devant la misere.
Tout fa doit te deplaire beaucoup , rtest-ce pas? ”

He was silent; sitting as before, with his feet twined together,
thrust back beneath the creaking wicker chair, leaning toward the
figure opposite, in its cofcked hat; her pencil between his fingers.
With Hans Lorenz Castorp’s blue eyes he looked out into the room.
It was empty, the company dispersed. The piano, in the corner
diagonally opposite, was being touched softly and lightly with one
hand, by the Mannheimer, by whose side sat Fraulein Engelhart,
turning the leaves of a music-book she held on her knee. At this
pause which had ensued in the conversation between Hans Castorp
and Clavdia Chauchat, the pianist left off playing, and sat with his
hand in his lap, while Fraulein Engelhart continued to turn the
pages of her music-book. These four alone remained, from all the
carnival merry-makers; they sat here motionless. The silence lasted
several minutes. Deeper and deeper, under its weight, sank the
heads of the pair at the piano: his toward his keyboard, hers toward
her book; but at last the two as by common consent stood up cau-
tiously, and carefully refraining from any glance in the direction
of the opposite comer, their heads drawn down in their shoulders,
their arms hanging stiffly at their sides, disappeared together, on
tiptoe, through the writing-room.

“ Everyone is going,” said Frau Chauchat. “ Cetaient les der-
niers. Il se fait tard. Eh bien , la fete de carnaval est ftnie” She
raised her arms to remove the paper cap from her head, with its

WALPURGIS-NIGHT 3 4 1

reddish braid wound round it like a wreath. “ Vous connaissez les
consequences , monsieur .”

But Hans Castorp gainsaid them, closing his eyes, and not other-
wise changing his position. He answered: “ Jamais , Clavdia. Jamais
je te dirai 4 vous,’ jamais de la vie ni de la mort , if one may say that
— one should be able to. Cette forme de s’adresser a une personne ,
qui est celle de VOccident cultive et de la civilisation humanitaire ,
me semble fort bourgeoise et pedante . Pourquoi , au fond , de la
forme? La forme , c’est la pedanterie elle-meme! T out ce que vous
avez fixe a Fegard de la morale , toi et ton compatriote souffrant —
tu veux serieusement que ga me surprenne? Pour quel sot me
prends-tu? Dis done , qu’est-ce que tu penses de moi? ”

“ C’est un sujet qui ne donne pas beaucoup a penser . Tu es un
petit bonhomme convenable , de bonne famille , d’wwe
petissante , disciple docile de ses precepteurs et qui retournera
bientot dans les plaines , poz/r oublier completement qu’il a jamais
parle en reve ici et pour aider a rendre son pays grand et puissant
par son travail honnete sur le chantier . Voild ta photographic in-
time y faite sans appareil. Tu la trouves exacte, fespere? ”

44 II y manque quelques details que Behrens y a trouves
44 Ah, les medecins en trouvent toujours, ils s'y connaissentP
u Tu paries comme M . Settembrini . Et ma fievre? Uou vient-
elle? ”

44 Allons done, e'est un incident sans consequence qui passer a
viteT

44 Non, Clavdia, tu sais bien que ce que tu dis la n'est pas vrai et
tu le dis sans conviction , fen suis sur . La fievre de mon corps et le
battement de mon coeur harasse et le frissonement de mes membres,
e'est le contraire d'un mcident , car ce ii est rien d? autre ” — and his
pale face with the twitching lips bent closer over hers — 44 rien
d 1 autre que mon amour pour toi, oui, cet amour qui m!a % saisi d
r instant, ou mes yeux font vue, ou, plutot , que fai reconnu quand
je fai reconnue toi — et e'etait lui, evidemment, qui vfa mene a cet
endroit — ”

44 Quelle folie! ”

44 Oh, f amour n'est rien, s'il n'est pas de la folie, une chose in -
sensee, def endue et une aventure dans le mal . Autrement, e'est une
banalite agreable, bonne pour en faire de petites chansons paisibles
dans les plaines . Mais quant d ce que je fai reconnue et que fai
reconnu mon amour pour toi — oui, e'est vrai, je fai deja connue,
anciennement, toi et tes yeux merveilleusement obliques et ta
bouche et ta voix, avec laquelle tu paries — une fois deja , lorsque

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342

fetais colie gien , je fai demande ton crayon , pour faire enfin ta
connaissance mondaine , parceque je faimais irraisonablement , ez
c’m ie /i, doute, c'est de mon ancien amour pour toi , gz/e
marques me re stent que Behrens a trouvees dans mon corps, et
qui indiquent que jadis aussi fetais malade — ”

His teeth struck together. As he raved, he had drawn one foot
from under his chair, and moved it forward, so that the other knee
touched the floor, there he knelt before her, his head bent, his
whole body quivering. “ Je faime,” he babbled, “ je fai aimee de
tout temps, car tu es le T oi de ma vie , mon reve, mon sort, mon
envie, mon eternel desir — ”

“ Allons, allonsf ” she said. “ Si tes precepteurs te voyaient — ”
But he shook his head, violently, bowed as it was toward the
carpet, and replied: “ Je m*en ficherais, je me fiche de tous ces
Carducci et de la Republique eloquente et du pr ogres humain dans
le temps, car je faime! ”

She caressed softly the close-cropped hair at the back of his
head.

“ Petit bourgeois ! ” she said. “ Jolt bourgeois d la petite tache
humide. Est-ce vrai que tu m'aimes tant? ”

And beside himself at her touch, now on both his knees, with
bowed head and closed eyes, he went on: “ Oh, V amour, tu sais
— Le corps, V amour, la mort, ces trois ne font qu'un. Car le corps,
c'est la maladie et la volupte, et c'est lui qui fait la mort, oui, ils sont
charnels tous deux, f amour et la mort, et voild leur terreur et leur
grande magie! Mais la mort, tu comprends, c'est dfune part une
chose mal famee, impudente, qui fait rougir de honte; et d* autre
part c'est une puissance tres solennelle et tres majestueuse — beau-
coup plus haute que la vie riant e gagnant de la monnaie et f arc is-
sant sa panse — beaucoup plus venerable que le pr ogres qui bavarde
par les temps — parcequ'elle est Vhistoire et la noblesse et la piete
et r eternel et le sacre qui nous fait tirer le chapeau et marcher sur
la pointe des pieds. — Or, de meme, le corps, lui aussi, et V amour
du corps, sont une affaire indecente et facheuse, et le corps rough
et pdlit a sa surface par frayeur et honte de lui-meme . Mais aussi il
est une grande gloire adorable , image miraculeuse de la vie orga -
nique , saint e merveille de la forme et de la be aute, et V amour pour
lui, pour le corps humain, dest de meme un interet extremement
humanitaire et une puissance plus educative que toute la pedagogie
du monde! Oh, enchantante beaute organique qui ne se compose ni
de teinture d Phuile ni de pierre, mais de matiere vivante et corrup-
tible, pleine du secret febrile de la vie et de la pourriture! Re garde
la symetrie merveilleuse de Vedifice humain , les epaules et les

WALPURGIS-NIGHT

343

hunches et les mamelons fleurissants de part et d! autre sur la poi-
trine, et les cotes arrangees par paires, et le nombril au milieu dans
la mollesse du ventre y et le sexe obscur entre les cuisses! Re garde les
omoplates se remuer sous la peau soyeuse du dos y et Pe chine qui
descend vers la luxuriance double et fraiche des f esses , et les grandes
branches des vases et des nerfs qui passent du tronc aux rameaux
par les aisselles, et comme la structure des bras correspond 4 celle
des jambes. Oh y les douces regions de la jointure interieure du coude
et du jarret y avec leur abondance de delicatesses organiques sous
leurs coussins de chair! Quelle fete immense de les caresser y ces en -
droits delicieux du corps humain! Fete a mourir sans plainte apres!
Oui y mon dieu y laisse-moi sentir Podeur de la peau de ta rotule , sous
laquelle Pingenieuse capsule articulaire secrete son huile glissante!
Laisse-moi toucher devotement de ma bouche PArteria femoralis
qui bat au front de ta cuisse et qui se divise plus has en les deux
arteres du tibia! Laisse-moi ressentir Pexhalation de tes pores et
tater ton duvet y image humaine d'eau et d'albumine , destinee pour
Panatomie du tombeau y et laisse-moi perir, mes levres aux tiennes! ”

He did not stir, or open his eyes; on his knees with bowed head,
his hands holding the silver pencil oustretched before him, he re-
mained, swaying and quivering.

She said: “ Tu es en effet un galant qui sait sollicker dPune
maniere profonde, a P allemande” And she set the paper cap on his
head.

“ Adieu, mon prince Carnaval ! Vous aurez une mauvaise ligne
de fievre ce soir, je vous le predis .”

She slipped from her chair, and glided over the carpet to the
door, where she paused an instant, framed in the doorway; half
turned toward him, with one bare arm lifted high, her hand upon
the hinge. Over her shoulder she said softly: “ N’oubliez pas de
me rendre mon crayon .”

And went out.

CHAPTER VI

Changes

What is time? A mystery, a figment — and all-powerful. It con-
ditions the exterior world, it is motion married to and mingled
with the existence of bodies in space, and with the motion of
these. Would there then be no time if there were no motion?
No motion if no time? We fondly ask. Is time a function of
space? Or space of time? Or are they identical? Echo answers.
Time is functional, it can be referred to as action; we say a thing
is “ brought about ” by time. What sort of thing? Change! Now
is not then, here not there, for between them lies motion. But the
motion by which one measures time is circular, is in a closed
circle; and might almost equally well be described as rest, as
cessation of movement — for the there repeats itself constantly
in the here, the past in the present. Furthermore, as our utmost
effort cannot conceive a final limit either to time or in space, we
have settled to think of them as eternal and infinite — apparently
in the hope that if this is not very successful, at least it will be
more so than the other. But is not this affirmation of the eternal
and the infinite the logical-mathematical destruction of every
and any limit in time or space, and the reduction of them, more
or less, to zero? Is it possible, in eternity, to conceive of a sequence
of events, or in the infinite of a succession of space-occupying
bodies? Conceptions of distance, movement, change, even of the
existence of finite bodies in the universe — how do these fare?
Are they consistent with the hypothesis of eternity and infinity
we have been driven to adopt? Again we ask, and again echo
answers.

Hans Castorp revolved these queries and their like in his brain.
We know that from the very first day of his arrival up here his
mind had been much disposed to such sleeveless speculation.
Later, perhaps, a certain sinister but strong desire or his, since
gratified, had sharpened it the more and confirmed it in its gen-
eral tendency to question and to carp. He put these queries to

CHANGES

345

himself, he put them to good cousin Joachim, he put them to
the valley at large, lying there, as it had these months on end,
deep in snow; though from none of these quarters could he ex-
pect anything like an answer, from which the least would be
hard to say. For himself, it was precisely because he did not
know the answers that he put the questions. For Joachim, it was
hardly possible to get him even to consider them, he having, as
Hans Castorp had said, in French, on a certain evening, nothing
else in his head but the idea of being a soldier down below.
Joachim wrestled with these hopes of his, that now seemed al-
most within his grasp, now receded into the distance and mocked
him there; the struggle grew daily more embittered, he even
threatened to end it once for all by a single bold bid for liberty.
Yes, the good, the patient, the upright Joachim, so affected to
discipline and the service, had been attacked by fits of rebel-
lion, he even questioned the authority of the “Gaffky scale”:
the method employed in the laboratory — the lab, as one called
it — to ascertain the degree of a patient’s infection. Whether
only a few isolated bacilli, or a whole host of them, were found
in the sputum analysed, determined his “ Gaffky number,” upon
which everything depended. It infallibly reflected the chances of
recovery with which the patient had to reckon; the number of
months or years he must still remain could with ease be deduced
from it, beginning with the six months that Hofrat Behrens called
a “ week-end,” and ending with the “ life sentence,” which, taken
literally, often enough meant very little indeed. Joachim, then,
inveighed against the Gaffky scale, openly giving notice that he
questioned its authority — or perhaps not quite openly, he did
not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin,
and even in the dining-room. “ I’m fed up with it, I won’t be
made a fool of any longer,” he said, the blood mounting to his
bronzed face. “ Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing,
my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested —
number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the
devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp there is
a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia,
he has galloping consumption, there isn’t the dimmest hope for
him. He may die any day — and yet they’ve never found even the
ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian
captain that was discharged cured the other day, he was simply
alive with them, Gaffky ten — and only the very tiniest cavity.
The devil fly away with Gaffky! I’m done, I’m going home, if it
kills me! ” Thus Joachim; and all his company were pained to see

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346

the gentle, serious youth so overwrought. Hans Castorp, when
he heard the threat, could scarcely refrain from quoting a certain
opinion he had heard expressed in French, by a third party. But
he was silent. Was he to set himself up to his cousin for a model
of patience, as did Frau Stohr, who actually admonished Joachim
not to be blasphemous, but to humble his pride, and take pattern
by her, Caroline Stohr, and the faithfulness and firm resolve which
made her hold out up here, instead of returning to queen it in
her Cannstadt home — to the end that when she did go back it
would be as a sound and healthy wife to the arms of her impatient
husband? No, such language was not for Hans Castorp — since
Carnival he had had a bad conscience towards his cousin. Con-
science told him Joachim must surely be aware of a certain mat-
ter never referred to between them; must see in it something very
like disloyalty and desertion — taken in connexion with a pair of
brown eyes we know, an unwarranted tendency to laughter,
and an orange-scented handkerchief, to whose influence Joachim
was daily five times exposed, yet gave no ground to evil, but
steadfastly fixed his eyes upon his plate. Yes, even the silent hos-
tility which Joachim opposed to his cousin’s problems and specu-
lations on the subject 01 time, Hans Castorp felt as an expression
of the military decorum which reproached himself. While as for
the valley, that snowed-in winter valley, when Hans Castorp,
lying in his excellent chair, directed upon it his inquiring meta-
physical gaze, it was silent too. Its peaked summits, its domes and
crests and brown-green-reddish forests stood there silent, and
mortal time flowed over and about them: sometimes luminous
against a deep-blue sky, sometimes shrouded in vapours, some-
times glowing rosy in the parting sun, sometimes glittering with
hard, diamondlike brilliance in the magic moonlight — but always,
always in snow, for six long, incredible, though scurrying months.
All the guests declared they could not bear to look any more at
the snow, they were sick of it; they had had their fill in the
summer-time, and now these masses and heaps and slopes and
cushions of snow, day in and day out, were more than they could
stand, their spirits sank under the weight of it. And they took
to coloured glasses, green, yellow, and red, to save their eyes, but
still more their feelings.

Mountain and valley, then, had been lying in deep snow for
six months; nay, seven, for as we talk, time strides on — not only
present time, taken up with the tale we are telling, but also past
time, the bygone time of Hans Castorp and the companions of
his destiny, up among the snows — time strides on, and brings

CHANGES

347

changes with it. The prophecy which so glibly, so much to Herr
Settembrini’s disgust, Hans Castorp had made on the eve of Car-
nival, was in a fair way to be fulfilled. True, the solstice was not
immediately at hand; yet Easter had passed over the valley, April
advanced, with Whitsuntide in plain view; spring, with the melt-
ing of the snows, would soon be here. Not all the snow would
melt: on the heights to the south, and on the north in the rocky
ravines of the Rhatikon, some would still remain, and through
the summer months more was sure to fall, though it would scarcely
lie. Yet the year revolved, and promised changes in its course;
for since that night of Carnival when Hans Castorp had borrowed
a lead-pencil of Frau Chauchat and afterwards returned it to her
again, receiving in its stead a remembrance which he carried about
with him in his pocket, since that night six weeks had passed, twice
as many as made up the original term of Hans Castorp’s sojourn
among those up here.

Yes, six weeks had gone by, since that evening when Hans
Castorp made the acquaintance of Clavdia Chauchat, and then
returned so much later to his chamber than the duty-loving Joa-
chim to his. Six weeks since the day after, bringing her depar-
ture, her departure for the present, her temporary departure, for
Daghestan, far away eastwards beyond the Caucasus. That her
absence would be only temporary, that she intended to return,
that she would or must return, at some date yet unspecified, of
this Hans Castorp possessed direct and verbal assurances, given,
not during that reported conversation in the French tongue, but
in a later interval, wordless to our ears, during which we have
elected to intermit the flow of our story along the stream of time,
and let time flow on pure and free of any content whatever. Yes,
such consolatory promises must have been vouchsafed our young
man before he returned to number thirty-four; for he had had
no word with Frau Chauchat on the day following, had not seen
her indeed, save twice at some distance: once when the glass
door slammed, and she had slipped for the last time to her place
at table, clad in her blue cloth skirt and white sweater. The young
man’s heart had been in his throat — only the sharp regard Fraulein
Engelhart bent upon him had hindered him from burying his face
in his hands. The other time had been at three o’clock, when he
stood at a corridor window giving on the drive, a witness to her
departure.

It took place just as other such which Hans Castorp had wit-
nessed during his stay up here. The sleigh or carriage halted be-
fore the door, coachman and porter strapped fast the trunks,

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

348

while friends gathered about to say good-bye to the departing
one, who, cured or not, and whether for life or death, was off
for the flat-land. Others besides friends gathered round as well,
curious on-lookers, who cut the rest-cure for the sake of the di-
version thus afforded. There would be a frock-coated official
representing the management, perhaps even the physicians them-
selves; then out came the gracious recipient of the attentions paid
by this little world to a departing guest; generally with a beaming
face, and a bearing which the excitement of the moment rendered
far more animated than usual. To-day it was Frau Chauchat who
issued from the portal, in company with her concave fellow-
countryman, Herr Buligin, who was to accompany her for part of
the way. She wore a long, shaggy, fur-trimmed travelling-cloak,
and a large hat; she was all smiles, her arms were full of flowers,
she too seemed possessed by the pleasurable excitement due to
the prospect of change, if to nothing else, which was common to
all those who left, whatever the circumstances of their leaving,
and whether with the consent of the physicans, or in sheer despera-
tion and at their own risk. Her cheeks were flushed, and she
chattered without stopping, probably in Russian, while the rug
was being arranged over her knees. People presented farewell
bouquets, the great-aunt gave a box of Russian sweetmeats. Nu-
merous other guests besides Frau Chauchat’s Russian companions
and table-mates, stood there to see her off; among them Dr. Kro-
kowski, showing his yellow teeth through his beard in a hearty
smile, the schoolmistress, and the man from Mannheim, who gazed
gloomily and furtively from a distance, and whose eyes found
out Hans Castorp as he stood at his corridor window looking
down upon the scene. Hofrat Behrens did not show himself — he
had probably ere now taken private leave of the traveller. The
horses started up, amid farewells and hand-wavings from the
bystanders; and then, as Frau Chauchat sank smilingly back against
the cushions of the sleigh, her eyes swept the facade of the Berghof,
and rested for the fraction of a second upon Hans Castorp’s face.
In pallid haste he sought his loggia, thence to get a last glimpse
of the sleigh as it went jingling down the drive toward the Dorf.
Then he flung himself into his chair, and drew out his keepsake,
his treasure, that consisted, this time, not of a few reddish-brown
shavings, but a thin glass plate, which must be held toward the
light to see anything on it. It was Clavdia’s x-ray portrait, show-
ing not her face, but the delicate bony structure of the upper
half of her body, and the organs of the thoracic cavity, surrounded
by the pale, ghostlike envelope of flesh.

CHANGES

349

How often had he looked at it, how often pressed it to his lips,
in the time which since then had passed and brought its changes
with it — such changes as, for instance, getting used to life up
here without Clavdia Chauchat, getting used, that is, to her re-
moteness in space! Yet after all, this adaptation took place more
rapidly than one might have thought possible; for was not time
up here at the Berghof arranged and organized to the end that
one should get very rapidly used to things, even if the getting
used consisted chiefly in getting used to not getting used? No
longer might he expect that rattle and crash at the beginning of
each of the five mighty Berghof meals. Somewhere else, in some
far-off clime, Clavdia was letting doors slam behind her, some-
where else she was expressing herself by that act, as intimately
bound up with her very being and its state of disease as time is
bound up with the motion of bodies in space. Perhaps, indeed,
her whole disease consisted in that, and in nothing else. — But
though lost to view, she was none the less invisibly present to
Hans Castorp; she was the genius of the place, whom, in an evil
hour, an hour unattuned to any simple little ditty of the flat-
land, yet one of passing sweetness, he had known and possessed,
whose shadowy presentment he now wore next his months-long-
labouring heart.

At that hour his twitching lips had stammered and babbled, in
his own and foreign tongues, for the most part without his own
volition, the maddest things: pleas, prayers, proposals, frantic
projects, to which all consent was denied, and rightly: as, that
he might be permitted to accompany the genius beyond the Cau-
casus; that he might follow after it; that he might await it at the
next spot which its free and untrammelled spirit should select as
a domicile; and thereafter never be parted from it more — these
and other such rash, irresponsible utterances. No, all that our
simple young adventurer carried away from that hour was his
ghostly treasure trove, and the possibility, perhaps the proba-
bility, of Frau Chauchat’s return for a fourth sojourn at the Berg-
hof — sooner or later, as the state of her health might decree.
But whether sooner or later — as she had said again at parting —
Hans Castorp would by that time be “ long since far away.” It
was a prophecy whose slighting note would have been harder
to bear had he not known that prophecies are sometimes made
in order that they may not come to pass — as a spell, indeed, against
their fulfilment. Prophecies of this kind mock the future: saying
to it how it should shape itself, to the end that it shall shame
to be so shaped. The genius, in the course of the conversation

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35 °

we have repeated, and elsewhere, called Hans Castorp a “ jolt
bourgeois m petit endroit hmmde ” which might in some sense
be considered a translation of the Settembrinian epithet “ life’s
delicate child and the question thus was, which constitutes
of the mingled essence of his being would prove the stronger, the
bourgeois or the other. The genius, though, had failed to take
into consideration the fact that Hans Castorp too had come about
a good deal in the world, and might easily return hither at a
fitting moment — though, in all soberness, was he not sitting up
here entirely in order that he might not need to return? Pre-
cisely and explicitly that was with him, as with so many others,
the very ground of his continued presence.

One prophecy, indeed, made on that carnival evening, made in
mockery, was fulfilled: Hans Castorp’s fever chart did display
a sharply rising curve. He marked it down with a feeling of
solemnity. Thereafter it fell a trifle, and then ran on, unchanged
save for slight undulations, well above its accustomed level. It
was fever, the degree and persistency of which, according to the
Hofrat, was out of all proportion to the condition of his lung.
“ H’m, young fellow me lad, you’re more infected than one w ould
take you for,” he said. “ We’ll have to come on to the hypos.
They’ll serve your turn, or I’m a Dutchman. In three or four
months you ought to be as fit as a fiddle.” Thus it came about that
Hans Castorp had to produce himself, twice in the week, Monday
and Saturday after the morning exercise, down in the “ lab,”
where he was given his injections.

These were given by either physician indifferently; but the
Hofrat performed the operation like a virtuoso, with a fine sweep,
squeezing the little syringe at the very moment he pressed the
point home. And he cared not a doit where he thrust his needle,
so that the pain was often acute, and the spot hard and inflamed
long afterwards. The effect of the inoculations on the entire or-
ganism was very noticeable, the nervous system reacted as after
hard muscular exertion; and their strength was displayed in the
heightened fever which was their immediate result. The Hofrat
had said they would have this effect, and so it fell out. The whole
affair, each time, took but a second; one after another, the row
of patients received their dosage, in thigh or arm, and turned
away. But once or twice, when the Hofrat was in a more lively
mood, not depressed by the tobacco he had smoked, Hans Castorp
came to speech with him, and conducted the brief conversation
somewhat as follows:

44 1 still remember the coffee and the pleasant talk we had last

CHANGES

351

autumn, Herr Hofrat,” he would say. “ Only yesterday, or per-
haps the day before, was it, I was reminding my cousin of how
we happened to — ”

“ Gaffky seven,” said the Hofrat. “ Last examination. The chap
simply can’t part with his bacilli. And yet he keeps at me worse
than ever, to let him get away so he can wear a sword tied round
his middle. What a child it is! Makes me a scene over a month
or so of time, as though it were aeons passing over our heads.
Means to leave, whether or no — does he say the same to you?
You ought to give him a pretty straight talking-to. Take it from
me, you’ll have him hopping the twig if he is too previous about
going down and breathing the nice damp air into his weak spot.
A sword-swallower like that doesn’t necessarily possess so much
grey matter; but you, as the steady civilian, you ought to see to
it he doesn’t make an ass of himself.”

“ I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat,” Hans Castorp responded,
taking the reins again into his hands. “ I do, often, when he begins
to kick against the pricks — and I think he will listen to reason.
But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He
is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority
from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving
for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest charac-
ters. For instance, lately — who was it went off? A lady, from the
‘ good ’ Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She’s gone to Daghestan,
they say. Well, Daghestan — I don’t know the climate, it is
probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down
on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our
ideas up here — though for aught I know it may be mountainous,
geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But
how can a person who isn’t sound live out there, where all the
proper ideas are totally lacking, and nobody has a notion of the
regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she
will be coming back, she told me so herself — happened to. How
did we come to speak of her? — Yes, Herr Hofrat, I remember as
thought it was yesterday, how we met you in the garden, or, rather,
you met us, for we were sitting on a bench — I could show you
the very bench, to-day, that we were sitting on — we were sitting
and smoking. Or, rather, I was smoking, for my cousin doesn’t
smoke, oddly enough. You were smoking too, and we exchanged
our brands, I recall. Your Brazil I found excellent; but I suspect
one has to go about them a little gingerly, or something may
happen as it happened to you that time with the two little im-
ported — when your bosom swelled with pride, and you nearly

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352

toddled off, you know. I may joke about it, since it turned out all
right. I’ve ordered another couple of hundred of my Maria
lately. I’m very dependent on her, she suits me in every respect.
But the carriage and customs make the cost rather mount up —
so if you have anything good to suggest, Herr Hofrat, I’m ready
to have a go at the domestic product — I see some attractive weeds
in the windows. Yes, we were privileged to look at your paintings,
I remember the whole thing so well. And I was perfectly amazed
at your oil technique, I’d never venture anything like it. You
showed us the portrait you made of Frau Chauchat, simply
first-class treatment of the skin — I must say I was very much
struck by it. At that time I was not personally acquainted with
the sitter, only by sight. But just before she went off, I got to
know her.”

“ You don’t say! ” answered the Hofrat — a little as he had that
time when Hans Castorp told him, shortly before the first examina-
tion, that he had fever. He said no more.

“ Yes,” went on the youth, “ I made her acquaintance — a thing
that isn’t so easy, hereabouts, you know. But Frau Chauchat and
I, we managed, at the eleventh hour, we had some conversation —
Ff — f ! ” went Hans Castorp, and drew his breath sharply through
his teeth. The needle had gone in. “ That was certainly a very im-
portant nerve you happened to hit on, Herr Hofrat,” he said.
“ I do assure you, it hurt like the devil. Thanks, a little massage
does it good. ... Yes, we came a little closer to each other, in
conversation.”

“ Ah? Well? ” the Hofrat said. His manner was as one expect-
ing from his own experience a very favouring reply, and expressing
his agreement in anticipation by the way he puts the question.

“ I’m afraid my French was rather lame, Hans Castorp an-
swered evasively. “ I haven’t had much occasion to use it. But the
words somehow come into one’s mind when one needs them — so
we understood each other tolerably well.”

“ I believe you,” said the Hofrat. “ Well? ” he repeated his in-
quisition; and even added, of his Own motion: “ Pretty nice,
what? ”

Hans Castorp stood, legs and elbows extended, his face turned
up, buttoning his shirt-collar.

“ It’s the old story,” he said. “ At a place like this, two people,
or two families, can live weeks on end under one roof, without
speaking. But some day they get acquainted, and take to each
other, only to find that one of the parties is on the point of leav-
ing. Regrettable incidents like that happen, I suppose. In such

CHANGES 353

cases, one feels like keeping in touch by post, at least. But Frau
Chauchat — ”

“ Tut, she won’t, won’t she? ” the Hofrat laughed.

“ No, she wouldn’t hear of it. Does she write to you, now and
again, from where she is staying? ”

“ Lord bless you! ” Behrens answered, “ she’d never think of
it. In the first place, she’s too lazy, and in the second — how could
she? I can’t read Russian, though I can jabber it, after a fashion,
when I have to, but I can’t read a word — nor you either, I
should suppose. And the puss can purr fast enough in French or in
book German, but writing — it would floor her altogether. Think
of the spelling! No, my poor young friend, we’ll have to console
each other. She always comes back again, sooner or later. Different
people take it differently — it’s a question of procedure, or of
temperament. One goes off and keeps coming back, another stops
long enough that he doesn’t need to come back. Just put it to
your cousin that if he goes off now, you’re likely to be still here
to see him return in state.”

“ But Herr Hofrat, how long do you mean that I — ? ”

“ That you? You mean that he, don’t you? That he won’t stop
as long a time below as he has been up here, that is what I mean,
and so I tell you. That’s my humble opinion, and I lay it on you
to tell him so from me, if you will be so kind as to undertake the
commission.”

Such, more or less, would be the trend of their conversation,
artfully conducted by Hans Castorp, who, however, reaped noth-
ing or less than nothing for his pains. How long one must re-
main in order to see the return of a person departed before her
time — on that point the result was equivocal; while as for direct
news of the departed fair one, he got simply none at all. No, he
would have no news of her, so long as they were separated by
the mystery of time and space. She would never write, and no
opportunity would be afforded him to do so. And when he
came to think of it, how should it be otherwise? Was it not
very bourgeois, even pedantic, of him, to imagine they ought to
write, when he himself had been of opinion that it was neither
necessary nor desirable for them to speak? Had he even spoken
with her, that carnival evening — anything that might be called
speaking, and not rather the utterance of a dream, couched in a
foreign tongue, and very little “ civilized ” in its drift? Why
should he write to her, on letter-paper or on postcards, setting
down for her edification, as he did for that of his people at home,
the fluctuations of his curve? Clavdia had been right in feeling

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354

herself dispensed from writing by virtue of the freedom her ill-
ness gave her. Speaking and writing were of course the first con-
cern of a humanistic and republican spirit; they were the proper
affair of Brunetto Latini, the same who wrote the book about
the virtues and the vices, and taught the Florentines the art of
language and how to guide their state according to the rules of
politics.

And here Hans Castorp was reminded of Ludovico Settem-
brini, and flushed, as once he had when the Italian entered his
sick-room and turned on the light. Hans Castorp might have
applied to him with his metaphysical puzzles, if only by way of
challenge or in a carping spirit, without any serious expectation
of an answer from the humanist, whose concerns and interests,
of course, were all of this earth. But since the carnival gaieties,
and Settembrini’s impassioned exit from the music-room, there
had been a coolness between them, due on Hans Castorp’s side
to a bad conscience, on the other’s to the deep wound dealt his
pedagogic pride. They avoided each other, and for weeks ex-
changed not a single word. In the eyes of one whose view it
was that all moral sanctions resided in the reason and the virtue,
Hans Castorp must have ceased to be “ a delicate child of life
Herr Settembrini must by now have given him up for lost. The
youth hardened his heart, he scowled and stuck out his lips when
they met, and the Italian’s darkly ardent gaze rested upon him
in silent reproach. But his resentment dissolved on the instant,
the first time Herr Settembrini spoke to him, which, as we have
said, happened after weeks of silence. Even so, it was in passing,
and in the form of a classical allusion, for the understanding of
which some training in occidental culture was required. They
met, after dinner, in the glass door — that door which nowadays
was never guilty of banging. Settembrini overtook the young
man, and in the act to pass him, said: ‘‘Well, Engineer, and how
have you enjoyed the pomegranate? ”

Hans Castorp smileef, overjoyed, but in confusion. He answered:
“ I don’t quite understand, Herr Settembrini. Did we have any
pomegranates? I don’t recall having tasted — oh, yes, once in my
life I had pomegranate juice and soda; it was too sweet.”

The Italian, already in front of him, turned his head to say:
“ Gods and mortals have been known to visit the nether world
and find their way back again. But in that kingdom they know
that he who tastes even once of its fruits belongs to them.

He passed on, in his everlasting check trousers, and left Hans
Castorp behind, presumably, and to a certain extent actually.

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355

staggered by so much allusiveness; though he was stirred to irri-
tation at its being taken for granted, and muttered through his
teeth after the departing back: “ Cardiicci-Latini-httmani-spagheti
— get along, do, and leave me in peace! ”

Yet he was at bottom sincerely glad to have the silence broken.
For despite his keepsake, the macabre trophy he wore next his
heart, he leaned upon Herr Settembrini, set great store by his
character and opinions; and the thought of being cast off would
have weighed upon his spirit more heavily than that remembered
boyish feeling of being left behind at school and not counting any
more, of enjoying, like Herr Albin, the boundless advantages of
his shameful state. He did not venture, however, himself to address
his mentor; who, for his part, let weeks elapse before he again
approached his “ delicate child.”

The ocean of time, rolling onwards in monotonous rhythm, bore
the Easter-tide on its billows. And they observed the season at
the Berghof, as they did consistently all the recurrent feasts of the
year, by way of breaking up and articulating the long stretches
of time. At early breakfast there was a nosegay of violets at each
place; at second breakfast each guest had a coloured egg; while
sugar and chocolate hares adorned and made festive the midday
table.

“ Have you ever made a voyage by steamship, Tenente? Or
you, Engineer? ” asked Herr Settembrini, strolling up to the
cousins’ table, toothpick in mouth. Most of the guests were short-
ening the main rest-cure in honour of the day, and devoting a
quarter-hour to coffee and cognac. “ These rabbits and coloured
eggs somehow remind me of the life on board a great ocean-
going boat, where you stare at a briny waste and a bare horizon
for weeks on end, and even the exaggerated ease of the life
scarcely avails to make you forget its precariousness, the sub-
merged consciousness of which continues to gnaw at the depths
of your being. I still recall the spirit in which the passengers in
such an ark piously observe the feasts of terra firma: they have
thoughts of the outer world, they are sensitive to the calendar.
On shore it would be Easter to-day, they say; or, to-day they
are celebrating the King’s birthday — and we will celebrate too,
as best we may. We are human beings too. Isn’t that the idea? ”

The cousins acquiesced. It was precisely that. Hans Castorp,
touched by being once more addressed, and pricked by his con-
science, praised Herr Settembrini’s words m sounding tones;
pronounced them capital; said how spirited they were, how much
the language of a literary man. He could not say too much.

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356

Undoubtedly, though only superficially, as Herr Settembrini,
in his plastic way, had remarked, the comfort on board an ocean
steamer did make one forget the element of risk in the circum-
stances. If he might venture to add anything, he would say it even
induced a sort of light-headedness, a tempting of fate, which the
ancients — in his desire to please he quoted the classics! — had called
hubris. Belshazzar, King of Babylon, and that sort of thing. In
short, it came close to being blasphemous. Yet, on the other hand,
the luxury of an ocean-going vessel connoted (!) a majestic tri-
umph of the human spirit, it was an honour to human kind, to
launch all this comfort and luxury upon the salt sea foam and
there sustain it — man thus boldly set his foot, as it were, upon the
forces of nature, controlled the wild elements; and that con-
noted (!) the victory of civilization over chaos — if he might make
so free as to employ the phrase.

Herr Settembrini listened attentively, legs and arms crossed,
daintily stroking with the toothpick his flowing moustaches.

“ It is remarkable,” he said. “ A man cannot make general ob-
servations to any extent, on any subject, without betraying him-
self, without introducing his entire individuality, and presenting,
as in an allegory, the fundamental theme and problem of his
own existence. This, Engineer, is what you have just done. All
you have just now said came from the very depths of your per-
sonality; even the present stage you have arrived at found there
poetic expression, and showed itself to be still the experimental — ”

“ Placet experiri” Hans Castorp said, with the Italian c , laughed
and nodded.

“ Sicuro — if what is involved is not recklessness and loose liv-
ing, but an honourable passion to explore the universe. You spoke
of hubris , that was the word you employed. The hubris which
the reason opposes to the powers of darkness is the highest human
expression, and calls down upon it the swift revenge of envious
gods — as when, per esempio , such an ark de luxe gets shipwrecked
and goes gallantly beneath the waves. That is defeat with honour.
Prometheus too was guilty of hubris — and his torture on the
Scythian cliffs was from our point of view a holy martyrdom.
But what about that other kind of hubris , which perishes in a
wanton trifling with the forces of unreason and hostility to the
human race? Is that — can that — be honourable? Si, o no? ”

Hans Castorp stirred his coffee-cup, though there was nothing
in it.

“ Engineer, Engineer,” said the Italian, and nodded musingly,
his black eyes fixed on space, “ are you not afraid of the hurri-

CHANGES

357

cane which is the second circle of the Inferno, and which whirls
and whips the offenders after the flesh, those lost unhappy ones
who sacrificed their reason to their desire? Gran dio! When I pic-
ture you, flapping about in the gale, heels over head — I could al-
most swoon out of sheer pity, and fall ‘ as a dead body falls.’ ”

They laughed, glad that he should be pleased to jest and talk
poetry. But Settembrini added: “You remember, Engineer, on
the evening of mardi gras , as you sat over your wine, you took
your leave of me — yes, in a way, it amounted to that. Well,
to-day it is my turn. You see me, gentlemen, in act to bid you
farewell. I am leaving House Berghof.”

The cousins were aghast.

“ Impossible! You are joking,” Hans Castorp cried, as he had
cried once before, on a like occasion. He was nearly as much
startled now as then.

Settembrini answered, in his turn: “Not at all. It is as I tell
you. More than that, the news should be to you no news. I once
explained to you that in the moment when I became aware that
my hope of looking forward to a return to my work within any
reasonable time was no longer tenable, in that moment I was
settled to strike my tent, so far as this establishment is con-
cerned, and seek in the village a permanent logis. Well — the
moment has arrived. I cannot recover, that is settled. I can pro-
long my days, but only up here. My final sentence is for life —
Hofrat Behrens with his customary vivacity has pronounced my
doom. Very well, I have drawn the inevitable inference. I have
taken new quarters, and am about to remove thither my small
earthly possessions, and the tools of my literary craft. It is not
far from here, in the Dorf ; we shall surely see each other, surely
I will not lose sight of you; but as a fellow-guest of this estab-
lishment I have the honour to take my leave.”

Such was the announcement Settembrini had made, that Easter
Sunday. Both cousins had shown themselves exceedingly upset.
They had talked at length and repeatedly with him, on the sub-
ject of his resolve; also about how he could carry on the service
of the cure even after he left the Berghof; about his taking with
him and continuing the great encyclopaedic task he had set him-
self, that survey of the masterpieces of belles-lettres, from the
point of view of human suffering and its elimination; finally, about
Herr Settembrini’s future lodging, in the house of a “ petty
chandler,” as the Italian called him. The chandler, it appeared,
let his upper storeys to a Bohemian ladies’-tailor, who in his turn
let out lodgings. And now all these arrangements lay in the past.

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358

Time had moved steadily on, and brought more than one change
in its train. Settembrini had ceased to have residence at the Berg-
hof, he had taken up his abode with Lukagek, the ladies’ tailor —
and that indeed some weeks back. He had not made his exit
in a sleigh, but on foot, wearing a short yellow coat, garnished
sparsely with fur at the collar and wrists, and accompanied by a
man who trundled the earthly and literary baggage of the hu-
manist on a hand-lorry. He pinched one of the dining-room girls
in the cheek with the back of two fingers, and went off down
the drive, swinging his stick — they watched him go. This, as we
said, was well on in April, three-quarters of the month lay in the
past. It was still the depth of winter — in their chambers the ther-
mometer registered scarcely more than forty degrees; outside
there were fifteen degrees of frost, and if one left one’s ink-well
in the loggia, it froze overnight into an icy lump, like a piece of
coal. Yet one knew that spring was nigh. There were days when
the sun shone, on which one felt in the air its delicate presence.
The melting of the snows was at hand, and brought with it cer-
tain changes to the Berghof — despite the authority of Hofrat
Behrens, despite all he could say, in dining-hall and bed-chamber,
at every meal, at every visit, at every examination, to combat the
prevailing prejudice against the season.

Were they, he asked, up here for the winter sports, or were
they patients? And if the latter, what good on earth were snow
and ice to them? Had they the notion in their heads that the
melting snow was a bad time for them to be here? Nonsense! —
it was the best time of all. He could show them that there were
relatively fewer bedridden, in the whole valley, at this time than
at any other in the year. And there was not a spot in the world
that was not less favourable to lung-patients at this season than the
one they were in. Anybody with a spark of common sense would
stop on, and give himself the benefit of the hardening process
which this sort of weather afforded. Then, provided they re-
mained for their appointed time, they would be fully healed,
staunch against any rigours of any climate in the world. And so
forth. But the prejudice stuck, let him say what he would. The
Berghof emptied. Perhaps it was the oncoming spring that got in
their bones and upset even the steadiest-going; but at all events,
the number of “ wild,” unauthorized departures from House Berg-
hof increased until the situation verged upon the critical. For
instance, Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, despite the pleasure she
got from displaying her lace underwear at examinations, despite
the fact that she was not improving, but getting steadily worse,

CHANGES

359

took an entirely mad and illegitimate leave for the flat-land. Her so-
journ in the valley extended much further back than Hans Ca-
storp’s; she had entered more than a year ago, with only a slight
weakness, for which a three months’ stay had been prescribed.
Four months later the word was that she would be perfectly sound
inside another six weeks. But at the end of that time there was
heard no talk of a cure; she must stop for at least another four
months. Thus it had gone on: certainly this was no bagnio, no
Siberian penal settlement; Frau Salomon had remained, and dis-
played her beauteous underwear. But now, when the snows were
melting, and she was prescribed, at her examination, another six
months, on account of whistling sounds in the upper left lung,
and unmistakable discords under the left shoulder-blade, her pa-
tience suddenly came to an end, and she left for her wet and windy
Amsterdam, uttering invectives against Dorf and Platz, the far-
famed climate, the doctors, and the International Sanatorium
Berghof. Was that well done?

Hofrat Behrens raised shoulders and arms, and let the latter fall
with a clap against his sides. At latest, he said, Frau Salomon would
be back in the autumn — and for good and all. We shall be able to
test the truth of his prophecy, for we are destined to spend yet
much earthly time at this pleasure resort. But the Salomon case
was far from being the only one of its kind. Time brought about
many changes. Time always did — but more gradually, in the rule,
not so strikingly. There were gaps at the tables, all seven of them,
at the “ good ” as well as at the bad ” Russian table, and at those
that stood transversely to the room. Not that this alone would
have given an exact or fair picture of the situation; for there were
always arrivals, as well as leave-takings, the bedrooms might be
full — though there one dealt with patients whose condition had
finally put an end to their exercising any choice in the matter.
The gaps in the dining-room were partly due to the exercise of
choice; but some of them yawned in a particularly hollow man-
ner — as, for instance, at Dr. Blumenkohl’s place — he being dead.
That expression he wore, as of something bad-tasting in the"
mouth, had grown more and more pronounced. Then he became
permanently bedridden, and then he died — no one knew pre-
cisely when, his affair being disposed of with the usual tact and
delicacy. A gap. Frau Stohr sat next it — it made her shudder, so
she moved over to Joachim Ziemssen’s other side, in the room
of Miss Robinson, discharged cured, and opposite the school-
mistress, Hans Castorp’s neighbour, still faithful to her post. The
latter was sitting, for the time, alone on her side of the table, for

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360

the other three places were free. The student Rasmussen had
grown daily thinner and weaker, he was now bedridden, probably
moribund. The great-aunt, with her niece and the full-breasted
Marusja, had gone a journey — that was the usual way to put it,
because everybody knew they would be back again. They would
certainly be back by autumn, so you could hardly say they had
left. The summer solstice — once Whitsuntide was past — stood
immediately before them; and after the longest day in the year
they would go downhill with a rush, toward winter. At that rate
the great-aunt and Marusja were as good as back again — which
was as it should be, for the lively Marusja was very far from being
cured, and the schoolmistress knew positively that the brown-eyed
one had tuberculous ulcers on her swelling bosom, which
had more than once already necessitated an operation. Hans
Castorp, as Fraulein Engelhart said this, gave a hasty glance
at Joachim bending sedulously over his plate a face gone all
mottled.

The lively great-aunt had given her table-mates a farewell sup-
per in the restaurant, to which were bidden the cousins, Frau Stohr
and Fraulein Engelhart — a proper banquet, with caviar, cham-
pagne, and liqueurs. Joachim had been very silent, in fact had
spoken only once or twice, and then hardly above a whisper; so
that the old lady, in a burst of good feeling, had sought to cheer
him up, even going so far as to set aside accepted forms and ad-
dress him with the thou. “ Never mind, V titer chert, cheer up, eat,
drink, and be merry, we’ll be coming back again,” she said. “ Let’s
all eat, drink, and be merry, and begone, dull care! God will send
the autumn in His own good time, before we know it — so why be
sad? ” Next morning she presented half the dining-room with gay
boxes of confits and left, with her two charges, on their little out-
ing.

And Joachim? Did he find things easier, for that? Or did he
suffer an agony of inward emptiness in view of the vacant places
at table? Had his unwonted irritability, his threats of taking un-
sanctified leave, anything to do with Marusja’s departure? Or, on
the other hand, that he had after all not left, but lent an ear to the
Hofrat’s gospel of the melting snows — was that fact any way
connected with the circumstance that the full-bosomed Marusja
was not gone for good but only on a journey, and would be back
again in five of the smallest time-units known to House Berghof ?
Ah, yes, they were both true, this and the other, as Hans Castorp
was well aware, without ever having exchanged a syllable with
Joachim on the subject — which he was as careful to refrain from

CHANGES 361

doing as his cousin was, on his side, to avoid mention of another
person also lately gone off for a little trip.

In the mean time, who was sitting at Settembrini’s table, in the
place vacated by the Italian and in the company of certain Dutch-
men who were possessed of such mighty" appetites that every day,
before the five-course Berghof dinner, even before the soup, each
one of them ordered and ate three fried eggs? Who, we say, but
Anton Karlowitsch Ferge, the same who had experienced the
hellish torment of the pleura-shock! Yes, Herr Ferge was out of
bed. Without the aid of the pneumothorax he had so improved as
to be able to spend most of the day up and dressed, and even to
assist at the Berghof meals, with his bushy, good-natured mous-
taches, and his exaggerated Adam’s apple, just as good-natured.
The cousins chatted with him sometimes, in dining-room or salon,
or even inclined their hearts unto that simple sufferer, and took him
with them on the daily walks. Elevated discourse was beyond him;
but within his limits he could talk very acceptably about the manu-
facture of galoshes, and about distant parts of the Russian empire,
Samara, Georgia and so on, as they plodded through slush and fog.

For the roads were really hardly passable. They streamed with
water and reeked with mist. The Hofrat, indeed, said it was not
mist, only cloud; but in Hans Castorp’s judgment this was quib-
bling. The spring fought out a bitter struggle, with a hundred set-
backs into the depth of winter; the battle lasted months long, well
into June. There were times in March when the heat was almost
unendurable, as one lay, in the lightest of clothing, in the reclining-
chair on the balcony /with the little parasol erected against the sun.
In those days some of the ladies plumped for summer, and arrayed
themselves in muslins for early breakfast — excusably, perhaps, in
view of the singularity of the climate up here, which was favour-
able to illusion on the score of weather, jumbling, as it did, all the
seasons together. Yet their forehandedness was but short-sighted-
ness after all, showing paucity of imagination, the stupidity which
cannot conceive anything beyond the present moment; even more
was it an avidity for change, a time-devouring restlessness and im-
patience. It was March by the calendar, therefore it was spring,
which meant as good as summer ; and they pulled out their summer
clothes, to appear in them before autumn should overtake them.
Which, in fact, it did. With April, cold, wet, cloudy weather set
in. A long spell of rain turned at length into flurries of fresh snow.
Fingers were stiff in the loggia, both camel’s-hair rugs were called
into service, it did not lack much of putting the fur sleeping-sack
in requisition anew; the management brought itself to turn on the

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362

heat, and on all hands were heard bitter complainings — the spring
had betrayed them. Toward the end of the month the valley lay
deep in snow; but then it thawed, just as certain experienced or
weather-sensitive among the guests had prophesied it would: Frau
Stohr, the ivory Levi, but equally the Widow Hessenfeld, smelt
and felt it simultaneously, before ever the smallest little cloud
showed itself over the top of the granite formation to the south.
Frau Hessenfeld got colic, Fraulein Levi became bedridden, and
Frau Stohr, drawing back her lips from her ratlike teeth with the
churlish expression she had, daily and hourly gave utterance to her
superstitious fear of a haemorrhage — for it was common talk that
the thaw brought them about, or at least favoured them. It became
unbelievably warm. The heat was turned off, balcony doors were
left open all night, and still it was over fifty degrees in the morn-
ing. The snow melted apace, it turned grey, became porous and
saturated; the drifts shrank together, and seemed to sink into the
earth. There was a gurgling, a trickling and oozing, all abroad. The
trees dripped, their masses of snow slid off; the shovelled-up barri-
cades in the streets, the pallid layers carpeting the meadows, dis-
appeared alike, though not all at once, they had lain too heavy for
that. Then what lovely apparitions of the springtime revealed
themselves! It was unheard-of, fairylike. There lay the broad
meadows, with the cone-shaped summit of the Schwarzhom tow-
ering in the background, still in snow, and close in on the right the
snow-buried Skaletta glacier. The common scene of pasture and
hayrick was still snow-clad, though with a thin and scanty coat,
that everywhere showed bare patches of dark earth or dry grass
sticking through. Yet after all, the cousins found, what a curious
sort of snow it was! Thick in the distance, next the wooded slopes,
but in the foreground a mere sprinkling at most; the stretches of
discoloured and winter-killed grass were dappled or sprigged with
white. They looked closer, they bent down surprised — it was not
snow, it was flowers: snow-nowers, a snow of flowers, short-
stemmed chalices of white and palest blue. They were crocuses, no
less; sprung by millions from the soggy meadow-bottom, and so
thick that one actually confused them with the snow into which
they merged.

The cousins smiled at the deception, and for joy at the wonder
before their eyes — at this timorous and lovely assumption of pro-
tective coloration, as it were, on the part of these first shy returning
motions of organic life. They picked some of the flowers, studied
the structure of their charming cups, and stuck them in their but-
tonholes; wore them home and put them in glasses on their stands;

CHANGES 363

for the deathly torpor of the winter had lasted long indeed — how-
ever short it had seemed.

But that flowery snow was soon covered with real; even the blue
soldanellas and red and yellow primroses that followed on suffered
the same fate. What a nght that was, spring had to wage up here,
before it finally conquered! It was flung back ten times before it
could get a foothold — back to the next onset of winter, with icy
wind, flurries of snow, and a heated house. At the beginning of
May — for while we have been talking of crocuses, April has
merged into May — it was real torture to write even so much as a
postcard while sitting in the loggia, the fingers so stiffened in the
raw, Novemberish air. The four or five shade-trees in the Platz
were as bare as they would be in a valley January. It rained days
on end, a whole week. Only the compensating excellence of the
type of reclining-chair in use up here could render tolerable the
ordeal of lying hours with wet and stiffened face, out here in
the reeking mist. Yet all the while, in secret, it was a spring rain
that fell; and more and more, the longer it lasted, did it betray itself
as such. Under it the snow melted quite away, there was no more
white, only here and there a vestige of dirty grey — and now, at
long last, the meadows began to green!

What a joy that was, what a boon to the eyes, after so much
white! But there was another green, surpassing in its tender soft-
ness even the hue of the new grass, and that was the green of young
larch buds. Hans Castorp could seldom refrain from caressing them
with his hand, or stroking his cheeks with them as he went on his
walks — their softness and freshness were irresistible. “ It almost
tempts one to be a botanist,” he said to his companion. “ It’s a fact,
I could almost wish to be a natural scientist, out of sheer joy at
the reawakening of nature, after a winter like this up here. That’s
gentian, man, that you see up there on the cliffs; and this is a sort
of little yellow violet — something I’m not familiar with. And this
is ranunculus, they look just the same down below, the natural or-
der Rammculace<e: compound, I remember, a particularly charm-
ing plant, androgynous, you can see a lot of stamens and pistils, an
androecium and a gynaeceum, if I remember rightly. I really must
root out some old volume of botany or other, and polish up my
knowledge in this field. — My hat, how gay it’s getting to look
in the world! ”

“ It will be even more so in June,” Joachim said. “ The flower-
ing-time in these parts is famous. But I hardly think I’ll be here
for it. — That’s probably from Krokowski, that you get the idea
of studying botany? ”

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3 <4

Krokowski? What made him say that? Oh, very likely because
Dr. Krokowski had been uttering himself botanically in one of his
lectures of late. Yes, we shall be in error if we assume that because
time has brought about many changes at the Berghof, Dr. Krokow-
ski no longer delivers his lectures. He delivers them as before, one
every two weeks, in a frock-coat, though no longer in sandals, for
those he wears only in the summer, and soon will be donning them
again: delivers them every second Monday, in the dining-room,
as on that far-off day when Hans Castorp returned late and blood-
bespattered from his walk. For three-quarters of a year now had
the analyst held forth on the subject of love and disease. Never
much at one time, in little chats, from half to three-quarters of an
hour long, he had dealt out the treasures of his intellect; and one
received the impression that he need never leave off, that he could
as well go on for ever. It was a sort of half-monthly Thousand and
One Nights’ Entertainment, spinning itself out at will, calculated,
like the stories of Scheherazade, to gratify the curiosity of a prince,
and turn away his wrath. Dr. Krokowski’s theme, in its untram-
melled scope, reminded one, indeed, of the undertaking to which
Settembrini had vowed himself, the Encyclopaedia of Suffering.
And the extent to which it offered points of departure could be
seen from the circumstance that the lecturer had lately talked about
botany — to be precise, about mushrooms. But he had perhaps
slightly changed his theme by now. He was at present discussing
love and death; finding occasion for observations in part subtly
poetic in their nature, in part ruthlessly scientific. And thus it was,
in this connexion, that the learned gentlemen, speaking with his
drawling, typically Eastern cadence, and his softly mouthed r,
came upon the subject of botany; that is to say, upon the subject of
mushrooms. These creatures of the shade, luxuriant and anomalous
forms of organic life, were fleshly by nature, and closely related to
the animal kingdom. The products of animal metabolism, such as
albumen, glycogen, animal starch, in short, were present in them.
And Dr. Krokowski went on to speak of a mushroom, famous in
classical antiquity and since, on account of its form and the powers
ascribed to it — a fungus in whose Latin name the epithet impudicus
occurred; and which in its form was suggestive of love, in its odour
of death. For it was a striking fact that the odour of the Impudicus
was that of animal decay: it gave out that odour when the viscous,
greenish, spore-bearing fluid dripped from its bell-shaped top. Yet
even to-day, among the ignorant, the mushroom passed for an
aphrodisiac.

All that, Lawyer Paravant found, had been a bit strong for the

CHANGES

365

ladies. He was still here, having hearkened to the Hofrat’s propa-
ganda, and stuck out the melting season. Likewise Frau Stohr, who
had shown strength of character and set her face against every
temptation to unlawful departure, expressed herself at table to the
effect that Krokowski had been positively “ obscure ” to-day, with
his classical mushroom. She had actually said obscure, the poor
creature, and gone on making one howler after another.

But what surprised Hans Castorp was that his cousin should have
mentioned Dr. Krokowski and his botanical allusions; for the
psycho-analyst had been as little referred to between them as
Clavdia Chauchat or Marusja. By common consent they had passed
over his ways and works in silence. But now Joachim had men-
tioned him — though in an irritable tone. His saying, too, that he
would not be here for the flowering season had sounded very much
out of sorts. Good Cousin Joachim seemed on the way to losing
his equilibrium. His voice vibrated with irritation when he talked,
and the old gentleness and moderation were of the past. Was it
that he missed the orange perfume? Did the way they put him off
with his Gaffky number drive him to the verge of despair? Or was
he of more than one mind whether he should await the autumn
up here or resolve on unlawful departure?

In reality it was something besides all these that had given the
shade of vexation to Joachim’s voice and made him mention the re-
cent botanical lecture with contempt. Hans Castorp did not know
this — or rather, he did not know that Joachim knew it; as for him-
self, he knew it well enough, did this venturesome spirit, this deli-
cate nursling of life, this schoolmaster’s plague! In a word, Joachim
had caught his cousin at his tricks again, had found him out in
another species of disloyalty, not so unlike the one he had been
guilty of on the evening of carnival, only possessed of a still keener

f >oint in the circumstance that of this one he made a practice,
n the rhythmic monotony of time’s flow, in the well-nigh minute
articulation of the normal day — that day which was ever, even
unto confusion and distraction, the same day, an abiding eternity,
so that it was hard to say how it ever managed to bring forth any
change — in the inviolable, unbreachable regimen, we say, of that
normal day, Dr. Krokowski’s routine of visits took him, as of yore,
through all the rooms, or rather through all the balconies, from
chair to reclining-chair, between half past three and four in the
afternoon. How often had the normal day of the Berghof renewed
itself, since the far-off time when Hans Castorp lay and grumbled
within himself because Dr. Krokowski described an arc about him
and left him on one side! The guest of that day had long become

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366

the comrade — Dr. Krokowski often thus addressed him when he
made his rounds; and if, as Hans Castorp said to Joachim, the mili-
tary associations of the word, with the exotic pronunciation of the
r, sounded singularly inappropriate in his mouth, yet the word
itself did not go so badly with his robust and hearty, confidence-
inviting manner. But that again, in its turn, was belied by his black-
ness and pallor, so that some aura of the questionable always hung
about the man.

“ Well, comrade, and how goes it? ” the doctor said, as, coming
from the barbarian Russians, he approached the head end of Hans
Castorp ’s reclining-chair. The patient, hands folded on his chest,
smiled daily at the blithe address, smiled with a friendly, albeit
rather harassed mien, watching the doctor’s yellow teeth, that were
visible through his beard. “ Slept right well, did you? ” Dr. Kro-
kowski would go on. “ Curve going down? Up, eh? Never mind,
it will be all right before you come to get married. Good day to
you.” And he would go on into Joachim’s balcony. For these after-
noon rounds were merely a coup cTceil , no more.

But once in a way he would stop rather longer, standing there
broad-shouldered and sturdy, ever with his manly smile, chatting
with the comrade of this and that: the weather, the various de-
partures and new arrivals, the mood the patient was in, whether
good or bad; sometimes about his personal affairs, origin and pros-
pects —before he uttered the formula: “ Good day to you ” and
passed on. Hans Castorp would shift his hands to behind his head,
and reply to all he was asked, smiling in his turn. He experienced a
penetrating sense of uncanniness, yes, but he answered. They spoke
in low tones, so that Joachim, despite the fact that the glass partition
only half separated them, could not make out what they said —
indeed, made not the slightest effort to do so. He heard his cousin
get up from his chair and go indoors, probably to show the doc-
tor his curve; and the conversation seemed to be further pro-
longed inside the chamber, to judge from the length of time
before the Assistant appeared, this time from the inside, through
his room.

What did the comrades talk about? Joachim never put the ques-
tion. But if one of us were to do so, an answer in general terms
might be forthcoming, as that there is much matter for an exchange
of views, between two comrades and fellow-men when they possess
ideas in common, and one of them has arrived at the point of con-
ceiving the material universe in the light of a downfall of the spirit,
a morbid growth upon it, while the other, as physician, is wont to
treat of the secondary character of organic disease. Yes, there was,

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367

we should say, much to talk about, much to say on the subject of
the material as the dishonourable decay of the immaterial, of life as
the impudicity of substance, or disease as an impure manifestation
of life. With the current lectures for background, the conversation
might swing from the subject of love as a force making for dis-
ease, from the supersensory nature of the indications, to “ old ” and
“ fresh ” infected areas, to soluble toxins and love potions, to the
illumination of the unconscious, to the blessings of psycho-analysis,
the transference of symptoms — in short, how can we know what
all they talked about, Dr. Krokowski and young Castorp, when all
these are merely guesses and suppositions thrown out in response to
a hypothetic question!

In any case, they talked no longer; it had lasted only a few weeks.
Of late the Assistant spent no more time with this particular patient
than with the others, but confined himself chiefly to the “ Well,
comrade? ” and “ Good day to you,” on his rounds. But now Joa-
chim had made another discovery, he had fathomed the duplicity
of his cousin — without, be it said, any faintest intention of so
doing, without having bent his military honour to the office of spy.
It happened quite simply that he had been summoned, one Wednes-
day, from the first rest period, to go down to the basement and be
weighed by the bathing-master. He came down the clean linoleum-
covered steps that faced the consulting-room door, with the x-ray
cabinets on either side: on the left the organic, on the right, round
the comer and one step lower down, the analytic, with Dr. Kro-
kowski’s visiting-card tacked on the door. Joachim paused half-
way down the stair, as he saw his cousin coming from the con-
sulting-room, where he had just had an injection. He stepped
hastily through the door, closed it with both hands, and without
looking round, turned toward the door which had the card fas-
tened on it with drawing-pins. He reached it with a few noiseless,
crouching steps, knocked, bent to listen, with his head close to the
tapping finger. And as the “ Come in ” in an exotic baritone
sounded on the other side, Joachim saw his cousin disappear into
the half-darkness of Dr. Krokowski’s analytic lair.

A New-Comer

Long days — the longest, objectively speaking, and with reference
to the hours of daylight they contained; since their astronomical
length could not affect the swift passage of them, either taken
singly or in their monotonous general flow. The vernal equinox lay
three months back, the solstice was at hand. But the seasons up here

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368

followed the calendar with halting steps, and only within the last
few days had spring fairly arrived: a spring still without hint of
summer’s denser air, rarefied, ethereal, and balmy, with the sun
sending silvery gleams from a blue heaven, and the meadows blithe
with parti-coloured flowers.

Hans Castorp found bluebells and yarrow on the hill-side, like
the ones Joachim had put in his room to greet him when he came;
and seeing them, realized how the year was rounding out. Those
others had been the late blossoms of the declining summer; whereas
now the tender emerald grass of the sloping meadows was thick-
starred with every sort of bloom, cup-shaped, bell-shaped, star-
shaped, any-shaped, filling the sunny air with warm spice and
scent: quantities of wild pansies and fly-bane, daisies, red and yel-
low primulas, larger and nner than any Hans Castorp had ever seen
down below, so far as he could recall noticing, and the nodding
soldanella, peculiar to the region, with its little eye-lashed bells of
rose-colour, purple, and blue.

Hans Castorp gathered a bunch of all this loveliness and took it
to his room; by no means with the idea of decoration, but of set
and serious scientific intent. He had assembled an apparatus to serve
his need: a botanical text-book, a handy little trowel to take up
roots, a herbarium, a powerful pocket-lens. The young man set to
work in his loggia, clad in one of the light summer suits he had
brought up with him when he came — another sign that his first
year was rounding out its course.

Fresh-cut flowers stood about in glasses within his room, and on
the lamp-stand beside his highly superior chair. Flowers half faded,
wilted but not dry, lay scattered on the floor of the loggia and on
the balustrade; others, between sheets of blotting-paper, were
giving out their moisture under pressure from heavy stones. When
they were quite dry and flat, he would stick them with strips of
paper into his album. He lay with his knees up, one crossed over the
other, the manual open face down upon his chest like a little gabled
roof; holding the thick bevelled lens between his honest blue eyes
and a blossom in his other hand, from which he had cut away with
his pocket-knife a part of the corolla, in order the better to examine
the thalamus — what a great fleshy lump it looked through the
powerful lens! The anthers shook out their yellow pollen on the
thalamus from the tips of their filaments, the pitted pistil stood
stiffly up from the ovaries; when Hans Castorp cut through it lon-
gitudinally, he could see the narrow channel through which the
pollen grains and utricles were floated by the nectar secretion into
the ovarian cavity. Hans Castorp counted, tested, compared; he

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369

studied the structure and grouping of calyx and petals as well as the
male and female organs; compared what he found with the sketches
and diagrams in his book; and saw with satisfaction that these were
accurate when tested by the structure of such plants as were
known to him. Then he went on to those he had not known the
names of, and by the help of his Linnaeus established their class,
group, order, species, family, and genus. As he had time at his dis-
posal, he actually made some progress in botanical systematization
on the basis of comparative morphology. Beneath each dried speci-
men in his herbarium he carefully inscribed in ornamental lettering
the Latin name which a humanistic science had gallantly bestowed
on it; added its distinguishing characteristics, and submitted the
whole to the approval of the good Joachim, who was all admiration.

Evenings he gazed at the stars. He was seized with an interest
in the passing year — he who had already spent some twenty-odd
cycles upon this earth without ever troubling his head about it.
If the writer has been driven to talk about the vernal equinox and
suchlike, it is because these terms formed the present mental furni-
ture of our hero, which he now loved to set out on all occasions,
here too surprising his cousin by the fund of information at his
command.

“ The sun,” he might begin, as they took their walks together,
“ will soon be entering the sign of the Crab. Do you know what
that means? It is the first summer sign of the zodiac, you know.
Then come Leo and Virgo, and then the autumn, the equinox,
toward the end of September, when the rays of the sun fall ver-
tically upon the equator again, as they did in March, when the sun
was in the sign of the Ram.”

“ I regret to say it escaped my attention,” Joachim said grumpily.
“ What is all that you are reeling off so glibly about the Ram and
the zodiac? ”

“ Why, you know what the zodiac is — the primitive heavenly
signs: Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and the rest. How
can you help being interested in them? At least, you must know
there are twelve of them, three for each season, the ascending and
the declining year, the circle of constellations through which the
sun passes. I think it’s great. Imagine, they have been found em-
ployed as ceiling decoration in an Egyptian temple — and a temple
of Aphrodite, to boot — not far from Thebes. They were known to
the Chaldeans too, the Chaldeans, if you please, those Arabic-
Semitic old necromancers, who were so well versed in astrology
and soothsaying. They knew and studied the zone in the heavens
through which the planets revolve; and they divided it into twelve

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370

signs by constellations, the dodecatemoria , just as they have been
handed down to us. Magnificent, isn’t it? There’s humanity for
you! ”

“ You talk about humanity just like Settembrini.”

“ Yes — and yet not just the same either. You have to take hu-
manity as it is; but even so I find it magnificent. I like to think about
the Chaldeans when I lie and look at the planets they were familiar
with — for, clever as they were, they did not know them all. But
the ones they did not know I cannot see either. Uranus was only re-
cently discovered, by means of the telescope — a hundred and
twenty years ago.”

“ You call that recently? ”

“ I call it recently — with your kind permission — in comparison
with the three thousand years since their time. But when I lie and
look at the planets, even the three thousand years get to seem
4 recently,’ and I begin to think quite intimately of the Chaldeans,
and how in their time they gazed at the stars and made verses on
them — and all that is humanity too.”

“ I must say, you have very tall ideas in your head.”

“ You call them tall, and I call them intimate — it’s all the same,
whatever you like to call it. But when the sun enters Libra again,
in about three months from now, the days will have shortened so
much that day and night will be equal. The days keep on getting
shorter until about Christmas-time, as you know. But now you
must please bear in mind that, while the sun goes through the win-
ter signs — Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces — the days are already
getting longer! For then spring is on the way again — the three-
thousandth spring since the Chaldeans; and the days go on length-
ening until we have come round the year, and summer begins
again.”

“ Of course.”

“ No, not of course at all — it is really all hocus-pocus. The days
lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the
twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go
downhill again, toward winter. You call that 4 of course ’; but if
one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite fright-
ening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a prac-
tical joke — that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and
autumn at the beginning of summer. You reel you’re being fooled,
led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns
out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle
consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent
whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration

A NEW-COMER 371

of motion, and eternity turns out to be not ‘ straight ahead ’ but
‘ merry-go-round ’! ”

“ For goodness’ sake, stop! ”

“The feast of the solstice — midsummer night! Fires on the
mountain-top, and ring-around-a-rosy about the leaping flames!
I have never seen it; but they say our rude forefathers used thus to
celebrate the first summer night, the night with which autumn be-
gins, the very midday and zenith of the year, the point from which
it goes downhill again: they danced and whirled and shouted and
exulted — and why, really, all that primitive exultation? Can you
make it out? What were they so jolly about? Was it because from
then on the world went down into the dark — or perhaps because
it had up till then gone uphill, and now the turning-point was
reached, the fleeting moment of midsummer night and midsummer
madness, the meeting-place of tears and laughter? I express it as it
is, in the words that come to me. Tragic joy, triumphant sadness

— that was what made our ancestors leap and exult around the
leaping flames: they did so as an act of homage to the madness of
the circle, to an eternity without duration, in which everything
recurs — in sheer despair, if you like.”

“ But I don’t like,” growled Joachim. “ Pray don’t put it off on
me. Pretty large concerns you occupy yourself with, nights when
you do your cure.”

“ Yes, I’ll admit you are more practically occupied with your
Russian grammar. Why, man, you’re bound to have perfect com-
mand of the language before long; and that will be a great advan-
tage to you if there should be a war — which God forbid.”

“ God forbid? You talk like a civilian. War is necessary. With-
out it, Moltke said, the world would soon go to pieces altogether

— it would rot.”

“ Yes, it has a tendency that way, I admit. And I’ll go so far as
to say,” began Hans Castorp, and was about to return to the Chal-
deans, who had carried on wars too, and conquered Babylonia,
even if they were a Semitic people, which was almost the same as
saying they were Jews — when the cousins became simultaneously
aware that two gentlemen, walking close in front of them, had been
attracted by what they were saying and interrupted their own
conversation to look around.

They were on the main street, between the Kurhaus and Hotel
Belvedere, on their way back to the village. The valley was gay in
its new spring dress, all bright and delicate colour. The air was
superb. A symphony of scents from meadows full of flowers filled
the pure, dry, lucent, sun-drenched air.

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372

They recognized Ludovico Settembrini, with a stranger; but it
seemed as though he for his part either did not recognize them or
did not care for a meeting, for he turned round again, quickened
his step, and plunged into conversation, accompanied by his usual
lively gestures. When the cousins came up on his right and gaily
greeted him, he exclaimed: “ Sapristi!” and “Well, well, well! ”
with every mark of delighted surprise; yet would have held back
and let them pass on, but that they failed to grasp his intention —
or else saw no sense in it. For Hans Castorp was genuinely pleased
to see him thus, after a lapse of time: he stopped and warmly shook
hands, asked how he did, and looked in polite expectation at his
companion. Settembrini was thus driven to do what he obviously
preferred not to do, but what seemed the only natural thing, under
the circumstances: namely, to present them to each other, which
he accordingly did, with much appropriate gesticulation, and the
gentlemen shook hands, half standing, half walking on.

It appeared that the stranger, who might be about Settembrini’s
age, was a housemate of his, the other tenant of Lukasek the ladies’
tailor. His name, so the young people understood, was Naphta. He
was small and thin, clean-shaven, and of such piercing, one might
almost say corrosive ugliness as fairly to astonish the cousins.
Everything about him was sharp: the hooked nose dominating his
face, the narrow, pursed mouth, the thick, bevelled lenses of his
glasses in their light frame, behind which were a pair of pale-grey
eyes — even the silence he preserved, which suggested that when
he broke it, his speech would be incisive and logical. According to
custom he was bare-headed and overcoatless — and moreover very
well dressed, in a dark-blue flannel suit with white stripes. Its quiet
but modish cut was at once marked down by the cousins, whose
worldly glances were met by their counterpart, only quicker and
keener, from the little man’s own side. Had Ludovico Settembrini
not known how to wear with such easy dignity his threadbare
pilot coat and check trousers, he must have suffered by contrast
with his company. This happened the less in that the checks had
been freshly pressed, doubtless by the hands of his landlord, and
might, at a little distance, have been taken for new. The worldly
and superior quality of the ugly stranger’s tailoring made him stand
nearer to the cousins than to Settembrini; yet it was not only his
age which ranged him rather with the latter, but also a quite pro-
nounced something else, most conveniently exemplified by the
complexion of the four. For the two younger were brown and
burnt, the two elder pale: Joachim’s face had in the course of the
winter turned an even deeper bronze, and Hans Castorp’s glowed

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rosy red under his blond poll. But over Herr Settembrini’s southern
pallor, so well set off by his dark moustache, the sun’s rays had no
power; while his companion, though blond-haired — his hair was a
metallic, colourless ashen-blond, and he wore it smoothed back
from a lofty brow straight over his whole head — also showed the
dead-white complexion of the brunette races. Two out of the four

— Hans Castorp and Settembrini — carried walking-sticks; Joa-
chim, as a military man, had none, and Naphta, after the introduc-
tions, clasped his hands again behind him. They, and his feet as
well, were small and delicate, as befitted his build. He had a slight
cold, and coughed unobtrusively.

Herr Settembrini at once and elegantly overcame the hint of
embarrassment or vexation he had betrayed at first sight of the
young people. He was in his gayest mood, and made all sorts of
jesting allusions as he performed the introductions — for example,
he called Naphta “ princeps scholastic orum” Joy, he said, quoting
Aretine, held brilliant court within his, Settembrini’s, breast; a joy
due to the blessing of the springtime — to which commend him.
The gentlemen knew he had a certain grudge against life up here

— often enough he had railed against it! — All honour, then, to the
mountain spring! It was enough of itself to atone for all the horrory
of the place. All the disquieting, provocative elements of spring
in the valley were here lacking: here were no seething depths, no
steaming air, no oppressive humidity! Only dryness, clarity, 3
serene and piercing charm. It was after his own heart, it was
superb.

They were walking in an uneven row, four abreast whenever
possible; when people came towards or passed them, Settembrini,
on the right wing, had to walk in the road, or else their front for
the moment broke up, and one or the other stepped back — either
Hans Castorp, between the humanist and Cousin Joachim, or little
Naphta on the left side. Naphta would give a short laugh, in a voice
dulled by his cold: its quality in speaking was reminiscent of a
cracked plate tapped on by the knuckle.

Indicating the Italian by a sidewise nod, he said, with a deliberate
enunciation: “ Hark to the Voltairian, the rationalist! He praises
nature, because even when she has the chance she doesn’t befog us
with mystic vapours, but preserves a dry and classic clarity. And
yet — what is the Latin for humidity? ”

“ Humor ” cried Settembrini, over his shoulder. “ And the hu-
mour in the professor’s nature-observations lies in the fact that like
Saint Catherine of Siena he thinks of the wounds of Christ when
he sees a red primula in the spring.”

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374

“ That would be witty, rather than humorous,” Naphta retorted.
“ But in either case a good spirit to import into nature; and one of
which she stands in need.”

“ Nature,” said Settembrini, in a lower voice, not so much over
as along his shoulder, “ needs no importations of yours. She is Spirit
herself.”

“ Doesn’t your monism rather bore you? ”

“ Ah, you confess, then, that it is simply to divert yourself that
you wrench God and nature apart, and divide the world into two
hostile camps? ”

“ I find it most interesting to hear you characterize as love of
diversion what I mean when I say Passion and Spirit.”

“ And you, who put such large words to such empty uses, don’t
forget that you sometimes reproach me for being rhetorical.”

“ You will stick to it that Spirit implies frivolity. But it cannot
help being what it is: dualistic. Dualism, anthithesis, is the moving,
the passionate, the dialectic principle of all Spirit. To see the world
as cleft into two opposing poles — that is Spirit. All monism is
tedious. Solet Aristoteles qiuerere pugnamP

“ Aristotle? Didn’t Aristotle place in the individual the reality
of universal ideas? That is pantheism.”

“ Wrong. When you postulate independent being for individ-
uals, when you transfer the essence of things from the universal to
the particular phenomenon, which Thomas Aquinas and Bonaven-
tura, as good Aristotelians, did, then you destroy all unity between
the world and the Highest Idea; you place the world outside of
God and make God transcendent. That, my dear sir, is classic
medievalism.”

“ Classic medievalism! What a phrase! ”

“ Pardon me, I merely apply the concept of the classic where it
is in place: that is to say, wherever an idea reaches its culmination.
Antiquity was not always classic. And I note in you a general
repugnance to the Absolute; to the broader application of cate-
gories. You don’t even want absolute Spirit. You only want to have
Spirit synonymous with democratic progress.”

“ I should hope we are at one in the conviction that Spirit, how-
ever absolute, ought never to become the advocate of reaction.”

“ Yet you are always claiming it as the advocate of freedom! ”

“ Why do you say 4 yet ’? Is it freedom that is the law of love of
one’s kind, or is it nihilism and all uncharitableness? ”

“ At any rate, it is the last two of which you are so obviously
afraid.”

Settembrini flung up his arm. The skirmish broke off. Joachim

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looked bewildered from one to the other, and Hans Castorp with
lifted brows stared at the path before him. Naphta had spoken
sharply and apodictically; yet he had been the one to defend
the broader conception of freedom. He had a way of saying
“ Wrong! ” with a ringing nasal sound, and then clipping his lips
tightly together over it — the effect was not ingratiating. Settem-
brini had countered for the most part lightly, yet with a fine
warmth in his tone, as when he urged their essential agreement
upon certain fundamental points. He now began, as Naphta did not
speak again, to gratify the natural curiosity of the young people
about the new-comer — some sort of explanation being obviously
their due after the dialogue just ended. Naphta passively let him go
on, without heeding. He was, so Settembrini said, professor of
ancient languages in the Fridericianum — bringing out the title
with pompous emphasis, as Italians do. His lot was the same as the
speaker’s own: that is, he had been driven to the conclusion that his
stay would be a long one, and had left the sanatorium for private
quarters under the roof of Luka^ek the ladies’ tailor. The high
school of the resort had cannily secured the services of this dis-
tinguished Latinist — the pupil of a religious house, as Settembrini
rather vaguely expressed it — and it went without saying that he
was an adornment to his position. In short, Settembrini extolled the
ugly Naphta not a little, regardless of the abstract disputation they
had just had, which now, it seemed, was to be resumed.

Settembrini went on to explain the cousins to Herr Naphta,
whereby it came out that he had already spoken of them. Here, he
said, was the young engineer who had come up on three weeks’
leave, only to have Herr Hofrat Behrens find a moist place in his
lung; and here was that hope of the Prussian army organization,
Lieutenant Ziemssen. He spoke of Joachim’s revolt and intended
departure, and added that one must not insult the Engineer by im-
puting to him any less zealous desire to return to his interrupted
labours.

Naphta made a wry face.

“ The gentlemen have an eloquent advocate. Far be it from me
to question the accuracy of his interpretation of your thoughts and
wishes. Work, work — why, he would call me nothing less than an
enemy of mankind — inimicus humarue natter ce — if I dared suggest
that there have been times when talk in that vein would utterly
fail to produce the desired effect: times when the precise opposite
to his ideal was held in incomparably higher esteem. Bernard of
Clairvaux, for instance, preached an order of progress towards per-
fection quite different from any Signor Ludovico ever dreamed of.

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Would you like to hear what it was? His lowest stage was in the
* mill,’ the second on the ‘ ploughed field,’ the third, and most com-
mendable — don’t listen, Settembrini! — was upon ‘ the bed of re-
pose.’ The mill was the symbol of earthly life — not a bad figure.
The ploughed field represented the soul of the layman, the scene of
the labours of priest and teacher. This was a stage higher than the
mill. But the bed — ”

“ That will do, we understand,” cried Settembrini. “ Sirs, is he
going to expatiate now upon the purpose and uses of the ‘ lewd
day-bed ’? ”

“ I did not know, Ludovico, that you were a prude. To see you
looking at the girls. . . . What has become of your pagan single-
mindedness? I continue: the bed is the place of intercourse between
the wooing and the wooed: symbolically, it typifies devotional re-
tirement from the world for the purpose of contact with God.”

“ Fie! Andate> andate! ” the Italian fended him off, in a voice
almost tearful. They all laughed. But Settembrini went on, with
dignity: “ No, no, I am a European, an Occidental, whereas the
order of progress you describe is purely Eastern. The Orient ab-
hors activity. Lao-Tse taught that inaction is more profitable than
anything else between heaven and earth. When all mankind shall
have ceased to do anything whatever, then only will perfect repose
and bliss reign upon this earth. There you have your intercourse
with God.”

“ Oh, indeed! And what about Western mysticism — and what
about quietism, a religion that numbers Fenelon among its disciples?
Fenelon taught that every action is faulty, since every will to act
is an insult to God, who wills to act alone. I cite the propositions
of Molinos. There is no doubt that the spiritual possibility of find-
ing salvation in repose has been disseminated pretty generally all
over the world.”

Here Hans Castorp put in his word. With the courage of sim-
plicity he mixed in the debate, and, gazing into space, delivered
himself thus: “ Devotion, retirement — there is something in it, it
sounds reasonable. We practise a pretty high degree of retirement
from the world, we up here. No doubt about it. Five thousand feet
up, we lie in these excellent chairs of ours, contemplating the world
and all that therein is, and having our thoughts about it. The more I
think of it, the surer I am that the bed of repose — by which I mean
my deck-chair, of course — has given me more food for thought in
these ten months than the mill down in the flat-land in all the years
before. There’s simply no denying it.”

Settembrini looked at him, a melancholy gleam in his dark eye.

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“ Engineer! ” he said, restrainingly. He took Hans Castorp’s arm
and drew him a little aside, as though to speak to him in private.
“ How often have I told you that one must realize what one is, and
think accordingly! Never mind the propositions. Our Western
heritage is reason — reason, analysis, action, progress: these, and
not the slothful bed of monkish tradition! ”

Naphta had been listening. He turned his head to say: “ Monkish
tradition! As if we did not owe to the monks the culture of the soil
of all Europe! As if it were not due to them that Germany, France,
and Italy yield us com and wine and fruit to-day, instead of being
covered with primeval forest and swamp! The monks, my dear sir,
were hard workers — ”

“ Ebbe! Well, then! ”

“ Permit me. The labour of these religious was neither an end in
itself — that is to say, it was not a narcotic — nor was its purpose
to further the progress of the world, or to reap commercial advan-
tage. It was pure penitential discipline, a part of the technique of
asceticism, the means of salvation. It mortified the senses, it was a
safe-guard against the wiles of the flesh. And as such, permit me to
point out, it was essentially unsocial. It was pure, unsullied religious
egoism.”

“ I am much indebted to you for the elucidation, and rejoice to
see that the blessings of labour can justify themselves, even against
the will of man.”

“ Certainly against his intentions, at least. What I am calling
your attention to is nothing less than the distinction between the
utilitarian and the humane.”

“ And what I am calling your attention to is the fact, which I
observe with indignation, that you are still dividing the world up
into opposing factions.”

“ I grieve to have incurred your displeasure. Yet it is needful to
make distinctions, and to preserve the conception of the Homo
Dei , free from contaminating constituents. It was you Italians that
invented banking and exchange, which may God forgive you! But
the English invented the economic social theory, and the genius of
humanity can never forgive them that.”

“ Ah, the genius of humanity was alive in that island’s great eco-
nomic thinkers too! — You wanted to say something, Engineer? ”

Hans Castorp demurred — yet said something anyhow, Naphta
as well as Settembrini listening with a certain suspense: “ From
what you say, Herr Naphta, you must sympathize with my cousin’s
profession, and understand his impatience to be at it. As for me, I
am an out-and-out civilian, my cousin often reproaches me with it.

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I have never seen service; I am a child of peace, pure and simple,
and have even sometimes thought of becoming a clergyman — ask
my cousin if I haven’t said as much to him many a time! But for all
that, and aside from my personal inclinations — or even, perhaps,
not altogether aside from them — I have some understanding and
sympathy for a military life. It has such an infernally serious side
to it, sort of ascetic, as you say — that was the expression you used,
wasn’t it? The military always has to reckon on coming to grips
with death, just as the clergy has. That is why there is so much dis-
cipline and decorum and regularity in the army, so much ‘ Spanish
etiquette,’ if I may say so; and it makes no great difference whether
one wears a uniform collar or a starched ruff, the main thing is the
asceticism, as you so beautifully said. — I don’t know if I’ve suc-
ceeded in making my train of thought quite — ”

“ Oh, quite,” said Naphta, and flung a glance at Settcmbrini, who
was twirling his cane and looking up at the sky.

44 And that,” went on Hans Castorp, “ is why I thought you must
have great sympathy with the feelings of my cousin Ziemssen. I am
not thinking of 4 Church and King ’ and suchlike associations of
ideas, that a lot of perfectly well-meaning and conventional people
stand for. What I mean is that service in the army — service is the
right word — isn’t performed for commercial advantage, nor for
the sake of the economic doctrine of society, as you call it — and
that must be the reason why the English have such a small army,
a few for India, and a few at home for reviews — ”

“ It is useless for you to go on, Engineer,” Settembrini inter-
rupted him. 44 The soldier’s existence — I say this without intend-
ing the slightest offence to Lieutenant Ziemssen — cannot be cited
in the argument, for the reason that, as an existence, it is purely
formal — in and for itself entirely without content. Its typical
representative is the infantry soldier, who hires himself out for
this or that campaign. Take the soldiers of the Spanish Counter-
Reformation, for instance, or of the various revolutionary armies,
the Napoleonic or Garibaldian — or take the Prussian. I will be
ready to talk about the soldier when I know what he is fighting
for.”

44 But that he does fight,” rejoined Naphta, 44 remains the dis-
tinctive feature of his existence as a soldier. Let us agree so far. It
may not be enough of a distinction to permit of his being 4 cited in
the argument ’; but even so, it puts him in a sphere remote from the
comprehension of your civilian, with his bourgeois acceptation

44 What you are pleased to call the bourgeois acceptation of life,”

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retorted Settembrini, speaking rather tight-lipped, with the corners
of his mouth drawn back beneath the waving moustache, while his
neck screwed up and around out of his collar with fantastic effect,
“ will always be ready to enter the lists on any terms you like, for
reason and morality, and for their legitimate influence upon young
and wavering minds/’

A silence followed. The young people stared ahead of them, em-
barrassed. After a few paces, Settembrini said — having brought
his head and neck to a natural posture once more: “ You must not
be surprised to hear this gentleman and me indulging in long dis-
putations. We do it in all friendliness, and on a basis of considerable
mutual understanding.”

That had a good effect — it was human and gallant of Herr Set-
tembrini. But then Joachim, meaning well in his turn, and thinking
to carry forward the conversation within harmless channels, was
fated to say: “We happened to be talking about war, my cousin
and I, as we came up behind you.”

“ I heard you,” Naphta answered. “ I caught your words and
turned round. Were you talking politics, discussing the world situ-
ation? ”

“ Oh, no,” laughed Hans Castorp. “ How should we come to be
doing that? For my cousin here, it would be unprofessional to dis-
cuss politics; and as for me, I willingly forgo the privilege. I don’t
know anything about it — I haven’t had a newspaper in my hand
since I came.”

Settembrini, as once before, found this reprehensible. He pro-
ceeded to show himself immensely well informed upon current
events, and gave his approval to the state of world affairs, in so far
as they were running a course favourable to the progress of civili-
zation. The European atmosphere was full of pacific thought and
plans for disarmament. The democratic idea was on the march.
He said he had it on reliable authority that the “ Young Turks ”
were about to abandon their revolutionary undertakings. Turkey
as a national, constitutional state — what a triumph for humanity!

“ Liberalization of Islam,” Naphta scoffed. “ Capital! enlight-
ened fanaticism — oh, very good indeed! And of interest to you
too,” he said, turning to Joachim. “ Because when Abdul Hamid
falls, then there will be an end of your influence in Turkey, and
England will set herself up as protector. — You must always give
full weight to the information you get from our friend Settem-
brini,” he said to both cousins — and this too sounded almost in-
solent: as though he thought they would be inclined to take Set-
tembrini lightly. “ On national-revolutionary matters he is very

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well informed. In his country they cultivate good relations with
the English Balkan Committee. But what is to become of the Reval
agreement, Ludovico, if your progressive Turks are successful?
Edward VII will no longer be able to give the Russians free access
to the Dardanelles; and if Austria pulls herself together to pursue
an active policy in the Balkans, why — ”

“ Oh, you, with your Cassandra prophecies! ” Settembrini par-
ried. “ Nicholas is a lover of peace. We owe him the Hague con-
ferences, which will always be moral events of the first order.”

“ Yes, Russia must give herself time to recover from her little
mishap in tfie East.”

“ Fie, sir! Why should you scoff at human nature’s yearning
for social amelioration? A people that thwarts such aspirations
exposes itself to moral obloquy.”

“ But what is politics for, then, if not to give both sides a chance
to compromise themselves in turn? ”

“ Are you espousing the cause of Pan-Germanism? ”

Naphta shrugged his shoulders, which were not quite even — in
fact, to add to his ugliness, he was probably a little warped. He dis-
dained to reply, and Settembrini pronounced judgment: “ At all
events, what you say is cynical. You see nothing but political trick-
ery in the lofty exertions of democracy to fulfil itself internation-
ally

‘ Where you would like me to see idealism or even religiosity.
What I do see is the last feeble stirrings of the instinct of self-
preservation, the last remnant at the command of a condemned
world-system. The catastrophe will and must come — it advances
on every hand and in every way. Take the British policy. Eng-
land’s need to secure the Indian glacis is legitimate. But what will
be the consequences of it? Edward knows as well as you and I that
Russia has to make good her losses in Manchuria, and that internal
peace is as necessary to her as daily bread. Yet — he probably
can’t help himself — he forces her to look westward for expan-
sion, stirs up slumbering rivalries between St. Petersburg and
Vienna — ”

“ Oh, Vienna! Your interest in that ancient obstruction is due,
I presume, to the fact that her decaying empire is a sort of mummy,
as it were, of the Holy Roman Empire of the German people.”

“ While you, I suppose, are Russophil out of humanistic affinity
with Caesaro-papism.

“ Democracy, my friend, has more to hope from the Kremlin
than she has from the Hofburg; and it is disgraceful for the country
of Luther and Gutenberg — ”

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“ It is probably not only disgraceful, but stupid into the bargain..
But even this stupidity is an instrument of fate — ”

“ Oh, spare me your talk about fate! Human reason needs only
to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate! ”

“ One always wills one’s fate. Capitalistic Europe is willing hers.”

“ One believes in the coming of war if one does not sufficiently
abhor it.”

“ Your abhorrence of war is logically disjointed if you do not
make the state itself your point of departure.”

“ The national state is the temporal principle, which you would
like to ascribe to the evil one. But when nations are free and equal,
when the small and weak are safe-guarded from aggression, when
there is justice in the world, and national boundaries — ”

“ Yes, I know, the Brenner frontier. The liquidation of Austria.
If I only knew how you expect to bring that about without a
war! ”

“ And I should like to know when I ever condemned a war for
the purpose of realizing national aspirations! ”

“ But you say — ”

“ No, here I must really corroborate Herr Settembrini,” Hans
Castorp mixed in the dispute, which he had been following as they
went, regarding attentively each speaker in turn, with his head on
one side. “ My cousin and I have had the privilege of frequent con-
versations with him on this and kindred subjects — what it
amounted to, of course, was that we listened while he explained
and developed his views — so I can vouch for the fact, and my
cousin here will confirm me, that Herr Settembrini spoke more
than once, with great enthusiasm, of the revolutionary principle,
and about rebellion and reform — which is no very peaceful prin-
ciple, I should think — and of the mighty efforts still to be made
before it triumphs everywhere, and the great universal world-
republic can come into being. Those were his words, though of
course it sounded much more plastic and literary as he said it. But
the part I have the most exact memory of, and have retained quite
literally, because being a thorough-going civilian I found it quite
alarming, was that he said the day would come, if not on the wings
of doves, then on the pinions of eagles — it was the eagles’ pinions
I was startled at — and that Vienna must be brought low before
peace and prosperity could ensue. So it is not possible to say that
Herr Settembrini condemned war as such. Am I right, Herr Set-
tembrini? ”

“ More or less,” said the Italian shortly, twirling his cane, with
averted head.

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382

“ Too bad,” Naphta smiled maliciously. “ There you are, con-
victed of warlike inclinations out of the mouth of your own pupil.
1 Assument pennas ut aquilce ’ — ”

“ Voltaire himself approved of a war for civilization, and ad-
vised Frederick to fight Turkey.”

“ Instead of which, he allied himself with her — he he! And then
the world-republic! I refrain from asking what becomes of the
principle of revolt when peace and prosperity have once been
brought about. For it is plain that from that moment rebellion be-
comes a crime — ”

“ You know quite well, as do these young men here, that we are
dealing with a progress in human affairs conceived of as endless.”

“ But all motion is in circles,” said Hans Castorp. “ In space and
time, as we learn from the law of periodicity and the conservation
of mass. My cousin and I were talking about it lately. How then
can progress be conceived of, in closed motion without constant
direction? When I lie in the evening and look at the zodiac — that
is, the half of it that is visible to us — and think about the wise men
of antiquity — ”

“ You ought not to brood and dream, Engineer,” Settembrini in-
terrupted him. “ You must resolve to trust to the instincts of your
youth and your blood, urging you in the direction of action. And
also your training in natural science is bound to link you to pro-
gressive ideas. You see, through the space of countless ages, life
developing from infusorium up to man: how can you doubt, then,
that man has yet before him endless possibilities of development?
And in the sphere of the higher mathematics, if you would rest
your case thereon, then follow your cycle from perfection to per-
fection, and, from the teaching of our eighteenth century, learn
that man was originally good, happy, and without sin, that social
errors have corrupted and perverted him, and that he can and will
once more become good, happy, and sinless, by dint of labour upon
his social structure — ”

“ Herr Settembrini has omitted to add,” broke in Naphta, “ that
the Rousseauian idyll is a sophisticated transmogrification of the
Church’s doctrine of man’s original free and sinless state, his primal
nearness and filial relation to God; to which state he must finally
return. But the re-establishment of the City of God, after the dis-
solution of all earthly forms, lies at the meeting-place of the earthly
and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual; redemption is
transcendental — and as for your capitalistic world-republic, my
dear Doctor, it is odd in this connexion to hear you talking about

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instinct. The instinctive is entirely on the side of the national. God
Himself has implanted in men’s breasts the instinct which bids them
separate into states. War — ”

“ War,” echoed Settembrini, “ war, my dear sir, has been forced
before now to serve the cause of progress; as you will grant if you
will recall certain events in the history of your favourite epoch —
I mean the period of the Crusades. These wars for civilization
stimulated economic and commercial relations between peoples,
and united Western humanity in the name of an idea.”

“ And how tolerant you always are towards an idea! I would
the more courteously remind you that the effect of the Crusades
and the economic relations they stimulated was anything but
favourable to internationalism. On the contrary, they taught the
peoples to become conscious of themselves, and thus furthered the
development of the national idea.”

“ Right; that is to say, right in so far as it was a question of
the relation between the peoples and the priesthood; for it was in-
deed at that time that the mounting consciousness of national
honour began to harden itself against hieratical presumption — ”

“ Though what you call hieratical presumption is nothing else
than the conception of human unity in the name of the Spirit! ”

“ We are familiar with that spirit — and we have no great love
for it.”

“ Your mania for nationalism obviously shrinks from the world-
conquering cosmopolitanism of the Church. Still, I cannot see how
you reconcile your nationalism with your horror of war. Because
your obsolescent cult of the State must make you a champion of
a positive conception of law, and as such — ”

“ Oh, if we are talking about law — the conceptions of natural
law and universal human reason have survived, my dear sir, in
international law.”

“ Pshaw, your international law is only another Rousseauian
transmogrification of the ins divinum , which has nothing in com-
mon with either nature or human reason, resting as it does upon
revelation — ”

“ Let us not quarrel over names, Professor! What I call natural
and international law, you are free to call the hcs divinum . The
important thing is that above the explicit jurisprudence of national
states there rises a higher jurisdiction, empowered to decide be-
tween conflicting interests by means of courts of arbitration.”

14 Courts of arbitration! The very name is idiotic! In a civil court,
to pronounce upon matters of life and death, communicate the will

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384

of God to man, and decide the course of history! — Well, so much
for the 4 wings of doves.’ Now for the 4 eagles’ pinions ’ — what
about them? ”

“ Civilian society — ”

“ Oh, society doesn’t know what it wants. It shouts for a cam-
paign against the fall in the birth-rate, it demands a reduction in
the cost of bringing up children and training them to a profession
— and meanwhile men are herded like cattle, and all the trades and
professions are so overcrowded that the fight round the feeding-
trough puts in the shade the horrors of past wars. Open spaces,
garden cities! Strengthening the stock! But why strengthen it, if
civilization and progress have decided there shall be no more war?
Whereas war would cure everything — it would 4 strengthen the
stock ’ and at the same time stop the decline in the birth-rate.”

“ You are joking, of course — you can’t mean what you say.
And our discussion comes to an end at the right moment, for here
we are,” Settembrini said, and pointed out to the cousins with his
stick the cottage before whose gate they had paused. It stood near
the beginning of the village: a modest structure, separated from
the street by a narrow front garden. A wild grape-vine, springing
from bare roots at the door, flung an arm along the ground-floor
wall towards the display window of a tiny shop. The ground-floor,
Settembrini explained, belonged to the chandler; Naphta was domi-
ciled a floor higher up, with the tailor’s shop, and his own quarters
were in the roof, where he had a peaceful little study.

Naphta, with unexpectedly spontaneous cordiality, expressed
the hope that he might have the pleasure of meeting them again.
44 Come and see us,” he said. 44 1 would say: 4 Come and see me,’ if
Dr. Settembrini here had not prior claims upon your friendship.
Come, however, as often as you like, whenever you feel you would
like a talk. I prize highly an interchange of ideas with youth, and
am perhaps not entirely without pedagogic tradition. Our Master
of the Lodge here ” — he nodded toward Settembrini — 44 would
have it that the bourgeois humanism of the day has a monopoly of
the pedagogic gift; but we must take issue with him. Until another
time, then! ”

Settembrini made difficulties — there were difficulties, he said.
The days of the Lieutenant’s sojourn up here were numbered; and
as for the Engineer, he would doubtless redouble his zeal in the
service of the cure, in order to follow his cousin down to the valley
with all the speed he might.

Both young men assented in turn. They had bowed their ac-
ceptance of Herr Naphta’s invitation, and next minute they also

A NEW-COMER 385

bowed their acknowledgment of the justice of Herr Settembrini’s
remarks. So everything was left open.

“ What did he call him? ” asked Joachim, as they climbed the
winding path to the Berghof.

“ I understood him to say 4 Master of the Lodge,’ ” answered
Hans Castorp. “ I was just wondering about it. It was probably
some joke or other, they have such odd names for each other. Set-
tembrini called Naphta £ princeps scholastic oricm ’ — not so bad,
either. The schoolmen were the theologians of the Middle Ages,
the dogmatic philosophers, if you like. They spoke several times
of the Middle Ages; it reminded me of the first day I came, when
Settembrini said there was a good deal up here that was mediaeval
— it was Adriatica von Mylendonk, her name, I mean, made him
say so. — How did you like him? ”

“ Who? The little man? Not very much. Though he said some
things I liked. That about courts of arbitration — they are nothing
but canting hypocrisy, of course. But I did not care much for the
man himself — a person may say as many good things as he likes,
it doesn’t matter to me, if he himself is a queer fish. And queer he
is, you can’t deny it. That stuff about the ‘ place of intercourse ’
was distinctly shady, not to mention anything else. And did you
see the big Jewish nose he had? Nobody but Jews have such puny
figures. Are you really thinking of visiting the man? ”

“ Visit him — of course we’ll visit him,” declared Hans Castorp.
“ When you talk about his being puny, that’s only the military
in you speaking. And as for his nose, the Chaldeans had the same
kind, and they knew devilish well what they were about, on
more subjects than alchemy. Naphta has something of the mys-
tagogue about him, he interests me a good deal. I won’t say that
I make him out altogether, yet, but if we meet him often perhaps
we shall; I don’t think it at all unlikely we may learn something
from the acquaintance with him.”

“ Oh, you, with your learning! Getting wiser all the time, with
your biology, and your botany, and your continual changing
from one idea to another! You began philosophizing about time
the first day you came. But we didn’t come up here to acquire
wisdom. We came to acquire health, to get healthier and healthier
until we are entirely well, and are free to quit, and go down
below where we belong! ”

“ ‘ Of old sat Freedom on the heights,’ ” quoted Hans Ca-
storp airily. “ Tell me first what freedom is,” he went on. “ Naphta
and Settembrini disputed over it a good deal without coming to
any conclusion. Settembrini says it is the law of love of one’s

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386

kind; that sounds like his ancestor, the Carbonaro. But however
valiant he was, and however valiant our Settembrini himself is — ”
“ Yes, he got uncomfortable when we talked about physical
courage.”

“ I can’t help thinking he would be afraid of things little
Naphta wouldn’t be, and that his freedom and his bravery are
more or less folderol. Do you think he would have the courage
‘ de se perdre ou meme se laisser deperir ’? ”

“ Why do you suddenly begin talking French? ”

“ Oh, I don’t know. The atmosphere up here is so international.
I don’t know which would find more pleasure in it — Settembrini
for the sake of his bourgeois world-republic, or Naphta for his
hierarchical cosmopolis. As you see, I kept my ears open; but
even so I found it far from clear. On the contrary, the result was
more confusion than anything else.”

“ It always is. You will find that when people discuss and ex-
press their views nothing ever comes of it but confusion worse
confounded. I tell you, it doesn’t matter in the least what a man’s
views are, so long as he is a decent chap. The best thing is to have
no opinions, and just do one’s duty.”

“ Yes, you can say that because you are a soldier, and your
existence is purely formal. But it’s different with me, I am a civilian,
and more or less responsible. And I must say it’s rather upsetting
to have on the one hand a man preaching an international world-
republic, and absolutely barring war, and yet so patriotic that he
is for ever demanding the rectification of the Brenner frontier,
to the point of fighting a war for civilization over it; and then on
the other a little chap contending that every national state is an
invention of the devil, and hurrahing for some universal unifica-
tion he sees on the far horizon — yet in the next minute justifying
our national instincts and making awful fun of peace conferences.
What a mix-up! By all means we must go visit him, and try
to understand what it is all about. You say we did not come up
here to get wiser, but healthier, and that is true. But all this con-
fusion must be reconciled; and if you don’t think so, why then
you are dividing the world up into two hostile camps, which,
I may tell you, is a grievous error, most reprehensible.”

Of the City of God , and Deliverance by Evil

Hans Castorp was in his loggia, studying a plant which, now
that the astronomical summer had begun, and the days were short-
ening, flourished luxuriantly in many places: the columbine or

OF THE CITY OF GOD

387

aquilegia, of the ranunculus family, which grew in clumps, with
long stalks bearing the blue, violet, or reddish-brown blossoms,
and spreading herbaceous foliage. They grew everywhere, but
most profusely in that quiet bottom where, nearly a year ago,
he had first seen them: that remote and wooded ravine, filled with
the sound of rushing water, where on the bench above the foot-
bridge, that ill-risked, ill-timed, ill-fated walk of his had ended.
He revisited it now and again.

It was, if one began it a little less rashly than he had, no great
distance thither. If you mounted the slope from the end of the
sledge-run in the village, you could reach in some twenty minutes
the picturesque spot where the wooden bridge of the path through
the forest crossed above the run as it came down from the Schatz-
alp, provided you kept to the shortest route, did not loiter about,
nor pause too long to get your breath. Hans Castorp, when
Joachim was detained at home in the service of the cure, for some
examination, blood-test, x-ray photography, weighing, or injec-
tion, would stroll thither in good weather, after second break-
fast, or even after first; or he would employ the hours between
tea and dinner in a visit to his favourite spot, to sit on the bench
where once the violent nose-bleeding had overtaken him, to
listen with bent head to the sound of the torrent and gaze at the
secluded scene, with the hosts of blue aquilegias blooming in its
depths.

Was it only for this he came? No, he sat there to be alone: to
recall and go over in his mind the events and impressions of the
past months. They were many, varied, and hard to classify; so
interwoven and mingled they seemed, as almost to obscure any
clear distinction between the concrete fact and the dreamed or
imagined. But one and all, they had in their essence something
fantastic, something which made his heart, unreliable as it had
been from his first day up here, stand still when he thought of
them, and then wildly flutter. Or could its flutterings be suffi-
ciently accounted for by the reflection that a round year had gone
by since first he sat here, that on this very spot whither once
he had come in a condition of lowered vitality and seen the
apparition of Pribislav Hippe, the aquilegias were blossoming
anew?

Now, at least, on his bench by the rushing water, he had no
more nose-bleeding — that was a thing of the past. Joachim had
said from the very first that it was not easy to get acclimatized,
and at the time of that earlier visit he was still finding it diffi-
cult. But he had made progress; and now, after eleven months,

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388

the process must be regarded as finished. More, in that direc-
tion, could not be expected. The chemistry of his digestion had
adjusted itself, Maria had her ancient relish, his parched mu-
cous membranes having sufficiently recovered to let him savour
again the bouquet of that estimable brand of cigars. He still
loyally ordered them from Bremen whenever his stock ran low*
although the shop-windows of the international resort displayed
attractive wares. Maria, he felt, made a sort of bond between
him, the exile, and his home in the “ flat-land ” — a bond more
effectual than the postcards he now and then sent to his uncle,
the intervals between which grew longer in proportion as he
imbibed the more spacious time conceptions prevalent “ up here.”
He mostly sent picture postcards, as being pleasanter to receive,
with charming view r s of the valley in winter and in summer dress.
They gave precisely the room he needed to tell his kinsmen the
latest news of his state, whatever had been let fall by the doctors
after the monthly or general examination: such as that, both to
sight and hearing, he had unmistakably improved, but was still
not entirely free from infection; that his continued slight excess
of temperature came from small infected areas which were cer-
tain to disappear without a trace if he had patience, and then
he would never need to return hither. He well knew that long
letters were neither asked nor expected, it being no humanistic or
literary circle to which he addressed himself down there, and the
replies he received were equally lacking in expansiveness. They
merely accompanied the means of subsistence which came to him
from home, the income from his paternal inheritance. Turned
into Swiss currency, this was so advantageous that he had never
spent one instalment when the next arrived, enclosed in a letter
of a few typed lines signed “ James Tienappel,” conveying his
greetings and best wishes for recovery, together with the same
from Grand-uncle Tienappel and sometimes from the seafaring
Peter as well.

The Hofrat, so Hans Castorp told his people, had latterly given
up the injections: they did not suit the young patient. They gave
him headache and fatigue, caused loss of appetite, reduced his
weight, and, while making his temperature go up at first, had not
succe.eded in reducing it in the long run. His face glowed rosy-
red with dry, internal heat, a sign that for this child of the low-
land, bred in an atmosphere that rejoiced in a high degree of
humidity, acclimatization could only consist in “ getting used to
not getting used to it ” — which, in fact, Rhadamanthus himself
never did, being perpetually purple-cheeked. “ Some people can’t

OF THE CITY OF GOD

389

get used to it,” Joachim had said; and this seemed to be Hans Ca-
storp’s case. For even that trembling of the neck, which had come
upon him soon after his arrival here, had never quite passed off,
but would attack him as he walked or talked — yes, even up here
in his blue-blossoming retreat, while he sat pondering the whole
complex of his adventures; so that the dignified chin-support of
Hans Lorenz Castorp had become almost fixed habit with him.
He himself would all at once be conscious of using it and have
a swift memory of the old mans choker collar, the provisional
form of the ruff; the pale gold round of the christening basin;
the ineffably solemn sound of the “ great-great-great.” These and
suchlike associations would gradually in their turn lead him back
to reflect upon the whole mass of his adventures in life.

Pribislav Hippe never again appeared to him in bodily form,
as once eleven months before. The progress of acclimatization
was over, there were no more visions. No more did his body lie
supine while his ego roved back to a far-off present. No more of
such incidents. The vividness and clarity of that memory-picture,
if it returned to hover before his eyes, vet kept within sane
and normal bounds — but might move Hans Castorp to draw
out of his breast pocket the glass plate which he had received as
a gift, and kept there in an envelope enclosed in a letter-case.
It was a small negative. Held in the same plane with the ground,
it was black and opaque; but lifted against the light, it revealed
matter for a humanistic eye: the transparent reproduction of the
human form, the bony framework of the ribs, the outline of the
heart, the arch of the diaphragm, the bellows that were the lungs;
together with the shoulder and upper-arm-bones, all shrouded in a
dim and vaporous envelope of flesh — that flesh which once, in
Carnival week, Hans Castorp had so madly tasted. What wonder
his unstable heart stood still or wildly throbbed when he gazed
at it, and then, to the sound of the rushing waters, leaning with
crossed arms against the smooth back of his bench, his head in-
clined upon one shoulder, among the blossoming aquilegias, began
to turn over everything in his mind!

It hovered before his eyes — the image of the human form divine,
the masterpiece of organic life — as once upon that frosty, starry
night when he had plunged so profoundly into the study of it.
His contemplation of its inner aspect was bound up in the young
man’s mind with a host of problems and discriminations, not of a
kind the good Joachim had need to concern himself with, but for
which Hans Castorp had come to feel as a civilian responsible.
True, down in the plain he had never been aware of them, nor

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390

probably ever would have been. It was up here that the thing
came about, where one sat piously withdrawn, looking down from
a height of five thousand feet or so upon the earth and all that
therein was — and it might be, also, by virtue of one’s physical
condition, with one’s body brought, as it were, into higher relief
by the toxins that were released by the localized inner infection
to bum, a dry heat, in the face. His musings brought him upon
Settembrini, organ-grinder and pedagogue, whose father had
seen the light of day in Hellas, who chose to define love of the
image as comprehending politics, eloquence, and rebellion, and
who would consecrate the burgher’s pike upon the altar of hu-
manity. He thought of Comrade Krokowski, and the traffic they
two had been having in the twilighted room below stairs. He
thought of the twofold nature of analysis, and questioned how
far it was applicable to realities and conducive to progress, how
far related to the grave and its noisome anatomy. He called up the
figures of the two grandfathers, the rebel and the loyalist, both,
for reasons diametrically opposed, black-clad; confronted them
with each other, and tried their worth. He went further, and took
counsel with himself over such vast problems as form and free-
dom, body and spirit, honour and shame, time and eternity — and
succumbed to a brief but violent spell of giddiness, on a sudden
thought that all about him the columbines were in blossom once
more, and his year here rounding to its close.

He had an odd name for the serious mental preoccupations
which absorbed him in his picturesque retreat; he called them
“ taking stock ”; the expression, crude as it was, defined for him
an employment which he loved, even though it was bound up
in his mind with the phenomena of fear and giddiness and palpi-
tation, and made his face burn even more than its wont. Yet
there seemed a peculiar fitness in the fact that the mental strain
involved obliged him to make use of the ancestral chin-support;
that way of holding his head lent him an outward dignity in
keeping with thoughts which passed through his brain as he
contemplated the image.

“ Homo dei ” — that was what the ugly Naphta had called the
image, when he was defending it against the English doctrine
of an economic society. And, by a natural association, Hans
Castorp decided that in the interest of these mental activities
of his, and his responsible position as a civilian member of so-
ciety, he must really — and Joachim must too— pay that little
man the honour of a visit. Settembrini did not like the idea, as
Hans Castorp was shrewd and thin-skinned enough to know.

OF THE CITY OF GOD

391

Even the first meeting had displeased the humanist, who had ob-
viously tried to prevent it and protect his pupils from intercourse
with Naphta, notwithstanding that he personally associated and
discussed with him. His “ pupils ” — thus life’s delicate child disin-
genuously put it, knowing all the time that it was himself alone
who was the object of Settembrini’s solicitude. So it is with school-
masters. They permit themselves relaxations, saying that they are
“ grown up,” and refuse the same to their pupils, saying that they
are not “ grown up.” It was a good thing, then, that the hand-
organ man was not actually in a position to deny young Hans
Castorp anything — nor had even tried to do so. It was only
necessary that the delicate child should conceal his thin-skinned
perceptions and assume an air of unconsciousness; when there was
nothing to prevent his taking friendly advantage of Naphta’s in-
vitation. Which, accordingly, he did, Joachim going along with
him, willy-nilly, on a Sunday afternoon after the main rest-cure,
not many days later than their first meeting.

It was but a few minutes’ walk from the Berghof down to the
vine-wreathed cottage door. They went in, passing on their right
the entrance to the little shop, and climbed the narrow brown
stairs to the door of the first storey. Near the bell was a small
plate, with the name of Luka$ek, Ladies’ Tailor. The door was
opened by a half-grown boy, in a sort of livery of gaiters and
striped jacket, a little page, with shaven poll and rosy cheeks.
Him they asked for Professor Naphta, impressing their names
on his mind, as they had brought no cards; he said he would go
and deliver them to Herr Naphta — whom he named without a
title. The door opposite the entrance stood open, and gave a
view of the shop, where, regardless of the holiday, Lukagek the
tailor sat cross-legged on a table and stitched. He was sallow
and bald-headed, with a large, drooping nose, beneath which his
black moustaches hung down on both sides his mouth and gave
him a surly look.

“ Good-afternoon,” Hans Castorp greeted him.

“ Griitsi ” answered the tailor, in the Swiss dialect, which fitted
neither his name nor his looks and sounded queer and unsuitable.

“ Working hard? ” went on Hans Castorp, motioning with his
head. “ Isn’t to-day Sunday? ”

“ Something pressing,” the tailor said curtly, stitching.

“ Is it pretty? Are you making it in a hurry for a party? ”
Hans Castorp guessed.

The tailor let this question hang, for a little; bit off his cotton
and threaded his needle afresh. After a while he nodded.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

392

T

“ Will it be pretty? ” persisted Hans Castorp. “ Will it have
sleeves? ”

u Yes, sleeves; it’s for an old ’un,” answered Luka9ek, with a
strong Bohemian accent. The return of the lad interrupted this
parley, which had been carried on through the doorway. Herr
Naphta begged the gentlemen to come in, he announced, and
opened a door a few steps further on in the passage, lifting the
portiere that hung over it to let them enter. Herr Naphta, in
slippers, stood on a mossy green carpet just within, and received
his guests.

Both cousins were surprised by the luxury of the two-windowed
study. They were even astonished; for the poverty of the cot-
tage, the mean stair and wretched corridor, led one to expect
nothing of the kind. The contrast lent to Naphta’s elegant fur-
nishings a note of the fabulous, which of themselves they scarcely
possessed, and would not otherwise have had in the eyes of Hans
Castorp and Joachim Ziemssen. Yet they were elegant too, even
strikingly so; indeed, despite writing-table and bookshelves the
room hardly had a masculine look. There was too much silk about
-wine-coloured, purplish silk; silken window-hangings, silken
portieres, and silken coverings to the furniture arranged on the
narrow side of the room in front of a wall almost entirely cov-
ered with a Gobelin tapestry. Baroque easy-chairs with little
pads on the arms were grouped about a small metal-bound table,
and behind it stood a baroque sofa with velvet cushions. Book-
cases lined the entrance wall on both sides of the door. They and
the writing-table or, rather, roll-top desk, which stood between
the windows, were of carved mahogany; the glass doors of the
bookcases were lined with green silk. But in the corner to the
left of the sofa-group stood a work of art, a large painted wood-
carving, mounted on a red-covered dais: a pietd, profoundly star-
tling, artlessly effective to the point of being grotesque. The
Madonna, in a cap, with gathered brows and wry, wailing mouth,
with the Man of Sorrows on her lap — considered as a work of
art it was primitive and faulty, with crudely emphasized and
ignorant anatomy, the hanging head bristling with thorns, face
and limbs blood-besprinkled, great blobs of blood welling from
the wound in the side and from the nail-prints in hands and feet.
This show-piece did indeed give a singular tone to the silken
chamber. The wall-paper, on the window wall and above the
bookcases, had obviously been supplied by the tenant: the green
stripe in it matched the soft velvet carpet spread over the red
drugget. The windows had cream-coloured blinds down to the

OF THE CITY OF GOD

393

floor. Only the ceiling had been impossible to treat: it was bare
and full of cracks; but a small Venetian lustre hung down from it

“ We’ve come for a little visit,” said Hans Castorp, with his
eyes more on the pious horror in the corner than on the owner
of the surprising room, who was expressing his gratification that
the cousins had kept their word. With a hospitable motion of his
small right hand he would have ushered them to the satin chairs.
But Hans Castorp went as if spellbound straight up to the wooden
group, and stood before it, arms akimbo and head on one side.

“ What is this you have here? ” he asked, in a low voice.
“ It’s frightfully good. What depiction of suffering! It’s old, of
course? ”

“ Fourteenth century,” answered Naphta. “ Probably comes
from the Rhine. Does it impress you? ”

“ Enormously,” said Hans Castorp. “ It would impress anybody
— couldn’t help it. I should never have thought there could be
anything in the world at once so — forgive me — so ugly, and so
beautiful.”

“ All works of art whose function it is to express the soul and
the emotions,” Naphta responded, “ are always so ugly as to be
beautiful, and so beautiful as to be ugly. That is a law. Their
beauty is not fleshly beauty, which is merely insipid — but the
beauty of the spirit. Moreover, physical beauty is an abstraction,”
he added; “ only the inner beauty, the beauty of religious ex-
pression, has any actuality.”

“ We are most grateful to you for making these distinctions
clear,” Hans Castorp said. “ Fourteenth century? ” he inquired
of himself; “ that means thirteen hundred so-and-so? Yes, that
is the Middle Ages, the way the books say; and I can more or
less recognize in this thing the conception I have been getting of
them lately. I never knew anything about the Middle Ages before,
myself, being on the technical side. But up here they have been
brought home to me in various ways. There was no economic
doctrine of society then, that’s plain enough. What is the name
of the artist? ”

Naphta shrugged his shoulders.

“What does it matter? ” he said. “We should not ask — for
in the time when it was made they never did. It was not created
by some wonderful and well-advertised single genius. It is an
anonymous product, anonymous and communal. Moreover, it is
very advanced Middle Ages — Gothic, signum mortificationis .
No more of the palliating and beautifying that the Roman epoch
thought proper to a depiction of the Crucifixion: here you have

394 THE magic mountain

no royal crown, no majestic triumph over martyrdom and the
world. It is the most utter and radical declaration of submission
to suffering and the weakness of the flesh. Pessimistic and as^
cetic — it is Gothic art alone which is truly that. You are prob-
ably not familiar with the work of Innocent III, De rmseria hu-
man<e conditionis: an exceedingly witty piece of writing — it was
written at the end of the twelfth century, but this was the earliest
art to furnish an illustration to it.”

Hans Castorp heaved a deep sigh. “ Herr Naphta,” he said,
“ every word you say interests me enormously. 4 Signum mortifi -
cationis ’ — is that right? I’ll remember it. ‘ Anonymous and com-
munal ’ — and that will take some thinking about too. You are
quite right in assuming I don’t know the work of that pope —
I take it Innocent III 'was a pope? Did I understand you to say
it is witty and ascetic? I must confess I should never have thought
the two things went hand in hand; but when I put my mind to it,
of course it is obvious that a discourse on human misery gives
one a good chance to poke fun at the things of the flesh.
Is the work obtainable? Perhaps if I got up my Latin I could
read it.”

“ I have it here,” Naphta said, motioning with his head toward
one of the bookcases. “ It is at your service. But shall we not sit
down? You can look at the pietd from the sofa. Tea is just com-
ing in.”

The little servant was fetching the tea, also a charming silver-
bound basket containing slices of layer cake. And behind him,
on the threshold, who should stand, on winged feet, wreathed in
his subtle smile, and exclaiming: “ Sapperlot ! ” and “ Accidente ”
— who, indeed, but the lodger from upstairs, Herr Settembrini,
dropped in to keep them company? From his little window, he
said, he had seen the cousins enter, and made haste to finish the
page of the encyclopaedia which he had at the moment in hand,
in order to beg an invitation. Nothing more natural than his com-
ing: it was justified by his old acquaintance with the Berghof
guests, no less than by his relations with Naphta, which, despite
deep-seated divergences of opinion, were lively on both sides,
the host accepting his presence as a thing of course. All this did
not prevent Hans Castorp from getting two impressions from his
advent, one as clearly as the other: first, that Herr Settembrini had
come to prevent them — or rather him — from being alone with
little Naphta, and to establish, as it were, a pedagogic equilibrium;
second, that Herr Settembrini did not object the least in the
world, but rather the contrary, to exchanging his room in the

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loft for a sojourn in Naphta’s fine and silken chamber, nor to
taking a good and proper tea. He rubbed together his small yellow
hands, with their line of hair running down the back from the
little finger, before he fell to, with unmistakable and outspoken
relish upon the layer cake, which had a chocolate filling.

The conversation continued on the subject of the pietd , Hans
Castorp holding it to the point with look and word, and turning
to the humanist as though to put him in critical rapport with the
work of art. Herr Settembrini’s aversion was obvious in the very
air with which he turned towards it — for he had originally sat
down with his back to that corner of the room. He was too polite
to express all he felt, and confined himself to pointing out cer-
tain defects in the physical proportions of the work, offences
against nature, which were far from working upon his emotions,
because they did not spring from archaic ineptitude, but from
deliberate bad intent — a fundamentally opposed principle. — In
which latter statement Naphta maliciously concurred. Certainly,
there was no question of technical lack of skill. What we had here
was conscious emancipation from the natural, a contempt for
nature manifested by a pious refusal to pay her any homage what-
ever. Whereupon Settembrini declared that disregard of nature
and neglect of her study only led men into error. He character-
ized as absurd the formlessness to which the Middle Ages and all
periods like them had been a prey, and began, in sounding words,
to exalt the Graeco-Roman heritage, classicism, form, and beauty,
reason, the pagan joy of life. To these things and these alone, he
said, was it given to ameliorate man’s lot on earth. Hans Castorp
broke in here. What, he asked, about Plotinus, then, who was
known to have said that he was ashamed of having a body? Or
Voltaire, who, in the name of reason, protested against the scan-
dalous Lisbon earthquake? Were they absurd? Perhaps. Yet it
seemed to him, as he thought about it, that what one characterized
as absurd might also be thought of as intellectually honourable;
from which it would follow that the absurd hostility to nature
evinced by Gothic art, when all was said and done, was as fine in
its way as the gestures of Plotinus or Voltaire, since it testified
to the selfsame emancipation, the same indomitable pride, which
refused to abdicate in favour of blind natural forces —

Naphta burst out laughing. He sounded more than ever like a
cracked plate and ended in a fit of coughing.

Settembrini said floridly to Hans Castorp: “ Your brilliance
is almost a discourtesy to our host, since it makes you appear un-
grateful for this delicious cake. But I don’t know that gratitude

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is your strong point. The kind I mean consists in making a good
use of favours received.”

As Hans Castorp looked rather mortified, he added in his most
charming manner: “ We all know you for a wag, Engineer: but
your sly quips at the expense of the true, the good, and the
beautiful will never make me doubt your fundamental love of
them. You are aware, of course, that there is only one sort of re-
volt against nature which may be called honourable; that which
revolts in the name of human beauty and human dignity. All
others bring debasement and degradation in their train, even
when not directed to that end. And you know, too, what inhuman
atrocities, what murderous intolerance were displayed by the
century to which the production behind me owes its birth. Look
at that monstrous type, the inquisitor — for instance, the san-
guinary figure of Conrad von Marburg — and his infamous zeal
in the persecution of everything that stood in the way of super-
natural domination! You are in no danger of acclaiming the sword
and the stake as instruments of human benevolence! ”

“ Yet in its service,” countered Naphta, “ laboured the whole
machinery by means of which the Holy Office freed the world of
undesirable citizens. All the pains of the Church, even the stake,
even excommunication, were inflicted to save the soul from ever-
lasting damnation — which cannot be said of the mania for de-
struction displayed by the Jacobins. Permit me to remark that
any system of pains and penalties which is not based upon belief
in a hereafter is simply a bestial stupidity. And as for the deg-
radation of humanity, the history of its course is precisely syn-
chronous with the growth of the bourgeois spirit. Renaissance,
age of enlightenment, the natural sciences and economics of the
nineteenth century, have left nothing undone or untaught which
could forward this degradation. Modern astronomy, for exam-
ple, has converted the earth, the centre of the All, the lofty thea-
tre of the struggle between God and the Devil for the possession
of a creature burningly coveted by each, into an indifferent little
planet, and thus — at least for the present — put an end to the
majestic cosmic position of man — upon which, moreover, all
astrology bases itself.”

“ For the present? ” Herr Settembrini asked, threateningly.
His own manner of speaking had something in it of the inquisi-
tor waiting to pounce upon the witness so soon as he shall have
involved himself in an admission of guilt.

“ Certainly. For a few hundred years, that is,” assented Naphta,
coldly. “ A vindication, in this respect, of scholasticism is on the

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397

way, is even well under way, unless all signs fail. Copernicus will
go down before Ptolemy. The heliocentric thesis is meeting by
degrees with an intellectual opposition which will end by achiev-
ing its purpose. Science will see itself philosophically enforced
to put back the earth in the position of supremacy in which she
was installed by the dogma of the Church.”

“What? What? Intellectual opposition? Science philosophi-
cally enforced? What sort of voluntarism is this you are giving
vent to? And what about pure knowledge, what about science?
What about the unfettered quest for truth? Truth, my dear sir,
so indissolubly bound up with freedom, the martyrs in whose
cause you would like us to regard as criminals upon this planet
but who are rather the brightest jewels in her crown? ”

Herr Settembrini’s question, and its delivery, were prodigious.
He sat very erect, his righteous words rolled down upon little
Naphta, and he let his voice swell out at the end, so that one could
tell how sure he was his opponent could only reply with shame-
faced silence. He had been holding a piece of layer cake between his
fingers, but now he laid it back on his plate, as if loath to bite into
it after launching his question.

Naphta responded, with disagreeable composure: “ My good
sir, there is no such thing as pure knowledge. The validity of the
Church’s teaching on the subject of science, which can be summed
up in the phrase of Saint Augustine: Credo , ut mtellegcnn : I be-
lieve, in order that I may understand, is absolutely incontro-
vertible. Faith is the vehicle of knowledge, intellect secondary.
Your pure science is a myth. A belief, a given conception of the
universe, an idea — in short, a will, is always in existence; which it
is the task of the intellect to expound and demonstrate. It comes
down every time to the quod erat demonstrandum. Even the con-
ception of evidence itself, psychologically speaking, contains a
strong element of voluntarism. The great schoolmen of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries were agreed that what is false in theology
cannot be true in philosophy. We can, if you like, leave theology
out of the argument; but a humanity, a cultural conception, which
refuses to recognize that what is philosophically false cannot be
scientifically true, is not worthy the name. The accusation of the
Holy Office against Galileo stated that his thesis was philosophi-
cally absurd. A more crushing arraignment could not well be.”

“ Aha! The reasoning of our great genius turned out in the
long run to have the greater validity! No, let us be serious, Fro -
fessore! Answer me this, answer me in the presence of these two
young listeners: Do you believe in truth, in objective, scientific

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398

truth, to strive after the attainment of which is the highest law
of all morality, and whose triumphs over authority form the
most glorious page in the history of the human spirit? ”

Hans Castorp and Joachim — the first faster than the second —
turned their heads from Settembrini to Naphta.

Naphta replied: “ There can be no such triumphs as those you
speak of; for the authority is man himself — his interests, his
worth, his salvation — and thus between it and truth no conflict
is possible. They coincide.”

4 Then truth, according to you — ”

“ Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is
comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature
only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is
the sole and single criterion of truth. Any theoretic science which
is without practical application to man’s salvation is as such with-
out significance, we are commanded to reject it. Throughout the
Christian centuries it was accepted fact that the natural sciences
afforded man no edification. Lactantius, who was chosen by Con-
stantine the Great as tutor to his son, put the position very clearly
when he asked in so many words what heavenly bliss he could
attain by knowing the sources of the Nile, or the twaddle of the
physicists anent the heavenly bodies. Answer him if you can!
Why have we given the Platonic philosophy the preference over
every other, if not because it has to do with knowledge of God,
and not knowledge of nature? Let me assure you that mankind
is about to find its way back to this point of view. Mankind
will soon perceive that it is not the task of true science to run
after godless understanding; but to reject utterly all that is harm-
ful, yes, even all that ideally speaking is without significance, in
favour of instinct, measure, choice. It is childish to accuse the
Church of having defended darkness rather than light. She did
well, and thrice well, to chastise as unlawful all unconditioned
striving after the 4 pure ’ knowledge of things — such striving,
that is, as is without reference to the spiritual, without bearing
on man’s salvation; for it is this unconditioned, this a-philosophical
natural science that always has led and ever will lead men into
darkness.”

“ Your pragmatism,” Settembrini responded, “ needs only to
be translated into terms of politics for it to display its pernicious
character in full force. The good, the true, and the just, is that
which advantages the State: its safety, its honour, its power from
the sole criterion of morality. Well and good. But mark that here-
with you fling open the door for every sort of crime to enter;

OF THE CITY OF GOD 399

while as for human truth, individual justice, democracy, you can
see what will become of them — ”

“ If I might be permitted/’ Naphta interpolated, “ to intro-
duce a little logic into the premisses, I should state the question
thus: either Ptolemy and the schoolmen were right, and the world
is finite in time and space, the deity is transcendent, the antithesis
between God and man is sustained, and man’s being is dual; from
which it follows that the problem of his soul consists in the con-
flict between the spiritual and the material, to which all social
problems are entirely secondary — and this is the only sort of
individualism I can recognize as consistent — or else, on the other
hand, your Renaissance astronomers hit upon the truth, and the
cosmos is infinite. Then there exists no suprasensible world, no
dualism; the Beyond is absorbed into the Here, the antithesis
between God and nature falls; man ceases to be the theatre of
a struggle between two hostile principles, and becomes harmonious
and unitary, the conflict subsists merely between his individual
and his collective interest; and the will of the State becomes, in
good pagan wise, the law of morality. Either one thing or the
other/’

“ I protest! ” cried Settembrini, holding his tea-cup outstretched
at arm’s length toward his host. “ I protest against the imputation
that the modern State means the subjugation of the individual
to evil ends! I protest against the dilemma in which you seek to
place us, between Prussianism and Gothic reaction! Democracy
has no meaning whatever if not that of an individualistic corrective
to State absolutism of every kind. Truth and justice are the
immediate jewels of personal morality. If, at times, they may
appear to stand counter, even to be hostile, to the interests of
the State, they may do so while all the time holding before their
eyes her higher, yes, let us boldly say, her spiritual weal. To find
in the Renaissance the origin of State- worship — what bastard
logic! The achievements wrung from the past — I use the word
literally, my dear sir — wrung from the past by the Renaissance
and the intellectual revival are personality, freedom, and the
rights of man.”

The listeners heaved each a deep sigh — they had been holding
their breaths during Herr Settembrini’s great replication. Hans
Castorp did not let himself go altogether, yet could not refrain
from slapping the edge of the table with his hand. “ Magnificent,”
he said, between clenched teeth. Joachim too evinced lively ap-

? roval, despite the word Herr Settembrini had let fall about
russianism. Both of them turned toward the antagonist who had

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400

just suffered this crushing rebuff — Hans Castorp with such eager-
ness that he fell unconsciously into the very posture he had taken
at the pig-drawing, his elbows on the table and his chin in his
palm, and peered in suspense into Herr Naphta’s face.

And Naphta sat there, tense and motionless, his lean hands in his
lap. He said: “ I try to introduce a little logic into the debate,
and you answer me with lofty sentiments. I was already tolerably
well aware that what is called liberalism — individualism, the
humanistic conception of citizenship — was the product of the
Renaissance. But the fact leaves me entirely cola, realizing as I
do, that your great heroic age is a thing of the past, its ideals
defunct, or at least lying at their latest gasp, while the feet of
those who will deal them the coup de grace are already before the
door. You call yourself, if I am not mistaken, a revolutionist. But
you err in holding that future revolutions will issue in freedom.
In the past five hundred years, the principle of freedom has out-
lived its usefulness. An educational system which still conceives
itself as a child of the age of enlightenment, with criticism as its
chosen medium of instruction, the liberation and cult of the ego,
the solvent of forms of life which are absolutely fixed — such
a system may still, for a time, reap an empty rhetorical advantage;
but its reactionary character is, to the initiated, clear beyond any
doubt. All educational organizations worthy of the name have
always recognized what must be the ultimate and significant prin-
ciple of pedagogy: namely the absolute mandate, the iron bond,
discipline, sacrifice, the renunciation of the ego, the curbing of the
personality. And lastly, it is an unloving miscomprehension of
youth to believe that it finds its pleasure in freedom: its deepest
pleasure lies in obedience.”

Joachim sat up straight. Hans Castorp reddened. Herr Settem-
brini excitedly twisted his fine moustache.

“ No,” Naphta went on. “ Liberation and development of the
individual are not the key to our age, they are not what our age
demands. What it needs, what it wrestles after, what it will create —
is Terror.”

He uttered the last word lower than the rest; without a motion
of his body. Only his eye-glasses suddenly flashed. All three of
them, as they heard it, jumped, even Herr Settembrini, who, how-
ever, promptly collected himself and smiled.

“ And may one ask,” he queried, “ whom, or what — you see
I am all question, I ask even how to ask — whom, or what you
envisage as the bringer of this — this — I repeat the word with some
unwillingness — this Terror? ”

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401

Naphta sat motionless, flashing like a drawn blade. He said:
“ I am at your service. I believe I do not err in assuming our
agreement in the conception of an original ideal state of man, a
condition without government and without force, an unmedi-
ated condition as the child of God, in which there was neither
lordship nor service, neither law nor penalty, nor sin nor relation
after the flesh; no distinction of classes, no work, no property:
nothing but equality, brotherhood, and moral perfectitude.”

“ Very good. I agree,” declared Settembrini. “ I agree with
everything except the relations after the flesh, which obviously
must at all times have subsisted, since man is a highly developed
vertebrate, and, like other creatures of his kind — ”

44 As you like. I am merely stating our fundamental agreement
with respect to the original, paradisial state of man, his freedom
from law, and his unmediated relation with God, which state was
lost to him by his fall. I believe we may go side by side for an-
other few steps of the way: in that we both explain the State as
a social contract, taking account of the Fall and entered into as a
safeguard against evil, and that we both see in it the origin of
sovereign power — ”

“ Benissimo! ” cried Settembrini. 44 Social contract — why, that
is Enlightenment, that is Rousseau. I had no idea — ”

“ One moment, pray. We part company here. All power and
all control was originally vested in the people, who made it over,
together with the right to make laws, to their princes. But from
this your school deduces in the first instance the right of the
people to revolt from the monarchy. Whereas we, on the con-
trary — ”

“ We? ” thought Hans Castorp, breathlessly. “ Who are 4 we ’?
I must certainly ask Settembrini afterwards, whom he means
by 4 we.’ ”

44 We, for our part,” Naphta was saying, 44 perhaps no less
revolutionary than you, have consistently deduced the supremacy
of the Church over the secular power. The temporal nature of
the power of the State is, as it were, written on its forehead;
but even if it were not, it would be enough to point to the his-
torical fact that its authority goes back to the will of the people,
whereas that of the Church rests upon the divine sanction, to
establish its character as a device which, if not precisely contrived
by the power of evil, is nevertheless a faulty and inadequate
makeshift.”

44 The State, my dear sir — ”

44 1 am acquainted with your views on the subject of the na-

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402

tional State. As your Virgil has it: ‘Fatherland-love conquers
all, and hunger unsated for glory.’ You add the corrective of a
somewhat liberal individualism — that is democracy, but it leaves
quite untouched your fundamental relation to the State. That
the soul of democracy is the power of money, apparently does not
impugn it — or would you deny the fact? Antiquity was capital-
istic, because of its State cult. The Christian Middle Ages clearly
recognized the inherent capitalism of the secular State: ‘ Money
will be emperor’ is a prophecy made in the eleventh century.
Would you deny that it has now literally come to pass, and with
it the utter bedevilment of life in general? ”

“ My dear friend, you have the floor. I am only eager to make
the acquaintance of the Great Unknown, the bringer of the
Terror.”

“ A perilous curiosity on your part, as the spokesman of a class
of society which has acted as the standard-bearer of freedom —
considering it is that very freedom that has dragged the world to
the brink of destruction. Your goal is the democratic Imperium,
the apotheosis of the principle of the national State in that of the
universal, the World-State. And the emperor of this World-State?
Your Utopia is monstrous — and yet, at this point, we find our-
selves to a certain extent again on common ground. For your
capitalistic world-republic is, in truth, transcendental in charac-
ter; the World-State is the secular State transcended; and we unite
in the faith that the final, perfected State, lying dim upon the far
horizon, should correspond to man’s original, primitive perfection.
Since the time of Gregory the Great, the rounder or the State
of God, the Church has always regarded it as her task to bring
mankind back under the divine guidance. Gregory’s claim to
temporal power was put forward not for its own sake, but rather
because his delegated dictatorship was to be the means and the way
to the goal of redemption — a transitional stage between the pagan
State and the heavenly kingdom. You have spoken to your pupils
here of the bloody deeds of the Church, her chastisements and
her intolerance; very foolishly so, for it stands to reason that the
zeal of the godly cannot be pacifistic in character — Gregory him-
self said: ‘ Cursed be the man who holds back his sword from the
shedding of blood.’ That power is evil we know. But if the king-
dom is to come, then it is necessary that the dualism between good
and evil, between power and the spirit, here and hereafter, must
be for the time abrogated to make way for a single principle,
which shall unify asceticism and domination. This is what I mean
by the necessity for the Terror.”

OF THE CITY OF GOD

403

“ But the standard-bearer, the standard-bearer? ”

“ Do you still ask? Is your Manchester liberalism unaware of
the existence of a school of economic thought which means the
triumph of man over economics, and whose principles and aims
precisely coincide with those of the kingdom of God? The Fathers
of the Church called mine and thine pernicious words, and private
property usurpation and robbery. They repudiated the idea of
personal possessions, because, according to divine and natural law,
the earth is common to all men, and brings forth her fruits for the
common good. They taught that avarice, a consequence of the
Fall, represents the rights of property and is the source of private
ownership. They were humane enough, anti-commercial enough,
to feel that all commercial activity was a danger to the soul of man
and its salvation. They hated money and finance, and called the
empire of capital fuel for the fires of hell. The fundamental eco-
nomic principle that price is regulated by the operation of the
law of supply and demand, they have always despised from the
bottom or their hearts; and condemned taking advantage of chance
as a cynical exploitation of a neighbour’s need. Even more ne-
farious, in their eyes, was the exploitation of time; the montrous-
ness of receiving a premium for the passage of time — interest, in
other words — and misusing to one’s own advantage and another’s
disadvantage a universal and God-given dispensation.”

“ Benissimo! ” cried Hans Castorp, in his excitement availing
himself of Herr Settembrini’s formula of assent. “ The time — a
universal, God-given dispensation! That is highly important.”

“ Quite,” said Naphta. “ Indeed, these humane spirits were re-
volted by the idea of the automatic increase of money; they
regarded as usury every kind of interest-taking and speculation,
and declared that every rich man was either a thief or the heir
of a thief. They went further. Like Thomas Aquinas, they con-
sidered trade, pure and simple, buying and selling for profit, with-
out altering or improving the product, a contemptible occupa-
tion. They were not inclined to place a very high value on labour
in and for itself, as being an ethical, not a religious concern, and
performed not in the service of God, but as a part of the business
of living. This being the case, they demanded that the measure
of profit or of public esteem should be in proportion to the
actual labour expended, and accordingly it was not the trades-
man or the industrialist, but the labourer and the tiller of the soil,
who were honourable in their eyes. For they were in favour of
making production dependent upon necessity, and held mass pro-
duction in abhorrence. Now, then: after centuries of disfavour

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404

these principles and standards are being resurrected by the modem
movement of communism. The similarity is complete, even to the
claim for world-domination made by international labour as against
international industry and finance; the world-proletariat, which
is to-day asserting the ideals of the Civitas Dei in opposition to the
discredited and decadent standards of the capitalistic bourgeoisie.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, the politico-economic means
of salvation demanded by our age, does not mean domination for its
own sake and in perpetuity; but rather in the sense of a temporary
abrogation, in the Sign of the Cross, of the contradiction between
spirit and force; in the sense of overcoming the world by master-
ing it; in a transcendental, a transitional sense, in the sense of the
Kingdom. The proletariat has taken up the task of Gregory the
Great, his religious zeal burns within it, and as little as he may
it withhold its hand from the shedding of blood. Its task is to strike
terror into the world for the healing of the world, that man may
finally achieve salvation and deliverance, and win back at length
to freedom from law and from distinction of classes, to his original
status as child of God.”

Thus Naphta. The little group was silent. The young men
looked to Herr Settembrini. It was, they felt, his affair.

He said: “ Astounding. I am staggered — I admit it. I had not
expected this. Roma locuta . Rome has spoken, and how — how
has she spoken! Herr Naphta has before our eyes performed a
hieratic salto mortale — if the epithet is inconsistent, the incon-
sistency has been ‘ temporarily abrogated ’ — oh, yes! I repeat,
it is astounding. Could you conceive, Professor, of any possible
criticism, if only on the score of consistency? A few minutes ago
you were at pains to make comprehensible to us a Christian in-
dividualism based on the dualism of God and the world, and to
prove its pre-eminence over all politically determined morality.
And now you profess a socialism pushed to the point of dictator-
ship and terrorism. How do you reconcile the two things? ”

“ Opposites,” said Naphta, “ may be consistent with each other.
It is the middling, the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other that is pre-
posterous. Your individualism, as I have already taken the liberty
of remarking, is defective. It is a confession of weakness. It cor-
rects its pagan State morality by the admixture of a little Christi-
anity, a little ‘ rights of man,’ a little so-called liberty — but that
is all. An individualism that springs from the cosmic, the astrologi-
cal importance of the individual soul, an individualism not social
but religious, that conceives of humanity not as a conflict between
the ego and society, but as a conflict between the ego and God,

OF THE CITY OF GOD 405

between the flesh and the spirit — a genuine individualism like that
sorts very well with the most binding communism.”

“ Anonymous and communal,” said Hans Castorp.

Settembrini glared at him. “ Be quiet, Engineer,” he said, with a
severity probably due to nervous irritation. “ Inform yourself,
but don’t try to express your views. That is an answer, at least,”
he said, turning to Naphta again. “ It gives me cold comfort, but
it is an answer. Let us examine all the consequences flowing from
it. Along with industry, your Christian communism would reject
machinery, technique, material progress. Along with what you
call trade — money and finance, which in antiquity ranked higher
than agriculture and manual labour — you reject freedom. For it
is clear, so clear as to be evident to the meanest intelligence, that
all social relations, public and private, would be attached to the
soil, as in the Middle Ages; even — I feel some reluctance to say
it — even the person of the individual. If only the soil can maintain
life, then only the possession of it can confer freedom. Manual
labourers and peasants, however honourable their position, if
they possess no real property, can only be the property of those
who do. As a matter of fact, until well on in the Middle Ages the
great mass of the population, even the town-dwellers, were serfs.
In the course of our discussion you have let fall various allusions
to the dignity of the human being. Yet you are defending the
morality of an economic system which deprives the individual
of liberty and self-respect.”

“ About self-respect and the lack of it,” responded Naphta,
“ there is a good deal to be said. For the moment, I should be
glad if the association were to make you conceive of liberty less
as a beautiful gesture and more as a serious problem. You assert
that Christian morality, with all its beauty and benignity, makes
for servitude. And I, on the other hand, assert that the question
of freedom — the question of cities, to put it more concretely — has
always been a highly ethical question, and is historically bound up
with the inhuman degeneration of commercial morality, with all
the horrors of modern industrialism and speculation, and with the
devilish domination of money and finance.”

“ I must insist that you do not take refuge behind scruples and
antinomies, but come out squarely where you belong, in favour
of the blackest sort of reaction.”

“ It would be the first step toward true liberty and love of
humanity to free one’s mind of the flabby fear engendered by the
very mention of the word reaction.”

“ Well, that is enough,” declared Herr Settembrini, in a voice

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406

that trembled slightly, pushing away his cup and plate — they
were empty by now — and rising from the satin sofa. “ Enough
for to-day, enough for a whole day, I should think. Our thanks,
Professor, for the delicious entertainment, and for the very spirituel
discourse. My young friends here from the Berghof are sum-
moned by the service of the cure, and I should like, before they
go, to show them my cell up above. Come, gentlemen. Addio y
Padre! ”

Hans Castorp marked the appellation with lifted brows. So now
it was padre! They submitted to Herr Settembrini’s breaking
up the little party and disposing of themselves without giving
Naphta the chance to come along supposing he had been inclined.
The young men in their turn thanked their host and took their
leave, urged by Naphta to come again. They went with Herr
Settembrini, Hans Castorp bearing with him the crumbling paste-
board volume containing De miser ia humarue conditionis , which
his host put into his hands. The surly Luka^ek still sat on his table
and sewed at the sleeved garment for the old woman. They had
to pass his open door to mount the ladderlike stair to the top
storey. It was, properly speaking, scarcely a storey at all, being
simply a loft with naked rafters and beams inside the roof; it had
the close air of a garret and smelt of warm shingles. But it was
divided into two rooms, which served the republican capitalist and
belletristic collaborator on the Sociology of Suffering as study
and sleeping-cabinet. These he blithely displayed to his young
friends, characterizing them as retired and cosy, in order to supply
them with suitable adjectives in which to praise them, which they
accordingly did. They both found his quarters charmingly cosy
and retired, just as he said. They had a glimpse into the tiny sleep-
ing-chamber, merely a short and narrow bedstead in the corner
under the sloping roof, and a small drugget on the floor beside it;
then they turned again to the study, which was no less sparsely fur-
nished, but orderly to the point of formality, or even frigid. Heavy
old-fashioned chairs, four in number, with rush seats, were sym-
metrically placed on either side the door, the divan was pushed
against the wall, and a round table with a green cover held the
centre of the room, upon which for all ornament — or, possibly,
for refreshment, but in any case with an effect of chaste sobriety —
there stood a water-bottle with a glass turned upside-down over it.
Books and pamphlets leaned against each other in a little hang-
ing shelf, and at the open window stood a high-legged, flimsy
folding desk, with a small, thick felt mat on the floor beneath it,
just large enough to afford standing-room. Hans Castorp took up

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407

position here for a minute to try what it was like. This was Herr
Settembrini’s workshop, where he wrote articles in belles-lettres
to contribute to the encyclopaedia of human suffering. The young
man rested his elbows on the slanting surface of the desk, and an-
nounced that he found the little apartment very retired and cosy.
Thus, he presumed, aloud, might Ludovico’s father, with his long,
aristocratic nose, have bent over his work at Padua — and learned
that he was standing, indeed, at the very desk of the deceased
scholar; nay, more, that the chairs, the table, even the water-bot-
tle, had been his, and that the chairs had come down from the
Carbonaro grandfather, the walls of whose law office at Milan they
once had graced. That made a great impression on the young peo-
ple; the chairs straightway began in their eyes to betray affinity
with political agitation — Joachim, who had been sitting all uncon-
scious on one, with his legs crossed, got up at once, looked at it
mistrustfully, and did not sit down again. But Hans Castorp, at the
elder Settembrini’s desk, thought how the younger now laboured
here, to mingle the politics of the grandfather and the father’s
humanism in a blend of literary beauty. At length they all
went off together, the author having offered to see his friends to
their door.

They were silent for some way; but the silence spoke of Naphta,
and Hans Castorp could wait. He felt sure Herr Settembrini would
mention his house-mate, had come out with them for that very pur-
pose. He was not mistaken.

Drawing a long breath, as if to get a good start, the Italian be-
gan: “ My friends, I should like to warn you.”

As he paused, after that, Hans Castorp asked, affecting surprise:
“ Against what? ” He might as well have said against whom, but
expressed himself impersonally to show how completely uncon-
scious he was of Herr Settembrini’s meaning — a meaning which
even Joachim perfectly comprehended.

“ Against the personage whose guest we have just been,” an-
swered Settembrini, “ and whose acquaintance I have unwillingly
been the means of your making. Chance willed it, as you saw, I
could not prevent it. But the responsibility is mine, and as such I
feel it. It is my duty to point out to your tender years the intel-
lectual perils of intercourse with this man, and to beg you to keep
your acquaintance with him within safe limits. His form is logic,
but his essence is confusion.”

“ He does seem rather weird,” was Hans Castorp’s view. “ Some
of the things he said were very queer: it sounded as if he meant to
say that the sun revolves round the earth.” But how could they, he

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went on, have suspected that a friend of his, Herr Settembrini’s,
was an unsuitable person for them to associate with? As he himself
admitted, they had made the acquaintance through him, had met
the man first in his company, and seen that the two walked and
took tea together. Surely that must mean —

u Of course, Engineer, of course.” Herr Settembrini’s voice was
full of mild resignation, it even trembled. “ I am open to this re-
joinder, and so you make it. Good. I am quite ready to accept the
responsibility. I live under the same roof as this man, our meetings
are unavoidable, one word leads on to another, an acquaintance is
formed. Herr Naphta is a person of most unusual mental powers.
He is by nature discursive, and so am I. Condemn me if you will —
I avail myself of the opportunity to cross swords with an antag-
onist who is after all my equal. I have no one else — anywhere. —
In short, it is true that I visit him and he me, we take walks together.
We dispute. We quarrel, nearly every day, till we draw blood; but
I confess the contrariness and mischievousness of his ideas but ren-
der our acquaintance the more attractive. I need the friction. Opin-
ions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them — and I
am only confirmed in mine. How could you assert so much of
yours, Lieutenant, or you, Engineer? You are defenceless against
intellectual sophistry, you are exposed to danger from the influence
of this half fanatical, half pernicious quackery — danger to the in-
tellect and to the soul.”

Hans Castorp rejoined that it was probably all true; he and his
cousin were naturally more or less prone to such dangers — it was
the same old story about the delicate child of life, he understood
perfectly. But on the other hand, one might cite Petrarch and his
maxim, which was familiar to Herr Settembrini. And after all it was
worth listening to, all that Naphta had to say. One must admit that
that about the communistic period, when no one would be allowed
to receive interest, was first-rate; also some of the things he said
about education which he, Hans Castorp, would probably never
otherwise have got to hear.

Settembrini compressed his lips, and Hans Castorp hastened to
say that, as for his own attitude, it was of course entirely non-parti-
san; he only meant that he had enjoyed hearing what Naphta had
to say about the deepest desire of youth. “ But do explain this one
thing to me,” he went on. “ This person — I call him that by way
of showing my detachment, and that I don’t by any means alto-
gether agree with all he says, but am inclined to make important
reservations — ”

“ And very rightly so,” cried Settembrini gratefully.

OF THE CITY OF GOD

409

“ — He had a great deal to say against money, the soul of the
State, as he expressed himself, and against property-holding, which
he considers thievery; in short, against the capitalistic system,
which he called, if I remember rightly, fuel for the fires of hell, or
something like that. He sang the praises of the Middle Ages for
forbidding the taking of interest. And all the time the man himself
must have, if I may say so — you get such a surprise when you first
enter his room and see all that silk — ”

“ Ah, yes,” smiled Settembrini, “ the taste is very characteristic
of him.”

“ — the beautiful old furniture,” Hans Castorp went on, “ the
pieta out of the fourteenth centuiy, the Venetian lustre, the little
page in livery — and such a lot of chocolate layer cake, too — he
must personally be pretty well off, I should think — ”

“ Herr Naphta,” Settembrini answered, “ is, personally, as little
of a capitalist as I am.”

“ But? ” queried Hans Castorp. “ There is a but in your tone,
Herr Settembrini.”

“ Well, those people never let anyone lack who belongs to them.”

“ Those people? ”

“ The Fathers.”

“ Fathers? What Fathers? ”

“ Why, Engineer, I mean the Jesuits.”

A pause ensued. The cousins displayed the greatest astonish-
ment. Hans Castorp cried out: “What! Good Lord! — you can’t
mean it! You don’t mean to say the man is a Jesuit! ”

“ You have guessed aright,” Herr Settembrini said with punc-
tilio.

“ I never in all my life — who would ever think of such a thing?
So that is why you called him padre ! ”

“ That was a polite exaggeration,” Settembrini answered. “ Herr
Naphta is not a Father. His illness is to blame for his not having
got that far. But he has finished his noviciate and taken his first
vows. The state of his health obliged him to give up his theolog-
ical studies, after which he spent some years in a school belonging
to the Society, where he acted as prefect and preceptor of the
younger pupils. That was in sympathy with his pedagogic lean-
ings, and he continues in the same line up here, by teaching Latin at
the Fridericianum. He has been here five years. When, or if, he can
leave this place, remains in doubt. But he belongs to the Society,
and even if the bond were a looser one than it is, he would never
want for anything. As I told you, he is personally poor; that is to
say, without possessions. That is the rule of the Society; which,

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4IO

however, commands immense riches, and, as you saw, looks well
after its own.”

“ Thunder — and lightning! ” Hans Castorp said. “ And I never
even knew that such things existed any more! A Jesuit! Well, well!
But do tell me — if he is so well looked after by those people, why
in the world does he live — I don’t mean to say a word about your
lodgings, Herr Settembrini, and you are certainly charmingly fixed,
at Luka?ek’s, it is so retired and cosy there; but I mean, if Naphta
really has such a pile as that, to speak vulgarly, why doesn’t he take
another apartment, in a better house, more stately, with a proper
entrance and large rooms? There is something secret and sus-
picious-looking about him, there in that hole, with all that silk — ”

Settembrini shrugged his shoulders.

“ He is probably guided by considerations of taste and tact,” he
said. “ I imagine he salves his anti-capitalistic conscience by living
in a poor house, and indemnifies himself by living in the style he
keeps. And I should sav that discretion plays some role in the affair
too. No use advertising to all the world how well the Devil takes
care of his own. He shows an unpretentious facade, and behind it
gives free rein to tastes such as a prince of the Church — ”

“ Extraordinary! ” Hans Castorp said. “ It is all perfectly new
and astonishing to me — I am free to confess. Why, Herr Settem-
brini, we are really very much indebted to you for this new ac-
quaintance. Many a time and oft we shall be going down to pay him
a visit — I am sure of that. Such discourse does wonders in the way
of enlarging the horizon — it gives one glimpses into a world the
existence of which one never dreamed. A proper Jesuit! When I
say proper, the adjective stands for all that passes through my mind
as I say it. I mean, is he a real, actual Jesuit? I know you mean a
person can’t be proper with the Devil supporting him from be-
hind; but what 1 mean is, is he proper as a Jesuit? That is what I am
thinking. He said certain things — you know the ones I mean —
about modern communism, and the religious zeal of the proletariat,
and not withholding its hand from bloodshed — I won’t discuss
them further, but surely your grandfather, with his citizen’s pike,
was a perfect ewe lamb by comparison — please forgive my lan-
guage. Is that allowed? Do his authorities stand for it? Is that the
doctrine of the Roman Church, which all the religious societies all
over the world propagate by means of intrigue, or so they say?
Isn’t it — what is the word? — heretical, abnormal, incorrect?
Those are the things I am thinking about Herr Naphta — and I
should be pleased to have your opinion on them.”

Settembrini smiled.

OF THE CITY OF GOD

41 1

“ Very simple. Herr Naphta is, of course, first of all a Jesuit. He
is that always, and before everything else. But he is also a man of
intellect — or I should not be seeking his society — and as such he
is always searching for new combinations, new associations and
adaptations, new shades of meaning proper to the time. You saw
how he surprised even me by his theories. He had never gone
so far with me before. I made use of the very evident stimulus of
your presence to stir him up to the point of saying his last word
on a certain subject. It sounded ridiculous enough, monstrous
enough — ”

“ Yes, yes; but tell me, why did he never become a Father? He
was old enough, wasn’t he? ”

“ I did tell you — it was his illness prevented him.”

“ Well, but don’t you think — if he is first a Jesuit and second a
man of intellect, always making new combinations — don’t you
think this second, added characteristic has to do with his illness? ”

“ What do you mean by that? ”

“ I only mean — look: he has a moist spot, and that hinders him
from becoming a Father. But his combinations would probably
have hindered him anyhow, and so, in a certain way, the spot and
the combinations hang together. In his way he too is a sort of deli-
cate child — a joli jesuite with a petite tache humideT

They had reached the sanatorium, but stood in a little group on
the terrace before the house talking still awhile before parting, and
watched by a few guests who happened to be lounging there. Herr
Settembrini said: “ I repeat, my young friends — I warn you. I
cannot prevent you from cultivating the acquaintance now it is
made, if curiosity leads you to do so. But arm yourselves, arm your
hearts and minds with suspicion, oppose him with a critical spirit.
I will characterize this man for you with a single word. He is a
voluptuary.”

The cousins made astonished faces. Hans Castorp asked: “ A —
what? But he is a member of a Society. They have to take certain
vows, I have always supposed — and then he is such a poor creature
physically, so — ”

“ You are talking rubbish, Engineer,” Settembrini interposed. “ It
has nothing to do with physical insufficiency; while as for the vows
you speak of, there are always reservations. I was speaking in a
broader, more intellectual sense, your comprehension of which I
felt I might presume upon, by now. You probably remember my
visiting you one day in your room — it was long ago, frightfully
long ago — you had just finished your three weeks in bed, after
being received into the sanatorium.”

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4 I2

“ Of course. You came in at dusk, and turned on the light — I
remember it as if it were yesterday — ”

“ Good. We fell into talk, as we have often done, I rejoice to say,
and upon somewhat elevated subjects. We spoke, I believe, of life
and death: of the dignity of death in so far as it is the condition and
appurtenance of life, and the grotesqueness into which it declines
so soon as the mind erects it into an independent principle. Young
men,” went on Herr Settembrini, standing close to the two, with
the thumb and middle finger of his left hand splayed out like a fork,
as if to collect their attention, while he raised the forefinger of his
right in warning , 44 imprint it upon your minds: the mind is sover-
eign. Its will is free, it conditions the moral world. Let it once
dualistically isolate death, and death will become, in actual fact,
actu, by this mental act of will, you understand me, a power in
itself, the power opposed to life, the inimical principle, the great
temptation; whose kingdom is the kingdom of the flesh. You ask
me why of the flesh? I answer you: because it unlooses and de-
livers, because it is deliverance — yet not deliverance from evil, but
deliverance by evil. It relaxes manners and morals, it frees man
from discipline and restraint, it abandons him to lust. If I warn
you against this man, whose acquaintance with you I have unwill-
ingly brought about, if I exhort you to go thrice-armed with a
critical spirit in all your dealings with him, it is because all his
thoughts are voluptuous, and stand under the aegis of death — and
death is the most dissolute of powers, as I told you then, Engineer

— I well remember my words, for I never fail to retain in my mind
any good and telling phrase I may have chanced to avail myself of

— a power hostile to civilization and progress, to work and to life,
against whose mephitic breath it is the noblest task of the teacher
to shield the mind of youth.”

Who could talk more beautifully than Herr Settembrini, who
clearer, or in better-rounded periods? Hans Castorp and Joachim
Ziemssen thanked him most warmly for all he had said, and
mounted the Berghof steps, while Herr Settembrini betook himself
once more to his humanistic writing-desk, in the storey above
Naphta’s silken cell.

This first visit of the cousins to Naphta, whose course we have
described, was followed by two or three others; one, even, in the
absence of Herr Settembrini. All of them afforded young Hans
Castorp much food for thought, when, in his blue-blossoming re-
treat, with the image of the human form divine, called Homo Dei \
hovering before his mind’s eye, he sat and 44 took stock.”

CHOLER

4*3

Choler. And Worse

August arrived, and with its entry slipped past the anniversary of
our hero’s arrival in these parts. So much the better when it was
gone — young Hans Castorp had scarcely looked forward to it
with pleasure. And that was the rule. The anniversary was not
popular. The old inhabitants passed it by without thought; and —
though in general they seized on every pretext for jollification, and
took occasion to celebrate their own private anniversaries in addi-
tion to these that accented the recurrent rhythm of the year; mak-
ing merry with popping of corks in the restaurant, over birthdays,
general examinations, imminent departures whether “ wild ” or
sanctioned, and the like — they accorded to the anniversary of
arrival no other attention than that of a profound silence. They
let it slip past, perhaps they actually managed to forget it, and they
might be confident that no one else would remember. They set
store by a proper articulation of the time, they gave heed to the
calendar, observed the turning-points of the year, its recurrent
limits. But to measure one’s own private time, that time which for
the individual in these parts was so closely bound up with space —
that was held to be an occupation only fit for new arrivals and
short-termers. The settled citizens preferred the unmeasured, the
eternal, the day that was for ever the same; and delicately each
respected in others the sentiment he so warmly cherished himself.
To say to anybody that this day three years ago was the day of his
arrival, that would have been considered brutal, in consummately
bad taste — it simply never happened. Even Frau Stohr, whatever
her lacks in other respects, was far too tactful and well disciplined
to let it slip out. Certainly she united great ignorance with her in-
fected and feverish physical state. Recently at table she had alluded
to the “ affectation ” of the tip of her lung; and the conversation
having taken a historical turn, she explained that dates were her
“ ring of Polycrates ” — a remark which made her hearers stare.
But it was unthinkable that she should remind young Ziemssen his
year would be up in February — though she had very likely
thought of it. For the unhappy creature’s head was full of useless
baggage, and she loved to keep track of other people’s affairs. But
the tradition of the place held her in check.

Thus also on Hans Castorp’s anniversary. She may have even
tried to nod at him meaningfully, at table; but encountering a va-
cant stare dexterously withdrew. Joachim too had kept silence,
though he probably had clearly in mind the date on which he had
fetched the guest from the Dorf station. Joachim was ever by na-

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414

ture taciturn; had always talked less than his cousin, even before
they came up here — there had never been any comparison be-
tween him and the humanists and controversialists of their ac-
quaintance — and in these days his silence had assumed heroic
proportions, only monosyllables passed his lips. His manner, how-
ever, spoke volumes. It was plain that in his mind the Dorf station
was associated with another order of ideas than those of arrival
or meeting people. He was conducting a lively correspondence
with the flat-land; his resolve was ripening, his preparations draw-
ing to a head.

July had been warm and bright. But with August bad weather
set in, cloudy and damp; with first a sleety drizzle and then actual
snow. And it lasted — with interludes of single resplendent days
— all through the month, and on into September. At first the rooms
held the warmth of the summery period just past: they stood at
fifty degrees, which passed for comfortable. But it grew rapidly
voider; there were rejoicings when the snowfall whitened the
Valley, for the sight of it — the sight alone, for the mere drop of
the temperature would not have sufficed — compelled the man-
agement to heat, first the dining-room, then the chambers as well;
so that when one rolled out of the rugs, at the end of a rest period,
and re-entered one’s chamber, one might warm one’s stiffened
fingers against the hot pipes, though the dry air these gave out
did accentuate the burning in the cheeks.

Was it winter again? Almost the senses thought so. On every
hand were loud complaints, that they had been cheated out of
their summer; though they had really cheated themselves, abetted
by conditions both natural and artificial, and by a consumption
of time-units reckless alike within and without. Reason was aware
that fine autumnal weather was certain to follow, there would
be a succession of brilliant days each outvying the other, and so
fine that one might still honour them with the name of summer,
save for the flatter arc the sun made in its course, and its earlier
setting. But the effect of the winter landscape on the spirit was
stronger than the power of such consolatory thoughts. The cous-
ins would stand at the closed door into the balcony, and look out
with loathing into the whirl of flakes — it was Joachim who stood
thus, and in a suppressed voice he said: “ So that’s to begin all
over again, is it? ”

From behind him in the room Hans Castorp responded: “ That
would be rather early — surely it can’t be settling down to winter
already — but it has a terribly final look. If winter consists in dark-
ness and cold, snow and hot pipes, then there’s no denying it’s

CHOLER

415

winter again. And when you think we’d just finished with it and
that the snow only just melted — at least, it seems that way, doesn’t
it, as though spring were only just over — well, it gives one a
turn, I will say. It is actually a blow to one’s love of life — let
me explain to you how I mean. I mean the world as normally ar-
ranged is conducive to man’s needs and his pleasure in life — isn’t
that so? I won’t go so far as to say that the whole natural order
of things, for instance the size of the earth, the time it takes to
revolve on its axis and about the sun, the division between day and
night, summer and winter — in short, the whole cosmic rhythm,
if you like to call it that — was especially arranged for our use
and behoof; that would be cheek, I suppose, and simple-minded
into the bargain. It would be teleological reasoning, as the philos-
ophers express it. No, it would be truer to say that our needs are —
thank God that it should be so — in harmony with the larger, the
fundamental facts of nature. I say thank God, for it is really
ground for praising Him. Now, when summer or winter comes
along down below, the past summer or winter is far enough in
the past to make one glad to see it again — and therein lies some
of the joy we have in life. But up here this order and harmony
are destroyed: first because there are no proper seasons, as you
yourself said when I first came, but only summer days and winter
days all mixed up together; and secondly, because what we spend
up here isn’t time at all, and the new winter, when it comes, isn’t
new, but the same old winter all the time. All that explains per-
fectly the disgtist you feel when you look out at the window.”

“ Thanks,” Joachim said. “ And now that you have explained
it, you feel so satisfied that you are even satisfied with the situa-
tion itself — although in all human — no! ” said he. “I’m done.
Fed up. It’s beastly. The whole thing is just one tremendous, rot-
ten, beastly sell; and I, for my part — ” He went with hasty
steps through the room, and shut the door angrily behind him.
Unless Hans Castorp was much mistaken, there had been tears in
the mild, beautiful eyes.

He left the other staggered. So long as Joachim had confined
himself to putting his determination into words, his cousin had
not taken it too seriously. But now that silence spoke for him, and
his behaviour too, Hans Castorp was alarmed, for he saw that
the military Joachim was the man to translate words into deeds
— he was so alarmed that he grew pale, and his pallor was for
them both. “ Fort possible quHl va mourir he thought. And
that piece of third-hand information mingled itself with an old,
painful, never-quite-to-be-suppressed fear, which made him say

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416

to himself: “ Is it possible he could leave me alone up here — me,
who only came on a visit to him? That would be crazy, horrible;
at the bare thought of it I can feel my heart flutter and my cheek
pale. Because if I am left up here — as I shall be, if he goes down,
for it is out of the question for me to go with him — if I am ljeft
up here, it is for ever; alone I should never find my way back.
Never back down to the world again. And at the thought my
heart stands still.”

Such the course of Hans Castorp’s fearful musings. But that
veiy afternoon, certitude was vouchsafed. Joachim declared him-
self, the die was cast, the bridges burnt.

They went down after tea to the basement for the monthly
examination. This was the beginning of September. On entering
the warm air of the consulting-room, they saw Dr. Krokowski
sitting at his table, and the Hofrat, very blue in the face, leaning
against the wall with his arms crossed, tapping his shoulder with
the stethoscope, and yawning at the ceiling. “ Mahlzeit , children,”
said he, languidly. His mood was lax, resigned and melancholic,
and he had probably been smoking. There were also, however,
some objective grounds for his state, as the cousins had heard:
international scandal of a kind only too familiar in the estab-
lishment. A certain young girl called Emmy Nolting had entered
House Berghof two years before in the autumn, and after a stay
of some nine months departed cured. But before September was
out she had returned, saying she did not “ feel well ” at home. In
February, with lungs from which all vestige of rhonchi had dis-
appeared, she was sent home again — but by the middle of July
was back in her place at Frau Iltis’s table. This Emmy, then, had
been discovered in her room at one o’clock at night in company
with another sufferer, a Greek named Polypraxios, the same whose
shapely legs had attracted favourable attention the night of mardi
gras — a young chemist whose father owned dye-works in the
Piraeus. The discovery had been made through the jealousy of
another young girl, a friend of Emmy, who had found her way
to Emmy’s room by the same route the Greek had taken — namely,
across the balconies; and, distracted by her jealous rage, had made
great outcry, so that everybody came running, and the scandal
became known to the sparrows on the house-tops. Behrens had
to send all three of them away; and had been at the moment going
over the whole unsavoury affair with Krokowski, who had had
both girls under private treatment. The Hofrat, as he examined,
continued to let fall remarks, in resigned and dreary tones — for
he was such a master of auscultation that he could listen to a man’s

CHOLER 417

inside, dictate what he heard to his assistant, and talk about some-
thing else all the time.

“ Ah, yes, gentlemen,” he said, “ this cursed libido! You can
get some fun out of the thing, it’s all right for you. — Vesicular.
— But a man in my position, verily I say unto you — dullness
here — he hath his belly full. Is it my fault that phthisis and con-
cupiscence go together — slight harshness here? I didn’t arrange
it that way; but before you know where you are you find your-
self the keeper of a stew — restricted here under the left shoulder.
We have psycho-analysis, we give the noodles every chance to
talk themselves out — much good it does them! The more they
talk the more lecherous they get. I preach mathematics. — Better
here, the rhonchi are gone. — I tell them that if they will occupy
themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the
best remedy against the lusts of the flesh. Lawyer Paravant was a
bad case; he took my advice, he is now busy squaring the circle,
and gets great relief. But most of them are too witless and lazy,
God help them! — Vesicular. — You see, I know it’s only too easy
for young folk to go to the bad up here — I used to try to do
something about these debauches. But it happened a few times
that some brother or bridegroom asked me to my face what affair
it was of mine — and since then I’ve stuck to my last. — Slight
rales up on the right.”

He finished with Joachim, thrust his stethoscope in the pocket
of his smock, and rubbed his eyes with both huge hands, as was
his habit when he had “ backslidden ” and become melancholy.
Half mechanically, between yawns, he reeled off his patter: “ Well,
Ziemssen, just keep your pecker up, you’ll be all right yet. You
aren’t like a picture in a physiology-book, there’s a hitch here
and there, and you haven’t cleaned up your GaflFky, you’ve even
gone up a peg or so, it’s six this time — but never mind, don’t pull
a long face, you are better than you were when you came, I can
hand it to you in writing. Just another five or six months — mo-
naths , I mean. Did you know that is the earlier form of the word?
I mean to say monath , after this — ”

“ Herr Hofrat,” Joachim began. He stood bare to the waist,
heels together and chest out, with a determined bearing, and as
mottled in the face as ever he had been that time when Hans Ca-
storp first made observations on the pallor of the deeply tanned.

Behrens ran on without noticing: “ — and if you stop another
round half year and do particular pipe-clay, why, you’ll be a
made man, you can take Constantinople single-handed; you’ll be
strong enough to command a regiment of Samsons — ”

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418

Who knows how much more nonsense he might have uttered
if Joachim’s unflinching determination to make himself heard
had not brought him to a stand.

“ Herr Hofrat,” the young man said, “ I should like to tell you,
if you will pardon me, that I have decided to leave.”

“ What’s that? So you want to leave? I thought you wanted
to go down later as a sound man, to be a soldier.”

“ No, I must leave now, Herr Hofrat, in a week, that is.”

“Do you mean what you say? You want to hop out of the
frying-pan into the fire? You’re going to hook it? Don’t you call
that desertion? ”

“ No, Herr Hofrat, I don’t look at it in that light. I must join
my regiment.”

“ Even though I tell you I can surely discharge you in half a
year, but not before? ”

Joachim’s bearing became even more correct. He took in his
stomach, and replied, repressed and curt: “ I have been here a
year and a half, Herr Hofrat. I cannot wait any longer. Origi-
nally it was to have been three months. Since then it has been
increased, first another three, then another six, and so on, and
still I am not cured.”

“ Is that mv fault? ”

“ No, Herr Hofrat. But I cannot wait any longer. If I don’t
want to miss my opportunity, I cannot wait to make my full cure
up here. I must go down now. I need a little time for my equip-
ment and other arrangements.”

“ Your family knows what you are doing — do they consent? ”

“ My mother — yes. It is all arranged. The first of October I
join the seventy-sixth regiment as cornet.”

“ At all hazards? ” Behrens asked, and fixed him with his blood-
shot eyes.

“ I have the honour,” Joachim answered, his lips twitching.

“ Very good, Ziemssen.” The Hofrat’s tone changed; he aban-
doned his position, he relaxed in every way. “ Very well, then.
Stir your stumps, go on, and God be with you. I see you know
your own mind, and so much is certainly true, that it is your
affair and not mine. Every pot stands on its own bottom. You
go at your own risk, I take no responsibility. But good Lord, it
may turn out all right. Soldiering is an out-of-doors job. It may
do you good, you may come through all right.”

“Yes, Herr Hofrat/’

“ Well, and what about your cousin, the peaceful citizen over
there? He wants to go along with you, does he? ”

CHOLER

419

This was Hans Castorp, who was supposed to answer. He stood
there as pale as at that first examination, which had ended by his
being admitted as a patient. Now, as then, his heart could be seen
hammering against his side. He said: “ I should like to be guided
by your opinion, Herr Hofrat.”

“ My opinion. Good.” He drew him to him by the arm, and
began to tap and listen. He did not dictate. It went rather fast.
When he finished, he said: “ You may go.”

Hans Castorp stammered: “ You — you mean — I am cured? ”

“ Yes, you are cured. The place above in the left lobe is no
longer worth talking about. Your temperature doesn’t go with it.
Why you have it, I don’t know. I assume it is of no further im-
portance. So far as I am concerned, you can go.”

“ But — Herr Hofrat — may I ask — that is — you are perhaps
not altogether serious? ”

“ Not serious? Why not? What do you suppose? And inci-
dentally, what do you think of me, might I be allowed to ask?
What do you take me for? A bawdy-house keeper? ”

He was in a towering passion. The blood flared up in his cheeks
and turned their blue to violet, his one-sided lip was wrenched
so high that the canines of the upper jaw were visible. He ad-
vanced his head like a steer, with staring, bloodshot, watery eyes.

“ I won’t have it,” he bellowed. “ In the first place, I’m not the
proprietor here! I’m on hire. I’m a doctor! I’m nothing but a
doctor, I would give you to understand. I’m not a pimp. I’m no
Signor Amoroso on the Toledo, in Napoli bella. I am a servant
of suffering humanity! And if either one of you should perchance
have conceived a different opinion of me and my character,
then you can both go to the devil with my compliments — you
can go to the dogs or you can turn up your toes, whichever you
like, and a pleasant journey to you! ”

He strode across the room and was out of the door that led to
the x-ray waiting-room. It crashed behind him.

The cousins looked imploringly at Dr. Krokowski, who buried
his nose in his papers. They hurried into their clothes. On the
stair Hans Castorp said: “ That was awful. Have you ever seen
him like that before? ”

“ No, not like that. But the authorities sometimes get these
attacks. The important thing is to behave with dignity and let
them pass over. He was irritated about the business with Poly-
praxios and Emmy Nolting. But did you see,” Joachim went
on, and the joy of having fought and won his battle mounted in
him and almost took away his breath, “ did you see how he gave in

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420

md showed no more fight, directly he saw I was in earnest?
All one has to do is to show some pluck, and not let oneself be
shouted down. Now IVe even got a sort of leave — at least, he
said himself I’ll probably pull out of it — and I’m travelling in
a week — in three weeks I’ll be with the colours,” he finished,
altering his phrase, and confining the joy that trembled in his
voice to his own affairs, without reference to Hans Castorp’s.

The latter was silent. He spoke no word, either of Joachim’s
“ leave ” or his own — which might equally well have been men-
tioned. He made his preparations for the rest-cure, put the ther-
mometer in his mouth, flung the camel’s-hair rugs about him
with swift, practised hand, the perfected technique of that con-
secrated art the flat-land knows not of; then he lay still, neat as a
sausage-roll, in his excellent chair, in the chill dampness of the
early autumn afternoon.

The rain-clouds hung low. Remnants of snow rested on the
boughs of the silver fir. The banner of the establishment was
furled round its staff. A low murmur of voices rose from the
rest-hall, whence last year, at much about this time, the voice
of Herr Albin had risen to Hans Castorp’s ear. The cure was
going on, the patients sat there with soon-chilled faces and finger-
tips. To him all this was long-established habit, the inevitable
course of life; he knew the gratitude of the settled patient for
the blessing of being able to lie, snugly ensconced, and think
everything over at leisure.

So it was settled, Joachim was to go. Rhadamanthus had re-
leased him; not rite , not with a clean bill of health, yet half ap-
provingly, on the ground, and in recognition, of his constant
spirit. He would go down: first with the narrow-gauge road as
far as Landquart, then to Romanshom, then across the wide, bot-
tomless lake, over which in the legend the rider rode, across
all Germany, and home. He would stop there, in the valley
world, among men with no notion of the way to live, ignorant
of “ measuring ” and of the whole ritual of rug-wrapping, of
fur sleeping-sacks, of the three daily walks, of — it was hard to
say, hard to count all the things of which those down below
stood in blank ignorance; but the mere picture of Joachim, after
a year and a half up here, living in the darkness of that flat-
landish incomprehension — a picture only of Joachim, with hardly
the faintest hypothetical reference to Hans Castorp himself — so
bewildered the young man that he closed his eyes and waved
it away with a motion of the hand, murmuring: “ Impossible! ”

And since it was impossible, he would live on up here, alone,

CHOLER

42 1

without Joachim? Yes, it came to that. How long? Until Behrens
discharged him cured — in earnest, that is, not as he had to-day.
But that was so indefinite a time-limit that he could no more
prophesy it than could Joachim, on a like occasion long ago.
Again, would the impossible by then have become any more pos-
sible? On the contrary, Joachim’s rash departure did — in hon-
esty — offer his cousin a support, now, before the impossible
should become utterly so, a guide and companion on a path which
of himself he would never, never find again. Ah, if one consulted
humanistic pedagogy, how humanistic pedagogy would adjure
him to take the hand and accept the offered guidance! But Herr
Settembrini was only a representative — of things and forces worth
hearing about, it was true, but not the only forces there were.
And with Joachim it was the same. He was a soldier. He was
leaving — almost at the very time set for the return of the high-
breasted one, for it was known that she would return in October.
While the departure of the civilian Hans Castorp became im-
possible precisely because he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat,
whose return, as yet, was not even thought of. “ I don’t look at
it in that light,” Joachim had answered when Rhadamanthus
talked about desertion — though as far as Joachim was concerned
that had probably only been some of the Hofrat’s melancholic
maundering. But for him, the civilian, the thing was different.
For him — ah, here was the right idea, the thought which he had
set himself to evolve, as he lay out in the cold and damp — for him
the real desertion would lie in his taking advantage of the occasion
to dash off unlawfully — or half unlawfully — to the flat-land.
It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive respon-
sibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the
image called Homo Dei ; it would be the betrayal of that appointed
task of “ stock-taking,” that hard and harassing task, which was
really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his
spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his
duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blue-
blossoming retreat.

He tore the thermometer out of his mouth, violently as never
before save when the Oberin had sold him the toy and he had
first used it. He looked at it with the same avid curiosity now as
then. Ah, Mercurius had indeed bounded upwards: he stood at
100.5°, almost .6°.

Hans Castorp threw off his covers, sprang up and strode to
the corridor door and back. Then he lay down again, called
softly to Joachim, and asked him what he measured.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

4 2 2

“ I’m not measuring any more,” replied his cousin.

“Well, I’ve some temperament,” Hans Castorp said, emulat-
ing Frau Stohr; Joachim, behind the glass pane, answered never
a word.

He said no more, on that day or the following; made no effort
to find out his cousin’s plans — which would, indeed, be driven
to declare themselves in no long time, by his either taking cer-
tain steps or refraining from them. They did so — by the latter.
Hans Castorp seemed to hold with that quietism in whose view
all action was an insult to God, who prefers to act by Himself.
At all events, the young man’s activity during these days con-
fined itself to a visit to Behrens; a consultation of which Joachim
was aware, the result of which he could have accurately pre-
dicted beforehand. His cousin had explained that he took the
liberty of placing more reliance upon the Hofrat’s oft-repeated
exhortations to stop up here long enough to perfect his cure
than he did upon an ill-considered verdict pronounced in the heat
of the moment. His temperature was 100.5°, he could not regard
himself as discharged in form; and unless the Hofrat’s recent
statement was to be regarded in the light of an expulsion, to
which he, the speaker, was not aware he had laid himself open,
he wished to say that upon mature consideration he had decided
to remain and await the event of a complete cure. To all which the
Hofrat had merely responded: “ Bon! Werry good — no offence
intended, none taken,” or words to that effect. That was talking
like a sensible man; hadn’t he seen first off that Hans Castorp had
more talent as a patient than that fire-eater his cousin? And so on.

All of this corresponded pretty accurately to Joachim’s guess.
He said nothing, only noting in silence that Hans Castorp made
no move to join in his preparations for departure. But the good
Joachim was busy enough, in all conscience, with his own affairs.
He had no more time to concern himself with his cousin’s fate
or further sojourn. Within his own bosom the tempest raged. It
was as well he no longer took his temperature — he had, so he
said, let his instrument fall, and broken it — for the thermometer
might have given contrary counsel: so fearfully wrought up was
he, now darkly glowing, now pale with joyful agitation. He
could no longer lie still in the cure; Hans Castorp heard how he
went up and down all day in his room, throughout those hours,
four times each day, when all over House Berghof the hori-
zontal obtained. A year and a half it had been. And now at last,
at last, he was off for the flat-land, for home and his regiment!
Even though with only half a discharge. It was no trifling event

CHOLER

42 3

— Hans Castorp’s heart went out to his cousin as he heard his
restless pacing. Eighteen months, the wheel full circle and half-
way round again, he had lived up here, deep, deep into the life of
the place, the inviolable ebb and flow of it, for seven times seventy
days; and now he would go down to live among strangers and
the uninitiate. What difficulties would he not have, to acclimatize
himself? Would it be surprising if Joachim’s agitation consisted
only in part of joyful emotion, and also in part of dread — if it
was not also the pang of parting with all this familiar life that
made him stride thus up and down his room? We leave Marusja
out of account.

But joy weighed down the scale. The good Joachim’s heart
overflowed at his lips. He spoke always of himself, he made no
reference to Hans Castorp’s future. He said how fresh and new
the world would seem, himself, all life, and every day, every
hour of the time. Once more he would rejoice in real, solid time,
the long, vital years of youth. He spoke of his mother, Hans Ca-
storp’s step-aunt Ziemssen, who had the same gentle black eyes as
her son. She had never visited him up here in all this time; put
off like him from month to month, from half-year to half-year,
she had delayed for the entire term of his stay in the mountains.
He spoke of the oath of fidelity to the colours, which he would
soon be taking — spoke ardently, with a smile on his face. It was
a solemn ceremony: in the presence of the standard he would be
sworn to it, literally, to the standard — “ You don’t say! Seri-
ously? ” Hans Castorp asked. “ To the flag-pole? To that scrap
of bunting? ” Even so! It was symbolic; in the artillery they were
sworn to the gun. What fanatical customs, the civilian remarked;
extravagantly emotional he found them. Joachim nodded, full of
pride and joy.

He spent his time in preparations; settled his last account with
the management, and days ahead of time began to pack. He
packed his summer and winter clothing, and had the sleeping-bag
and camel’s-hair rugs sewed up in sacking by one of the servants.
They might be useful at manoeuvres. He began to make his fare-
wells; paid visits to Naphta and Settembrini — alone, for his cousin
did not offer to go with him, nor did he ask what Settembrini
had said to Joachim’s imminent departure and to Hans Castorp’s
imminent stopping-behind. Whether Settembrini had remarked
“ Yes, yes,” or “ I see, I see,” or both, or merely “ Poverettof ” To
Hans Castorp it was evidently all one.

Came the eve of departure. Joachim performed for the last
time each act of the daily round: each meal, each rest period, each

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424

walk; he took leave of the physicians and the Oberin. The morn-
ing dawned. He came to table with cold hands and burning eyes;
he had not closed them all night. He ate scarce a mouthful; and
when the dwarf waitress came to say that his trunks had been
strapped, he started up from his chair to take leave of his table-
mates. Frau Stohr wept, the easy, brineless tears of the simple-
minded; and after, behind Joachim’s back, shook her head at the
schoolmistress and turned her hand about in the air, with the fin-
gers spread out, thus expressing a cheap and common scepticism
on the score of Joachim’s competence to depart, and his future
welfare. Hans Castorp saw her do it, as he drank out his cup
standing, in act to follow his cousin. Then came the business of
tipping, and receiving the management’s official farewell in the
vestibule. The usual group of spectators stood about: Frau Utis
with her “ steriletto,” the ivory Levi, the inordinate Popoff and
his wife. They waved their handkerchiefs as the wagon went
down the drive with the brake on. Joachim had been presented
with roses. He wore a hat, Hans Castorp none.

The morning was glorious, with the first sunshine after days
of gloom. The Schiahorn, the Green Towers, the round top of
the Dorfberg stood out unchangeable and unmistakable against
the blue; Joachim’s eyes rested on them. Hans Castorp said it was
almost a pity the weather had turned so fine on the last day.
There was a sort of spite about it; partings were always easier
if some inhospitable impression was left at the end. To which
Joachim: he didn’t need anything to make it easier, and this was
excellent weather for manoeuvres, he could do with it down be-
low. They said little else. Things being as they were between
them, and the situation for them both, there was indeed not much
to say. The lame porter sat on the box with the driver.

Erect and bouncing on the hard cushions, they laid the water-
course behind them, the narrow-gauge track; drove along the ir-
regularly built-up street beside the latter, and drew up in the
paved square before the station of the Dorf, that was little more
than a shell. Hans Castorp with a thrill recalled first impressions.
Since his arrival, thirteen months before, in the twilight, he had
not seen the station. “ Here was where I arrived,” he remarked
superfluously, to Joachim, who only said: “So you did,” and
paid the coachman.

The nimble lame man attended to tickets and luggage. They
stood together on the platform by the miniature train, m one of
whose grey-upholstered compartments Joachim kept a place
with his overcoat, travelling-rug and roses. “Well, get along,

AN ATTACK

42 5

and take your fanatical oath/’ Hans Castorp told his cousin, and
Joachim answered: “ I mean to.” What else was there to say?
Last greetings to exchange, greetings to those down below, to
those up here. Hans Castorp drew patterns on the asphalt with
his cane. “ Take your places! ” shouted the guard. Hans Castorp
started; looked at Joachim, Joachim at him. They put out their
hands. Hans Castorp was vaguely smiling; the other’s eyes looked
sad, beseeching. “ Hans! ” he said — yes, incredible and painful as
the thing was, it happened: he had called his cousin by his first
name. Not with the thou, not “ old fellow,” or “ man,” by which
forms they had addressed each other their lives long. No, in de-
fiance of all reserve, almost gushingly, he called his cousin by his
first name. “ Hans! ” he said, and pressed his hand imploringly
— and the latter noted that the excitement of the journey, the
sleepless night, the emotion, made Joachim’s head tremble on
his neck, as his own did when he “ took stock ” — “ Hans,” he
said earnestly, “ come down soon! ” He swung himself up. The
door banged, the train whistled, the carriages shunted together.
The little engine puffed and pulled off, the train glided after.
The traveller waved his hat from the window, the other, on
the platform, his hand. Desolately he stood, after that, a long
time, alone. Then slowly he retraced the path that more than a
year ago he had first traversed with Joachim.

An Attack , and a Repulse

The wheel revolved. The hand on time’s clock moved forward.
Orchis and aquilegia were out of bloom, and the mountain pink.
The deep-blue, star-shaped gentian and the autumn crocus, pale
and poisonous, appeared again among the damp grass, and a red-
dish hue overspread the forests. The autumn equinox was past.
All Souls’ was in sight — and, for practised time-consumers, prob-
ably also the Advent season, the solstice, and Christmas. But for
the moment there were lovely October days, a succession of them,
like that on which the cousins had viewed the Hofrat’s paintings.

Since Joachim’s departure Hans Castorp sat no more at Frau
Stohr’s table, the one with Dr. Blumenkohl’s empty place, at
which the gay Marusja had been wont to smother her irrespon-
sible mirth in her orange-scented pocket-handkerchief. New
guests, strangers, sat there now. Our friend, two months deep in
his second year, had been given a new place by the management
at a near-by table, diagonally to his old one, between that and
the “ good ” Russian table. In short, Settembrini’s table. Yes, Hans

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426

Castorp sat in the humanist’s vacated seat, again at the end, fac-
ing the “ doctor’s place,” which at each of the seven tables was
left free for the Hofrat and his famulus to use when they could.

At the upper end, next the place of the medical presiding of-
ficer, the hump-backed Mexican sat, perched on many cushions;
the amateur photographer, whose facial expression was that of
a deaf person, because he possessed no language with which to
communicate his thoughts. Beside him sat the ancient maiden
lady from Siebenbiirgen. She, as Herr Settembrini had said,
claimed the interest of all and sundry for her brother-in-law, a
man of whom nobody knew anything, or wished to know. Regu-
larly at certain hours of the day this lady was to be seen at the
balustrade of her loggia with a little Tula-silver-handled cane
across the nape of her neck — it served also as a support on her
walks — expanding her flat chest by means of deep-breathing ex-
ercises. Opposite her sat a Czech, whom everybody called Herr
Wenzel, as his family name was impossible to pronounce. Herr
Settembrini, indeed, did once essay to utter the involved succes-
sion of consonants; less in good faith than by way of testing
gaily the elegant helplessness of his Latinity in face of that matted
•and tangled growth of sound. Although plump as a mole, with an
appetite amazing even up here, the Czech had for four years been
asseverating that there was no hope for him. Of an evening, he
would strum the songs of his native land upon a beribboned man-
dolin; or talk about his sugar-beet plantation, and the pretty girls
who worked it. On Hans Castorp’s either side sat the wedded pair
from Halle, Magnus the brewer and his wife, about whom melan-
choly hung as a cloud, because they had no tolerance for certain
important products of metabolism: he sugar, she albumen. Their
spirits, particularly the sallow Frau Magnus’s, were proof against
any ray of cheer; forlornity exhaled from her like damp from a
cellar; even more than Frau Stohr she represented that unedify-
ing union of dullness and disease, which had offended Hans
Castorp’s soul — under correction from Herr Settembrini. Herr
Magnus was livelier and chattier, though only in a vein intoler-
able to the Italian’s literary sense. He was inclined to choler
too, and often clashed with Herr Wenzel on political and other
grounds. The nationalistic aspirations of the Czech exasperated
him; again, the latter declared himself in favour of prohibition,
and made moral remarks about the brewing industry, while Herr
Magnus, very red in the face, defended from the hygienic view-
point the unexceptionableness of the drink with which his inter-
ests were bound up. At such moments as these, Herr Settembrini’s

AN ATTACK

427

light and humorous touch had often preserved the amenities; but
Hans Castorp, in his place, found his authority little able to cope
with the situation.

With only two of his table-mates had he # personal relations:
Anton Karlowitsch Ferge from St. Petersburg, that good-natured
sufferer, was one, on his left. He had things to tell, under his
bushy, red-brown moustaches, about the manufacture of rubber
shoes; about distant regions in the polar circle, about perpetual
winter at the North Cape. Hans Castorp and he sometimes made
their daily round together. The other, who joined them as occa-
sion offered, and who sat next the hump-backed Mexican, at the
far end of the table, was the man from Mannheim, with the thin
hair and poor teeth — Ferdinand Wehsal by name, and merchant
by calling — whose eyes had rested with such dismal longing
upon Frau Chauchat’s pleasing person, and who since that car-
nival night had sought Hans Castorp’s company.

He did so with meek persistence, with a deprecating devotion
which was even repugnant to Hans Castorp, understanding as
he did its involved origins; but to which he felt himself humanly
bound to respond. Blandly, then, and aware that even a lifting of
the brows would suffice to make the poor-spirited creature cringe
and shrink away, he suffered Wehsal’s fawning presence, and the
latter lost no chance to make himself agreeable. He suffered the
man to carry his overcoat as they went on their walks together,
and Wehsal did this devotedly; suffered even the conversation
of the Mannheimer, which was depressing to a degree. Wehsal
had an itch to raise questions like ibis: would there be any sense
in making a declaration of love to a woman whom one adored,
but who made absolutely no response — a declaration, in other
words, of hopeless love? What did his companion think? For
his part, he thought well of the idea, he thought there would be
boundless happiness in the experience. Even if the act of con-
fession aroused nothing but disgust, and involved great humilia-
tion, still it insured a moment of intimate contact with the be-
loved object. The confidence drew her into the circle of his
passion, and if after that all was indeed over, yet the loss was
paid for by the despairing bliss of the moment; for the avowal
was an act of force, the more satisfying the greater the resistance
it encountered. At this point a darkening of Hans Castorp’s brows
made Wehsal desist, though it had more reference to the pres-
ence of the good-natured Ferge, with his shrinking from the
higher flights of conversation, than to any moral censorship on
the part of our hero. Unwilling to make him out as either better

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428

or worse than he really was, we feel bound to mention that the
wretched Wehsal, one evening when they were alone, prayed him,
with pallid lips, for the love of God to tell him what had taken
place after the mardi gras festivities, and Hans Castorp had good-
naturedly complied, without, as the reader may imagine, intro-
ducing any wanton or flippant element into his recital. Still, there
seems every reason, on our part and on his, not to go into it
very much, and we will only add that thereafter Wehsal carried
his friend's overcoat with even more self-abnegation than before.

So much of our Hans’s table-mates. The seat at his right was
vacant, was only occupied for a few days by a guest, such as he
himself had once been, a visiting relative from below, an envoy,
one might say — no other than Hans’s uncle James Tienappel.

It was uncanny, to have suddenly sitting next him a delegate
and ambassador from home, exhaling from the very weave of
his English suit of clothes the atmosphere of that old life in the
“ upper ” world so far below. But it was bound to come. For a
long time Hans Castorp had silently reckoned with the possibility
of an advance from the flat-land, and even been fairly sure what
personal shape it would take. It was, in fact, not difficult to guess
who would come, for Peter, the seafaring man, was almost out of
the question, while as for Great-uncle Tienappel himself, it was no
less true than ever that wild horses could not drag him to a spot
from the atmospheric pressure of which he had everything to
fear. No, James was the man to be sent with a commission from
home to search out the truant — and his advent had been ex-
pected even earlier. After Joachim had returned alone, and told
the family circle what the state of things was, the visit had been
due and overdue, and thus Hans Castorp was not in the slightest
degree nonplussed when, scarcely two weeks after his cousin
left, the concierge handed him a telegram. He opened it with
foreknowledge of its contents, and read the announcement of
James Tienappel’s impending arrival. He had business in Switzer-
land, and would take the occasion to make Hans a visit on his
heights. He would be here the day after to-morrow.

“ Good,” thought Hans Castorp. “ Excellent,” he thought. And
added to himself something like “ Don’t mention it! ” “ If you
only knew! ” he silently apostrophized the oncoming one. In a
word, he took the approaching visit with utter composure; an-
nounced it to Hofrat Behrens and the management, engaged a
room — Joachim’s, it being still vacant — and on the next day but
one, at the hour of his own arrival, towards eight o’clock — it
was already dark — drove in the same uncomfortable vehicle in

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4 2 9

which he had seen Joachim off, down to station “ Dorf,” to meet
the envoy from the flat-land, who had come to spy out the land.

Crimson-faced, bare-headed, overcoatless, he stood at the edge
of the platform as the train rolled in, beneath his relative’s car-
riage window, and told him to come on out, for he was here.
Consul Tienappel — he was Vice-Consul, having obligingly re-
lieved his father of that office too — stepped out, wrapped m his
winter overcoat, and half frozen, for the October evening was
chill, indeed was nearly cold enough for frost, toward morning
it would probably freeze; stepped out of his compartment in
lively surprise, which he expressed after the elegant, somewhat
rarefied manner of the gentlemanly north-west German; greeted
his nephew-cousin with repeated and emphatically uttered ex-
clamations of satisfaction at his appearance; saw himself relieved
by the lame concierge of all care for his luggage, and climbed
with Hans Castorp up on the high, hard seat of the cabriolet, in
the square outside. They drove under a heaven thick with stars,
and Hans Castorp, his head tipped back, with pointing forefinger
expounded to his uncle-cousin the starry field, named planets by
name and showed off this or that constellation. The other, more
observant of his companion than of the cosmos, said to himself
that it was perhaps conceivable, it was at least not actually lunatic,
to begin a conversation by talking about the stars, but there
were other subjects that lay closer to hand. Since when, he asked,
had Hans Castorp known so much about matters up aloft; and
the young man replied that his knowledge was the fruit of long
lying in the evening rest-cure, spring, summer, autumn, and win-
ter. What? He lay out in a balcony at night? Oh, yes. The Consul
would too. He would have nothing else to do.

“ Certainly, of course,” James Tienappel acquiesced, rather
intimidated. His foster-brother spoke on, equably, monotonously.
He sat without hat or overcoat, in the air, fresh to frostiness, of
the autumn evening. “ I suppose you aren’t cold? ” James asked
him, shivering in his inch-thick ulster. He talked fast and rather
indistinctly, his teeth showing a tendency to chatter. “ We don’t
feel the cold,” Hans Castorp said, with tranquil brevity.

The Consul could not look at him enough as they sat and
drove. Hans Castorp asked after relatives and friends at home.
James conveyed various greetings, including Joachim’s, who was
already with the colours, and radiant with pride and joy. Hans
Castorp received them with a quiet word of thanks, without
asking more particular questions about his home. Disquieted by
an indefinite something, either emanating from his nephew, or

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caused by his own unsettlement after the long journey, James
looked about him, not able to descry much of the landscape; he
drew in a deep breath of the strange air, exhaled it, and pronounced
it magnificent. Of course, the other answered, not for nothing
was it famous far and wide. It had great properties. It accelerated
oxidization, yet at the same time one put on flesh. It was capable
of healing certain diseases which were latent in every human
being, though its first effects were strongly favourable to these,
and by dint of a general organic compulsion, upwards and out-
wards, made them come to the surface, brought them, as it were,
to a triumphant outburst. — Beg pardon — triumphant? — Yes; had
he never felt that an outbreak of disease had something jolly
about it, an outburst of physical gratification? “ Certainly, of
course,” the uncle hastened to say, with his lower jaw under im-
perfect control. And then announced that he could stop eight
days — a week, that was; seven days — or perhaps six. He said he
found Hans Castorp looking very fit indeed, thanks to a stay that
had been so much longer than anyone anticipated, and this being
the case he supposed his nephew would travel down with him
when he left.

“ Oh, no, I don’t quite intend to play the fool like that,” Hans
Castorp said. Uncle James talked like a valley man. Let him stop
up here a bit, look about him and get used to things, he would
change his tune. The thing was to achieve an absolute cure, and
to that end Behrens had just lately socked him another six months.
“ Are you crazy? ” the uncle asked. He addressed his relative as
“ young man,” and asked if he was crazy. A holiday that would
soon have lasted a year and a quarter, and now another half a year
on top of that! Who, deuce take it, had all that time to waste?
Hans Castorp laid back his head, and laughed, a quiet, brief
chuckle. Time! Uncle James would have to alter his ideas about
time, in the first place, before he could talk. Tienappel said he
would have a serious conversation to-morrow with the Hofrat,
on Hans’s affair. “By all means,” advised the nephew. “You’ll
like him. An interesting character, brusque to a degree, yet melan-
choly.” He pointed up to the lights on the Schatzalp, and casually
mentioned that they had to bring down their corpses by bob-
sleigh in the winter.

The gentlemen supped together in the restaurant, after Hans
Castorp had conducted his relative to his room and given him a
chance to get a wash-up. It had been fumigated with H^CO, he
explained, quite as thoroughly as though the late tenant had not
gone off without leave, but in quite a different way — an exit

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43 1

instead of an exodus. The uncle inquired what he meant. “ Jar-
gon,” said Hans Castorp. “ A way we have in the service. Joachim
deserted — deserted to the colours — funny, but it can be done.
But make haste, or we shall get nothing hot to eat.” In the warm,
well-lighted restaurant they sat down facing each other at the
raised table in the window. The dwarf waitress served them nim-
bly, and James ordered a bottle of burgundy, which was presented
lying in a basket. They touched glasses, and the grateful glow
ran through their veins. The younger talked of life up here, of
the events the changing seasons brought in their course, of vari-
ous personalities among the patients, of the pneumothorax, the
functioning of which he explained at length, describing the
ghastly nature of the pleura-shock, and citing the case of the good-
natured Herr Ferge, with the three-coloured fainting-fits, the hal-
lucinatory stench, and the diabolic laughing-fit when they felt
over the pleura. He paid for the meal. James ate and drank heartily,
as was his custom — with an appetite still further sharpened by
his journey and the change of air. But he intermitted the process
several times, sat with his mouth full of food and forgot to chew,
holding his knife and fork at an obtuse angle above his plate
and regarding Hans Castorp with a fixed stare. He seemed un-
aware that he did this, nor did the other give sign of remarking
it. Consul Tienappel’s temples, covered with thin blond hair,
showed swollen veins.

The conversation did not run upon their home below, there
was no reference to family or personal, business or city affairs,
nor yet to the firm of Tunder and Wilms, Ship-builders, Smelters,
and Machinists, who were still waiting for their apprentice —
though it was likely they had too much else to do to be aware
that they were waiting. James Tienappel had touched, of course,
on these topics, during their drive and after, but they had fallen
flat; no one had picked them up. They had bounded off, as it
were, from Hans Castorp ’s serene, unfeigned, unmistakable sang-
froid, which was like a suit of armour; like his indifference to
the chill of that autumn evening, like his little phrase “ We don’t
feel the cold.” This air of his may have been the reason why his
uncle looked at him so fixedly. They spoke of the Oberin and
the doctors, of Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, at one of which James
would be present if he stopped a week. Who had told the nephew
the uncle would wish to be present? Nobody — he had simply
assumed it, with such tranquil certitude as to render absurd the
bare idea of not being present, which, accordingly, James has-
tened to disclaim with a quick “ Certainly, of course,” as though

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anxious to show he had never for a moment considered it. It
was this very power, quiet yet compelling, that caused Consul
Tienappel all unconsciously to gaze at his nephew; and now even
open-mouthed, for he found his nasal passages obstructed, though,
so far as he knew, he had no catarrh. He heard his relative hold
forth upon the disease which was the business of life up here,
and upon the receptivity commonly displayed for it; upon Hans
Castorp’s own simple but tedious case, upon the attraction the
bacilli had for the cellular tissue of the air passages of the throat,
bronchial tubes, and pulmonary vesicles; upon the formation of
nodules, the manifestation of soluble toxins and their narcotic
effect upon the system; of the breaking-down of the tissues, of
caseation, and the question whether the disease would be arrested
by a chalky petrefaction and heal by means of fibrosis, or whether
it would extend the area, create still larger cavities, and de-
stroy the organ. He was told of the “ galloping ” form the dis-
ease sometimes assumed, which made the end an affair of not
more than a few months or even weeks; of pneumotomy, of the
Hofrat’s masterly surgery, of resection of the lungs, an opera-
tion which was to be performed to-morrow or the day after upon
a severe case just brought to the sanitorium, a charming, or once-
charming Scotswoman suffering from gmgroena pulmomm 1, gan-
grene of the lungs, a green and black pestilence, which obliged
her to inhale all day a vaporized solution of carbolic acid, lest
she go out of her head from sheer physical disgust. Here, sud-
denly, the Consul, to his own great surprise and chagrin, burst
out laughing. He fairly snorted, but recovered himself immedi-
ately, horrified; coughed, and tried his best to disguise the sense-
less outbreak. He felt a relief, which however bore within it the
seeds of fresh disquiet, when he saw that Hans Castorp paid no
heed, though he must have noticed the incident, but passed it over
with an unconcern which was not so much tact, consideration,
or courtesy, as it was the purest indifference, an uncanny in-
vulnerability or complaisance, as though he had long ceased to
notice or to feel surprise at such occurrences. Perhaps the Consul
wished to make his burst of hilarity appear plausible; perhaps
he had some other connexion in mind; at all events, he abruptly
took over the conversation and began talking like a club-man.
The veins stood out on his forehead, as he described a chansonette
by a certain cafe-chantant artiste, a perfectly crazy piece of goods,
who was then on the boards at St. Pauli, taking away the breath
of his Hamburg fellow-males by her temperamental charms,
which he essayed to describe to his cousin. His tongue was a

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little thick, though that need not have troubled him, since his
cousin’s strange complaisance seemed to cover this phenomenon
like the other. But his weariness became at length so overpower-
ing that the meeting broke up at about half past ten, and he was
scarcely capable of attending when he was introduced to the
oft-mentioned Dr. Krokowski, who sat reading a newspaper
near the door of one of the salons. He responded little else than
“ Certainly, of course ” to the doctor’s blithe and hearty greeting,
and was relieved when his nephew left him, passing by the balcony
from Joachim’s room to his own, after bidding him good-night
and saying he would fetch him for eight o’clock breakfast.
He was glad to relapse into the deserter’s bed, with his regu-
lar good-night cigarette — with which he nearly caused a
conflagration, by twice falling asleep with it alight between
his lips.

James Tienappel, whom Hans Castorp addressed by turns as
Uncle James and James, was a long-legged man close to the
forties, dressed in good English suiting and florid linen; with
thinnish canary-yellow hair, blue eyes set close together, a close-
clipped, straw-coloured moustache, and carefully manicured
hands. He had continued to live in the old Consul’s roomy villa
in Harvestehuder Way, though he had been a husband and father
for some years, having taken a wife from his own social sphere,
of his own highly civilized and elegant type, with the same soft,
quick, pointedly polite manner of speech. In his own sphere he
passed for a very energetic, cautious and — despite his refined
ways — coldly practical man of business. But outside it — when
he travelled south, for instance — he displayed a kind of eager
pliancy, a quick and friendly readiness to step outside his own per-
sonality, which was by no means a sign of the insecurity or his
own culture, but rather betrayed a conviction of its sufficiency,
and a desire to correct his own aristocratic limitations; it evi-
denced a wish not to show surprise at new ways, even when he
found them extraordinary past belief. “ Certainly, of course,” he
would hasten to remark, so that nobody might say of him that
with all his elegance he was limited. He had come up here on a
definite practical mission, to see how matters stood with his dila-
tory young kinsman, to “ prize him loose,” as he put it to him-
self, and take him back home. But he was conscious that he was
operating on foreign territory; and the first few minutes up here
had made him suspect that he was a guest in a sphere quite for-
eign to him, and more instead of less self-assured than his own.
His business instincts conflicted with his good breeding — the

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more keenly the more he was aware of the self-confident poise of
the institutional life.

All this Hans Castorp had realized when he replied to the Con-
sul’s wire with an inward “ Don’t mention it! ” But we must not
suppose that he consciously practised on his uncle with the strange
properties of the place. He had been too long a part of it; it was
not he who wielded them against the aggressor, but they him.
Everything — from the moment when an emanation from his
nephew had first whispered to the Consul that his undertaking
had small chance of success — everything about the situation ful-
filled itself, simply, inevitably, up to the end, and Hans Castorp
accompanied the process with his melancholy, fatalistic smile.

On the first morning, at breakfast, the host made his guest
acquainted with his circle of table-mates. Afterwards James met
the Hofrat, who came paddling through the dining-room, with
the black and pale assistant in his wake, strewing on all sides his
regular rhetorical question: “ Slept well? ” He met the Hofrat,
and from his lips heard that not only had it been a clipper of
an idea to come on a visit to his marooned cousin, but that he
served his own interest even better in so coming, for that he was
totally anaemic was plain to any eye. He, Tienappel, anaemic? —
“ Ray-ther so,” said Behrens, and putting up a forefinger pulled
down the skin under James’s eye. “ Ray-ther so! ” he reiterated.
The avuncular guest would be turning a clever trick to stretch
himself out on his balcony for a few weeks and do his best to
emulate the good example set him by his nephew. In his con-
dition he could do nothing sharper than to act as though he had
a slight case of tuberculosis pulmonum — it was always present
anyhow. “ Certainly, of course,” replied the Consul hastily; and
as the Hofrat paddled off, he gazed after the man and his neck-
bone, with open mouth and mien sedulously polite, for quite a
while, his nephew standing by, utterly unmoved, unscathed.
They took the prescribed walk, as far as the watercourse and
back, after which James Tienappel experienced his first rest-cure.
Hans Castorp lent him one or his camel’s-hair rugs, in addition
to James’s own plaid; he himself found one cover quite enough
this fine autumn weather. And instructed him step by step in the
traditional art of putting on rugs; yes, after he had got the Con-
sul all nicely mummified, deliberately undid him again, to the
end that he should pack himself up alone, with Hans Castorp
lending a helping hand. Then the adept taught the catechumen
how to attach the linen parasol to his chair and adjust it against
the sun.

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The Consul was pleased to be jocose. The spirit of the flat-land
was still strong within him, and he made merry over his lesson, as
he had earlier over the prescribed exercise after breakfast. But
when he saw the peaceful, uncomprehending smile with which his
nephew met his jests, a smile in wnich was mirrored all the serene
self-assurance of the local tradition, alarm laid hold on him. He
feared, actually, the impairment of his business energy, and hastily
resolved to have the decisive conversation with the Hofrat as soon
as possible and get it over — that very afternoon if it could be
done, while he still possessed and could bring to bear the strength
of conviction which he had brought with him from below. He
distinctly felt that this was weakening, that his own good breed-
ing had joined hands against him with the spirit of the place.

And furthermore he felt that it had been superfluous for the
Hofrat to advise him, on account of his anaemia, to live during
his stay here as the patients did. For, it appeared, this followed
of itself; no other course seemed possible. This was perhaps partly
the fruit of his nephew’s calm and invulnerable self-assurance;
perhaps it was not absolutely the only and inevitable course to
pursue — but how was a man of his breeding to distinguish? Noth-
ing could be clearer than that the abundant second breakfast
should follow upon the rest period, after which the stroll down
to the Platz appeared the natural and inevitable sequence — and
then Hans Castorp did his uncle up again. He did him up — the
right phrase for it — and there, in the autumn sunlight, in a chair
whose qualities should be sung rather than spoken, he let him
lie, until a clanging gong summoned the patients to the midday
meal. So lavish was it, so altogether tiptop and first-rate, that the
main rest period which ensued seemed an inward necessity rather
than an outward conformity, and James participated in it with
the sincerest personal conviction. And so on until the mighty
supper and the social evening in the salon with the optical diver-
sions. What objection could be brought against a daily regimen
like that, which so blandly took acquiescence for granted? None,
surely, even though the Consul’s critical powers had not been
diminished by a physical discomfort which, while not actual
illness, yet, composed of mingled fatigue and excitement, with
the concomitants of chill and feverishness, was burdensome
enough.

Hans Castorp had availed himself of the official channels in
arranging for that ardently desired consultation with Hofrat
Behrens: he had given a message to the bathing-master, which
the latter passed on to the Oberin, and Consul Tienappel had the

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436

opportunity of making the acquaintance of this peculiar person-
ality. She appeared to him as he lay upon his balcony, and her
extraordinary manner put a severe strain on the good breeding of
the hapless gentleman lying there in his chair like a sausage-roll.
He would be so good, he was told, to have patience for a few
days; the Hof rat was busy, there were operations and general ex-
aminations, suffering humanity must take precedence, that was
a sound Christian principle; and as he was ostensibly in good health,
he must get used to the idea that he was not number one up here,
that he must stand back and await his turn. It would be different
if he wished to make an appointment for an examination — she,
Adriatica, would not have been surprised if he had. When she
looked him straight in the eyes — like that — she found his rather
blurred and flickering; and he looked, as he lay, not as though
everything were in the best of order with him, she herself would
hardly give him a clean bill of health. Was it really an examination
or a private interview he wanted? “ The latter, of course,” James
assured her. Then he would be so good as to wait until she let him
know. The Hofrat had not much time for private interviews.

In short, it all turned out quite otherwise than James had ex-
pected, and the conversation with the Directress no little disturbed
his equanimity. A man of his breeding hesitated to say rudely to
his nephew that he found her an appalling person: it would be
indiscreet, considering how plainly Hans Castorp’s manner re-
vealed his acceptance of all the extraordinary phenomena up here.
James merely tapped at his nephew’s door, and insinuated that
Fraulein Mylendonk was surely extremely original. Hans Castorp
looked up inquiringly, and half assented; asking, in his turn: “ Did
she sell you a thermometer? ” “ Me — no,” said his uncle. “ Is that
the custom up here? ” The worst of it was that Hans Castorp
would clearly not have been surprised if she had. It was “ We
don’t feel the cold ” all over again. And the Consul did feel the
cold, felt it persistently, though his head was hot. He thought to
himself that if the Oberin had offered him a thermometer, he
would certainly have refused it, and thereby have committed a
blunder, since he could not ask to use his nephew’s — he was too
civilized for that.

Some days passed, perhaps four or five. The life of the ambassa-
dor ran on rails — the rails laid for it to run on — and that it should
run off them was unthinkable. The Consul had his experiences,
got his impressions — in which we shall not trouble to follow him.
One day, in Hans Castorp’s room, he lifted from its easel on the
chest or drawers a black glass plate, one of the small personal arti-

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437

cles with which the owner adorned his cleanly quarters. He held
it toward the light; it proved to be a photographic negative. He
looked at it — “ What is that? ” he said. He might well ask. It
showed the headless skeleton of a human form — the upper half,
that is — enveloped in misty flesh; he recognized the female torso.
“ That? Oh, a souvenir,” the nephew answered. To which the
uncle replied: “ Pardon me,” and hastily replaced the picture on
its easel. We give this merely as example of the sort of experience
the four or five days supplied him. He attended one of Dr. Kro-
kowski’s conferences — that he should stop away was unthinkable.
On the sixth day he achieved the much-desired private talk with
the Hofrat. He was sent for, and after breakfast descended the
stairs to the basement, to have a serious word with the man on the
subject of his nephew and the way he spent his time.

When he came up, he asked, in a still, small voice: “ Did you
ever hear the like of that? ”

But it was plain that Hans Castorp had. It was plain that what-
ever James could tell him would not make him “ feel the cold.”
So James broke off, and to his nephew’s further, mildly interested,
query answered: “ Oh, nothing.” But from hour to hour he de-
veloped a new habit: of peering diagonally upwards, with drawn
brows and puckered lips, then suddenly turning his head to repeat
the same gaze in the opposite direction. Had the interview with
the Hofrat also gone off differently from James’s expectations?
Had it lost its character as a private interview, had the subject
shifted from Hans Castorp to James Tienappel? One might think
so. The Consul showed himself in high spirits. He talked a great
deal, laughed without reason, struck his nephew with his fist in the
pit of the stomach, shouting: “ Hullo there, old fellow! ” Between
times he had that look, first here and then suddenly there. But
there came to be another, more definite goal to his glances, at
table, on their walks, and in the salon of an evening.

We have heard of a certain Frau Redisch, wife of a Polish in-
dustrialist, who had sat at the table with Frau Salomon, absent
without leave, and the greedy schoolboy with the round spectacles.
The Consul had scarcely noticed her at first, and indeed she was
just a rest-hall dame, like another — a shortish brunette of abun-
dant forms, no longer of the youngest, even slightly grey, but
with a coquettish double chin and lively brown eyes. In point of
culture she was far from being able to hold her own with Frau
Consul Tienappel down below. So much is certain. But the Consul,
after Sunday supper, in the hall, made the discovery, thanks to the
decollete of Frau Redisch’s spangled black frock, that her bosom

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438

was very white and voluptuous, the breasts pressed together so
that the crease between them was visible for some way; and the
mature and elegant gentleman was as much shaken by this discov-
ery as though it possessed for him a new and undreamed-of sig-
nificance. He sought and made acquaintance with Frau Redisch;
conversed with her at length, first standing and then sitting, and
went up to bed singing. Next day Frau Redisch wore no spangled
frock, her bosom was shrouded; but the Consul knew what he
knew, and stuck by his discovery. He sought to intercept the lady
on her walks, and strolled beside her in conversation, bending to-
wards and over her in the most gallant and pointed way; he
drank to her at table and she responded, smiling so much as to
show several gold fillings in her teeth; he spoke of her to his
nephew, and said she was a divine creature — w hereupon he burst
out in song. And all this Hans Castorp let pass, with perfect equa-
nimity, as much as to say that it was all regular and true to form.
But it could not strengthen James’s authority over his junior, nor
add lustre to his embassy.

The meal at which he saluted Frau Redisch by lifting his glass
— twice in fact, during it, once at the fish and once at the sherbet —
was one which the Hofrat partook of at Hans Castorp’s table, in
the course of his turn round the seven, at each of which his place
at the upper end was reserved. He sat folding his giant hands be-
tween Herr Wehsal and the hunch-backed Mexican, with whom
he spoke Spanish, for he could talk in almost any language, even
Turkish and Hungarian. He sat, with his little one-sided moustache
and his blue, goggling, bloodshot eyes, and looked on at Consul
Tienappel saluting Frau Redisch with his glass of Bordeaux. After-
wards, as the meal progressed, the Hofrat made a little speech,
incited thereunto by James, who unexpectedly asked him, down
the whole length of the table, what was the process of physical
decomposition. The Hofrat was at home in that field, the physi-
cal was so to speak his domain, he was the king of it; would he not
tell them what happened when the body decomposed?

“ In the first place,” the Hofrat complied, putting his elbows on
the table and bowing over his folded hands, “ in the first place,
your belly bursts. You lie there on your chips and sawdust, and
you bloat; the gases swell you up, puff you all out, the way frogs
do when bad little boys fill them up with air. You get to be a regu-
lar balloon; the skin of your belly can’t stand it any more, it bursts.
You go pop. You relieve yourself mightily, like Judas Iscariot
when he fell from the bough and all his bowels gushed out. And
after that you are fit for society again. If you got leave to come

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439

back, you could visit your friends without being offensive. You
are thoroughly stunk out. After that you’re perfectly refined, like
the burghers of Palermo, hanging in the cellars of the Capucins
outside Porta Nuova: quite the gentlemen they are, all dried up
and elegant, everybody respects them. The main thing is to get
well stunk out.”

44 Certainly, of course,” said the Consul. 44 Thanks very much.”
The next morning he had vanished.

He was off, gone down with the first little train to the flat-land
— though not without having put his affairs in order — that we
would not suggest. He had paid his bill, and the fee for the fumi-
gation of his room; then, in all haste, without a syllable to his
relative, he had packed his hand-bags — probably the night before,
or even in the dawning, when everybody else was asleep — and
when Hans Castorp entered his uncle’s room at the hour for early
breakfast, he found it empty.

Arms akimbo, he stood and said: 44 Well, well! ” And a pensive
smile overspread his features. 44 Yes, yes,” he said, and nodded.
Somebody had taken to his heels. In headlong haste, breathless, as
though the moment of resolution must not be let slip, he had flung
his things together and made off. Not with his cousin by his side,
not after fulfilment of his lofty mission, but glad to save even
himself by flight, the goodman had deserted to the flat-land —
well, pleasant journey to you, Uncle James!

Hans Castorp let no one suspect his ignorance of his uncle’s
plans. Particularly not the lame concierge who had taken his uncle
to the station. From Lake Constance James sent back a card, saying
that he had had a telegram requiring his immediate return for busi-
ness reasons. He had not liked to disturb his cousin (a polite lie).
And he wished him a continued pleasant sojourn at House Berghof.
Was that said in mockery? If so, Hans Castorp found it highly dis-
ingenuous, for his uncle had been in no jesting mood when he cut
short his stay. No, he had become inwardly aware — one could
conceive him paling at the thought — that even as it was, after only
a week up here, he would find everything down below wrong and
out of place, and that the feeling would last a considerable time
before readjustment set in: it would seem to him unnatural to go
to his office, instead of taking a prescribed walk after breakfast,
and thereafter lying ritually wrapped, horizontal in a balcony.
And this dread perception had been the immediate ground of his
flight.

Thus ended the campaign of the flat-land to recover its lost
Hans Castorp. Our young man did not conceal from himself that

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the total failure of this embassy marked a crisis in the relations
between himself and the world below. It meant that he gave it up,
finally and with a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders; it meant,
for himself, the consummation of freedom — the thought of which
had gradually ceased to make him shudder.

Operationes Spiritual es

Leo Naphta came from a little place near the Galician- Volhynian
border. His father, of whom he spoke with respect, obviously
with the feeling that he was now remote enough from his native
scene to view it with impartial benevolence, had been the village
schochet, or slaughterer — a calling different indeed from that of
the gentile butcher, who was labourer and tradesman, whereas
Leo’s father was an official, and the holder of a spiritual office. Elie
Naphta, after being tested by the rabbi in his pious proficiency,
had been empowered by him to slaughter suitable animals after
the Mosaic law and according to Talmudic prescription. The per-
formance of his ritual task had imparted something priestly to his
being; and his blue eyes, which the son described as sending out
gleams like stars, had held in their depth a wealth of silent spiritual
fervour. The solemnity of his bearing spoke of that early time
when the killing of animals had been in actual fact a priestly office.
Leo, or Leib, as he had been called in his childhood, had been
allowed to watch in the court-yard while the father carried out
his task, aided by his helper, a powerful youth of the athletic
Jewish type, beside whom the slender Elie with his round blond
beard seemed still more fragile and delicate. Standing near the
victim, which was hobbled and bound indeed, but not stunned, he
would lift the mighty slaughter-knife and bring it to rest in a
deep gash close to the cervical vertebra; while the assistant held
the quickly filling basins to receive the gushing, steaming blood,
and the child looked on at the sight with that childish gaze which
often pierces through the sense into the essential, and may have
been in an unusual degree the gift of the starry-eyed Elie’s son.
He knew that Christian butchers had to stun their cattle with a
blow from a club before killing them, and that this regulation was
made in order to avoid unnecessary cruelty. Yet his father, so fine
and so intelligent by comparison with those louts, and starry-eyed
as never one of them, did his task according to the Law, striking
down the creature while its senses were undimmed, and letting its
life-blood well out until it sank. The boy Leib felt that the stupid
goyim were actuated by an easy and irreverent good nature, which

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44I

paid less honour to the deity than did his father’s solemn merci-
lessness; thus the conception of piety came to be bound up in his
mind with that of cruelty, and the idea of the sacred and the
spiritual with the sight and smell of spurting blood. For he prob-
ably saw that his father had not chosen his bloody trade out of
the same brutal tastes that moved the lusty gentile butcher or his
own Jewish assistant to find gratification in it, but rather on spir-
itual grounds, and in a sense bespoken by the starry eyes.

Yes, Elie Naphta had been a brooding and refining spirit; a
student of the T orah y but a critic as well, discussing the Scriptures
with his rabbi — with whom he not infrequently disagreed. In
his village, and not only among those of his own creed, he had

E assed for something unusual, for a man of more than common
nowledge — knowledge for the most part of holy things, but
possibly also of matters that might not be quite canny, and any-
how were not in the ordinary run. There was something irregu-
lar, schismatic, about him, something of the familiar of God, a
Baal-Shem or Zaddik, a miracle-man. Once he had actually cured
a woman of a malignant sore, and another time a boy of spasms,
simply by means of blood and invocations. But it was precisely
this aura of an uncanny piety, in which the odour of his blood-
boltered calling played a part, that proved his destruction. There
had been the unexplained death of two gentile boys, a popular
uprising, a panic of rage — and Elie had died horribly, nailed
crucifix-wise on the door of his burning home. His tuberculous,
bedridden wife, the boy Leo, and four brothers and sisters, all
wailing and lamenting with upflung arms, had fled the country.

Not utterly and entirely penniless, thanks to the father’s fore-
sight, the little troop came to rest in a small town of the Vorarl-
berg. Frau Naphta found work in a cotton-spinning factory,
where she laboured as long as her strength held out, while the
children attended the common school. The mental pabulum pur-
veyed by this establishment probably answered to the needs of
Leo’s brothers and sisters; but for him, the eldest, it was quite in-
sufficient. From his mother he had the seeds of his lung disease;
from his father, besides his slenderness of build, an extraordinary
intelligence: mental gifts that were from the first bound up with
instinctive aspirations, a lofty ambition, and an ardent yearning
for the more refined side of life, which caused him to reach out
passionately beyond the sphere of his origin. The fourteen- and
fifteen-year-old lad managed to get hold of books out of school
hours, and with lawless avidity continued to educate himself and
feed his growing and impatient mind. He thought and uttered

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44 2

things which made the failing mother draw her head down crook-
edly between her shoulders and look at him with both wasted
hands flung out. His person and the answers he gave at religious
instruction drew upon him the attention of the district rabbi,
and this devout and learned man received him as a private pupil,
gratifying his taste for form by instruction in Hebrew and the
classics, his logical turn by mathematics. But the good man was
ill paid for his pains; as time went on, it became ever clearer that
he had nourished a viper in his bosom. As once between Elie
Naphta and his rabbi, so it was here. They fell out, exasperation on
religious and philosophical grounds ensued and grew more and
more embittered; the upright cleric had everything to endure
from the irritability, captiousness, scepticism, and cutting dialectic
of young Leo. Added to that, the lad’s turn for sophistry and his
insatiable intellect had latterly taken on a revolutionary cast. An
acquaintance with the son of a social-democratic member of the
Reichsrat, and with this popular hero himself, turned his thoughts
on politics, and made him apply his passion for logic to the field
of social criticism. He said things that made the hair stand up on
the head of the good Talmudist, who in politics was entirely
loyal, and gave the final blow to the relations between master and
pupil. In brief it came to this: that Leo was cast out, forbidden to
cross the threshold of his master’s study — precisely at the time
when Rahel Naphta lay dying.

And then, immediately after the mother’s passing, Leo made the
acquaintance of Father Unterpertinger. The sixteen-year-old lad
sat lonely on a bench in the park district of the Margaretentop, as
it was called, a small height on the bank of the 111, overlooking the
town, whence one had a pleasant spreading view over the valley
of the Rhine. He sat there lost in troubled and bitter thoughts of
his fate and his future, when a member of the teaching staff of the
Morning Star, the pensionnat of the Society of Jesus, out for a
walk, sat down near him, put down his hat on the bench, crossed
one leg over the other under his cassock, and after reading his brevi-
ary awhile began a conversation which waxed very lively, and
proved in the end a decisive factor in Leo’s destiny. The Jesuit, a
much-travelled and cultured person, a judge and fisher of men,
pedagogue by passion and conviction, pricked up his ears at the
scornful tone, the clearly articulated sentences, in which the poor
Jewish lad answered his first questions. A keen and tortured in-
tellect breathed in the words, and, probing further, the good
father discovered a command of fact and a caustic elegance of
thought made only the more surprising by the ragged exterior

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443

of the youth. They spoke of Karl Marx, whose Capital Leo had
studied in a cheap edition; and passed from him to Hegel, of whom
or about whom he had also read enough to be able to say some-
thing striking. Whether from a general tendency to paradox, or
with intent to be courteous, he called Hegel a “ Catholic thinker
and on the father’s laughing query how that could be substantiated,
since Hegel, as Prussian State philosopher, must surely be counted
definitely with the Protestants, the boy replied that precisely the
phrase “ State philosopher ” strengthened his position, and jus-
tified his characterization in a religious, though, of course, not
in a churchly-dogmatic sense. For (Leo loved the conjunction,
it came from his mouth with a triumphant, ruthless ring, his eyes
flashing behind his spectacles every time he could bring it in)
politics and Catholicism were, as conceptions, psychologically
akin, both of them belonging to a category which embraced all
that was objective, feasible, empirical, with an issue into active
life. Opposed to it stood the Protestant, the pietistic sphere, which
had its origin in mysticism. Jesuitism, he added, clearly betrayed
the political, the pedagogical element in Catholicism; the Society
had always regarded statecraft and education as its rightful do-
main. And he cited Goethe, who, rooted in Protestantism and
assuredly Protestant, as he was, had yet, by virtue of his ob-
jectivity and his doctrine of action, possessed a strongly Catholic
side. He had defended auricular confession, and as an educator
had been well-nigh Jesuitical.

Naphta may have said these things out of conviction, or be-
cause they were clever, or because, being a poor lad, he knew
how adroit flattery could be made to serve his ends. The Father
laid less stress on their intrinsic value than upon the general ability
of which they gave evidence. Their talk had been prolonged, the
Father soon possessed himself of the facts of Leo’s personal situa-
tion, and finished by inviting the youth to visit him at the school.

And thus it was vouchsafed to Naphta to enter the precincts
of the Stella Matutina. It it quite conceivable that he had already
long since coveted the scholarly and social charms of that atmos-
phere; and now, by this turn of affairs, he had won a new master
and patron far better calculated than the old one to prize and
promote his peculiar aptitudes, a master cool by nature, whose
value lay in his cosmopolitanism; an entry into whose circle now
became the object of the Jewish lad’s desire. Like many gifted
people of his race, Naphta was both natural aristocrat and natural
revolutionary; a socialist, yet possessed by the dream of shining
in the proudest, finest, most exclusive and conventional sphere of

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444

life. That flirt utterance which the society of a Catholic theologian
had tempted from him was — however comparative and analytical
in form — in substance a declaration of affection for the Roman
Church, as a power at once spiritual and aristocratic (in other
words anti-material), at once superior and inimical to worldly
things (in other words, revolutionary). And the homage he thus
paid was genuine, and profound; for, as he himself explained,
Judaism, by virtue of its secular and materialistic leanings, its
socialism, its political adroitness, had actually more in common
with Catholicism than the latter had with the mystic subjectivity
and self-immolation of Protestantism; the conversion of a Jew
to the Roman Catholic faith was accordingly a distinctly less
violent spiritual rupture than was that of a Protestant.

Sundered from the shepherd of his original fold, orphaned,
forsaken, full of craving after freer air and forms of existence
upon which his native gifts gave him a claim, Naphta, who was
long past the age of consent, was so impatient for profession that
he saved his patron all the trouble of winning this soul — or rather,
this extraordinary head — for his sect. Even before Leo’s baptism
he had, at the Father’s instigation, found temporary lodgment in
the Stella Matutina, where he was given food for both body and
mind; and had migrated hither with the greatest equanimity, and
the callousness of the bom aristocrat, leaving his brothers and sis-
ters to the care of the Poor Guardians and a destiny suited to
their lesser gifts.

The property of the establishment was extensive, comprising
in its buildings space for four hundred pupils, with wood and
meadow land, half a dozen playing-fields, farm buildings, and
stalls for hundreds of cows. The institution was at once boarding-
school, model farm, athletic training-school, foster-mother of fu-
ture scholars, and temple of the muses — for there were constant
performances of plays and music. The life was both monastic and
manorial. With its discipline and elegance, its quiet good cheer, its
well-being, its intellectual atmosphere, and the precision of its
varied daily regimen, it soothed and flattered the lad Leo’s deepest
instincts. He was exaggeratedly happy. He ate excellent meals in
a spacious refectory where the rule of silence obtained — as in
the corridors of the establishment — and in the centre of which a
young prefect sat on a raised platform and read aloud. Leo’s zeal
in his classes was fiery; and despite the weakness of his chest he
made every effort to hold his own in the games and sports. He went
devotedly to early mass, and took part in the Sunday service with
a fervour which must have been gratifying to his priestly teachers.

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES

445

His social bearing was no less satisfactory to them. And on high
days and holy-days, after the cake and wine, he made one of the
long line of pupils who, in grey and green uniform with a stripe
on the trousers, high collar and kepi, went walking in the country.

He thrilled with gratitude at the consideration they showed
him, in respect of his origin, his infant Christianity, and his per-
sonal fortunes. No one in the institution seemed to know that he
was an object of charity. The rules of the house favoured the
concealment of his homeless and family-less state. It was forbidden
to send parcels of food or sweets to the pupils; if any came, they
were divided and Leo received his share with the others. And the
cosmopolitanism of the institution prevented his race from being
perceptible. There were other young exotics among the pupils,
such as the Portuguese South-Americans, who looked even more
“ Jewish ” than he did, and thus the idea did not come up. An
Ethiopian prince had been received at the same time with Naphta;
he had woolly hair, and was distinctly Moorish in appearance,
though most distinguished.

In class Leo expressed the desire to study theology, in order
to prepare himself for membership in the Society, in case he
should be found worthy. In consequence, his place was changed
from the “ second school,” where the food and living conditions
were more modest, to the first, where he was served by waiters
at table, and had a cubicle between a Silesian nobleman, the Count
of Harbuval and Chamare, and the young Marquis di Rangoni-
Santacroce from Modena. He passed his examinations brilliantly,
and, true to his resolve, quitted the pupil-life of the school to
enter upon his noviciate in near-by Tisis, where he led a life of
service and humility, silent subordination and religious discipline,
and imbibed therefrom a spiritual relish fully equal to the fanatical
expectations of his early years.

Meanwhile, however, his health suffered; less, indeed, through
the severity of the noviciate, which was not lacking in physical
recreation, than from within. The subtlety and acumen charac-
teristic of the educational system of which he was now the object
met his own natural tendencies half-way. He spent all his days
and a good share of his nights in intellectual exercises, in search-
ings of the conscience, in contemplation, in introspection, into
which he flung himself with such a passion of contentiousness as
to involve him in a thousand difficulties, contradictions, and con-
troversies. He was the despair — if at the same time the greatest
hope — of his tutors, whom he daily pushed to the limits of their
endurance by his raging dialectic and the subtility of his mental

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processes. “ Ad hcec quid tu? ” he would ask, the glasses of his
spectacles flashing. And the cornered Father could only admonish
him to pray for a tranquil spirit — “ ut in aliquem gradum quietis
in crnima perveniat .” This tranquillity, when achieved, consisted
of a complete atrophy of the personality, a state of insensibility in
which the individual became a lifeless tool; it was a veritable
“ graveyard peace,” the uncanny outward signs of which Brother
Naphta could see on the empty, staring faces of those about him,
but to which he would never attain, even by the route of physi-
cal decay.

It spoke for the intellectual fibre of those in authority over
him that his delays and drawbacks had no effect on his standing.
At the end of his two years’ noviciate, the Pater Provincial him-
self sent for him, and after the interview sanctioned his admis-
sion into the Society. The young scholastic, having taken the
four lowest orders of door-keeper, acolyte, lector, and exorcizor,
and also the “ simple ” vows, was now definitely a member of
the Society, and set out for Falkenberg, the Jesuit college in
Holland, to begin his theological studies.

He was then twenty years old. At the end of three years, the
unfavourable climate and the continued mental strain had so com-
bined to aggravate his hereditary complaint that a longer stay
would have endangered his life. His superiors were alarmed by
a haemorrhage; he hovered for weeks between life and death, when
they hurried him, barely convalescent, back whence he had come.
In the institution where he had been a pupil he found occupation
as prefect and supervisor of the boarders, and teacher of the
humanities and philosophy. Such an interval was in any case pre-
scribed for the students of the Society; but it usually lasted only
a few years, after which one returned to the college to take up
again the seven years’ course of study and carry it to its conclu-
sion. This, however, it was not granted Brother Naphta to do.
He continued ailing; doctor and superior decided that it was best
for him to serve his order here among the pupils, in the good
country air, with plenty of outdoor occupation on the farm. He
took indeed the first of the higher orders, and won therewith the
right to chant the Epistle on Sundays at mass — a right, however,
which he never exercised, first because he was entirely unmusical,
and second because of his weak chest, which made his voice break
and unfitted it for singing. He never got further than being sub-
deacon —not even to diaconate, much less to priesthood. The
haemorrhages recurred, the fever persisted, and he had finally come
to the mountains for an extended cure at the Society’s expense.

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES

447

This was now in its sixth year, and gradually coming to be no
longer so much a cure as a fixed condition of existence, a residence
for life in rarefied atmosphere, coloured by some activity as
Latin master in the Davos gymnasium for slightly tubercular boys.

All this, in much greater detail, Hans Castorp learned in the
course of visits to Naphta's silken cell, either alone or in com-
pany with his table-mates Ferge and Wehsal, whom he had in-
troduced there; or else when he met Naphta out on a walk, and
strolled back to the Dorf in his company. He learned it as occa-
sion offered, bit by bit, but also in the form of continuous narra-
tive; and found it all highly extraordinary. Not only so, but he
incited Ferge and Wehsal to find it the same, which they accord-
ingly did. The former, indeed, all the while protested that he
was just a plain man, and this high-flown stuff utterly beyond
him, his experience with the pleura-shock having been the sole
event in his life to raise it above the most humdrum sphere. Wehsal,
however, obviously enjoyed this narrative of a man’s rise to suc-
cess from humble and oppressed beginnings — and in any case
there was no ground in it for arrogance, since the good fortune
seemed dwindling away again in the prevailing fleshly infirmity.

Hans Castorp, for his part, regretted the reverse in Naphta’s
affairs, thinking with pride and concern of the ambitious Joa-
chim, who with a heroic effort had burst through the tough web
of the Rhadamanthine rhetoric and flown to the colours, where
his cousin’s fancy painted him clinging to the standard with three
fingers upraised in the oath of fealty. To such a standard had
Naphta too sworn faith, he too had been received beneath its
folds: this had been the very figure he had employed when ex-
plaining his Society to Hans Castorp. But obviously, with his
deviations and combinations, he was less true to his oath than
Joachim to his. Hans Castorp, listening to the future or ci-devant
Jesuit, felt himself strengthened in his views as a civilian and
child of peace, while realizing that this man and Joachim would
each find something satisfying in the calling of the other and
recognize its likeness with his own. For the one was as military
as the other, and both in every sense of the word; both being
ascetic, both hierarchical, both bound to strict obedience and
“ Spanish etiquette.” This last in particular played a great role
in Naphta’s society, originating as it did in Spain. Its exercises,
which were a sort of pendant to the army regulations issued later
by the Prussian Frederick to his infantry, were first written in
the Spanish language, Naphta often making use of Spanish phrases

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448

in his narrative and descriptions. Thus he would speak of the
“ dos banderas ” — the two standards — the Satanic and the celes-
tial, beneath which the armies gathered for the great struggle: the
one near Jerusalem, where Christ was the “ capitan general ” of
all the faithful, the other on the plains of Babylon, of which the
“ caudillo ” or chieftain was Lucifer.

And had not the establishment of the Morning Star been, pre-
cisely, a military academy, the pupils of which were drilled by
divisions in military and spiritual decorum, a mingling, so to
speak, of stand-up collar and Spanish ruff? And ideas of rank
and preferment, which played such a brilliant part in Joachim’s
profession — how plainly, Hans Castorp thought, were they visi-
ble in that other society, wherein Naphta, alas, by reason of his
illness, had been prevented from making further headway! By his
account, the Society was exclusively composed of officers on fire
with zeal, moved by the single thought of distinguishing them-
selves ( insignis esse , in Latin). And these, according to the teach-
ing of their founder and first general, the Spanish Loyola, per-
formed a far more splendid service than any could who were
guided merely by their normal reason. For theirs was a work of
supererogation (ex super erogatione) in that they not only com-
bated the rebellion of the flesh (rebellio camis), which after all
was incumbent upon any average healthy human reason to do,
but were hostile to even an inclination toward the things of the
sense, toward love of self and love of worldly things, even where
these had not been directly forbidden. For it was better and
more honourable to assail the foe ( agere contra ), that is, to at-
tack, than merely to defend oneself ( resistere ). To weaken and
break the foe — those were the instructions in the service-book;
and here again its author, the Spanish Loyola, was of one mind
with Joachim’s capitan general , the Prussian Frederick, with his
motto of “ Attack, attack! Keep on their heels! Attaquez done
toujoters! ”

But what Naphta’s and Joachim’s worlds had most of all in
common was their attitude towards the shedding of blood, their
axiom that one must not hold back one’s hand. Therein, as
worlds, as orders, as states of society, they were in stern accord.
The child of peace would listen with avidity to Naphta’s stories
of the warlike monks of the Middle Ages, who, ascetic to the
point of physical exhaustion, and filled with a ghostly lust of
power, had been unsparing in bloodshed to the end of establish-
ing the kingdom of God and its supernal overlordship; of the
warlike Templars, who had held it of far greater worth to die in

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES

449

battle with the infidel than in their beds, and no crime but the
highest glory, to kill or be killed for Christ’s sake. Luckily, Set-
tembrini had not been present at that conversation! He con-
tinued to fill the role of organ-grinder, and sang the praises of
peace to harp and psaltery; but there was always the holy war
against Vienna, to which he never said nay, though Naphta vis-
ited his foible with scorn and contempt, and when the Italian
was glowing with passionate feeling, would lead the bourgeoisie
of all Christendom into the field against him, swearing that every
country, or else no country at all, was his fatherland, and repeat-
ing with cutting effect the phrase of a general of the Society, named
Nickel, according to which our love of country was “ a plague,
and the certain death of Christian love.”

It was, of course, his ascetic ideal that made Naphta call patriot-
ism a scourge — and what all did he not comprehend under the
word, what all, according to him, did not run counter to the
ascetic ideal and the kingdom of God! For not alone attachment
to home and family, but even clinging to life and health were so
set down; he made it a reproach to the humanist that the latter
sang the praises of peace and happiness: quarrelsomely accused
him of love of the flesh ( amor carnalis) and dependence upon
bodily comfort {commodorum corporis ), and told him to his
face that it was the worst sort of bourgeois irreligiosity to ascribe
to health or life itself any importance whatsoever.

That was in the course of the great disputation on sickness and
health, which one day, close on Christmas, arose out of certain
differences they had during a snowy walk to the Platz and back.
They all took part: Settembrini, Naphta, Hans Castorp, Ferge
and Wehsal — one and all slightly feverish, at once nervously
stimulated and physically lethargic from walking and talking in
the severe frost, all subject to fits of shivering, and — whether
principals in the argument, like Settembrini and Naphta, or for
the most part receptive, like the others, contributing only short
ejaculations from time to time — all, without exception, so utterly
absorbed that they stopped several times by the way, in a dis-
orderly, gesticulating knot, blocking the path of the passers-by,
who had to describe a circle to get round them. People even
paused and listened in astonishment to their extravagance.

The discussion had grown out of a reference somebody made
to Karen Karstedt, poor Karen with the open finger-ends, whose
death had lately occurred. Hans Castorp had heard nothing of
her sudden turn for the worse and final exit; else he would gladly
have assisted at the last rites, as a comradely attention, if not

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450

simply out of his confessed liking for funerals. But the local prac-
tice of discretion had prevented him from hearing of it until too
late. Karen had gone to take up the horizontal for good, in the
garden of the Cupid with the crooked snow-cap. Requiem ceter-
nam . He dedicated a few friendly words to her memory, inter-
rupted by Herr Settembrini, who began making game of his
pupil’s charitable activities, his visits to Leila Gerngross, Rotbein
the business man, the “ overfilled ” Frau Zimmermann, the brag-
gart son of Tous-les-deux, and the afflicted Natalie von Mallinck-
rodt. He censured Hans Castorp in retrospect for paying tribute
in costly flowers to that dismal, ridiculous crew; and Hans Ca-
storp replied that with the temporary exception of Frau von
Mallinckrodt and the boy Teddy, the recipients of his attentions
had now in all seriousness died — to which Herr Settembrini re-
torted by asking if that made them any more respectable. Well,
after all, Hans Castorp responded, wasn’t there such a thing as
Christian reverence before suffering? Before Settembrini could
put him down, Naphta interposed, and began to speak of the
devout excesses manifested by pious souls in the Middle Ages,
astounding cases of fanatic devotion and ecstasy in the care of the
sick: kings’ daughters kissing the stinking wounds of lepers, volun-
tarily exposing themselves to contagion and calling the ulcers they
received their “ roses or drinking the water that had been used
for the cleansing of abscesses, and vowing that nothing had ever
tasted so good.

Settembrini made as though he would vomit. It was not so much,
he said, the physically disgusting element in these tales that turned
his stomach as the monstrous lunacy which betrayed itself in such
a conception of the love of humanity. Then, recovering his poise
and good humour, he drew himself up and held forth upon the
recent progress of humanitarian ideals, the triumphant forcing
back of epidemic disease, upon hygiene and social reform; he con-
trasted the horrors of pestilence with the feats of modern medical
science.

All these, Naphta responded, were very honest bourgeois
achievements; but they would have done more harm than good
in the centuries under discussion. They would have profited
neither one side nor the other; the ailing and wretched as little
as the strong and prosperous, these latter not having been piteous
for pity’s sake, but for the salvation of their own souls. Successful
social reform would have robbed them of their necessary justifica-
tion, as it would the wretched of their sanctified state. The per-
sistence of poverty and sickness had been in the interest of both

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES 45 I

parties, and the position could be sustained just so long as it
was possible to hold to the purely religious point of view.

“ A filthy point of view,” Settembrini declared. A position the
stupidity of which he felt himself above combating. This talk of
the sanctified lot of the poor and wretched — yes, and what the
Engineer, in his simplicity, had said about the Christian reverence
due to suffering — was simply gammon, resting as it did on a mis-
conception, on mistaken sympathy, on erroneous psychology.
The pity the well person felt for the sick — a pity that almost
amounted to awe, because the well person could not imagine how
he himself could possibly bear such suffering — was very greatly
exaggerated. The sick person had no real right to it. It was, in fact,
the result of an error in thinking, a sort of hallucination; in that
the well man attributed to the sick his own emotional equipment,
and imagined that the sick man was, as it were, a well man who
had to bear the agonies of a sick one — than which nothing was
further from the truth. For the sick man was — precisely that, a
sick man: with the nature and modified reactions of his state.
Illness so adjusted its man that it and he could come to terms;
there were sensory appeasements, short circuits, a merciful nar-
cosis; nature came to the rescue with measures of spiritual and
moral adaptation and relief, which the sound person naively failed
to take into account. There could be no better illustration than the
case of all this tuberculous crew up here, with their reckless folly,
light-headedness and loose morals, and their total lack of desire for
health. In short, let the sound man with all his respect for illness
once fall ill himself, and he would soon see that being ill is a state
of being in itself — no very honourable one either — and that he
had been taking it a good deal too seriously.

At this point Anton Karlowitsch Ferge girded his loins to re-
monstrate — he defended the pleura-shock against sneers and con-
tumely. So Herr Settembrini thought you could take the pleura-
shock too seriously, did he? With all due respect and gratitude and
all that, he, Ferge, must really beg Herr Settembrini’s pardon!
His great Adam’s apple and his good-natured moustaches worked
up and down as he repudiated any lack of respect for the suffer-
ings he had undergone. He was just a plain man, an insurance
agent, with no high-falutin ideas; even the present conversation
soared far above his head. But if Herr Settembrini meant to sug-
gest that the pleura-shock was a good example of what he was
talking about -- that torture by tickling, with its stench of sulphur
and its three-coloured fainting fit — well, really he was very much
obliged to Herr Settembrini, he really must thank him very kindly

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indeed; but there had been nothing of the sort about the pleura-
shock — not it! Talk about adjustments and “ merciful narcosis ”
— why, it had been the most sickening piece of business under the
shining sun, and nobody who had not been through it could have
the least idea —

“ Yes, yes,” Herr Settembrini said. Herr Ferge’s collapse got
more and more remarkable as time went on, and he would pres-
ently be wearing it like a halo round his head. He, Settembrini,
had no great respect for sick folk who laid claim to considera-
tion on the score of their illness. He was ill himself, and seri-
ously; but in all sincerity he felt inclined to be ashamed of the
fact. However, his present remarks were purely abstract and im-
personal; and the distinction he made between the nature and
reactions of a well and a sick man was based on common sense, as
the gentlemen would see if they would think about insanity —
take, for instance, hallucinations. Suppose one of his companions,
the Engineer, say, or Herr Wehsal, should enter his room to-night
at dusk and see his deceased father sitting there in a corner, who
should look at and speak to him — that would be absolutely mon-
strous, wouldn’t it? A shattering experience, which would con-
found both sense and reason, and make him get out of the room
as fast as he could and put himself in the care of a specialist
in nervous ailments. Or wouldn’t it? The joke of the thing was
that such an experience would not be possible for any of the
gentlemen present, since they were all in enjoyment of full mental
health. If it did happen to any of them, it would be a sure sign
that they were not sound, but diseased, and they would not react
to the appearance with emotions of horror and by taking to their
heels, but treat it as though it were entirely in order, and begin a
conversation with it — this being, in fact, the reaction of a per-
son suffering from a hallucination. To suppose that such hallu-
cinations affected the person subject to them with the same horror
as would be felt by a sound mind was a defect of the imagination to
which normal persons were often prone.

Herr Settembrini spoke with droll and plastic effect. His pic-
ture of the father in the comer made them all laugh, even Ferge,
put out though he was by the slight to his pleura-shock. Herr
Settembrini took advantage of their hilarity to expatiate further
on the contemptibleness of people who were subject to halluci-
nations, and of pazzi in general. It was his opinion that these
people gave way a great deal more than they need, and often
nad it in their power to control their own freakishness. He had
made this observation when he had visited asylums for the insane.

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For in the presence of the doctor, or of a stranger, the patients
would mostly intermit their jabbering, grimaces, and weaving to
and fro, and behave quite sensibly, as long as they felt themselves
under scrutiny, only to let themselves go again afterwards. For
lunacy undoubtedly in many cases meant the kind of self-abandon-
ment which was the refuge of a weak nature against extreme dis-
tress, a defence against such overwhelming blows of destiny as it
felt itself, when in its right mind, unable to cope with. But al-
most anybody might get in that state; and he, Settembrini, had
held more than one lunatic to temporary self-control, simply by
opposing to his humbuggery an air of inexorable reason.

Naphta laughed derisively; Hans Castorp protested his readiness
to believe Herr Settembrini’s statement. Indeed, as he pictured
him smiling beneath his moustaches and fixing the feeble-minded
with the eye of remorseless reason, he could well understand how
the poor fellow had had to pull himself together and behave
with “temporary self-control,” though probably finding Herr
Settembrini’s presence a most unwelcome incident. — But Naphta
too had had experience of asylums for the insane. He recalled a
visit to the violent ward, where he had seen such sights as — my
God, such sights as would have been a bit too much even for Herr
Settembrini’s intelligent eye or disciplinary powers: Dantesque
scenes, monstrous tableaux of horror and agony: naked madmen
squatting in the continuous bath, in every posture of mental an-
guish or in the stupor of despair; some shrieking aloud, others
with uplifted arms and gaping mouths whence issued laughter that
mingled all the elements of hell —

“ Aha,” cried Herr Ferge, and took leave to remind them of
the laughter which had escaped him when they went over his
pleura. In short, Herr Settembrini’s inexorable pedantry would
have had to confess itself beaten before these sights in the violent
ward; in the face of which, the shudder of religious awe would
surely have been a more human reaction than this condescending
twaddle about reason, which our Worshipful Brother and Eminent
Preceptor saw fit to put forward as a treatment for insanity.

Hans Castorp was too preoccupied to question the new titles
Naphta was conferring on Herr Settembrini. Hastily he made a
resolve to look them up the first chance he got; for the moment,
he had his hands full with the present conversation. Naphta was
acrimoniously debating the general tendency which led the hu-
manist to exalt health and cry down and belittle illness. Herr
Settembrini’s attitude was, he thought, a remarkable, even ad-
mirable example of self-abnegation, considering he was ill him-

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self. But the position, no matter how strikingly meritorious, was
as mistaken as it could well be: resting as it did upon a respect
and reverence for the human body which could only be justified
if that body had remained in original sinlessness, instead of sink-
ing to its present fallen state (statu degradationis). For it had
been created immortal, and by the original sins of depravity and
abomination, by the degeneration of its nature, it had become
mortal and corruptible, and was thus to be regarded as the prison-
house and torture-chamber of the soul, or as the fit instrument for
rousing the conscience to a sense of shame and confusion ( pudoris
et ccmfusionis sensum),2LS Saint Ignatius had it.

The humanist Plotinus, exclaimed Hans Castorp, was also known
to have given expression to the same idea. But Herr Settembrini
flung up his hands and ordered the young man not to confuse two
different points of view — and, for the rest, to be advised and
maintain an attitude of receptivity.

Naphta, continuing, derived the reverence which the Christian
Middle Ages paid to physical suffering from the fact that it ac-
quiesced on religious grounds in the sight of the anguish of the
flesh. For the wounds of the body not only emphasized its sunken
state, they also corresponded in the most edifying manner to the
envenomed corruption of the soul, and thereby gave rise to emo-
tions of true spiritual satisfaction: whereas blooming health was a
misleading phenomenon, insulting to the conscience of man and
requiring to be counteracted by an attitude of debasement and
humility before physical infirmity, which was infinitely bene-
ficial to the soul. Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius ?
Who will deliver me from the body of this death? There spoke
the voice of the spirit, which was eternally the voice of true hu-
manity.

On the contrary — according to Herr Settembrini’s view, pre-
sented with no little heat — it was a voice from the darkness, a
voice from a world upon which the sun of reason and humanity
was not yet risen. Truly, in his own physical person he was con-
taminate; yet what mattered that, since his mind was untainted
and sound — and quite competent to bring confusion to his priestly
opponent in any discussion touching the body, or to laugh him
to scorn over the soul? He took too high a flight in celebrating the
human body as the true temple of the Godhead; for Naphta
straightway declared that this mortal fabric was nothing more
than a veil between us and eternity; whereupon Settembrini defi-
nitely forbade him the use of the word humanity — and so it
went on.

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES 45 5

Bare-headed, their faces stiff in the cold, they trod in their
rubber galoshes the crisp, creaking, cinder-strewn snow, or
ploughed through porous masses in the gutter: Settembrini in
a winter jacket with beaver collar and cuffs — the fur was worn
to the pelt, and looked fairly mangy, but he knew how to carry
it off with an air; Naphta in a long black overcoat that came
down to his heels and up to his ears, and showed none of the fur
with which it was lined throughout. Both speakers treated their
theme as of the utmost personal concern; and both often turned,
not to each other but to Hans Castorp, with argument and ex-
position, referring to their opponents with a jerk of the head or
thumb. They had him between them, and he turned his head to
assent first to one and then to the other; now and again he stood
stock-still on the path, tipping his body back from the waist
and gesturing with his fur-lined glove as he made some quite
inadequate contribution to the talk. Ferge and Wehsal circled
about, now in front and now behind, now in a single row until they
had to break up their line again to let people pass.

It was due to some remark of theirs that the debate took on a
less abstract tone, and all the company joined in a discussion of
torture, cremation and punishment — both capital and corporal.
It was Ferdinand Wehsal who introduced the last-named; with
obvious relish, Hans Castorp observed. As was to be expected,
Herr Settembrini, in high-sounding words, invoked the dignity
of the human race against a procedure whose results were as
devastating in education as in penology. And equally to be ex-
pected, though rendered startling by a certain kind of gloomy
ferocity, was Naphta’s approval of the bastinado. According to
him, it was absurd to prate about human dignity, since true
dignity indwelt not in the flesh but in the spirit. The soul of man
was for ever prone to suck the joys of this earthly life from the
flesh instead of the spirit; thus pain, by rendering bitter to him
the things of the senses, was highly efficacious, driving him back
to the spirit and giving the latter the mastery over the flesh. It
was shallow to contend that the discipline of the whipping-post
had anything particularly shameful about it. Saint Elizabeth had
been flogged by her confessor, Conrad von Marburg, until the
blood came, and by such means her soul was rapt “ to the third
choir of angels.” She herself, moreover, had beaten with rods an
old woman who was too sleepy to make her confession. The
members of a certain sect, and even other persons of devout and
serious character, submitted to flagellation in order that the
spiritual impulse might be strengthened. Would anyone seriously

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contend that such a procedure was barbarous and inhuman? It
was true that corporal punishment was on the decline in certain
countries which considered themselves in the van of progress:
but the belief that such a decline was a sign of enlightenment be-
came only the more comic the longer it persisted.

Well, anyhow, Hans Castorp considered, so much was granted:
that in the antithesis between body and soul it was undoubtedly
the body which embodied — the body embodied, that wasn’t so
bad, was it? — the evil principle; in so far as the body was nat-
urally nature — pretty good, too, that! — and nature, being dia-
metrically opposed to the spirit and reason, was by that fact in-
trinsically evil — mystically evil, one might say, if it didn’t sound
like showing off! But it followed from this that the body should
be treated accordingly, and made to profit from disciplinary meth-
ods, which might also be called mystically evil. Herr Settembrini,
for instance, that time when the weakness of vhe flesh had pre-
vented him from attending the Congress for the Advancement
of Civilization at Barcelona, ought to have had a Saint Elizabeth
at his side — !

Everybody laughed; but while the humanist was bringing up
his guns, Hans Castorp hastily began to talk about a beating he
had once received, when he was in one of the lower forms in the
gymnasium, where this form of punishment still survived to
some extent, and there were always switches on hand. His, Hans
Castorp’s social position had been too good for the masters to
venture to lay hands on him; but he had once been whipped by
a stronger pupil, a big lout of a fellow who had laid on with the
flexible switch across Hans Castorp’s thin-stockinged calves. It had
hurt so confoundedly — so “ mystically ” — that he had fairly
sobbed for rage, and the tears had ignominiously flowed down.
And he recalled having read that in the penitentiaries, when men
are flogged, the most hardened reprobates will blubber like little
children.

Herr Settembrini hid his face in his hands, that were clad in
very shabby leather gloves; and Naphta, with statesmanlike calm,
asked how else they would expect to reduce refractory criminals
— unless by putting in the stocks, which were quite the suitable
furnishing for a prison. A humane penitentiary would be neither
one thing nor the other, an aesthetic compromise: if Herr Settem-
brini did not think so, then it was clear that, though an aesthete,
he had very little sense of the fitness of things. And in the field of
education, a conception of human dignity which would bar cor-
poral punishment from the schools had its roots, according to

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457

Naphta, in the liberal-individualism of our bourgeois, humanitarian
age, in an enlightened absolutism of the ego, which was, indeed,
now dying off, to give place to social conceptions made of sterner
stuff: ideas of discipline and conformity, of coercion and com-
pliance, to the realization of which an element of godly severity
would be needful, and which, when realized, would make us alter
all our ideas on the subject of the chastisement of the human
carcass.

“ Hence the phrase perinde ac si cadaver” scoffed Settembrini.
Naphta suggested that since God, in punishment of our sins, had
visited us with the shameful and horrible sentence of bodily cor-
ruption, after all it was not such a frightful insult to that same
body that it should now and then get a flogging. And then, some-
how, all at once, they came upon the subject of cremation.

Settembrini paid it homage. That indignity of corruption, he
said, of which Naphta spoke, could by its means be redressed.
On practical as well as on ideal grounds, mankind was now about
to redress it. He explained that he was helping prepare for an in-
ternational congress for the promotion of cremation, the scene
of whose labours would probably be Sweden. A model cremato-
rium would be exhibited, planned in accordance with the latest
researches and experiments, with a hall of urns; they hoped to
rouse widespread interest and enthusiasm. What an effete and
obsolete procedure burial was, under our modem conditions —
the price of land, the expansion of our cities and consequent shov-
ing of the graveyards out on to the periphery! And the chop-
fallen funeral processions, with their dignity curtailed by
present-day traffic conditions! Herr Settembrini had plenty of dis-
illusioning facts at his command. He made a droll picture of a grief-
stricken widower on his daily pilgrimage to the grave-side, to hold
communion with the beloved departed; and said that the man
must have a superfluity of that most precious of human com-
modities, time; and further, that the rush of business in a large
modem burying-ground must surely dash his atavistic bliss. The
destruction of the body by fire — what a cleanly, sanitary, dig-
nified, yes, heroic conception that was, compared with abandon-
ing it to the miserable processes of decay and assimilation by the
lower forms of life! Yes, the newer method was more satisfying
emotionally too, and kinder to the human longing after immor-
tality. For what the fire destroyed was the more perishable part
of the body, the elements which even during one’s life were got
rid of by metabolism; whereas those which accompanied man
through life, taking least share in the process of change, those be-

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came the ashes, and with them the survivors possessed the de-
ceased’s imperishable part.

“ Oh, charming,” Naphta said. “ Oh, really, very good! Man’s
imperishable part, his ashes! ”

Naphta evidently meant to hold humanity fast to its old, irra-
tional position in the face of established biological fact; meant
to force it to remain at the stage of primitive religion, where death
was a spectre surrounded by such mysterious terrors that the gaze
of reason could not be focused upon it. What barbarism! The fear
of death went back to a very low cultural stage, when violent
death was the rule, and its horrors thus became associated with
the idea of death in general. But now, thanks to the development of
hygiene and the increase in personal security, a natural death was
the rule, a violent one the exception; modem man had come to
think of repose, after exhaustion of his powers, as not at all dreadful,
but normal and even desirable. No, death was neither spectre nor
mystery. It was a simple, acceptable, and physiologically necessary
phenomenon; to dwell upon it longer than decency required was
to rob life of its due. Accordingly, the Hall of Death (as the
modern crematory and vault for the urns was to be called) would
be supplemented by a Hall of Life, where architecture, painting,
sculpture, music, and poetry would combine to draw the thoughts
of the survivors from the contemplation of death, from weak and
unavailing grief, and fix them upon the joys of life.

“ On with the dance! ” Naphta mocked. “ Don’t let them make
too much of the funeral rites, don’t let them pay too much respect
to such a simple fact as death — but without that simple fact, there
would never have been either architecture nor painting, sculpture
nor music, poetry nor any other art.”

“ He deserts to the colours,” murmured Hans Castorp dreamily.

“ Your remark is incomprehensible,” Settembrini answered him,
“which doesn’t prevent it from being at the same time silly.
Either the experience of death must be the last experience of life,
or else it must be a bugaboo, pure and simple.”

“ Will there be obscene symbols employed in the Hall of Life,
like those on the ancient sarcophagi? ” Hans Castorp asked with
a serious air.

“ By all accounts,” Naphta chimed in, “ there will be a fine fat
feeding for the senses.” In oils and in marbles, a humanistic taste
would celebrate the glories of the senses — of the sinful body
whose flesh it had saved from putrefaction. There was nothing
surprising about that — it was of a piece with its fastidiousness in
the matter of corporal punishment.

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459

Thus they came upon the subject of torture — introduced by
Wehsal, to whom, it seemed, it made a particular appeal. “ The
question,” now — what were the gentlemen’s views about it? He,
Ferdinand, when he was “ on the road,” liked to visit those quiet
retreats in the centres of ancient culture, where such research into
the conscience of man used to be carried on. He had seen the
torture-chambers of Nuremberg and Regensburg, he had made
a study of them, and been edified. They had certainly devised a
number of ingenious ways of man-handling the body for the
good of the soul. There had never been any outcry — they rammed
the famous choke-pear, itself such a very tasty morsel, into the
victim’s mouth, and after that silence reigned.

“ Porcheria! ” Settembrini muttered.

Ferge professed his respect for the choke-pear, and the whole
silent activity. But anything worse than the pinning back of his
pleura he was sure had never been devised, not even in those times.

That had been done for his good!

The obdurate soul, offended justice, these warranted a tempo-
rary lack of mercy. But in fact, the torture was an invention of
the human reason.

Settembrini presumed that the speaker was not quite in his
senses.

Oh, yes, he was pretty well in possession of them. It was Herr
Settembrini, the professed aesthete, who was probably not alto-
gether familiar with the history of the development of mediaeval
jurisprudence. There had been, in fact, a process of continuous
rationalization, in the course of which reason had taken the
place of God, who had been shoved out of the department of
justice. In other words, trial by battle had fallen into disuse, be-
cause it had been observed that the stronger man conquered even
when he was in the wrong. It had been people of Herr Settem-
brini’s kidney, the doubters and critics, who had made the ob-
servation, and brought about the Inquisition, which superseded
the old naive procedure. Justice no longer relied on the interven-
tion of God in favour of the truth, but aimed to get it out of the
accused by confession. No sentence without confession — you
could hear that still among the people, for the instinct lodged deep
with them; the chain of evidence might be as strong as it liked,
but if there had been no confession, there would remain a lurking
feeling that the sentence was illegitimate.. But how get at the con-
fession? How procure the truth, out of the mass of circumstance
and suspicion? How look into the heart, the brain, of a man who
denied and concealed? If the spirit was recalcitrant, there remained

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460

the body, which could be got at. The torture was recommended to
reason, as a means to an end, the end of bringing out the indis-
pensable confession. But it was Herr Settembrini who had de-
manded and introduced confession, and he, accordingly, who was
responsible for torture.

The humanist implored the others not to believe a word of all
this. Herr Naphta was indulging in a diabolical joke. If the posi-
tion had really been what he said, if it were true that the hor-
rible thing was actually an invention of the human reason, that
only showed how grievously she always needed sustaining and
enlightening, and how little ground the instinct-worshippers had
for their fear that things could ever be too much directed by
reason on this earth! But the speaker was of course in error. The
judicial abomination they were discussing could not be laid at
the door of the human reason, because it went back to an original
belief in hell. The rack, the pincers, the screws and tongs you
saw in these chambers of torment and martyrdom represented
the effort of a childish and deluded fancy to emulate what it piously
believed to be the sufferings of the eternally damned. But that was
not all. They thought to assist the evil-doer, whose spirit they as-
sumed to be wrestling after confession, while his flesh, the evil
principle, set itself against the soul’s desire: they had it in mind
to do him a service of love, in breaking his body by torture. It
was a madness of asceticism —

44 How about the ancient Romans — did they harbour the same
delusion? ”

44 The Romans? Ma che ! ”

44 But they employed the torture as a judicial instrument.’’

Logical impasse. Hans Castorp tried to help out — as if it were
his metier to guide such a conversation! Of his own accord, he
flung into the arena the question of capital punishment. Torture,
he said, was abolished — though examining magistrates still had
ways of making an accused person pliable. But the death penalty
persisted, it seemed impossible to do without it. It was practised
by the most civilized nations. The French system of deportation
had worked very badly. There was nothing feasible to do with
certain half-human beings, except to make them a head shorter!

They were not 44 certain half-human beings ” Settembrini cor-
rected him. They were men, like the Engineer, like himself, Set-
tembrini — only weak-willed victims of a defective social system.
He cited the case of an abandoned criminal, the kind always re-
ferred to by the prosecuting attorneys as a 44 beast in human form,”
who had covered the walls of his cell with verse, and not at all

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES 46 t

bad verse either, much better than most prosecuting attorneys
ever managed to write.

That cast a somewhat singular light on the art of verse-writing,
Naphta retorted, but was not otherwise worth answering.

Hans Castorp said he was not surpiseed to hear that Naphta
favoured the death penalty. To his mind, Naphta was as revolu-
tionary as Settembrini, only in a conservative direction — a re-
actionary revolutionist.

Herr Settembrini, with a confident smile, assured them that
the world, after passing through a period of inhuman reaction,
would always return to the normal order of things. But Herr
Naphta preferred to discredit art sooner than admit that it might
have a humanizing effect upon a sunken wretch. He need not ex-
pect, by such fanatical talk, to make much headway with light-
seeking youth. He, Settembrini, had the honour to belong to a
newly-formed league, the scope of which was the abolition of
capital punishment in all civilized countries. It was not yet settled
where the first congress should meet; but one thing was sure,
that those who addressed it would have plenty of arguments at
hand. He submitted some of them forthwith: the ever-present
possibility that justice might err and judicial murder be committed;
the hope of reformation, which it was never possible to disregard;
the biblical injunction “ Vengeance is mine.” Then he referred to
the theory that the State, in its function not as the wielder of force,
but as the instrument of human betterment, may not repay evil
with evil; he attacked the conception of guilt, on the ground of
scientific determinism; and lastly, he repudiated the whole theory
of punishment.

On top of which “ light-seeking youth ” had to stand by while
Naphta neatly wrung the neck of all these arguments, one after
the other. He derided the humanist’s reluctance to shed blood, and
his reverence for human life. He said that the latter was charac-
teristic of our intensely bourgeois age, our policy of molly-coddle.
Even so, its inconsistency was apparent. For let an idea arise that
went beyond considerations of personal safety and well-being —
and such ideas were the only ones worthy of human beings, and
thus in a higher sense were the normal field of human activity —
and the individual would, even under average emotional stress,
be sacrificed without scruple to the higher claim. Nay, more: the
individual, of his own free will, would expose himself without a
thought.The philanthropy of his honoured opponent would elimi-
nate from life all its stem and mortal traits; it would castrate life,
as would the determinism of its so-called science. But determinism

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462

would never succeed in doing away with the conception of guilt.
It could only add to its authority and its awfulness.

Oh, so he demanded that the unhappy victim of social malad-
justment be convinced of his own sinfulness, and tread in full
conviction the path to the scaffold?

“ Quite. The evil-doer is filled with his guilt as with himself.
For he is as he is, and can and will not be otherwise — and therein
lies his guilt.”

Naphta shifted the ground of the discussion from the empiric
to the metaphysical. He went on to say that in behaviour, in
action, determinism did indeed rule; there was no freedom of
choice. But in being, the man is as he has wished to be, and as,
until his last breath, he has never ceased to wish to be. He has
revelled in slaying, and does not pay too dear in being slain. Let
him die, then, for he has gratified his heart’s deepest desire.

“ Deepest desire? ”

“ Deepest desire.”

Thev all gritted their teeth. Hans Castorp gave a little cough,
Wehsal set his jaw awry. Herr Ferge breathed a sigh, Settembrini
shrewdly remarked: “ There is a kind of generalization that has a
distinctly personal cast. Have you ever had a desire to commit
murder? ”

“ That is no concern of yours. But if I had, I should laugh in
the face of any ignorant humanitarianism that tried to feed me
on skilly till I died a natural death. It is absurd for the murderer
to outlive the murdered. They two, alone together, as two beings
are together in only one other human relationship, have, like them,
the one acting, the other suffering him, shared a secret that binds
them for ever together. They belong to each other.”

Settembrini said frigidly that he lacked the brains necessary to
the understanding of this death-and-murder mysticism — and he
really didn’t miss them. No offence intended; Herr Naphta’s reli-
gious gift did undoubtedly far surpass his own, but he protested
that he was not envious. His own nature had an unconquerable
craving for fresh air; it kept him somewhat aloof from a sphere
where reverence — and not merely the unthinking reverence of
youth — was paid to suffering, and that in a spiritual as well as a
physical sense. In that sphere, it was plain, virtue, reason, and
healthiness counted for nothing, vice and disease were honoured
in a wondrous way.

Naphta concurred. He said that being virtuous and healthy did
not, in fact, constitute being in a state of religion at all. It would

OPERATIONES SPIRITUALES 463

clear the air to have it plainly stated that religion had nothing to do
with reason and morality.

“ For,” he added, “ it has nothing to do with life. Life is based
on conditions and built up on foundations which are partly the re-
sult of experience, and partly belong to the domain of ethics. We
call the first kind time, space, and causality; the second, ^morality
and reason. But one and all of these are not only foreign to, utterly
a matter of indifference to the nature of religion; they are even
hostile to it. For they are precisely what make up life — the so-
called normal life, which is to say, arch Philistinism, ultra-
bourgeoisiedom, the absolute antithesis of which, the very genius
of antithesis to which, is the life of religion.”

Naphta went on to say that he would not deny to the other
sphere the possibility of genius. There was much to admire in the
monumental respectability, the majestic Philistinism of the middle-
class consciousness. But one must never forget that as it stood,
straddle-legged, firmly planted on earth, hands behind the back,
chest well out, it was the embodiment of irreligion.

Hans Castorp, like a schoolboy, put up his hand. He wished,
he said, not to offend either side. But since they were talking
about progress, and thus, to a certain extent also, about politics,
and the republic of eloquence and the civilization of the educated
Occident, he might say that it seemed to him the difference — or,
if Herr Naphta insisted, the antithesis — between life and religion
went back to that between time and eternity. Only in time was
there progress; in eternity there was none, nor any politics or elo-
quence either. There, so to speak, one laid one’s head back in God,
and closed one’s eyes. And that was the difference between
religion and morality — he was aware that he had put it very
badly.

The way he put it, Settembrini remarked, naive as it was, was
less objectionable than his fear of giving offence, his inclination to
give ground to the Devil.

Oh, as far as the Devil was concerned, they two had talked
about him aforetime, hadn’t they? “ O Satana , O ribellione ” But
which devil was it he had been giving ground to just now? Was it
Carducci’s one — rebellion, activity, critical spirit — or was it the
other? It was pretty dangerous having a devil on either hand,
like this; how in the Devil’s name should we get out of it?

That, Naphta said, was no proper description of the state of
affairs as Herr Settembrini looked at them. For the distinctive
feature of his cosmos was that he made God and the Devil two

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464

distinct persons or principles, with “ life ” as a bone of conten-
tion between them — which, by the by, was just the way the
Middle Ages had envisaged them. But in reality, God and the
Devil were at one in being opposed to life, to bourgeoisiedom,
reason and virtue, since they together represented the religious
principle.

“ What a disgusting hodge-podge — che guazzabuglio proprio
stomachevole! ” Good and evil, sanctification and criminal con-
duct, all mixed up together! Without judgment! Without direc-
tion! Without the possibility of repudiating what was vile! Did
Herr Naphta realize what it was he denied and disavowed in the
presence of youth, when he flung God and the Devil together
and in the name of this mad two-in-oneness refused to admit the
existence of an ethical principle? He denied every standard of
values, he denied goodness! Horrible! — Very well, then there ex-
isted neither good nor evil, nothing but a morally chaotic All!
There was not even the individual in possession of a critical faculty
— there w r as only the all-consuming, the all-levelling universal
communalty, and mystic immersion in her!

It was delicious, Herr Settembrini’s thinking of himself as an
individualist! For to be that, one had at least to recognize the
difference between morality and blessedness, which our honoured
illuminant and monist most certainly did not! A society in which
life was stupidly conceived as an end in itself, with no questions
asked about its ulterior meaning and purpose, was governed by
a tribal and social ethic, indeed, a vertebrate morality, if you liked,
but certainly not by individualism. For individualism belonged,
singly and solely, in the realm of the religious and mystical, in
the so-called “ morally chaotic All.” And this morality of Herr
Settembrini’s, what was it, what did it want? It was life-bound,
and thus entirely utilitarian; it was pathetically unheroic. Its end
and aim was to make men grow old and happy, rich and com-
fortable— and that was all there was to it. And this Philistine
philosophy, this gospel of work and reason, served Herr Settem-
brini as an ethical system. As far as he, Naphta, was concerned,
he would continue to deny that it was anything but the sheerest
and shabbiest bourgeoisiedom.

Settembrini enjoined him to be calm — his own voice shaking
with passion. He found Herr Naphta’s talk about “ bourgeoisie-
dom ” simply insufferable — and God knew why he should put on
that contemptuous, aristocratic air! As if the opposite of life —
and we all knew what that was — was likely to be more refined
than life itself!

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465

New cries, new catchwords! Now it was the “ aristocratic
principle.” Hans Castorp, all flushed and depleted from taxing
his brains in the cold, shaky as to his capacity for clear expres-
sion, hot and cold with his own audacity, heard himself babble
that always since a child he had pictured death to himself as wear-
ing a starched ruff, or at least a sort of half-uniform, with a stand-up
collar, while life, on the other hand, wore an ordinary collar. His
words sounded, even to himself, like a drunken impropriety; he
hastened to assure the company that that was not at all what he
had meant to say. And yet — wasn’t it a fact that one couldn’t
imagine certain people dead, simply because they were so very
ordinary? That must mean they were very fit for life, but could
not die, because unfit for the consecration of death.

Herr Settembrini said he was confident Hans Castorp uttered
such stuff merely for the sake of being contradicted. Tne young
man would find him ever ready to lend a hand in the intellectual
warfare, against attacks like the present. The Engineer had used
the expression “ fit for life had he intended it in a derogatory
sense? To him it was synonymous with “ worthy of life,” the two
conceptions being perfectly harmonious, and suggesting by a
natural process of association another equally beautiful, “ worthy
of love. One might with truth say that he who was worthy of
the one was fully worthy of the other. And both together, love-
worthy and life-worthy, made up the true nobility.

Hans Castorp found that charming — most edifying. Herr Set-
tembrini had quite won him over with his plastic theory. Say what
you like — and there was a lot to be said for the idea that illness
had something solemn and ennobling about it — yet after all, you
couldn’t deny that illness was an accentuation of the physical, it
did throw man back, so to speak, upon the flesh and to that extent
was detrimental to human dignity. It dragged man down to the
level of his body. Thus it might be argued that disease was un-
human.

On the contrary, Naphta hastened to say. Disease was very hu-
man indeed. For to be man was to be ailing. Man was essentially
ailing, his state of unhealthiness was what made him man. There
were those who wanted to make him “ healthy,” to make him “ go
back to nature,” when, the truth was, he never had been “ natural.”
All the propaganda carried on to-day by the prophets of nature,
the experiments in regeneration, the uncooked food, fresh-air
cures, sun-bathing, and so on, the whole Rousseauian parapher-
nalia, had as its goal nothing but the dehumanization, the animaliz-
ing of man. They talked of “ humanity,” of nobility — but it was

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466

the spirit alone that distinguished man, as a creature largely di-
vorced from nature, largely opposed to her in feeling, from all
other forms of organic life. In man’s spirit, then, resided his true
nobility and his merit — in his state of disease, as it were; in a word,
the more ailing he was, by so much was he the more man. The
genius of disease was more human than the genius of health. How,
then, could one who posed as the friend of man shut his eyes to
these fundamental truths concerning man’s humanity? Herr Set-
tembrini had progress ever on his lips: was he aware that all prog-
ress, in so far as there was such a thing, was due to illness, and to
illness alone? In other words, to genius, which was the same thing?
Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of
the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into
disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by
fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use

it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act
of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atone-
ment.

“ Aha! ” thought Hans Castorp. “ You unorthodox Jesuit, you,
with your interpretations of the Crucifixion! It’s plain why you
never became a priest, joli jesuite a la petite tache humide! Now
roar, lion! ” he mentally addressed Herr Settembrini. And the lion
roared. He characterized all Naphta had said as quibbling, sophis-
try, and confusion.

“ Say it! ” he cried to his opponent, “ say it in your character as
schoolmaster, say it in the hearing of plastic youth, say straight
out, that the soul is — disease! Verily you will thereby encourage
them to a belief in the spiritual. Disease and death as nobility, life
and health as vulgarity — what a doctrine whereby to hold fast the
neophyte to the service of humanity! Davvero , e criminoso! ” And
like a crusader he entered the lists in defence of the nobility of life
and health, of that which nature gave, for the soul of which one
did not need to fear. “ The Form,” he said; and Naphta rejoined
bombastically: “ The Logos.” But he who would have none of the
Logos answered: “The Reason,” and the man of the Logos re-
torted with “ The Passion.”

It was confusion worse confounded.

“ The Object,” cried one, the other: “ The Ego! ” “ Art ” and
“ critique ” were bandied back and forth, then once more “ na-
ture ” and “ soul,” and as to which was the nobler, and concern-
ing the “ aristocratic problem.” But there was no order nor clarity,
not even of a dualistic and militant kind. Things went not only by
contraries, but also all higgledy-piggledy. The disputant not only

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467

contradicted each other, they contradicted themselves. How often
had Settembrini not spent his oratory in praise of criticism, as being
the aristocratic principle? Yet now it was for its opposite, for
“ art,” that he made the same claim. How often had Naphta not
stood for instinct, what time Settembrini called nature a blind
force, mere “ factum et fatum before which reason and human
pride must never abdicate! But here now was Naphta on the side
of the soul and disease, wherein alone true nobility and humanity
resided, while Settembrini flung himself into advocacy of nature
and her noble sanity, regardless of his inconsistency on the score
of emancipation from her. The “ Object ” and the “ Ego ” were
no less involved in confusion — yes, and here the confusion, more-
over, remained constant, was the most literal and incorrigible; so
that nobody any longer knew who was the devout and who the
free-thinker. Naphta sharply forbade Settembrini to call himself
an individualist, for so long as he denied the antithesis between God
and nature, saw in the problem of man’s inward conflict no more
than the struggle between individual and collective interest, and
was vowed to a materialistic and bourgeois ethic, in which life be-
came an end in itself, limited to utilitarian aims, and the moral law
subserved the interest of the State. He, Naphta, was well aware
that man’s inner conflict based upon the antagonism between the
sensible and the supra-sensible; it was he, not Settembrini, who
represented the true, the mystical individualism. He, not Settem-
brini, was in reality the free-thinker, the man who looked for guid-
ance within himself. Hans Castorp reflected that if that were true,
then what about the “ anonymous and communal ” — not to men-
tion any other contradiction? And what about those striking com-
ments he had made to Father Unterpertinger on the subject of
Hegel’s Catholicism, and the affinity between Catholicism and
politics, and the category of the objective which they together
comprised? Had not statecraft and education always been the
special province of the Society to which Naphta belonged? And
what an education! Herr Settembrini himself was certainly a zeal-
ous pedagogue, zealous to the point of tedium; but he could simply
not compete with Naphta in the matter of ascetic, self-mortifying
objectivity. Absolute authority, iron discipline, coercion, submis-
sion, the Terror! All that might have its own value, but it paid
scant homage to the individual and the dignity of his critical
faculty. It was the army regulations of the Prussian Frederick, the
Exercise-book of the Spanish Loyola all over again; it was rigid, it
was devout, to the very marrow. But one question remained to be
asked: how had Naphta arrived at this savage absolutism, he who,

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468

by his own account, believed not at all in pure knowledge or un-
fettered research, in other words not in truth, the objective, scien-
tific truth, to strive after which was for Ludovico Settembrini the
highest Jaw of human morality. Here was the object of his rigid
devotion, whereas Naphta with reprehensible looseness referred
truth back to mankind itself, and declared that that was truth
which advantaged man. Wasn’t it the most utter bourgeoisiedom,
the sheerest utilitarian Philistinism, to make truth depend on the
interest of mankind? It certainly could not be considered strict
objectivity, there was much more free-thinking and subjectivity
about it than Leo Naphta would admit — it was, indeed, quite as
much politics as Herr Settembrini’s didactic phrase: “ Freedom is
the law of love of one’s kind.” That, obviously, was to make free-
dom, as Naphta made truth, depend upon man, and thus was more
orthodox than liberal. But here again were distinctions that tended
to disappear in the process of definition.

Ah, this Settembrini — it was not for nothing he was a man of
letters, son of a politician and grandson of a humanist! He had lofty
ideas about emancipation and criticism — and chirruped to the
girls in the street. On the other hand, knife-edged little Naphta
was bound by the strictest sort of vows; yet in thought he was
almost a libertine, whereas the other was a very fool of virtue, in
a manner of speaking. Herr Settembrini was afraid of “ Absolute
Spirit,” and would like to see it everywhere wedded to democratic
progress; he was simply outraged at the religious licence of his
militant opponent, which would jumble up together God and the
Devil, sanctification and bad behaviour, genius and disease, and
which knew no standards of value, no rational judgment, no exer-
cise of the will. But who then was the orthodox, who the free-
thinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should
he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-
libertine state; or should he take his stand on the “ Critical-Subjec-
tive,” where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals
contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view
constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp’s civilian
responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to
keep the premisses apart from each other and clear in his mind, that
the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost
into Naphta’s “ morally chaotic All.” The confusion, the cross-
purposes, became general, and Hans Castorp suspected that the
antagonists would have been less exacerbated had not the dispute
bitten into their very souls.

They had got up meantime to the Berghof . Then the three who

SNOW

469

lived there walked back with the others as far as their door, where
they stood about in the snow for some further while, and Settem-
brini and Naphta continued to dispute. It was apparent to Hans
Castorp that their zeal was the zeal of the schoolmaster, bent on
making an impression upon his plastic mind. Herr Ferge reiterated
that it was all too much for him; while Wehsal, so soon as they
had got off the themes of torture and corporal punishment, showed
small interest. Hans Castorp stood with bent head and bur-
rowed with his stick in the snow, pondering the vasty confusion
of it all.

They broke off at last. There were no limits to the subject — but
they could not go on for ever. The three guests of the Berghof
took their way home, and the two disputants had to go into the
cottage together, the one to seek his silken cell, the other his hu-
manistic cubby-hole with the pulpit-desk and the water-bottle.
Hans Castorp betook himself to his balcony, his ears full of the
hurly-burly and the clashing of arms, as the army of Jerusalem and
that of Babylon, under the dos banderas , came on in battle array,
and met each other midst tumult and shoutings.

Snow

Daily, five times a day, the guests expressed unanimous dissatis-
faction with the kind of winter they were having. They felt it was
not what they had a right to expect of these altitudes. It failed to
deliver the renowned meteorological specific in anything like the
quantity indicated by the prospectus, quoted by old inhabitants,
or anticipated by new. There was a very great failure in the supply
of sunshine, an element so important in the cures achieved up here
that without it they were distinctly retarded. And whatever Herr
Settembrini might think of the sincerity of the patients’ desire to
finish their cure, leave “ home ” and return to the flat-land, at any
rate they insisted on their just dues. They wanted what they were
entitled to, what their parents or husbands had paid for, and they
grumbled unceasingly, at table, in lift, and in hall. The manage-
ment showed a consciousness of what it owed them by installing
a new apparatus for heliotherapy. They had two already, but these
did not suffice for the demands of those who wished to get sun-
burnt by electricity — it was so becoming to the ladies, young and
old, and made all the men, though confirmed horizontallers, look
irresistibly athletic. And the ladies, even though aware of the
mechanico-cosmetical origin of this conquering-hero air, were
foolish enough to be carried away by it. There was Frau Schon-

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470

feld, a red-haired, red-eyed patient from Berlin. In the salon she
looked thirstily at a long-legged, sunken-chested gallant, who de-
scribed himself on his visiting-card as “ Aviateur diplome et E?i-
seigne de la Marine allemande .” He was fitted out with the pneumo-
thorax and wore u smoking ” at the midday meal but not in the
evening, saying this was their custom in the navy. “ My God,”
breathed Frau Schonfeld at him, “ what a tan this demon has — he
gets it from the helio — it makes him look like a hunter of eagles! ”
“ Just wait, nixie! ” he whispered in her ear, in the lift, “ Til make
you pay for looking at me like that! ” It made goose-flesh and
shivers run over her. And along the balconies, past the glass par-
titions, the demon eagle-hunter found his way to the nixie.

But the artificial sun was far from making up for the lack of the
real one. Two or three days of full sunshine in the month — it was
not good enough, gorgeous though these were, with deep, deep
velvety blue sky behind the white mountain summits, a glitter as
of diamonds and a fine hot glow on the face and the back of the
neck, when they dawned resplendent from the prevailing thick
mantle of grey mist. Two or three such days in the course of weeks
could not satisfy people whose lot might be said to justify extraor-
dinary demands from the external world. They had made an in-
ward compact, by the terms of which they resigned the common
joys and sorrows proper to flat-land humanity, and in exchange
were made free of a life that was, to be sure, inactive, but on the
other hand very lively and diverting, and care-free to the point
of making one forget altogether the flight of time. Thus it was not
much good for the Hofrat to tell them how favourably the Berg-
hof compared with a Siberian mine or a penal settlement, nor to
sing the praises of the atmosphere, so thin and light, well-nigh as
rare as the empty universal ether, free of earthly admixture
whether good or bad, and even without actual sunshine to be pre-
ferred to the rank vapours of the plain. Despite all he could say,
the gloomy disaffection gained ground, threats of unlicensed de-
parture were the order of the day, were even put into execution,
without regard for the warning afforded by the melancholy return
of Frau Salomon to the fold, now a “ life member,” her tedious but
not serious case having taken that turn by reason of her self-willed
visit to her wet and windy Amsterdam.

But if they had no sun, they had snow. Such masses of snow as
Hans Castorp had never till now in all his life beheld. The previous
winter had done fairly well in that respect, but it had been as noth-
ing compared to this one. The snow-fall was monstrous and im-
measurable, it made one realize the extravagant, outlandish nature

SNOW

471

of the place. It snowed day in, day out, and all through the night.
The few roads kept open were like tunnels, with towering walls
of snow on either side, crystal and alabaster surfaces that were
pleasant to look at, and on which the guests scribbled all sorts of
messages, jokes and personalities. But even this path between walls
was above the level of the pavement, and made of hard-packed
snow, as one could tell by certain places where it gave way, and let
one suddenly sink in up to the knee. One might, unless one were
careful, break a leg. The benches had disappeared, except for the
high back of one emerging here and there. In the town, the street
level was so raised that the shops had become cellars, into which
one descended by steps cut in the snow.

And on all these lying masses more snow fell, day in, day out.
It fell silently, through air that was moderately cold, perhaps ten
to fifteen degrees of frost. One did not feel the cold, it might have
been much less, for the dryness and absence of wind deprived it
of sting. The mornings were very dark, breakfast was taken by the
light of the artificial moon that hung from the vaulted ceiling of
the dining-room, above the gay stencilled border. Outside was the
reeking void, the world enwrapped in grey-white cotton-wool,
packed to the window-panes in snow and mist. No sight of the
mountains; of the nearest evergreen now and again a glimpse
through the fog, standing laden, and from time to time shaking
free a bough of its heavy load, that flew into the air, and sent a
cloud of white against the grey. At ten o’clock the sun, a wan wisp
of light, came up behind its mountain, and gave the indistinguish-
able scene some shadowy hint of life, some sallow glimmer of
reality; yet even so, it retained its delicate ghostliness, its lack of
any definite line for the eye to follow. The contours of the peaks
dissolved, disappeared, were dissipated in the mist, while the vision,
led on from one pallidly gleaming slope of snow to another, lost
itself in the void. Then a single cloud, like smoke, lighted up by the
sun, might spread out before a wall of rock and hang there for
long, motionless.

At midday the sun would half break through, and show signs of
banishing the mist. In vain — yet a shred of blue would be visible,
and suffice to make the scene, in its strangely falsified contours,
sparkle marvellously far and wide. Usually, at this hour, the snow-
fall stopped, as though to have a look at what it had done; a like
effect was produced by the rare days when the storm ceased, and
the uninterrupted power of the sun sought to thaw away the pure
and lovely surface from the new-fallen masses. The sight was at
once fairylike and comic, an infantine fantasy. Tne thick light

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47 *

cushions plumped up on the boughs of trees, the humps and
mounds of snow-covered rock-cropping or undergrowth, the
droll, dwarfish, crouching disguise all ordinary objects wore, made
of the scene a landscape in gnome-land, an illustration for a fairy-
tale. Such was the immediate view — wearisome to move in,
quaintly, roguishly stimulating to the fancy. But when one looked
across the intervening space, at the towering marble statuary of the
high Alps in full snow, one felt a quite different emotion, and that
was awe of their majestic sublimity.

Afternoons between three and four, Hans Castorp lay in his bal-
cony box, well wrapped, his head against the cushion, not too high
or too low, of his excellent chair, and looked out at forest and
mountain over his thick-upholstered balustrade. The snow-laden
firs, dark-green to blackness, went marching up the sides of the
valley, and beneath them the snow lay sort like down pillows.
Above the tree line, the mountain walls reared themselves into the
grey-white air: huge surfaces of snow, with softly veiled crests,
and here and there a black jut of rock. The snow came silently
down. The scene blurred more and more, it inclined the eye,
gazing thus into woolly vacuity, to slumber. At the moment of
slipping off one might give a start — yet what sleep could be purer
than this in the icy air? It was dreamless. It was as free from the
burden — even the unconscious burden — of organic life, as little
aware of an effort to breathe this contentless, weightless, imper-
ceptible air as is the breathless sleep of the dead. When Hans Ca-
storp stirred again, the mountains would be wholly lost in a cloud
of snow; only a pinnacle, a jutting rock, might show one instant,
to be rapt away the next. It was absorbing to watch these ghostly
pranks; one needed to keep alert to follow the transmutations, the
veiling and unveiling. One moment a great space of snow-covered
rock would reveal itself, standing out bold and free, though of
base or peak naught was to be seen. But if one ceased to fix one’s
gaze upon it, it was gone, in a breath.

Then there were storms so violent as to prevent one’s sitting on
the balcony for the driven snow which blew in, in such quantity
as to cover floor and chair with a thick mantle. Yes, even in this
sheltered valley it knew how to storm. The thin air would be in a
hurly-burly, so whirling full of snow one could not see a hand’s
breadth before one’s face. Gusts strong enough to take one’s breath
away flung the snow about, drew it up cyclone-fashion from the
valley floor to the upper air, whisked it about in the maddest
dance; no longer a snow-storm, it was a blinding chaos, a white
dark, a monstrous dereliction on the part of this inordinate and

snow 473

violent region; no living creature save the snow-bunting — which
suddenly appeared in troops — could flourish in it.

And yet Hans Castorp loved this snowy world. He found it not
unlike life at the sea-shore. The monotony of the scene was in both
cases profound. The snow, so deep, so light, so dry and spotless,
was the sand of down below. One was as clean as the other: you
could shake the snow from boots and clothing, just as you could
the fine-ground, dustless stone and shell, product of the sea’s depth
— neither left trace behind. And walking in the snow was as toil-
some as on the dunes; unless, indeed, a crust had come upon it, by
dint of thawing and freezing, when the going became easy and
pleasant, like marching along the smooth, hard, wet, resilient strip
of sand close to the edge of the sea.

But the storms and high-piled drifts of this year gave pedes-
trians small chance. They were favourable only for skiing. The
snow-plough, labouring its best, barely kept free the main street
of the settlement and the most indispensable paths. Thus the few
short feasible stretches were always crowded with other walkers,
ill and well: the native, the permanent guest, and the hotel popula-
tion; and these in their turn were bumped by the sleds as they
swung and swerved down the slopes, steered by men and women
who leaned far back as they came on, and shouted importunately,
being obsessed by the importance of their occupation. Once at the
bottom they would turn and trundle their toy sledges uphill again.

Hans Castorp was thoroughly sick of all the walks. He had two
desires: one of them, the stronger, was to be alone with his thoughts
and his stock-taking projects; and this his balcony assured to him.
But the other, allied unto it, was a lively craving to come into close
and freer touch with the mountains, the mountains in their snowy
desolation; toward them he was irresistibly drawn. Yet how could
he, all unprovided and foot bound as he was, hope to gratify such
a desire? He had only to step beyond the end of the shovelled
paths — an end sdon reached upon any of them — to plunge breast-
high in the snowy element.

Thus it was Hans Castorp, on a day in his second winter with
those up here, resolved to buy himself skis and learn to walk on
them, enough, that is, for his purposes. He was no sportsman, had
never been physically inclined to sport; and did not behave as
though he were, as did many guests of the cure, dressing up to suit
the mode and the spirit of the place. Hermine Kleefeld, for in-
stance, among other females, though she was constantly blue in
the face from lack of breath, loved to appear at luncheon in tweed
knickers, and loll about after the meal in a basket-chair in the hall.

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474

with her legs sprawled out. Hans Castorp knew that he would meet
with a refusal were he to ask the Hofrat to countenance his plan.
Sports activities were unconditionally forbidden at the Berghof
as in all other establishments of the kind. This atmosphere, which
one seemed to breathe in so effortlessly, was a severe strain on the
heart, and as for Hans Castorp personally, his lively comment on
his own state, that “ the getting used to being up here consisted in
getting used to not getting used,” had continued in force. His fever,
which Rhadamanthus ascribed to a moist spot, remained obstinate.
Why else indeed should he be here? His desire, his present purpose
was then clearly inconsistent and inadmissible. Yet we must be at
the pains to understand him aright. He had no wish to imitate the
fresh-air faddists and smart pseudo-sportsmen, who would have
been equally eager to sit all day and play cards in a stuffy room,
if only that had been interdicted by authority. He felt himself a
member of another and closer community than this small tourist
world; a new and a broader point of view, a dignity and restraint
set him apart and made him conscious that it would be unfitting
for him to emulate their rough-and-tumble in the snow. He had no
escapade in view, his plans were so moderate that Rhadamanthus
himself, had he known, might well have approved them. But the
rules stood in the way, and Hans Castorp resolved to act behind his
back.

He took occasion to speak to Herr Settembrini of his plan —
who for sheer joy could have embraced him. “ Si, si, si! Do so, do
so, Engineer, do so with the blessing of God! Ask after nobody’s
leave, but simply do it! Ah, your good angel must have whispered
you the thought! Do it straightway, before the impulse leaves you.
I’ll go along, I’ll go to the shop with you, and together we will
acquire the instruments of this happy inspiration. I would go with
you even into the mountains, I would be by your side, on winged
feet, like Mercury’s — but that I may not. May not! If that were
all, how soon would I do it! That I cannot is the truth, I am a
broken man. — But you — it will do you no harm, none at all, if
you are sensible and do nothing rash. Even — even if it did you
harm — just a little harm — it will still have been your good angel
roused you to it. I say no more. Ah, what an unsurpassable plan!
Two years up here, and still capable of such projects — ah, yes,
your heart is sound, no need to despair of you. Bravo, bravo! By all
means pull the wool over the eyes of your Prince of Shadows! Buy
the snow-shoes, have them sent to me or Luka?ek, or the chandler
below-stairs. You fetch them from here to go and practise, you go
off on them — ”

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475

So it befell. Under Herr Settembrini’s critical eye — he played
the connoisseur, though innocent of sports — Hans Castorp ac-
quired a pair of oaken skis, finished a light-brown, with tapering,
pointed ends and the best quality of straps. He bought the iron-
shod staff with the little wheel, as well, and was not content to
have his purchases sent, but carried them on his shoulder to Set-
tembrini’s quarters, where he arranged with the grocer to take
care of them for him. He had looked on enough at the sport to
know the use of his tools; and choosing for his practice-ground an
almost treeless slope not far behind the sanatorium, remote from
the hubbub of the spot where other beginners learned the art, he
began daily to make his first blundering attempts, watched by
Herr Settembrini, who would stand at a little distance, leaning on
his cane, with legs gracefully crossed, and greet his nursling’s
progress with applause. One day Hans Castorp, steering down the
cleared drive toward the Dorf, in act to take the skis back to the
grocer’s, ran into the Hofrat. Behrens never recognized him,
though it was broad day, and our beginner had well-nigh collided
with him. Shrouded in a haze of tobacco-smoke, he stalked past
regardless.

Hans Castorp found that one quickly gets readiness in an art
where strong desire comes in play. He was not ambitious for ex-
pert skill, and all he needed he acquired in a few days, without
undue strain on wind or muscles. He learned to. keep his feet tidily
together and make parallel tracks; to avail himself of his stick in
getting off; he learned how to take obstacles, such as small eleva-
tions of the ground, with a slight soaring motion, arms outspread,
rising and falling like a ship on a billowy sea; learned, after the
twentieth trial, not to trip and roll over when he braked at full
speed, with the right Telemark turn, one leg forward, the other
bent at the knee. Gradually he widened the sphere of his activities.
One day it came to pass that Herr Settembrini saw him vanish in
the far white mist; the Italian shouted a warning through cupped
hands, and turned homewards, his pedagogic soul well-pleased.

It was beautiful here in these wintry heights: not mildly and
ingratiatingly beautiful, more as the North Sea is beautiful in a
westerly gale. There was no thunder of surf, a deathly stillness
reigned, but roused similar feelings of awe. Hans Castorp’s long,
pliant soles carried him in all directions: along the left slope to
Clavadel, on the right to Frauenkirch and Glaris, whence he could
see the shadowy massif of the Amselfluh, ghostlike in the mist; into
the Dischma valley, or up behind the Berghof in the direction of
the wooded Seehorn, only the top of which, snow-covered, rose

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476

above the tree line, or the Drusatscha forest, with the pale outline
of the Rhatikon looming behind it, smothered in snow. He took his
skis and went up on the funicular to the Schatzalp; there, rapt six
thousand feet above the sea, he revelled at will on the gleaming
slopes of powdery snow — whence, in good weather, there was a
view of majestic extent over all the surrounding territory.

He rejoiced in his new resource, before which all difficulties and
hindrances to movement fell away. It gave him the utter solitude
he craved, and filled his soul with impressions of the wild inhu-
manity, the precariousness of this region into which he had ven-
tured. On his one hand he might have a precipitous, pine-clad
declivity, falling away into the mists; on the other sheer rock might
rise, with masses of snow, in monstrous, Cyclopean forms, all
domed and vaulted, swelling or cavernous. He would halt for a
moment, to quench the sound of his own movement, when the
silence about him would be absolute, complete, a wadded sound-
lessness, as it were, elsewhere all unknown. There was no stir of
air, not so much as might even lightly sway the tree-boughs; there
was not a rustle, nor the voice of a bird. It was primeval silence to
which Hans Castorp hearkened, when he leaned thus on his staff,
his head on one side, his mouth open. And always it snowed,
snowed without pause, endlessly, gently, soundlessly falling.

No, this world of limitless silences had nothing hospitable; it re-
ceived the visitor at his own risk, or rather it scarcely even received
him, it tolerated his penetration into its fastnesses, in a manner that
boded no good; it made him aware of the menace of the elemental,
a menace not even hostile, but impersonally deadly. The child of
civilization, remote from birth from wild nature and all her ways,
is more susceptible to her grandeur than is her untutored son who
has looked at her and lived close to her from childhood up, on
terms of prosaic familiarity. The latter scarcely knows the religious
awe with which the other regards her, that awe which conditions
all his feeling for her, and is present, a constant, solemn thrill, in the
profoundest depth of his soul. Hans Castorp, standing there in his
puttees and long-sleeved camel’s-hair waistcoat, on his skis de
luxe , suddenly seemed to himself exceedingly presumptuous, to be
thus listening to the primeval hush, the deathlike silence of these
wintry fastnesses. He felt his breast lightened when, on his way
home, the first chalets, the first abodes of human beings, loomed
visible through the fog. Only then did he become aware that he
had been for hours possessed by a secret awe and terror. On the
island of Sylt he had stood by the edge of the thundering surf. In
his white flannels, elegant, self-assured, but most respectful, he had

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477

stood there as one stands before a lion’s cage and looks deep into
the yawning jaws of the beast, lined with murderous fangs. He had
bathed in the surf, and heeded the blast of the coast-guard’s horn,
warning all and sundry not to venture rashly beyond the first line
of billows, not to approach too nearly the oncoming tempest —
the very last impulse of whose cataract, indeed, struck upon him
like a blow from a lion’s paw. From that experience our young
man had learned the fearful pleasure of toying with forces so great
that to approach them nearly is destruction. What he had not then
felt was the temptation to come closer, to carry the thrilling con-
tact with these deadly natural forces up to a point where the full
embrace was imminent. Weak human being that he was — though
tolerably well equipped with the weapons of civilization — what he
at this moment knew was the fascination of venturing just so far
into the monstrous unknown, or at least abstaining just so long
from flight before it, that the adventure grazed the perilous, that
it was just barely possible to put limits to it, before it became no
longer a matter of toying with the foam and playfully dodging the
ruthless paw — but the ultimate adventure, the billow, the lion’s
jaws, and the sea.

In a word, Hans Castorp was valorous up here — if by valour we
mean not mere dull matter-of-factness in the face of nature, but
conscious submission to her, the fear of death cast out by irresist-
ible oneness. Yes, in his narrow, hypercivilized breast, Hans Ca-
storp cherished a feeling of kinship with the elements, connected
with the new sense of superiority he had lately felt at sight of the
silly people on their little sleds; it had made him feel that a pro-
founder, more spacious, less luxurious solitude than that afforded
by his balcony chair would be beyond all price. He had sat there
and looked abroad, at those mist- wreathed summits, at the carnival
of snow, and blushed to be gaping thus from the breastwork of
material well-being. This motive, and no momentary fad — no, nor
yet any native love of bodily exertion — was what impelled him
to learn the use of skis. If it was uncanny up there in the magnifi-
cence of the mountains, in the deathly silence of the snows — and
uncanny it assuredly was, to our son of civilization — this was
equally true, that in these months and years he had already drunk
deep of the uncanny, in spirit and in sense. Even a colloquy with
Naphta and Settembrini was not precisely the canniest thing in
the world, it too led one on into uncharted and perilous regions.
So if we can speak of Hans Castorp ’s feeling of kinship with the
wild powers of the winter heights, it is in this sense, that despite
his pious awe he felt these scenes to be a fitting theatre for the issue

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478

of his involved thoughts, a fitting stage for one to make who,
scarcely knowing how, found it had devolved upon him to take
stock of himself, in reference to the rank and status of the Homo
Dei .

No one was here to blow a warning to the rash one — unless,
indeed, Herr Settembrini, with his farewell shout at Hans Castorp’s
disappearing back, had been that man. But possessed by valorous
desire, our youth had given the call no heed — as little as he had
the steps behind him on a certain carnival night. cc Eh y Ingegnere ,
un po ’ di ragioTie , saf ” “ Yes, yes, pedagogic Satana, with your
ragione and your ribellione” he thought. “ But I’m rather fond of
you. You are a wind-bag and a hand-organ man, to be sure. But
you mean well, you mean much better, and more to my mind, than
that knife-edged little Jesuit and Terrorist, apologist of the Inqui-
sition and the knout, with his round eye-glasses — though he is
nearly always right when you and he come to grips over my paltry
soul, like God and the Devil in the mediaeval legends.”

He struggled, one day, powdered in snow to the waist, up a suc-
cession of snow-shrouded terraces, up and up, he knew not whither.
Nowhither, perhaps; these upper regions blended with a sky no
less misty-white than they, and where the two came together, it
was hard to tell. No summit, no ridge was visible, it was a haze and
a nothing, toward which Hans Castorp strove; while behind him
the world, the inhabited valley, fell away swiftly from view, and
no sound mounted to his ears. In a twinkling he was as solitary, he
was as lost as heart could wish, his loneliness was profound enough
to awake the fear which is the first stage of valour. “ Pr<eterit
figura Indus rmmdi” he said to himself, quoting Naphta, in a Latin
hardly humanistic in spirit. He stopped and looked about. On all
sides there was nothing to see, beyond small single flakes of snow,
which came out of a white sky and sank to rest on the white earth.
The silence about him refused to say aught to his spirit. His gaze
was lost in the blind white void, he felt his heart pulse from the
effort of the climb — that muscular organ whose animal-like shape
and contracting motion he had watched, with a feeling of sacri-
lege, in the x-ray laboratory. A naive reverence filled him for that
organ of his, for the pulsating human heart, up here alone in the
icy void, alone with its question and its riddle.

On he pressed; higher and higher toward the sky. Walking, he
thrust the end of his stick in the snow and watched the blue Tight
follow it out of the hole it made. That he liked; and stood for long
at a time to test the little optical phenomenon. It was a strange, a
subtle colour, this greenish-blue; colour of the heights and deeps,

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479

ice-clear, yet holding shadow in its depths, mysteriously exquisite.
It reminded him of the colour of certain eyes, whose shape and
glance had spelled his destiny; eyes to which Herr Settembrini,
from his humanistic height, had referred with contempt as “ Tartar
slits ” and “ wolfs eyes ” — eyes seen long ago and then found
again, the eyes of Fribislav Hippe and Clavdia Chauchat. “ With
pleasure,” he said aloud, in the profound stillness. “ But don’t break
it — c'est a visser , tu sais Ana his spirit heard behind him words
of warning in a mellifluous tongue.

A wood loomed, misty, far off to the right. He turned that way,
to the end of having some goal before his eyes, instead of sheer
white transcendence; and made toward it with a dash, not re-
marking an intervening depression of the ground. He could not
have seen it, in fact; everything swam before his eyes in the white
mist, obliterating all contours. When he perceived it, he gave him-
self to the decline, unable to measure its steepness with his eye.

The grove that had attracted him lay the other side of the gully
into which he had unintentionally steered. The trough, covered
with fluffy snow, fell away on the side next the mountains, as he
observed when he pursued it a little distance. It went downhill, the
steep sides grew higher, this fold of the earth’s surface seemed like
a narrow passage leading into the mountain. Then the points of his
skis turned up again, there began an incline, soon there were no
more side walls; Hans Castorp’s trackless course ran once more
uphill along the mountain-side.

He saw the pine grove behind and below him, on his right,
turned again toward it, and with a quick descent reached the laden
trees; they stood in a wedge-shaped group, a vanguard thrust out
from the mist-screened forests above. He rested beneath their
boughs, and smoked a cigarette. The unnatural stillness, the mon-
strous solitude, still oppressed his spirit; yet he felt proud to have
conquered them, brave in the pride of having measured to the
height of surroundings such as these.

It was three in the afternoon. He had set out soon after lunch-
eon, with the idea of cutting part of the long rest-cure, and tea
as well, in order to be back before dark. He had brought some
chocolate in his breeches pocket, and a small flask of wine; and
told himself exultantly that he had still several hours to revel in
all this grandeur.

The position of the sun was hard to recognize, veiled as it was
in haze. Behind him, at the mouth of the valley, above that part of
the mountains that was shut off from view, the clouds and mist
seemed to thicken and move forward. They looked like snow —

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480

more snow — as though there were pressing demand for it! Like
a good hard storm. Indeed, the little soundless flakes were coming
down more quickly as he stood.

Hans Castorp put out his arm and let some of them come to rest
on his sleeve; he viewed them with the knowing eye of the nature-
lover. They looked mere shapeless morsels; but he had more than
once had their like under his good lens, and was aware of the ex-
quisite precision of form displayed by these little jewels, insignia,
orders, agraffes — no jeweller, however skilled, could do finer,
more minute work. Yes, he thought, there was a difference, after
all, between this light, soft, white powder he trod with his skis,
that weighed down the trees, and covered the open spaces, a dif-
ference between it and the sand on the beaches at home, to which
he had likened it. For this powder was not made of tiny grains of
stone; but of myriads of tiniest drops of water, which in freezing
had darted together in symmetrical variation — parts, then, of the
same anorganic substance which was the source of protoplasm, of
plant life, of the human body. And among these myriads of en-
chanting little stars, in their hidden splendour that was too small
for man’s naked eye to see, there was not one like unto another;
an endless inventiveness governed the development and unthink-
able differentiation of one and the same basic scheme, the equilat-
eral, equiangled hexagon. Yet each, in itself — this was the uncanny,
the anti-organic, the life-denying character of them all — each of
them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form. They were
too regular, as substance adapted to life never was to this degree —
the living principle shuddered at this perfect precision, found it
deathly, the very marrow of death — Hans Castorp felt he under-
stood now the reason why the builders of antiquity purposely and
secretly introduced minute variation from absolute symmetry in
their columnar structures.

He pushed off again, shuffling through the deep snow on his
flexible runners, along the edge of the wood, down the slope, up
again at random, to his heart’s content, about and into this lifeless
land. Its empty, rolling spaces, its dried vegetation of single dwarf
firs sticking up through the snow, bore a striking resemblance to a
scene on the dunes. Hans Castorp nodded as he stood and fixed the
likeness in his mind. Even his burning face, his trembling limbs, the

f peculiar and half-intoxicated mingled sensations of excitement and
atigue were pleasurable, reminding him as they did of that familiar
feeling induced by the sea air, which could sting one like whips,
and yet was so laden with sleepy essences. He rejoiced in his free-
dom of motion, his feet were like wings. He was bound to no path,

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none lay behind him to take him back whence he had come. At
first there had been posts, staves set up as guides through the snow
— but he had soon cut free from their tutelage, which recalled the
coastguard with his horn, and seemed inconsistent with the atti-
tude he had taken up toward the wild.

He pressed on, turning right and left among rocky, snow-clad
elevations, and came behind them on an incline, then a level spot,
then on the mountains themselves — how alluring and accessible
seemed their softly covered gorges and defiles! His blood leaped
at the strong allurement of the distance and the height, the ever
profounder solitude. At risk of a late return he pressed on, deeper
into the wild silence, the monstrous and the menacing, despite that
gathering darkness was sinking down over the region like a veil,
and heightening his inner apprehension until it presently passed
into actual fear. It was this fear which first made him conscious
that he had deliberately set out to lose his way and the direction in
which valley and settlement lay — and had been as successful as
heart could wish. Yet he knew that if he were to turn in his tracks
and go downhill, he would reach the valley bottom — even if some
distance from the Berghof — and that sooner than he had planned.
He would come home too early, not have made full use of his time.
On the other hand, if he were overtaken unawares by the storm,
he would probably in any case not find his way home. But how-
ever genuine his fear of the elements, he refused to take prema-
ture flight; his being scarcely the sportman’s attitude, who only
meddles with the elements so long as he knows himself their mas-
ter, takes all precautions, and prudently yields when he must —
whereas what went on in Hans Castorp’s soul can only be described
by the one word challenge. It was perhaps a blameworthy, pre-
sumptuous attitude, even united to such genuine awe. Yet this
much is clear, to any human understanding: that when a young
man has lived years long in the way this one had, something may
gather — may accumulate, as our engineer might put it — in the
depths of his soul, until one day it suddenly discharges itself, with
a primitive exclamation of disgust, a mental “ Oh, go to the devil! ”
a repudiation of all caution whatsoever, in short with a challenge.
So on he went, in his seven-league slippers, glided down this slope
too and pressed up the incline beyond, where stood a wooden hut
that might be a nayrick or shepherd’s shelter, its roof weighted
with flat stones. On past this to the nearest mountain ridge, bristling
with forest, behind whose back the giant peaks towered upward in
the mist. The wall before him, studded with single groups of trees,
was steep, but looked as though one might wind to the right and

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482

get round it by climbing a little way up the slope. Once on the
other side, he could see what lay beyond. Accordingly Hans Ca-
storp set out on this tour of investigation, which began by descend-
ing from the meadow with the hut into another and rather deep
gully that dropped off from right to left.

He had just begun to mount again when the expected happened,
and the storm burst, the storm that had threatened so long. Or may
one say “ threatened ” of the action of blind, nonsentient forces,
which have no purpose to destroy us — that would be comforting
by comparison — but are merely horribly indifferent to our fate
should we become involved with them? “ Hullo! ” Hans Castorp
thought, and stood still, as the first blast whirled through the
densely falling snow and caught him. “ That’s a gentle zephyr —
tells you what’s coming.” And truly this wind was savage. The air
was in reality frightfully cold, probably some degrees below zero;
but so long as it remained dry and still one almost found it balmy.
It was when a wind came up that the cold began to cut into the
flesh; and in a wind like the one that blew now, of which that first
gust had been a forerunner, the furs were not bought that could

f protect the limbs from its icy rigours. And Hans Castorp wore no
ur, only a woollen waistcoat, which he had found quite enough,
or even, with the faintest gleam of sunshine, a burden. But the wind
was at his back, a little sidewise; there was small inducement to turn
and receive it in the face; so the mad youth, letting that fact rein-
force the fundamental challenge of his attitude, pressed on among
the single tree-trunks, and tried to outflank the mountain he had
attacked.

It was no joke. There was almost nothing to be seen for swim-
ming snow-flakes, that seemed without falling to fill the air to
suffocation by their whirling dance. The icy gusts made his ears
bum painfully, his limbs felt half paralysed, his hands were so
numb he hardly knew if they held the staff. The snow blew in-
side his collar and melted down his back. It drifted on his shoulders
and right side; he thought he should freeze as he stood into a snow-
man, with his staff stiff in his hands. And all this under relatively
favouring circumstances; for let him turn his face to the storm
and his situation would be still worse. Getting home would be no
easy task — the harder, the longer he put it off.

At last he stopped, gave an angry shrug, and turned his skis the
other way. Then the wind he faced took his breath on the spot,
so that he was forced to go through the awkward process of turn-
ing round again to get it back, and collect his resolution to ad-
vance in the teeth of his ruthless foe. With bent head and cautious

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483

breathing he managed to get under way; but even thus fore-
armed, the slowness of his progress and the difficulty of seeing
and breathing dismayed him. Every few minutes he had to stop,
first to get his breath in the lee of the wind, and then because he
saw next to nothing in the blinding whiteness, and moving as he
did with head down, had to take care not to run against trees, or be
flung headlong by unevennesses in the ground. Hosts of flakes flew
into his face, melted there, and he anguished with the cold of them.
They flew into his mouth, and died away with a weak, watery
taste; flew against his eyelids so that he winked, overflowed his eyes
and made seeing as difficult as it was now almost impossible for
other reasons: namely, the dazzling effect of all that whiteness,
and the veiling of his field of vision, so that his sense of sight was
almost put out of action. It was nothingness, white, whirling noth-
ingness, into which he looked when he forced himself to do so.
Only at intervals did ghostly-seeming forms from the world of
reality loom up before him: a stunted fir, a group of pines, even the
pale silhouette of the hay-hut he had lately passed.

He left it behind, and sought his way back over the slope on
which it stood. But there was no path. To keep direction, relatively
speaking, into his own valley would be a question far more of luck
than management; for while he could see his hand before his face,
he could not see the ends of his skis. And even with better visi-
bility, the host of difficulties must have combined to hinder his
progress: the snow in his face, his adversary the storm, which
hampered his breathing, made him fight both to take a breath and
to exhale it, and constantly forced him to turn his head away to
gasp. How could anyone — either Hans Castorp or another and
much stronger than he — make head? He stopped, he blinked his
lashes free of water drops, knocked off the snow that like a coat of
mail was sheathing his body in front — and it struck him that
progress, under the circumstances, was more than anyone could
expect.

And yet Hans Castorp did progress. That is to say, he moved on.
But whether in the right direction, whether it might not have been
better to stand still, remained to be seen. Theoretically the chances
were against it; and in practice he soon began to suspect some-
thing was wrong. This was not familiar ground beneath his feet,
not the easy slope he had gained on mounting with such difficulty
from the ravine, which had of course to be retraversed. The level
distance was too short, he was already mounting again. It was plain
that the storm, which came from the south-west, from the mouth
of the valley, had with its violence driven him from his course. He

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484

had been exhausting himself, all this time, with a false start. Blindly,
enveloped in white, whirling night, he laboured deeper and deeper
into this grim and callous sphere.

“No, you don’t,” said he, suddenly, between his teeth, and
halted. The words were not emotional, yet he felt for a second
as though his heart had been clutched by an icy hand; it winced,
and then knocked rapidly against his ribs, as it had the time Rhada-
manthus found the moist cavity. Pathos in the grand manner was
not in place, he knew, in one who had chosen defiance as his role,
and was indebted to himself alone for all his present plight. “ Not
bad,” he said, and discovered that his facial muscles were not his
to command, that he could not express in his face any of his soul’s
emotions, for that it was stiff with cold. “ What next? Down this
slope; follow your nose home, I suppose, and keep your face to the
wind — though that is a good deal easier said than done,” he went
on, panting with his efforts, yet actually speaking half aloud, as
he tried to move on again: “ but something has to happen, I can’t
sit down and wait, I should simply be buried in six-sided crystal-
line symmetricality, and Settembrini, when he came with his little
horn to find me, would see me squatting here with a snow-cap over
one ear.” He realized that he was talking to himself, and not too
sensibly — for which he took himself to task, and then continued
on purpose, though his lips were so stiff he could not shape the
labials, and so did without them, as he had on a certain other occa-
sion that came to his mind. “ Keep quiet, and get along with you
out of here,” he admonished himself, adding: “ You seem to be
wool-gathering, not quite right in your head, and that looks bad
for you.”

But this he only said with his reason — to some extent detached
from the rest of him, though after all nearly concerned. As for his
natural part, it felt only too much inclined to yield to the confusion
which laid hold upon him with his growing fatigue. He even re-
marked this tendency and took thought to comment upon it,
“ Here,” said he, “ we have the typical reaction of a man who loses
himself in the mountains in a snow-storm and never finds his way
home.” He gasped out other fragments of the same thought as he
went, though he avoided giving it more specific expression. “ Who-
ever hears about it afterwards, imagines it as horrible; but he for-
gets that disease — and the state I am in is, in a way of speaking,
disease — so adjusts its man that it and he can come to terms; there
are sensory appeasements, short circuits, a merciful narcosis — yes,
oh yes, yes. But one must fight against them, after all, for they are
two-faced, they are in the highest degree equivocal, everything

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485

depends upon the point of view. If you are not meant to get home,
they are a benefaction, they are merciful; but if you mean to get
home, they become sinister. I believe I still do. Certainly I don’t
intend — in this heart of mine so stormily beating it doesn’t appeal
to me in the least — to let myself be snowed under by this idi-
otically symmetrical crystallometry.”

In truth, he was already affected, and his struggle against on-
coming sensory confusion was feverish and abnormal. He should
have been more alarmed on discovering that he had already de-
clined from the level course — this time apparently on the other
slope. For he had pushed off with the wind coming slantwise at
him, which was ill-advised, though more convenient for the mo-
ment. “ Never mind,” he thought, “ I’ll get my direction again
down below.” Which he did, or thought he did — or, truth to tell,
scarcely even thought so; worst of all, began to be indifferent
whether he had done or no. Such was the effect of an insidious
double attack, which he but weakly combated. Fatigue and ex-
citement combined were a familiar state to our young man —
whose acclimatization, as we know, still consisted in getting used
to not getting used; and both fatigue and excitement were now
present in such strength as to make impossible any thought of
asserting his reason against them. He felt as often after a colloquy
with Settembrini and Naphta, only to a far greater degree: dazed
and tipsy, giddy, a-tremble with excitement. This was probably
why he began to colour his lack of resistance to the stealing nar-
cosis with half-maudlin references to the latest-aired complex
of theories. Despite his scornful repudiation of the idea that he
might lie down and be covered up with hexagonal symmetricality,
something within him maundered on, sense or no sense: told him
that the feeling of duty which bade him fight against insidious
sensory appeasements was a purely ethical reaction, representing
the sordid bourgeois view of life, irreligion, Philistinism; while
the desire, nay, craving, to lie down and rest, whispered him in the
guise of a comparison between this storm and a sand-storm on the
desert, before which the Arab flings himself down and draws his
burnous over his head. Only his lack of a burnous, the unfeasi-
bility of drawing his woollen waistcoat over his head, prevented
him from following suit — this although he was no longer a child,
and pretty well aware of the conditions under which a man freezes
to death.

There had been a rather steep declivity, then level ground,
then again an ascent, a stiff one. This was not necessarily wrong;
one must of course, on the way to the valley, traverse rising ground

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486

at times. The wind had turned capriciously round, for it was now
at Hans Castorp’s back, and that, taken by itself, was a blessing.
Owing, perhaps, to the storm, or the soft whiteness of the incline
before him, dim in the whirling air, drawing him toward it, he bent
as he walked. Only a little further — supposing one were to give
way to the temptation, and his temptation was great; it was so
strong that it quite lived up to the many descriptions he had read
of the “ typical danger-state.” It asserted itself, it refused to be
classified with the general order of things, it insisted on being
an exception, its very exigence challenged comparison — yet at
the same time it never disguised its origin or aura, never denied
that it was, so to speak, garbed in Spanish black, with snow-
white, fluted ruff, and stood for ideas and fundamental concep-
tions that were characteristically gloomy, strongly Jesuitical and
anti-human, for the rack-and-knout discipline which was the par-
ticular horror of Herr Settembrini, though he never opposed it
without making himself ridiculous, like a hand-organ man for ever
grinding out “ ragione ” to the same old tune.

And yet Hans Castorp did hold himself upright and resist his
craving to lie down. He could see nothing, but he struggled, he
came forward. Whether to the purpose or not, he could not tell;
but he did his part, and moved on despite the weight the cold
more and more laid upon his limbs. The present slope was too
steep to ascend directly, so he slanted a little, and went on thus
awhile without much heed whither. Even to lift his stiffened lids
to peer before him was so great and so nearly useless an effort
as to offer him small incentive. He merely caught glimpses: here
clumps of pines that merged together; there a ditch or stream,
a black line marked out between overhanging banks of snow.
Now, for a change, he was going downhill, with the wind in his
face, when, at some distance before him, and seeming to hang
in the driving wind and mist, he saw the faint outline of a human
habitation.

Ah, sweet and blessed sight! Verily he had done well, to march
stoutly on despite all obstacles, until now human dwellings ap-
peared, in sign that the inhabited valley was at hand. Perhaps there
were even human beings, perhaps he might enter and abide the
end of the storm under shelter, then get directions, or a guide if
the dark should have fallen. He held toward this chimerical goal,
that often quite vanished in mist, and took an exhausting climb
against the wind before it was reached; finally drew near it — to
discover, with what staggering astonishment and horror may be
imagined, that it was only the hay-hut with the weighted roof,

SNOW 487

to which, after all his striving, by all his devious paths, he had
come back.

That was the very devil. Hans Castorp gave vent to several
heart-felt curses — of which his lips were too stiff to pronounce
the labials. He examined the hut, to get his bearings, and came
to the conclusion that he had approached it from the same direc-
tion as before — namely, from the rear; and therefore, what he
had accomplished for the past hour — as he reckoned it — had
been sheer waste of time and effort. But there it was, just as the
books said. You went in a circle, gave yourself endless trouble
under the delusion that you were accomplishing something, and
all the time you were simply describing some great silly arc that
would turn back to where it had its beginning, like the riddling
year itself. You wandered about, without getting home. Hans
Castorp recognized the traditional phenomenon with a certain
grim satisfaction — and even slapped his thigh in astonishment at
this punctual general law fulfilling itself in his particular case.

The lonely hut was barred, the door locked fast, no entrance
possible. But Hans Castorp decided to stop for the present. The
projecting roof gave the illusion of shelter, and the hut itself,
on the side turned toward the mountains, afforded, he found,
some little protection against the storm. He leaned his shoulder
against the rough-hewn timber, since his long skis prevented him
from leaning his back. And so he stood, obliquely to the wall, hav-
ing thrust his staff in the snow; hands in pockets, his collar turned
up as high as it would go, bracing himself on his outside leg, and
leaning his dizzy head against the wood, his eyes closed, but open*
ing them every now and then to look down his shoulder and
across the gully to where the high mountain wall palely appeared
and disappeared in mist.

His situation was comparatively comfortable. “ I can stick it
like this all night, if I have to,” he thought, “ if I change legs from
time to time, lie on the other side, so to speak, and move about a
bit between whiles, as of course I must. I’m rather stiff, naturally,
but the effort I made has accumulated some inner warmth, so after
all it was not quite in vain, that I have come round all this way.
Come round — not coming round — that’s the regular expression
they use, of people drowned or frozen to death. — I suppose I used
it because I am not quite so clear in the head as I might be. But it
is a good thing I can stick it out here; for this frantic nuisance of
a snow-storm can carry on until morning without a qualm, and
if it only keeps up until dark it will be quite bad enough, for in
the dark the danger of going round and round and not coming

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488

round is as great as in a storm. It must be toward evening already,
about six o’clock, I should say, after all the time I wasted on my
circular tour. Let’s see, how late is it? ” He felt for his watch; his
numbed fingers could scarcely find and draw it from his pocket.
Here it was, his gold hunting-watch, with his monogram on the
lid, ticking faithfully away in this lonely waste, like Hans Ca-
storp’s own heart, that touching human heart that beat in the
organic warmth of his interior man.

It was half past four. But deuce take it, it had been nearly as
much before the storm burst. Was it possible his whole bewil-
dered circuit had lasted scarcely a quarter of an hour? “ ‘ Coming
round ’ makes time seem long,” he noted. “ And when you don't
‘ come round ’ — does it seem longer? But the fact remains that at
five or half past it will be regularly dark. Will the storm hold up
in time to keep me from running in circles again? Suppose I take
a sip of port — it might strengthen me.”

He had brought with him a bottle of that amateurish drink,
simply because it was always kept ready in flat bottles at the
Berghof, for excursions — though not, of course, excursions like
this unlawful escapade. It was not meant for people who went
out in the snow and got lost and night-bound in the mountains.
Had his senses been less befogged, he must have said to himself
that if he were bent on getting home, it was almost the worst
thing he could have done. He did say so, after he had drunk several
swallows, for they took effect at once, and it was an effect much
like that of the Kulmbacher beer on the evening of his arrival at
the Berghof, when he had angered Settembrini by his ungoverned
prattle anent fish-sauces and the like — Herr Ludovico, the peda-
gogue, the same who held madmen to their senses when they would
give themselves rein. Hans Castorp heard through thin air the
mellifluous sound of his horn; the orator and schoolmaster was
nearing by forced marches, to rescue his troublesome nursling,
life’s delicate child, from his present desperate pass and lead him
home. — All which was of course sheer rubbish, due to the Kulm-
bacher he had so foolishly drunk. For of course Herr Settembrini
had no horn, how could he have? He had a hand-organ, propped
by a sort of wooden leg against the pavement, and as he played a
sprightly air, he flung his humanistic eyes up to the people in the
houses. And furthermore he knew nothing whatever of what had
happened, as he no longer lived in House Berghof, but with
Lukagek the tailor, in his little attic room with the water-bottle,
above Naphta’s silken cell. Moreover, he would have nor right nor

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489

reason to interfere — no more than upon that carnival night on
which Hans Castorp had found himself in a position quite as mad
and bad as this one, when he gave the ailing Clavdia Chauchat
back son crayon — his, Pribislav Hippe’s, pencil. What position
was that? What position could it be but the horizontal, literally
and not metaphorically the position of all long-termers up here?
Was not he himself used to lie long hours out of doors, in snow and
frost, by night as well as day? And he was making ready to sink
down when the idea seized him, took him as it were by the col-
lar and fetched him up standing, that all this nonsense he was
uttering was still inspired by the Kulmbacher beer and the im-
personal, quite typical and traditional longing to lie down and
sleep, of which he had always heard, and which would by quib-
bling and sophistry now betray him.

“ That was the wrong way to go to work,” he acknowledged to
himself. “ The port was not at all the right thing; just the few
sips of it have made my head so heavy I cannot hold it up, and
my thoughts are all just confused, stupid quibbling with words.
I can’t depend on them — not only the first thought that comes
into my head, but even the second one, the correction which my
reason tries to make upon the first — more’s the pity. ‘ Son crayon! ’
That means her pencil, not his pencil, in this case; you only say son
because crayon is masculine. The rest is just a pretty feeble play
on words. Imagine stopping to talk about that when there is a
much more important fact; namely, that my left leg, which I am
using as a support, reminds me of the wooden leg on Settembrini’s
hand-organ, that he keeps jolting over the pavement with his
knee, to get up close to the window and hold out his velvet hat
for the girl up there to throw something into. And at the same
time, I seem to be pulled, as though with hands, to lie down in the
snow. The only thing to do is to move about. I must pay for the
Kulmbacher, and limber up my wooden leg.”

He pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulder. But
one single pace forward, and the wind sliced at him like a scythe,
and drove him back to the shelter of the wall. It was unques-
tionably the position indicated for the time; he might change it
by turning his left shoulder to the wall and propping himself on
the right leg, with sundry shakings of the left, to restore the cir-
culation as much as might be. “ Who leaves the house in weather
like this? ” he said. “ Moderate activity is all right; but not too
much craving for adventure, no coying with the bride of the
storm. Quiet, quiet — if the head be heavy, let it droop. The wall

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

is good, a certain warmth seems to come from the logs — proba-
bly the feeling is entirely subjective. — Ah, the trees, the trees!
Oh, living climate of the living — how sweet it smells! ”

It was a park. It lay beneath the terrace on which he seemed
to stand — a spreading park of luxuriant green shade-trees, elms,
planes, beeches, birches, oaks, all in the dappled light and shade
of their fresh, full, shimmering foliage, and gently rustling tips.
They breathed a deliciously moist, balsamic breath into the air.
A warm shower passed over them, but the rain was sunlit. One
could see high up in the sky the whole air filled with the bright
ripple of raindrops. How lovely it was! Oh, breath of the home-
land, oh, fragrance and abundance of the plain, so long foregone!
The air was full of bird song — dainty, sweet, blithe fluting.

piping, twittering, cooing, trilling, warbling, though not a single
little creature could be seen. Hans Castorp smiled, breathing grati-
tude. But still more beauties were preparing. A rainbow flung its
arc slanting across the scene, most bright and perfect, a sheer
delight, all its rich glossy, banded colours moistly shimmering
down into the thick, lustrous green. It was like music, like the
sound of harps commingled with flutes and violins. The blue and
the violet were transcendent. And they descended and magically
blended, were transmuted and re-unfolded more lovely than be-
fore. Once, some years earlier, our young Hans Castorp had been

E rivileged to hear a world-famous Italian tenor, from whose throat
ad gushed a glorious stream to witch the world with gracious art.
The singer took a high note, exquisitely; then held it, while the
passionate harmony swelled, unfolded, glowed from moment to
moment with new radiance. Unsuspected veils dropped from be-
fore it one by one; the last one sank away, revealing what must
surely be the ultimate tonal purity — yet no, for still another fell,
and then a well-nigh incredible third and last, shaking into the
air such an extravagance of tear-glistening splendour, that con-
fused murmurs of protest rose from the audience, as though it
could bear no more; and our young friend found that he was
sobbing. — So now with the scene before him, constantly trans-
formed and transfigured as it was before his eyes. The bright,
rainy veil fell away; behind it stretched the sea, a southern sea
of deep, deepest blue shot with silver lights, and a beautiful bay,
on one side mistily open, on the other enclosed by mountains
whose outline paled away into blue space. In the middle distance
lay islands, where palms rose tall and small white houses gleamed
among cypress groves. Ah, it was all too much, too blest for
sinful mortals, that glory of light, that deep purity of the sky, that

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491

sunny freshness on the water! Such a scene Hans Castorp had never
beheld, nor anything like it. On his holidays he had barely sipped
at the south, the sea for him meant the colourless, tempestuous
northern tides, to which he clung with inarticulate, childish love.
Of the Mediterranean, Naples, Sicily, he knew nothing. And yet
— he remembered . Yes, strangely enough, that was recognition
which so moved him. “ Yes, yes, its very image,” he was crying
out, as though in his heart he had always cherished a picture of this
spacious, sunny bliss. Always — and that always went far, far,
unthinkably far back, as far as the open sea there on the left where
it ran out to the violet sky bent down to meet it.

The sky-line was high, the distance seemed to mount to Hans
Castorp’s view, looking down as he did from his elevation onto
the spreading gulf beneath. The mountains held it embraced, their
tree-clad foot-hills running down to the sea; they reached in
half-circle from the middle distance to the point where he sat,
and beyond. This was a mountainous littoral, at one point of which
he was crouching upon a sun-warmed stone terrace, while be-
fore him the ground, descending among undergrowth, by moss-
covered rocky steps, ran down to a level shore, where the reedy
shingle formed little blue-dyed bays, minute archipelagoes and
harbours. And all the sunny region, these open coastal heights and
laughing rocky basins, even the sea itself out to the islands, where
boats plied to and fro, was peopled far and wide. On every hand
human beings, children of sun and sea, were stirring or sitting.
Beautiful young human creatures, so blithe, so good and gay, so
pleasing to see — at sight of them Hans Castorp’s whole heart
opened in a responsive love, keen almost to pain.

Youths were at work with horses, running hand on halter
alongside their whinnying, head-tossing charges; pulling the re-
fractory ones on a long rein, or else, seated bareback, striking
the flanks of their mounts with naked heels, to drive them into the
sea. The muscles of the riders’ backs played beneath the sun-
bronzed skin, and their voices were enchanting beyond words
as they shouted to each other or to their steeds. A little bay ran
deep into the coast line, mirroring the shore as does a moun-
tain lake; about it girls were dancing. One of them sat with her
back toward him, so that her neck, and the hair drawn to a knot
above it smote him with loveliness. She sat with her feet in a
depression of the rock, and played on a shepherd’s pipe, her eyes
roving above the stops to her companions, as in long, wide gar-
ments, smiling, with outstretched arms, alone, or in pairs sway-
ing gently toward each other, they moved in the paces of the

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492

dance. Behind the flute-player — she too was white-clad, and her
back was long and slender, laterally rounded by the movement
of her arms — other maidens were sitting, or standing entwined
to watch the dance, and quietly talking. Beyond them still, young
men were practising archery. Lovely and pleasant it was to see
the older ones show the younger, curly-locked novices, how
to span the bow and take aim; draw with them, and laughing
support them staggering back from the push of the arrow as it
leaped from the bow. Others were fishing, lying prone on a jut
of rock, waggling one leg in the air, holding the line out over
the water, approaching their heads in talk. Others sat straining
forward to fling the bait far out. A ship, with mast and yards,
lying high out of the tide, was being eased, shoved, and steadied
into the sea. Children played and exulted among the breaking
waves. A young female, lying outstretched, drawing with one
hand her flowered robe high between her breasts, reached with
the other in the air after a twig bearing fruit and leaves, which
a second, a slender-hipped creature, erect at her head, was play-
fully withholding. Young folk were sitting in nooks of the
rocks, or hesitating at the water’s edge, with crossed arms clutch-
ing either shoulder, as they tested the chill with their toes. Pairs
strolled along the beach, close and confiding, at the maiden’s ear
the lips of the youth. Shaggy-haired goats leaped from ledge to
ledge of the rocks, while the young goatherd, wearing perched
on his brown curls a little hat with the brim turned up behind,
stood watching them from a height, one hand on his hip, the other
holding the long staff on which he leaned.

“ Oh, lovely, lovely,” Hans Castorp breathed. “ How joyous
and winning they are, how fresh and healthy, happy and clever
they look! It is not alone the outward form, they seem to be wise
and gentle through and through. That is what makes me in love
with them, the spirit that speaks out of them, the sense, I might
almost say, in which they live and play together.” By which he
meant the friendliness, the mutual courteous regard these chil-
dren of the sun showed to each other, a calm, reciprocal rever-
ence veiled in smiles, manifested almost imperceptibly, and yet
possessing them all by the power of sense association and in-
grained idea. A dignity, even a gravity, was held, as it were, in
solution in their lightest mood, perceptible only as an ineffable
spiritual influence, a high seriousness without austerity, a rea-
soned goodness conditioning every act. All this, indeed, was not
without its ceremonial side. A young mother, in a brown robe
loose at the shoulder, sat on a rounded mossy stone and suckled

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493

her child, saluted by all who passed with a characteristic gesture
which seemed to comprehend all that lay implicit in their general
bearing. The young men, as they approached, lightly and formally
crossed their arms on their breasts, and smilingly bowed; the
maidens shaped the suggestion of a curtsy, as the worshipper does
when he passes the high altar, at the same time nodding repeatedly,
blithely and heartily. This mixture of formal homage with lively
friendliness, and the slow, mild mien of the mother as well, where
she sat pressing her breast with her forefinger to ease the flow of
milk to her babe, glancing up from it to acknowledge with a smile
the reverence paid her — this sight thrilled Hans Castorp’s heart
with something very close akin to ecstasy. He could not get his
fill of looking, yet asked himself in concern whether he had a
right, whether it was not perhaps punishable, for him, an out-
sider, to be a party to the sunshine and gracious loveliness of all
these happy folk. He felt common, clumsy-booted. It seemed un-
scrupulous.

A lovely boy, with full hair drawn sideways across his brow
and falling on his temples, sat directly beneath him, apart from
his companions, with arms folded on his breast — not sadly, not
ill-naturedly, quite tranquilly on one side. This lad looked up,
turned his gaze upward and looked at him, Hans Castorp, and
his eyes went between the watcher and the scenes upon the
strand, watching his watching, to and fro. But suddenly he looked
past Hans Castorp into space, and that smile, common to them
all, of polite and brotherly regard, disappeared in a moment from
his lovely, purely cut, half-childish face. His brows did not darken,
but in his gaze there came a solemnity that looked as though
carven out of stone, inexpressive, unfathomable, a deathlike re-
serve, which gave the scarcely reassured Hans Castorp a thorough
fright, not unaccompanied by a vague apprehension or its meaning.

He too looked in the same direction. Behind him rose tower-
ing columns, built of cylindrical blocks without bases, in the
joinings of which moss had grown. They formed the fagade of
a temple gate, on whose foundations he was sitting, at the top of
a double flight of steps with space between. Heavy of heart he
rose, and, descending the stair on one side, passed through the
high gate below, and along a flagged street, which soon brought
him before other propylaea. He passed through these as well, and
now stood facing the temple that lay before him, massy, weathered
to a grey-green tone, on a foundation reached by a steep flight of
steps. The broad brow of the temple rested on the capitals of
powerful, almost stunted columns, tapering toward the top —

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494

sometimes a fluted block had been shoved out of line and projected
a little in profile. Painfully, helping himself on with his hands,
and sighing for the growing oppression of his heart, Hans Ca-
storp mounted the high steps and gained the grove of columns.
It was very deep, he moved in it as among the trunks in a forest
of beeches by the pale northern sea. He purposely avoided the
centre, yet for all that slanted back again, and presently stood
before a group of statuary, two female figures carved in stone, on
a high base: mother and daughter, it seemed; one of them sitting,
older than the other, more dignified, right goddesslike and mild,
yet with mourning brows above the lightless empty eye-sockets;
clad in a flowing tunic and a mantle of many folds, her matronly
brow with its waves of hair covered with a veil. The other figure
stood in the protecting embrace of the first, with round, youthful
face, and arms and hands wound and hidden in the folds of the
mantle.

Hans Castorp stood looking at the group, and from some dark
cause his laden heart grew heavier still, and more oppressed with
its weight of dread and anguish. Scarcely daring to venture, but
following an inner compulsion, he passed behind the statuary,
and through the double row of columns beyond. The bronze door
of the sanctuary stood open, and the poor soul’s knees all but gave
way beneath him at the sight within. Two grey old women,
witchlike, with hanging breasts and dugs of finger-length, were
busy there, between flaming braziers, most horribly. They were
dismembering a child. In dreadful silence they tore it apart with
their bare hands — Hans Castorp saw the bright hair blood-
smeared — and cracked the tender bones between their jaws, their
dreadful lips dripped blood. An icy coldness held him. He would
have covered his eyes and fled, but could not. They at their gory
business had already seen him, they shook their reeking fists and
uttered curses — soundlessly, most vilely, with the last obscenity,
and in the dialect of Hans Castorp’s native Hamburg. It made him
sick, sick as never before. He tried desperately to escape; knocked
into a column with his shoulder — and found himself, with the
sound of that dreadful whispered brawling still in his ears, still
wrapped in the cold horror of it, lying by his hut, in the snow,
leaning against one arm, with his head upon it, his legs in their
skis stretched out before him.

It was no true awakening. He blinked his relief at being free
from those execrable hags, but was not very clear, nor even
greatly concerned, whether this was a hay-hut, or the column of
a temple, against which he lay; and after a fashion continued to

snow 495

dream, no longer in pictures, but in thoughts hardly less involved
and fantastic.

“ I felt it was a dream, all along,” he rambled. “ A lovely and
horrible dream. I knew all the time that I was making it myself —
the park with the trees, the delicious moisture in the air, and
all the rest, both dreadful and dear. In a way, I knew it all be-
forehand. But how is it a man can know all that and call it up to
bring him bliss and terror both at once? Where did I get the
beautiful bay with the islands, where the temple precincts,
whither the eyes of that charming boy pointed me, as he stood
there alone? Now I know that it is not out of our single souls
we dream. We dream anonymously and communally, if each
after his fashion. The great soul of which we are a part may dream
through us, in our manner of dreaming, its own secret dreams,
of its youth, its hope, its joy and peace — and its blood-sacrifice.
Here I lie at my column and still feel in my body the actual rem-
nant of my dream — the icy horror of the human sacrifice, but
also the joy that had filled my heart to its very depths, born
of the happiness and brave bearing of those human creatures in
white. It is meet and proper, Thereby declare that I have a
prescriptive right to lie here and dream these dreams. For in
my life up here I have known reason and recklessness. I have
wandered lost with Settembrini and Naphta in high and mortal
places. I know all of man. I have known mankind’s flesh and
blood. I gave back to the ailing Clavdia Chauchat Pribislav Hippe’s
lead-pencil. But he who knows the body, life, knows death. And
that is not all; it is, pedagogically speaking, only the beginning.
One must have the other half of the story, the other side. For
all interest in disease and death is only another expression of
interest in life, as is proven by the humanistic faculty of medi-
cine, that addresses life and its ails always so politely in Latin,
and is only a division of the great and pressing concern which,
in all sympathy, I now name by its name: the human being, the
delicate child of life, man, his state and standing in the universe.
I understand no little about him, I have learned much from ‘ those
up here,’ I have been driven up from the valley, so that the breath
almost left my poor body. Yet now from the base of my column
I have no meagre view. I have dreamed of man’s state, of his
courteous and enlightened social state; behind which, in the tem-
ple, the horrible blood-sacrifice was consummated. Were they,
those children of the sun, so sweetly courteous to each other, in
silent recognition of that horror? It would be a fine and righjt
conclusion they drew. I will hold to them, in my soul, I will

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496

hold with them and not with Naphta, neither with Settembrini.
They are both talkers; the one luxurious and spiteful, the other
for ever blowing on his penny pipe of reason, even vainly imagin-
ing he can bring the mad to their senses. It is all Philistinism and
morality, most certainly it is irreligious. Nor am I for little Naphta
either, or his religion, that is only a guazzabuglio of God ana the
Devil, good and evil, to the end that the individual soul shall plump
into it head first, for the sake of mystic immersion in the universal.
Pedagogues both! Their quarrels and counter-positions are just
a guazzabuglio too, and a confused noise of battle, which need
trouble nobody who keeps a little clear in his head and pious in his
heart. Their aristocratic question! Disease, health! Spirit, nature!
Are those contradictions? I ask, are they problems? No, they are
no problems, neither is the problem of their aristocracy. The reck-
lessness of death is in life, it would not be life without it — and in
the centre is the position of the Homo Dei , between recklessness
and reason, as his state is between mystic community and windy
individualism. I, from my column, perceive all this. In this state
he must live gallantly, associate in friendly reverence with himself,
for only he is aristocratic, and the counter-positions are not at all.
Man is the lord of counter-positions, they can be only through
him, and thus he is more aristocratic than they. More so than death,
too aristocratic for death — that is the freedom of his mind. More
aristocratic than life, too aristocratic for life, and that is the piety
in his heart. There is both rhyme and reason in what I say, I have
made a dream poem of humanity. I will cling to it. I will be good.
I will let death have no mastery over my thoughts. For therein lies
goodness and love of humankind, and in nothing else. Death is
a great power. One takes off one’s hat before him, and goes weav-
ingly on tiptoe. He wears the stately ruff of the departed and
we do him honour in solemn black. Reason stands simple before
him, for reason is only virtue, while death is release, immensity,
abandon, desire. Desire, says my dream. Lust, not love. Death and
love — no, I cannot make a poem of them, they don’t go together.
Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger
than death. Only love, not reason, gives sweet thoughts. And from
love and sweetness alone can form come: form and civilization,
friendly, enlightened, beautiful human intercourse — always in
silent recognition of the blood-sacrifice. Ah, yes, it is well and
truty dreamed. I have taken stock. I will remember. I will keep
faith with death in my heart, yet well remember that faith with
death and the dead is evil, is hostile to humankind, so soon as we
give it power over thought and action. For the sake of goodness

SNOW

497

and love , man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts .
— And with this — I awake. For I have dreamed it out to the end,
I have come to my goal. Long, long have I sought after this word,
in the place where Hippe appeared to me, in my loggia, every-
where. Deep into the snow mountains my search has led me. Now
I have it fast. My dream has given it me, in utter clearness, that
I may know it for ever. Yes, I am in simple raptures, my body is
warm, my heart beats high and knows why. It beats not solely on
physical grounds, as finger-nails grow on a corpse; but humanly,
on grounds of my joyful spirits. My dream word was a draught,
better than port or ale, it streams through my veins like love and
life, I tear myself from my dream and sleep, knowing as I do,
perfectly well, that they are highly dangerous to my young life.
Up, up! Open your eyes! These are your limbs, your legs here in
the snow! Pull yourself together, and up! Look — fair weather! ”
The bonds held fast that kept his limbs involved. He had a hard
struggle to free himself — but the inner compulsion proved
stronger. With a jerk he raised himself on his elbows, briskly drew
up his knees, shoved, rolled, wrestled to his feet; stamped with his
skis in the snow, flung his arms about his ribs and worked his
shoulders violently, all the while casting strained, alert glances
about him and above, where now a pale blue sky showed itself
between grey-bluish clouds, and these presently drew away to
discover a thin sickle of a moon. Early twilight reigned: no snow-
fall, no storm. The wall of the opposite mountain with its shaggy,
tree-clad ridge stretched out before him plain and peaceful.
Shadow lay on half its height, but the upper half was bathed in
palest rosy light. How were things in the world? Was it morning?
Had he, despite what the books said, lain all night in the snow and
not frozen? Not a member was frost-bitten, nothing snapped
when he stamped, shook and struck himself, as he did vigorously,
all the time seeking to establish the facts of his situation. Ears,
toes, finger-tips, were of course numb, but not more so than they
had often been at night in his loggia. He could take his watch from
his pocket — it was still going, it had not stopped, as it did if
he forgot to wind it. It said not yet five — it was in fact con-
siderably earlier, twelve, thirteen minutes. Preposterous! Could
it be he had lain here in the snow only ten minutes or so, while
all these scenes of horror and delight and those presumptuous
thoughts had spun themselves in his brain, and the hexagonal
hurly vanished as it came? If that were true, then he must be
grateful for his good fortune; that is, from the point of view of a
safe home-coming. For twice such a turn had come, in his dream

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498

and fantasy, as had made him start up — once from horror, and
again for rapture. It seemed, indeed, that life meant well by her
lone-wandering delicate child.

Be all that as it might, and whether it was morning or after-
noon — there could in fact be no doubt that it was still late after-
noon — in any case, there was nothing in the circumstances or in
his own condition to prevent his going home, which he accord-
ingly did: descending in a fine sweep, as the crow flies, to the
valley, where, as he reached it, lights were showing, though his
way had been well enough lighted by reflection from the snow.
He came down ‘the Brehmenbiihl, along the edge of the forest,
and was in the Dorf by half past five. He left his skis at the grocer’s,
rested a little in Herr Settembrini’s attic cell, and told him how
the storm had overtaken him in the mountains. The horrified
humanist scolded him roundly, and straightway lighted his
spirit-kettle to brew coffee for the exhausted one — the strength
of which did not prevent Hans Castorp from falling asleep as
he sat.

An hour later the highly civilized atmosphere of the Berghof
caressed him. He ate enormously at dinner. What he had dreamed
was already fading from his mind. What he had thought — even
that selfsame evening it was no longer so clear as it had been at
first.

A Soldier , and Brave

Hans Castorp had had frequent word from his cousin, short
messages, at first full of good news and high spirits, then less
so, then at length communications that sought to hide something
truly sad to hear. The succession of postcards began with the
joyous announcement that Joachim was with the colours, and a
description of the fanatical ceremony in which, as Hans Castorp
ironically couched it in his reply, he had taken the vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience. One after another Joachim
passed easily through the stages of his chosen vocation, whose
difficulties were smoothed away by the interest of his superiors
and his own passionate love for the service. All this he described
to his cousin in his brief messages. He was dispensed from the duty
of going to the military academy, as he had already studied some
semesters, and from the cornetcy. By the New Year he would be
promoted to a subaltemship — and sent a photograph of himself in
the uniform of an officer. His utter devotion to tne spirit of the
hierarchy he served, that straitly honourable hierarchy, the bonds

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 499

of whose organization were like iron, and which yet in its crab-
bedly humorous way knew how to yield something to the weak-
ness of the flesh, was plain in every hasty line. He related anecdotes
illustrating the quaintly complex attitude of his cranky, fanatical
sergeant-major toward him, the blundering young subordinate,
in whom he yet envisaged the ordained superior of to-morrow,
who already had the right to enter the officers’ casino. It was all
very fantastic and droll. Then he told of being admitted to pre-
pare for the officers’ examination. By the beginning of April he
was a lieutenant.

Manifestly there was no happier man, none with more single-
minded devotion of his whole being to the chosen career. With
a sort of shamefaced beatitude he told of going past the Rathaus
for the first time, in full uniform, how the sentry had saluted, and
he nodded to him from a distance. He spoke of the small vexations
and rewards of the service, of the wonderfully satisfying com-
radeship, of the sheepish loyalty of his Bursch, of funny occur-
rences on the parade-ground and in instruction; of inspection, of
love-feasts. Also he occasionally mentioned social affairs, visits,
dinners, balls. Not a word of his health.

Until toward summer. Then he wrote that he was in bed, on
sick-leave, a catarrh, a matter of a few days. By the beginning of
June he was back. But at the middle of the month he had crocked
up again, and complained bitterly of his luck. He could not con-
ceal his worry lest he should miss the August general manoeuvres,
toward which he was already eagerly looking. Rubbish! in July
he was as sound as a berry, weeks long. But then an examination,
made advisable by his accursed fluctuations of temperature, sud-
denly appeared on the horizon. As to the result of this examina-
tion, Hans Castorp for long weeks heard nothing; and when he
heard, perhaps out of mortification, perhaps because of his physical
state, it was not Joachim who wrote. His mother, Louisa Ziemssen,
telegraphed. She said the physicians thought it necessary for Joa-
chim to go on sick-leave for some weeks: high mountains indicated
immediate departure advised reserve two rooms reply prepaid
signed Aunt Louisa.

It was at the end of July when Hans Castorp, lying in his bal-
cony, ran through this dispatch, then read it, and read it again. He
nodded as he did so, not with his head but with his whole torso,
and said between his teeth: “ Si, si, ff,” like Herr Settembrini. “ Joa-
chim is coming back! ” ran through him like tidings of great joy.
But he grew subdued at once, on the thought “ H’m, this is bad
news! One might almost call it a mess. The deuce! That went fast.

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500

Ripe for ‘ home ’ again. The mother coming with him ” — Hans
Castorp said the mother, not Aunt Louisa, his family feeling having
grown unconsciously very faded. “ That is serious. And directly
before the manoeuvres he has been so on fire to go to. H’m, it’s
certainly a skin game, it’s playing it low down on poor Joachim,
it’s the very opposite of the ideal. By which I mean that the body
triumphs, it wants something different from the soul, and puts it
through — a slap in the face of all those lofty-minded people who
teach that the body is subordinate to the soul. Seems to me they
don’t know what they are talking about, because if they were right,
a case like this would put the soul in a pretty equivocal light. Ver -
bum sap . — I know what I mean. The question I raise is how far
they are right when they set the two over against each other; and
whether they aren’t rather in collusion, playing the same game.
That’s something that never occurs to the lofty-minded gentry.
Not that I am for a moment saying-anything against Joachim and
his ‘ doggedness.’ He is the soul of honour — but what is honour,
is what I want to know, when body and soul act together? Is it
possible you have not been able to forget a certain refreshing per-
fume, a tendency to giggle, a swelling bosom, all waiting for you
at Frau Stohr’s table? — He is coming back! ” he returned to the
thought with the same joyous sensation. “ He comes in bad shape,
it is true, but we shall be together again, I shan’t live up here all by
myself. And that’s a good thing. It won’t be quite as it was before,
his room is taken. That Mrs. Macdonald sits there and coughs, a
voiceless sort of cough, and keeps looking at the picture of her
little son, on her table or in her hand. But she is at the last stage. If
nobody else has engaged it, why — but for the present it must be
another one. Twenty-eight is free, so far as I know. I’ll go down to
the office — and to Behrens too. This is news. On the one hand it is
bad news, on the other grand news — and in any case a change.
I’d like to wait for the 4 Comrade ’ though, he’ll be coming along
presently, and just ask him if he is still of the opinion, in a case like
this, that the physical is to be regarded as secondary.”

He went to the office before tea. The room he had in mind, on
the same corridor as his own, was free, and there would be a place
for Frau Ziemssen. He hastened to Behrens, and found him in the
“ lab,” a cigar in one hand, and in the other a test-tube of dull-
coloured fluid.

“ Herr Hof rat, what do you think? ” he began.

“ That there’s always the devil to pay,” responded the pneu-
motomist. “ Here we have Rosenheim, from Utrecht,” said he, and
waved his cigar at the test-tube. “ Gaffky ten. And Schmitz the

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 501

manufacturer comes along and tells me he’s been spitting on the

C avement — with Gaffky ten, if you please. I’m supposed to blow
im up. Well, if I blow him up, it will be the deuce and all, because
he’s as touchy as a bear with a sore head} and he and his family
occupy three rooms in the establishment. If I give him what for,
the management gives me the same — pressed down and running
over.. You see what kind of trouble I get into every minute — and
me so anxious to go my own simple way, unspotted from the
world.”

“ Silly business,” Hans Castorp said, with the ready understand-
ing of the old inhabitant. “ I know’ them both. Schmitz is im-
mensely proper and pushful, and Rosenheim is plenty smeary. But
there may be other sore spots, besides the hygienic. They are both
friendly with Dona Perez from Barcelona, at the Kleefeld’s table
— that’s the basic trouble, I should think. If I were you I’d just call
attention to the rule in general, and then shut my eye to the rest.”

“ Don’t I just? I’ve got functional blepharospasm already from
doing nothing else. But what are you about down here? ”

Hans Castorp came out with the sad yet thrilling news.

Not that the Hofrat was surprised, nor would have been in any
case. But he had also been kept informed of Joachim’s progress;
Hans Castorp told him, whether asked or unasked, and he knew
that Joachim had been in bed in May.

“ Aha,” said he. “ And what did I tell you? What did I tell both
of you, not once but a hundred times, in so many words? So now
you have it. Nine months he’s had his heart’s desire, and been liv-
ing in a fool’s paradise. Well, it wasn’t a snakeless paradise — it was
infected, more’s the pity. But he wouldn’t believe what his little
ole Behrens told him, and so he’s had bad luck, like the rest of them,
when they don’t believe what their little ole Behrens says, and
come too late to their senses. He’s got as far as lieutenant, anyhow,
there’s that to say. But what’s the use of it? The good Lord sees
your heart, not the braid on your jacket, before Him we are all in
our birthday suits, generals and common men alike. . . .” He ram-
bled on, rubbed his eyes with his huge hands, still holding the cigar
between his fingers; then he said Hans Castorp must excuse him
for this time. A berth for Joachim would of course be found, when
he came his cousin should stick him into bed, without delay. So
far as he, Behrens, was concerned he bore nobody any grudge, he
would be ready to welcome home the prodigal and like a fond
parent kill the fatted calf.

Hans Castorp telegraphed. He spread the news of his cousin’s
return, and all those who had been the young man’s friends were

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502

glad and sorry and both quite sincerely; for his clean and chival-
rous personality had been universally approved, and there was a
sort of unspoken feeling that Joachim had been the best of the lot
up here. We mention no one in particular; but incline to think that
in some quarters a certain satisfaction was felt in the knowledge
that Joachim must give up the soldier’s career and return to the
horizontal, and in all his immaculateness become one of them up
here again. Frau Stohr, of course, had had her ideas all along; time
had now justified the rather unfeeling hints she threw out when
Joachim went down, and she was not above saying I told you so.
“ Pretty rotten,” she called it. She had known it for that from the
first, and only hoped that Ziemssen by his pigheadedness had not
made it putrid. Her choice of words was conditioned by sheer in-
nate vulgarity. How much better it was to stop at one’s post, as she
did; she too had her life down below, in Cannstadt, a husband and
two children, but she could contain herself. . . . No reply came
to the telegram. Hans Castorp remained in ignorance of the hour
or day of his cousin’s coming, and thus could not receive him at the
station when, three days later, he and his mother simply arrived.
Lieutenant Joachim, laughing and excited, burst upon his cousin
in the evening rest-cure.

It had just begun. The same train brought them as had Hans
Castorp, when years ago, years that had been neither long nor
short, out timeless, very eventful yet ‘ the sum of nothing,’ he had
first come to this place. The time of year was the same too — one
of the very first days of August. Joachim, as we said, went gaily
into Hans Castorp’s room, or rather out of it into the loggia, with
a rapid tread, and laughing, breathless, incoherent, greeted his
cousin. He had put all that long way behind him, those miles of
territory and that lake that was like a sea, and then wound high
up the narrow passes — and there he stood, as though he had never
been away. His cousin started up from the horizontal and greeted
him with a shout and “ Well, well, well! ” His colour was fresh,
thanks to his open-air life, or perhaps to the flush of travel. He had
hurried directly to his cousin’s room without going first to his
own, in order to greet his old-time companion, while his mother
was putting herself to rights in the chamber assigned her. They
were to eat in ten minutes, of course in the restaurant. Hans Ca-
storp could surely have a little something more with them, or at
least take a glass of wine. And Joachim pulled him over to number
twenty-eight, where the scene was reminiscent of that long-ago
evening when Hans Castorp arrived. Now it was Joachim, who,
feverishly talking, washed up at the shining wash-hand-basin,

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 503

while Hans Castorp looked on, surprised and in a way disappointed
to see his cousin in mufti. He had always pictured him as an officer;
but here he was in grey “ uni,” looking like everybody else. Joa-
chim laughed, and said he was naive. He had left his uniform at
home, of course. It was not such a simple matter with a uniform
— you couldn’t wear it just any place. “ Oh, thanks awfully,” said
Hans Castorp. But Joachim seemed unaware of any offence in his
own remark and went on, asking about matters and things in the
Berghof, not only without the least touch of condescension, but
even rather moved by the home-coming. Then Frau Ziemssen ap-
peared through the door connecting their two rooms, and greeted
her nephew in a way some people have on these occasions; namely,
as though pleasurably surprised to find him here. She spoke with
subdued melancholy, in part caused by fatigue, in part with refer-
ence to Joachim’s state — and they went down to dinner.

Louisa Ziemssen had the same gentle and beautiful dark eyes
as Joachim. Her hair, that was quite as black, but mingled now
with many threads of grey, was confined by a nearly invisible net;
an arrangement characteristic of the mild and measured com-
posure of her personality, which was simple, and at the same time
dignified and pleasing. Hans Castorp felt no surprise to see that
she was puzzled, even a little put out, by Joachim’s liveliness, his
rapid breathing and headlong talk, which were probably foreign to
his manner either at home or on the journey, besides giving the lie
to his actual condition. For herself she was impressed with the
sadness of this return, and would have found a subdued bearing
more suitable. How could she enter into Joachim’s turbulent emo-
tions, due in part to the sensation that he was come home, which
for the moment outweighed all else, and in part to the stimulus
of the incomparably light, empty, yet kindling air he was once
more breathing? All that was totally dark to her. “ My poor lad,”
she thought, as she watched him and his cousin abandoned to mirth,
telling each other a hundred anecdotes, asking each other a hundred
questions, throwing themselves back in their chairs with peals of
laughter. “ Children, children! ” she protested more than once;
and finally levelled a mild reproof at behaviour which might rather
have gladdened her heart: “ Why, Joachim, I have not seen you
like this for many a long day. It seems as though you needed to
come back here to be as you were on the day of your promotion.”
No more was needed to quench Joachim’s lively mood. He turned
completely round, fell silent and ate none of the sweet, though it
was most toothsome, a chocolate souffle with whipped cream.
Hans Castorp did what he could in his cousin’s stead, though his

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504

own hearty dinner was only an hour behind him. Joachim looked
up no more — obviously because his eyes were full of tears.

Such a result was as far as possible from Frau Ziemssen’s inten-
tion. It was really more for decorum’s sake that she had tried to
introduce a little sobriety into the mood of her son, not realizing
that precisely the middle course, the golden mean, was impossible
up here, and only a choice of extremes offered. When she saw him
break down, she seemed not far from tears herself, and most grate-
ful to her nephew for his gallant efforts to redress the balance of
the situation. Yes, he said, Joachim would find there had been
changes in the population of the Berghof, there were new people,
but on the other hand, some that had gone away were come back
again. For instance, the great-aunt and her charges sat once more
at Frau Stohr’s table, and Marusja laughed as much as ever.

Joachim said nothing. But Frau Ziemssen was thereby reminded
that they had chanced to meet someone who sent greetings, which
she must deliver while she thought of it. It was in a restaurant in
Munich, where they had spent a day between two night journeys.
A lady — a not unsympathetic person, though unaccompanied, and
with rather too level brows — had come up to their table to greet
Joachim. She had been a patient up here, Joachim would know —

“ Frau Chauchat,” Joachim said, in a low voice. She was spend-
ing some time in a cure in the Allgau, and intended to go to Spain
in the winter. She sent greetings.

Hans Castorp was no raw youth, he had control over the nerves
that might have made the blood rush to or leave his face. He said:
“ Oh, so she has emerged from behind the Caucasus again, has she?
And she is going to Spain? ”

The lady had mentioned a place in the Pyrenees. A pretty, or at
least a charming woman. Pleasant voice, pretty gestures. But free
manners, slack, Frau Ziemssen thought. “ She spoke to us as though
we were old friends, told about herself, asked questions, though
it seems Joachim had never actually known her. I thought it rather
odd.”

“That is the East — and the illness,” replied Hans Castorp.
“ One mustn’t try to measure her by humanistic standards.” He
thought he remembered that she had intended to make a journey
into Spain. H’m, Spain. That country too lay remote from the
humanistic mean, though on the side of austerity rather than of
softness. There it was not lack but excess of form that obtained;
death itself was in the guise of form, not dissolution — black, re-
fined, sanguinary, Inquisition, stiff ruff, Loyola, the Escurial, et
cetera — h’m, yes, it was interesting; he wondered what Frau

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 505

Chauchat would say to Spain. She’d probably get over banging
doors — and perhaps a combination of the two extremes would
bring her closer to the humane mean. Yet something pretty awful,
terroristic, might come to pass if the East went to Spain. . . .

No, he neither paled nor flushed; but the impression the news
had made upon him betrayed itself none the less; on such talk as
this nothing but perplexed silence could supervene. Joachim, of
course, was less taken aback than his mother, being acquainted
from aforetime with his cousin’s mental volatility up here. But
a great perturbation showed in Frau Ziemssen’s eyes, as though
her nephew had uttered some gross impropriety; and after a pain-
ful pause she broke up the gathering by rising from table, with a
phrase or so intended to gloze over the situation. Before they
separated, Hans Castorp told them that Behrens’s order was for
Joachim to remain in bed at least on the morrow, or until he had
come to examine him. The rest would be decided later. Soon the
three relatives lay each in his room, with the door open to the
freshness of the summer night in this altitude, and each with his
thoughts: Hans Castorp ’s were chiefly concerned with Frau Chau-
chat’s return, to be expected within six months’ time.

So this was young Joachim’s home-coming — for a little after-
cure. That way of putting it had obviously been the one given out
down below, and it passed current here too, even Hofrat Behrens
taking it up, though the first thing he did was to sentence Joachim
to four weeks in the “ caboose ” by way of repairing the most
obvious damage, acclimatizing him anew, and putting his house in
order as far as temperature was concerned. He was careful to avoid
setting any limit for the “ after-cure.” Frau Ziemssen, sensible,
discerning, never very sanguine save at Joachim’s bedside, men-
tioned the autumn, perhaps October, as the terminus, and Behrens
acquiesced, at least to the extent of saying that anyhow they would
be further on then than they were now. Frau Ziemssen liked him
immensely. His bearing toward her was courtly; he called her “ my
dearest lady,” looking deferentially down upon her with his blood-
shot eyes; and he talked such extravagant corps-student jargon
that despite her depression she always had to laugh. “ I know he is
in the best of hands,” she said; and after a week’s stay went back
to Hamburg, as Joachim had no need of care, and his cousin was
always with him.

“ Set your heart at rest,” Hans Castorp said to Joachim, sitting
by his bed in number twenty-eight. “ You’ll get off by the autumn,
the old ’un has more or less committed himself to that. You can
look forward to it as a terminus — October. In that month some

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506

people go to Spain, and you can go back to your bander a , to dis-
tinguish yourself ex super erogatione. . .

It became his daily task to console his cousin for the disappoint-
ment of missing the manoeuvres, which were beginning in these
August days. Joachim could think of nothing else, and expressed
the greatest self-contempt at this cursed slackness that had come
over him in the last minute.

“ Rebellio carnis” Hans Castorp said. “ What can you do about
it? The bravest officer can do nothing — even St. Anthony had his
little experiences. Good Lord, don’t the manoeuvres come every
year — and surely you know how time flies up here. You haven’t
been gone long enough not to get back into step quite easily, and
before you can turn round your little after-cure will be over.”

But the refreshment of his sense of time, caused by Joachim’s
stay in the valley, had been so considerable that he could not help
looking forward with dread to the next four weeks. Everybody,
it is true, did his best to make time light for him; the sympathy
felt on all hands for the clean personality of the young officer
expressed itself in many visits. Settembrini came, was very affec-
tionate and charming, and called Joachim Capitano , instead of
Lieutenant as before. Naphta too visited him, and all the old ac-
quaintances in the house availed themselves of a free quarter-hour
to sit by his bed, repeat the phrase about the little after-cure, and
hear his news. The ladies were Stohr, Levi, litis and Kleefeld, the
gentlemen Ferge, Wehsal, and others. They even brought him
flowers. When the four weeks were up he left his bed, the fever
being so far brought under control that it would not harm him to
move about. He began taking his meals in the dining-room, at his
cousin’s table, sitting between him and the brewer’s wife, Frau
Magnus, opposite Herr Magnus, the place that had once been
Uncle James’s, and for a few days Frau Ziemssen’s as well.

Thus the young people began to live once more side by side.
Yes, to make it all even more as it had been, Mrs. Macdonald
breathed her last, with the picture of her little son in her hand, and
her room, next his cousin’s, reverted to Joachim, after it had been
thoroughly freed of bacteria by means of H 2 CO. More exact, in-
deed, it was to say that Joachim now lived next door to Hans Ca-
storp, instead of the reverse: the latter was now the old inhabitant,
and his cousin shared his existence only provisionally and tem-

E orarily. Joachim stuck stiffly by the October terminus — though
is nervous system refused to some extent to lend itself to the hu-
manistic norm, and prevented a compensatory radiation of heat.
The cousins resumed their visits to Settembrini and Naphta and

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 507

their walks with those two devoted opponents. When they were
joined by A. K. Ferge and Wehsal, which often happened, they
formed a group of six, and before this considerable audience the
two opposed spirits carried on an endless duel, which we could
not reproduce in any fullness without losing ourselves, as it did
daily, in an infinitude of despair. Hans Castorp chose to regard his
own poor soul as the object of their dialectic rivalry. He had
learned from Naphta that Settembrini was a Freemason, which fact
impressed him as much as Settembrini’s earlier statement that
Naphta was a Jesuit. He was quite absurdly surprised to hear that
there still existed such things as Freemasons; and diligently plied
the terrorist with questions about the origin and significance of
this curious body, which in a few years would celebrate its two-
hundredth birthday. When Settembrini spoke behind his back of
Naphta and his intellectual tendencies, it was always on an appeal-
ing note of warning, with a hint that the subject had more than a
little of the diabolic about it. But when Naphta did the same, he
made unaffectedly merry over the sphere which the other repre-
sented, and gave Hans Castorp to understand that the things for
which Settembrini fought were all of them dead issues; free-
thought and bourgeois enlightenment were the pathetic delusions
of yesterday, though prone to the self-deception which made them
a laughing-stock: namely, that they were still full of revolutionary
life. Said Naphta: “ Dear me, his grandfather was a carbonaro —
in other words a charcoal-burner. From him he gets the charcoal-
burner’s faith in reason, freedom, human progress, the whole box
of tricks belonging to the classicistic-humanistic virtue-ideology.
You see, what perplexes the world is the disparity between the
swiftness of the spirit, and the immense unwieldiness, sluggishness,
inertia, permanence of matter. We must admit that this disparity
would be enough to excuse the spirit’s lack of interest in reality,
for the rule is that it has sickened long before of the ferments that
bring revolution in their train. In very truth, dead spirit is more
repulsive to the living than dead matter, than granite for example,
which makes no claim to be alive. Such granite, the relic of an an-
cient reality left so far behind by the spirit that it refuses any
longer to associate with it the conception of reality, continues a
sluggish existence, and by its bald and dull continuance prevents
futility from becoming aware that it is futile. I am speaking in
general terms, but you will know how to apply my words to that
humanistic free-thought which imagines itself to be still in a
heroic attitude of resistance to authority and domination. Ah, and
the catastrophes, by virtue of which it thinks to manifest its vi-

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

508

tality, the ever-delayed spectacular triumphs at which it is pre-
paring to assist, and thinks one day to celebrate! The living spirit
would die of ennui at the bare thought of these, were it not aware
that from such catastrophes it alone can emerge as the victor, weld-
ing as it does the elements of the old and the new to create the true
revolution. — How is your cousin to-day, Hans Castorp? You
know what profound sympathy I feel for him.”

“ Thanks, Herr Naphta. Everyone seems to feel the same, such
a good lad as he is. Even Herr Settembrini admits him very much
into his good graces, despite his dislike of a sort of terrorism there
is in Joachim’s profession. And now I hear Herr Settembrini is a
Mason! Imagine! I must say that gives me to think. It sets his per-
sonality in a new light, and clarifies certain things for me. Does he
go about putting his foot at the right angle and shaking hands
with a particular grip? I have never seen anything — ”

“ Our worthy third-degree friend has probably got beyond such
childishness,” Naphta thought. “ I imagine the lodges have cur-
tailed their rites a good deal, in response to the lamentable arid
Philistinism of our time. They would probably blush for the cere-
monial of former periods as an extravagant mummery, and not
without reason, for it would be absurd to present their atheistic
republicanism in the guise of a mystery. I don’t know with what
species of horrors they may have tested Herr Settembrini’s con-
stancy; they may have led him blindfold through dark passages,
and made him wait in gloomy vaults before the hall of the conclave,
full of mirrored lights, burst upon his eyes. They may have
solemnly catechized him, menaced his bare breast with swords to
the accompaniment of a death’s-head and three tapers. You must
ask himself; but I fear you will get small satisfaction, for even if
the procedure was much tamer than this, in any case he will have
been sworn to silence.”

“ Sworn? To silence? They do that too, then? ”

“ Certainly. Silence and obedience.”

“ Obedience too. But listen, Professor, it seems to me then, he
has no occasion to stick at the terrorism in my cousin’s profession.
Silence, and obedience! I could never have believed a free-thinker
like Herr Settembrini would submit to such out-and-out Spanish
conditions and vows. I perceive that Freemasonry has something
quite military and Jesuitical about it.”

“And your perceptions are perfectly correct,” Naphta re-
sponded. “ Your divining-rod twitches, and knocks. The idea of the
society is rooted in and inseparably bound up with the absolute.

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 509

By consequence, it is terroristic; that is to say, anti-liberal. It lifts
the burden from the individual conscience, and consecrates in the
name of the Absolute every means even to bloodshed, even to
crime. There is some support for the view that the vows of the
brotherhood were once symbolically sealed in blood. A brother-
hood can never be purely contemplative. By its very nature it must
be executive, must organize. You probably do not know that the
founder of the Illuminati, a society which for a long time was
nearly identified with Freemasonry, was a former member of the
Society of Jesus? ”

“ No, that is certainly news to me.”

“ Adam Weishaupt formed his secret benevolent order entirely
upon the model of the Society of Jesus. He himself was a Mason,
and the most reputable lodge members of the time were Illuminati.
I am speaking of the second half of the eighteenth century, which
Settembrini would not hesitate to characterize as the period of the
degeneration of his fraternity. Actually it was the period of its
highest flower, as of all secret societies in general, a time when
Masonry attained to a higher life, of which it was later ‘ purged ’
by men of the stamp of our friend of humanity here. In that time
he would certainly have belonged to those who reproached it with
Jesuitry and obscurantism.”

“ Were there grounds for the reproach? ”

“Yes — if you choose to call it that. The shallow free-thinking
of the day was of that opinion. It was the period when the Fathers
of our faith sought to animate the society by breathing into it
Catholic-hierarchical ideas — at that time there was actually a Jesuit
lodge of Freemasonry at Clermont, in France. And it was the time
when Rosicrucianism made its entrance into the lodges, that re-
markable brotherhood, which, you will note, was a peculiar union
of purely rational ideas of political and social improvement and a
millennial programme, with elements distinctly oriental, Indian
and Arabic philosophy and magical nature-lore. The reform and
revision of the lodges which then took place was in the direction
of strict observance in a definitely irrational and mystical, magical-
alchemical sense, to which the Scottish Rite owes its existence.
These are degrees of knighthood which were added to the old mili-
tary ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master; upper ranks
which issued in the hieratical, and were full of Rosicrucian mys-
ticism. There ensued a sort of casting-back to certain spiritual and
knightly orders which existed in the Middle Ages, for instance the
Templars, you know, who took the vows of poverty, chastity,

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510

and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Even to-day there
is an upper degree in Freemasonry which bears the title ‘ Grand
Duke of Jerusalem.’ ”

“ It’s all news to me, Herr Naphta. But Fm getting to know Herr
Settembrini’s tricks. ‘ Grand Duke of Jerusalem ’ — that’s not bad,
not bad at all. You ought to call him that some time, by way of a
joke. The other day he called you ‘ doctor angelicus .’ Why not
take your revenge? ”

“ Oh, there are a host more such titles in the upper reaches of
the Knights Templars. There are a Past Grand Master, a Knight of
the East, a Grand High-priest — the thirty-first degree is called
Noble Prince of the Royal Mysteries. You observe that all these
names have reference to oriental mysticism. The reappearance of
the Templars, indeed, means nothing else than the entrance of such
conceptions, the presence of irrational ferments in a world given
over to rational-utilitarian ideas of social improvement. This it
was which lent Freemasonry a new brilliance and charm, and ex-
plains the great number of recruits to it at that period of its his-
tory. It drew to itself all the elements which were weary of the
rationalistic twaddle of the century, and thirsting for a stronger
draught of life. The success of the order was such that the Philis-
tine complained of it for estranging men from domestic happiness
and destroying their reverence for women.”

“ Then it is not surprising that Herr Settembrini does not love
to be reminded of the golden age of his order.”

“ No, he does not love to be reminded that there was a time
when it drew upon its head all the hatred felt by free-thinkers,
atheists, and encyclopaedists for the whole complex of Church,
Catholicism, monk, Middle Ages — you heard that the Masons
were accused of obscurantism — ”

“ Why? I should be glad to hear why, more precisely.”

“ I will tell you. The Strict Observance meant the broadening
and deepening of the traditions of the order, it meant referring its
historical origin back to the cabalistic world, the so-called dark-
ness of the Middle Ages. The higher degrees of Freemasonry were
initiates of the ‘ physica et mystical the representatives of a magic
natural science, they were in the main great alchemists.”

“ I shall have to put on my thinking-cap and try to recall what
alchemy is — generally speaking, I mean. Alchemy: transmuting
into gold, the philosopher’s stone, aurum potabile .”

“ In the popular mind, yes. More informedly put, it was purifi-
cation, refinement, metamorphosis, transubstantiation, into a higher
state, of course; the lapis philo sophorum , the male-female product

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 5 1 1

of sulphur and mercury, the res bi?ia , the double-sexed prima ma -
teria , was no more, and no less, than the principle of levitation, of
the upward impulse due to the working of influences from with-
out. Instruction in magic, if you like.”

Hans Castorp was silent. He glanced slantwise upward, and
blinked.

“ The primary symbol of alchemic transmutation,” Naphta said,
“ was par excellence the sepulchre.”

“ The grave? ”

“ Yes, the place of corruption. It comprehends all hermetics, all
alchemy, it is nothing else than the receptacle, the well-guarded
crystal retort wherein the material is compressed to its final trans-
formation and purification.”

“ Hermetics — what a lovely word, Herr Naphta! I’ve always
liked the word hermetic. It sounds like magicking, and has all sorts
of vague and extended associations. You must excuse my speaking
of such a thing, but it reminds me of the conserve jars that our
housekeeper in Hamburg — Schalleen, we call her, without any
Miss or Mrs. — keeps in her larder. She has rows of them on her
shelves, air-tight glasses full of fruit and meat and all sorts of
things. They stand there maybe a whole year — you open them as
you need them and the contents are as fresh as on the day they
were put up, you can eat them just as they are. To be sure, that
isn’t alchemy or purification, it is simple conserving, hence the
word conserve. The magic part of it lies in the fact that the stuff
that is conserved is withdrawn from the effects of time, it is her-
metically sealed from time, time passes it by, it stands there on its
shelf shut away from time. Well, that’s enough about the conserve
jars. It hasn’t much to do with the subject. Pardon me, you were
going to enlighten me further.”

“ Only if you wish me to do so. The learner must be of daunt-
less courage and athirst for knowledge, to speak in the style of our
theme. The grave, the sepulchre, has always been the emblem of
initiation into the society. The neophyte coveting admission to the
mysteries must always preserve undaunted courage in the face of
their terrors; it is the purpose of the Order that he should be tested
in them, led down into and made to linger among them, and later
fetched up from them by the hand of an unknown Brother. Hence
the winding passages, the dark vaults, through which the novice
is made to wander; the black cloth with which the Hall of the
Strict Observance was hung, the cult of the sarcophagus, which
played so important a role in the ceremonial of meetings and initia-
tions. The path of mysteries and purification was encompassed by

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512

dangers, it led through the pangs of death, through the kingdom of
dissolution; and the learner, the neophyte, is youth itself, thirsting
after the miracles of life, clamouring to be quickened to a demonic
capacity of experience, and led by shrouded forms which are the
shadowing-forth of the mystery.”

“ Thank you so much, Professor Naphta. That is splendid. That
is what the teaching of hermetics is like, then; it can’t hurt me to
have heard something about it too.”

“ The less so that it is a guide to the ultimate; to the absolute
recognition of the transcendental, and therewith to our end and
aim. The alchemistic ritual of the lodges, in later centuries, led
many a noble and inquiring spirit to that end — to which I need
give no name, for it cannot have escaped you that the successive
degrees of the Scottish Rite were only a surrogate, a substitute of
the Hierarchy, that the alchemistic learning of the Master-Mason
fulfilled itself in the mystery of transubstantiation, and that the
hidden guidance which the lodge vouchsafed to its pupils has its
prototype just as plainly in the means of grace, as the symbolic
mummeries of lodge ceremonial have theirs in the liturgical and
architectural symbolism of our Holy Catholic Church.”

“ Ah, indeed! ”

“ But even that is not all. I have already suggested that the deri-
vation of the lodge from that craftsmanly and honourable masonic
guild is only a historical extension. The Strict Observance invested
it with a much deeper human basis. The secrets of the lodge have,
in common with certain mysteries of our Church, the clearest con-
nexion with the ceremonial mysteries and ritual excesses of primi-
tive man. I refer, so far as the Church is concerned, to the love-
feast, the sacramental enjoyment of body and blood; as for the
lodge — ”

“ One moment. One moment for a marginal note. Even in the
strict communion to which my cousin belongs, they have so-called
love-feasts. He has often written to me about them. I suppose they
are very respectable affairs — except possibly they get a little
drunk, but nothing like what it is at the corps-students’ — ”

“ As for the lodge, however, I am thinking of the cult of the
sepulchre, to whom I referred you before. In both cases it has to
do with a symbolism of the ultimate, with elements of orgiastic
primitive religion, with wild sacrificial rites by night, to the honour
of dying and transforming, death, metamorphosis, resurrection.
You will recall that the mysteries of Isis, and the Eleusinian mys-
teries too, were served by night, and in caverns. In Freemasonry
there are present a host of Egyptian survivals, and there were,

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 513

among the secret societies, some that called themselves Eleusinian.
There were lodges that held feasts of Eleusinian mysteries and
aphrodistic rites which finally did introduce the female element;
feasts of roses, to which reference is made in the three blue roses
on the Masonic apron, and which often passed over into the bac-
chantic.”

“ What’s this, what’s this I hear, Professor Naphta? All this Free-
masonry? And I must reconcile with it all my ideas of our en-
lightened Herr Settembrini? ”

“ You would do him very great injustice if you imagined he
knew anything about it. I told you that he, or his like, purified the
lodge of all the elements of higher life. They humanized it, they
modernized it. God save the mark! They rescued it from false gods
and restored it to usefulness, reason and progress, for making war
upon princes and priests, in short for social amelioration. In it they
once more discuss nature, virtue, moderation, the fatherland. In a
word, it is a god-forsaken bourgeoisiedom, in the form of a club.”

“ What a pity! Too bad about the feasts of roses! I mean to ask
Settembrini if he hears anything about them nowadays.”

“The noble knight of the T-square! ” scoffed Naphta. “You
must remember that it has been no easy matter for him to get ad-
mitted inside the gates of the temple of humanity. He is as poor
as a church-mouse, and they not only demand the higher, the
humanistic culture — save the mark — but also one must belong to
the possessing classes, to be able to stand the dues and entrance
fees. Culture and possessions — there is the bourgeoisie for you!
There you have the pillars of the liberal world-republic.”

“ In any case,” laughed Hans Castorp, “ we have it all right
before our eyes.”

“ And yet,” Naphta added, after a pause, “ I would counsel you
not to take this man and what he stands for as altogether a laugh-
ing matter; since we are on the subject, let me warn you to be on
your guard. The insipid is not synonymous with the harmless.
Stupidity is not necessarily free from suspicion. These people have
watered their wine, that was once such a fiery draught, but the
idea of the brotherhood itself remains strong enough to stand a
good deal of water. It preserves the remnant of a fruitful mystery,
and there is as little doubt that the lodge mixes in politics, as that
there is more to see in our amiable Herr Settembrini than just his
simple self, and that powers stand behind him, whose representa-
tive and emissary he is.”

“ An emissary? ”

“ That is, a proselyter, a seeker of souls.”

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

5*4

“ And what kind of emissary are you, may I ask? ” Hans Ca-
storp thought. Aloud he said: “ Thank you, Professor Naphta.
I am genuinely grateful for your advice and warning. What do
you think? Suppose I go a storey higher — in so far as one can
speak of a storey — and touch up our disguised lodge-brother a
bit? The learner must be of dauntless courage, athirst for knowl-
edge. But cautious too, of course. It’s well to take precautions
when one deals with emissaries.”

He might with impunity seek further information from Herr
Settembrini, for that gentleman could not reproach Naphta with
any lack of discretion; indeed, he had never made any secret of
his membership in the harmonious band of brothers. The Rivista
della Massoneria lay open upon his table; Hans Castorp had simply
never noticed it. Enlightened by Naphta, he led the conversation
round to the subject of the “ kingly art,” as though Settembrini’s
connexion with it had never been a matter of doubt, and he met
with very little reticence. True, there were points upon which the
literary man was silent. When they were touched upon he closed
his lips with ostentation, being obviously bound by those terror-
istic vows of which Naphta had spoken; this when Hans Castorp
encroached on trade secrets, as it were, outward forms of the
organization, and his own position within it. But otherwise he was
almost too expansive; and held forth at length, giving the seeker
after information a considerable picture of the extent of the so-
ciety, which spread almost all over the world, with twenty thou-
sand lodges and a hundred and fifty grand lodges, in round num-
bers, and had penetrated civilizations like Haiti and the Negro
republic of Liberia. Also he had much to tell of the great names
whose bearers had been Masons: Voltaire, Lafayette and Napo-
leon, Franklin and Washington, Mazzini and Garibaldi; among the
living, the King of England, and besides him, a large group of peo-
ple in whose hands lay the conduct of the nations of Europe, mem-
bers of governments and parliaments.

Hans Castorp expressed respect, but no surprise. It was the same
with the student corps, he said. The members of these held together
in after life, and they looked after their people well, so that it was
hard to get into any important official hierarchy if you had not
been a corps-student. For that reason it was perhaps not so logical
of Herr Settembrini to argue that the membership of those im-
portant personages in the society was flattering to it; since on the
other hand it might be assumed that the occupation of so many
important posts by Freemasons gave evidence of the power of the

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 5 1 5

society, which certainly mixed in politics, perhaps more than Herr
Settembrini was willing to admit.

Settembrini smiled, fanning himself with the magazine, which
he still held in his hand. Did Hans Castorp intend to put him a case?
Had he in mind to betray him into incautious utterances upon the
political character, the essentially political spirit of the lodge?
“ Useless furberia , Engineer. We admit that we are political, admit
it openly, unreservedly. We care nothing for the odium that is
bound up with the word in the eyes of certain fools — they are at
home in your own country, Engineer, and almost nowhere else.
The friend of humanity cannot recognize a distinction between
what is political and what is not. There is nothing that is not po-
litical. Everything is politics.”

“ That’s flat.”

“ I know there are people who think well to refer to the orig-
inally unpolitical nature of Masonic thought. But these people
play with words, and set limits which have long since become
imaginary and without significance. In the first place, the Spanish
lodges, at least, have had a political coloration from the very first.”

“ I should imagine so.”

“ You can imagine very little, Engineer. Do not fancy that you
are inclined to profound thought; the best you can do is to be
receptive and to take to heart — I say this in your own interest, as
well as in the interest of your country and or Europe — what I am
about to impress upon you: namely, that in the second place,
Masonic thought was never unpolitical, at any time — could not
be. If it believed itself to be so, it was in error as to its own essen-
tial characteristics. What are we? Master-builders and builders on
a building. The purpose of all is one, the good of the whole the
fundamental tenet of the brotherhood. What is this good, what is
this building? It is the true social structure, the perfecting of hu-
manity, the new Jerusalem. But tell me which that is, political or
non-political? The social problem, the problem of our common
existence, is in itself politics, politics through and through, and
nothing else than politics. Whoever devotes himself to the cause
— and he does not deserve the name of man that would withhold
himself from that devotion — belongs to politics, foreign and do-
mestic; he understands that the art of the Freemason is the art of
government — ”

“ Art of — ”

“ That Illuminist Freemasonry had the regent degree — ”

“ That is fine, Herr Settembrini: art of government, degree of

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516

regent — I like all that very much. But tell me something: are you
Christians, you Masons? ”

“ Perche? ”

“ I beg your pardon, I will ask another question; I’ll put it more
simply and generally. Do you believe in God? ”

“ I will reply to you. But why do you ask? ”

“ I was not trying to draw you, just now. But there is a story
in the Bible of the Pharisees testing our Lord with a Roman coin,
and he tells them to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,
and unto God the things that are God’s. It seemed to me this dis-
tinction is the distinction between the political and the non-polit-
ical. If there is a God, then there is also this distinction. Do Free-
masons believe in God? ”

“ I bound myself to answer. You are speaking of a unity which
we seek to bring about, but which to-day, alas, does not exist. If
it comes to exist — and I repeat that we labour with silent assiduity
upon this great task — then indeed the religious creed of the free-
mason will be unanimous, and it will be ‘ Ecrasez V infame! ’ ”

“ Will that be obligatory? It would hardly be tolerant.”

“ The problem of tolerance, my dear Engineer, is rather too
large for you to tackle. Do not forget that tolerance becomes
crime, if extended to evil.”

“ God would be the evil? ”

“ Metaphysics is the evil. It is for no purpose but to put to
sleep the energy which we should apply to the building of the
temple of society. An example is afforded by the action of the
Grand Orient of France a generation ago. He struck the name of
God out of his writings. We Italians followed him.”

“ How Catholic! ”

“ In what sense do you — ”

“ I mean I find it enormously Catholic, to strike out God.”

“ What you wish to express is — ”

“ Nothing worth listening to, Herr Settembrini. Don’t pay too
much attention to my prattle. It just struck me that atheism may
be enormously Catholic, and as though one might strike out God
merely the better to be Catholic.”

Herr Settembrini allowed a pause to ensue; but it was clear
that he only did so out of pedagogic deliberation. He answered,
after a measured silence: “ Engineer, I am far from wishing to
wound or mortify you in your adhesion to Protestantism. We
were speaking of tolerance; it is surely superfluous for me to
emphasize that far from mere toleration, I feel for Protestant-
ism, as the historical opponent of the enslavement of knowledge,

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 517

the most profound admiration. The invention of printing and
the Reformation are and remain the two outstanding services of
central Europe to the cause of humanity. Without question. But
after what you have just said I do not doubt you will understand
me when I reply that after all it is only one side of the question,
and there is another. Protestantism conceals elements — the very
personality of your reformer concealed elements. — I am think-
ing of elements of quiescent beatitude, hypnotic abstraction,
which are not European, but foreign to the laws of life that
govern our busy continent. Look at him, this Luther! Observe
the portraits we have, in early and later life. What sort of cranial
formation is that, what cheek-bones, what a singular emplace-
ment of the eye! My friend, that is Asia! I should be surprised,
I should be greatly surprised, if there were not Wendish, Slavic,
Sarmatic elements in play there. And if the mighty apparition
of this man — for who would deny that it was mighty? — had
not flung a fatal preponderance into one of the two scales which
in your country hang so dangerously even, into the scale of the
East, so that the other even to-day is still outweighed and flies
up in the air — ”

Herr Settembrini walked from the humanistic folding-desk in
the little window, where he had been standing, up to the table,
nearer his pupil, who was sitting on the cot against the wall, his
elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“ Caro! ” Herr Settembrini said. “ Caro amico! There will be
decisions to make, decisions of unspeakable importance for the
happiness and the future of Europe; it will fall to your coun-
try to decide, in her soul the decision will be consummated.
Placed as she is between East and West, she will have to choose,
she will have to decide finally and consciously between the two
spheres. You are young, you will have a share in this decision,
it is your duty to influence it. And therefore let us thank the fates
that brought you up here to this horrible region, thus giving me
opportunity to work upon your plastic youth with my not un-
practised, not wholly flagging eloquence, and make you feel the
responsibility which — which your country has in the face of
civilization — ”

Hans Castorp sat, his chin in his hand. He looked out of the
mansard window, and in his simple blue eyes there was a certain
obstinacy. He was silent.

“ You are silent,” Herr Settembrini said, moved. “ You and
your native land, you preserve a silence which seems to cover a
reservation — and which gives one no hint of what goes on in

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518

your depths. You do not love the Word, or you have it not, or
you are chary with it to unfriendliness. The articulate world
does not know where it is with you. My friend, that is perilous.
Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradic-
tious word, preserves contact — it is silence which isolates. The
suspicion lies to hand that you will seek to break your silence
with deeds. You will ask Cousin Giacomo ” (Settembrini had
taken to calling Joachim Giacomo, for convenience’ sake) “ to step
out in front of your silence,

‘ And thrice he smites, and thrice his blows
Deal death, before him fly his foes. . . .’”

Hans Castorp began to laugh, and Herr Settembrini smiled
too, satisfied for the moment with the effect of his plastic words.

“ Good,” he said. “ Very good, let us laugh, you will always
find me ready to do that. Laughter, says the classic, is a sunbeam
of the soul. We have wandered from the point, we have taken up
questions which, I admit, have much to do with the difficulties
encountered by us in our preparatory efforts to establish a Ma-
sonic world-federation.” Herr Settembrini went on to speak of
the idea of this world-federation, which had originated in Hun-
gary, the hoped-for realization of which was destined to con-
summate the world-power of Freemasonry. Casually he dis-
played letters from foreign potentates of the society: one from the
very hand of the Swiss Grand Master, Brother Quartier la Tente,
of the thirty-third degree; and discussed the proposal to make
Esperanto the official language of the body. His zeal elevated him
to the sphere of policy; he directed his gaze hither and yon,
estimated the prospects of revolutionary thought in his own coun-
try, in Spain, in Portugal. He was in contact by letter, it appeared,
with persons who were at the head of the Portuguese lodge, and
there, without much doubt, things were ripening to a decisive
event. Hans Castorp would think of him when, before very long,
it came to an upset in that country. Hans Castorp promised to
do so.

It should be remarked that these Masonic conferences between
the pupil and the two mentors took place separated in time, be-
fore Joachim’s return. The following conversation, however, oc-
curred during his second stay up here, and in his presence, nine
weeks after he arrived, at the beginning of October. Hans Ca-
storp retained a clear memory of this gathering in the autumn
sunshine, before the Kurhaus in the Platz, where they sat sip-
ping cooling drinks; for it was just at that time he began to feel

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 519

a secret concern about Joachim — though its ground was not
one usually thought very important, being merely a sore throat
and hoarseness, quite harmless afflictions, which yet appeared to
Hans Castorp in a somewhat peculiar light — the same light, one
might say, that he saw in the depths of Joachim’s eyes. Those
eyes had always, we know, been large and mild, but to-day, pre-
cisely on this very day, had seemed to grow larger and deeper,
with a musing, yes, we must even say an ominous expression,
together with the above-mentioned light. It would have been
false to say that Hans Castorp did not like the look of them;
he did, only that it disquieted him. And, in short, one cannot,
by their very nature, speak of these impressions otherwise than
vaguely and confusedly. As for the talk — a controversy, of
course, between Settembrini and Naphta — it was an affair of it-
self, only slightly connected with those earlier and private ut-
terances on the subject of Freemasonry. Ferge and Wehsal were
there, and the interest was general, although not all the parties
were equal to the situation. Herr Ferge, for instance, was quite
definitely not. But a dispute carried on as though it were a mat-
ter of life and death, yet with all the polished elegance of a
full-dress debate — as were, indeed, all engagements between
Settembrini and Naphta — such a dispute is in itself highly divert-
ing to hear, even for those who understand but little of it or
its bearing. Strangers sitting near them listened in amaze to the
exchange of words and were chained to the spot by the passion
and brilliance displayed.

All this took place, as we said, in front of the Kurhaus, after
tea. The four guests from the Berghof had met Settembrini there,
and by chance Naphta also. They sat together about a little metal
table, with various drinks and soda, or anise and vermouth. Naphta,
who regularly took his tea here, had ordered wine and cake,
obviously a reminiscence from his student days. Joachim moistened
his aching throat with a lemonade made of fresh lemons, very
strong and sour; it had an astringent effect which soothed the
ache. Settembrini was drinking sugar-and-water through a straw,
with a gusto that made it the rarest of beverages.

He jested: “What do I hear, Engineer? What are these ru-
mours that fly about? Your Beatrice is returning? Your guide
through all the nine circles of Paradise? I must hope that you
will not entirely scorn the friendly hand of your Virgil. Our
ecclesiastic here will tell you that the world of the medio evo is
not complete when Franciscan mysticism is not counterbalanced
by the opposite pole of Thomistic cognition.”

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

5 2 °

They laughed over these erudite jests, and looked at Hans Ca-
storp, who laughed back, raising his glass to his “ Virgil.’’ But
it is unbelievable what endless academic strife arose in the next
hour out of Herr Settembrini’s high-sounding but harmless re-
mark. Naphta, having been in a manner challenged, straightway
girded up his loins, and fell foul of the Latin poet, whom Set-
tembrini was known to admire to the point of idolatry, even
placing him higher than Homer, while Naphta had more than
once expressed contempt for him and for the whole of Latin
poetry, and did not fail to seize this opportunity to do so again.
It was a complaisant limitation of the great Dante, due to his
period, that he took so seriously this mediocre versifier and in
his poem assigned him so high a role — even though Herr Ludo-
vico did ascribe rather too freemasonly a meaning to it. But
what was there to this courtly laureate and lickspittle of the
Julian house, this urban litterateur and eulogist, who was with-
out a spark of creative genius, whose soul, if he had one, was
second-hand, and who was certainly no poet, but a Frenchman
in an Augustan full-bottomed wig!

Herr Settembrini had no doubt that the speaker would find
ways and means of reconciling his scorn of the golden age of
Rome with his office as teacher of Latin. Yet he, Settembrini,
could not avoid calling attention to the serious conflict in which
such judgments involved Herr Naphta with his own favourite
centuries, when Virgil was not only not despised, but his great-
ness was recognized in the most naive way; namely, by making
a seer and magician of him.

It was vain, Naphta responded, for Herr Settembrini to invoke
the simplicity of those primitive times, the victorious element
which preserved its creative vitality even while endowing that
which it conquered with a demonic quality. But in truth, the
Fathers of the early Church were never weary of warning the
faithful against the lies of the old philosophers and poets, in
particular of cautioning them not to be corrupted by the volup-
tuous eloquence of Virgil; and to-day, at a time when again an
age is declining to its fall, and we see the approaching dawn of
another proletarian morn, the time is ripe to feel with them.
Finally, in order to leave nothing unanswered, Herr Ludovico
might be assured that he, the speaker, did his duty by the small
civilian task which Herr Settembrini had been so kind as to
mention, with all due reservatio mentalis; though there was in-
deed a certain irony in his conforming to the standards of a
classic and rhetorical educational system, whose survival the most

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 5 21

optimistic observer could not predicate for more than a few
decades.

“ You studied them,” Settembrini cried out, “ you studied them
till you sweated, those old poets and philosophers; you have
sought to make their priceless heritage your own, as you used
the building-stones of their monuments to erect your churches.
For well you knew that your proletarian soul could of its own
strength bring no art form to birth; and you hoped to defeat
antiquity with its own weapons. So it will ever be, history will
repeat itself. Your crude immaturity must go to school to the
power which you would like to persuade yourself and others to
despise; for without discipline you could not endure in the sight
of man, and there is but one kind, that which you call the bour-
geois, but which is in reality the human.” Herr Settembrini went
on. A matter of decades? The end of the humanistic principles
of education? Only politeness prevented him from a burst of
laughter both unaffected and mocking. A Europe that knew how
to preserve its immortal treasures would serenely pass over any
proletarian apocalypse of which it here and there pleased people
to dream and resume its ordered programme or the reign of
classic reason.

It was, Naphta rejoined bitingly, just this ordered programme
about which Herr Settembrini seemed not to be very well in-
formed. That which he took for granted was precisely that which
was being called in question: namely, whether the Mediterranean,
classic, humanistic tradition was bound up with humanity and so
coexistent with it, or whether it was but the intellectual garb and
appurtenance of a bourgeois liberal age, with which it would
perish. History would decide this; he would recommend Herr
Settembrini not to lull himself in the secure triumph of his Latin
conservatism.

All his hearers, but with especial bitterness Herr Settembrini
himself, listened to this brazen characterization on the part of
little Naphta. He, Herr Settembrini, the avowed servant of prog-
ress, a conservative! He twisted violently his flowing mous-
taches, and seeking for a return blow left the enemy time for a
further onslaught upon the classical ideal in education, the rhetori-
cal and literary spirit which characterized the whole of the Euro-
pean educational system, and its splenetic partisanship of the
formal and grammatical, which was nothing else than an acces-
sory to the interests of bourgeois class supremacy, and had long
been an object of ridicule to the people. They had no idea what
an utter joke our doctors’ degrees and the whole system fostered

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

5 “

by our educational mandarins had become in the minds of the
proletariat; as also the public school system, which was the
instrument of the domination of the middle classes, maintained
in the delusion that popular education is merely watered scholar-
ship. The sort of training and education required by the people
in their struggle against the crumbling bourgeois kingdom they
had long known how to find elsewhere than in these governmental
establishments for compulsory training; one day all the world
would realize that our system, which had developed out of the
cloister school of the Middle Ages, was a ridiculous bureaucracy
and anachronism, that nobody in the world any longer owes his
education to his schooling, and that a free and public instruction
through lectures, exhibitions, cinematographs, and so forth was
vastly to be preferred to any school course.

Herr Settembrini said that Naphta had served up to their
audience a mixture of revolution ana obscurantism, in which, how-
ever, the obscurantist element outweighed the other, to an un-
savoury extent. Herr Settembrini was pleased to see his concern
for the enlightenment of the people, but his pleasure was marred
by the fear that what really actuated Herr Naphta was an in-
stinctive tendency to involve both people and world in analpha-
betic darkness.

Naphta smiled. “ That bogy! ” he said. Herr Settembrini be-
lieved himself to have uttered a word of terror, to have dis-
played the head of the gorgon, quite convinced that everybody
would promptly pale at the sight. He, Naphta, regretted to dis-
appoint his partner in the dialogue, but the fact was, the sight of
the humanistic horror of illiteracy simply made him laugh. Verily,
one must be a classical literary man, a precieux , a seicentist , a
Marinist, a Jack-of-all-trades of the estilo culto, to attach such
exaggerated educational value to knowing how to write, as to
imagine that where that knowledge was lacking a night of the
spirit must reign. Did Herr Settembrini remember that the great-
est poet of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach, could
neither read nor write? It had been thought blameworthy, in the
Germany of that time, to send a boy to school unless he was to
be a priest; and this popular-aristocratic scorn of the literary arts
was always the sign of fundamental nobility of soul; the literary
person, true son of humanism and bourgeoisiedom, could always,
certainly, read and write — whereas the noble, the soldier, and
the people never could, or barely — but he could do and under-
stand nothing else in all the wide world, being nothing but a
Latinistic windbag, who had power over language, but left life

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 523

to people who were fit for it. Which was the reason why the
literary person always conceived of politics as an empty bag of
wind; that is, of rhetoric and “literature,” which in political
jargon were called radicalism and democracy — and so on, and
so on.

But now Herr Settembrini sprang into the breach. His oppo-
nent, he cried, was rash to expose his preference for the intense
barbarism of certain epochs, and to pour scorn upon a love of
literary form — without which no human nature was possible
or thinkable, never had been and never would be! Fundamental
nobility? Only misanthropy could so characterize the absence
of letters, a rude and tongue-tied materialism. Rather you could
only rightly so characterize a certain lordly luxuriance, the
generosita which displayed itself in ascribing to form a human
value independent of its content — the cult of speech as an art
for art’s sake, the inheritance bequeathed by the Graeco-Roman
culture, which the humanists, the uomini letterati , had restored,
restored at least to the Romance nations, and which was the
source of every later significant idealism, even political. “ Yes,
my dear sir! That which you would disparage as a divorce be-
tween literature and life is nothing but a higher unity in the
diadem of the beautiful; I am under no apprehension as to the
side on which high-hearted youth will choose to fight, in a strug-
gle where the opposing camps are literature and barbarism.”

Hans Castorp had been only half listening to the dialogue, be-
ing preoccupied by the fundamental nobility of the soldierly rep-
resentative then present — or rather by the strange new expres-
sion in his eyes. He started slightly as he felt himself challenged
by Herr Settembrini’s last words, and made such a face as he had
the time the humanist would have solemnly constrained him to
a choice between East and West: a face full of reserve and ob-
stinacy. He said nothing. They forced everything to an issue,
these two — as perhaps one must when one differed — and
wrangled bitterly over extremes, whereas it seemed to him, Hans
Castorp, as though somewhere between two intolerable posi-
tions, between bombastic humanism and analphabetic barbarism,
must lie something which one might personally call the human.
He did not express his thought, for fear of irritating one or other
of them; but, wrapped in his reserve, listened to one goading the
other on, each leading the other from hundredthly to thousandthly,
and all because of Herr Settembrini’s original little joke about
Virgil.

The Italian would not give over; he brandished the word, he

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524

made it prevail. He threw himself into the fray as the defender
of literary genius, celebrated the history of the written word,
from the moment when man, yearning to give permanency to his
knowledge or emotions, engraved word-symbols upon stone. He
spoke of the Egyptian god Thoth, identical with the thrice-
renowned Hermes of Hellenism; who was honoured as the in-
ventor of writing, protector of libraries, and inciter to all literary
efforts. He bent the knee metaphorically before that Trismegistus,
the humanistic Hermes, master of the palaestra, to whom humanity
owed the great gift of the literary word and agonistic rhetoric —
which incited Hans Castorp to the remark that this Egyptian per-
son had apparently been a politician, playing in the grand style the
same role as that Herr Brunetto Latini who had sharpened the
wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of language and how
to guide their State according to the rules of politics. Naphta
put in that Herr Settembrini was slightly disingenuous: his picture
of Thoth-Trismegistus had a good deal of the reality smoothed
away. He had beep, in fact, an ape, moon and soul deity, a pea-
cock with a crescent moon on his head, and in his Hermes as-
pect, a god of death and of the dead, a soul-compeller and tutelary
soul-guide, of whom late antiquity made an arch-enchanter, and
the cabalistic Middle Ages the Father of hermetic alchemy.

Hans Castorp ’s brain reeled. Here was blue-mantled death
masquerading as a humanistic orator; and when one sought to
gaze at closer range upon this pedagogic and literary god, benev-
olent to man, one discovered a squatting ape-faced figure, with
the sign of night and magic on its brow. He waved it away with
one hand, which he laid over his eyes. But upon that darkness
wherein he sought refuge from complete bewilderment, there
broke the voice of Herr Settembrini, continuing to chant the
praises of literature. All greatness, both contemplative and active,
he said, had been bound up with it from all time; and men-
tioned Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, named the Prussian Fred-
erick and other heroes, even Lasalle and Moltke. It disturbed
him not a whit that Naphta referred him to China, where such a
witless idolatry of the alphabet obtained as had never been the
case in any other land, and where one might become a field-
marshal if one could draw the forty thousand word-symbols of
the language — a standard, one would think, directly after a
humanistic heart! — Ah, Naphta well knew — pitiable scoffer
though he was! — that it was a matter not of drawing symbols
but of literature as a human impulse, of its spirit, which was Spirit
itself, the miraculous conjunction of analysis and form. This it

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 5 2 5

was that awakened the understanding of all things human, that
operated to weaken and dissolve silly prejudices and convictions,
that brought about the civilizing, elevating, and betterment of the
human race. While it developed extreme ethical sensitiveness and
refinement, far from being fanatical, it preached honest doubt,
fairness, tolerance. The purifying, healing influence of literature,
the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word,
literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love,
the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest
manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type,
as saint — in this high key was Herr Settembrini’s apologetic
pitched. But alas, his antagonist was not struck dumb — on the
contrary, he straightway set about with malicious, brilliant criti-
cism to undermine the humanist’s panegyric. He declared him-
self to the party of conservation and of life, and struck out against
the decadent spirit which hid itself behind all that seraphic cant.
The marvellous conjunction to which Herr Settembrini referred,
in a voice all quavering with emotion, was nothing but a decep-
tion and juggling, for the form which the literary spirit prided
itself on uniting with the principle of examination and division
was only an apparent, a lying form, no true, adequate, natural,
living form. These so-called reformers of humanity did indeed
take the words purification and sanctification in their mouths,
but what they really meant and intended was the emasculation,
the phlebotomy of life. Yes, their theory and moving spirit were
in violation of life; and he who would destroy passion, that man
desired nothing less than pure nothingness — pure, at least, in the
sense that pure was the only adjective which could be applied to
nothingness. It was just here that Herr Settembrini showed him-
self for that which he was: namely, the man of progress, lib-
eralism, and middle-class revolution. For the progress was pure
nihilism, the liberal citizen was quite precisely the advocate of
nothingness and the Devil; yes, he denied God, the conserva-
tively and positively Absolute, by swearing to the devilish anti-
Absolute. And yet with his deadly pacificism thought himself
monstrously pious. But he was anything else than pious, he was
a traitor to life, before whose stem inquisition and Vehmgericht
he deserved to be put to the question — and so forth.

Thus did Naphta astutely go about to turn Herr Settembrini’s
paean the wrong way and represent himself as the incarnation of
the cherishing severity of love — so that it was again impossible
to distinguish which side was in the right, where God stood and
where the Devil, where death and where life. Our readers will

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526

believe us that his antagonist insisted on giving him tit for tat,
paying in the newest-minted coin, receiving in his turn another
just as good; thus the conversation proceeded, on the lines laid
down. But Hans Castorp attended no longer. Joachim had re-
marked that he believed he had a feverish cold, and did not quite
know what to do about it, as colds were not “ ref us ” up here.
The duellists had paid him no heed, but Hans Castorp kept, as
we have said, an eye on his cousin, and so got up, in the midst
of a speech, relying on Ferge and Wehsal to display adequate
thirst for further pedagogic disputation.

On the way home he and Joachim agreed that it was best to in-
voke the official channels in matters like colds and sore throats.
In other words, they would ask the bathing-master to see the
Oberin, in order that something might be done to relieve the
sufferer. It was well done. That very evening, directly after din-
ner, Adriatica knocked at Joachim's door, Hans Castorp being
present, and asked what were the wishes of the young officer.

“ Sore throat? Hoarseness? ” she repeated; “ what sort of an-
tics are these, young ’un? ” and undertook to pierce him with
her eye. It was not Joachim’s fault that their glances failed to
meet, hers swerved aside. Yet she would continue to try, though
experience must have taught her it was not given her to succeed
in the undertaking. With the help of a sort of metal shoehorn
from her pocket, she looked at the patient’s tonsils, Hans Ca-
storp standing by with the lamp. Rising on tiptoes to peer into
Joachim’s throat, she asked: “Tell me, young ’un, do you ever
swallow the wrong way? ”

What could he answer? For the moment, while she peered into
his throat, nothing; but even after she was done, he was at a
loss. Naturally, in the course of his life, when eating or drinking
he had swallowed the wrong way; but everybody did the same,
and surely that could not be what she meant. He asked why: he
could not remember the last time.

It was no matter, she said. It had merely occurred to her. He
had taken a cold, she added, to the astonishment of the cousins,
for colds were in the ordinary way taboo. In any case, it would
be necessary to have the Hofrat’s laryngeal mirror for further
examination of the throat. She left some formamint, and a band-
age with a gutta-percha sheath, to be used for a moist compress
during the night. Joachim availed himself of both, finding they
gave relief. He continued to use them; but his hoarseness per-
sisted, it even grew worse in the next few days, though the sore
throat largely disappeared.

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 527

His fever proved imaginary — at least the thermometer gave
no more than the usual result, that, namely, which together with
the results of the Hofrat’s examinations kept our ambitious Joa-
chim here for his little after-cure, instead of letting him return
to the colours. The October terminus had slipped by and no man
named it, neither the Hofrat nor the cousins between themselves.
They let it pass, in silence, with downcast eyes. From the diag-
nosis which Behrens dictated at the monthly examinations to
the psychically expert assistant sitting at his table, and from the
results shown by the photographic plate, it was all too clear that
though there had once been a departure, of which the best that
could be said was that it had been decidedly risky, this time
there was nothing for it but iron self-discipline, until such a day
as entire immunity might be won, for the fulfilment of the oath
and the service of the flat-land.

Such was the decree with which, one and all, they silently pre-
tended to be in agreement. But the truth was, neither of the cous-
ins was sure the other believed it; if they did not meet each
other’s eyes, it was because of the doubt both pairs of eyes sought
to hide, and because the eyes had met before. That, of course,
often happened, after the colloquy on the subject of literature,
during which Hans Castorp had first remarked the strange new
light and ominous expression in the depths of his cousin’s eyes.
And happened once at table. Joachim suddenly choked violently,
and could scarcely get his breath. While he gasped behind his
serviette, and his neighbour, Frau Magnus, performed the time-
honoured service of slapping him on the back, the cousins’ eyes
met, in a way more alarming to Hans Castorp than the incident
itself, that being something that might happen to anyone. Then
Joachim closed his eyes and left the table, his face covered with
his serviette, to cough himself out in the garden.

Ten minutes later he came back, smiling, if rather pale, and
with excuses on his lips for the disturbance. He went on again
with his hearty meal, and no one thought afterwards even of
wasting a word on so trifling an episode. But some days later, at
second breakfast, the thing occurred again; this time there was
no meeting of eyes, at least on the part of the cousins, for Hans
Castorp bent over his plate and went on eating without seeming
to notice. But after the meal they spoke of it, and Joachim freed
his mind on the subject of that damned female who had put the
thing in his head with her silly question and somehow or other
set a spell on him. Yes, it was obviously a case of suggestion,
Hans Castorp agreed, and as such rather amusing, despite its

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528

annoying side. And Joachim, having named it, seemed able to
counteract the spell; he was careful at table, and did not choke
any more frequently than persons not bewitched. Not until nine
or ten days later did it occur again — where there was simply
nothing to be said.

But he was summoned out of his order to Rhadamanthus. The
Oberin had so arranged it, probably with good sense; since there
was a laryngeal mirror at hand, it was well to make use of that
clever little device for the relief of the obstinate hoarseness or
even total lack of voice from which he suffered for hours at
a time, and the sore throat, which recurred whenever he omitted
to keep his throat passages soft by various salivating medica-
ments. Not to mention, indeed, that though he choked as other
people do, and no more frequently, this was only by dint of the
very greatest care, which hindered him at his meals, and made
him late in finishing.

The Hofrat, then, mirrored, reflected, peered deep into Joa-
chim’s throat, and when he had done, Joachim went straight to
his cousin’s balcony to give him the result. He said, half whis-
pering, as it was the hour for the afternoon cure, that it had been
bothersome, and tickled a good deal. Behrens had rambled on
about an inflamed condition, and said the throat must be painted
every day; they were to begin to-morrow, as the medicament had
to be put up. An inflamed condition, then, and it was to be
painted. Hans Castorp, his head full of far-reaching associa-
tions, having to do for instance with the lame concierge, and that
lady who had gone about for a week holding her ear, and need
not have troubled herself, would have liked to put more ques-
tions. But he refrained, inwardly resolving to see the Hofrat
privately, and said to Joachim he was glad the trouble was being
treated, and that the Hofrat had taken it personally in hand. He
was top-hole in his line, he would soon put it right. Joachim
nodded without looking at him, turned and went into his
balcony.

What troubled our honour-loving Joachim? In these last days
his eyes had grown so shy, so uncertain in their glance. Fraulein
von Mylendonk’s efforts had suffered shipwreck only the other
day against his mild dark gaze; but now had she tried, she might
even have succeeded. For Joachim avoided meeting people’s eyes;
and even when he met them, as he sometimes must notwithstand-
ing, for his cousin looked at him a good deal, Hans Castorp was
not greatly the wiser. He sat now in his balcony much cast down,

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 529

and tempted to see the chief upon the spot, but refrained, for
Joachim must have heard him get up; it was better to wait, and
see Behrens later in the afternoon.

That proved impossible. It seemed he simply could not lay
eyes on the Hofrat; either that evening, or in the course of the
two following days. It was difficult to prevent Joachim from
noticing; but that could not fully account for the fact that
Rhadamanthus was not to be brought to bay. Hans Castorp sought
and asked for him through the house; was sent here or there where
he would be certain to find him, and found only that he had gone.
Behrens was present at a meal, indeed, but sat far off Hans Ca-
storp, at the “ bad ” Russian table, and disappeared before the
sweet. Once or twice, seeing him stand in talk with Krokowski,
with the Oberin, with a patient, on the stairs or in the passage,
Hans Castorp thought he had him, and only needed to wait. But
chancing to turn away his eyes a minute, he looked back to find
him vanished.

On the fourth day he succeeded. From his balcony he saw his
prey below, giving directions to the gardener; slipped forth of
his covers and ran down. He saw the Hofrat s back, as he was
paddling in the direction of his own house, set off at a smart
pace after him, even took the liberty of calling, but the Hofrat
paid no heed. At last, breathless, he caught up his quarry and
brought him to a stand.

“ What are you doing here? ” demanded the Hofrat, and gog-
gled his eyes. “ Shall I get an extra-special copy of the house
rules printed for you? Seems to me this is the rest period. Your
curve and your x-ray don’t justify you in playing the independ-
ent gentleman, so far as I know. I ought to set up a scarecrow
to gobble up people who have the cheek to come down and walk
about in the garden at this hour.”

“ Herr Hofrat, I absolutely must speak to you for a moment.”

“ I’ve been observing for some days that you thought you had.
You’ve been laying traps for me, as though I were a female and
the object of your passion. What do you want? ”

“ It is on account of my cousin, Herr Hofrat. Pardon me —
he is coming to you to have his throat painted. — I feel sure the
thing is all right — it is quite harmless, isn’t it, if you will pardon
my asking? ”

“You are always for having everything harmless, Castorp —
that is the nature of you. You rather like mixing in matters that
are not harmless, but you treat them as though they were and

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530

think to find favour in the eyes of God and man. You’re a bit of
a hypocrite, Castorp, and a bit of a coward; your cousin puts it
very euphemistically when he calls you a civilian.”

“ That may all be, Herr Hofrat. The weaknesses of my character
are beyond question. But that is just the point — at the moment
they are not in question: what I’ve been trying for three days to
ask you is — ”

“That I’ll wrap up the dose in jelly for you — isn’t that it?
You want to badger me into abetting your damned hypocrisy, so
that you can sleep in comfort, while other people have to wake
and watch and grin and bear it.”

“ But, Herr Hofrat, why are you so hard on me? I actually
want to — ”

“ Yes, yes, hardness isn’t your line, I know. Your cousin’s a
different sort, quite another pair of shoes. He knows. He knows
— and keeps quiet. Understand? He doesn’t go about hanging on
to people’s coat-tails and asking them to help him pull the wool
over his eyes! He knows what he did, and what he risked, and
he is the kind to bite his teeth together on it. That’s the kind
of thing a man, that is a man, can do: unfortunately it isn’t in the
line of a fascinating biped like yourself. But I warn you, Castorp,
if you are going to give way to your civilian feelings and set up
a howl, I’ll simply show you the door. What we need now is a
man. You understand? ”

Hans Castorp was silent. Nowadays he too turned mottled
when he changed colour, being too copper-tinted to grow really
pale. At last, with twitching lips, he said: “ Thank you, Herr
Hofrat. I understand now — at least, I feel sure you would not
speak to me so — so solemnly if it weren’t serious with Joachim.
But I dislike scenes very much — you do me injustice there. If
the thing requires judgment and discretion, I think I can prom-
ise you I shall not be wanting.”

“ You set great store by your cousin, Hans Castorp? ” asked
the Hofrat, as suddenly he gripped the young man’s hand, and
looked at him with his blue, blood-veined, protruding eyes, under
their white eyelashes.

“ What is there to say, Herr Hofrat? A near relation, and —
and my good friend and only companion up here ” — Hans Ca-
storp gulped and turned one foot about on its toes as he stood.

The Hofrat hastened to let go his hand.

“ Well, then be as good to him as you can, these next six or
eight weeks,” he said. “ Just turn yourself loose and give free
rein to your native harmlessness. That will help him the most.

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 531

I’ll be here too, to help make things comfortable, and befitting
the officer and gentleman he is.”

“ It’s the larynx, isn’t it? ” Hans Castorp asked, inclining his
head in answer.

“ Lctryngea” Behrens assented. “Breaking down fast. The
mucous membrane of the trachea looks bad too. Maybe yelling
commands in the service set up a locus minoris resistenti <e there.
But we must always be ready for such little diversions. Not much
hope, my lad; really none at all, I suppose. Of course, we’ll try
everything that’s good and costs money.”

“ The mother,” began Hans Castorp.

“ Later on, later on. No hurry. Use your discretion, and see
that she comes into the picture at the right time. And now get
back where you belong. He will miss you — ■ it can’t be pleasant
for him to feel himself discussed behind his back.”

Daily Joachim went to be painted, in the fine autumn weather.
In white flannel trousers and blue blazer, he would come back
late from his treatment, neat and military; would enter the din-
ing-room, make his little bow, courteous and composed, in ex-
cuse of his tardiness, and sit down to his meal, which was specially
prepared, for he no longer ate the regular food, on account of
the danger of choking; he received minces and broths. His table-
mates grasped quickly the state of affairs. They returned his
greetings with unusual warmth, and addressed him as Lieutenant.
When he was not there they asked after him of Hans Castorp;
and even people from the other tables came up to inquire. Frau
Stohr wrung her hands, and exhausted herself in vulgar lamenta-
tions. But Hans Castorp replied only in monosyllables, admitted
the seriousness of the affair, yet to a certain extent made light
of it, in the honourable design not to betray his cousin untimely.

Daily they took their walks together, thrice covering the pre-
scribed distance, to which the Hofrat had now strictly limited
Joachim, in order to husband his strength. Hans Castorp walked
at his cousin’s left. They had been used to walk as chance had it,
but now he held consistently to the left. They did not talk much;
uttered the phrases proper to the daily routine, and little else. On
the subject that lay between them there is nothing to say, especially
between people of traditional reserve, who could scarcely bring
themselves to utter each other’s first names. Sometimes it did well
up insistently in Hans Castorp’s civilian breast, as though it must
out. But it could not: the painful, rebellious feeling sank away
again, and he was still.

With bowed head Joachim walked beside him. He gazed earth

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532

wards — as though looking at the earth. How strange! He walked
so comme il faut> so much as he had always been; he greeted people
with his wonted courtliness, he set store, as always, by his out-
ward appearance and biensecmce — and he belonged to the earth.
Well, thither we all belong, soon or late. But so young; with such
joyous goodwill to his chosen service — to belong to the earth
so young, is bitter. Bitterer, harder to understand, for him who
knew and walked beside him than for the devoted one himself,
whose knowledge, even though he knew and kept silent, was
academic in its nature, was in a way less his own concern than his
companion’s. It is a fact that a man’s dying is more the survivors’
affair than his own. Whether he realizes it or not, he illustrates the
pertinence of the adage: So long as we are, death is not; and when
death is present, we are not. In other words, between death and
us there is no rapport; it is something with which we have nothing
to do — and only incidentally the world and nature. And that is
why all living creatures can contemplate it with composure, with
indifference, unconcern, with egoistic irresponsibility. Of this
state of mind Hans Castorp observed much in his cousin, in these
weeks; and comprehended that Joachim, knowing, yet did not
know; that it was not hard for him to preserve a decorous silence
on the subject, for the reason that his inward relation to it was, so
to speak, merely theoretic. So far as it came into practical consid-
eration with him, it was regulated by a healthy sense of the fit-
ness of things, which made him as little likely to discuss it as he
was to talk about other functional indecencies of which we are
all aware, by which our life is conditioned, but on the subject
of which we yet preserve bienseance .

So they walked and kept silence between them upon all such
unseemly natural concerns. Even the complaints which at first
Joachim had so frequently and loudly voiced at missing the
manoeuvres, and neglecting the service in general, he voiced no
more. Yet why, despite all his unconscious bearing, did that sad,
shrinking look creep back into his gentle eyes? And that flicker-
ing glance — over which the Frau Directress, had she tried, might
now have triumphed? Was it because he saw how big-eyed and
hollow-cheeked he was grown? — for so he was, in these few
weeks, much more than during his whole stay down below, and
his bronze skin turned from day to day more brown and leathery.
As though circumstances which to Herr Albin were but an op-
portunity to enjoy the boundless advantages of shame, were to
the young officer a source of chagrin and self-contempt. Before
what, before whom, did his once frank and open glance seek to

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE

533

swerve aside? How strange is this shame of the living creature
that slips away into a corner to die, convinced that he may not
expect from outward nature any reverence or regard for his
suffering and death! Convinced, and rightly: a troop of swallows
on exultant wing will give no heed to a maimed comrade, nay,
they will even peck him with their beaks. But the example is from
the lower reaches of nature. Hans Castorp’s heart indeed, his
humanly pitying and loving heart, swelled in his breast to see this
dark, instinctive shame rise in Joachim’s eyes. He walked on his
left side expressly; and when there came a little rise to surmount,
would help his cousin, who had grown by now unsteady on his
feet; would put his arm across his shoulder; overcoming his shy-
ness, would even leave it there a while, until Joachim shook it off
pettishly and said: “ Don’t, it looks silly — as if we were drunk,
coming along like that.”

But there came a moment when Hans Castorp saw in a differ-
ent light the sadness in Joachim’s eyes. It was when the latter
received the order to keep his bed, at the beginning of Novem-
ber. The snow lay deep. By then he found it too difficult to eat
even the minces and porridge they prepared for him, as every
second mouthful went the wrong way. The change to liquid
nourishment was indicated, and Behrens sent him to bed, in order
to conserve his strength. The evening before, the last evening he
was about, Hans Castorp saw him talking to Marusja, Marusja
of the ready laugh, the orange-scented handkerchief, the bosom
fair to outward eye. After dinner, during the social half-hour,
Hans Castorp came out of the music-room to look for his cousin,
and saw him by the tiled stove, near Marusja’s rocking-chair,
which Joachim held tipped back with his left arm, so that she
looked up in his face from a half-lying posture, with her round
brown eyes, and he bent over her, talking softly and disjointedly.
She smiled every now and then, and shrugged her shoulders, nerv-
ously, deprecatingly.

The onlooker hastened to withdraw; though he saw that he was
not the only one to watch the little scene, unobserved or at least
unheeded by Joachim. The sight shook Hans Castorp more than
any sign of railing strength he had seen all these weeks in his cousin:
Joachim in conversation, sunk in conversation, with Marusja, at
whose table he had sat so long without exchanging a syllable with
her, but in reason and honour kept his eyes cast down, and sternly
refused to be aware of her person or existence, though he went all
mottled whenever she was mentioned in his presence — “ Ah,
yes, he is a lost man,” thought Hans Castorp, and sat down on a

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534

chair in the music-room, to give Joachim time for this one fare-
well indulgence.

From now on, Joachim took up the horizontal. Hans Castorp
sitting in his excellent chair wrote to Louisa Ziemssen. To his
earlier reports he added that Joachim had now taken to his bed;
that he had said nothing, but the wish to have his mother by him
could be read in his eyes, and Hofrat Behrens agreed that it would
be well. He put it all with great delicacy. And Louisa Ziemssen,
as was not surprising, took the earliest possible train and came to
her son. Three days after the humanely worded letter went off
she arrived, and Hans Castorp engaged a sleigh and fetched her
from the station in a snow-storm. As the train drew in, he took
care to compose his features, that the mother might not receive
a shock, nor on the other hand be lulled by false hopes.

How often had such meetings taken place on this platform,
how often this arrival in haste, this anguished searching of fea-
tures as the traveller descended from the train! Frau Ziemssen
gave the impression that she had run all the way from Ham-
burg on foot. Flushed of face, she drew Hans Castorp’s hand
between hers to her breast, and looking at him as though she
feared to hear, put her hurried, almost shamefaced queries. He
parried them by thanking her for having come so quickly, saying
it was splendid to have her, and how delighted Joachim would
be. Yes, he was in bed now; it was too bad, but had to be, on ac-
count of the liquid diet, which must naturally weaken him to
some extent. If necessary, of course, there were other expedi-
ents — for instance, artificial nourishment. But she would > c ee for
herself.

She saw; and beside her, Hans Castorp saw too. Up to that
moment he had not been fully aware of the changes the last
weeks had made in Joachim — the young have not much eye for
such things. But now he looked with the eyes of the newly ar-
rived mother, as though he had not seen Joachim for weeks; and
realized clearly and distinctly, as doubtless she did too, and be-
yond a doubt Joachim himself clearest of all, that he was a
moribundus . He took Frau Ziemssen’s hand and held it — his own
was as yellow and wasted as his face. And his ears, because of the
emaciation, stood out almost disfiguringly. Yet despite this blem-
ish, the one affliction of his young days, and despite the austere
expression illness set upon his features, their manly beauty seemed
intensified — the lips, perhaps, beneath the small black moustache,
looked a shade too full by contrast with the hollow cheek. Two
lengthwise folds had graven themselves in the yellow surface of

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 535

his brow; his eyes, deep in their bony sockets, were larger
and more beautiful than ever, Hans Castorp never tired of look-
ing at them. For all the distressed and wavering look was gone,
now Joachim lay in bed; there was only that earlier light in their
dark, quiet depths — yes, there was the “ ominous ” look as well.
He did not smile, he took his mother’s hand and whispered her
a welcome. He had not even smiled on her entrance; and this im-
mobility of his mien said all.

Louisa Ziemssen was a brave soul. She did not dissolve in grief
at sight of her dear son. The almost invisible net that confined
and kept in order her hair was symbolic of her composed and
self-controlled bearing. Phlegmatic, energetic, as they all were on
her native heath, she took in hand the care of Joachim, spurred
on by his appearance to engage all her maternal powers in the
struggle, and persuaded that if anything could save him, it must
be her watchful and devoted care. Not to spare herself, but only
from a sense of style, did she consent to call in a nurse. It was
Sister Berta, Alfreda Schildknecht, who came with her little black
bag. Frau Ziemssen’s zeal left her little to do, by day or night, and
she had plenty of time to stand in the corridor, with her eye-
glass ribbon behind her ear, and keep an eye to all that went on.
She was a prosaic soul, this Protestant sister. Once, when she was
alone in the room with Hans Castorp and the patient, who was not
asleep but lay on his back with open eyes, she actually made the
remark: “ Who would have dreamed I should ever come to tend
the last illness of either of you? ”

Hans Castorp, horrified, shook his fist at her, but she scarcely
grasped his meaning; she was far from any thought of sparing
Joachim’s feelings, and too matter-of-fact to dream that any-
one, least of all the next of kin, could be in any doubt as to the
character and issue of this illness. “ There,” she said, and held
a handkerchief wet with cologne to Joachim’s nose, “ take a little
comfort, Herr Leutnant, do! ” And after all, she was right: there
could be little sense, at this hour, in keeping up the pretence. It
was more for the sake of the tonic effect that Frau Ziemssen still
spoke to her son, in a brisk, encouraging voice, of his recovery.
For two things were unmistakable: first, that Joachim was ap-
proaching death in full consciousness, and second, that he con-
sented to his state, and was in harmony with himself. Only in the
last week — the end of November — did cardiac weakness show
itself. There were hours when he grew confused, no longer real-
ized his condition, and spoke of an early return to the colours,
spoke even of the autumn manoeuvres, which he imagined were

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53 6

still going on. Then it was Hof rat Behrens ceased to hold out any
hope, and told the relatives the end was a matter of hours.

The condition is as regular as it is pathetic, this forgetful,
credulous self-deception, that attacks even masculine spirits at
the hour when the lethal process nears its culmination. As imper-
sonal, as true to type, as independent of the individual conscious-
ness as the temptation to slumber that overpowers the man
benumbed by cold, or the walking in circles of one who has lost his
way. Hans Castorp’s grief and concern did not prevent him from
objective observation of these phenonema, nor from making
shrewd if baldly expressed remarks upon them in conversation with
Naphta and Settembrini, when he reported to them on his cous-
in’s condition. He even drew upon himself a rebuke from Settem-
brini, for saying he thought the current conception in error
which would have it that a philosophical credulity and belief that
all is for the best is the mark of a sound nature, as pessimism and
cynicism are of morbidity. For if this were true, it would not be
precisely the hopeless final stage that displayed an optimism so
abnormally rosy as to make the preceding depression seem by
comparison a crassly healthy manifestation of life. He was glad at
the same time to be able to tell his friends that though Rhadaman-
thus gave them no hope, yet the hopelessness was not of the most
painful character, for he prophesied* a gentle, painless end, despite
Joachim’s blooming youth.

“ Idyllic — affair of the heart, my dear lady,” Behrens said, and
held Louisa Ziemssen’s hand in his own two, the size of shovels,
looking down at her with his goggling, watery, blood-shot eyes.
“ I’m tremendously glad it is taking such a gratifying course, and
he doesn’t need to go through with oedema of the glottis or any
indignity of that sort, he will be spared a lot of messing about. The
heart is giving out rapidly, lucky for him and for us; we can do
our duty with camphor injections and the like, without much
chance of drawing things out. He will sleep a good deal at the end,
and his dreams will be pleasant, I think I can promise you that; even
if he shouldn’t go off in his sleep, still it will be a short crossing,
he’ll scarcely notice, you may rely upon it. It’s so in the majority
of cases, at bottom — I know what death is, I am an old retainer of
his; and believe me, he’s overrated. Almost nothing to him*. Of
course, all kinds of beastliness can happen beforehand — but it isn’t
fair to count those in, they are as living as life itself, and can just as
well lead up to a cure. But about death — no one who came back
from it could tell you anything, because we don’t realize it. We
come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 537

lie the experiences of our life. But the beginning and the end, birth
and death, we do not experience; they have no subjective charac-
ter, they fall entirely in the category of objective events, and that’s
that.”

Which was the Hofrat’s way of administering consolation. We
may hope that the reasonable Frau Ziemssen drew comfort there-
from; his assurances, at least, were in a very large degree justified
by the event. Joachim, in these days, slept many hours, out of
weakness, and probably dreamed of the flat-land and the service
and whatever else was pleasant to him to dream. When he roused,
and they asked how he felt, he would answer a little incoherently,
yet always that he felt well and happy. This though he had scarcely
any pulse, and at the end could no longer feel the hypodermic
needle. His body was insensitive, you might have burned or
pinched the flesh, he was past feeling.

Great physical changes had taken place since the mother’s com-
ing. Shaving had grown burdensome to him, for some eight or ten
days it had not been done, and he had now a strong growth of
beard, setting off with a black frame his waxen face and gentle
eyes. It was the warrior’s beard, the beard of the soldier in the
field; they all found it manly and becoming. But because of this
beard Joachim had suddenly grown from a stripling to a ripe man
— though perhaps not because of it alone. He was living fast, his
life whirred away like the mechanism of a watch; he passed at a
gallop through stages not granted him in time to reach; and in the
last four-and-twenty hours became a grey old man. The cardiac
weakness caused a facial swelling that gave the effect of strain, and
made upon Hans Castorp the impression that dying must at the
very least be a great effort, though of course Joachim, thanks to
various sensory adjustments and a merciful narcosis of the system,
was not aware of it. The puffing of the features was mostly about
the lips; the inside of the mouth also seemed dry or semi-paralysed,
making Joachim mumble like an old man — which annoyed him
excessively. If he could only, he said thickly, get rid of it he would
be quite all right, but it was a cursed nuisance.

In what sense he meant the “ quite all right ” was not clear —
in fact, he showed the typical tendency to ambiguousness, made
more than one remark of doubtful or double sense, seemed to know
and yet not to; once, when it was very evident that a wave of the
oncoming dissolution broke over him, he shook his head and said
self-pityingly that he felt very bad, he had never felt so bad before.

After that he became austere, forbidding, even gruff; would not
listen to any soothing fictions or pretence, but stared before him

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538

and made no reply. Louisa Ziemssen had sent for a young clergy-
man, who, to Hans Castorp’s regret, did not appear in a starched
ruff, but wore bands instead. After he had prayed with Joachim,
the patient assumed an official tone and air, and uttered his wishes
in the form of short commands.

At six o’clock in the afternoon he began making a strange con-
tinuous movement with his right hand, with the chain bangle on
the wrist: passing it across the bed-cover, at about the hips, lifting
it as he drew it back- and toward him, with a raking motion, as
though he were gathering something in.

At seven o’clock he died; Alfreda Schildknecht was in the cor-
ridor, the mother and cousin were alone with him. He had sunk
down in the bed, and curtly ordered them to prop him up. While
Frau Ziemssen, with her arm about his shoulders, tried to do so, he
said hurriedly that he must write out an application for an exten-
sion of his leave and hand it in at once; and even while he said this,
the “ short crossing ” came to pass, as Hans Castorp, reverently
watching in the light of the red-shaded table-lamp, quickly per-
ceived. His gaze grew dim, the unconscious tension of the features
relaxed, the strained and swollen look about the lips notably di-
minished; the beauty of early manhood visited once more our Joa-
chim’s quiet brow, and all was over.

Louisa Ziemssen turned sobbing away; it was Hans Castorp who
bent over the moveless, breathless form, closed the eyes with the
tip of his ring-finger, and laid the hands together on the coverlet.
Then he too stood and wept, tears ran down his cheeks, like those
that had smarted the skin of the English officer of marines: those
clear drops flowing in such bitter abundance every hour of our
day all over our world, till in sheer poetic justice we have named
the earth we live in after them; that alkaline, salty gland-secretion,
which is pressed from our system by the nervous stress of acute
pain, whether physical or mental. It contained, as Hans Castorp
knew, a certain amount of mucin and albumen as w'ell.

The Hofrat came, summoned by Sister Berta. He had been there
a half-hour earlier, and given a camphor injection; had scarcely
been absent for more than the moment of the “ short crossing.”
“ Ay,” said he simply, “ he has it behind him now,” and lifted the
stethoscope from Joachim’s breast. And he pressed both their
hands, nodding his head; standing with them awhile by the bed,
and looking into Joachim’s moveless visage, with the warrior beard.
“ Crazy young one,” he said: jerking his head towards the recum-
bent form. “ Crazy chap. Would force it, you know — of course,
that’s the way of the service down there, all force, all compulsion

A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 539

— he joined the service while he was febrile, he took a life-and-
death chance. Field of honour, you know — slipped away from us,
and now he’s dead on the field. Honour was the death of him, and
death — well, you might put it the other way round too. At any
rate, he’s gone — ‘ had the honour to take his leave.’ A madman, a
crazy chap.” And he left, tall and stooped, his neck-bone very
prominent.

It had been decided to take Joachim home; and House Berghof
assumed the arrangements, doing all that was necessary or that
could add to the dignity or stateliness of the occasion. Mother and
cousin needed not to lift a finger. By next day Joachim lay in his
silk dress-shirt, with flowers about him on the coverlet, looking, in
the midst of all this white, more beautiful than immediately after
death. Every trace of strain w)as gone from the features, they had
composed themselves, growing cold, into a silent purity of form.
Curling dark locks fell upon the yellowish brow, that seemed to be
of some fine brittle stuff between wax and marble; through the
crisp hair of the beard the lips showed full and curling. An antique
helmet would have become this head — as many of the guests re-
marked, who came to take last leave of Joachim.

Frau Stohr, as she looked, wept with abandon. “ A hero, he was
a hero,” cried she, and demanded that the Erotica be played at his
grave.

“ Be quiet,” hissed Settembrini, at her side. He and Naphta were
with her in the room. Greatly moved, with both hands he waved
the onlookers toward the bed and summoned them to mourn with
him. u Un giovanotto tanto simpatico , tanto stimdbile said he re-
peatedly.

And Naphta, without looking at him, or relaxing his contained
manner, apparently could not refrain from saying, low and bit-
ingly: “ I am glad to see that despite your enthusiasm for freedom
and progress, you have some feeling for serious things.”

Settembrini pocketed the affront. Perhaps he felt conscious,
under the circumstances of the moment, of the superiority of
Naphta’s position over his own; may even have sought to balance
this by the lively expression of his grief, especially when Leo
Naphta further presumed on his advantage, while he had it, and
sententiously added: “ The mistake you literary men make is in
thinking that only the spirit makes for virtue. It is nearer the truth
to say that only where there is no spirit is there true virtue.”

“ Goodness,” thought Hans Castorp, “ but that was a Pythian
remark! Made like that with the lips snapped together afterwards,
it quite staggers one — for the moment, that is.”

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54O

In the afternoon the metallic coffin arrived. The removal of
Joachim to this stately receptacle, decorated with lions’ heads and
rings, was the sole affair of the man who came along with it, a
black-clad functionary of the undertaking establishment which
had the arrangements in hand. He wore a sort of short dress-coat,
and the wedding-ring on his plebian hand had almost grown into
the flesh. One inclined to feel that he exhaled an odour of death
from his garments — pure prejudice, of course, and groundless.
This specialist let it be known that all his spiriting had to be done
behind the scenes, and a proper and dress-parade appearance pre-
sented to the surviving relatives. Hans Castorp felt fairly suspicious
of the fellow and all his works. He assented to Frau Ziemssen’s
withdrawal, but was not minded to be bowed from the scene him-
self. He stood by and lent a hand, grasping the figure under the
shoulders and helping carry it over to the coffin, upon whose cover-
let and tasselled cushions Joachim presently lay ensconced high and
solemnly, among candelabra provided by the house.

On the next day but one appeared a phenomenon which deter-
mined Hans Castorp to take inward leave of that quiet form, to
void the field and leave it to the professional guardian of the ameni-
ties: Joachim, whose expression had been so noble and serious, be-
gan now to smile in his warrior beard. Hans Castorp did not con-
ceal from himself that this smile had in it the seeds of corruption;
he knew in his heart that time was pressing. It was good that the
coffin was now to be closed, the lid screwed on; that the hour for
removal was at hand. Hans Castorp, laying aside traditional re-
serve, lightly touched with his lips the icy forehead of that which
once was Joachim; and though conscious still of mistrustful senti-
ments toward the man behind the scenes, yet submissively followed
Louisa Ziemssen from the room.

We let the curtain fall, for the last time but one. While it rustles
down, let us take our stand in spirit with Hans Castorp on his
lonely height, and gaze down with him upon a damp burial-ground
in the flat-land; see the flash of a sword as it rises and falls, hear the
word of command rapped out, and three salvoes, three fanatical
salutes reverberating over Joachim Ziemssen’s root-pierced grave.

CHAPTER VII

By the Ocean of Time

Can one tell — that is to say, narrate — time, time itself, as such,
for its own sake? That would surely be an absurd undertaking. A
story which read: “ Time passed, it ran on, the time flowed on-
ward ” and so forth — no one in his senses could consider that a
narrative. It would be as though one held a single note or chord
for a whole hour, and called it music. For narration resembles music
in this, that it fills up the time. It “ fills it in ” and “ breaks it up,”
so that “ there’s something to it,” “ something going on ” — to
quote, with due and mournful piety, those casual phrases of our
departed Joachim, all echo of which so long ago died away. So
long ago, indeed, that we wonder if the reader is clear how long
ago it was. For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium
of life. Both are in extricably bound up with it, as inextricably as
are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music
divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance
its value, both at once. Thus music and narration are alike, in that
they can only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession in
time, as one thing after another; and both differ from the plastic
arts, which are complete in the present, and unrelated to time save
as all bodies are, whereas narration — like music — even if it should
try to be completely present at any given moment, would need
time to do it in.

So much is clear. But it is just as clear that we have also a dif-
ference to deal with. For the time element in music is single. Into a
section of mortal time music pours itself, thereby inexpressibly
enhancing and ennobling what it fills. But a narrative must have
two kinds of time: first, its own, like music, actual time, condi-
tioning its presentation and course; and second, the time of its con-
tent, which is relative, so extremely relative that the imaginary
time of the narrative can either coincide nearly or completely with
the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away. A piece of
music called a “ Five-minute Waltz ” lasts five minutes, and this is

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54 2

its sole relation to the time element. But a narrative which con-
cerned itself with the events of five minutes, might, by extraor-
dinary conscientiousness in the telling, take up a thousand times
five minutes, and even then seem very short, though long in relation
to its imaginary time. On the other hand, the contentual time of a
story can shrink its actual time out of all measure. We put it in this
way on purpose, in order to suggest another element, an illusory,
even, to speak plainly, a morbid element, which is quite definitely
a factor in the situation. I am speaking of cases where the story
practises a hermetical magic, a temporal distortion of perspective
reminding one of certain abnormal and transcendental experiences
in actual life. We have records of opium dreams in which the
dreamer, during a brief narcotic sleep, had experiences stretching
over a period or ten, thirty, sixty years, or even passing the extreme
limit of man’s temporal capacity for experience: dreams whose
contentual time was enormously greater than their actual or mu-
sical time, and in which there obtained an incredible foreshortening
of events; the images pressing one upon another with such rapidity
that it was as though “ something had been taken away, like the
spring from a broken watch ” from the brain of the sleeper. Such
is the description of a hashish eater.

Thus, or in some such way as in these sinister dreams, can the
narrative go to work with time; in some such way can time be
dealt with in a tale. And if this be so, then it is clear that time, while
the medium of the narrative, can also become its subject. There-
fore, if it is too much to say that one can tell a tale of time, it is none
the less true that a desire to tell a tale about time is not such an
absurd idea as it just now seemed. We freely admit that, in bring-
ing up the question as to whether the time can be narrated or not,
we have done so only to confess that we had something like that in
view in the present work. And if we touched upon the further
question, whether our readers were clear how much time had
passed since the upright Joachim, deceased in the interval, had in-
troduced into the conversation the above-quoted phrases about
music and time — remarks indicating a certain alchemistical height-
ening of his nature, which, in its goodness and simplicity, was, of
its own unaided power, incapable of any such ideas — we should
not have been dismayed to hear that they were not clear. We might
even have been gratified, on the plain ground that a thorough-go-
ing sympathy with the experiences of our hero is precisely what
we wish to arouse, and he, Hans Castorp, was himself not clear
upon the point in question, no, nor had been for a very long time —
a fact that has conditioned his romantic adventures up here, to an

BY THE OCEAN OF TIME 543

extent which has made of them, in more than one sense, a “ time-
romance.”

How long Joachim had lived here with his cousin, up to the time
of his fateful departure, or taken all in all; what had been the date
of his going, how long he had been gone, when he had come back;
how long Hans Castorp himself had been up here when his cousin
returned and then bade time farewell; how long — dismissing
Joachim from our calculations — Frau Chauchat had been absent;
how long, since what date, she had been back again (for she
did come back) ; how much mortal time Hans Castorp himself had
spent in House Berghof by the time she returned; no one asked
him all these questions, and he probably shrank from asking him-
self. If they had been put him, he would have tapped his forehead
with the tips of his fingers, and most certainly not have known —
a phenomenon as disquieting as his incapacity to answer Herr Set-
tembrini, that long-ago first evening, when the latter had asked
him his age.

All which may sound preposterous; yet there are conditions
under which nothing could keep us from losing account of the
passage of time, losing account even of our own age; lacking, as
we do, any trace of an inner time-organ, and being absolutely in-
capable of fixing it even with an approach to accuracy by our-
selves, without any outward fixed points as guides. There is a case
of a party of miners, buried and shut off from every possibility of
knowing the passage of day or night, who told their rescuers that
they estimated the time they had spent in darkness, flickering be-
tween hope and fear, to be some three days. It had actually been
ten. Their high state of suspense might, one would think, have
made the time seem longer to them than it actually was, whereas
it shrank to less than a third of its objective length. It would ap-
pear, then, that under conditions of bewilderment man is. likely to
under- rather than over-estimate time.

No doubt Hans Castorp, were he wishful to do so, could with-
out any great trouble have reckoned himself into certainty; just as
the reader can, in case all this vagueness and involvedness are re-
pugnant to his healthy sense. Perhaps our hero himself was not
quite comfortable either; though he refused to give himself any
trouble to wrestle clear of vagueness and involution and arrive at
certainty of how much time had gone over his head since he came
up here. His scruple was of the conscience — yet surely it is a want
of conscientiousness most flagrant of all not to pay heed to the
time!

We do not know whether we may count it in his favour that

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544

circumstances advantaged his lack of inclination, or perhaps we
ought to say his disinclination. When Frau Chauchat came back
— under circumstances very different from those Hans Castorp had
imagined, but of that in its place — when she came back, it was the
Advent season again, and the shortest day of the year; the begin-
ning of winter, astronomically speaking, was at hand. Apart from
arbitrary time-divisions, and with reference to the quantity of
snow and cold, it had been winter for God knows how long, in-
terrupted, as always all too briefly, by burning hot summer days,
with a sky of an exaggerated depth of blueness, well-nigh shading
into black; real summer days, such as one often had even in the
winter, aside from the snow — and the snow one might also have
in the summer! This confusion in the seasons, how often had Hans
Castorp discussed it with the departed Joachim! It robbed the year
of its articulation, made it tediously brief, or briefly tedious, as one
chose to put it; and confirmed another of Joachim’s disgusted utter-
ances, to the effect that there was no time up here to speak of,
either long or short. The great confusion played havoc, moreover,
with emotional conceptions, or states of consciousness like “ still ”
and “ again ”; and this was one of the very most gruesome, bewil-
dering, uncanny features of the case. Hans Castorp, on his first day
up here, had discovered in himself a hankering to dabble in that
uncanny, during the five mighty meals in the gaily stenciled dining-
room; when a first faint giddiness, as yet quite blameless, had made
itself felt.

Since then, however, the deception upon his senses and his mind
had assumed much larger proportions. Time, however weakened
the subjective perception of it has become, has objective reality in
that it brings things to pass. It is a question for professional think-
ers — Hans Castorp, in his youthful arrogance, had one time been
led to consider it — whether the hermetically sealed conserve upon
its shelf is outside of time. We know that time does its work, even
upon Seven-Sleepers. A physician cites a case of a twelve-year-
old-girl, who fell asleep and slept thirteen years; assuredly she did
not remain thereby a twelve-year-old girl, but bloomed into ripe
womanhood while she slept. How could it be otherwise? The dead
man — is dead; he has closed his eyes on time. He has plenty of
time, or personally speaking, he is timeless. Which does not prevent
his hair and nails from growing, or, all in all — but no, we shall not
repeat those free-and-easy expressions used once by Joachim, to
which Hans Castorp, newly arrived from the flat-land, had taken
exception. Hans Castorp’s hair and nails grew too, grew rather
fast. He sat very often in the barber’s chair in the main street of the

BY THE OCEAN OF TIME

545

Dorf, wrapped in a white sheet, and the barber, chatting obsequi-
ously the while, deftly performed upon the fringes of his hair,
growing too long behind his ears. First time, then the barber, per-
formed their office upon our hero. When he sat there, or when he
stood at the door or his loggia and pared his nails and groomed
them, with the accessories from his dainty velvet case, he would
suddenly be overpowered by a mixture of terror and eager joy
that made him fairly giddy. And this giddiness was in both senses
of the word: rendering our hero not only dazed and dizzy, but
flighty and light-headed, incapable of distinguishing between
“ now ” and “ then,” and prone to mingle these together in a time-
less eternity.

As we have repeatedly said, we wish to make him out neither
better nor worse than he was; accordingly we must report that he
often tried to atone for his reprehensible indulgence in attacks of
mysticism, by virtuously and painstakingly striving to counteract
them. He would sit with his watch open in his hand, his thin gold
watch with the engraved monogram on the lid, looking at the
porcelain face with the double row of black and red Arabic fig-
ures running round it, the two fine and delicately curved gold
hands moving in and out over it, and the little second-hand taking
its busy ticking course round its own small circle. Hans Castorp,
watching the second-hand, essayed to hold time by the tail, to
cling to and prolong the passing moments. The little hand tripped
on its way, unheeding the figures it reached, passed over, left be-
hind, left far behind, approached, and came on to again. It had no
feeling for time limits, divisions, or measurements of time. Should
it not pause on the sixty, or give some small sign that this was the
end of one thing and the beginning of the next? But the way it
passed over the tiny intervening unmarked strokes showed that all
the figures and divisions on its path were simply beneath it, that it
moved on, and on. — Hans Castorp shoved his product of the
Glashiitte works back in his waistcoat pocket, and left time to take
care of itself.

How make plain to the sober intelligence of the flat-land the
changes that took place in the inner economy of our young adven-
turer? The dizzying problem of identities grew grander in its scale.
If to-day’s now — even with decent goodwill — was not easy to
distinguish from yesterday’s, the day before’s or the day before
that’s, which were all as like each other as the same number of peas,
was it not also capable of being confused with the now which had
been in force a month or a year ago, was it not also likely to be
mingled and rolled round in the course of that other, to blend with

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546

it into the always? However one might still differentiate between
the ordinary states of consciousness which we attached to the
words “ still,” “ again,” “ next,” there was always the temptation
to extend the significance of such descriptive words as “ to-
morrow,” “ yesterday,” by which “ to-day ” holds at bay “ the
past ” and “ the future.” It would not be hard to imagine the exist-
ence of creatures, perhaps upon smaller planets than ours, practis-
ing a miniature time-economy, in whose brief span the brisk trip-
ping gait of our second-hand would possess the tenacious spatial
economy of our hand that marks the hours. And, contrariwise, one
can conceive of a world so spacious that its time system too has a
majestic stride, and the distinctions between “ still,” “ in a little
while,” “ yesterday,” “ to-morrow,” are, in its economy, possessed
of hugely extended significance. That, we say, would be not only
conceivable, but, viewed in the spirit of a tolerant relativity, and in
the light of an already-quoted proverb, might be considered legiti-
mate, sound, even estimable. Yet what shall one say of a son of
earth, and of our time to boot, for whom a day, a week, a month,
a semester, ought to play such an important role, and bring so many
changes, so much progress in its train, who one day falls into the
vicious habit — or perhaps we should say, yields sometimes to the
desire — to say “ yesterday ” when he means a year ago, and “ next
year ” when he means to-morrow? Certainly we must deem him
lost and undone, and the object of our just concern.

There is a state, in our human life, there are certain scenic sur-
roundings — if one may use that adjective to describe the surround-
ings we have in mind — within which such a confusion and
obliteration of distances in time and space is in a measure justified,
and temporary submersion in them, say for the term of a holiday,
not reprehensible. Hans Castorp, for his part, could never without
the greatest longing think of a stroll along the ocean’s edge. We
know how he loved to have the snowy wastes remind him of his
native landscape of broad ocean dunes; we hope the reader’s recol-
lections will bear us out when we speak of the joys of that straying.
You walk, and walk — never will you come home at the right time,
for you are of time, and time is vanished. O ocean, far from thee we
sit and spin our tale; we turn toward thee our thoughts, our love,
loud and expressly we call on thee, that thou mayst be present in
the tale we spin, as in secret thou ever wast and shalt be! — A sing-
ing solitude, spanned by a sky of palest grey; full of stinging damp
that leaves a salty tang upon the lips. — We walk along the springy
floor, strewn with seaweed and tiny mussel-shells. Our ears
are wrapped about by the great mild, ample wind, that comes

BY THE OCEAN OF TIME

547

sweeping untrammelled blandly through space, and gently blunts
our senses. We wander — wander — watching the tongues of foam
lick upward toward our feet and sink back again. The surf is
seething; wave after wave, with high, hollow sound, rears up, re-
bounds, and runs with a silken rustle out over the flat strand: here
one, there one, and more beyond, out on the bar. The dull, perva-
sive, sonorous roar closes our ears against all the sounds of the
world. O deep content, O wilful bliss of sheer forgetfulness! Let us
shut our eyes, safe in eternity! No — for there in the foaming grey-
green waste that stretches with uncanny foreshortening to lose it-
self in the horizon, look, there is a sail. There? Where is there?
How far, how near? You cannot tell. Dizzyingly it escapes your
measurement. In order to know how far that ship is from the shore,
you would need to know how much room it occupies, as a body in
space. Is it large and far off, or is it small and near? Your eye grows
dim with uncertainty, for in yourself you have no sense-organ to
help you judge of time or space. — We walk, walk. How long, how
far? Who knows? Nothing is changed by our pacing, there is the
same as here, once on a time the same as now, or then; time is
drowning in the measureless monotony of space, motion from
point to point is no motion more, where uniformity rules; and
where motion is no more motion, time is no longer time.

The schoolmen of the Middle Ages would have it that time is an
illusion; that its flow in sequence and causality is only the result of
a sensory device, and the real existence of things in an abiding pres-
ent. Was he walking by the sea, the philosopher to whom this
thought first came, walking by the sea, with the faint bitterness of
eternity upon his lips? We must repeat that, as for us, we have
been speaking only of the lawful licence of a holiday, of fantasies
born of leisure, of which the well-conducted mind wearies as
quickly as a vigorous man does of lying in the warm sand. To call
into question our human means and powers of perception, to ques-
tion their validity, would be absurd, dishonourable, arbitrary, if it
were done in any other spirit than to set bounds to reason, which
she may not overstep without incurring the reproach of neglecting
her own task. We can only be grateful to a man like Herr Settem-
brini, who with pedagogic dogmatism characterized metaphysics
as the “ evil principle,” to the young man in whose fate we are in-
terested, and whom he had once subtly called “ life’s delicate
child.” We shall best honour the memory of one departed, who
was dear to us, if we say plainly that the meaning, the end and aim
of the critical principle can and may be but one thing: the thought
of duty, the law of life. Yes, law-giving wisdom, in marking off the

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limits of reason, planted precisely at those limits the banner of life,
and proclaimed it man’s soldierly duty to serve under that banner.
May we set it down on the credit side of Hans Castorp’s account,
that he had been strengthened in his vicious time-economy, his
baleful traffic with eternity, by seeing that all his cousin’s zeal,
called doggedness by a certain melancholy blusterer, had but the
more surely brought him to a fatal end?

Mynheer Peeperkorn

Mynheer Peeperkorn, an elderly Dutchman, spent some time at
House Berghof, that establishment which, in its prospectus, so cor-
rectly described itself as “ international.” Pieter Peeperkorn — such
was his name, so he called himself, as for instance, “ Pieter Peeper-
kom will now take unto himself a Hollands gin ” — was a colonial
Dutchman, a man from Java, a coffee-planter. His slightly faded
nationality is scarcely sufficient ground for introducing him at this
late day into our story. God knows we have had racial mixtures
a-plenty in the famous cure conducted with such many-tongued
efficiency by Herr Hofrat Behrens! There was the Egyptian prin-
cess who had given the Hofrat the extraordinary coffee-machine
and sphinx cigarettes, a sensational person with cropped hair and
beringed fingers yellow with nicotine, who went about — except
at the main meal of the day, for which she made full Parisian toilet
— in a sack coat and well-pressed trousers; and who scorned the
world of men, to lay hot and heavy, though fitful siege to an in-
significant little Roumanian Jewess called plain Frau Landauer,
while Lawyer Paravant for her royal highness’s beaux yeux neg-
lected his mathematics and altogether played the fool for love. This

E rincess, in addition to her own colourful personality, had among
er little suite a Moorish eunuch, a weak and sickly man, who yet,
despite his basic and constitutional lack — upon which Caroline
Stohr loved to dwell — clung to life more desperately than most,
and was quite inconsolable over the conclusions Hofrat Behrens
drew from the transparency they made of his dusky inside.

Mynheer Peeperkorn, then, compared with such phenomena,
might seem well-nigh colourless. And it is true that this part of our
story might, like an earlier chapter, bear the caption “ A New-
comer.” But the reader need not fear that in him another occasion
for pedagogic strife has arrived upon the scene. No, Mynheer
Peeperkorn was not the man to be the bearer of logical confusion.
He was quite a different man, as we shall see. Yet he brought sore

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 549

dismay and perplexity upon the hero of our tale, as will shortly
be very evident.

Mynheer Peeperkorn arrived at the Dorf station by the same
evening train as Frau Chauchat. They drove up in the same sleigh
to House Berghof, and supped together in the restaurant. The ar-
rival, in short, was not only coincident but concurrent, and con-
tinued in that sense, Mynheer taking his place beside the returned
wanderer at the “ good ” Russian table, opposite the doctor’s seat
— the place Popoff had occupied, what time he performed his wild
and equivocal antics. The companionship troubled our good Hans
Castorp — that it should turn out like this had never entered his
mind. The Hofrat, after his own fashion, had announced the day
and hour of Clavdia’s return. “ Well, Castorp, old top,” he said,
“ there’s always a reward for faithful waiting. To-morrow the
little puss will be slinking back — I’ve had a dispatch.” But not a
word that she might not come alone. Perhaps he did not know that
she and Peeperkorn were travelling together; at least, he showed
surprise when Hans Castorp, the day after, as much as took him
to task.

“ Don’t know myself where she picked him up,” he declared.
“ I take it they met on the return from the Pyrenees. Alas, poor
Strephon! Tut, my lad, you’ll have to put up with it, no use pull-
ing a long face. They’re thick as thieves, it seems, have even their
luggage in common. The man’s larded with money, from what 1
hear. Retired coffee-king, Malayan valet, plutocratic is no word
for it. But he hasn’t come up here for fun. A catarrhal condition
due to alcoholism — and from what I can see he is threatened with
tropical fever, malignant, intermittent, you know; protracted, ob-
stinate. You’ll have to be patient with him.”

“ Don’t mention it,” replied Hans Castorp, loftily. “ And what
about you? ” he said to himself. “ I wonder what your feelings
are; you didn’t come off scot-free either, or I miss my guess, you
blue-in-the-face widower, with your oil-painting technique. Old
dog in the manger! You needn’t tell me: so far as Peeperkorn is
concerned, I’m certain we’re companions in misery.” — “ Quaint
creature,” he continued aloud, and shrugged. “ An original, cer-
tainly. He’s so lean — yet he’s robust; that is the impression he
makes, at least that’s the impression I got at breakfast. Lean, and
robust, those are the adjectives, I think, though they aren’t com-
monly used together. He is certainly tall and broad, and likes to
stand with his legs apart and his hands in his trouser pockets —
which, I observe, are put in running up and down, not like yours
and mine and most people’s of our class. And when he stands there

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550

and talks, in his guttural Dutch voice, there’s something unmis-
takably robust about him. But he has a sparse whisker, you could
almost count the hairs; and his eyes are very small and pale, hardly
any colour to them at all. He keeps trying to open them wide, and
has made a lot of wrinkles, regular corrugations, that turn up on
the temples and run straight across his forehead, and his forehead
is high and red, with long wisps of white hair. He wears a clerical
waist-coat, but his tail-coat is check. These are the impressions I
got this morning.”

Behrens answered: “ I see you’ve taken his number — you’re
right, too, for you will have to come to terms with his being here.”

“ Yes, I expect we shall,” said Hans Castorp. We have left it to
him to describe the unlooked-for guest, and he has not come badly
off — we could scarcely add anything essential to the picture. He
had a good view; as we know, he had in Clavdia’s absence moved
closer to the “ good ” Russian table; the one where he now sat
stood parallel with hers, only rather farther away from the veran-
dah door. Both he and Peeperkom were on the inner and narrow
side of their respective tables, and thus, in a way, neighbours, Hans
Castorp being slightly in the Dutchman’s rear, very advantageously
placed to observe him, as also to look at the three-quarter view
which Frau Chauchat’s profile presented. We might round out
Hans Castorp ’s description by a few notes: as, that the Dutchman’s
nose was large and fleshy, his mouth large too, and bare of mous-
taches, the lips of irregular shape, as though chapped. His hands
were fairly broad, with long, pointed nails; he used them freely as
he talked, and he talked almost continuously, though Hans Castorp
failed to get his drift. Those adequate, compelling, cleanly attitudes
of the hands — so varied, so full of subtle nuances — possessed a
technique like that of an orchestral conductor. He would curve
forefinger and thumb to a circle; extend the palm, that was so
broad, with nails so pointed, to hush, to caution, to enjoin attention
— and then, having by such means led up to some stupendous utter-
ance, produce an anticlimax by saying something his audience
could not quite grasp. Yet this, perhaps, was less a disappointment
than it was a conversion of expectancy into ecstatic amaze; for the
speaking gesture made good what he did not say, and was of itself
alone vastly satisfying and diverting. Sometimes, indeed, after lead-
ing up to his climax, he left it out altogether. He would lay his hand
tenderly on the arm of the young Bulgarian scholar next him, or on
Frau Chauchat’s on the other side; then lift it obliquely for silence,
create suspense for what he was about to say, wrinkling high his
brows, so that the lines running upwards from the outer corners

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

551

of his eyes were deepened like those on a mask; he would look
down on the cloth before his neighbour’s place, and from his thick,
distorted lips words of the highest import seemed about to issue

— then, after more pause, he would breathe an outward breath,
give up the struggle, nod, as though to say “ As you were,” and
return undelivered to his coffee, which was served to him of extra
strength, in his own machine.

After the draught he would proceed thus, choking off with one
hand the conversation, making a silence round him, as a conductor
hushes the confused sounds of tuning instruments and collects his
orchestra to begin a number; mastering at will any situation, for
could anything resist that regal head, with its aureole of white hair
and its pallid eyes, the great folds of the brows, the long whisker
and shaven raw upper lip? They were silent, they looked at him and
smiled, they waited, anticipatorily nodding. He spoke.

In rather a low voice he said: “Ladies and gentlemen. Very
well. Very well indeed. Very. Settled. But will you keep in mind,
and — not for one moment — not one moment — lose sight of the
fact — but no more. On this point not another word. What is in-
cumbent upon me to say is not so much — it is in the first place
simply this: it is our duty — we lie under a solemn — an inviolable

— No! No, ladies and gentlemen! It was not thus — it was not thus
that I — how mistaken to imagine that I — quite right, ladies and
gentlemen! Set — tied. Let us drop the subject. I feel we under-
stand each other, and now — to the point! ”

He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures
were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Ca-
storp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment;
or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech,
certainly never missed it. We wonder how it might appear to a deaf
person. Perhaps the impressiveness of what he saw would make
him draw an altogether wrong conclusion as to what he might have
heard but for his infirmity — and cause him to suffer accordingly.
Such people incline to mistrust and bitterness. On the other hand,
a young Chinaman at the other end of the table, who possessed
too little of the language to understand what had been said, but
had yet assiduously listened and looked, clapped his hands and
called out: “ Tres bien , tres bienP

And Mynheer Peeperkorn came “ to the point.” He drew him-
self up, swelled his broad chest, buttoned the check frock-coat over
the clerical waistcoat; the pose of his white head was regal. He
beckoned to a “ dining-room girl ” — it was the dwarf — and
though busily engaged, she at once obeyed his weighty summons.

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552

and stood, milk jug and coffee-pot in hand, by his chair. She too
felt drawn to look at him with an ingratiating smile on her large,
old face; she too was rapt by the pallid gaze beneath the deep-
wrinkled brow; by the lifted hand, whose thumb and forefinger
were joined in an O, while the other three with their lanceolate
nails stood stiffly up.

“ My child,” said he, “ very well. Very well indeed — very. You
are small — what is that to me? On the contrary. I find it a positive
good, I thank God, that you are as you are; I thank God you are
so small and full of character. What I want of you is also small and
full of character. But in the first place, what is your name? ”

She said, smiling and stammering, that her name was Emerentia.

“Splendid,” cried Peeperkom, throwing himself back in his
chair and stretching out his arm toward her. He cried it in the tone
of one who would say “Wonderful! Is not everything wonder-
ful? ” — “ My child,” he went on, with a perfectly serious face,
almost sternly, “ you surpass all my expectations. Emerentia! You
utter it so modestly — yet, taken with your person, it holds out
such boundless possibilities. Beautiful. Worth dwelling upon, com-
muning with in the depths of one’s — in order to — understand me,
my child: as a term of endearment — the pet name. It might be
Rentia. Though Emchen would equally warm and fortify the heart

— in short, for the moment, I will abide by Emchen. Emchen, then,
Emchen my child, attend. A little bread, my love. But hold! Let no
misunderstanding come between us — for in your somewhat over
life-size face I seem to read — bread, Renzchen, bread; yet not
baker’s bread, of which in this place we have enough and to spare,
in all conceivable forms. Not corn that is baked, my angel, but
com that is burnt — in other words, distilled. Bread or God, bread
of sunshine, little pet name; bread for the laving of man’s weary
spirit. But I still have misgivings — whether the sense of this word

— I would even consider substituting for it another, the beautiful
word cordial — if here we did not encounter a new danger, that it
might be understood in the ordinary thoughtless sense — No more,
Rentia. Settled. Set — tied, and out of the question. Rather would
I, in consideration of the debt of honour I acknowledge, right cor-
dially to rejoice your characteristic smallness — a gin, love, and
haste thee. A Schiedamer, Emerentia. Bring me one hither.”

“ A geneva, sir,” repeated the dwarf, and spun three times round
on herself, seeking a place for her jugs, which she finally deposited
on Hans Castorp’s table, quite near him, obviously not wishing to
burden Herr Peeperkom with the same. She put wings to her feet,
and he soon received his desire. The little glass was so full that the

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

553

“ bread ” overflowed and bedewed the plate. He took the grain
distillation between thumb and middle finger, and held it toward
the light. “ Pieter Peeperkom,” he declared, “ will now take unto
himself a glass of Hollands/’ He appeared to chew the liquid some-
what, then swallowed it down; “ And now,” he said, “ I look on
you all with new eyes.” He lifted Frau Chauchat’s hand from the
cloth, carried it to his lips and laid it back, letting his own rest for
some while upon it.

An odd man, and of great personal weight, though incoherent.
The population of the Berghof were enthusiastic over him. It was
reported that he had only lately retired from his colonial interests
and transferred them to the continent. He was said to have a mag-
nificent house at The Hague, and another at Scheveningen. Frau
Stohr called him a money magnet (the unhappy woman meant
magnate) and indicated the string of pearls Frau Chauchat had
worn in the evening since her return to the Berghof. These pearls,
Frau Stohr considered, were scarcely a token of affection from the
trans-Caucasian husband; more likely they came out of the com-
mon travelling-trunk. She winked and jerked her head in the direc-
tion of Hans Castorp, whose discomfiture she parodied with her
mouth drawn down — no, illness and affliction had had no power
to refine Caroline Stohr; her jeers over the young man’s disap-
pointment positively went beyond bounds. He preserved his com-
posure, ana corrected her blunder, not unadroitly. It was magnate,
not magnet she had meant to say, he told her. Money-magnate.
But magnet was not so bad after all — certainly Herr Peeperkom
had a good deal that was attractive about him. The schoolmistress,
Fraulein Engelhart, with a wry smile, flushing dully, but not look-
ing at him as she spoke, asked how he liked the new guest. He re-
plied, quite calmly, that he found Mynheer Peeperkom a “ blurred
personality ”; a personality, that is, undoubtedly, though blurred.
The precision or the characterization showed objectivity and poise;
it dislodged the schoolmistress from her position. Ferdinand
Wehsal, too, made oblique reference to the unexpected circum-
stances of Frau Chauchat’s return; and got from Hans Castorp
proof that a look may be every whit as telling and unequivocal as
the articulate word. “ You paltry wretch,” said the stare with
which Hans Castorp measured the Mannheimer — said it without
the shadow of a doubt of its meaning. Wehsal understood that
look, and pocketed it up; even nodded and showed his bad teeth;
but from that time forward he ceased to carry Hans Castorp’s over-
coat, when they went their walks with Naphta, Settembrini, and
Ferge.

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554

But dear me, Hans Castorp could carry his own coat, couldn’t
he — and much preferred to; he had only let the poor creature
take it now and then out of sheer good feeling. However, there
was no doubt everybody in the circle knew that Hans Castorp was
hard hit by the wholly unforeseen circumstance, which frustrated
all the hopes he had cherished against the return of his carnival
partner. It would be putting it even better to say that she had ren-
dered nugatory all his hopes; that, precisely, was the mortifying
fact.

His designs had been of the most discreet and delicate, he had
meant nothing clumsy or abrupt. He would not even fetch her
from the station — what a mercy, indeed, he had not thought of
doing so! Uncertain whether a woman — upon whom illness had
conferred such a degree of freedom — uncertain whether she
would even admit the fantastic adventures of a dream dreamed on
carnival night, in a foreign tongue to boot! Whether she would
even wish in the first instance to be reminded of them. No, there
would be no exigence, no clumsy pressing of claims. Admitted that
his relations with the slant-eyed sufferer went beyond the limits
prescribed by the traditions of the Occident; the uttermost for-
mality of civilization, even for the moment apparent forgetfulness
— was indicated as the suitable procedure. A respectful greeting
from table to table — only that, for the time, no more. A courtly
approach as occasion indicated, an easy inquiry after the health
of the traveller. The actual meeting would follow in good time, as
a reward for his chivalrous reserve.

All this fine feeling, now, had become null and void — Hans Ca*
storp’s conduct being deprived of choice, and therewith of merit.
The presence of Mynheer Peeperkom effectively disposed of any
tactics save utter aloofness. On the evening of the arrival, Hans Ca-
storp had seen from his loge the sleigh come up the winding drive.
On the box next the coachman sat the Malayan valet, a yellow little
man with a fur collar to his overcoat, and a bowler hat. At the
back, his hat over his brows, sat the stranger, beside Clavdia. That
night Hans Castorp got little sleep. Next morning he heard for the
asking the name or the mysterious new arrival; heard likewise that
the two travellers occupied neighbouring suites on the first floor.
He was early at breakfast, and sat in his place erect but pale, await-
ing the slamming of the glass door. It did not come. Clavdia’s en-
trance was noiseless; for Mynheer Peeperkorn closed the door be-
hind her — tall and broad, his white hair flaring above his lofty
brow, he followed the familiar gliding tread of his companion, as
with head stuck out before her she slipped to her chair. Yes, she

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

555

was unchanged. Regardless of his programme, Hans Castorp de-
voured her, with his sleep-weary eyes. There was the red-blond
hair, no more elaborately dressed than of yore, wound in the same
simple braid about her head; there were the “ prairie-wolfs eyes,”
the rounding neck, the lips that seemed fuller than they actually
were, thanks to the prominent cheek-bones, which gave the cheeks
that exquisite flat or slightly concave look. — Clavdia! he thought,
and thrilled. He fixed his eyes on the unexpected guest; not with-
out a toss of the head for the splendid masklike impression the
person made; not without summoning a sneer at pretensions which,
however justified by present possession, were invalidated by the
past — by certain very definite events in the past — for instance in
the field of amateur portraiture. Hans Castorp knew, for had not
those events visited himself with justifiable pangs? — Even her way
of turning, before she sat down, to present herself, as it were, to
the room, she had as of yore. Mynheer Peeperkom assisted at the
little ceremony, standing behind her while it took place, and then
seating himself at Clavdia’s side.

As for that courtly salute from table to table — nothing came of
it. Clavdia’s eyes, when she presented herself, had passed over Hans
Castorp’s person and his whole vicinity, and rested upon the far
corner of the room. At the next meal it was the same. And the more
meals passed without any response to his gaze than this blank and
indifferent passing-over, the more impracticable became the pro-
ject of the courtly salute. After supper the two travelling-com-
panions sat in the small salon, on the sofa together, surrounded by
their table-mates; and Peeperkom, his magnificent visage flaming
against the flashing white of hair and beard, drank out the bottle
of red wine he had ordered at table. At each of the main meals he
drank one, or two, or two and a half bottles, in addition to the
“ bread ” which he took even at early breakfast. Obviously the
system of this kingly man stood in more than common need of
moistening. He took in fluid likewise in the form of extra-strong
coffee, many times a day, drinking it out of a large cup, even after
dinner — or rather, he drank it during dinner, along with the wine.
Wine and coffee, Hans Castorp heard him say, were both good
for fever — quite aside from their cordial and refreshing proper-
ties — very good against the intermittent tropical fever which had
kept him in bed for several hours the second day after he arrived.
The Hofrat called it quartan fever: it took the Dutchman about
every fourth day, first with a chill, then with a fever, then with a
mighty sweat. He was said to have also an inflamed spleen, from
the same cause.

55 <*

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Vingt Et Un

A little time passed, some three or four weeks — this on our own
reckoning, since on Hans Castorp’s we cannot depend. They
brought no great change. On our hero's part they witnessed an
abiding scorn of the unforeseen circumstances which kept him in
undeserved exile, of, in particular, that circumstance which called
itself Pieter Peeperkom, when it took unto itself a glass of gin —
the disturbing presence of that kingly, incoherent man, which
upset Hans Castorp far more than had the presence of the “ organ-
grinder ” in the old days. His brows took on two querulous ver-
tical wrinkles, and five times daily he contracted them as he sat
and looked at the returned traveller — glad despite himself to be
able to look at her — and at the high-and-mighty presence sitting
there all unaware what a poor light past events shed on his present
pretensions.

One evening the social hour happened to be livelier than usual
— which it might be at any time without especial cause. A Hun-
garian student played spirited gipsy waltzes on his fiddle; and
Hofrat Behrens, who chanced to be present for a quarter-hour with
Dr. Krokowski, got somebody to play the melody of the “ Pil-
grims’ Chorus ” on the bass notes of the piano, while he himself
operated in a skipping movement with a brush over the treble, and
parodied the violin counterpoint. Everybody laughed; and the
Hofrat, nodding benevolent approval of his own sprightly per-
formance, withdrew amid applause. The gaiety prolonged itself,
there was more music, people sat down with drinks beside them to
dominoes and bridge, trifled with the optical instruments, or stood
in groups talking. Even the Russian circle mingled with the others
in hall and music-room. Mynheer Peeperkom was to be seen
among them — or rather, he could not but be seen, wherever he
was, his kingly head towering high above any scene, and dwarfing
it by the sheer weight and majesty of his person. Those who stood
about him, drawn first by the reports of the man’s wealth, soon
hung absorbed upon his personality. Forgetful of all else, they
stood laughing and nodding, spellbound by the pallid eye, by the
brow’s mighty folds, by the compulsion of the gestures his long-
nailed hands performed. And never, for one moment, were they
conscious of any lack in his incoherent, rhapsodic, literally futile
remarks.

If we look about for our friend Hans Castorp, we shall find him
in the reading- and writing-room, where once (but that “ once ”

VINGT ET UN

557

is vague, not the teller nor the reader of this story, nor yet its hero,
being any longer clear upon the degree of its “ once-ness ”) —
where once he had received certain very important communica-
tions touching the history of human progress. It was quiet here —
only two or three other persons shared his retreat. At one pf the
double tables, under the electric light, a man was writing; and a
lady with two pairs of glasses on her nose sat by the bookshelves
and turned over the leaves of an illustrated magazine. Hans Ca-
storp sat near the open door to the music-room, with his back to
the portieres, on a chair that happened to be standing there, a plush-
covered chair in Renaissance style, with a high straight back, and
no arms. He held a newspaper as though to read it, but instead was
listening with his head on one side to the snatches of .music and
talk from the next room. His brows were dark, his thoughts
seemed not on harmonies bent, but rather on the thorny path of
his present disillusionment. Bitter, bitter was the weird of our
young man, who had'borne out the long waiting only to be gulled
at the end. Indeed he seemed not far from a sudden determination
to fling his paper upon the chair he sat in, to escape by the hall
door and exchange the empty gaieties of the salon for the frosty
solitude of his balcony, and the society of his Maria.

“ And your cousin, A4onsieur? ” a voice suddenly asked above
and behind his shoulder. It was a voice enchanting to his ear;
it seemed his senses had been expressly contrived to perceive its
sweet-and-bitter huskiness as the very height and summit of earthly
harmonies; it was the voice that once had said to him: “ Certainly.
But be careful not to break it ” — a compelling, fateful voice. And
if he heard aright, it had asked him about Joachim.

Slowly he let his newspaper fall, and turned his face up a little,
so that the crown of his head came against the straight back of his
chair. He even closed his eyes, but quickly opened them, and gazed
somewhere into space — the expression on the poor wight’s face
was well-nigh that of a sleep-walker, or clairvoyant. He wished
she might ask again, but she did not, he was not even sure she still
stood behind him, when, after all that pause, so tardily and with
scarce audible voice he answered: “ He is dead. He went down be-
low to the service, and he died.”

He realized that this “ dead ” was the first word to fall between
them; likewise, simultaneously, that she was not sure of expressing
herself in his tongue, and chose short and easy phrases to condole
in. Still standing behind and above him, she said: “ Oh, woe, alas!
That is too bad! Quite dead and buried? Since when? ”

“ Some time ago. His mother came and took him back with her.

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558

He had grown a beard, a soldier’s beard. They fired three salvoes
over his grave.”

“ He deserved them. He was a very good young man. Far better
than most other people — than some others one knows.”

“ Yes, he was good and brave. Rhadamanthus always talked
about his doggedness. But his body would have it otherwise.
Rebellio camis , the Jesuits call it. He always set store by his body
— in the highest sense. However, his body thought otherwise, and
snapped its fingers at doggedness. But it is more moral to lose your
life than to save it.”

“ Monsieur is still the philosophizing faineant, I see. But Rhada-
manthus? Who is that? ”

“ Behrens. That is Settembrini’s name for him.”

“ Ah, Settembrini. Him I know. That Italian who — whom I
did not like. He was not hu — man. He had — arrogance.” The
voice dwelt on the word human — dreamily, fanatically; and ac-
cented arrogance on the final syllable. “ He is no longer here? And
I am so stupid, I do not know what is Rhadamanthus.”

“ A humanistic allusion. Settembrini has moved away. We’ve
philosophized a lot of late, he and I and Naphta.”

“ Who is Naphta? ”

“ His adversary.”

“ If he is that, then I would gladly make his acquaintance. — Did
I not tell you your cousin would die if he went down to be a
soldier? ”

And Hans Castorp answered as he had vowed and dreamed:
“ Tu Vas su he said.

“ What are you thinking of? ” she asked him.

There was a long pause. He did not retract, he waited, with the
crown of his head pressed against the chair-back, and his gaze half
tranced, to hear her voice again; and again he was not sure she
was still there, again he was afraid the broken music might have
drowned her departing footsteps. At last it came again: “And
Monsieur did not go down to his cousin’s funeral? ”

He replied: “ No, I bade him adieu up here, before they shut
him away, when he had begun to smile in his beard. His brow was
cold — tu sais comme les fronts des morts sont f voids? ”

“ Again! What a way is that to address a lady whom one hardly
knows! ”

“ Must I speak not humanly, but humanistically? ”

“ Quelle blague! You were here all the time? ”

“ Yes. I waited.”

“ Waited — for what? ”

VINGT ET UN

559

“ For thee! ”

A laugh came from above him, a word that sounded like “ Mad-
man! ” — “ For me? How absurd it is — ils ne t'auraient pas laisse
partirP

“ Oh, yes, Behrens would have, once — he was furious. But it
would have been folly. I have not only the old scars that come
from my school-days, but the fresh places that give me my fever.”

“ Still fever? ”

“ Yes, still, a little — or nearly always. It is intermittent. But not
an intermittent fever.”

“ Des allusions? ”

He was silent. He still gazed somnambulantly, but his brows
were gathered. After a while he asked: “ Et toi — ou as~tu ete? ”

A hand struck the back of the chair. “ Toujour s ce tutoyer!
Metis e'est un sauvage! — Where have I been? All over. In Mos-
cow ” — the voice pronounced it Muoscow — “ in Baku — in some
German baths, in Spain.”

“ Oh, in Spain. Did you like it? ”

“ So-so. The travelling is bad. The people are half Moorish.
Castile is bare and stark. The Kremlin is finer than that castle
or monastery, or whatever it is, at the foot of the mountains — ”

“ Yes, the Escurial.”

“ Yes, Philip’s castle. An inhuman place. I preferred the folk-
dancing in Catalonia, the sardana to the bagpipes. Moi , fai danse
aussi moi! they take each other’s hands and dance in a ring — the
whole square is full of dancing people. C’est charmant. That is
hu — man. I bought a little blue cap, such as all the men and boys
of the people wear down there, almost like a fez — the boina.
I shall wear it in the rest-cure, and other places, perhaps. Mon-
sieur shall judge if it becomes me.”

“ What monsieur? ”

“ Sitting here in this chair.”

“ Not Mynheer Peeperkorn? ”

“ He has already pronounced judgment — he says I look charm-
ing in it.”

“ He said that — all of it? Did he really finish the sentence, so it
could be understood? ”

“ Ah! It seems Monsieur is out of temper? Monsieur would
be spiteful, cutting? He would laugh at people who are much
greater and better, and — more hu — man than himself and his

— his ami bavard de la Mediterranee, son maitre et grand parleur

— put together. But I cannot listen — ”

“ Have you my x-ray portrait? ” he interrupted, crest-fallen.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

560

She laughed. “ I must look it out.”

“ I carry yours here. And on my bedside table I have a little
easel — ”

He did not finish. Before him stood Peeperkorn. He had searched
for his travelling-companion, entered through the portieres and
stood in. front of Hans Castorp’s chair, behind which he saw her
talking; stood like a tower, so close to Hans Castorp as to rouse
the latter from his trance, and make him realize that it was in place
to get up and be mannerly. But they were so close he had to slide
sidewise from his seat, and then the three stood in a triangle, the
centre of which was the chair.

Frau Chauchat complied with the requirements of the civi-
lized West, by presenting the gentlemen to each other, Hans Ca-
storp to Peeperkorn as “ an acquaintance of a former stay.”
Superfluous to account for Herr Peeperkorn. She gave his name,
and the Dutchman bent a look upon the young man, out of his
colourless eyes, beneath the astonishing arabesque of wrinkles
that made his face so like an old idol’s; gave him a look, and put
out his hand, which was freckled on the back, and would have
looked like a sea-captain’s, Hans Castorp thought, but for the
lanceolate finger-nails. For the first time, he stood under the im-
mediate influence of Peeperkorn ’s impressive personality (per-
sonality was the word that always occurred to one in reference to
this man, one knew straightway that this was a personality; and the
more one saw of him the more one was convinced that a personality
must look not otherwise than as he did) and his unstable youth
felt the weight of this broad-shouldered, red-faced man in the
sixties, with his aureole of white hair, his cracked lips and the
chin-whisker that strayed long and scanty over the clerical waist-
coat. Peeperkom’s manner was courtesy itself.

“ My dear sir,” he said, “ with the greatest of pleasure. Don’t
mention it. I am entirely your man. In making your acquaint-
ance, I distinctly feel — as a young man, you inspire me with
confidence. I like you. I — don’t mention it. Settled, sir, settled.
You suit me.”

What could Hans Castorp do? Peeperkorn’s gestures were con-
clusive, peremptory. He liked Hans Castorp. It was “ settled.”
And his satisfaction gave Peeperkorn an idea, which he indicated
by means of speaking gesture. His fair companion, coming to the
rescue, elaborated and made it vocal.

“My child,” he said. “Very well. Very well indeed. Very.
But how would it be — ? Pray understand me. Our life here is

VINGT ET UN

561

but brief. Our power to do it justice is but — These are facts,
my child. Laws. In — ex — orable. In short, my child, in short and
in brief — ” He paused, in an impressive attitude, which suggested
that he would defer to another’s judgment but disclaim responsi-
bility if, despite his warning, an error were committed.

Frau Chauchat was obviously skilled in interpreting his half-
uttered wishes. She said: “ Why not? We might remain down a
little longer, make a party, perhaps, and drink a bottle of wine
together.” She turned to Hans Castorp. “ Make haste! Why are
you waiting? We must have company, we three are not enough.
Who is still in the salon? Ask anyone who is there, fetch some
of your friends down from their balconies. We will ask Dr. Ting-fu
from our table.”

Peeperkorn rubbed his hands.

“Very good,” he said. “Absolutely. Capital. Do as you are
bid, young man, make haste! Let us make a little company,
play, and eat and drink. Let us feel that — settled, young man.
Absolutely.”

Hans Castorp took the lift to the second storey. He knocked
at Ferge’s door, who in his turn fetched Wehsal and Herr Albin
from their chairs in the main rest-hall below. Lawyer Paravant
and the Magnus couple were still in the hall, Frau Stohr and the
Kleefeld in the salon. A large table was set up under the centre
chandelier, chairs and serving-tables put about. Mynheer courte-
ously greeted each guest as he appeared, with a glance of the
pallid eyes and a lifting of the masklike brows. They sat down,
twelve together, Hans Castorp between his kingly host and Clavdia
Chauchat. Cards and counters were produced, they decided on
some rounds of vingt et un. Peeperkorn summoned the dwarf and
in his most impressive manner ordered wine — white Chablis of
’06, three bottles for a start — and dessert, whatever patisseries and
dried fruits were to be had. He rubbed his hands in high glee
as the good things came in, and communicated his sentiments in
broken phrases which were none the less entirely successful, at
least in the direction of establishing his “ personality.” He laid
both hands on his neighbour’s arm, then raised his long forefinger
with the pointed nail, and claimed and received the admiration of
the table for the splendid golden colour of the wine in the rum-
mers, for the sugar that sweated from the Malaga grapes, for a
certain sort of little salt and poppy-seed pretzel. These, he declared,
were divine, and with an imperious gesture nipped in the bud any
possible protest against the strength of his adjective. He had taken

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562

charge of the bank at first, but soon turned it over to Herr Albin,
and was understood to say that the charge of it hindered his un-
fettered enjoyment.

The gambling was to him quite evidently a minor consideration.
The stakes were very low, a mere trifle in his view, though the
bidding, at his suggestion, began at fifty rappen , a considerable
sum to most of those present. Lawyer Paravant and Frau Stohr
went white and red by turns; the latter suffered pangs of inde-
cision when called on to decide whether it was too high for her
to buy at eighteen. She squealed aloud when Herr Albin with chill
routine dealt her a card so high as to confound her hopes over
and over. Peeperkom laughed heartily.

“ Squeal away, madame, squeal away,” said he. “ It sounds
shrill and full of life, it wells up from depths — drink, madame,
drink and refresh yourself for new efforts.” He filled her glass,
also his neighbour’s and his own, ordered three more bottles, and
clicked glasses with Wehsal and Frau Magnus the inly wasted
one; they two seeming to stand in most need of enlivenment.
Faces flushed more and more, from the effects of the truly mar-
vellous wine — only Dr. Ting-fu’s remained unchangingly yellow,
with jet-black slits of eyes. He staked very high, with his little
suppressed giggle, and was shamelessly lucky. Lawyer Paravant,
his gaze a-swim, challenged fate by putting ten francs on an only
moderately hopeful opening card, bought until he was pale in
the face, and then won twice his money back; for Herr Albin
had rashly doubled on the strength of an ace he received. Not
only the persons involved felt the shock of these events; the whole
circle shared the shattering effect. Even Herr Albin, whose sang-
froid outdid the croupiers of Monte Carlo, where, according to
him, he was an old habitue, now scarcely mastered his excitement.
Hans Castorp played high, so did Frau Stohr and the Kleefeld,
Frau Chauchat as well. They went the rounds: played Chemin
de fer, “ My aunt, your aunt,” and the perilous Difference . There
were outbursts of jubilation and despair, explosions of rage, at-
tacks of hysterical laughter — all due to the reaction of this unlaw-
ful pleasure upon their nerves; and all perfectly serious and
genuine. The chances and changes of life itself would have called
up in them no other reaction.

But it was not solely — or even chiefly — the play and the wine
that made the little circle so tense, that flushed their cheeks and
opened their eyes so wide, or evoked such breathless excitement,
such almost painful concentration on the moment’s business. It
Was rather the effect of a commanding nature in their midst, a

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563

“ personality ”; it was Mynheer Peeperkom who held the gath-
ering in the hollow of his mobile gesturing hand, and enforced it,
by the spectacle of his countenance, by his pallid gaze beneath the
monumental creases of his brow, by his words, and his com-
pelling pantomime, to take the mood of the hour. No matter what
he said; it was highly incomprehensible, and the more so the more
wine he drank. Yet they hung on his lips, they could not take their
eyes from the little round made by his finger and thumb, with
the pointed nails stiffly erect beside it; or from the majestic, speak-
ing face; they utterly succumbed to feelings which for self-
forgetfulness and intensity far exceeded the accustomed gamut of
these people. The tribute they paid was too much for some of
them — Frau Magnus, at least, felt very poorly; threatened to faint,
but stoutly refused to retire, and contented herself with the
chaise-longue, where she lay awhile with a wet napkin over her
forehead, and then rejoined the group at the table.

Peeperkom put down her plight to lack of nourishment. He
expressed himself in this sense, with impressive disjointedness,
forefinger aloft. People must nourish themselves properly, he gave
them to understand, in order to do justice to life’s manifold
claims. And he ordered sustenance for the company: platters of
cold meat, joint and roast; tongue, goose, ham, sausage, whole
dishes of delectables, all garnished with little radishes, butter-balls,
and parsley, gay as flower-beds. They found a welcome, despite
the lately consumed supper, which, it were superfluous to tell
the reader, had lacked nothing in heartiness. But Mynheer Peeper-
korn, after a few bites, dismissed the whole as “ kickshaws ” —
dismissed them with a scorn which gave dismaying evidence of
the uncertain temper of this lordly man. Yes, he waxed chol-
eric, turned upon one of the company who tried to defend the
collation. He swelled with rage, struck the table with his fist, and
cursed the food for garbage, fit for the dust-bin. This reduced
the offender to silence, for certainly Peeperkom, as host and dis-
penser of the good cheer, might find fault with its quality if he
chose.

But his rage, however disproportionate, became him magnifi-
cently, Hans Castorp saw that. It did not misrepresent or render
him petty: it wrougnt his incoherence, which no one in the group
could have had the heart to connect with the mixture of wine he
had drunk, to so royal a pitch that they all with one accord agreed,
and took not another bite of the offending viands. Frau Chauchat
set to work to mollify her companion’s mood. She stroked his
great sea-captain’s hand, as it rested on the cloth after the blow

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564

he had struck, and said cajolingly that they might order something
else, a hot dish, perhaps, if the chef could be won over. “ Very
good, my child/’ Peeperkom said, assuaged. And passed, without
abating his dignity, from a full torrent of wrath to a state of
appeasement, as he took Clavdia’s hand and kissed it. He ordered
omelets for himself and the company, for each person a fine large
omelette crux fines herbes , to help them do justice to the demands
life made on them. And accompanied the order with a hundred-
franc note as a sweetener for the staff.

His placidity was fully restored by the appearance of the steam-
ing dishes, with their burden of canary-yellow besprent with
green, which dispersed a mild warm fragrance of eggs and butter
upon the air. They fell to with Peeperkorn, who ate and presided
over the enjoyment, with broken words and compelling gesture
enjoining upon everybody a perfervid appreciation of these gifts
of God. He ordered a Hollands all round to go with the omelets;
the transparent liquor gave out a healthy grain odour, mingled
with just the faintest whiff of juniper — and Peeperkorn laid upon
them all to drink it reverently.

Hans Castorp smoked, Frau Chauchat as well; the latter Russian
cigarettes with a mouthpiece, from a lacquered box with a troika
going full speed on the lid, which lay to hand on the table before
her. Peeperkom made no objection to his neighbours’ enjoyment,
but did not smoke himself — he never had done so. If they under-
stood him aright, he considered the use of tobacco one of those
over-refined enjoyments the cultivation of which robbed of their
majesty the simpler pleasures of life — those gifts and claims to
which our power of feeling was even at best scarcely equal.
“ Young man,” said he to Hans Castorp, holding him by the power
of his pale eye and his developed gesture: “ Young man — the sim-
ple — the holy. Good — you understand me. A bottle of wine, a
steaming dish of eggs, pure grain spirit — let us absorb such things
as these, exhaust them, satisfy their claims, before we — Posi-
tively, sir. Not a word. I have known men and women, cocaine
eaters, hashish smokers, morphine takers — My dear friend, very
good. Very good indeed. Very. Let them. We cannot judge, or
condemn. But the simple, the great, the primeval gifts of God —
to them they were unequal in the first place. Settled, my friend.
Condemned, rejected. They could not respond. — Your name,
young man? Good. I knew it, but I had forgotten. Not in cocaine,
not in opium, not in vice as such does the viciousness lie. The un-
pardonable — the — unpardonable — sin — ”

He paused. Tall and broad, he bent toward his neighbour;

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565

paused and maintained a marvellously expressive silence. His fore-
finger was raised, his mouth a broken line beneath the bare, red
upper lip, which was somewhat raw from the razor, the hori-
zontal folds of his bald forehead rose to meet the white aureole
of his hair; the small pale eyes stared wide, and Hans Castorp
seemed to read in them some flicker of horror at the crime, the
great transgression, the unforgivable sin, which seeking to expound
he stood there now, charmir^g the silence with all the force of
a commanding though incoherent personality. Hans Castorp
thought it a disinterested horror, yet with something too of a
personal kind, something that touched the kingly creature near:
fear, perhaps, but not of any mean or narrow sort; that was very
like panic flickering up momentarily in the eyes. Hans Castorp —
despite the grounds he had for hostile misinterpretation of Frau
Chauchat’s majestic friend — was by nature too respectful not to
feel shocked at the revelation.

He cast down his eyes, and nodded, to give his neighbour the
satisfaction of being understood.

“You are quite right,” he said. “It may easily be a sin — and
a sign of impotence — to indulge in the refinements of life, at
the same time being inadequate to its great, simple, sacred gifts.
If I understood you aright, Herr Peeperkorn, that was your mean-
ing. And though I hadn’t thought of it in that light, I may say
that I agree with you, now that you mention it. It probably hap-
pens seldom enough that these sound and simple gifts of life have
real justice done them. The majority of human beings are too
heedless, too flabby, too corrupt, too worn out inwardly to give
them their due, I feel sure of that.”

The mighty one was immensely pleased. “ Young man,” he
said, “ positively. Will you permit me — not a word. I beg you
to drink with me — no heel-taps — arm-in-arm. I do not, at this
moment, propose to you the brotherly thou; I was about to do
so, but it would no doubt be precipitate. Somewhat. In the near
future, however. Depend upon it. Or, if you insist upon the
present — ”

Hans Castorp demurred.

“ Excellent, young man. ‘ Impotence ’ — very good. Very.
Gives one the shivers. ‘ Corrupt ’ — very good too. ‘ Gifts ’ — not
so good — 4 claims ’ better — the holy, the feminine claims life
makes upon manly honour and strength — ”

Hans Castorp was suddenly driven to realize that Peeperkorn
was very drunk. Still, his drunkenness was not debasing, there
was no loss of dignity; rather it combined with the nobility of

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his nature to produce an immense and awe-inspiring effect.
Bacchus himself, thought Hans Castorp, without detriment to
his godhead, leaned for support on the shoulders of his troop.
Everything depended upon who was drunk — a drunken per-
sonality was far from being the same as a drunken tinker. He
took care not to abate, even inwardly, his respect for this over-
whelming person, whose gestures had grown lax, and his tongue
stammering.

“ Brother,” said Peeperkorn. His great torso lolled back in free
and regal intoxication against his chair. His arm lay stretched
along the cloth and he tapped the table with fist lightly clenched.
“ Brother-in-blood — prospective. In the near future — after a
proper interval for reflection. — Very good. Set — tied. — Life,
young man, is a female. A sprawling female, with swelling breasts
close to each other, great soft belly between her haunches, slender
arms, bulging thighs, half-closed eyes. She mocks us. She chal-
lenges us to expend our manhood to its uttermost span, to stand
or fall before her. To stand or fall. To fall, young man — do you
know what that means? The defeat of the feelings, their over-
throw when confronted by life — that is impotence. For it there
is no mercy, it is pitilessly, mockingly condemned. — Not a word,
young man! Spewed out of the mouth. Shame and ignominy are
soft words for the ruin and bankruptcy, the horrible disgrace.
It is the end of everything, the hellish despair, the Judgment
Day. . .

The Dutchman had flung back his mighty torso more and
more, his kingly head sank lower on his breast, he seemed to be
dozing as he talked. But with the last word he lifted the fist that
had been lying relaxed on the table, and brought it down with a
crash, making our slim young Hans Castorp, overwrought as he
was with wine and play, and the singularity of the whole scene,
jump, and in startled awe look at the mighty one. “ The Judg-
ment Day! ” How the phrase suited the man! Hans Castorp did
not remember ever hearing it uttered, except perhaps at cate-
chism. And no wonder, he said to himself. Who else would have
thought of using it like that — or, more correctly, who would
have been big enough to take the thunderbolt in his mouth?
Naphta, perhaps, when he talked his vindictive rubbish — but it
would have been cheek. Whereas Peeperkorn’s utterance seemed
to hold the sound of the last trump, majestic, biblical. “ Good
Lord, what a personality! ” he felt for the hundredth time. “ At
last I’ve come in contact with a real character — and it turns
out to be Clavdia’s — .” Not too clear-headed himself, he turned

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567

his wineglass about on the table, one hand in his trouser pocket,
one eye clipped shut against the smoke of the cigarette he held in
the corner of his mouth. Certainly he would have done better
to keep quiet. What was his feeble pipe, after the rolling thunder
of Jove? But his two democratic mentors had trained him to
discussion — for they were both democratic, though one of them
struggled against it — and habit betrayed him into one of his
naive commentaries.

“ Your remarks, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” (what an expression!
Does one make “ remarks ” about the Day of Judgment?) “ lead
back my mind to what you said previously about vice: that it
consists in an affront to the simple, what you call the holy, or,
as I might say, the classic, gifts which life offers us; the larger gifts,
by contrast with the later and 4 cultivated ’ ones, the refinements,
which you 4 indulge in,’ as one of us put it, whereas one 4 conse-
crates oneself ’ to the great gifts and pays them homage. But just
here, it seems to me, lies the excuse for vice (you must pardon
me, but I incline by nature to excuses, though there is nothing
4 large ’ about them — I am quite clear on that point) in so far
as it is a result of impotence. About the horrors or impotence you
have said things of such magnitude that I am quite confounded, as
you see me sit here. But in my view, a vicious man appears not at
all insensible of your horrors; on the contrary he does them full
justice, since it is the abdication of his feelings before the classical
gifts of life that drives him to vice. Thus we need not see in vice
any affront to life, it may just as well be regarded as homage to
it; on the other hand, so far as the refinements represent stimu -
lantia , as they say — means of excitation or intoxication — so far
as they sustain or increase the power to feel, then life is their
purpose and meaning, the desire for feeling, the impotent striving
after feeling — I mean — ”

What was he talking about? Was it not democratic and un-
blushing enough that he had said 44 as one of us put it ” — thus
coupling himself and a personality like Peeperkorn? Had certain
events in the past — which shed a dubious light on present preten-
sions — given him courage to utter the impertinence? Were the
gods wishful to destroy him, when they moved him to embark
on this foolhardy analysis of 44 vice ”? Now let him look to it to
extricate himself; for surely he has invoked the whirlwind.

Mynheer Peeperkorn, during Hans Castorp’s harangue, had
sat flung back in his chair, his head still sunk on his breast. It
was uncertain even whether he had been listening. But now,
slowly, as the young man’s utterance grew more involved, he

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568

began to erect himself to his full sitting height, the majestic head
inflamed; the pattern of furrows on his brow expanded upwards,
his little eyes opened in pallid menace. Obviously a storm was
brewing beside which the other had been a passing cloud. Myn-
heer’s under lip pressed wrathfully against the upper, the corners
of his mouth drew down, the chin protruded. Slowly he raised
his right arm above his head; the fist clenched and remained poised
aloft, ready for summary execution upon the democratic prattler,
who for his part was panic-stricken — yet not without a thrill of
precarious joy at this spectacle of regal rage.

He repressed an inclination to flight, and hastened to say, dis-
armingly: “ Of course, I have failed to express my meaning. The
whole thing is simply a question of scale. If a thing has size, one
cannot call it vice. Vice is petty. Of their nature, so are the r affine-
ments . They are never on the grand scale. But since the most
primitive times man has had to his hand a resource, a means of
mounting to the heights of feeling, which belongs among the
classic gifts of life: a resource, simple, sacred, in the grand style,
if I may so express myself. I mean the grape, wine, the gift of the
gods to man, as we are told of old time. A God invented it, and
with its invention civilization began. For we are told that, thanks
to the art of planting and treading the vine, man emerged from
his barbaric state, and achieved culture; even to-day where the
grape grows, those people are accounted, or account themselves,
possessed of a higher culture than the Cimmerians, a fact which is
worthy our attention. For it indicates that civilization is not a
thing of the reason, of being sober and articulate; it has far more
to do with inspiration and frenzy, the joys of the winecup — if I
may make so bold as to ask, have I not expressed your attitude
in the matter? ”

A sly dog, this Hans Castorp. Or, as Herr Settembrini with
literary feeling had put it, a “ wag.” To rush into controversy with
personalities, to be even forward of speech — but then to know
how to extricate himself when need was, and his coat-tails, as it
were, all but on fire! In the first place, he had given them an
impromptu but quite respectable apologia for drinking; into which,
en passant , he had slipped a reference to “ civilization ” — of which
there was just then small trace in Mynheer Peeperkorn’s primitive
and menacing attitude; and lastly, he had got round him, put him
in the wrong, by asking him, quite simply, a question which one
can scarcely answer and maintain the threatening pose or the raised
fist. And accordingly the Dutchman relaxed from his neolithic
rage, slowly his arm sank again till it rested on the table, his face

VINGT ET UN 569

lost its swollen look, the storm passed over with no trace but the
last mutter of thunder, he even seemed to entertain the thought of
clicking glasses again; and now Frau Chauchat came to the rescue,
by calling her companion’s attention to the gradual disintegra-
tion of the party.

“ My friend,” she said to him, in French, “ you are neglecting
your other guests. You devote yourself too exclusively to this gen-
tleman — important though your conversation with him doubt-
less is — and the others have stopped playing, I fear they grow
tired — shall we say good-night? ”

Peeperkom turned his attention to the circle. It was true: they
were demoralized. Lethargy and boredom sat on every brow;
the guests were out of hand, like a neglected class. Several were
on the point of falling asleep. Peeperkorn took a firm grip on
the reins he had let fall. “ Ladies and gentlemen! ” he summoned
them, with raised forefinger — and that pointed finger was like a
waving standard or the flash of an unsheathed sword, as his words
were like the rallying-cry of the leader, which brings to a stand
the threatened rout. It had its effect in a trice. They picked them-
selves up, they pulled themselves together, they looked again with
smiles into their host’s pale eyes beneath his masklike brows. He
held them all, he pressed them afresh into service of his per-
sonality, sinking the tip of his forefinger till it met the tip of his
thumb, and erecting the three others straight and stiff with their
long nails. He stretched out his sea-captain’s hand, checking them,
warning them, and words issued from his cracked lips — words
utterly irrelevant and indistinct, yet exerting on their spirits a
resistless power, thanks to the reserves of personality behind
them.

“ Ladies and gentlemen. Very good, very good indeed. Very.
The flesh, ladies and gentlemen, is — not another word. No, per-
mit me to say — weak, so the Scripture has it. Weak. Inclined to
be unequal to claims — but I appeal to your — in short, ladies and
gentlemen, in short and in brief, I ap — peal! You will say to me:

‘ Sleep.’ Very good, ladies and gentlemen, very good, very. I love
and honour sleep. I venerate the deep, sweet, refreshing bliss of
it. Sleep is one of the — what did you call them, young man? — one
of the classic gifts of life — the first, the very first, the highest,
ladies and gentlemen. But you will recall, you will remember —
Gethsemane. ‘ And took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebe-
dee. . . . Then saith he unto them: . . . Tarry ye here and watch
with me.’ You remember? ‘ And he cometh unto the disciples and
findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter: What, could ye not

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57 °

watch with me one hour? ’ Immense, my friends. Heart-piercing,
moving to the last — very. ‘ And came and found them asleep again,
for their eyes were heavy. And saith unto them: Sleep on now, and
take your rest, behold the hour is at hand.’ Ladies and gentlemen,
that pierces the heart, it sears — ”

In truth, they were all cut to the quick, they were crushed.
He had folded his hands across his chest, upon his scanty beard,
and laid his head on one side. His eyes had grown dim with
feeling as the words expressive of the lonely anguish of death
fell from his chapped lips. Frau Stohr sobbed. Frau Magnus heaved
a heavy sigh. Lawyer Paravant saw it was incumbent upon him
to represent the sense of the meeting. In a voice solemnly sunk, he
assured their honoured host that the circle was his to command.
Herr Peeperkorn mistook them. Here they were, blithe as the
dawn, jolly as sand-boys, ready for anything. This, he said, was
a priceless evening, so festive, so out of the ordinary. Such was
their feeling, and no one of them had any present idea of avail-
ing himself of life’s good gift of sleep. Mynheer Peeperkorn could
count on them, one and all.

“ Splendid, excellent,” Peeperkorn cried, and stood erect again.
He unclasped his hands and spread them wide and high before
him, palms outward — it looked like a heathen prayer. His majestic
physiognomy, but now imprinted with Gothic anguish, blos-
somed once more in pagan jollity. Even a sybaritic dimple ap-
peared in his cheek. “ The hour is at hand,” said he, and sent for the
wine-card. He put on a hom-rimmed pince-nez, the nose-piece
of which rode high up on his forehead, and ordered champagne,
three bottles of Mumm & Co., Cordon rouge , extra dry, with
petits fours , toothsome cone-shaped little dainties in lace frills,
covered with coloured frosting and filled with chocolate and
pistache cream. Frau Stohr licked her fingers after them. Herr
Albin nonchalantly removed the wire from the first bottle, and let
the mushroom-shaped cork pop to the ceiling; elegantly he con-
formed to the ritual, holding the neck of the bottle wrapped in
a serviette as he poured. The noble foam bedewed the cloth.
Every glass rang as the guests saluted, then drank the first one
empty at a draught, electrifying their digestive organs with the
ice-cold, prickling, perfumed liquid. Every eye sparkled. The
game had come to an end, no one troubled to take cards or gains
from the table. They gave themselves over to a blissful far niente ,
enlivened by scraps of conversation in which, out of sheer high
spirits, no one hung back. They uttered thoughts that in the
thinking had seemed primevally fresh and beautiful, but in the

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571

saying somehow turned lame, stammering, indiscreet, a perfect
gallimaufry, calculated to arouse the scorn of any sober onlooker.
The audience, however, took no offence, all being in much the
same irresponsible condition. Even Frau Magnus’s ears were red,
and she admitted that she felt “ as though life were running
through her ” — which Herr Magnus seemed not over-pleased to
hear. Hermine Kleefeld leaned against Herr Albin’s shoulder as
she held her glass to be filled. Peeperkorn conducted the Bac-
chanalian rout with his long-fingered gestures, and summoned
additional supplies: coffee followed the champagne, “ Mocha
double,” with fresh rounds of “ bread,” and pungent liqueurs:
apricot brandy, chartreuse, creme de vanille , and maraschino for
the ladies. Later there appeared marinated filets of fish, and beer;
lastly tea, both Chinese and camomile, for those who had done with
champagne and liqueurs and did not care to return to a sound wine,
as Mynheer himself did; he, Frau Chauchat, and Hans Castorp
working back after midnight to a Swiss red wine. Mynheer Peeper-
korn, genuinely thirsty, drank down glass after glass of the simple,
effervescent drink.

The party held together for another hour, partly because they
were all too leaden-footed and befuddled to rise, partly because
this method of spending the hours of the night appealed to them
by its novelty; partly by the weight of Peeperkom’s personality,
and the blasting example of Peter and his brethren, to which they
all shamed to yield. Generally speaking, the female section seemed
less compromised than the male. For the men, flushed or sallow,
sat with their legs sprawled before them, puffing out their cheeks.
Now and then they would make a half-mechanical effort to lift
the glass, but their hearts were no longer in it. The women were
more enterprising. Hermine Kleefeld, bare elbows on the table,
propped up her head, her cheeks in her hands, and showed the
giggling Ting-fu all the enamel of her front teeth. Frau Stohr,
with her chin and shoulder coquettishly meeting, sought to re-
awaken Lawyer Paravant to desire. Frau Magnus’s state was such
that she had seated herself on Herr Albin’s lap and was pulling
both his ears by their lobes — a sight in which Herr Magnus ap-
peared to find relief. The company had urged Anton Karlowitsch
Ferge to regale them with the story of the pleura-shock; but his
tongue was too thick, he could not manage it, and honourably
avowed his incapacity, which was greeted by the company as
occasion for another drink. Wehsal all at once began to weep
bitterly, from some unplumbed depth of wretchedness. They
brougnt him round with coffee and cognac; but the episode roused

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572

Peeperkom’s lively interest, who looked at his quivering chin, from
which tears dripped, and with raised forefinger and lifted mask-
like brows called the attention of the company to the phenomenon.

“ That is — ” he said. “ Ah — with your permission, that is —
holy. Dry his chin, my child, take my serviette — or, still better,
let it drip. He himself has done so. Holy, holy, my friends. In
every sense. Christian and pagan. A primitive phenomenon, of the
first — the very first — No. No, that is to say — ”

This oft-repeated phrase set the key for all the running com-
ment with which he accompanied his production of gesture —
gesture that by now, in all conscience, had grown more than a
little burlesque. He had a way of lifting that little circlet formed
by thumb and forefinger to a poise above his ear, and coyly twist-
ing his head away from it — one watched him as one might an
elderly priest of some oriental cult, with the skirts of his robe
snatched up, doing a dance before the sacrificial altar. Again, flung
back in Olympian repose, with one arm stretched out on the back
of his neighbour’s chair, he beguiled them all to their confusion,
by painting a vivid and irresistible scene of a dark, frosty
winter morning, when the yellow gleam of the night-lamp re-
veals the network of bare boughs outside the pane, rigid in the
harsh and penetrating mist of early dawn. So telling was the
picture, so universal its appeal — actually, they all shivered; par-
ticularly when he went on to speak of rising in such a dawn, and
squeezing a great sponge filled with ice-cold water over neck
and shoulders. The effective sensation he characterized as “ holy.”
But all this was a digression, an aside thrown out to illustrate
receptivity for life; a fantastic impromptu, let fall merely to renew
and reassert the whole irresistible compulsion of his presence and
his sensations upon the scene of abandoned night-revelry. He
made love to every female creature within reach, without dis-
crimination or respect of person; tendering such offers to the dwarf
that the crippled creature’s large old face was wreathed in
smiles. He paid Frau Stohr compliments that made the vulgar
creature bridle more extravagantly than ever, and become almost
senseless with affectation. He supplicated — and received — a kiss
from Fraulein Kleefeld, upon his thick, chapped lips. He even
coquetted with the forlorn Frau Magnus — and all this without
detriment to the delicate homage he paid his companion, whose
hand he would every now and then carry gallantly to his lips.
“ Wine — ” he said, “ women; they are — that is — pardon me —
Gethsemane — Day of Judgment. . .

Toward two o’clock word flew about that “ the old man ” —

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573

in other words, Hofrat Behrens — was approaching by forced
marches. Panic reigned among the nerveless company. Chairs and
ice-pails were upset. They fled through the library. Peeperkom
raged at the precipitate breaking-up of the festivities, in kingly
choler struck the table with his fist and called after the retreating
“cowardly slaves” — but allowed Frau Chauchat and Hans Ca-
storp to calm him with the consideration that the banquet had
already lasted some six hours, and must in any case some time
come to an end. He lent an ear when they murmured something
about the “ holy ” boon of sleep, and yielded to their efforts to
lead him away to bed.

“ Let me lean upon you, my child! And you, young man, on my
other side,” he said. They helped him lift his unwieldy body from
table, gave him the support of their arms, and he walked with
wide steps between them bedwards, his mighty head sunk on his
lifted shoulder. First one and then the other of his aides was carried
to one side by his staggering pace. It is probable that he was
merely indulging himself in the regal luxury of being thus sup-
ported and piloted; presumably he could have gone by himself.
But he scorned the effort. If made it would have been solely for the
unworthy purpose of disguising his state, and of this he was royally
unashamed, revelling in the fun of making his companions stagger
with him from side to side. He even said, on the way: “ Children —
nonsense. Of course I’m not — at this moment. You ought to see —
ridiculous — ”

“ Ridiculous, of course,” Hans Castorp agreed. “ It certainly
is. We are giving the classical gifts of lire their due, staggering
in their honour. Seriously, on the other hand: Fve had my share
too; but any so-called drunkenness to the contrary, I fully recog-
nize the honour of helping such a tremendous personality to bed;
I am not so drunk I don’t know that in the matter of size I don’t
hold a candle — ”

“ Come, come, chatterbox,” Peeperkorn said, and they moved
rhythmically on toward the stairs, drawing Frau Chauchat with
them.

The report of the Hofrat’s approach had been a bogy. Per-
haps the weary little waitress was responsible, thinking thereby
to break up the party. Peeperkorn scented the false alarm, and
would have turned back for another drink. But they both set to
work to talk him out of the idea, and he let himself be moved on.

The Malayan valet, in white cravat and black silk slippers,
awaited his master in the corridor before their apartments. He
bowed low, laying his hand upon his breast.

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574

“ Kiss each other,” commanded Peeperkom. “ Young man,
kiss this lovely woman good-night, upon her brow,” said he to
Hans Castorp. “She will have no objection to receiving and
responding to — do it to my health, with my blessing.” But Hans
Castorp declined.

“No, Your Majesty,” he said. “I beg your pardon. It would
not do.”

Peeperkom, in the arms of his valet, drew up his arabesques and
demanded to know why.

“ Because your companion and I can exchange no kisses on the
brow,” Hans Castorp responded. “ I hope you sleep well. No, no,
that is the sheerest nonsense, however you look at it.”

Frau Chauchat, for her part, was moving toward her door;
Peeperkom gave way, and let the unwilling suitor go, though
looking at him awhile over his and the Malay’s shoulders, his
wrinkled brows drawn high in astonishment at an insubordination
his kingly temper was seldom called upon to brook.

Mynheer Peeperkom (Continued)

Mynheer Peeperkorn remained in House Berghof the whole
winter — what there was left of it — and on into the spring; and
there took place, among others, a memorable excursion (in which
Settembrini and Naphta joined) into the Fluela valley, to see
the waterfall. This occurred at the end of his stay. At the end?
Did he remain no longer, then? No. He went away? Yes — and
no. How yes and no? Pray let us have no prying into secrets —
in the fullness of time we shall know. We are aware that Lieu-
tenant Ziemssen died, not to speak of other less admirable perform-
ers of the dance of death. Then Peeperkorn’s malignant tropical
fever carried him off? No, not so — but why so impatient? Let us
not forget the condition of life as of narration: that we can never
see the whole picture at once — unless we propose to throw over-
board all the God-conditioned forms of human knowledge. Let
us at least pay time so much honour as the nature of our story
permits — little enough, in all conscience; for it has begun to rush
pell-mell and helter-skelter; or, if the words suggest too much
noise and confusion, shall we say it is going like the wind? The
little hand on time’s clock trips away as though measuring sec-
onds; but God knows how much time it is covering when it whisks
round heedless of the divisions it passes over! So much is certain,
that we have been up here years. Our brains reel, surely this is an
evil dream, though dreamed with nor hashish nor opium; a censor

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

575

of morals would rebuke us for it. Yet how much logical clarity,
how much pure light of reason have we opposed to the stealing
vague? Not by chance, may we say, have we kept company with
intellectual lights like Naphta and Settembrini, instead of sur-
rounding ourselves with incoherent Peeperkorns! And this leads
us to a comparison, which in many respects, notably that of scale,
must result in favour of this latest arrival on the scene. It did so
in Hans Castorp’s own mind. He lay, considering matters, in his
loge, and admitted to himself that his two over-vocal mentors, the
self-elected guardians of his soul, were dwarfed beside Pieter
Peeperkorn. Almost he inclined to call them what Peeperkorn in
his royal cups had called him, Hans Castorp — chatterboxes. He
was well pleased that hermetic pedagogy should have given him
this too: contact with an out-and-out personality.

True, this personality was the companion of Clavdia Chauchat’s
travels, and as such a greatly disturbing element. But that was
another matter, and one which Hans Castorp did not allow to
prejudice his judgment. He persisted in his sincere and respectful
if also rather forward sympathy for this man on the grand scale,
regardless of his partnership in the travelling-trunks of the woman
of whom once, on a carnival night, Hans Castorp had borrowed a
lead-pencil. That was his way; though we know some people,
male and female, will not understand such a lack of sensibility,
preferring that our hero should hate Peeperkorn, avoid him,
call him an old dotard, a drivelling old sot. Instead of which we see
him by Peeperkom’s bedside in his attacks of fever — prattling to
him (the word applies to his own share in the conversation, not the
majestic Peeperkorn’s) and with the receptivity of inquiring youth
on his travels, letting himself be played on by the pow r er of the
personality. All this Hans Castorp did, and ail this we report of
him, indifferent to the danger that someone may thereby be
reminded of Ferdinand Wehsal, who once was wont to carry
Hans Castorp’s overcoat. The comparison is not pertinent — for
our hero was no Wehsal. Depths of self-abasement were not his
line. But he was no “ hero ” either: which is to say, he would never
let his relation to the masculine be conditioned by the feminine.
True to our principle of making him out neither better nor worse
than he was, we assert that he simply declined — not expressly and
consciously, but quite naively, declined to let his judgment of his
own sex be perverted by romantic considerations. Nor his sense
of what was formative in experience. The female sex may find
this offensive; we believe Frau Chauchat did feel some involun-
tary chagrin over the fact — a biting remark or so escaped her,

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576

to which we shall refer later on. But surely it was this very charac-
teristic of his which rendered him so irresistible an object for
pedagogic rivalry.

Pieter Peeperkom lay grievously ill, the day after that evening
of cards and champagne we have described — and no wonder.
Nearly all the participants in those long-drawn-out, exhausting
revels were the same. Hans Castorp was no exception, his head
ached to splitting; which did not prevent him from paying a
visit to the bedside of his last night’s host. He craved permission
through the Malay, whom he met in the corridor; and it was
readily granted.

He entered the Dutchman’s double bedroom through the salon
which separated it from Frau Chauchat’s. It was larger and more
luxuriously furnished than most of the Berghof rooms, with satin-
upholstered arm-chairs and curly-legged tables. A thick, soft car-
pet covered the floor, and the beds — they were not the usual
hygienic dying-bed of the establishment, but very stately indeed,
of polished cherry-wood with brass mounting, and above them
hung a little canopy without curtains, like one umbrella sheltering
both.

Pieter Peeperkorn lay in one of the two; its red satin coverlet
was strewn with papers, books, and letters, and he was reading
the T elegraaf through his horn-rimmed pince-nez with the high
nose-piece. The coffee-machine stood on a chair at the bedside,
and a half-empty bottle of the same simple effervescent red wine
was on the night-table, among vials of medicine. Hans Castorp was
rather put off to see the Dutchman wearing not a white night-shirt,
but a long-sleeved woollen vest, buttoned at the wrists and collar-
less, cut round in the neck, and clinging to the old man’s powerful
torso, his broad shoulders and breast. This undress threw into
even greater relief the splendid humanity of his head on the pillow;
in it he looked more remote than ever from the conventional and
middle-class, suggesting on the one hand the hovrnie du peuple , on
the other a portrait-bust.

“ By all means, young man,” he said, taking off the horn spec-
tacles by the nose-piece. “ Come in. Don’t mention it — on the
contrary.” Hans Castorp sat down by the bed, and concealed his
surprise — for it was that rather than admiration which he felt,
however sympathetically — under a burst of cordial and lively
chatter, which Peeperkorn seconded with magnificent disjecta
membra and much play of gesture. He looked very “ poorly,”
yellow and in evident distress; a good deal affected by the attack
of fever he had had toward morning, and the subsequent ex-

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

577

haustion — in part undoubtedly the result of his last night’s bout.

“ We were pretty — last night, you know — carried it pretty
far,” he said. “ But you are — Good. With you there were no
further — but my age, and the condition I am in — my child,”
he turned with mild yet quite perceptible severity to Frau Chau-
chat, who just then entered the room from the salon, “ very
well, very well indeed. Very. But I repeat — ought to have been
prevented.” Something like an approach to his regal fit of rage
rose in face and voice. The injustice, the unreason of the reproof
were obvious to anybody who tried to imagine the storm that
would have burst on the head of one seriously thinking to disturb
him in his drink. But such are the moods of the great. Frau Chau-
chat moved to and fro in the room, after greeting Hans Castorp,
who rose as she entered, without a handshake, but with a smile and
nod, and a “ Pray don’t disturb yourself ” — in his tete-a-tete , that
was, with Mynheer. She busied herself about the room, summoned
the Malay to take the coffee-machine, then withdrew awhile, and
on her return, soft-footed, took part standing in the others’ talk.
Hans Castorp got an impression that she was there on guard. It was
all very well for her to come back to the Berghof in company with
a personality. But when the long-suffering lover took leave to
evince regard for the personality, as man for man, then she betrayed
uneasiness in pointed phrases like “ Pray don’t disturb yourself ”
and the like. They cost Hans Castorp a smile, which he bent his
head to hide, though inwardly aglow. Peeperkorn poured him out a
glass of wine from the bottle on the night-table. Under the circum-
stances the best thing, in the Dutchman’s opinion, was to begin
where one had left off; and that innocent effervescent wine had the
same effect as soda-water. They touched glasses. Hans Castorp, as
he drank, looked at the freckled, sea-captain’s hand, with its pointed
nails, the woollen band buttoned round the wrist. It took up the
glass, carried it to the thick, cracked lips; the throat, so like a
statue’s and yet rather like a day labourer’s, worked up and down as
it swallowed the wine. Peeperkorn indicated the medicine bottle
on the table, a brown liquid, of which he took a spoonful from
Frau Chauchat’s hand. It was an antipyretic, chiefly quinine, he
said. He made his guest try its characteristic bitter and pungent
taste; and had much to say in praise of the wonder-working, germ-
destroying properties of the drug, its tonic quality, its wholesome
effect in regulating the temperature. It slowed down protein catab-
olism, promoted assimilation, in short it was a boon to mankind,
a wonderful cordial, tonic and stimulant — an intoxicant as well,
for one could get quite tipsy on it, he said, making the last night’s

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578

suggestive gesture of fingers and head like a pagan priest at his
ritual dance.

Yes, a wonderful substance, cinchona. It had not been three
hundred years since European pharmacology made its acquaint-
ance; not a century since the alkaloid had been isolated which
was its active principle; isolated and. to a certain extent, analysed,
for it would be too much to say that chemistry knew all there
was to know about it, or was in a position to reproduce it syn-
thetically. Our pharmacology need not be too arrogant over its
science; for the state of its knowledge on the subject of quinine
was a fair example of the rest. It had various facts about the opera-
tion of this or that drug; but was very often embarrassed to know
the causes of the effect produced. If the young man were to survey
the field of our toxicological knowledge, he would find that no one
could tell him anything of the elementary properties conditioning
the effects of the so-called poisons. For example, take the venom of
snakes: all that was known of these animal substances was that they
belonged to the albuminoid group, and consisted of various pro-
teids, none of which produced a violent effect, except in this cer-
tain — and most uncertain — combination. Introduced into the
blood-circulation, the effect was astonishing indeed, considering
how far we were from being accustomed to think of albumen as
a poison. The truth was, Peeperkorn said, and lifted his head from
the pillow, elevated the arabesques on his brow, and gave point to
his remarks by the little circle and the upright finger-tips — the
truth was, in the world of matter, that all substances were the
vehicle of both life and death, all of them were medicinal and all
poisonous, in fact therapeutics and toxicology were one and the
same, man could be cured by poison, and substances known to be
the bearers of life could kill at a thrust, in a single second of time.

He spoke very impressively, and with unwonted coherence, of
drugs and poisons, and Hans Castorp listened and nodded; less
concerned with the content of his speech — he seemed to have the
subject much at heart — than with silently exploring this extraor-
dinary personality, which in the end remained as inexplicable as the
operation of the snake-poison he was discussing. In the world of
matter, Peeperkorn said, everything depended on dynamics, all
else being entirely hypothetical. Quinine was one of the medicinal
poisons; one of the strongest of these. Four grammes could make
one deaf and giddy and short-winded; it acted like atropine on the
visual organs, it was as intoxicating as alcohol; workers in quinine
factories had inflamed eyes and swollen lips and suffered from af-
fections of the skin. Peeperkorn described the cinchona, the qui-

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

579

nine-tree, in the primeval forests of the Cordilleras, three thousand
metres above sea-level. Its bark, called Peruvian or Jesuits’ bark,
came late to Spain, long after the natives of South America knew
its use. He spoke of the enormous quinine plantations owned by
the Dutch government in Java, whence yearly many million
pounds of the coils of reddish bark, like cinnamon, were shipped
to Amsterdam and London. In fact, said Peeperkom, bark, the
wood-fibre itself, from the epidermis to the cambium, contained,
almost always, extraordinary dynamic virtue, for good or evil. The
knowledge of drugs possessed by the coloured races was far su-
perior to our own. In certain islands east of Dutch New Guinea,
youths and maidens prepared a love charm from the bark of a tree
— it was probably poisonous, like the manzanilla tree, or the cmtictris
toxic aria, the deadly upas-tree of Java, which could poison the air
round with its steam and fatally stupefy man and beast. This bark
they powdered and mixed with coconut shavings, rolled the mix-
ture into a sheet and toasted it, then sprinkled a brew in the face
of the reluctant one, who was straightway inflamed with love for
the sprinkler. Sometimes it was the bark of the root that contained
the principle, as was the case with a certain creeper growing in the
Malay Archipelago, called strychnos tieute, from which the natives
prepared the upas-radsha , by adding snake-venom. This drug
caused immediate death when introduced into the circulation — as
for instance by means of an arrow — but nobody could explain how
it operated. All that seemed clear was that the upas had a dynamic
relation with strychnine. . . . Peeperkorn, by this time, was sitting
erect in his bed; now and then, with a hand that slightly trembled,
conveying the wineglass to his cracked lips, to take great, thirsty
draughts. He went on to speak of the “ crows’-eye ” tree of the
Coromandel Coast, from the orange-yellow berries of which — the
crows’ eyes — was extracted the most powerful alkaloid of all,
strychnine. His voice sank to a whisper, and the great folds of his
brow rose high, as he described to Hans Castorp the ash-grey
boughs, the strikingly glossy foliage and yellow-green blossoms;
the picture of this tree conjured up in the mind’s eye of the young
man was luridly, almost hysterically garish — it made him shudder.

But here Frau Chauchat intervened, saying it was not good for
Mynheer Peeperkorn to talk any longer, it tired him too much.
She disliked to interfere, but Hans Castorp would forgive her if
she suggested that they had had enough for the time. The young
man accordingly took his leave. But often, in the months that fol-
lowed, did Hans Castorp sit by the bed of that kingly man, when
he kept it after an attack of fever: Frau Chauchat being within

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580

hearing, as she moved about the rooms, and sometimes taking part
with a few words. They spent much time together when Peeper-
korn was free of fever; for the Dutchman, on his good days, seldom
failed to gather round him a select company, to play and drink and
otherwise divert themselves and rejoice the inner man. These re-
unions took place either in the salon, as on the first occasion, or in
the restaurant; and Hans Castorp had a habitual place between the
great man and his languid companion. They even went abroad to-
gether, took walks with Herr Ferge and Wehsal, Naphta and Set-
tembrini, those opposed spirits, whom they could hardly fail to
meet. Hans Castorp counted himself fortunate in presenting them
to Peeperkorn, and even, in the end, to Clavdia Chauchat. He
troubled not at all whether the acquaintance was to these peda-
gogues’ liking or not. Secure in the knowledge that they needed a
tree whereon to sharpen their pedagogical tusks, he reckoned on
their putting up even with unwelcome society, in order to con-
tinue in enjoyment of his own.

And he was not wrong in thinking that the members of this
motley group would at least get used to not getting used to each
other. Strangeness, tension, even suppressed hostility there was of
course enough between them; it is surely rather remarkable that a
comparatively insignificant personality could have held them to-
gether. That he did so must be laid to a certain shrewd geniality
native to him, which found everything fish that came to his net,
and not only bound to him people of the most diverse tastes and
characters, but exerted enough power to bind them to each other.

Again, how involved were the relations between the various
members of our group! Let us con them a little, as Hans Castorp
himself did, with shrewd, yet friendly eye, as they went their ways
together. There was the unhappy Wehsal, consumed by his louring
passion for Frau Chauchat; who grovelled before Peeperkorn and
Hans Castorp, the one on grounds of the past, the other for the
sake of the compelling present. And there was Clavdia Chauchat
herself, charming, soft-stepping invalid, the property of Peeper-
korn— surely by choice and conviction, yet uneasy and sharp-
tongued to see her carnival cavalier on such good terms with her
sovereign lord. The irritation was probably the same in kind as that
which coloured her feeling toward Herr Settembrini, the humanist
and haranguer, whom she could not abide, calling him arrogant,
not “ hu~ man.” Dearly would she have liked to ask this mentor
of Hans Castorp ’s the meaning of certain words in his own Medi-
terranean tongue, of which, though less contemptuously, she was
as ignorant as he of hers: the words he had flung after the alto-

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

581

gether nice young German, quite correct and of good family, on
that carnival night when at length he had summoned courage to
approach her. — Hans Castorp was in love up to his ears, so much
was true; not in the accepted blissful sense, but as one loves when
the case is out of all reason, and cannot be celebrated in any pretty
little flat-land ditties we know of. He was badly smitten, quite
subjugated, endured all the orthodox pangs; yet was the man to
retain, even in his slavery, a certain sense of proportion, which told
him that his devotion was worth something to the fair one with
the Tartar eyes; not too blind in his abasement to measure its worth
by Settembrini’s own attitude toward her. The Italian was as dis-
tant as the dictates of humanistic courtesy would permit; while she
was only too obviously piqued by his bearing. The position with
regard to Leo Naphta was scarcely more — or, from Hans Ca-
storp’s point of view, scarcely less — favourable. True, there was
here no fundamental antagonism such as set Herr Ludovico’s being
against hers and all its works. Also, the language difficulty was less,
and they sometimes strolled and talked apart, Clavdia and the
knife-edged little man; discussed books, and questions of political
philosophy, upon which both held radical views. Hans Castorp, in
his simplicity, would sometimes take part. Yet Frau Chauchat could
not but be aware of a certain haughty aloofness in Naphta’s bear-
ing. Its source was the caution of the parvenu, a feeling of insecur-
ity in this unfamiliar society. But in truth his Spanish terrorism
had little in common with her roving, door-slamming, all-too-
human humanity. And there was moreover the subtle, scarcely
perceptible animosity felt by both pedagogues on the score of this
disturbing female element that came between them and their
fledgling, and united them in an unspoken, primitive hostility, at
least as potent as their long-standing conflict with each other. If
Hans Castorp was aware of these sentiments they could hardly
escape his charmer’s feminine intuition.

Was there something of the same aversion in the attitude of the
two dialecticians toward Pieter Peeperkom? At least, Hans Ca-
storp thought he discerned it, though perhaps he went out to meet
it, and took malicious pleasure in watching tongue-tied majesty
in contact with his two “ auditors,” as, with reference to his stock-
taking activities, he jestingly called them — though distinctly feel-
ing that the word was but a definition by contraries! Mynheer,
in the open, was not so impressive as in the house. He wore a soft
felt hat drawn down on his brows, covering the blaze of white hair
and the forehead’s extraordinary folds, reducing, as it were, the
scale of his features, even the commanding large red nose. He

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looked better standing than walking; for he took small steps, and
with each one of them shifted the full weight of his body on to the
leg he had advanced — it was the comfortable gait of an old man,
but it was not kingly. He stooped slightly too, or rather, shrank
together; though even so he overlooked Herr Ludovico, and was
a whole head taller than little Naphta. But it was not his height
alone that made his presence oppressive — oh, quite as oppressive
as Hans Castorp had anticipated! — to the two politicians.

Yes, they suffered by comparison — so much was perceptible
not only to the connoisseur’s watchful eye, but very probably to
the feelings of those concerned, the tongue-tied giant as well as
the two insignificant and over-articulate others. Peeperkorn treated
both with distinguished attention, a respect which Hans Castorp
would have called ironic had he not known that irony is not on the
grand scale. Kings are never ironical — not even in the sense of a
direct and classic device of oratory, to say nothing of any other
kind. The Dutchman’s manner toward Hans Castorp’s friends was
rather mocking than ironic. He made beautiful fun of them, either
openly or veiled in exaggerated respect. “ Oh, yes, yes,” he would
say, with his finger threatening their direction, the head and smil-
ing lips turned away, “ this is — these are — ladies and gentlemen,
I call your attention — cerebrum, cerebral, you understand! No, no
— positively. Extraordinary — displays great — ” In revenge, they
looked at each other, pantomimed despair, angled for Hans Ca-
storp’s glance; but he refused to be drawn.

Settembrini however attacked Hans Castorp directly, and con-
fessed to pedagogic concern.

“ Lord, what a stupid old man you have there, Engineer,” said
he. “ What is it you see in him? What good can he do you? I am at
a loss. I should understand — though scarcely approve — your put-
ting up with his society in order to enjoy that of his mistress. But
it is obvious that you are even more interested in him than in her.
Come to the aid of my understanding, I implore you.”

Hans Castorp laughed. “ By all means,” said he. “ Absolutely.
That is to say — very good. Very good indeed.” He tried to imitate
Peeperkom’s gestures. “ Yes, yes,” he went on, laughing, “ you find
it stupid, Herr Settembrini, and I admit it is unclear, which in your
eyes is even worse. Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stu-
pidity, and cleverness is one of the worst. There, I have made an
epigram — a bon mot! What do you think of it? ”

“Very good. I look forward eagerly to your collection of
aphorisms. Perhaps there is still time to beg you not to forget some
comment we once made on the anti-social nature of paradox.”

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

583

“ I won’t indeed, Herr Settembrini. I certainly will not. No, my
mot was not in the nature of paradox, I assure you. I only meant
to indicate the difficulty I really find in distinguishing between
stupidity and cleverness. It is so hard to draw a line — one goes over
into the other. — I know you hate all that mystical guctzzabuglio;
you are all for values, judgment, and judgment of values; and I’m
sure you are right. But this about stupidity and — on my honour,
it’s a complete mystery; and after all, it is allowable to think about
mysteries, isn’t it, so long as one is honestly bent on getting to the
bottom of them? But I ask you. Can you deny that he puts us all in
his pocket? That’s expressing it crudely, perhaps — but, so far as I
can see, you can’t deny it. He puts us all in his pocket; somehow or
other, he has the right to laugh at us all — but where does he get it?
Where does it come from? How does he do it? Certainly it’s not
that he’s so clever. I admit that you can’t talk about his cleverness.
He’s inarticulate — it’s more feeling with him, feeling is just his
mark, if you’ll excuse my language. No, as I say, it’s not out of
cleverness, not on intellectual grounds at all, that he can do as he
likes with us. You would be right to deny it. It isn’t the point. But
not on physical either. It’s not the massive shoulders, or the strength
of his biceps; not because he could knock us down if he liked. He
isn’t conscious of his power; if he does take a notion, he can easily
be put off it with a couple of civilized words. — So it is not physical.
And yet the physical has something to do with it; not in a muscular
sense — it’s something quite different, mystical; because so soon as
the physical has anything to do with it, it becomes mystical, the
physical goes over into the spiritual, and the other way on, and you
can’t tell them apart, nor can you cleverness and stupidity. But the
result is what we see, the dynamic effect — he puts us in his pocket.
We’ve only one word for that — personality. We use it in another,
more regular sense too, in which we are all personalities — morally,
legally, and otherwise. But that is not the sense in which I am using
it now. I am speaking of the mystery of personality, something
above either cleverness or stupidity, and something we all have to
take into account: partly to try to understand it; but partly, where
that is not possible, to be edified by it. You are all for values; but
isn’t personality a value too? It seems so to me, more so than either
cleverness or stupidity, it seems positive and absolute, like life — in
short, something quite worth while, and calculated to make us
trouble about it. That’s what I wanted to say in answer to what
you said about stupidity.”

Nowadays, when Hans Castorp relieved his mind, he did not
hem and haw, become involved and stick in the middle. He said his

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5 8 4

say to the end like a man, rounded off his period, let his voice drop
and went his way; though he still got red, and at heart was still
afraid of the silence he knew would follow when he had done, to
give him time to feel mortified at what he had expressed.

Herr Settembrini let it have full sway before he said: “ You deny
that you are hunting paradoxes; but at the same time you well
know that I love them as much as I do mysteries. In making a
mystery of the personality, you run a risk of idol-worship. You
do reverence to a hollow mask. You see mystery in mystification,
in one of those counterfeits with which a malicious demon of phys-
ical form loves sometimes to mock us. Have you ever frequented
theatrical circles? You know those physiognomies in which the
features of Julius Caesar, Beethoven, and Goethe unite — the happy
possessor of which has only to open his mouth to prove himself the
most pitiable fool on God’s earth? ”

“ Very good, a freak of nature,” said Hans Castorp. “ But not
alone a freak of nature, not simply a hoax. For since these people are
actors, they must have a gift, and the gift itself is beyond cleverness
and stupidity, it is after all a value. Mynheer Peeperkorn has a gift,
say what you like; and thus it is he can stick us all in his pocket. Put
Herr Naphta in one corner of the room, and let him deliver a dis-
course on Gregory the Great and the City of God — it would be
highly worth listening to — and put Mynheer Peeperkorn in the
other, with his extraordinary mouth and the wrinkles on his fore-
head, and let him not say a word except 4 By all means — capital —
settled, ladies and gentlemen! ’ You will see everybody gather
round Peeperkorn, and Herr Naphta will be sitting there alone
with his cleverness and his City of God, though he may be uttering
such penetrating wisdom that it pierces through marrow and cu-
cumber, as Behrens says — ”

“ Take shame to yourself for bowing down to success,” Herr
Settembrini adjured him. “ Mundus vult decipi . I do not claim that
people ought to flock about Herr Naphta. He is too full of guile
for my taste. But I am inclined to range myself on his side, in the
imaginary scene you have conjured up with such relish. Will you
despise logic, precision, discrimination? Will you contemn them,
in favour of some suggestion-hocus-pocus and emotional charla-
tanry? If you will, then the devil has you in his — ”

“ But he can often talk as coherently as you please,” said Hans
Castorp, “ when he gets interested. The other day he was telling
me about dynamic drugs and Asiatic poison-trees; it was so interest-
ing it was almost uncanny — interesting things are always a bit
uncanny — but the interest was not so much in what he was saying

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 585

as it was taken in connexion with his personality, which made it
interesting and uncanny at once.”

“ Ah, yes, your weakness for Asia is well known to me. True,
I cannot oblige with marvels such as those,” the Italian said, so
bitterly that Hans Castorp hastened to assure him how much he
valued his conversation and instruction from quite another angle,
and that it had not occurred to him to make comparisons which
would be unjust to both sides. Herr Settembrini paid no heed, he
spumed the politeness, and went on: “ In any case, Engineer, you
must permit me to admire your serene objectivity. It approaches
the fantastic, you will admit. The way things stand: this zany has
taken away your Beatrice from you, yet you — it is unheard of.”

“ These are temperamental differences, Herr Settembrini. We
have different views as to what is knightly and warm-blooded.
You, a southerner, would prescribe poison and dagger, at least you
would conceive the affair in its social and passionate aspect, and
want me to act like a game-cock. That would of course be mascu-
line and gallant, in a social sense. But with me it is different. I am
not at all masculine in the sense that I see in another man only a
rival male and nothing more. Perhaps I am not masculine at all —
certainly I am not in the sense which I tend to call ‘ social,’ I don’t
exactly know why. What I do is to question my sad heart whether
I have any ground of complaint against the man. Has he really in-
sulted me? But an insult must be of intent, otherwise it can be
none. And as for his having ‘ done anything ’ to me, there I should
have to apply to her — and I have no right to, certainly not with
regard to Peeperkom. For he is a quite extraordinary personality,
which by itself is something for women, and then he is hardly a
civilian, like me, he is a sort of military, a bit like my poor cousin,
in that he has a point (Thomteur , a sore spot, as it were, which is
feeling, life. — I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go ram-
bling on, and partly expressing something I find it difficult to ex-
press, than to keep on transmitting faultless platitudes. That must
be a military trait in my character, after all, if I may say so — ”

“ You may say so,” Settembrini acquiesced. “ A trait at least
worthy of praise. The courage to recognize and express — that is
the quality that makes literature — that is humanism.”

Thus they parted on good terms, Herr Settembrini having given
the conversation this placable turn. It was the wiser course; his
position had not been so strong he could afford to push the argu-
ment to extremes. A conversation dealing with jealousy was rather
slippery ground for him; at one point he would have been obliged
to admit that his own position — as a pedagogue — was scarcely

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586

masculine in the social and cock-fighting sense, else why should the
prepotent Peeperkorn disturb his tranquillity, in the same way
Naphta and Frau Chauchat did? Lastly, the Italian could not hope
to argue his pupil out of interest in a personality to whose native
superiority he himself and his partner in cerebral gymnastic were
willy-nilly constrained to bow.

They were on safer ground when they could sustain the con-
versation in the realms of the intellectual, and hold the attention
of their audience by one of their elegant and impassioned debates,
academic, yet conducted as though the matter discussed were the
most burning question of the time, or of all time. They were of
course almost the sole support of such discussions; while these
lasted, they did, to some extent, neutralize the effect of “ bigness ”
purveyed by a certain member of their group, who could only
accompany them by a running play of wrinkles, gestures, and
snatches of mockery. But even that was enough to cast a shadow,
rob their brilliant performance of some of its gloss, emasculate it,
as it were, set up a cross-current perceptible to them all, though
Peeperkorn himself remained unconscious, or conscious to a de-
gree impossible for them to guess. Neither side could get any ad-
vantage, both were embarrassed, and the stamp of futility set upon
their debate. We might put it like this: that their life-and-death
duel of wits came to be carried on always with vague subterranean
reference to “ bigness ” walking beside them, and to be deflected
from its orbit by the magnetism “ bigness ” exerted. One cannot
characterize otherwise this puzzling, for the two disputants mad-
dening, posture of affairs. One can only add that had there been
no Pieter Peeperkorn, party feeling would have run higher on both
sides; as when Leo Naphta defended the arch-revolutionary nature
of the Church, against Settembrini’s dogmatic assertion that that
great historic power was to be looked upon merely as the pro-
tectress of the sinister forces of reaction; whereas all the forces
that made for life and future, and looked undismayed on change
and revolution, he claimed for the principles of enlightenment,
science and progress, which had their rise in an epoch of quite
opposed tendencies, the famous century that witnessed the rebirth
of classical culture. He drove home his convictions with a grace-
ful play of word and gesture. Whereupon Naphta, with chilling
acuity, undertook to show — and showed too, with devastating
clarity — that the Church, as the embodiment of the religious and
ascetic ideal, was remote indeed from posing as the champion and
support of the existing order, in other words of secular culture
and civil law — rather had she from the beginning inscribed upon

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587

her radical banner the programme of their extirpation root and
branch; that absolutely everything beloved and cherished of the
bourgeoisie, the conservative, the cowardly, and the impotent —
the State, family life, secular art and science — was consciously or
unconsciously hostile to the religious idea, to the Church, whose
innate tendency and permanent aim was the dissolution of all exist-
ing worldly orders, and the reconstitution of society after the
model of the ideal, the communistic City of God.

After that, Settembrini took the floor — and well he knew how
to avail himself of it. It was lamentable, he said — this confusion of
luridly revolutionary doctrine with a general insurrection of all
the powers of evil. The Church’s love of innovation had for cen-
turies manifested itself in putting to the question the living idea,
wherever she found it; throttling it, quenching it in smoke at the
stake; to-day she announces through her emissaries that she re-
joices in revolution, that her goal is the uprooting of freedom, cul-
ture, and democracy, which she intends to replace by barbarism
and the dictatorship of the mob. Yea, verily, a fearsome mixture
of contradictory consistency and consistent contradiction. . . .

His opponent, Naphta retorted, displayed no lack of the same
qualities. By his own account, he was a democrat; yet his words
sounded neither democratic nor egalitarian; but rather displayed a
reprehensible and arrogant aristocratism, as when he alluded to the
delegated dictatorship of the proletariat as mob rule! However,
where the Church was in question, assuredly he showed himself
a democrat; for the Church was admittedly the most aristocratic
force in the history of mankind; an aristocracy in the last and
highest sense, that of the spirit. For the ascetic spirit — if the pleo-
nasm might be pardoned him — the spirit that would deny and
destroy the world, was aristocracy itself, a pure culture of the
aristocratic principle. It could never be popular; and the Church,
accordingly, had at all times been unpopular. A little research into
the cultural history of the Middle Ages would convince Herr Set-
tembrini of the stout resistance which the people — in the widest
sense — opposed to the things of the Church. There were for in-
stance monkish figures, the invention of popular fantasy, who,
quite in the spirit of Luther, had set up wine, women, and song in
opposition to the ascetic idea. All the instincts of secular heroism,
all warlike spirit, all court poetry, set themselves in more or less
open conflict with the religious idea and the hierarchy. For all that
was “ the world,” all that was “ the common people,” compared
with the aristocracy of the spirit represented by Church.

Herr Settembrini thanked him for jogging his memory. The

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588

figure of the monk Ilsan in the Rosengarten he did indeed find re-
freshing by comparison with this much-lauded aristocracy of the
grave. He, the speaker, was no friend to the German Reformation;
but they would find him ever ready to defend whatever of demo-
cratic individualism there was in its teaching, against any and every
clerical and feudal craving for dominion over the individual.

“ Aha! ” cried Naphta. So Herr Settembrini would condemn
the Church for lack of democracy, for being wanting in a sense of
the value of human personality? But what of the humane freedom
from prejudice evinced by canonical law? For whereas Roman
law made the possession of legal rights dependent upon citizenship,
and Germanic law upon individual freedom and membership in
the tribe, ecclesiastical law, orthodoxy, was alone in divorcing legal
rights from either national or social considerations, and asserting
that slaves, serfs, and prisoners of war were all capable of making
wills and inheriting property.

Settembrini bitingly remarked that he might mention, as not
entirely irrelevant in this connexion, the so-called “ canonical por-
tion,” which subtracted a substantial sum from every testamentary
bequest. And he spoke of priestly demagoguery, which began to
vent its thirst for power in exaggerated solicitude for the under
dog, when the top dog would none of it. The Church, he asserted,
cared more about the quantity of souls she got hold of than their
quality — which certainly reflected upon her pretensions to spirit-
ual refinement.

So the Church lacked refinement? Herr Settembrini’s attention
was invited to the inexorable aristocratism which underlay the idea
that shame could be inherited: the passing on of guilt to the —
democratically considered — innocent descendants; for example,
the illegitimacy and lifelong pollution of natural children. But the
Italian bade him be silent: in the first place, because his human feel,
ings rose up in arms against Naphta’s words, and in the second,
because he had had enough of such quibbles, and saw in the shifts
of his opponent’s apologetics only the same old infamous and
devilish cult of nihilism, which wanted to be called Spirit, and
found so legitimate, so sacrosanct the admittedly existent hatred of
the ascetic principle.

But here Naphta begged to be forgiven for laughing outright.
The nihilism or the Church! The nihilism of the most realistic sys-
tem of government in the history of the world! Herr Settembrini,
then, had never been touched by a breath of that ironic humanity
which made constant concession to the world and the flesh,
cleverly veiling the letter and letting the spirit rule, not to put too

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

589

sore a constraint on nature? He had never heard of the ecclesias-
tical conception of indulgence, under which was to be classified
one of the sacraments of the Church — namely, marriage, not in
itself an absolute good, like the other sacraments, but only a pro-
tection against sin, countenanced in order to set bounds to sensual
desire; that the ascetic principle, the ideal of complete chastity,
might be upheld, without at the same time opposing an unpolitic
harshness to the flesh?

Herr Settembrini, of course, could not refrain from protesting
against this hideous conception of “ policy ”; against the gesture of
a shrewd and sinister complaisance, made by the “ Spirit ” — or
what called itself so — against the imaginary guilt of its opposite,
which it pretended to deal with in a “ politic ” sense, but which in
reality stood in no need of the pernicious indulgence it proffered;
against the accursed dualism of a conception which bedevilled the
universe — that is to say, life — as well as life’s dark opposite, the
Spirit — for if life was evil, the Spirit, as pure negation, must be so
too. And he broke a lance in defence of the blamelessness of sen-
sual gratification — hearing which, Hans Castorp could not but
think of the humanistic cuddy under the roof, with its standing
desk, rush-bottomed chairs, and water-bottle. Naphta asserted that
sensual gratification was never blameless — nature, he said, always
had a bad conscience in respect of the spiritual. The ecclesiastical
policy of indulgence practised by the Spirit he designated as
u love ” — this to refute the nihilism of the ascetic principle. Hans
Castorp felt how very odd indeed the word sounded in the mouth
of sharp, skinny little Naphta.

So it went on — we know already how it went, and so did Hans
Castorp. We have listened, as he did, for a little while, in order to
learn how such a peripatetic passage-at-arms fares, in what way
it is blown upon, by the presence of a personality. It seemed as
though a secret impulse to animadvert upon the presence of Peeper-
korn quenched the leaping spark of wit, and called up that sense
of weary devitalization that comes over us when an electric con-
nexion fails to connect. Yes, that was it. No spark leaped nimbly
from pole to pole, no flash of lightning, no current. The intellect
which should in its own opinion have neutralized the presence was
neutralized by it — as Hans Castorp, amazed and curious, perceived.

Revolution, conservation — he looked at Peeperkorn, saw him
stalking along, not particularly majestic on foot, with his slump-
ing gait, his hat drawn over his brows; saw his thick lips with their
broken line, heard him say, jerking his head mockingly in the di-
rection of the debaters: “ Yes, yes — cerebrum, highly cerebral,

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590

you understand. Very; that is — it shows ” — and behold, in a trice,
the current cut off! Dead. As a door-nail. They tried another tack,
invoked more powerful spells, came on the “ aristocratic problem,”
on popularity and exclusiveness. Not a spark. Despite itself, what
they said sounded personal. Hans Castorp saw Clavdia’s travelling-
companion as he lay under the red satin coverlet, in his collarless
woollen shirt, half ancient ouvrier , half royal bust. And the nerve
of the debate quivered and died. They tried to galvanize it into life.
Negation, cult of nihilism on the one hand, on the other the posi-
tive assertion of life, and the inclining of the heart unto love. But
where was the spark, where the current, directly one looked at
Mynheer, as one did, irresistibly, as though magnetized? They
simply were not there — which remained, to use Hans Castorp’s
expression, neither more nor less than a mystery. He took note,
for his collection of aphorisms, that either one expresses a mystery
in the simplest words, or leaves it unexpressed. But to get this one
expressed, one could only say straight out that Pieter Peeperkorn,
with his kingly mask, and bitter, irregular mouth, was both, now
this, now that; both seemed to fit him and to neutralize each other
when one looked at him — both this and that, the one and the other.
Yes, this stupid old man, this commanding cipher! He did not
paralyse the opposition by cross-purposes and confusion, like
Naphta, he was not like him equivocal, or was so in an entirely
different way, in a positive way, this staggering mystery, which so
naively set at naught not only cleverness and stupidity, but so much
else in the way of opposed views invoked by Settembrini and
Naphta, in order to stimulate interest, to their own pedagogical
ends. The personality, it appeared, was not pedagogically inclined
— yet what a find, what a prize, for inquiring youth on its travels!
Fascinating it was to watch riddling royalty when the conversa-
tion turned on marriage and sin, indulgences, the guilt or innocence
of pleasures of the sense! His head would sink upon his shoulder
or chest, the calamitous lips part as the mouth relaxed into pathetic
curves, the nostrils dilate as with pain, the folds on the forehead
rose until the eyes were fixed in a wide, suffering gaze. — It was a
picture of bitterness and woe. And behold, as one looked, this
martyr’s visage blossomed into wantonness. The head was ro-
guishly on a side, the still open lips wreathed in wickedly sugges-
tive smiles, the sybaritic little dimple appeared in one cheek —
he was again the dancing priest, and jerked his head as before,
mockingly, in the direction of so much cerebration, as they heard
him say: “ Ah, yes, yes, absolutely! But isn’t there a — are there
not — sacraments of pleasure — you understand — ”

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591

Still, as we said, Hans Castorp’s diminished friends and teachers
were always well served when they could wrangle. They were in
their element, whereas the personality was not. Though one might
have two views of the role he played when wrangling was the
order of the day. But on the other hand, when the scene changed
from the sphere of the intellectual to the strictly earthly and prac-
tical, and dealt with questions, and in fields, where commanding
natures prove their worth — then there were no two views possible.
For then the others were undone, then they were cast in tne shade,
then they drew in their horns, and Peeperkom came out, grasped
the sceptre, arranged, decided, “ settled.” Was there any wonder,
then, that he behaved so as to bring that state of things about, that
he sought to override logomachy? He suffered, while it held sway,
or if it held sway for long. But not in his vanity. Of that Hans Ca-
storp felt assured. For vanity is not on the grand scale, nor is great-
ness vain. No, Peeperkorn’s need of reality had other grounds. It
sprang, to put it baldly, from fear: from a characteristic infirmity
of minds on the grand scale, from the sensitively and passionately
cherished point d'honneur which Hans Castorp had struggled to
explain to Herr Settembrini, describing it as in a sense a military
trait.

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” the Dutchman said, and lifted his sea-
captain’s hand, with its nails like lance-heads, in entreaty and
monition. “ Ladies and gentlemen. Very good. Very. Asceti-
cism. Indulgences. Lust of the flesh. By all means. Most impoi '
tant. Most debatable. But may I — I should like to — I fear we
may commit a serious error. Are we not irresponsibly neglecting
— one of our highest — ” He drew in a deep breath. “ Ladies and
gentlemen. This air — this characteristic thawing air, with its some-
what enervating breath, full of memories and promises of spring —
we should not breathe it in to breathe it out in — Really. — I must
implore you. We must not. It is an insult. We should give it out
only in the form of praise — of complete and utter — enough, ladies
and gentlemen. I interrupt myself — in honour of — ” He did, in-
deed, stand still, bent backward, shading his brows with his hat.
They followed his gaze. “ May I,” said he, “ may I draw your at-
tention upwards — high in the sky, to that black, circling point
against the blue, intensely blue, shading into black — that is a bird
of prey. It is, if I am not mistaken — look, ladies and gentlemen,
look, my child. It is an eagle. Most emphatically I call your atten-
tion — look, it is no buzzard, no vulture, it is an eagle. If you were
as far-sighted as my advancing age — yes, my child, advancing —
my hair is white. You would see, as plainly as I do, the blunt pinions

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592

— it is a golden eagle. He circles directly overhead, he hovers, not
a single beat of his wing — at a tremendous height in the blue, and
with his keen, far-sighted eyes under the prominent bony structure
of his brows he is peering earthwards. The eagle, ladies and gentle-
men, the bird of Jove, king of his kind, the lion of the upper air. He
has feathered gaiters, and a beak of iron, with a sudden hook at the
end; claws of enormous strength, their talons curving inwards, the
front ones overlapped by the long hinder one in an iron clutch.
Look! ” And he tried to put his long fingers in the posture of an
eagle’s claw. “ Gaffer, why are you circling and spying up there? ”
He turned his head upwards again. “ Strike! Strike downward,
with your iron beak into head and eyes, tear out the belly of the
creature God gives you — splendid! Splendid! Absolutely! Bury
your talons in its entrails, make your beak drip with its blood — ”

He had wrought himself to a pitch. All interest in Settembrini’s
and Naphta’s antinomies was fled away. But the vision of the eagle
remained — even though they ceased talking about it, and devoted
themselves to the programme they were carrying out under Myn-
heer’s lead. They stopped at an inn to eat and drink — quite out of
hours, but with an appetite whetted by silent memories of the
eagle. There was a feasting and a tippling, such as always went on
where Mynheer was, in Dorf or Platz, or the inns at Glaris and
Klosters, whither they had gone in the little train. Under his tute-
lage, they tasted the “ classic ” gifts of life: coffee and cream with
fresh bread, moist cheese and fragrant Alpine butter, heavenly-
tasting with hot roasted chestnuts. They drank red Veltliner, to
their hearts’ content. Peeperkom accompanied the impromptu
meal with a fire of ejaculations; or incited Anton Karlowitsch
Ferge to talk, that good-natured sufferer, who abhorred all high
thoughts, but could hold forth so acceptably on the subject of the
manufacture of rubber shoes in Russia. He described how the rub-
ber mass was treated with sulphur and other substances, and the
finished, glossy product subjected to a heat of over two hundred
degrees to “ vulcanize ” it. He talked about the polar circle, for his
business trips had more than once taken him thither; about the
midnight sun, and eternal winter at the North Cape — all this out
of his scraggy throat, from beneath his bushy moustaches. Up
there, he said, the steamers looked tiny, next the gigantic cliffs, on
the steel-grey surface of the sea. And a yellow radiation was dif-
fused over great tracts of the heavens — the northern lights. The
whole thing had seemed spooky to him, Anton Karlowitsch: the
scene and himself to boot.

Thus Herr Ferge, the complete outsider, the only member of

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 593

the group who stood detached from its complicated relationships.
But now that we speak of these, it will be well to relate two con-
versations, two priceless conversations a deux , which our unheroic
hero had, the first with Clavdia Chauchat, the second with the
present companion of her travels; one in the hall, on an evening
when the disturbing element lay above with a fever; the other on
an afternoon by Mynheer’s bedside.

It was half dark in the hall. The social activities had been brief
and languid, the guests withdrew early to the evening cure or else
took their wilful way into town, to dance and game. A single light
burned in the hall ceiling — and in the adjoining salons dimness
reigned. But Hans Castorp knew that Frau Chauchat, who had
taken dinner without her protector, was not gone upstairs after it,
but still lingered in the writing-room, so he did the same. He sat
by the tiled hearth, in the back part of the hall, which was raised
by one step from the rest, and separated by arches supported on
two columns; in a rocking-chair such as that one Marusja had
leaned back in, on the evening Joachim had spoken with her for
the first and last time. He was, permissibly at this hour, smoking a
cigarette.

She came, he heard her approaching step and the sound of her
frock; fanning the air with a letter she held by one corner, and say-
ing, in her Pribislav voice: “ The porter has gone. Do give me *
timbre poste ”

She was wearing a thin dark silk this evening, cut round in the
neck, with filmy sleeves finished by a buttoned cuff at the wrists.
It was the cut he loved. She wore the pearls, they gleamed palely
in the half light. He looked up into her Khirgiz face.

“ Timbre? ” he repeated, “ I have none.”

“ No? Tant pis pour vous . Not prepared to do a lady a favour? ”
She pouted and shrugged her shoulders. “ I am disappointed. You
ought to be more precise and dependable. I imagined you having
a compartment in your pocket-book, nice neat little sheets of all
denominations.”

“ Why should I? I never write a letter. To whom should I write?
I seldom do, even a card, and that is already stamped. I have no
one to write to. I have no contact with the flat-land, it has fallen
away. We have a folk-song that says: ‘ I am lost to the world ’ —
so it is with me.”

“ Well, then, lost soul, at least give me a papiros” said she, and
sat down opposite him on a bench with a linen cushion, one leg
over the other. She stretched out her hand. “ With those, at least,
you are provided.” She took a cigarette, negligently, from the sil-

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594

ver case he held out to her, and availed herself of his little pocket-
device, the flame of which lighted up her face. The indolent “ Give
me a cigarette,” the taking it without thanks, bespoke the spoiled,
luxurious female; yet even more it betokened a human companion-
ship and mutual “ belonging,” an unspoken give and take which
came both thrilling and tender to his love-lorn sense.

He said: “ Yes, I always have them. I am always provided, one
must be. How should 1 get on without them? I have, as they say,
a passion for them. To tell the truth, however, I am hardly a very
passionate man, though I have my passions, phlegmatic ones.”

“ I am extraordinarily relieved,” she said, breathing out, as she
spoke, the smoke she had inhaled, “ to hear that you are not a pas-
sionate man. But how should you be? You would have degen-
erated. Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But
one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that is
self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment. Cest
ga. You don’t realize what revolting egoism it is, and that one day
it will make you an enemy of the human race? ”

“ Well, well, well! Enemy of the human race! How can you
make such a general statement, Clavdia? Have you something defi-
nite and personal in your mind, when you say we don’t live for the
sake of life, but for the sake of enriching ourselves? Women don’t
usually moralize like that, so abstractly. Oh, morality, and that! A
subject for Naphta and Settembrini to quarrel over. It belongs to
the realm of the Great Confusion. Whether one lives for oneself,
or for the sake of life — one doesn’t know oneself, no one can know
that precisely and certainly. I mean, the limits are fluid. There is
egoistic devotion, and there is devoted egoism. I think, on the
whole, that it is as it is in love. Of course, it is probably immoral
of me that I cannot very well attend to what you say to me about
morality for being so happy that we are sitting here as we once did,
and then never again, even since you came back. And that I may
tell you there was never anything so lovely as the way those cuffs
suit your hand, and the soft flowing silk your arm -- your arm,
that I know so well — ”

“ I am going.”

“ Oh, please, please not! I promise to have proper regard for the
circumstances, and the — personalities.”

“ As one would expect, from a man without passion! ”

“ Yes, you see — you mock at me when I — and then, when I —
you say you will leave me — ”

“ Pray speak a little more connectedly, if you expect me to
understand you.”

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 595

“ So I am not to have any benefit from all your practice in guess-
ing the meaning of disconnected sentences? Is that fair, I ask — or
I would if I did not know that it is not a matter of justice at all — ”

“ No, justice is a phlegmatic passion. In contrast to jealousy —
when phlegmatic people are jealous, they always make themselves
ridiculous.”

“ There — ridiculous. Then grant me my phlegm. I repeat, how
could I do without it? For instance, how else could I have endured
to wait so long? ”

“ I beg pardon? ”

“ Aussi longtemps pour tot ”

“ Voyons, mon arm . I say no more about the form of address
you persist in, in your folly. You will tire of it — and then, I am
not prudish, not an outraged middle-class housewife — ”

“ No, for you are ill. Your illness gives you freedom. It makes
you — wait, I must hunt for the word — it makes you — spiritu-
elle! ”

“ We shall speak of that another time. It was something else I
meant. Something I demand to hear. You shall not pretend I had
anything to do with your waiting — if you did wait — that I en-
couraged you to it, or even permitted it. You must admit explicitly
that the opposite was the case — ”

“ Certainly, Clavdia, with pleasure. You never asked me to wait,
I did it on my own. I can quite understand your laying stress on
the point — ”

“ Even when you make admissions, there is always some im-
pertinence about them. You are impertinent by nature — not only
with me, but in general — God knows why. Your admiration, your
very humility, is an impertinence. Don’t think I can’t see it. I ought
not to speak with you at all, and certainly not when you dare to
talk about waiting for me. It is inexcusable that you are still here.
You should have been long ago at your work, sur le c banner, or
wherever it was.”

“ Now that, Clavdia, is not spirituel — it even sounds conven-
tional. You are just talking. You can’t mean it in Settembrini’s
sense — and however else, then? I cannot take it seriously. I will
not go off without permission, like my poor cousin, who, as you
said he would, died because he tried to do service down below,
and who knew himself, I suppose, that he would die, but preferred
death to doing service up here any longer. Well, it was for that he
was a soldier. But I am not. I am a civilian, for me it would be de-
serting the colours to do what he did, and go and serve the # cause
of progress down in the flat-land, despite what Behrens says. It

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596

would be the greatest disloyalty and ingratitude, to the illness, and
its spirituel quality, and to my love for you, of which I bear scars
both old and new — and to your arms I know so well, even admit-
ting that it was in a dream, a highly spirituel dream, that I learned
to know them, and that you had no responsibility for my dream,
and were not bound by it, nor your freedom infringed on — ”

She laughed, cigarette in mouth, so that the Tartar eyes became
narrow slits; leaning back against the wainscoting, her hands rest-
ing on the bench on either side of her, one leg crossed over the
other, and swinging her foot in its patent-leather shoe.

“ Quelle generosite! Pauvre petit ! Oh la la, vraiment — Precisely
thus I have always imagined un homrne de genie! ”

“ Don’t, Clavdia. I am no homme de genie — as little as I am a
personality. Lord, no. But chance — call it chance — brought me
up here to these heights of the spirit — you, of course, do not know
that there is such a thing as alchemistic-hermetic pedagogy, tran-
substantiation, from lower to higher, ascending degrees, if you
understand what I mean. But of course matter that is capable of
taking those ascending stages by dint of outward pressure must
have a little something in itself to start with. And what I had in
me, as I quite clearly know, was that from long ago, even as a lad,
I was familiar with illness and death, and had in the face of all

common sense borrowed a lead pencil from you, as I did again on
carnival night. But unreasoning love is spirituel ; for death is the
spirituel principle, the res bina , the lapis philosophorum , and the
pedagogic principle too, for love of it leads to love of life and
love of humanity. Thus, as I have lain in my loge, it has been re-
vealed to me, and I am enchanted to be able to tell you all about it.
There are two paths to life: one is the regular one, direct, honest.
The other is baa, it leads through death — that is the spirituel way.”

“You are a quaint philosopher,” she said. “I will not assert
that I have understood all your involved German ideas; but it
sounds human and good, and you are good, a good young man.
You have truly behaved en philo sophe, one must say that for
you — ”

“ Too much en philosophe for your taste, eh, Clavdia? ”

“No more impertinences. They become tiresome. That you
waited for me was silly — uncalled for. But you are not angry,

because you waited in vain? ”

“ It was hard, Clavdia, even for a man phlegmatic i#his pas-
sions. Hard for me and hard of you to come back with him
like that — for of course you knew through Behrens that I was
here and waiting for you. But I have told you I regard it as a

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

597

dream, what we had together, and I admit that you are free.
And I waited after all not quite in vain, for here you are, we
sit together as once we did, I can hear the piercing sweetness of
your voice, known to my ear from so long ago; and beneath
this flowing silk are your arms, your arms that I know — even
though upstairs there lies your protector, in a fever, the mighty
Peeperkorn, whose pearls you wear — ”

“ And with whom, for your own profit and enrichment, you
have struck up such a friendship.”

“Do not grudge me it, Clavdia, Settembrini reproached me
with it too. But that is conventional prejudice. The man is a boon
— for God’s sake, is he not a personality? He is already old —
yes; but even so, I could well understand how you as a woman
could love him madly. You do love him madly? ”

“ All honour to thy philosophy, my little German Hanschen,”
she said, and lightly stroked his hair. “But I could not find it
in my heart to speak to you of my love for him. It would not be
hu — man.”

“ Ah, why not, Clavdia? It is my belief that love of humanity
begins where poor-spirited people believe it leaves off. We can
speak quite quietly or him. You love him passionately? ”

She bent to toss her cigarette-end in the grate, and then sat
with folded arms.

“ He loves me,” she said, “ and his love makes me proud and
grateful, and devoted to him. Tu peux comprendre gela . Or else
you are not worthy the friendship he feels for you. His feeling
forced me to follow and serve him. What else could I do? You
may judge. Is it possible for any human being to disregard his
love? ”

“ Not possible,” Hans Castorp confirmed. “ No, of course, it
was out of the question. How could a woman bring herself to dis-
regard his feeling, and his anguish over that feeling — to forsake
him, as it were, in his Gethsemane — ”

“ Turies pas du tout stupide said she, her slanting eyes fixed in
a reverie. “ You understand things. ‘ Anguish over the feeling — ’ ”
“ Not much understanding is needed to know that you had to
follow him — though, or rather because, there must be much that is
troubling in his love.”

“ Cest exact . Troubling. There is much care with him, you
know, flteny difficulties.” She had taken his hand, and played
absently with the fingers — but suddenly she knitted her brows,
she looked up and said: “ Mais — dis-moi: ce n y est pas un peu —
ordinaire , que nous parlons de lui, comrne ga? ”

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598

“ No, Qavdia. Surely not. Far from it. Surely it is no more
than human. You love the word, and I love to hear you say it,
in your quaint pronunciation. My cousin Joachim did not like
it — on military grounds. He thought it meant general licence
and flabbiness; and in that sense, as an unlimited guazzabuglio of
self-indulgence, I have my own suspicions of it, I confess. But
in the sense of freedom, goodness, esprit , then it is great, we can
freely apply it to our talk about Peeperkom and the care and
pain he causes you. Of course, they are the result of his sore spot
— his dread of denying the feelings, that makes him love so much
what he calls the classic gifts of life, the gift of Bacchus, liquid
refreshment — we may speak of that in all reverence, for even in
that weakness his scale is kingly and we shall lower neither him
nor ourselves by speaking of it.”

“ It is not a question of us,” she said. She had folded her arms
again. “ One would not be a woman if one were not willing to
bear humiliation for the sake of a man like that, on the grand
scale, as you say, when one is the object of his feeling and of
his suffering from it.”

“ Absolutely, Clavdia. Well said. For then even the humilia-
tion is on the grand scale, and from the height of it the woman
can look down on poor creatures built on smaller lines, and speak
to them with such contempt as was in your voice when you said,
about the postage stamps: ‘You ought to be more precise and
dependable! ’ ”

“ You are hurt? You must not be. Let us put those feelings
away, send them to Jericho. Do you agree? I have been wounded
too sometimes — I will confess it, since we are sitting together
like this. I have been angry with your phlegm, and your being
such friends with him, on account of your egoistic craving for
experience. Yet I was glad too, and grateful for the respect you
paid him. You were loyal; if you were a bit impertinent too,
after all I could make allowance for that.”

“ Very kind of you”

She looked at him. “ You are incorrigible, it seems. And cer-
tainly I can’t quite tell how much esprit you have — but deep
you are, a deep young man. Well, very good, one can do with it,
and be friends. Shall we be friends, shall we make a league —
not against but for him? Will you give me your hand on it? I
am often frightened. — Sometimes I am afraid of the solitude
with him — the inward solitude, tu sais — he is — frightening;
sometimes I am afraid something may happen to him — it makes
me shudder. — I should be glad to feel I had someone beside me.

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 599

Enfin — if you care to know — that was why I came back here
with him — chez toiP

They sat knee to knee, he with his rocking-chair tipped toward
her, she on her bench. Her last words were breathed close to his
face, and she pressed his hand as she spoke. He said: “ To me?
Oh, Clavdia! That is beautiful beyond words! You came back
to me with him? And yet will you say my waiting was silly and
wrong and fruitless? It would be very inept of me to refuse, not
to know how to value your friendship, friendship with me for
his sake — ”

She kissed him on the mouth. It was a Russian kiss, the kind that
is exchanged in that spreading, soulful land, at high religious
feasts, as a seal of love. But when a notoriously “ deep ” young
man and a lady still young, and of such insinuating charm, ex-
change it, we are involuntarily reminded of Dr. Krokowski’s
ingenious if not wholly unobjectionable method of treating the
subject of love, in that slightly fluctuating sense, so that no one
was ever quite sure whether it was earthly or heavenly, spiritual
or fleshly love he had in mind. Are we so treating it, or were
Clavdia Chauchat and Hans Castorp, when they exchanged their
Russian kiss? But what will the reader say if we simply refuse
to go into the question? To try to make a clean-cut distinction
between the passionate and the soulful — that would, no doubt,
be analytical. But we feel that it would also be inept — to borrow
Hans Castorp’s useful word — and certainly not in the least “ gen-
ial.” For what would “ clean-cut ” be? The subject is so equivocal,
the limits so fluctuating. We make bold to laugh at the idea. Is
it not well done that our language has but one word for all kinds
of love, from the holiest to the most lustfully fleshly? All am-
biguity is therein resolved: love cannot but be physical, at its
furthest stretch of holiness; it cannot be impious, in its utterest
fleshliness. It is always itself, as the height of shrewd “ geniality ”
as in the depth of passion; it is organic sympathy, the touching
sense-embrace of that which is doomed to decay. In the most rag-
ing as in the most reverent passion, there must be caritas. The
meaning of the word varies? In God’s name, then, let it vary.
That it does so makes it living, makes it human; it would be a
regrettable lack of “ depth ” to trouble over the fact.

So while these youthful lips meet in their Russian kiss, let us
darken our little stage and change the scene. For now, instead
of the dimness of the hall we have the rather pensive light of
a declining spring day in the season of melting snows; and our
hero is seated in his wonted place at the bedside of Mynheer

6oo

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Peeperkom, in friendly and respectful converse with that great
man. Frau Chauchat, after the tea hour, at which she had ap-
peared alone, as at the previous three meals, had gone shopping
in the Platz, and Hans Castorp announced himself for his usual
visit to the Dutchman. First of all to show him attention and
help him pass the time; but also to be edified by the motions of
the great man’s personality. In short, out of “ varying ” motives,
varying as life varies. Peeperkom laid aside the Telegraaf and
tossed the hom-rimmed eye-glasses upon it. He reached his visi-
tor a broad, sea-captain’s hand, and his thick chapped lips, on
which sat a distressed expression, moved vaguely. Red wine and
coffee were as usual to hand; the coffee things stood on a chair,
stained brown from recent use — Mynheer had taken his regular
afternoon drink, hot and strong, with sugar and cream, and was
in a perspiration. His face with its fringe of white hair was flushed,
and little beads stood on brow and upper lip.

“ I am sweating somewhat,” he said. ^ Come in, young man,
come in. On the contrary. Sit down. It is a sign of weakness when
one takes a hot drink and sweats thereafter. Will you — quite
right — a handkerchief — thank you.” The flush soon faded and
gave place to the yellowish pallor which was Mynheer’s facial
teint after a bad attack. The fever had been severe this morning,
and in all three stages, the cold, the hot, the moist; Peeperkom’s
little eyes looked tired beneath the lined, masklike brow. He
said: “ It is — by all means, young man. I would like to express
my — the word is — Positively. Appreciative — very kind of you

— to visit an ailing old man — ”

“ Not at all, Mynheer Peeperkom. I am the one to be grate-
ful, for permission to sit here a little; I get a great deal more
out of it than you — I assure you my motives are not altruistic.
But what sort of description is that of yourself — an ailing old
man? It would never occur to anyone to call you that. It gives
an entirely false picture.”

“ Very good/’ responded Mynheer. He closed his eyes for a
second or so, leaning his majestic head against the pillows, the
chin raised, the fingers with their long nails folded on his kingly
chest, the muscles of which showed beneath the tricot shirt.
“ You are right, young man, or, rather, you mean it well. I am
sure. It was pleasant yesterday — yes, yesterday afternoon, at
that hospitable spot — the name of which I have now forgotten

— where we ate the excellent salami and scrambled eggs — and
that sound native wine — ”

“ It was gorgeous,” Hans Castorp confirmed. “ We certainly

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

601

are filled up — the Berghof chef would not have been pleased to
see us putting it in — one and all; he’d have felt insulted. That
was genuine salami, the real thing; Herr Settembrini ate it with
tears in his eyes. He is a patriot, you must know, a democratic
patriot. He has consecrated his burgher’s pike on the altar of
humanity, so that salami may be taxed at the Brenner frontier.”

“ That is no matter,” Peeperkom declared. “ He is most chiv-
alrous and courteous and very affable in conversation — a gallant
gentleman, though obviously unable to change his clothing with
any frequency.”

“ None at all,” said Hans Castorp, “ none at all! I know him
well, have been friendly with him for a long time; he was kind
enough to take me up, because he found I was a ‘ delicate child
of life.’ That is an expression we use between us, the sense of
which is not obvious without the context. He has taken much

E ains to influence me for my good. But never, summer or winter,
ave I seen him wear anything but those check trousers and that
threadbare double-breasted coat. He wears the old things with
great dignity, there is something gallant about him, I agree with
you there. The way he does it is a triumph over poverty — I like
better to see it than little Naphta’s elegance, that always seems
suspicious — a work of darkness, as it were, and he gets the money
for it in some hole-and-corner way, I understand.”

“ A chivalrous and affable gentleman,” repeated Peeperkom,
passing over Hans Castorp’s remarks about little Naphta. “ But
also — forgive me the reservation — not free from prejudice.
Madame, my companion, has no great opinion of him — you may
have seen. She feels little sympathy — no doubt because she per-
ceives the same prejudice to exist toward herself. Not a word,
young man. I am far from — comment on Herr Settembrini and
your friendly feelings for him — No more! I should not think
of saying that in any point — he has failed in any respect in
knightly courtesy. My dear friend — irreproachable, very. But
there is — a line drawn, a certain — a withdrawal — which makes
comprehensible Madame Chauchat’s — ”

“ Feeling against him. Perfectly natural. Perfectly justified.
Pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkom, for taking the words out of
your mouth. I venture to do so in the consciousness that you
will not misunderstand me. When one thinks how women are
made (you smile, to hear a person of my youth and inexperience
making general observations on this subject) — how dependent
a woman’s feeling for a man is upon his feeling for her — it is
not surprising. Women, if you will permit me so to express

6o 2

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

myself, are creatures not of action but of reaction; they do not
initiate, they are inactive in the sense that they are passive. May
I, even at the risk of being tiresome, try to follow that a little
further? Woman, so far as I have been able to observe, regards
herself, in a love-affair, as the object. She lets it come; she does
not make a free choice, she only chooses on the basis of the
man’s having chosen, and even then, even then, I must repeat,
her choice is suspect, it is prejudiced by the very fact that she
has been chosen — provided, of course, the man is not too poor
a specimen, and even so — Good Lord, what unalloyed drivel
I’m talking! But when one is young, everything seems new and
astonishing. You ask a woman: ‘ Do you love him? ’ And she
tells you: 4 He loves me so much! ’ and rolls her eyes up, or
else rolls them down. Imagine an answer like that from one of
us — if you will pardon me putting us in the same category.
Perhaps there are men who would answer like that, but they are
poor-spirited creatures — their women wear the breeches, if you
will forgive the expression. I should like to know what kind of
self-appraisement is at the bottom of the feminine answer. Is
it that the woman thinks she owes a man boundless devotion
merely because he has conferred the favour of his choice upon
so lowly a creature? Or does she see in the man’s love an in-
fallible sign of her personal excellence? I’ve often asked my-
self these questions, when I have been thinking quietly alone.”

44 Primitive — traditional mysteries you touch on there, young
man, applying your glib little phrases to the sacred conditions
of our existence,” responded Peeperkom. “Man is intoxicated
by his desire, woman demands and expects to be intoxicated by
it. Hence our holy duty of feeling, hence the shame in unfeeling-
ness, in powerlessness to awaken the woman to desire. Will you
take a glass of red wine with me? I will drink, for I am thirsty.
I have given out a considerable amount of water to-day.”

“Thanks, Mynheer Peeperkom. I do not usually take any-
thing at this hour; but I am always ready to drink a swallow or
so to your health.”

44 Then take the wineglass. There is only one, I will use the
water-glass. It won’t insult this simple wine to drink it out of
an ordinary tumbler — ” He poured out the wine, with Hans
Castorp’s help, as his hand trembled slightly, and drank thirstily,
as though it had been water.

44 That is refreshing,” he said. 44 Won’t you have some more?
No? Permit me to fill my glass ” — the second time, he spilled
some wine; the turned-over sheet was stained with dark-red spots.

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

603

u I repeat,” he said, with one lancelike finger reared up, “ I re-
peat, that therein lies our duty, our sacred duty to feel. Feeling,
you understand, is the masculine force that rouses life. Life slum-
bers. It needs to be roused, to be awakened to a drunken mar-
riage with divine feeling. For feeling, young man, is godlike.
Man is godlike, in that he feels. He is the feeling of God. God
created him in order to feel through him. Man is nothing but
the organ through which God consummates his marriage with
roused and intoxicated life. If man fails in feeling, it is blasphemy;
it is the surrender of His masculinity, a cosmic catastrophe, an
irreconcilable horror — ” He drank.

“ Permit me to relieve you of your glass,” Hans Castorp said.
“ I find your train of thought highly edifying. Mynheer Peeper-
kom. You are developing a theology there, in which you ascribe
to man a highly honourable, if perhaps rather a one-sided re-
ligious function. There is, if I may say so, a certain austerity
in your conception, it has its alarming side. Pardon me. All re-
ligious austerity is naturally somewhat alarming to people who
are built on modest lines. I have no thought of criticizing the
conception, I should like simply to return to your remark about
certain prejudices, which, according to your observations, Herr
Settembrini has on the subject of Madame. I have known Herr
Settembrini for some time, more than a year, for years, in fact.
And I can assure you that his prejudices, in so far as they exist,
are in no case of a petty or bourgeois character. It would be
absurd to think so. It can only be a question of prejudice in a
general sense, impersonal, relating to certain pedagogic princi-
ples, which, in my character as a delicate child of life, Herr
Settembrini has been at pains to — but that would lead us too far.
It is a very complex subject, into which I could not — ”

“ And you love Madame? ” Mynheer suddenly asked. He
turned toward his visitor that kingly countenance, with the sore,
writhen mouth and the pale little eyes under the arabesque of
lines on the brow.

Hans Castorp started. He stammered: “I — that is — I feel great
respect for Frau Chauchat, certainly, in her character as — ”

“ Pray! ” said Peeperkom, stretching out his hand with that
gesture which held back the flow of words. Having thus made
a free space for what he was about to say, “ Let me,” he went
on, “ let me repeat, that I am far from reproaching this Italian
gentleman with any actual offence against the rules of chivalry.
I levelled this reproach against no one — no one. But it occurs
to me — Understand me, young man, I am gratified, very. Your

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604

presence rejoices my heart. At the same time, I say to myself:
your acquaintance with Madame is older than ours. You were
a companion of her earlier sojourn up here. And she is a woman
of the rarest charms, and I am only an ailing old man. How does
it happen — to-day, as I was unable to accompany her, she goes
down unattended to the village to make purchases — there is no
harm in that, none at all. But doubtless — am I then to ascribe it to
the — what was it you said? — the pedagogic principles of Signor
Settembrini that you — I beg you not to misunderstand me — ”

“ Not at all. Mynheer Peeperkom. Absolutely not. Not in the
least. I act independently. On the contrary, Herr Settembrini has
even taken occasion to — I regret to see that you have spilled wine
on your sheets, Mynheer Peeperkom. May I not — we usually
put salt on while the spots are fresh — ”

“ It does not matter,” said Peeperkom, fixing his guest with his
glance.

Hans Castorp changed colour. He said, with a hollow smile:
“Everything up here is out of the ordinary. The spirit of the
place, if I may put it so, is not conventional. The sufferer, whether
man or woman, is privileged. The laws of chivalry are thus forced
rather into the background. You are for the moment indisposed,
Mynheer Peeperkom, an acute indisposition. Your companion
is relatively well. I think I do as Madame would wish in repre-
senting her here beside you, in her absence — in so far as there
can be any talk of representing her, ha ha! — instead of repre-
senting you with her and offering to attend her into the village.
How indeed should I come to be playing the cavalier to Madame?
I have no title to the position, no mandate, and I have, I must
admit, a strong sense of mine and thine. In short, I find my posi-
tion is correct, in face of the general situation, and also the very
genuine feelings I entertain for you, Mynheer Peeperkom. You
asked me, I believe, a question, and I think what I have said should
be a satisfactory answer to it.”

“ A very amiable answer,” Peeperkom responded. “ I listen with
involuntary pleasure, young man, to your fluent little phrases.
Your tongue runs on, it springs over stock and stone, and rounds
off all the sharp comers. But satisfactory — no. Your answer does
not* quite satisfy me — you must forgive me for disappointing
you. Austere, my dear friend — you used the word with reference
to some of my remarks just now. But in yours too I seem to note
a certain austerity, they seem a little stiff and forced, and not in
harmony with your nature, though I am acquainted with the

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

605

phenomenon through your bearing in one respect and therefore
recognize it now. I mean the formal manner you assume toward
Madame -rand toward no one else in our little circle, on our
walks and excursions. And of which you owe me an explanation.
It is a duty, an obligation. I am not mistaken. I have confirmed
my observation too many times, and it is unlikely it has not
been remarked by others as well — with the difference that these
others may perhaps — or even probably — possess a key which
I do not.”

Mynheer spoke with uncommon precision and clarity this
afternoon, despite the exhaustion consequent upon his fever. There
was scarcely a trace of his usual rhapsodic style. He half sat in
his bed, his powerful shoulders and splendid head turned toward
his guest; one arm was stretched out over the coverlet, with the
freckled, sea-captain’s hand erect at the end of the woollen sleeve,
forming the ring of precision. The lance-tipped fingers were
aloft. And his lips formed the words, as precisely, as “ plastically,”
as Herr Settembrini himself could have wished, and rolled the r in
his throat in words like probably and austerity.

“ You smile,” he-went on. “ You seem to be busy searching the
tablets of your memory and finding them blank. But there can
be no doubt that you know what I mean. I do not say that you
do not sometimes address Madame, or that you do not answer
her, as occasion arises. But I repeat, you do so with a definite
constraint, an evasiveness, and, in fact, an avoidance of one cer-
tain form. One gets the impression that there has been a one-sided
wager; it is as though you had eaten a philippina with Madame,
and made up that you will not address her with the usual form
of address. In short, you never use the third person plural. You
never say Sie to Madame.”

“ But Mynheer Peeperkom — how absurd — what sort of
philippina would that be? ”

“ May I mention the circumstance — you are surely aware of
it yourself — that you have just grown pale to the lips? ”

Hans Castorp did not look up. He bent over and busied him-
self with the red stains on the sheet. “ It had to come to that, I
suppose,” he thought. “ It had to come out. — And I suppose
I even helped it on myself. I can see that now. Did I really go
pale? It may be. For now we’ve certainly come to grips. What
will happen? Shall I keep on lying? It might still go — but I won’t.
I’ll just sit tight a few minutes and look at these blood-stains —
I mean wine-stains — on the sheet.”

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THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

They were both silent. The stillness lasted some two or three
minutes — and gave evidence how much under such circumstances
these very small units of time can expand.

It was Pieter Peeperkorn who first spoke. “ On the evening
when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” he
said, beginning in a singsong tone, and letting his voice fall at
the end, as though embarked on a long recitative, “ we had a
little celebration, sat very late eating and drinking and making
merry, and then, in an elevated mood, of spirit free and unre-
strained, arm in arm we sought our beds. As we parted, here at
my door, the idea came to me to ask you to salute Madame on
the brow, as a good friend from her former visit up here. You
bluntly refused, rejected the idea on the ground that it would
be preposterous. You will not deny that the expression itself
demanded an explanation — an explanation for which you have
remained until now in my debt. Are you willing to absolve your-
self of it?” '

“ Ah, so he noticed that too,” Hans Castorp thought, and bent
closer over the wine-stains, one of which he scratched with his
middle finger. “ The fact is I suppose I wanted him to notice it,
or I should not have said it. But what to say now? My heart is
pounding. Will there be an exhibition of royal rage? Perhaps
I’d best keep an eye on his fist, he may be holding it over me
already. Certainly I am in a fine position — between the devil
and the deep blue sea, as it were.”

And suddenly he felt his right wrist grasped by the hand of
Peeperkorn.

“ Hullo! ” he thought. “ Why should I be sitting here with
my tail between my legs? Have I done him any injury? Not in
the least. Let him talk to the man in Daghestan before he does
to me. And after that somebody else, and so on. And then me.
And what has he to complain of about me? Nothing, so far. Then
why should my heart be pounding like this? It is high time I sit
up and look him in the eye — with all due respect to his per-
sonality, of course.”

He did so. The great man’s face was yellow, the eyes pale
beneath the forehead’s heavy folds, a bitter expression sat on
the wounded lips. They looked each other in the eye, the splen-
did old man and the insignificant young one, and Peeperkorn con-
tinued to hold Hans Castorp by the wrist. At last he said, gently:
“ You were Clavdia’s lover when she was here before.”

Hans Castorp bowed his head once more but lifted it again
straightway, took a deep breath, and began: “ Mynheer Peeper-

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

607

korn! It is in the highest degree repugnant to me to tell you a
lie. I am searching for a means of avoiding it, but this is not
easy. I should be boasting if I say yes, lying if I say no. Let me
explain in what sense this is to be taken. I lived a long time,
oh, a very long time in this house with Clavdia — I beg pardon,
with the present companion of your travels — before making
her acquaintance. Our relations — or, rather, my relation to her

— was never the social one; I can only say of it that its be-
ginnings are shrouded in darkness. In my thoughts I have never
named Clavdia but with the thou — and never in reality either.
For on the evening when, casting off certain pedagogic restraints
of which we were speaking, I made bold to approach her, upon
a pretext furnished me by the long-ago past, it was carnival. It
was an evening of masks and freedom, an irresponsible hour,
when the thou was in force, and by the power of magic and
dreams, somehow had — full sway. And — it was also the eve of
Clavdia’s departure.”

“ Full sway,” repeated Peeperkom. “ You have put that very

— very — well.” He released Hans Castorp’s hand, and began with
his own huge ones to massage both sides of his own face, eyes,
cheeks, and chin. Then he folded his hands upon the wine-
bespotted sheet, and laid his head on the left shoulder, the one
toward his guest, with the effect that his face was lightly turned
away.

“ I have given you the best answer I could, Mynheer Peeper-
kom,” Hans Castorp said. “ I have tried to say neither too much
nor too little. I was concerned to let you see that it is in a way
open to us to count that evening — when the thou had full sway,
and it was the eve oi Chvdia’s departure — or not to count it.
It was an extraordinary occasion, almost outside the calendar,
intercalated, so to speak, a twenty-ninth of February. It would
have been only half a lie if I had simply denied the truth of what
you said.”

Peeperkorn made no answer.

“ I preferred,” Hans Castorp began again, after a pause, “ to
tell you the truth, rather than run the risk of losing your favour,
which, I openly admit, would be a sensible loss to me, I may
say a blow, a real blow, comparable to the one I received when
Frau Chauchat returned hither as the companion of your travels.
I have risked letting this happen, because I have long wished and
hoped that there might be understanding between myself and
the man for whom I entertained feelings of the most extraordinary
respect and reverence. It seemed finer, more 4 human ’tome-

6o8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

you know that is Clavdia’s favourite word, and how she pro-
nounces it, in that enchanting, husky drawl of hers — than silence
and dissimulation; and in that sense a weight was lifted from my
heart when you put your question.”

No answer.

“ One thing more. Mynheer Peeperkom,” Hans Castorp went
on, “There was another thing that made me wish to make a
clean breast of it to you: and that was the personal experience
I had with the irritating effect of uncertainty, being let in for
suspicions that could be neither confirmed nor dismissed. You
know now who it was — before this present relationship was es-
tablished which it would be absurd of me not to respect — with
whom Clavdia spent — or experienced, or committed — that
twenty-ninth of February. It is clear to you now. But for my
part I have never been able to know — though of course I realized
that anyone in my situation has to reckon with the past — by
which I really mean predecessors — and though I also realized
that Hofrat Behrens is an amateur portrait-painter, and had, in
the course of many sittings, made a capital portrait of her, with
a treatment of the skin so very lively and realistic that — between
ourselves — it gave me very seriously to think. I have tormented
myself no end with that riddle, and still do.”

“ You still love her? ” Peeperkom asked, without changing his
position, his face still turned away. The large room fell more and
more into twilight.

“ You will pardon me. Mynheer Peeperkom,” answered Hans
Castorp, “ but my feeling for you, which is one of the highest
respect and admiration, will not permit me to speak of my feel-
ing for the present companion of yo t travels.”

“ And does she — ” Peeperkom asked, with lowered voice,
“ does she still return your feeling? ”

“ I do not say,” answered Hans Castorp, “ I do not say that
she ever returned it. That is scarcely credible. We were touching
upon this subject earlier in the afternoon, when we spoke of the
responsive nature of women. There is nothing much about me
to fall in love with. I am not built on a grand scale, as you can
see. The possibility of — of a twenty-ninth of February could
only be ascribed to feminine receptivity on the basis of the man’s
choice already made. I must say that when I refer to myself as a
man, it seems to me a sort of self-advertising and bad taste — but
at all events, Clavdia is a woman.”

“ She was responsive to your feeling,” murmured Peeperkom,
with wry lips.

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 609

“ How much more so to yours,” said Hans Castorp. “ And in all
probability to many another. One has to face that, when — ”

“ Stop! ” Peeperkom said, still turned away, but with a ges-
ture of the palm toward his interlocutor. “ Is it not rather — com-
mon — of us to talk about her? ”

“ I don’t feel it so, Mynheer Peeperkom. I think I can set your
mind at rest on that point. These are human topics we are treat-
ing of; human in the sense that they have to do with freedom
and the spirituel — you must pardon me if I use a rather am-
biguous terminology, but I needed the expression lately, and made
it my own.”

“ Very good, go on,” Peeperkom said in a low voice.

Hans Castorp spoke in a low voice, too, and sat on the edge of his
chair by the bed, bent toward the kingly old man, his hands be-
tween his knees.

“For she is certainly a most spirituel being,” he said, “and
the husband beyond the Caucasus — you know, of course, that
she has a husband beyond the Caucasus — gives her her free-
dom, whether out of stupidity or intelligence I don’t know, I
don’t know the chap. But it is a good thing he does, for it is her
illness grants it to her — and whoever falls into our situation
will do well to follow his example, and not complain, either of the
past or of the future.”

“ You don’t complain? ” asked Peeperkom, and turned his
face. It seemed ashen in the twilight, the pale, weary eyes stared
out beneath the great folds of brow, the large chapped lips stood
half open, like the mouth of a tragic mask.

“ I hardly thought it was a question of myself,” Hans Castorp
answered modestly. “ What I meant was that you should not com-
plain, nor deprive me of your friendship because of events in the
past. That is what concerns me at this hour.”

“ But aside from that,” Peeperkom said, “ I must involuntarily
have been the cause of much suffering on your part.”

“ If you put the question,” responded Hans Castorp, “ and if
I answer yes, my answer must not be taken to mean that I did not
know how to value the enormous privilege of knowing you; for
that privilege was indissolubly bound up with the suffering.”

“ I thank you, young man, I thank you. I value the courtesy
of your little phrases But, aside from our acquaintance — ”

“ It is difficult,” I fans Castorp said, “ to divorce the two; and
the idea does not commend itself to me that I should divorce
them in order to be free to reply in the affirmative to your ques-
tion. The very fact that it was a personality like you in whose

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company Clavdia returned could only make more distressing and
involved her coming back in the company of anybody whatever.
It gave me a quarter of an hour, I assure you, and still does, that I
do not deny; I have purposely kept as much as I could to the
positive element, that is my sincere feeling of honour and reverence
for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn — in which there mingled a spice
of malice against your mistress; for women are never at ease when
their lovers come to terms.”

“ True enough,” Peeperkorn said, and ran his hand over mouth
and chin to conceal a smile, as though he were afraid Madame
Chauchat might see it. Hans Castorp too smiled discreetly — and
then they both nodded, in mutual understanding.

“ This little revenge,” went on Hans Castorp, “ was granted
me at the end, because, so far as I personally am concerned, I
have a quarrel after all, not with Clavdia, not with you, Mynheer
Peeperkorn, but with my lot in general, my destiny. I will try
to tell you about it, in so far as I can, now that I am secure in
the honour of your confidence, and in this altogether exceptional
and extraordinary twilight hour.”

“ Pray do so,” said Peeperkorn, courteously, and Hans Castorp
went on.

“ I have been up here a long time, Mynheer Peeperkorn, years.
How long I hardly know myself, but it has been years of my
life. My cousin, to visit whom I came up, in the first instance,
was a soldier, an upright and honourable soul, but that was no
help to him — he died, and left me, and I remained here alone.
I was no soldier, but a civilian, I had a profession, as you may
have heard, a good, two-fisted job, which is even supposed to do
its share in drawing together the nations of the earth — but some-
how it did not draw me. I admit this freely; but the reasons for it
I cannot describe otherwise than to say that they are veiled in
obscurity, the same obscurity that envelops the origin of my
feeling for Madame your mistress — I call her that expressly to
show that I am not thinking of undermining the situation as it
exists — my feeling for Clavdia Chauchat, and my intimate sense
of her being, which I have had since the first moment her eyes
met mine and bewitched me, enchanted me, you understand, be-
yond all reason. For love of her, in defiance of Herr Settembrini,
I declared myself for the principle of unreason, the spirituel prin-
ciple of disease, under whose aegis I had alre; dy, in reality, stood
for a long time back; and I remained up here, I no longer know
precisely how long. I have forgotten, broken with, everything,
my relatives, my calling, all my ideas of life. When Clavdia went

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

6 II

away, I waited here for her return, so that now I am wholly lost
to life down below, and dead in the eyes of my friends. That is
what I meant when I spoke of my destiny, and said there might
be some justice in a complaint over my present state. I have read
a story — no, I saw it in the theatre: a good-natured youth, a sol-
dier like my cousin, who comes to know a charming gipsy —
charming she was, with a flower behind her ear, a wild and fatal
creature, who so bewitches him that he goes off altogether, sacri-
fices everything to her, deserts the colours, joins the smugglers,
dishonours himself in every way. Well, when he has got so far,
she for her part has had enough of him, and takes up with a
matador, a forceful personality with a magnificent baritone voice.
The end of it all is that the little soldier, white as a sheet, shirt open
at the throat, stabs his mistress with his knife in front of the
circus — which, after all, she brought upon herself. It is rather a
pointless story after all: how did I come to think of it? ”

Mynheer Peeperkorn, at mention of the knife, had shifted his
position in the bed, with a quick motion to one side, turning his
face toward his guest, and looking him piercingly in the eye.
Now he pulled himself to a more comfortable posture, supporting
himself on one elbow, and said: “ Well, young man, I have listened
to you, and I have the whole picture. On my side, let me make you
an honourable declaration. Were my hair not white, my limbs not
racked with fever, you would see me ready to give you satisfac-
tion, man to man, weapon to weapon, for the injury I unwittingly
did you, and that which my companion added to it, for which like-
wise it is mine to atone. Positively, my friend — you would see me
at your service. But as matters lie, you must let me make a dif-
ferent proposal. It is this: I recall an exalted moment, when our
acquaintance was very young, when I felt myself pleasantly im-
pressed by your native parts, and stood reaay to offer you the
brotherly thou; but then perceived that the moment was prema-
ture. Very good. I stand again to-day at that moment, I return
to it, I declare that the period of probation has come to an end.
Young man, we are brothers. Your phrase was that the thou had
full sway — very good, let ours likewise have full sway, let us
give free rein to brotherly feeling. The satisfaction which age
and incapacity prevent me from giving you, I offer in another
form, in the form of a brotherly alliance, such as one forms against
a third party, against the world, against all and sundry; let us
swear it to each other in the name of our feeling for somebody.
Take your wineglass, young man, I will use the water-glass again,
it does the crude new wine no shame — ”

6l2

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

With his trembling hand he filled the glasses, Hans Castorp
hastening to assist him.

“ Take it,” repeated Peeperkom, “ take my arm, let us drink
so, let us drink it out — positively, young man. Very. Here is my
hand. Art thou satisfied r ”

“That is no word for it, of course, Mynheer Peeperkorn,”
said Hans Castorp. He had not found it easy to drink out the full
glass at a draught; he spilled a little and dried his knee with
his handkerchief. “ I might better say that I am immensely happy,
and can hardly grasp how this has all come about, it is like a dream.
What an immense honour for me! How I have deserved it I
scarcely know, certainly in no active sense. It is not surprising that
at first it seems entity too bold, and I doubt if I shall be able to
fetch it out — especially in Clavdia’s presence, who is not quite
so likely to be pleased with the new arrangement, all at once.”

“ Leave that to me,” responded Peeperkom; “ the rest is a
matter of practice and habit. Go, now, young man. Leave me,
my son. The night has fallen, our loved one may return any mo-
ment, and a meeting between you just now would perhaps not
be quite well-advised.”

“ Farewell, Mynheer Peeperkom,” Hans Castorp said, and rose.
“ Yes, it has grown dark. I can imagine Herr Settembrini coming
in suddenly and turning on the light, to let reason and convention
reign — it is a weakness of his. Good-bye until to-morrow. I leave
you, so proud, so joyful, as I could never have dreamed it was possi-
ble for me to be. And now you will have at least three good days,
and free of fever, and that rejoices me as much as though it were
myself. Brother, good-night! ”

Mynheer Peeperkorn (Conclusion)

A waterfall is always an attractive goal for an excursion. We
scarcely know how to explain why Hans Castorp, with all his
native love of falling water, had never visited the picturesque
cascade in the valley of the Fluela. His cousin’s strong sense of
duty to the service had probably prevented him, during Joachim’s
time; the latter’s purposeful attitude had tended to confine their
activities to the close vicinity of the Berghof. But even since that
time — if we except the winter excursions on skis — Hans Castorp’s
relations with the mountain scenery had been extremely conserva-
tive, not to say monotonous. The young man found a curious
pleasure in the contrast between the limitations of his physical
sphere and the broad scope of his mental operations. However,

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

613

when it was proposed that his little group of seven people should
make a driving excursion to the waterfall, he readily assented.

It was the blissful month of May, oft celebrated in the pleasant
little ditties of the flat-land. Up here the air was fresh, the tem-
perature scarcely ingratiating; but at least the snow was gone.
It might, indeed, snow again; during the last few days there
had been flurries of gigantic flakes, but it did not lie, it only made
wet. The winter drifts had wasted away, they were gone, save
for vestiges here and there; and the green slopes, the open paths,
tempted the spirit to rove.

The group had been less socially occupied of late weeks owing
to the illness of its ruling spirit, the prepotent Pieter Peeperkom.
His fever refused to yield to the beneficent working of the
climate or the skilled ministrations of so excellent a doctor as
Hofrat Behrens. He was obliged to spend much time in bed, not
only on the days when the quartan fever held sway, but on others
too. There was trouble with his liver and spleen, Behrens told
those who tended him; the digestion was not what it should be —
in short, the Hofrat did not neglect to point out that the condition
seemed to indicate a danger of chronic debility, not to be ignored.

Mynheer Peeperkorn had presided at only one evening festivity
in all these weeks; and the group had taken but one short walk.
Hans Castorp was rather relieved than otherwise at this state of
affairs; for the pledge he had drunk with Clavdia Chauchat’s
protector made him difficulties, in general conversation, of the
same kind he had to deal with in the case of Frau Chauchat her-
self, namely the avoidance of the formal mode of address — as
though, as Peeperkorn said, they had eaten a philippina together.
He was fertile in expedients to get round it or simply leave it
out; nevertheless, the favour accorded him by Peeperkorn had
doubled his present dilemma.

But now the excursion to the waterfall was the order of the
day; Peeperkom himself had arranged it, and felt equal to the
effort. It was the third day after the usual attack, and he announced
that he wished to take advantage of it. He did not, indeed, appear
at the early meals of the day, but took them, in company with
Madame Chauchat, in their salon, as they often did of late. But Hans
Castorp received word, through the lame concierge, to be ready
for a drive an hour after the midday meal, and further, to com-
municate with Ferge and Wehsal, Settembrini and Naphta, and to
engage two landaus for three o’clock.

Accordingly, at this hour they assembled before the portal of
the Berghof — Hans Castorp, Ferge and Wehsal. and awaited the

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

614

pair from the appartements de luxe ; whiling the time by holding
out lumps of sugar on the palms of their hands, for the horses to
nip them up with thick, moist black lips. Their companions ap-
peared with no great delay on the threshold; Peeperkorn’s kingly
head seemed narrower; he lifted his hat as he stood in a long,
rather shabby ulster, by Madame Chauchat’s side, and his lips
shaped a vague form of greeting to the company in general. Then
he descended and shook hands with the three gentlemen, who met
him at the foot of the steps. He laid his left hand on Hans Castorp’s
shoulder, saying: “ Well, young man, and how goes it, my son? ”

“ Topping, thanks, I hope it’s mutual,” responded the young
man.

The sun shone, the day was beautiful and bright. But they had
done well to don overcoats, driving would be cool. Madame
Chauchat too wore a warm belted mantle of some woolly stuff
with a pattern of large checks, and a small fur about her shoulders.
The rim of her felt hat was turned down at one side by the olive-
green veil she wore bound under her chin; an effect so charm-
ing that it was actual pain to most of the beholders — Ferge being
the only man there not in love with her. To his disinterested state
was probaby due the temporary advantage he presently enjoyed,
of being selected to sit opposite Mynheer and Madame in the first
landau, while Hans Castorp mounted with Wehsal into the sec-
ond, catching as he did so a mocking smile that for a moment
visited Frau Chauchat’s face. The others would be called for at
their lodgings. The Malayan servant joined the party with a
capacious basket, from the top of which protruded the necks of
two winebottles. He bestowed it under the back seat of the first
landau, took his place by the coachman on the box and folded his
arms; the horses started up, and the carriages, with the brakes
against their wheels, drove down the drive.

Wehsal had seen Frau Chauchat’s smile, and expressed him-
self on the subject to his companion, showing his bad teeth as
he talked.

“ Did you see,” he asked, “ how she was laughing at you for
having to drive alone with me? Yes, yes, a man like me is always
fair game. Do you find it so disgusting to have to sit next to me? ”

“ Pull yourself together, Wehsal, and stop talking in that poor-
spirited way,” Hans Castorp admonished him. “ Women are for
ever smiling, at anything, just for the sake of smiling; there is no
sense in attending to it. Why do you always cry yourself down?
You have your advantages and your disadvantages, like the rest
of us. For instance, you can play out of the Midsummer Night's

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 6l $

Dream , and it’s not everybody who can. Will you play for us again
soon? ”

“Yes, you think you can talk to me condescendingly, like
that,” retorted the wretched soul, “ and you don’t know what
cheek there is in your consolation and how it just lowers me the
more. You have the right to, though. You are laughing out of
the wrong corner of your mouth now; but once you were in the
seventh heaven, and felt her arms about your neck — oh, God, it
bums me in the pit of my stomach when I think of it — and you
are conscious of all you have had, when you look down on me and
my torments and think what a beggarly wretch I am.”

“You haven’t a pretty way of expressing yourself, Wehsal.
I don’t need to conceal my opinion of it, since you reproach me
with being cheeky: it is really very repulsive and probably in-
tentional on your part; you lay yourself out to be disgusting and
humiliate yourself, the whole time. Are you really so desperately
in love with her? ”

“Fearfully,” answered Wehsal, with a head-shake. “Words
cannot express what I have had to endure from my craving for
her. I wish I could say it will be the death of me — but the trouble
is, one can neither die nor live. It was a bit better while she was
away, I was gradually beginning to forget her. But since she came
back, and I have her daily before my eyes, I get attacks — I bite
my hand and strike about me, and am beside myself. Such things
ought not to be; yet one cannot wish not to have them. Whoever
is in that state cannot wish not to be, it would be like wishing not
to live, because it has bound itself up with life. What good would
it do to die? Afterwards — afterwards, yes, gladly. In her arms it
would be bliss. But before — no; it would be preposterous, because
life is longing, and longing is life — it cannot go against itself, that
is the cursed catch in the game. Even when I say cursed, it is only
a way of talking, as though I were somebody else, for in myself
I cannot feel it so. There are many kinds of torture, Castorp, and
whichever one you are under, your one desire and longing is to
be free of it. But the torture of fleshly lust is the only one you can
never wish to be free of, except through satisfaction. Never, never
in any other way, never at any price. So it is; the man who is
not suffering from it doesn’t dwell on it; but the man who is
learns to know our Lord Jesus Christ, and his tears run down.
Good Lord in heaven, what a thing it is, that the flesh can crave
the flesh like that, simply because it is not its own flesh, but
belongs to another soul — how strange, and yet, when you come
to look at it, how unassuming, how friendly, how almost apolo-

6 16

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

getic! One might say, almost, if that is all he wants, in God’s
name let him have it! What is it I want, Castorp? Do I want
to kill her? Do I want to shed her blood? I only want to fondle
her. Dear, good Castorp, don’t despise me for whining like this
— but after all, couldn’t she let me have my way? There would
be something higher about it, Castorp; I am not a beast of the
field, in my way I am a man too. Pure fleshly desire casts about,
here, there, and everywhere; it is not bound, not fixed, and so
we call it animal. But when it is fixed upon a human being, with
a human face, then we begin talking about love. It is not that
I just crave her carnal part, to enjoy as if she were a flesh-and-
blood doll; if there were one least little thing different about
her face, it might be that I should not crave her at all — which
shows that I love her soul, and love her with my soul. For love
of the face is love of the soul — ”

“ Why, Wehsal, what’s the matter with you? You are off your
head, you don’t know how you are going on — ”

“ But that is just it,” pursued the unhappy wretch, “ that she
has a soul, that she is a creature made up of soul and body. And
her soul will have absolutely nothing to do with mine, nor her body
either, and thence come, oh, God, the torments I suffer, and there-
fore is my desire condemned to shame, and my body must mortify
itself for ever. Why will she know nothing of me, Castorp, either
body or soul, and why is my desire a horror to her? Am I not a
man? Even if I am repulsive? I swear to you that I am, that I
would give her more than all the others who have lain there, once
she opened to me the bliss of her embrace, of her arms, which are
beautiful because her soul is so. There is not a glory of the flesh
I would not offer her, Castorp, if it were only a matter of the
body, not of the countenance, if it were not her accursed soul
that will have none of me, without which I should have no long-
ing for her body — that is the devil’s treadmill in which I eternally
go round and round.”

“ Hush, Wehsal, hush, the coachman can understand you. He
does not turn his head, on purpose, but I can see by the expression
of his back that he is listening.”

“ Yes, you’re right, he is listening, and he understands. There
you have again the thing I am talking about, and can see what it
is like. If I were speaking of — of palingenesis, or hydrostatics,
he would not understand, and would not listen, he would not have
the faintest idea about it, nor care to have. There is no popular
understanding for those things. But this business of body and soul,

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

617

the last and highest and most ghastly private matter in the world,
is also the most universal — everybody can understand it and
laugh at anyone suffering from it, whose days are a torture of
desire and his nights a torment of hell. Castorp, dear Castorp,
let me make my little moan to you — you don’t know the sort of
nights I have. Every night I dream of her, ah, what do I not dream
of her, it makes me bum inside even to think of it! And all the
dreams end the same way: she gives me a box on the ear, slaps me
in the face, sometimes spits at me, with her face all distorted with
disgust, and then I awake, covered with sweat and drowned in
shame and desire — ”

“ That will do, Wehsal. We will sit quiet now, and make up
our minds to hold our tongues until we reach the grocer’s and
someone gets in with us. That is my wish. I don’t want to wound
you, and I admit that your mental state is a quite choice and par-
ticular mess. But you know the story about the maiden who
by way of being punished for something had snakes and toads
hop out of her mouth, a snake or a toad for every word she
spoke. The book does not say what she did about it, but I should
think she finally had to keep her mouth shut.”

“ But every human being needs to express what he feels,” said
Wehsal complainingly, “ to relieve himself, my dear Castorp,
when he is in the state I am in! ”

“ And every human being has the right to do it, too, if you
like. But my dear Wehsal, it seems to me there are certain rights
a man simply does not assert.”

After which, according to Hans Castorp’s desire, they were
silent. Moreover, they were now arrived at the grocer’s vine-
clad cottage, where they needed not to linger at all, for Naphta
and Settembrini stood waiting in the street; the one in his shabby
fur, the other in a yellowish-white spring overcoat, copiously
stitched, and looking almost foppish. They all bowed and ex-
changed greetings, and Naphta took his place beside Ferge in the
first landau, which now contained four persons, while Herr Set-
tembrini added himself to the other two in the second carriage.
Wehsal gave up his place on the back seat, and the Italian lolled
there elegantly, as though on his native Corso; in his very best
mood, and bubbling over with esprit .

He talked about the pleasure of driving, the charm of sitting
still and being moved along at the same time amid a changing
scene; showed a fatherly interest in Hans Castorp, even patted
the forlorn Wehsal’s cheek and bade him forget his own un-

6 1 8

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sympathetic ego in admiration of the blithe exterior world, to
which the Italian pointed with a spacious gesture of his hand
in its worn leather glove.

It was a delightful drive. The horses, all four of them sturdy,
glossy, well-fed beasts, with a blaze on each forehead, covered
the excellent road at a steady pace. There was no dust. The route
was bordered here and there by crumbling rock tufted with grass
and flowers. Telegraph-poles flew past. Their way wound along
the mountain forests in pleasant curves that invited the interest
and led it on; in the sunny distance glimmered mountain heights
still partly covered with snow. They left behind their own ac-
customed valley, and the change of scene refreshed their spirits.
At the edge of the forest they drew up, having decided to cover
on foot the remainder of the distance to the goal they had in
mind — a goal of which they had been for some time aware, by
reason of the sound that came to their ears, at first scarcely per-
ceptible, but steadily increasing in volume. They all heard, directly
they dismounted, that far-away, sibilant, vibrating roar, that distant
murmuring of water, as yet so faint that they would suddenly
lose the sound and pause to listen again.

“ It is mild enough now,” Settembrini said. He had often been
here before. “ But when you come close, it is brutal, at this time
of the year. You won’t be able to hear yourselves think — mark
my words.”

Thus they entered the woods, along a path strewn with damp
pine-needles: Pieter Peeperkom first, leaning on Madame Chau-
chat’s arm, his soft blacK hat drawn down on his brows, walk-
ing with his slumping gait; behind them Hans Castorp, hatless,
like the other gentlemen, hands in pockets, head on one side,
whistling softly as he looked about; then Naphta and Settem-
brini, then Ferge and Wehsal, last the Malay with the tea-basket
on his arm. They all talked about the wood.

For the wood was not quite usual, it had a peculiarity which
made it picturesque, exotic, even uncanny. It abounded in a
hanging moss that draped and wreathed and wrapped the trees:
the matted web of this parasitic plant hung and dangled in long,
pallid beards from the branches, so that scarcely any pine-needles
were visible for the shrouding veil. A complete, a bizarre trans-
formation, a bewitched and morbid scene. For the trees were sick
of this rank growth, it threatened to choke them to death — so
all the visitors felt, as the little train wound along the path toward
the sound, and the hissing and splashing swelled slowly to a
mighty tumult that justified Settembrini’s prediction.

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

619

A turn in the path revealed the bridge and the rocky ravine
down which the torrent poured. At the moment their eyes per-
ceived it, their ears seemed saluted with the maximum of sound
— for which infernal was the only right word. The volume of
water fell perpendicularly in a single cascade, perhaps nine or
ten feet high, and of considerable breath, and foaming white
shot away over the rocks. The frantic noise of its falling seemed
to mingle all possible intensities and variations of sound — hissing,
thundering, roaring, bawling, whispering, crashing, crackling,
droning, chiming — truly it was enough to drive one senseless.
The visitors went very close, on the slippery rocks at the bottom
of the chasm, and stood looking, bespattered with its spray, en-
veloped in its mist, their ears stopped by its insensate clamour.
They exchanged glances and head-shakes and rather intimidated
smiles as they stood regarding this spectacle, this long catastrophe
of foam and fury, whose preposterous roaring deafened them,
frightened them, bewildered their senses of sight and hearing, so
that they even imagined they heard above, below, and on all
sides, cries of warning, trumpet-calls, hoarse human voices.

Gathered in a little group behind Mynheer Peeperkorn, Frau
Chauchat surrounded by the five gentlemen, they stood and looked
into the surging waters. The others could not see the Dutchman’s
face, but they saw him take off his hat, and breathe in the fresh-
ness with expanding chest. They communicated by looks and
signs, for words would have been useless, even shrieked imme-
diately into the ear, against that raging thunder. Their lips formed
soundless phrases of wonder and admiration. Hans Castorp, Set-
tembrini, and Ferge proposed, by nods and signs, to climb up
the side of the ravine in which they stood, and look down upon
the water from above. It was not difficult: a series of narrow
steps cut in the rock led up to an upper storey, so to speak, of
the forest. They climbed it, one behind the other, reached the
bridge which spanned the water just where it arched to pour
downward, and leaning on the rail, waved to the party below.
Then they crossed over and climbed laboriously down on the
other side of the stream, whence they rejoined their friends by
a second bridge over the whirling torrent.

Tea-drinking was now indicated; and more than one of them
said it might be well to withdraw a little from the din in order
to enjoy that refreshment in comfort, not totally dumb, not utterly
deafened and dazed. But they learned that Peeperkorn thought
otherwise. He shook his head, and pointed several times with
violence toward the ground. His distorted lips curled back with

620

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

the emphasis of the “ Here! ” they shaped. What could the others
do? In such matters he was accustomed to command, and the
weight of his personality would always have been decisive, even
if he had not been, as he was, master and mover of the expedi-
tion. Size itself is tyrannical, autocratic; thus it has always been,
thus it will remain. Mynheer desired to eat in sight, in thunderous
hearing of the waterfall, it was his mighty will. Who did not
wish to go hungry must acquiesce. Most of them felt dissatisfied.
Herr Settembrini saw that all chance of conversation, of a human
interchange of ideas, would be out of the question, and flung up
his hand with a gesture of resigned despair. The Malay hastened
to carry out his master’s will. Two camp-stools were set up against
the rocks for Monsieur and Madame, and at their feet upon a cloth
he spread out the contents of the basket: coffee-apparatus and
glasses, thermos bottles, cake and wine. The others found places
on boulders, or against the railing of the foot-bridge, holding their
cups of hot coffee in their hands, their plates on their knees; they
ate silently, amid the clamour.

Peeperkom sat with his coat-collar turned up and his hat on
the ground beside him, drinking port out of a monogrammed
silver cup, which he emptied many times. And suddenly he be-
gan to speak. Extraordinary man! It was impossible for him to
hear his own voice, still more for the others to catch a syllable
of what he let transpire without its in the least transpiring. But
with the winecup in his right hand, he raised his forefinger, stretch-
ing his left arm palm outwards toward the water. They saw his
kingly features move in speech, the mouth form words, which
were as soundless as though spoken into empty, etherless space. No
one dreamed he would continue; with embarrassed smiles they
watched this futile activity, thinking every moment it would
cease. But he went on, with tense, compelling gesture, to harangue
the clamour that swallowed his words; directing upon this or that
one of the company by turns the gaze of his pale little weary
eyes, spanned wide beneath the lifted folds of his brow; and
whoever felt himself addressed was constrained to nod back again,
wide-eyed, open-mouthed, hand to ear, as though any sort of
effort to hear could better the utterly hopeless situation. He even
stood up! There, in his crumpled ulster, that reached nearly to
his heels, the collar turned up; bare-headed, cup in hand, the
high brow creased with folds like some heathen idol’s in a shrine,
and crowned by the aureole of white hair like flickering flames;
there he stood by the rocks and spoke, holding the circle of thumb
and forefinger, with the lancelike others above it, before his face.

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN

621

and sealing his mute and incomprehensible toast with that com-
pelling sign of precision. Such words as they were accustomed to
hearing from him, they could read on his lips or divine from his
gestures: “ Settled ” and “ Absolutely! ” — but that was all. They
saw his head sink sideways, the broken bitterness of the lips, they
saw the man of sorrows in his guise. But then quite suddenly flashed
the dimple, the sybaritic roguishness, the garment snatched up
dancewise, the ritual impropriety of the heathen priest. He lifted
his beaker, waved it half-circle before the assembled guests,
and drank it out in three gulps, so that it stood bottom upwards.
Then he handed it with outstretched arm to the Malay, who
received it with an obeisance, and gave the sign to break up the
feast.

They all bowed and thanked him as they hastened to do his
bidding. Those crouching on the ground sprang up, the others
jumped down from the railing. The little Javanese in his stiff hat
and turned-up collar gathered the remnants of the meal. They went
back along the path in the same order as they had come, through
the draped, uncanny grove, to the high road and the waiting car-
riages.

This time "Hans Castorp mounted with Mynheer and Madame,
and sat opposite the pair with the humble Ferge, to whom all high
thoughts were vain. Scarcely a word was spoken on the homeward
drive. Mynheer sat with his jaw dropped and his hands palm up-
ward on the carriage rug spread across his and Madame’s knees.
Settembrini and Naphta dismounted and took their leave before
the carriages crossed the track and the watercourse, and Wehsal
drove alone as far as the portal of the Berghof, where the party
separated.

Was Hans Castorp’s sleep this night rendered light and fitful by
portents of which his soul knew naught — so that the slightest var-
iation in the usual nightly peace of the Berghof, the faintest com-
motion, the barely perceptible sound of running, was enough to
fetch him broad awake, to make him sit up in bed? He had been,
in fact, awake for some time before a knock came on his door, as
it did shortly after two o’clock. He answered at once, composed,
alert and energetic, and heard the voice of one of the nurses in the
house, saying in high, uncertain tones that Frau Chauchat would
be glad if he would come at once to the first storey. Briskly he
responded, sprang up and flung on some clothing, ran his fingers
through his hair, and went down; not slow, not fast, and more in
uncertainty as to the how than the what, in the meaning of these
summons.

622

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

The door to Peeperkom’s salon stood open, also that to his bed-
room, where all the lights were burning. The two physicians, the
Directress, Madame Chauchat, and the Malay were within, the
last-named dressed not as usual, but in a sort of national costume,
with a striped garment like a shirt, very long wide sleeves, a gaily
coloured skirt, and a curious, cone-shaped hat made of yellow
cloth on his head. He wore an ornament of amulets on his breast,
and stood with folded arms at the head of the bed, wherein Pieter
Peeperkom lay on his back, his arms stretched out before him.
Hans Castorp, paling, took in the scene. Frau Chauchat sat with
her back toward him in a low chair at the foot of the bed. Her
elbows rested on the coverlet, her chin was in her hands, whose
fingers were buried in her upper lip, and she gazed into the face
of her protector.

“Evening, m’ boy,” said Behrens, who stood talking in low
tones with Krokowski and the Oberin, and nodded ruefully to
Hans Castorp, with his upper lip drawn back. He was in his sur-
geon’s coat, from the pocket of which a stethoscope stuck out,
wore embroidered slippers and no collar. “ It’s all up with him,”
he added in a whisper. Gone for good, o’er the border and awa’.
Come have a look — run your experienced eye over him — you’ll
agree there’s nothing for us to do.”

Hans Castorp approached the bed on tiptoe. The Malay with-
out turning his head followed the movement, until his eyeballs
showed white. The young man assured himself by a side glance
that Frau Chauchat was paying no heed; then stood by the bed in
his accustomed posture, his weight on one leg, his head on one side,
his hands folded across his stomach, reverently, reflectively gazing.
Pieter Peeperkorn lay under the red satin coverlet, in his tricot
shirt, as Hans Castorp had so often seen him. His hands were veined
a bluish black, likewise parts of his face; a considerable disfigure-
ment, though the kingly features remained unaltered. Beneath the
white aureole of hair the masklike folds carved by the habitual ges-
ture of a lifetime ran in a row of four or five, straight across the
brow and then in a right angle down the temples; they were more
striking than ever, by contrast with the drooping lids and the re-
pose of the features. The cracked lips were slightly parted. The
cyanosis indicated abrupt stoppage, a violent apoplectic arrest of
the vital functions.

Hans Castorp stood awhile, reverently, observing all this; hesi-
tating to move, expectant of being addressed by the “ widow.” As
he was not, and could not bring himself to disturb her, he turned
toward the little group of other persons present. Behrens jerked

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 623

his head in the direction of the salon, and Hans Castorp followed
him thither.

' “ Suicide? ” he asked, subdued but terse.

“ Rather,” said the Hofrat, with a shrug, and added: “ up to
the hilt. To the wth power. Have you ever seen a toy like this be-
fore? ” he went on, and drew out of the pocket of his smock an
irregularly shaped case, from which he took a small object and
presented it to the young man’s notice. “ Nor I either. But it is
well worth seeing. We live and learn. It’s a fantastic little gadget,
and ingenious. I took it out of his hand. Take care, if it drips on
your skin it will blister.”

Hans Castorp turned the puzzling little object in his hands. It
was made of steel, gold, ivory, and rubber, wonderful to see. There
were two curving prongs of bright steel, extremely sharp-pointed;
a slightly spiral centre portion of gold-inlaid ivory, in which the
prongs were somewhat movable and could sink up to a point; and
a bulb of semi-hard black rubber. The whole thing was only about
two inches long.

“ What is it? ” Hans Castorp asked.

“That,” answered Behrens, “is an organized hypodermic
syringe. Or, if you like, it is a copy of the mechanism of the cobra’s
bite. Understand? You don’t seem to,” he went on, as Hans Ca-
storp continued to stare at the bizarre little instrument. “ These
are the teeth. They are not solid all the way, there is a canal in-
side, the thickness of a hair; you can see the issue of it quite plainly,
here just above the point. They are also open at the base, of course,
and communicate with the excretory duct of the bulb, which runs
into the ivory middle part. When the teeth bite, they sink in a
little, and the pressure on the reservoir shoots the contents into the
canals, so that the poison gets into circulation the moment the
fangs sink in the flesh. Perfectly simple, when you see it like that;
you just have to get the idea. He probably had it made after his
own design.”

“ Surely,” Hans Castorp said.

“ The amount must have been very small,” continued the Hof-
rat. “ What it lacked in quantity it made up for in — ”

“ Dynamic,” Hans Castorp finished for him.

“ Well, yes. What it was we shall soon find out. It will be worth
knowing too, it has something curious to teach us. Shall we wager
that the native on duty over there, who dressed himself up like
that for the night’s work, could tell us all we want to know? I
suspect it is a combination of animal and vegetable poisons, the
most powerful known, for it must have worked like lightning.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

62 4

Everything points to its having taken away his breath, paralysed
his respiration, you know, quick suffocation, probably easy and
painless.”

“ God grant it,” said Hans Castorp piously, handed the uncanny
toy back to the Hofrat and returned to the bedchamber.

Madame Chauchat and the Malay were there alone. And this
time Clavdia lifted her face toward the young man as he neared
the bed.

“ You had a right to be called,” she said.

“ It was kind of you,” he answered, “ and you are right.” He
availed himself of the third person plural as used by the peoples of
the cultured West. “ We were brothers. I feel shamed in the depth
of my soul that I tried to hide it, and used circumlocutions before
other people. Were you with him at the last? ”

“ The servant called me when all was over,” she answered.

“ He was built on such a grand scale,” Hans Castorp began again,
“ that he considered it a blasphemy, a cosmic catastrophe, to be
found wanting in feeling. For you must know, he regarded him-
self as the instrument of God’s marriage. That was a piece of
majestic tomfoolery — when one is moved one can say things that
sound crass and irreverent, but are after all more solemn than the
conventional religious formulas.”

“ Cest une abdication” she said. “ He knew of our folly? ”

“ I was not able to prevent it, Clavdia. He guessed, when I re-
fused to kiss you on the forehead, in his presence. At this moment,
his presence is rather symbolic than actual — but will you let me
do it now? ”

She moved her head toward him, in a little nod, the eyes closed.
He pressed his lips on her brow. The brown, doglike eyes of the
Malay servant watched the scene, rolling sidewise, until the whites
showed.

The Great God Dumps

Once more we hear Herr Hofrat Behren’s voice — let us give it
our ear. For we hear it perhaps for the last time. Some day even the
story itself will come to an end. Long has it lasted; or, rather, the
pace of its contentual time has so increased that there is no more
holding it, even its musical time is running out. Perhaps we shall
have no further opportunity to hear the lively cadences of the
Rhadamanthine tongue. The Hofrat said to Hans Castorp: “ Ca-
storp, old cock, you’re bored. Chap-fallen, I see it every day, dis-
gust and ennui are written on your brow. You’re collapsed like a
punctured tire — if some first-class excitement doesn’t come along

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS 62$

every day, you pull a face as though you were saying: 4 H’m, small
potatoes and few in the hill! ’ Am I right, or am I not? ”

Hans Castorp said never a word — a sure sign that his inward
man was indeed pervaded with gloom.

“ Right, then, of course, as I always am,” Behrens answered
himself. “ Well, I can’t have you spreading the toxin of your dis-
affection all over my community, you disgruntled citizen, you.
I must convince you that you are not forgotten of God and man,
that the powers above have an eye, an unchanging eye upon you,
and ceaselessly ponder your welfare. Old Behrens hasn’t forsaken
you yet, my lad. Well, joking aside, I’ve been thinking about your
case, and in the watches of the night something has come to me.
I might almost speak of a revelation — in short, I promise great
things from my new idea, nothing more nor less than your com-
plete cure and triumphal progress down to the flat-land, before
you can say Jack Robinson.”

“ Yes,” he went on, after a pause for effect, “ you may well open
your eyes ” — Hans Castorp had done nothing of the sort, merely
blinked at him rather sleepy and distraught — “ of course you
haven’t an idea how old Behrens can say such a thing. Well, it’s
like this: it cannot have escaped your acute apperceptions that
there is something about your case that doesn’t hold water. The
symptoms of infection have not for a long time corresponded to
the local condition, which is undoubtedly very much improved.
It’s not only since yesterday that I’ve been thinking about it. Here
is your latest photo, take it and hold it up to the light. See there!
The sheerest pessimist and cavillar — as the Kaiser says — could not
see very much in it to find fault with. Some of the foci are absorbed,
the area is smaller and more clearly defined, which you are experi-
enced enough to know is a sign of healing. Nothing here to explain
the unreliability of your domestic heater, my man. The doctor
finds himself under the necessity of casting about for another
cause.” Hans Castorp’s bow conveyed at most a civil interest.

“ You would think old Behrens must admit to having made a
mistake in the treatment? Well, if you did, you’ve come a cropper
again; sized the thing up wrong, and old Behrens too. The treat-
ment was not wrong, but it was just possibly one-sided. The possi-
bility has occurred to me that your symptoms were not necessarily
to be referred to tuberculosis alone — because it is out of the ques-
tion to refer them to it any longer. There must be some other
source of trouble. In my view, you’ve got cocci.”

“ Yes,” he repeated with increase of emphasis, and in acknowl-
edgment of the bow with which Hans Castorp accepted his state-

626

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

ment, “ it is my profound conviction that you have streps — which,
of course, is not necessarily alarming.”

Of alarm there could be no talk: Hans Castorp’s face expressed
at most a sort of ironic recognition, either of his companion’s acute-
ness, or of the new dignity with which the Hofrat had hypo-
thetically invested him.

“ No call for panic,” he varied his theme. “ Everybody has cocci.
Any ass can have streps. You needn’t be puffed up. It is not very
long since we have known that one can have streptococci in the
blood without showing any symptoms of infection. And many of
my colleagues are as yet unacquainted with the situation which
confronts us; namely, that a man can even have tubercular bacilli
in his blood without being any the worse for it. We aren’t more
than three steps from the conception that tuberculosis is a disease
of the blood.”

Hans Castorp politely found that truly remarkable.

“ When I say streps,” Behrens began again, “ you must not pic-
ture a well-known or severe type of illness. If this little one has
really settled down and made itself at home in you, the bacterio-
logical blood-test will show it. But whether it is really the cause
of the fever — supposing it is present — that we can only tell from
the effect of the strepto-vaccine treatment. This, my dear friend,
is the technique, and I promise myself unheard-of results. Tuber-
culosis is the most long-winded thing in the world; but affections
of this sort can be cured very quickly to-day; if you react to the
inoculations, you will be as sound as a bell inside six weeks. Well,
what do you say to that? That little ole Behrens has his head on
his shoulders, what? ”

“ It is only a hypothesis for the moment, isn’t it? ” Hans Ca-
storp said languidly.

“But a demonstrable hypothesis! A highly fruitful hypoth-
esis! ” the Hofrat responded. “ You’ll see how fruitful it is, when
the cocci begin to grow in our culture. To-morrow afternoon we’ll
tap you; we’ll let your blood according to the sacred rites of the
village barber. It’s diverting in itself, and may have miraculous
results.”

Hans Castorp declared himself ready for the diversion, and
thanked the Hofrat in due form for his efforts in his behalf. He
put his head on one side and watched Behrens paddle off. It was
true: the intervention had come at the critical moment, Rhada-
manthus had not been far out in the description he gave of Hans
Castorp’s face and air. The new undertaking was put forth —
quite explicitly, there had been no attempt to wrap it up — in

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS

627

order to tide him over the crisis he was in, which betrayed itself
by a bearing very like the departed Joachim’s, when he was men-
tally working himself up to a certain desperate resolve.

And further. It seemed to Hans Castorp that not only he him-
self had arrived at this point, but that all the world, “ the whole
show,” as he said, had arrived there with him; he found it hard to
differentiate his particular case from the general. He had experi-
enced the extravagant ending of his connexion with a certain per-
sonality. A commotion had ensued in the house. There had been a
farewell between Clavdia Chauchat and himself, the surviving
member of a severed brotherhood; a farewell, uttered in the
shadow of a tragic renunciation, and followed by her second de-
parture from the Berghof. Now all these events had put the young
man in a frame of mind to find life itself not precisely canny.
Everything appeared to have gone permanently and increasingly
awry, as though a demonic power — which had indeed for a long
time given hints of its malign influence — had suddenly taken con-
trol, in a way to induce secret consternation and almost thoughts
of flight. The name of the demon was Dumps.

The reader will accuse the writer of laying it on pretty thick
when he associates two such ideas a§ these, and ascribes to mere
staleness a mystical and supernatural character. But we are not
indulging in flights of fancy. We are adhering strictly to the per-
sonal experience of our simple-minded hero, which in some way
defying exact definition it has been given us to know, and which
indicates that when all the uses of this world unitedly become flat,
stale, and unprofitable, they are actually possessed by a demonic
quality capable of giving rise to the feelings we have described.
Hans Castorp looked about him. He saw on every side the uncanny
and the malign, and he knew what it was he saw: life without
time, life without care or hope, life as depravity, assiduous stagna-
tion; life as dead.

Yet it was occupied too, it had activities of various kinds, pur-
sued simultaneously; now and again one of these would assume the
proportions of a craze, and subordinate everything to itself. Old
residents experienced the periodic revival of more than one of these
fads. So for instance amateur photography, always playing an
important role at the Berghof, had twice become a perfect mania,
lasting weeks and months on end. Everywhere one saw people
absorbedly bent over cameras supported in the pit of their
stomachs, focusing and snapping the shutter; and floods of snap-
shots were handed round at table. It became a point of honour
to do the developing oneself. The supply of dark-rooms in the

6z8

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

establishment was not sufficient, the bedroom windows and doors
were draped with black cloth, and people busied themselves by dim
red lights over chemical baths, until something caught fire, the
Bulgarian student at the “ good ” Russian table was nearly reduced
to ashes, and a prohibitory decree went forth from the manage-
ment. Next they tired of ordinary photography, the fashion veered
to flash-lights and colour photography after Lumiere. They were
enthusiastic over groups of people with startled, staring eyes in
livid faces dazed by the magnesium flare, resembling the corpses
of the murdered set upright. Hans Castorp had a framed diaposi-
tive, showing him with a copper-coloured visage, a brassy butter-
cup in his buttonhole, standing among buttercups in a poison-
ously green meadow, with Frau Stohr on one side of him in a
sky-blue blouse, and Fraulein Levi on the other in a blood-red
sweater.

Then there was the collecting of postage stamps, a considerable
interest at all times, but rising periodically to an obsession. Every-
body pasted, haggled, exchanged, took in philatelic magazines,
carried on correspondence with special vendors, foreign and do-
mestic, with societies and private owners; astonishing sums were
spent for rare specimens, even by people whose means were
scarcely adequate to their expenses at the Berghof.

Postage stamps would have their day, and give way to the next
folly on the list, which might be the accumulation and endless
munching of all possible brands of chocolate. Everybody’s mouth
was stained brown, and the Berghof kitchen offered its most
elaborate delicacies to captious and indifferent diners who had
lost their appetites to Milka-nut , Chocolat a la creme d’amandes ,
Marquis-napolitains , and gold-besprinkled cats’ tongues.

Pig-drawing, a diversion introduced by high authority on a
long-ago carnival evening, had had its little day, and led up to
geometrical teasers which for a time consumed all the mental
powers of the Berghof world, and even the last thoughts and en-
ergies of the dying. Weeks on end the house was under the spell
of a complicated figure consisting of not less than eight circles,
large and small, and several engaged triangles, the whole to be
drawn free-hand without lifting the pen — or, as a further refine-
ment, to be drawn blindfold. Lawyer Paravant, the virtuoso of this
kind of mental concentration, finally succeeded in performing the
feat, perhaps with some loss of symmetry; but he was the only
one.

We know on the authority of the Hofrat that Lawyer Paravant
studied mathematics; we know too the disciplinary grounds of

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS

629

his devotion to that branch of learning, and its virtue in cooling
and dulling the edge of fleshly lusts. If the guests of the Berghof
had more generally applied themselves to the same study, the
necessity for certain recent rulings would most likely have been
obviated. The chief of these dealt with the passage across the bal-
conies, at the end of the white glass partitions that did not quite
reach to the balustrade. These were now extended by means of
little doors, which the bathing-master had it in charge to lock
every night — and did so, to a general accompaniment of smirks
and sniggers. Since that time, the chambers in the first storey had
become popular, because they afforded a passage across the ve-
randah roor beyond the balustrade. But this disciplinary departure
had not been introduced on Lawyer Paravant’s account. He had
long since overcome the severe attack caused by the presence of
the Egyptian Fatme, and she had been the last to challenge his
natural man. Since her time he had flung himself with redoubled
conviction into the arms of the clear-eyed goddess, of whose
soothing powers Hofrat Behrens had so morally discoursed. There
was one problem to which day and night he devoted all his brains,
all the sporting pertinacity which once — before the beginning of
this prolonged and enforced holiday, that even threatened at times
to end in total quiescence — had gone to the convicting of crim-
inals. It was — the squaring of the circle.

In the course of his studies, this retired official had convinced
himself that the arguments on which science based the impossi-
bility of the proposition were untenable; and that an overruling

{ jrovidence had removed him, Paravant, from the world of the
iving, and brought him here, having selected him to transfer the
problem from the realms of the transcendental into the realms of
the earthly and exact. By day and night he measured and calcu-
lated; covered enormous quantities of paper with figures, letters,
computations, algebraic symbols; his face, which was the face of an
apparently sound and vigorous man, wore the morose and vision-
ary stare of a monomaniac; while his conversation, with consistent
and fearful monotony, dealt with the proportional number pi, that
abandoned fraction which the debased genius of a mathematician
named Zachariah Dase one day figured out to the two-hundredth
decimal place — purely for the joy of it and as a work of superero-
gation, for if he had figured it out to the two-thousandth, the result,
as compared with unattainable mathematical exactitude, would
have been practically unchanged. Everybody shunned the devoted
Paravant like the plague; for whomever he succeeded in button-
holing, that unhappy wretch had to listen to a torrent of red-hot

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

63O

oratory, as the lawyer strove to rouse his humaner feelings to the
shame that lay in the defilement of the mind of man by the hope-
less irrationality of this mystic relation. The fruitlessness of for
ever multiplying the diameter of the circle by pi to find its circum-
ference, of multiplying the square of the radius by pi to find its
area, caused Lawyer Paravant to be visited by periodic doubt
whether the problem had not been unnecessarily complicated, since
Archimedes’ day; whether the solution were not, in actual fact, a
child’s affair for simpleness. Why could not one rectify the cir-
cumference, why could one not also convert every straight line
into a circle? Lawyer Paravant felt himself, at times, near a revela-
tion. He was often seen, late in the evening, sitting at his table in
the forsaken and dimly lighted dining-room, with a piece of
string laid out before him, which he carefully arranged in circular
shape, and then suddenly, with an abrupt gesture, stretched out
straight; only to fall thereafter, leaning on his elbows, into bitter
brooding. The Hofrat sometimes lent him a helping hand at the
sorry sport, and generally encouraged him in his freak. And the
sufferer turned to Hans Castorp too, again and yet again, with his
cherished grievance, finding in the young man much friendly
understanding and a sympathetic interest in the mystery of the
circle. He illustrated his pet despair to the young man by means of
an exact drawing, executed with vast pains, showing a circle be-
tween two polygons, one inscribed, the other circumscribed, each
polygon being of an infinite number of tiny sides, up to the last
human possibility of approximation to the circle. The remainder,
the surrounding curvature, which in some ethereous, immaterial
way refused to be rationalized by means of the calculable bound-
ing lines, that, Lawyer Paravant said, with quivering jaw, was pi.
Hans Castorp, for all his receptivity, showed himself less sensitive
to pi than his interlocutor. He said it was all hocus-pocus; and
advised Paravant not to over-heat himself with his cat’s-cradle;
spoke of the series of dimensionless points of which the circle
consisted, from its beginning — which did not exist — to its end —
which did not exist either; and of the overpowering melancholy
that lay in eternity, for ever turning on itself without permanence
of direction at any given moment — spoke with such tranquil resig-
nation as to exert on Lawyer Paravant a momentary beneficent
effect.

It was a consequence of our good Hans Castorp’s nature that
more than one of his fellow-patients made a confidant of him;
several of them possessing some idee fixe or other and suffering

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS

631

because they could get no hearing from the callous majority. There
was an elderly man from somewhere in the back blocks of Austria,
a one-time sculptor, with white moustaches, a hooked nose and
blue eyes; who had conceived a project, financial and political in
its scope, and drawn it up most meticulously in a calligraphic hand,
colouring the important points in sepia. The main feature of the
scheme was that every newspaper subscriber should bind himself
to contribute a daily quantum of forty grammes of old newspaper,
collected on the first of every month; which in one year would
amount to a lump quantity of 1400 grammes, and in twenty years
to not less than 288 kilogrammes. Reckoning at twenty pfennig
the kilo, this would come to fifty-seven marks and sixty pfennig.
Five million subscribers, it was calculated, would in the course of
twenty years deliver a quantity of old newspaper valued at the
enormous sum of 288 million marks; of which two-thirds might be
reckoned off to the new subscriptions, which would thus pay for
themselves, the other third, amounting to about a million marks,
remaining to be devoted to humanitarian projects, such as financing
free establishments for tuberculous patients, encouraging strug-
gling talent, and so on. The plan was elaborated even to the design
for a centimetre price-column, from which the organization for
collecting the old paper could read off each month the value of
the paper collected, and the stamped form to be used as a receipt
in exchange for payment. It was an excellent plan from every point
of view. The wanton waste and destruction of news-print, thrown
away or burnt up by the unenlightened, was a betrayal of our
forests and of our political economy. To save and conserve paper
meant to save cellulose, meant the conservation of our forests, the
protection of human material that was used up in the manufacture
of cellulose and paper — human material and capital. Furthermore,
since newspaper might easily come to have four times the value
of wrapping-paper and pasteboard, it would become an economic
factor of considerable importance, and the basis of fruitful govern-
mental and communal assessments, and thus lighten for newspaper
readers the burden of taxation. In short, the plan was good, it was
every way incontrovertible. The uncanny air of futility, or even
a sort of sinister crack-brainedness, which hung about it was due
to the addled fanaticism with which the former artist pursued and
supported an economic idea, about which he was obviously so
little serious that he made not the smallest effort to put it into
execution. Hans Castorp, nodding, with his head on one side,
listened to the man, as with fevered eloquence he made propa-

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632

ganda for his idea; observing at the same time in himself the con-
tempt and repulsion which diminished his partisanship for the in-
ventor against the indifference of the thoughtless world.

Some of the patients studied Esperanto, and knew enough to
converse a little in that artificial jargon at their meals. Hans Ca-
storp listened gloomily, but admitted to himself that there were
other things even worse. A group of English who had been here
for a short time, introduced a parlour game which consisted in
the question, asked by the first player of his neighbour: “ Have
you ever seen the Devil with a night-cap on? ” To which the per-
son asked must reply: “ No, I’ve never seen the Devil with a night-
cap on,” and then repeat the question in his turn, and so on. It was
insufferable. Yet Hans Castorp found the patience-players even
worse. They were to be seen all over the house, at every hour of
the day, laying out their cards; a passion for that diversion having
assumed such proportions at the Berghof as to turn the place into
a den of vice. Hans Castorp had the more ground for horror, in
that he himself fell a temporary victim to the plague — was, indeed,
one of the severest cases. It was the patience called “ elevens ” that
proved his undoing, the game in which the cards are laid out in
three rows of three deep, and any two cards that together make
eleven covered anew as they come uppermost, as well as the three
face-cards, until by good luck the pack is dealt out. It seems incon-
ceivable that such a simple procedure could prove fascinating to
the point of bewitchment — yet so it was. Hans Castorp, like
so many others, experienced it — always with drawn and frown-
ing brows, for this particular form of debauch is never a merry
one. He was given over to the whims of the card-goblins, en-
snared by the fitful and fickle favour of fortune, which some-
times let the face-cards and elevens pile up so that the game was
over before the third tier was laid, when the fleeting triumph would
stimulate the nerves to new efforts. But next time perhaps, the
ninth and last card would fall without any possibility of covering
anything, or else the game, having aroused nattering hopes, would
obstinately stick at the last moment. Everywhere, at all hours of
the day, he played patience — and at night under the stars, and in
the morning in his pyjamas; played at table, played almost in his
sleep. He shuddered, but he played. Thus one day Herr Settem-
brini found him — and disturbed him, as even from the beginning
it had been his mission to do.

u Accidente! ” said he. “ What, Engineer, you are playing
cards? ”

“ Not precisely playing cards,” Hans Castorp told him. “ I am

THE GREAT GOD DUMPS

633

just laying them out, to have a tussle with abstract chance. The
tricks it plays intrigue me, it is as inconsistent as the wind. It fawns
on you, and then suddenly puts up its back and won’t budge. This
morning, directly I got up, it came three times running, once in
two rows, which is a record. But will you believe it, this is the
thirty-third time I have played it without once going even half-
way through? ”

Herr Settembrini looked at him, as so often he had looked in the
course of the years, with melancholy black eyes.

“ At all events, you are preoccupied,” he said. “ It does not look
as though I could find here the consolation I seek, nor balsam for
my inward wound.”

“ Wound? ” echoed Hans Castorp, laying afresh.

“ The world situation puzzles me,” the Freemason sighed. “ The
Balkan Federation will go through, Engineer, all the information
I receive points that way. Russia is working feverishly for it. And
the combination is aimed against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy,
which must fall before any of the Russian programme can be
realized. You understand my scruples. Austria, as of course you
are aware, I hate with all my strength. But shall I, on that account,
lend support and countenance in my soul to the Sarmatian despot-
ism, which is about to set the torch to the whole of our highly
civilized continent? Yet on the other hand, diplomatic collabora-
tion, to however small an extent, between my own country and
Austria, I should regard as dishonourable. These are conscientious
scruples which — ”

“ Seven and four,” said Hans Castorp. “ Eight and three. Knave,
queen, king. It is coming out. You have brought me luck, Herr
Settembrini.”

The Italian was silent. Hans Castorp felt the black eyes, the eyes
of reason and morality, bent in sorrow upon him. He played on
for a while; then, resting his cheek in his hand, looked up at his
mentor with the innocent, impenitent air of a naughty child.

“ Your eyes,” the master said, “ vainly seek to hide the fact that
you are conscious of your state.”

“ Placet experiri Hans Castorp was so pert as to reply to him.
Herr Settembrini left; and the abandoned one sat long, at his table
in the middle of his white room, his chin supported on his hand,
and brooded; shuddering in the very core of him at the cross-pur-
poses everything in the world had got into, at the grinning and
grimacing of the demons and ape-headed gods into whose hands
it had fallen, at their unbridled domination, the name of which was
“ The Great God Dumps.”

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

634

An apocalyptic, evil name, calculated to give rise to mysterious
fears. Hans Castorp sat and rubbed his brow and his heart with the
flat of his hand. He was frightened. It seemed to him “ all this ”
could come to no good, that a catastrophe was impending, that
long-suffering nature would rebel, rise up in storm and whirlwind
and break the great bond which held the world in thrall; snatch
life beyond the “ dead point ” and put an end to the “ small pota-
toes ” in one terrible Last Day. He longed to flee — as we have
seen already. It was fortunate, then, that the heads had their un-
changing eyes upon him, that they knew how to read his face, and
were ready to tide him over the hard place with new and fruitful
diversions.

They had declared, the heads, in the accents of a corps-student,
that they were on track of the actual causes of the instability of
Hans Castorp’s heating economy. And those causes, according to
their scientific pronouncement, were so easy to come at that a
veritable cure and legitimate dismissal to the flat-land had leaped
into the foreground. The young man’s heart throbbed stormily
with manifold emotions, when he stretched out his arm for the
blood-letting. Going slightly pale, and blinking, he expressed his
admiration for the splendid ruby colour of his life-blood, as it
mounted in the glass container. The Hofrat himself, assisted by
Dr. Krokowski and a Sister of Mercy, performed the slight but
portentous operation. Then passed several days, occupied in Hans
Castorp’s mind with the question how this blood of his, this part of
himself, would behave out of his control and under the eye of
science.

At first, the Hofrat said one could not expect it to grow straight
off. Later, he said it was unfortunate nothing had grown, as yet.
But there came a day when he approached Hans Castorp at break-
fast, where he sat at the upper end of the “ good ” Russian table,
in the place once occupied by his great brother-in-blood, and
whimsically congratulated him on the fact that the coccus was
definitely established in one of the cultures they had prepared. It
was now a question of probabilities: whether the symptoms of in-
fection were to be referred to the insignificant amount of tubercle
bacillus, or to the streptococci, which, also, were only present in
small quantity. He, Behrens, must think it over. They were not
finished with the cultures yet. He showed them to Hans Castorp in
the “ lab a red, coagulate blood, in which tiny grey points were
discernible. Those were the cocci. But any ass might have cocci,
and tubercular bacilli too. If not for the symptoms of infection,
they were not worth noticing.

FULLNESS OF HARMONY

<535

Outside his body, under the eyes of science, Hans Castorp’s
blood went on bearing witness. The morning came when the Hof-
rat in his sprightly phraseology announced that not only on the
first culture, but on all the others as well, cocci had subsequently
grown, in large quantities. It was not yet certain that they were
all streptococci, but it was more than probable that they were the
cause of the existing infection — or such part of it as had not been
due to the previously existing and perhaps not quite conquered
tubercular infection. And the conclusion the Hofrat drew was —
a strepto- vaccine! The prognosis was extraordinarily favourable,
there was not the slightest risk about the procedure, so in any case
it could do no harm to try it. As the serum was prepared from
Hans Castorp’s own blood, the inoculation with it could introduce
into his system no deterrent not already present there. At worst,
the experiment would have a negative result — which could hardly
be called unfavourable, since even without it the patient must stop
on in any case!

Hans Castorp could not go quite that far. He submitted to the
treatment, though he found it absurd, contemptible. This inocu-
lation of himself with part of himself seemed a singularly cheerless
procedure, an incestuous abomination, a self-to-self which could
have nothing but a fruitless, hopeless result. Such was his ignorant
and hypochondriac judgment, right only as to the unfruitfulness
of the result, but there wholly. The diversion lasted for weeks.
Sometimes it seemed to do harm — which was of course not the
case — sometimes good, which, it followed, must equally not be the
case. The result was negative — without being explicitly so called
and announced. The whole undertaking died a natural death, and
Hans Castorp went on playing patience — and gazing into the eye
of the demon, whose unbridlea sway he foresaw would come to
an end of horror.

Fullness of Harmony

What new acquisition of House Berghof was it which at length,
released our long-standing friend from his patience-playing mania,
and flung him into the arms of another passion, nobler, though at
bottom no less strange? We are about to relate, being ourselves
much taken by the mysterious object, and eager to communicate
our enthusiasm.

The excellent management, in its sleepless concern for the happi-
ness of its guests, had considered matters, there in the bowels of
the earth, had resolved, and acted. It acquired, at a cost which we

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

636

need not go into, but which must surely have been considerable,
a new device for the entertainment of the patients, and added it
to those already installed in the largest of the reception-rooms of
House Berghor. Was it some clever artifice, of the same nature as
the stereopticon, the kaleidoscope, or the cinematographic cylin-
der? Yes — and yet, again, no, far from it. It was not an optical toy
which the guests discovered one evening in the salon, and greeted
with applause, some of them flinging their hands above their heads,
others stooping over and clapping in their laps. It was an acoustical
instrument. Moreover, the simple devices aoove-mentioned were
not to be compared with it — they were outclassed, outvalued, out-
shone. This was no childish peep-show, like those of which all the
guests were sick and tired, at which no one ever looked after the
first few weeks. It was an overflowing cornucopia of artistic en-
joyment, ranging from grave to gay. It was a musical apparatus. It
was a gramophone.

We are seriously concerned lest the term be understood in an
unworthy, outworn sense, and ideas attach to it which are appli-
cable only to the primitive form of the instrument we have in
mind, never to the elegant product evolved by a tireless applica-
tion of technical means to the Muses’ own ends. My dear friends,
we implore you to realize that the instrument we describe was not
that paltry box with a handle to it, a disk and shaft atop and a shape-
less brass funnel attached, which used to be set up on the table
outside country inns, to gratify the ears of the rude with its nasal
braying. This was a case finished in dull ebony, a little deeper than
broad, attached by a cord to an electric switch in the wall, and
standing chastely on its special table. With the antediluvian mecha-
nism described above, it had nothing in common. You lifted the
prettily bevelled lid, which was automatically supported by a brass
rod attached on the inside, and there above a slightly depressed
surface was the disk, covered with green cloth, with a nickelled
rim, and nickelled peg upon which one fitted the hole in the centre
of the hard-rubber record. At the right, in front, was a time-regu-
lating device, with a dial and figures like a watch; at the left, the
lever, which set the mechanism going or stopped it; and behind,
also on the left, the hollow, curving, club-shaped, nickel-plated
arm, with its flexible joints, carrying the flat round sound-box at
the end, with a fitment into which the needle was screwed. If you
opened the double doors at the front of the box, you saw a set of
slanting shelves, rather like a blind, stained black like the case —
and that was all.

“ Newest model,” the Hofrat said. “ Latest triumph of art, my

FULLNESS OF HARMONY

637

children; A-i, copper-bottomed, super finissimo, nothing better on
the market in this line of goods ” — he managed to give the words
the twang of an eager and ignorant salesman. “ This is not just a
machine,” he went on, taking a needle out of one of the gay little
metal boxes ranged on the table, and fitting it into the holder, “ it’s
a Stradivarius, a Guarneri; with a resonance, a vibration — dernier
raffinemcmgy Polyhymnia patent, look here in the inside of the lid.
German make, you know, we do them far and away better than
anybody else. The truly musical, in modem, mechanical form,
the German soul up to date. And here’s the libretto,” he said, and
gestured with his head toward a little case on the wall, filled with
broad-backed albums. “ I turn it all over to you, it is yours. But
take care of it; I commend it to the solicitude of the public. Shall
we shoot it off once, just for fun? ”

The patients implored him to do so. Behrens drew out a fat
magic tome, turned over the heavy leaves, and chose a paper en-
velope, which showed a coloured title through a round hole on
the front. He placed the record on the disk, set it in motion, waited
until it was at full speed, and then carefully set the fine steel point
upon the edge of the plate. There was a low, whetting sound. He
let the lid sink, and at the same moment, from the open doors in
front, from between the slats of the blind, or, rather, from the box
as a whole, came a burst of music, with a hubbub of instruments,
a lively, bustling, insistent melody: the first contagious bars of an
Offenbach overture.

They listened, their lips parted in smiles. They could scarcely
believe their ears at the purity and faithful reproduction of the
colour of the wood-wind. A solo violin preluded whimsically;
the bowing, the pizzicato , the sweet gliding from one position to
another, were all clearly audible. It struck into the melody of the
waltz, “ Achy ich habe sie verloren”; the orchestral harmony
lightly bore the flattering strain — enchanting it was to hear it taken
up by the ensemble and repeated as a sounding tutti. Of course,
it was scarcely like a real orchestra playing in the room. The
volume of sound, though not to any extent distorted, had suffered
a diminution of perspective. If we may draw a simile from the
visual field, it was as tnough one were to look at a painting through
the wrong end of an opera-glass, seeing it remote and diminutive,
though with all its luminous precision of drawing and colour. The
vivid, consummate piece of music was reproduced in all the rich-
ness of its light-hearted invention. The finish was abandon itself, a
galop with a drolly hesitating beginning, a shameless cancan that
called up a vision of top-hats waved in the air, flying skirts and

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

638

tossing knees, and seemed never to come to the end of its triumphal
jollification. But at length the mechanism stopped automatically.
It was over. There was cordial applause.

They called for more, and it was forthcoming. A human voice
welled out from the casket, a masculine voice at once soft and
powerful, with orchestral accompaniment. It was a famous Italian
baritone; the marvellous organ swelled out to the full extent of its
natural register, there could be no talk here of any diminution or
veiling of the sound. If one sat in an adjoining room and did not
see the instrument, it seemed not otherwise than as though the
artist stood in the salon in his own person, notes in hand, and sang.
He sang an aria di bravura in his own tongue — Eh, il barbiere!
“ Di qualita, di qualita ! Figaro qua , Figaro la, Figaro , Figaro , Fi-
garo! ” The listeners almost died of laughter at his falsetto par -
lando , at the contrast between the deep voice and the tongue-
splitting facility with which it rendered the words. The musical
followed and admired the art of his phrasing, his breathing-tech-
nique. He was a master in the irresistible, a virtuoso of the Italian
da capo school; he must have come forward to the footlights and
flung up his arm, as he held the last tone before the closing tonic,
so that the audience involuntarily burst out in shouts of applause
before he ceased. It was beyond words.

Followed a French horn, playing, with delicate scrupulosity,
variations on a folk-song. A soprano voice, with the loveliest fresh-
ness and precision, the most exquisite staccato , trilled and warbled
an air from La Traviata . The spirit of a world-famed violinist
played as though behind veils a romance by Rubinstein, to a piano
accompaniment that sounded thin and cold, like a spinet. The
wonder-box seemed to seethe: it poured out the chimes of bells,
harp glissandos, the crashing of trumpets, the long rolling of
drums. Lastly, dance records were put in. There were specimens
of the new imported dance, the tango, in the taste of a water-side
dive, calculated to make a Viennese waltz sound sedate and grand-
fatherly by contrast. Two couples displayed the fashionable steps,
Behrens having by now withdrawn with the admonition that a
needle should be used no more than once, and the whole instru-
ment handled “ as though it were made of eggs.” Hans Castorp
took his place as operator.

But why precisely Hans Castorp? In this wise. With suppressed
eagerness he had opposed those who had thought to take over,
on the Hofrat’s departure, the changing of plate and needle, the
switching on and off of the current. “ Let me do it,” he said to
them, gently putting them aside; and they gave way, first because

FULLNESS OF HARMONY

639

he wore an air of having known all about it for years, and second
because they cared little to take their pleasures actively, instead
of sitting to be served to as much and such enjoyment as they could
comfortably and unbored receive.

Not so Hans Castorp. While the Hofrat was introducing his
new toy to the guests, the young man had remained in the back-
ground, not laughing or applauding, but following the perform-
ance with tense interest, rubbing an eyebrow round with two
fingers, as he had on occasion a way of doing. Several times he
restlessly shifted his position, even went into the reading-room to
listen from there; then took up his stand close to Behrens, with his
hands behind his back, and an enigmatic expression on his face,
fixing the casket with his eye, and observing the simple operation
of it. But within him something was saying: “ Hold on! This is an
epoch. This thing was sent to me! ” He was filled with the surest
foreknowledge of a new passion, a new enchantment, a new burden
of love. The youth in the flat-land, who at first sight of a maiden
marvels to find himself pierced to the heart with love’s barbed
arrow, feels not greatly different. Jealousy followed hard upon.
Public property, was it? Had that feeble curiosity the right, or the
strength, to possess anything? “ Let me do it,” he had said between
his teeth, and they were content it should be so. They danced a
little more, to the rollicking pieces he ran off; asked tor another
vocal number, an operatic duet, the barcarole from the Contes
c f Hoffmann , which sounded lovely enough. When he closed the
lid they all flocked off, chattering in their ephemeral pleasure over
the new toy, these to the evening rest-cure, those to bed. He had
been waiting for them to go. They left behind all as it was, the
boxes of needles open, the plates and albums strewn about. It was
like them. He made as though to follow, but then left them on the
stairs, turned back to the salon, closed all the doors, and stopped
there half the night, busy as a bee.

He made himself acquainted with the new possession, and
worked in undisturbed enjoyment through the contents of the
heavy albums. There were twelve, in two sizes, with twelve records
each; many of the flat, round, black disks were inscribed on both
sides, not only with the continuation of a piece of music, but also
because many of the plates held two distinct records. Here was a
world to conquer, large enough that even to survey it was a diffi-
cult task at first, and bewildering; yet a world full of beautiful
possibilities. He played some twenty or thirty records; using a
kind of needle that moved softly over the plate and lessened the
sound, in order that his activity might not offend the silence of

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

640

the night. But twenty or thirty were scarcely the eighth part of
the riches that lay asking to be enjoyed. He must be content to-
night with looking over the titles, only choosing one now and
again to set upon the disk and give it voice. To the eye one was
like another, except for the coloured label in the centre of each
hard-rubber plate; each and all were covered to the centre or
nearly so with concentric circles; but it was these fine lines that
held all imaginable music, the happiest inspirations from every
region of the art, in choicest reproduction.

There were many overtures, and single symphonic movements,
played by famous orchestras, the names of whose conductors were
given on the record. There was a long list of lieder , sung to piano
accompaniment by famous prima donnas; some of these were the
lofty and conscious creation of individual artists, others simple
folk-songs, still others fell between the two categories, in that they
were products of an intellectual art, and at the same time sprang
from all that was profoundest and most reverent in the feeling and
genius of a people — artificial folk-songs, one might call them,
if the word artificial need not be taken to cast a slur on the genuine-
ness of their inspiration. One of these Hans Castorp had known
from childhood; but from now on began to attach to it a quite
special love and clothe it with many associations, as shall be seen
hereafter. What else was there — or, simply — what was there not?
Operas a-plenty. An international troupe of famous artists, male
and female, displayed their highly trained, God-given talent in
arias, duos , ensembles illustrating various periods and localities in
the history of the opera — to discreet orchestral accompaniment.
The opera of the south, a high-hearted, light-hearted ravishment;
the German, racy of the people, whimsical, hobgoblinish; and both
grand and comic opera in the French style. But was that all? Oh,
no. A succession of chamber music followed, quartets and trios,
instrumental solo numbers for violin, ’cello, flute; concert num-
bers with violin or flute obbligato, piano solos — and then there
were the light diversions, the “ couplets,” the topical and popular
numbers, played in the first instance by some small orchestra or
other, and needing a coarse needle to render them suitably.

Hans Castorp, bustling and solitary, sifted and classified it all,
and tried a fraction of it upon the instrument. At a late hour, as
late as on the occasion of the first carouse with Pieter Peeperkom
of majestic memory, he went flushed of cheek to bed, where from
two to seven he dreamed of the worider-box. He saw in his sleep
the disk circling about the peg, with a swiftness that made it almost
invisible and quite soundless. Its motion was not only circular, but

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also a peculiar, sidling undulation, which communicated itself to
the arm that bore the needle, and gave this too an elastic oscilla-
tion, almost like breathing, which must have contributed greatly
to the vibrato and portamento of the stringed instruments and the
voices. Yet it remained unclear, sleeping as waking, how the mere
following out of a hair-line above an acoustic cavity, with the sole
assistance of the vibrating membrane of the sound-box, could pos-
sibly reproduce such a wealth and volume of sound as filled Hans
Castorp^s dreaming ear.

Next morning he was early in the salon, even before breakfast;
and comfortably sitting with folded hands, listened to a glorious
baritone voice, singing to a harp accompaniment: “ Blick ’ ich
umber in diesem edlen Kreise .” The harp sounded perfectly natu-
ral, there was no distortion or diminution of the sound that poured
out of the casket accompanying the swelling, breathing, articulat-
ing human voice — it was simply amazing! And there could be on
earth nothing more tender than the next number he chose: a duet
from a modem Italian opera, a simple, heartfelt mingling of emo-
tion between two beings, one part taken by the world-famous
tenor who was so well represented in the albums, the other by a
crystal-clear and sweet little soprano voice; nothing more lovely
than his “ Da mi il braccio , mia piccina ” and the simple, sweet,
succinct little melodic phrase in which she replies.

Hans Castorp started as the door opened in his rear. It was the
Hofrat, looking in on him; in his clinical coat, the stethoscope
showing in his breast pocket, he stood there a moment, with his
hand on the door-knob, and nodded at the distiller of sweet sounds.
Hans Castorp, over his shoulder, replied to the nod, and the chiefs
blue-cheeked visage, with its one-sided moustache, disappeared as
he drew the door to behind him. Hans Castorp returned to his in-
visible, melodious pair of lovers.

Later in the day, after the noon and evening meals, he had a
changing audience for his performance — unless one must reckon
him in with the audience, instead of as the dispenser of the enter-
tainment. Personally he inclined to the latter view. And the Berg-
hof population agreed with him, to the extent that from the very
first night they silently acquiesced in his self-appointed guardian-
ship of the instrument. They did not care, these people. Aside from
their ephemeral idolatry of the tenor, luxuriating in the melting
brilliance of his own voice, letting this boon to the human race
stream from him in cantilenas and high feats of virtuosity, not-
withstanding their loudly proclaimed enthusiasm, they were with-
out real love for the instrument, and content that anyone should

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operate it who was willing to take the trouble. It was Hans Ca-
storp who kept the records in order, wrote the contents of each
album on the inside of the cover, so that each piece might be
found at once when it was wanted, and “ ran ” the instrument.
Soon he did it with ease and dexterity. The others would have
spoiled the plates by using worn-out needles, would have left
them lying about on chairs, would have tried all sorts of imbecile
tricks, playing some noble and stately piece of music at break-
neck speed and pitch, or setting the indicator at zero, so that
nothing but a hysterical trilling or a long expiring groan came
from the instrument. They had tried all that already. Of course,
they were ill; but they were also pretty crude. After a while,
Hans Castorp simply took the key of the little cabinet that held
the needles and albums, and kept it in his pocket, so that his per-
mission must needs be asked if anyone desired to play.

Evening, after the social quarter-hour, when the guests were
gone, was his best time. He remained in the salon, or returned
stealthily thither, and played until deep in the night. He found
there was less danger than he had feared of disturbing the nightly
rest of the house; for the carrying power of this ghostly music
proved relatively small. The vibrations, so surprisingly powerful
in the near neighbourhood of the box, soon exhausted themselves,
grew weak and eerie with distance, like all magic. Hans Castorp
was alone among four walls with his wonder-box; with the florid
performance of this truncated little coffin of violin-wood, this
small dull-black temple, before the open double doors of which
he sat with his hands folded in his lap, his head on one side, his
mouth open, and let the harmonies flow over him.

These singers male and female whom he heard, he could not
see; their corporeal part abode in America, in Milan, Vienna,
St. Petersburg. But let them dwell where they might, he had
their better part, their voices, and might rejoice in the refining
and abstracting process which did away with the disadvantages
of closer personal contact, yet left them enough appeal to the
sense, to permit of some command over their individualities,
especially in the case of German artists. He could distinguish
the dialect, the pronunciation, the local origin of these; the charac-
ter of the voice betrayed something of the soul-stature of indi-
viduals, and the level of their intelligence could be guessed by
the extent to which they had neglected or taken advantage of
their opportunities. Hans Castorp writhed when they failed. He
bit his lips in chagrin when the reproduction was technically
faulty; he was on pins and needles when the first note of an

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often-used record gave a shrill or scratching sound — which hap-
pened more particularly with the difficult female voice. Still,
when these things happened, he bore with them, for love makes
us forbearing. Sometimes he bent over the whirring, pulsating
mechanism as over a spray of lilac, rapt in a cloud of sweet sound;
or stood before the open case, tasting the triumphant joy of the
conductor who with raised hand brings the trumpets into place
precisely at the right moment. And he had favourites in his
treasure-house, certain vocal and instrumental numbers which he
never tired of hearing.

One group of records contained the closing scenes of a cer-
tain brilliant opera, overflowing with melodic genius, by a great
countryman of Herr Settembrini, the doyen of dramatic music
in the south, who had written it to the order of an oriental prince,
in the second half of the last century, to celebrate the completion
of a great technical achievement which should bind the peoples
of the earth together. Hans Castorp had learned something of the
plot, knew the main lines of the tragic fate of Radames, Amneris,
and Aida; and when he heard it from his casket could understand
well enough what they said. The incomparable tenor, the royal
alto with the wonderful sob in her register, and the silver soprano

— he understood perhaps not every word they said, but enough,
with his knowledge of the situation, and his sympathy in general
for such situations, to feel a familiar fellow-feeling that increased
every time he listened to this set of records, until it amounted to
infatuation.

First came the scene of the explanation between Radames and
Amneris: the king’s daughter has the captive brought before her,
whom she loves, whom she would gladly save for her own, but
that he has just thrown all away for the sake of a barbarian slave

— fatherland and honour and all. Though he insists that in the
depth of his soul honour remains untarnished. But this inner
unimpairment avails him little, under the weight of all that in-
disputable guilt and crime, for he has become forfeit to the spiritual
arm, which is inexorable toward human weakness, and will cer-
tainly make short work of him if he does not, at the last moment,
abjure the slave, and throw himself into the royal arms of the
alto with the sob in her register — who, so far as her voice went,
richly deserved him. Amneris wrestles fervidly with the mellif-
luous but tragically blind and infatuated tenor, who sings nothing
at all but “ In vain ” and “ I cannot,” when she addresses him witn
despairing pleas to renounce the slave, for that his own life is in
the balance. “ I cannot ” . . . “ Once more, renounce her ”...

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“ In vain thou pleadest ” — and deathly obstinacy and anguished
love blend together in a duet of extraordinary power and beauty,
but absolutely no hope whatever. Then comes the terrifying repe-
tition of the priestly formulas of condemnation, to the accompani-
ment of Amneris’s despair; they sound hollowly from below, and
them the unhappy Radames does not reply to at all.

“ Radames, Radames,” sings the high-priest peremptorily, and
points out the treason he has committed.

“ Justify thyself,” all the priests, in chorus, demand.

The high-priest calls attention to his silence, and they all hol-
lowly declare him guilty.

“ Radames, Radames,” sings the high-priest again. “ The camp
thou hast left before the battle.”

And again: “Justify thyself.” “Lo, he is silent,” the highly
prejudiced presiding officer announces once more; and all the
priests again unanimously declare him guilty.

“ Radames, Radames,” for the third time comes the inexorable
voice. “To Fatherland, to honour and thy King, thy oath thou
hast broken ” — “ Justify thyself,” resounded again. And finally,
for the third time, “ Fellonia ” the priestly chorus proclaims, after
noting that Radames has again remained absolutely silent. So then
there is nothing for it: the chorus announces the evil-doer for
judgment, proclaims that his doom is sealed, that he must die the
death of a deserter and be buried alive beneath the temple of the
offended deity.

The outraged feelings of Amneris at this priestly severity had
to be imagined, for here the record broke off. Hans Castorp
changed the plate, with as few movements as possible, his eyes
cast down. When he seated himself again, it was to listen to the
last scene of the melodrama, the closing duet of Radames and
Aida, sung in the underground vaults, while above their heads
in the temple the cruel and bigoted priests perform the service
of their cult, spreading forth their arms, giving out a dull, mur-
murous sound. u Tu — in questa tomba?” comes the inexpres-
sibly moving, sweet and at the same time heroic voice of Radamej,
in mingled horror and rapture. Yes, she has found her way to him,
the beloved one for whose sake he has forfeited life and honour,
she has awaited him here, to die with him; and the exchange of
song between the two, broken at times by the muffled sound of
the ceremonies above them, or blending and harmonizing with
it, pierced the soul of our solitary night-watcher to its very depth,
as much by reason of the circumstances as by the melodic ex-
pression or them. They sang of heaven, these two; but truly the

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songs were heavenly themselves, and heavenly sweet the singing
of them. That melodic line resistlessly travelled by the voices,
solo and unisono , of Radames and Aida; that simple, rapturous
ascent, playing from tonic to dominant, as it mounts from the
fundamental to the sustained note a half-tone before the octave,
then turning back again to the fifth — it seemed to the listener
the most rarefied, the most ecstatic he had ever heard. But he
would have been less ravished by the sounds, had not the situation
which gave them birth prepared his spirit to yield to the sweetness
of the music. It was so beautiful, that Aida should have found
her way to the condemned Radames, to share his fate for ever!
The condemned one protested, quite properly, against the sacri-
fice of the precious life; but in his tender, despairing “ No, no,
troppo sei bella ” was the intoxication of final union with her
whom he had thought never to see again. It needed no effort of
imagination to enable Hans Castorp to feel with Radames all this
intoxication, all this gratitude. And what, finally, he felt, under-
stood, and enjoyed, sitting there with folded hands, looking into
the black slats of the jalousies whence it all issued, was the tri-
umphant idealism of the music, of art, of the human spirit; the
high and irrefragable power they had of shrouding with a veil
of beauty the vulgar horror of actual fact. What was it, considered
with the eye of reason, that was happening here? Two human
beings, buried alive, their lungs full of pit gas, would here together
— or, more horrible still, one after tne other — succumb to the
pangs of hunger, and thereafter the process of putrefaction would
do its unspeakable work, until two skeletons remained, each totally
indifferent and insensible to the other’s presence or absence. This
was the real, objective fact — but a side, and a state of affairs quite
distinct, of which idealism and emotion would have none, which
was triumphantly put in the shade by the music and the beauty
of the theme. The situation as it stood did not exist for either
operatic Radames or operatic Aida. Their voices rose unisono to
the blissful sustained note leading into the octave, as they assured
each other that now heaven was opening, and the light of its
eternity streaming forth before their yearning eyes. The consoling
power of this aesthetic palliation did the listener good, and went
far to account for the special love he bore this number of his
programme.

He was wont to rest from these terrors and ecstasies in another
number, brief, yet with a concentrated power of enchantment;
peaceful, compared with the other, an idyll, yet rajfine , shaped
and turned with all the subtlety and economy of the most modem

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art. It was an orchestral piece, of French origin, purely instru-
mental, a symphonic prelude, achieved with an instrumentation
relatively small for our time, yet with all the apparatus of modern
technique and shrewdly calculated to set the spirit a-dreaming.

Here is the dream Hans Castorp dreamed: he lay on his back
in a sunny, flower-starred meadow, with his head on a little knoll,
one leg drawn up, the other flung over — and those were goat’s
legs crossed there before him. His fingers touched the stops of a
little wooden pipe, which he played for the pure joy of it, his
solitude on the meadow being complete. He held it to his lips, a
reed pipe or little clarinet, and coaxed from it soothing head-
tones, one after the other, just as they came, and yet in a pleasing
sequence. The care-free piping rose toward the deep-blue sky,
and beneath the sky stretched the branching, wind-tossed boughs
of single ash-trees and birches whose leaves twinkled in the sun.
But his feckless, day-dreaming, half-melodious pipe was far from
being the only voice in the solitude. The hum of insects in the
sun-warmed air above the long grass, the sunshine itself, the soft
wind, the swaying tree-tops, the twinkling leaves — all these gentle
vibrations of the midsummery peace set themselves to his simple
piping, to give it a changeful, ever surprisingly choice harmonic
meaning. Sometimes the symphonic accompaniment would fade
far off and be forgot. Then goat-legged Hans would blow stoutly
away, and by the naive monotony or his piping lure back Nature’s
subtly colourful, harmonious enchantment; until at length, after
repeated intermission, she sweetly acceded. More and higher in-
struments came in rapidly, one after another, until all the pre-
viously lacking richness and volume were reached and sustained
in a single fugitive moment that yet held all eternity in its con-
summate bliss. The young faun was joyous on his summer
meadow. No “ Justify thyself,” was here; no challenge, no priestly
court-martial upon one who strayed away and was forgotten of
honour. Forgetfulness held sway, a blessed hush, the innocence of
those places where time is not; “ slackness ” with the best con-
science in the world, the very apotheosis of rebuff to the Western
world and that world’s insensate ardour for the “ deed.” The
soothing effect of all which upon our night-walking music-maker
gave this record a special value in his eyes.

There was a third. Or rather there were many, a consecutive
group of three or four, a single tenor aria taking up almost half
the space of a whole black rubber plate. Again it was French
music — an opera Hans Castorp knew well, having seen and heard
it repeatedly. Once, at a certain critical juncture now far in the

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past, he had made its action serve him for an allegory. The record
took up the play at the second act, in the Spanish tavern, in crude
Moorish architecture, a shawl-draped, roomy cellar like the floor
of a barn. One heard Carmen’s voice, a little brusque, yet warm,
and very infectious in its folk-quality, saying she would dance
before the sergeant; one heard the rattle of castanets. But in the
same moment, from a distance, the blare of trumpets swelled out,
bugles giving a military signal, at which sound the little sergeant
starts up. “ One moment, stop! ” he cries, and pricks up his ears
like a horse. Why? What was it then, Carmen asked; and he:
“ Dost thou not hear? ” astonished that the signal did not enter
into her soul as into his. “ Carmen, ’tis the retreat! ” It is the
trumpets from the garrison, giving the summons. “ The hour draws
nigh for our return,” says he, in operatic language. But the gipsy
girl cannot understand, nor does she wish to. So much the better,
she says, half stupidly, half pertly; she needs no castanets, for here
is music dropped from the sky. Music to dance by, tra-la, tra-la!
He is beside himself. His own disappointment retreats before his
need to make clear to her how matters stand, and how no love-
affair in the world can prevent obedience to this summons. How
is it she cannot understand anything so fixed, so fundamental?
44 1 must away, the signal summons me, to quarters! ” he cries, in
despair over a lack of understanding that doubly burdens his
heavy heart. And now, hear Carmen! She is furious. Outraged to
the depths of her soul, her voice is sheer betrayed and injured
love — or she makes it sound so. “ To quarters? The signal? ” And
her heart? Her faithful, loving heart, just then, in its weakness,
yes, she admitted, in its weakness, about to while away an hour
with him in dance and song? “ Tan-ta-ra! ” And in a fury of
scorn she sets her curled hand to her lips and imitates the horns:
“ Taran-tara! ” And that was enough to make the fool leap up,
on fire to be off! Good, then, let him be off, away with him!
Here are helmet, sabre, and hanger — away, away, away with him,
let him be off, let him be off, off to the barracks! He pleads for
mercy. But she goes on, scorching him with her scorn, mocking
him, taking his place and showing in pantomime how at the sound
of the horn he lost what little sense he had. Tan-tara! The signal!
O heaven! he will come too late! Let him go, let him be off, for
the summons sounds, and he, like a fool, makes to go, at the very
moment when she would dance for him. From this time, so she
will account his love!

He is in torments. She cannot understand. The woman, the
gipsy girl, cannot, will not understand. Will not — for in her

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rage and scorn speaks something more and larger than the mo-
ment and the personal: a hatred, a primeval hostility against that
principle, which in the accents of these Spanish bugles — or French
horns — called to the love-lorn little soldier. Over that it was her
deepest, her inborn, her more than personal ambition to triumph.
And she possesses a very simple means: she says that if he goes
he does not love her — precisely that which Jose cannot bear to
hear. He beseeches her to let him speak. She will not. Then he
compels her — it is a deucedly serious moment, dull notes of
fatality rise from the orchestra, a gloomy, ominous motif, which,
as Hans Castorp knew, recurred throughout the opera, up to
its fatal climax, and formed also the first phrase of the soldier’s
aria , on the next plate, which had now to be inserted. “ See here
thy flow’ret treasured well ” — how exquisitely Jose sang that!
Hans Castorp played this single record over and over, and listened
with the deepest participation. As far as its contents went, it did
not fetch the action much further; but its imploring emotion was
moving in the highest degree. The young soldier sang of the
flower Carmen had tossed him at the beginning of their acquaint-
ance, which had been everything to him, in the arrest he had
suffered for love of her. He confesses: “ Sometimes I cursed the
hour I met thee, and tried all vainly to forget thee ” — only next
moment to rue his blasphemy, and pray on his knees to see her
once more. And as he prayed — striking the same high note as just
before on the “ To see thee, Carmen,” but now the orchestration
lends all the resources of its enchantment to paint the anguish, the
longing, the desperate tenderness, sweet despair, in the little sol-
dier’s heart — ah, there she stood before his eyes, in all her fatal
charm; and clearly, unmistakably, he felt that he was undone,
for ever lost — on the word undone came a sobbing whole-tone
grace-note to the first syllable — lost and for ever undone. “ Then
would an ecstasy steal o’er me,” he despairingly asseverated in a
recurrent melody repeated wailingly by the orchestra, rising two
tones from the tonic and thence returning ardently to the fifth:
* Carmen, my own,” he repeats, with infinite tenderness but rather
tasteless redundancy, going all the way up the scale to the sixth,
in order to add: “ My life, my soul belongs to thee ” — after which
he let his voice fall ten whole tones and in deepest emotion gave
out the “ Carmen, I love thee! ” shuddering forth the words in
anguish from a note sustained above changing harmonies, until
the “ thee ” with the syllable before it was resolved in the full
accord.

“ Yes, ah, yes,” said Hans Castorp, with mournful satisfaction,

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649

and put on the finale: where they are all congratulating young
Jose because the meeting with the officer has cut off his retreat, and
now it only remains open to him to desert, as Carmen, to his
horror, had before now demanded he should.

“ Away to the mountains, away, away,

Share in our life, careless and gay,”

they sang in chorus — one could understand the words quite
well:

“ Freely to roam, the world our home,

Gaily to pass o’er land and sea
And enjoy, all else excelling,

Sweet liberty! ”

“ Yes, yes,” he said, as before; and passed on to a fourth record,
something very dear and good.

It is not our fault that it was French again, nor are we responsi-
ble for its once more striking the military note. It was an inter-
mezzo, a solo number, the Prayer from Gounod’s Faust . The singer,
a character warmly sympathetic to our young man’s heart, was
called in the opera Valentine; but Hans Castorp named him by
another and dearly familiar, sadness-evoking name; whose one-
time bearer he had come largely to identify with the operatic
character whom the wonder-box was making vocal — though the
latter to be sure had a much more beautiful voice, a warm and
powerful baritone. His song was in three parts: the first consisting
of two closely related “ comer ’’-strophes, religious in character,
almost in the style of the Protestant chorale, and a middle-strophe,
bold and chevaleresque, war-like, light-hearted, yet God-fearing
too, and essentially French and military. The invisible character
sang:

“ Now the parting hour has come
I must leave my loved home ”

and turned under these circumstances to God, imploring Him
to take under His special care and protection his beloved sister.
He was going to the wars: the rhythm changed, grew brisk and
lively, dull care and sorrow might go hang! He, the invisible
singer, longed to be in the field, to stand in the thickest of the
fray, where danger was hottest, and fling himself upon the foe —
gallant, God-fearing, altogether French. But if, he sang, God
should call him to Himself, then would He look down protectingly

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on “ thee ” — meaning the singer’s sister, as Hans Castorp was
perfectly aware, yet the word thrilled him to the depths, and his
emotion prolonged itself as the hero sang, to a mighty choral
accompaniment:

“ O Lord of heaven, hear myprayer!

Guard Marguerite within Thy shelt’ring care! ”

There the record ceased. We have dwelt upon it because of
Hans Castorp’s especial penchant; but also because it played a
certain role on a later and most strange occasion. And now we
come back to the fifth and last piece in his group of high fa-
vourites: this time not French, but something especially and ex-
emplarily German; not opera either, but a lied , one of those which
are folk-song and masterpiece together, and from the combination
receive their peculiar stamp as spiritual epitomes. Why should
we beat about the bush? It was Schubert’s “ Linden-tree,” it
was none other than the old, old favourite, “ Am Brimnen vor
dem Tore”

It was sung to piano accompaniment by a tenor voice; and
the singer was a lad of parts and discernment, who knew how
to render with great skill, fine musical feeling and finesse in recita-
tive his simple yet consummate theme. We all know that the noble
lied sounds rather differently when given as a concert-number
from its rendition in the childish or the popular mouth. In its
simplified form the melody is sung straight through; whereas
in the original art-song, the key changes to minor in the sec-
ond of the eight-line stanzas, changes back again with beautiful
effect to major in the fifth line; is dramatically resolved in the
following “ bitter blasts ” and “ facing the tempest ”; and returns
again only with the last four lines of the third stanza, which are
repeated to finish out the melody. The truly compelling turn in the
melody occurs three times, in its modulated second half, the third
time in the repetition of the last half-strophe “ Ay, onward, ever
onward.” The enchanting turn, which we would not touch too
nearly in bold words, comes on the phrases “ Upon its branches
fair,” “ A message in my ear,” “ Yet ever in my breast ”; and each
time the tenor rendered them, in his clear, warm voice, with his
excellent breathing-technique, with the suggestion of a sob, and
so much sensitive, beauty-loving intelligence, the listener felt his
heart gripped in undreamed-of fashion; with an effect the singer
knew how to heighten by head-tones of extraordinary ardour on
the lines “ I found my solace there,” and “ For rest and peace are
here.” In the repetition of the last line, “ Here shouldst thou find

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thy rest,” he sang the “ shouldst thou ” the first time yearningly,
at full strength, but the second in the tenderest flute-tones.

So much for the song, and the rendering of it. For the earlier
selections, we may flatter ourselves, perhaps, that we have been
able to communicate to the reader some understanding, more or
less precise, of Hans Castorp’s intimate emotional participation
in the chosen numbers of his nightly programme. But to make
clear what this last one, the old “ Linden-tree,” meant to him, is
truly a ticklish endeavour; requiring great delicacy of emphasis
if more harm than good is not to come of the undertaking.

Let us put it thus: a conception which is of the spirit, and
therefore significant, is so because it reaches beyond itself to
become the expression and exponent of a larger conception, a
whole world of feeling and sentiment, which, whether more or
less completely, is mirrored in the first, and in this wise, accord-
ingly, the degree of its significance measured. Further, the love
felt for such a creation is in itself “ significant ”: betraying some-
thing of the person who cherishes it, characterizing his relation
to that broader world the conception bodies forth — which, con-
sciously or unconsciously, he loves along with and in the thing
itself.

May we take it that our simple hero, after so many years of
hermetic-pedagogic discipline, of ascent from one stage of being
to another, has now reached a point where he is conscious of
the “ meaningfulness ” of his love and the object of it? We assert,
we record, that he has. To him the song meant a whole world,
a world which he must have loved, else he could not have so
desperately loved that which it represented and symbolized to
him. We know what we are saying when we add — perhaps
rather darkly — that he might have had a different fate if his
temperament had been less accessible to the charms of the sphere
of feeling, the general attitude of mind, which the lied so pro-
foundly, so mystically epitomized. The truth was that his very
destiny had been marked by stages, adventures, insights, and these
flung up in his mind suitable themes for his “ stock-taking ”
activities, and these, in their turn, ripened him into an intuitional
critic of this sphere, of this its absolutely exquisite image, and his
love of it. To the point even that he was quite capable of bringing
up all three as objects of his conscientious scruples!

Only one totally ignorant of the tender passion will suppose
that such scruples can detract from the object of love. On the
contrary, they but give it spice. It is they which lend love the
spur of passion, so that one might almost define passion as misgiving

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love. But wherein lay Hans Castorp’s conscientious and stock-
taking misgiving, as to the ultimate propriety of his love for the
enchanting lied and the world whose image it was? What was the
world behind the song, which the motions of his conscience made
to seem a world of forbidden love?

It was death.

What utter and explicit madness! That glorious song! An in-
disputable masterpiece, sprung from the profoundest and holiest
depths of racial feeling; a precious possession, the archetype of
the genuine; embodied loveliness. What vile detraction!

Yes. Ah, yes! All very fine. Thus must every upright man speak.
But for all that, behind this so lovely and pleasant artistic produc-
tion stood — death. It had with death certain relations, which one
might love, yet not without consciously, and in a “ stock-taking ”
sense, acknowledging a certain illicit element in one’s love.
Perhaps in its original form it was not sympathy with death;
perhaps it was something very much of the people and racy of
life; but spiritual sympathy with it was none the less sympathy
with death. At first blush proper and pious enough, indisputably.
But the issues of it were sinister.

What was all this he was thinking? He would not have listened
to it from one of you. Sinister issues. Fantastical, dark-corner,
misanthropic, torture-chamber thoughts, Spanish black and the
ruff, lust not love — and these the issues of pure-eyed loveliness!

Unquestioning confidence, Hans Castorp knew, he had never
placed in Herr Settembrini. But he remembered now an ad-
monition the enlightened mentor had given him in past time,
at the beginning of his hermetic career, on the subject of “ spiritual
backsliding ” to darker ages. Perhaps it would be well to make
cautious application of that wisdom to the present case. It was
the backsliding which Herr Settembrini had characterized as “ dis-
ease ”; the epitome itself, the spiritual phase to which one back-
slid — that too would appeal to his pedagogic mind as “ diseased ”?
And even so? Hans Castorp’s loved nostalgic lay, and the sphere
of feeling to which it belonged — morbid? Nothing of the sort.
They were the sanest, the homeliest in the world. And yet — This
was a fruit, sound and splendid enough for the instant or so, yet
extraordinarily prone to decay; the purest refreshment of the
spirit, if enjoyed at the right moment, but the next, capable of
spreading decay and corruption among men. It was the fruit of
life, conceived of death, pregnant of dissolution; it was a miracle
of the soul, perhaps the highest, in the eye and sealed with the
blessing of conscienceless beauty; but on cogent grounds re-

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653

garded with mistrust by the eye of shrewd geniality dutifully
“ taking stock ” in its love of the organic; it was a subject for
self-conquest at the definite behest of conscience.

Yes, self-conquest — that might well be the essence of triumph
over this love, this soul-enchantment that bore such sinister fruit!
Hans Castorp’s thoughts, or rather his prophetic half-thoughts
soared high, as he sat there in night and silence before his truncated
sarcophagus of music. They soared higher than his understand-
ing, they were alchemistically enhanced. Ah, what power had
this soul-enchantment! We were all its sons, and could achieve
mighty things on earth, in so far as we served it. One need have
no more genius, only much more talent, than the author of the
“ Lindenbamn” to be such an artist of soul-enchantment as should
give to the song a giant volume by which it should subjugate the
world. Kingdoms might be founded upon it, earthly, all-too-
earthly kingdoms, solid, “ progressive,” not at all nostalgic — in
which the song degenerated to a piece of gramophone music played
by electricity. But its faithful son might still be he who consumed
his life in self-conquest, and died, on his lips the new word of
love which as yet he knew not how to speak. Ah, it was worth
dying for, the enchanted lied! But he who died for it, died indeed
no longer for it; was a hero only because he died for the new,
the new word of love and the future that whispered in his heart.

These, then, were Hans Castorp’s favourite records.

Highly Questionable

Edhin Krokowski’s lectures had in the swift passage of the years
taken an unexpected turn. His researches, which dealt with
psycho-analysis and the dream-life of humanity, had always had
a subterranean, not to say catacombish character; but now, by a
transition so gradual that one scarcely marked it, they had passed
over to the frankly supernatural, and his fortnightly lectures in
the dining-room — the prime attraction of the house, the pride
of the prospectus, delivered in a drawling, foreign voice, in frock-
coat and sandals from behind a little covered table, to the rapt
and motionless Berghof audience — these lectures no longer treated
of the disguised activities of love and the retransformation of the
illness into the conscious emotion. They had gone on to the ex-
traordinary phenomena of hypnotism and somnambulism, telep-
athy, “ dreaming true,” and second sight; the marvels of hysteria,
the expounding of which widened the philosophic horizon to such
an extent that suddenly before the listener’s eyes would glitter

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654

darkly puzzles like that of the relation of matter to the psychical,
yes, even the puzzle of life itself, which, it appeared, was easier to
approach by uncanny, even morbid paths than by the way of
health.

We say this because we consider it our duty to confound those
flippant spirits who declared that Dr. Krokowski had resorted
to mystification for the sake of redeeming his lectures from hope-
less monotony; in other words, with purely emotional ends in
view. Thus spoke the slanderous tongues which are everywhere
to be found. True, the gentlemen at the Monday lectures flicked
their ears harder than ever to make them hear; Fraulein Levi
looked, if possible, even more like a wax figure wound up by
machinery. But these effects were as legitimate as the train of
thought pursued by the mind of the learned gentleman, and for
that he might claim that it was not only consistent but even in-
evitable. The field of his study had always been those wide, dark
tracts of the human soul, which one had been used to call the
subconsciousness, though they might perhaps better be called the
superconsciousness, since from them sometimes emanates a know-
ingness beyond anything of which the conscious intelligence is
capable, and giving rise to the hypothesis that there may subsist
connexions and associations between the lowest and least illumined
regions of the individual soul and a wholly knowing All-soul.
The province of the subsconscious, “ occult ” in the proper sense
of the word, very soon shows itself to be occult in the narrower
sense as well, and forms one of the sources whence flow the
phenomena we have agreed thus to characterize. But that is not all.
Whoever recognizes a symptom of organic disease as an effect of
the conscious soul-life of forbidden and hystericized emotions,
recognizes the creative force of the psychical within the material
— a force which one is inclined to claim as a second source of
magic phenomena. Idealist of the pathological, not to say patho-
logical idealist, he sees himself at the point of departure of certain
trains of thought which will shortly issue in the problem of ex-
istence, that is to say in the problem of the relation between spirit
and matter. The materialist, son of a philosophy of sheer animal
vigour, can never be dissuaded from explaining spirit as a mere
phosphorescent product of matter; whereas the idealist, proceed-
ing from the principle of creative hysteria, is inclined, and very
readily resolved, to answer the question of primacy in the exactly
opposite sense. Take it all in all, there is here nothing less than
the old strife over which was first, the chicken or the egg — a
strife which assumes its extraordinary complexity from the fact

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 655

that no egg is thinkable except one laid by a hen, and no hen
that has not crept out of a previously postulated egg.

Well then, it was such matters as these that Dr. Krokowski
discussed in his lectures. He came upon them organically, log-
ically, legitimately — that fact cannot be over-emphasized. We
will even add that he had already begun to treat of them before
the arrival of Ellen Brand upon the scene of action, and the
progress of matters into the empirical and experimental stage.

Who was Ellen Brand? We had almost forgotten that our
readers do not know her, so familiar to us is the name. Who was
she? Hardly anybody, at first glance. A sweet young thing of
nineteen years, a flaxen-haired Dane, not from Copenhagen but
from Odense-on-Fiinen, where her father had a butter business.
She herself had been in commercial life for a couple of years or
so; with a sleeve-protector on her writing-arm she had sat over
heavy books, perched on a revolving stool in a provincial branch
of a city bank — and developed temperature. It was a trifling
case, probably more suspected than real, though Elly was indeed
fragile, fragile and obviously chlorotic — distinctly sympathetic
too, giving one a yearning to lay one’s hand upon the flaxen head —
as the Hofrat regularly did, when he spoke to her in the dining-
room. A northern freshness emanated from her, a chaste and glassy,
maidenly chaste atmosphere surrounded her, she was entirely
lovable, with a pure, open look from childlike blue eyes, and a
pointed, fine, High-German speech, slightly broken, with small
typical mispronunciations. About her features there was nothing
unusual. Her chin was too short. She sat at table with the Kleefeld,
who mothered her.

Now this little Fraulein Brand, this little Elly, this friendly-
natured little Danish bicycle-rider and stoop-shouldered young
counter-jumper, had things about her, of which no one could
have dreamed, at first sight of her transparent small personality,
but which began to discover themselves after a few weeks; and
these it became Dr. Krokowski’s affair to lay bare in all their
extraordinariness.

The learned man received his first hint in the course of a general
evening conversation. Various guessing games were being played;
hidden objects found by the aid of strains from the piano, which
swelled higher when one approached the right spot, and died
away when the seeker strayed on a false scent. Then one person
went outside and waited while it was decided what task he should
perform; as, exchanging the rings of two selected persons; inviting
someone to dance by making three bows before her; taking a

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656

designated book from the shelves and presenting it to this or that
person — and more of the same kind. It is worthy of remark that
such games had not been the practice among the Berghof guests.
Who had introduced them was not afterwards easy to decide;
certainly it had not been Elly Brand, yet they had begun since
her arrival.

The participants were nearly all old friends of ours, among
them Hans Castorp. They showed themselves apt in greater or
less degree — some of them were entirely incapable. But Elly
Brand’s talent was soon seen to be surpassing, striking, unseemly.
Her power of finding hidden articles was passed over with ap-
plause and admiring laughter. But when it came to a concerted
series of actions, they were struck dumb. She did whatever they
had covenanted she should do, did it directly she entered the
room; with a gentle smile, without hesitation, without the help of
music. She fetched a pinch of salt from the dining-room, sprinkled
it over Lawyer Paravant’s head, took him by the hand, led him
to the piano and played the beginning of a nursery ditty with his
forefinger; then brought him back to his seat, curtseyed, fetched
a footstool and finally seated herself at his feet, all of that being
precisely what they had cudgelled their brains to set her for a task.

She had been listening.

She reddened. With a sense of relief at her embarrassment they
began in chorus to chide her; but she assured them she had not
blushed in that sense. She had not listened, not outside, not at the
door, truly, truly she had not!

Not outside, not at the door?

“ Oh, no ” — she begged their pardon. She had listened after
she came back, in the room, she could not help it.

How not help it?

Something whispered to her, she said. It whispered and told
her what to do, softly, but quite clearly and distinctly.

Obviously that was an admission. In a certain sense she was
aware, she had confessed, that she had cheated. She should have
said beforehand that she was no good to play such a game, if she
had the advantage of being whispered to. A competition loses
all sense if one of the competitors has unnatural advantages over
the others. In a sporting sense, she was straightway disqualified —
but disqualified in a way that made chills run up and down their
backs. With one voice they called on Dr. Krolcowski, they ran
to fetch him, and he came. He was immediately at home in the
situation, and stood there, sturdy, heartily smiling, in his very
essence inviting confidence. Breathless they told him they had

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

6 57

something quite abnormal for him, an omniscient, a girl with
voices. Yes, yes? Only let them be calm, they should see. This was
his native heath, quagmirish and uncertain footing enough for
the rest of them, yet he moved upon it with assured tread. He asked
questions, and they told him. Ah, there she was — come, my
child, is it true, what they are telling me? And he laid his hand
on her head, as scarcely anyone could resist doing. Here was much
ground for interest, none at all for consternation. He plunged the
gaze of his brown, exotic eyes deep into Ellen Brand’s blue ones,
and ran his hand down over her shoulder and arm, stroking her
gently. She returned his gaze with increasing submission, her head
inclined slowly toward her shoulder and breast. Her eyes were
actually beginning to glaze, when the master made a careless out-
ward motion with his hand before her face. Immediately there-
after he expressed his opinion that everything was in perfect order,
and sent the overwrought company off to the evening cure, with
the exception of Elly Brand, with whom he said he wished to have
a little chat.

A little chat. Quite so. But nobody felt easy at the word, it was
just the sort of word Krokowski the merry comrade used by
preference, and it gave them cold shivers. Hans Castorp, as he
sought his tardy reclining-chair, remembered the feeling with
which he had seen Elly’s illicit achievements and heard her shame-
faced explanation; as though the ground were shifting under his
feet, and giving him a slightly qualmish feeling, a mild seasick-
ness. He had never been in an earthquake; but he said to himself
that one must experience a like sensation of unequivocal alarm.
But he had also felt great curiosity at these fateful gifts of Ellen
Brand; combined, it is true, with the knowledge that their field
was with difficulty accessible to the spirit, and the doubt as to
whether it was not barren, or even sinful, so far as he was con-
cerned — all which did not prevent his feeling from being what
in fact it actually was, curiosity. Like everybody else, Hans Ca-
storp had, at his time of life, heard this and that about the mys-
teries of nature, or the supernatural. We have mentioned the
clairvoyante great-aunt, of whom a melancholy tradition had come
down. But the world of the supernatural, though theoretically
and objectively he had recognized its existence, had never come
close to him, he had never had any practical experience of it. And
his aversion from it, a matter of taste, an aesthetic revulsion, a re-
action of human pride — if we may use such large words in con-
nexion with our modest hero — was almost as great as his curi-
osity. He felt beforehand, quite clearly, that such experiences.

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658

whatever the course of them, could never be anything but in bad
taste, unintelligible and humanly valueless. And yet he was on
fire to go through them. He was aware that his alternative of
“ barren ” or else “ sinful,” bad enough in itself, was in reality
not an alternative at all, since the two ideas fell together, and
calling a thing spiritually unavailable was only an a-moral way of
expressing its forbidden character. But the “ placet experiri ”
planted in Hans Castorp’s mind by one who would surely and re-
soundingly have reprobated any experimentation at all in this field,
was planted firmly enough. By little and little his morality and his
curiosity approached and overlapped, or had probably always
done so; the pure curiosity of inquiring youth on its travels, which
had already brought him pretty close to the forbidden field, what
time he tasted the mystery of personality, and for which he had
even claimed the justification that it too was almost military in
character, in that it did not weakly avoid the forbidden, when
it presented itself. Hans Castorp came to the final resolve not to
avoid, but to stand his ground if it came to more developments
in the case of Ellen Brand.

Dr. Krokowski had issued a strict prohibition against any fur-
ther experimentation on the part of the laity upon Fraulein Brand's
mysterious gifts. He had pre-empted the child for his scientific
use, held sittings with her in his analytical oubliette, hypnotized
her, it was reported, in an effort to arouse and discipline her slum-
bering potentialities, to make researches into her previous psychic
life. Hermine Kleefeld, who mothered and patronized the child,
tried to do the same; and under the seal of secrecy a certain num-
ber of facts were ascertained, which under the same seal she
spread throughout the house, even unto the porter’s lodge. She
learned, for example, that he who — or that which — whispered
the answers into the little one’s ear at games was called Holger.
This Holger was the departed and etherealized spirit of a young
man, the familiar, something like the guardian angel, of little
Elly. So it was he who had told all that about the pinch of salt
and the tune played with Lawyer Paravant’s forefinger? Yes,
those spirit lips, so close to her ear that they were like a caress, and
tickled a little, making her smile, had whispered her what to do.
It must have been very nice when she was in school and had not
prepared her lesson to have him tell her the answers. Upon this
point Elly was silent. Later she said she thought he would not have
been allowed. It would be forbidden to him to mix in such serious
matters — and moreover, he would probably not have known the
answers himself.

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

659

It was learned, further, that from her childhood up Ellen had
had visions, though at widely separated intervals of time; visions,
visible and invisible. What sort of thing were they, now — in-
visible visions? Well, for example: when she was a girl of sixteen,
she had been sitting one day alone in the living-room of herpar-
ents’ house, sewing at a round table, with her father’s dog Freia
lying near her on the carpet. The table was covered with a Turk-
ish shawl, of the kind old women wear three-cornered across their
shoulders. It covered the table diagonally, with the corners some-
what hanging over. Suddenly Ellen had seen the corner nearest
her roll slowly up. Soundlessly, carefully, and evenly it turned
itself up, a good distance toward the centre of the table, so that
the resultant roll was rather long; and while this was happening,
the dog Freia started up wildly, bracing her forefeet, the hair
rising on her body. She had stood on her hind legs, then run
howling into the next room and taken refuge under a sofa. For a
whole year thereafter she could not be persuaded to set foot in
the living-room.

Was it Holger, Fraulein Kleefeld asked, who had rolled up
the cloth? Little Brand did not know. And what had she thought
about the affair? But since it was absolutely impossible to think
anything about it, little Elly had thought nothing at all. Had
she told her parents? No. That was odd. Though so sure she had
thought nothing about it, Elly had had a distinct impression, in
this and similar cases, that she must keep it to herself, make a
profound and shamefaced secret of it. Had she taken it much to
heart? No, not particularly. What was there about the rolling up
of a cloth to take to heart? But other things she had — for ex-
ample, the following:

A year before, in her parent’s house at Odense, she had risen,
as was her custom, in the cool of the early morning and left
her room on the ground-floor, to go up to the breakfast-room,
in order to brew the morning coffee before her parents rose.
She had almost reached the landing, where the stairs turned,
when she saw standing there close by the steps her elder sister
Sophie, who had married and gone to America to live. There
she was, her physical presence, in a white gown, with, curiously
enough, a garland of moist water-lilies on her head, her hands
folded against one shoulder, and nodded to her sister. Ellen, rooted
to the spot, half joyful, half terrified, cried out: “ Oh, Sophie,
is that you? ” Sophie had nodded once again, and dissolved- She
became gradually transparent, soon she was only visible as an
ascending current of warm air, then not visible at all, so that Ellen’s

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path was clear. Later, it transpired that Sister Sophie had died
of heart trouble in New Jersey, at that very hour.

Hans Castorp, when Fraulein Kleefeld related this to him, ex-
pressed the view that there was some sort of sense in it: the appari-
tion here, the death there — after all, they did hang together. And
he consented to be present at a spiritualistic sitting, a table-tipping,
glass-moving game which they had determined to undertake with
Ellen Brand, behind Dr. Krokowski’s back, and in defiance of his
jealous prohibition.

A small and select group assembled for the purpose, their theatre
being Fraulein Kleefeld’s room. Besides the hostess, Fraulein Brand,
and Hans Castorp, there were only Frau Stohr, Fraulein Levi, Herr
Albin, the Czech Wenzel, and Dr. Ting-Fu. In the evening, on
the stroke of ten, they gathered privily, and in whispers mustered
the apparatus Hermine had provided, consisting of a medium-
sized round table without a cloth, placed in the centre of the
room, with a wineglass upside-down upon it, the foot in the air.
Round the edge of the table, at regular intervals, were placed
twenty-six little bone counters, each with a letter of the alphabet
written on it in pen and ink. Fraulein Kleefeld served tea, which
was gratefully received, as Frau Stohr and Fraulein Levi, despite
the harmlessness of the undertaking, complained of cold feet and
palpitations. Cheered by the tea, they took their places about
the table, in the rosy twilight dispensed by the pink-shaded table-
lamp, as Fraulein Kleefeld, in concession to the mood of the gath-
ering, had put out the ceiling light; and each of them laid a finger
of his right hand lightly on the foot of the wineglass. This was the
prescribed technique. They waited for the glass to move.

That should happen with ease. The top of the table was smooth,
the rim of the glass well ground, the pressure of the tremulous
fingers, however lightly laid on, certainly unequal, some of it
being exerted vertically, some rather sidewise, and probably in
sufficient strength to cause the glass finally to move from its posi-
tion in the centre of the table. On the periphery of its field it
would come in contact with the marked counters; and if the
letters on these, when put together, made words that conveyed
any sort of sense, the resultant phenomenon would be complex
and contaminate, a mixed product of conscious, half-conscious,
and unconscious elements; the actual desire and pressure of some,
to whom the wish was father to the act, whether or not they were
aware of what they did; and the secret acquiescence of some dark
stratum in the soul of the generality, a common if subterranean
effort toward seemingly strange experiences, in which the sup-

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

66 1

pressed self of the individual was more or less involved, most
strongly, of course, that of little Elly. This they all knew be-
forehand — Hans Castorp even blurted out something of the sort,
after his fashion, as they sat and waited. The ladies’ palpitation
and cold extremities, the forced hilarity of the men, arose from
their knowledge that they were come together in the night to
embark on an unclean traffic with their own natures, a fearsome
prying into unfamiliar regions of themselves, and that they were
awaiting the appearance of those illusory or half-realities which
we call magic. It was almost entirely for form’s sake, and came
about quite conventionally, that they asked the spirits of the de-
parted to speak to them through the movement of the glass. Herr
Albin offered to be spokesman and deal with such spirits as mani-
fested themselves — he had already had a little experience at
seances.

Twenty minutes or more went by. The whisperings had run
dry, the first tension relaxed. They supported their right arms
at the elbow with their left hands. The Czech Wenzel was al-
most dropping off. Ellen Brand rested her finger lightly on the
glass and directed her pure, childlike gaze away into the rosy
light from the table-lamp.

Suddenly the glass tipped, knocked, and ran away from under
their hands. They had difficulty in keeping their fingers on it.
It pushed over to the very edge of the table, ran along it for a
space, then slanted back nearly to the middle; tapped again, and
remained quiet.

They were all startled; favourably, yet with some alarm. Frau
Stohr whimpered that she would like to stop, but they told her
she should have thought of that before, she must just keep quiet
now. Things seemed in train. They stipulated that, in order to
answer yes or no, the glass need not run to the letters, but might
give one or two knocks instead.

“ Is there an Intelligence present? ” Herr Albin asked, severely
directing his gaze over their heads into vacancy. After some hesi-
tation, the glass tipped and said yes.

“ What is your name? ” Herr Albin asked, almost gruffly, and
emphasized his energetic speech by shaking his head.

The glass pushed off. It ran with resolution from one point to
another, executing a zigzag by returning each time a little dis-
tance toward the centre of the table. It visited H, O, and L, then
seemed exhausted; but pulled itself together again and sought
out the G, and E, and the R. Just as they thought. It was Holger in
person, the spirit Holger, who understood such matters as the

662

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pinch of salt and that, but knew better than to mix into lessons at
school. He was there, floating in the air, above the heads of the
little circle. What should they do with him? A certain diffidence
possessed them, they took counsel behind their hands, what they
were to ask him. Herr Albin decided to question him about his
position and occupation in life, and did so, as before, severely,
with frowning brows; as though he were a cross-examining
counsel.

The glass was silent awhile. Then it staggered over to the P,
zigzagged and returned to O. Great suspense. Dr. Ting-Fu gig-
gled and said Holger must be a poet. Frau Stohr began to laugh
hysterically; which the glass appeared to resent, for after indi-
cating the E it stuck and went no further. However, it seemed
fairly clear that Dr. Ting-Fu was right.

What the deuce, so Holger was a poet? The glass revived, and
superfluously, in apparent pridefulness, rapped yes. A lyric poet,
Fraulein Kleefeld asked? she said ly — ric, as Hans Castorp in-
voluntarily noted. Holger was disinclined to specify. He gave no
new answer, merely spelled out again, this time quickly and un-
hesitatingly, the word poet, adding the T he had left off before.

Good, then, a poet. The constraint increased. It was a con-
straint that in reality had to do with manifestations on the part of
uncharted regions of their own inner, their subjective selves, but
which, because of the illusory, half-actual conditions of these
manifestations, referred itself to the objective and external. Did
Holger feel at home, and content, in his present state? Dreamily,
the glass spelled out the word tranquil. Ah, tranquil. It was not a
word one would have hit upon oneself, but after the glass spelled
it out, they found it well chosen and probable. And how long
had Holger been in this tranquil state? The answer to this was
again something one would never have thought of, and dreamily
answered; it was “ A hastening while.” Very good. As a piece of
ventriloquistic poesy from the Beyond, Hans Castorp, in particular,
found it capital. A “ hastening while ” was the time-element Hol-
ger lived in: and of course he had to answer as it were in parables,
having very likely forgotten how to use earthly terminology and
standards of exact measurement. Fraulein Levi confessed her curi-
osity to know how he looked, or had looked, more or less. Had he
been a handsome youth? Herr Albin said she might ask him her-
self, he found the request beneath his dignity. So she asked if the
spirit had fair hair.

“Beautiful, brown, brown curls,” the glass responded, delib-
erately spelling out the word brown twice. There was much merri-

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

663

ment over this. The ladies said they were in love with him. They
kissed their hands at the ceiling. Dr. Ting-Fu, giggling, said Mister
Holger must be rather vain.

Ah, what a fury the glass fell into! It ran like mad about the
table, quite at random, rocked with rage, fell over and rolled into
Frau Stohr’s lap, who stretched out her arms and looked down at
it pallid with fear. They apologetically conveyed it back to its
station, and rebuked the Chinaman. How had he dared to say such a
thing — did he see what his indiscretion had led to? Suppose Hol-
ger was up and off in. his wrath, and refused to say another word!
They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of cour-
tesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had
said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while.
Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love
it so!

And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was
something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped.
And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, copi-
ously, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear
knows how long. It seemed impossible to stop him. And what a
surprising poem it was, this ventriloquistic effort, delivered to the
admiration of the circle — stuff of magic, and shoreless as the sea
of which it largely dealt. Sea-wrack in heaps and bands along the
narrow strand of the broad-flung bay; an islanded coast, girt by
steep, cliffy dunes. Ah, see the dim green distance faint and die
into eternity, while beneath broad veils of mist in dull carmine and
milky radiance the summer sun delays to sink! No word can utter
how and when the watery mirror turned from silver into untold
changeful colour-play, to bright or pale, to spreading, opaline and
moonstone gleams — or how, mysteriously as it came, the voice-
less magic died away. The sea slumbered. Yet the last traces of the
sunset linger above and beyond. Until deep in the night it has not
grown dark: a ghostly twilight reigns in the pine forests on the
downs, bleaching the sand until it looks like snow. A simulated
winter forest all in silence, save where an owl wings rustling flight.
Let us stray here at this hour — so soft the sand beneath our tread,
so sublime, so mild the night! Far beneath us the sea respires slowly,
and murmurs a long whispering in its dream. Does it crave thee to
see it again? Step forth to the sallow, glacierlike cliffs of the dunes,
and climb quite up into the softness, that runs coolly into thy shoes.
The land falls harsh and bushy steeply down to the pebbly shore,
and still the last parting remnants or the day haunt the edge of the
vanishing sky. Lie down here in the sand! How cool as death it is,

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664

how soft as silk, as flour! It flows in a colourless, thin stream from
thy hand and makes a dainty little mound beside thee. Dost thou
recognize it, this tiny flowing? It is the soundless, tiny stream
through the hour-glass, that solemn, fragile toy that aaorns the
hermit’s hut. An open book, a skull, and in its slender frame the
double glass, holding a little sand, taken from eternity, to prolong
here, as time, its troubling, solemn, mysterious essence. . . .

Thus Holger the spirit and his lyric improvisation, ranging with
weird flights of thought from the familiar sea-shore to the cell of
a hermit and the tools of his mystic contemplation. And there was
more; more, human and divine, involved in daring and dreamlike
terminology — over which the members of the little circle puzzled
endlessly as they spelled it out; scarcely finding time for hurried
though rapturous applause, so swiftly did the glass zigzag back
and forth, so swiftly the words roll on and on. There was no dis-
tant prospect of a period, even at the end of an hour. The glass
improvised inexhaustibly of the pangs of birth and the first kiss
of lovers; the crown of sorrows, the fatherly goodness of God;
plunged into the mysteries of creation, lost itself in other times
and lands, in interstellar space; even mentioned the Chaldeans and
the zodiac; and would most certainly have gone on all night, if the
conspirators had not finally taken their fingers from the glass, and
expressing their gratitude to Holger, told him that must suffice
them for the time, it had been wonderful beyond their wildest
dreams, it was an everlasting pity there had been no one at hand
to take it down, for now it must inevitably be forgotten, yes, alas,
they had already forgotten most of it, thanks to its quality, which
made it hard to retain, as dreams are. Next time they must ap-
point an amanuensis to take it down, and see how it would look
in black and white, and read connectedly. For the moment, how-
ever, and before Holger withdrew to the tranquillity of his hasten-
ing while, it would be better, and certainly most amiable of him,
if he would consent to answer a few practical questions. They
scarcely as yet knew what, but would he at least be in principle
inclined to do so, in his great amiability?

The answer was yes. But now they discovered a great perplex-
ity — what should they ask? It was as in the fairy-story, when the
fairy or elf grants one question, and there is danger of letting the
precious advantage slip through the fingers. There was much in
the world, much of the future, that seemed worth knowing, yet
it was so difficult to choose. At length, as no one else seemed able
to settle, Hans Castorp, with his finger on the glass, supporting
his cheek on his fist, said he would like to know what was to be

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 665

the actual length of his stay up here, instead of the three weeks
originally fixed.

Very well, since they thought of nothing better, let the spirit
out of the fullness of his knowledge answer this chance query.
The glass hesitated, then pushed off. It spelled out something very
queer, which none of them succeeded m fathoming, it made the
word, or the syllable Go, and then the word Slanting and then
something about Hans Castorp’s room. The whole seemed to be a
direction to go slanting through Hans Castorp’s room, that was
to say, through number thirty-four. What was the sense of that?
As they sat puzzling and shaking their heads, suddenly there came
the heavy thump of a fist on the door.

They all jumped. Was it a surprise? Was Dr. Krokowski stand-
ing without, come to break up the forbidden session? They looked
up guiltily, expecting the betrayed one to enter. But then came
a crashing knock on the middle of the table, as if to testify that the
first knock too had come from the inside and not the outside of
the room.

They accused Herr Albin of perpetrating this rather contempt-
ible jest, but he denied it on his honour; and even without nis
word they all felt fairly certain no one of their circle was guilty.
Was it Holger, then? They looked at Elly, suddenly struck by her
silence. She was leaning back in her chair, with drooping wrists
and finger-tips poised on the table-edge, her head bent on one
shoulder, her eyebrows raised, her little mouth drawn down so
that it looked even smaller, with a tiny smile that had something
both silly and sly about it, and gazing into space with vacant,
childlike blue eyes. They called to her, but she gave no sign of
consciousness. And suddenly the night-table light went out.

Went out? Frau Stohr, beside herself, made great outcry, for
she had heard the switch turned. The light, then, had not gone out,
but been put out, by a hand — a hand which one characterized
afar off in calling it a “ strange ” hand. Was it Holger’s? Up to then
he had been so mild, so tractable, so poetic — but now he seemed
to degenerate into clownish practical jokes. Who knew that a
hand which could so roundly thump doors and tables, and knav-
ishly turn off lights, might not next catch hold of someone’s throat?
They called for matches, for pocket torches. Fraulein Levi
shrieked out that someone had pulled her front hair. Frau Stohr
made no bones of calling aloud on God in her distress: “ O Lord,
forgive me this once! ” she moaned, and whimpered for mercy in-
stead of justice, well knowing she had tempted hell. It was Dr.
Ting-Fu who hit on the sound idea of turning on the ceiling light;

666

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

the room was brilliantly illuminated straightway- They now es-
tablished that the lamp on the night-table had not gone out by
chance, but been turned off, and only needed to have the switch
turned back in order to burn again. But while this was happening,
Hans Castorp made on his own account a most singular discovery,
which might be regarded as a personal attention on the part of the
dark powers here manifesting themselves with such childish per-
versity. A light object lay in his lap; he discovered it to be the
“ souvenir ” which had once so surprised his uncle when he lifted it
from his nephew's table: the glass diapositive of Clavdia Chau-
chat's x-ray portrait. Quite uncontestably he, Hans Castorp, had
not carried it into the room.

He put it into his pocket, unobservably. The others were busied
about Ellen Brand, who remained sitting in her place in the same
state, staring vacantly, with that curious simpering expression.
Herr Albin blew in her face and imitated the upward sweeping
motion of Dr. Krokowski, upon which she roused, and inconti-
nently wept a little. They caressed and comforted her, kissed her
on the forehead and sent her to bed. Fraulein Levi said she was
willing to sleep with Frau Stohr, for that abject creature confessed
she was too frightened to go to bed alone. Hans Castorp, with his
retrieved property in his breast pocket, had no objection to finish-
ing off the evening with a cognac in Herr Albin’s room. He had
discovered, in fact, that this sort of thing affected neither the heart
nor the spirits so much as the nerves of the stomach — a retroactive
effect, like seasickness, which sometimes troubles the traveller with
qualms hours after he has set foot on shore.

His curiosity was for the time quenched. Holger’s poem had
not been so bad; but the anticipated futility and vulgarity of the
scene as a whole had been so unmistakable that he felt quite will-
ing to let it go at these few vagrant sparks of hell-fire. Herr Set-
tembrini, to whom he related his experiences, strengthened this
conviction with all his force. “ That,” he cried out, ‘‘was all that
was lacking. Oh, misery, misery! ” And cursorily dismissed little
Elly as a thorough-paced impostor.

His pupil said neither yea nor nay to that. He shrugged his
shoulders, and expressed the view that we did not seem to be alto-
gether sure what constituted actuality, nor yet, in consequence,
what imposture. Perhaps the boundary line was not constant. Per-
haps there were transitional stages between the two, grades of
actuality within nature; nature being as she was, mute, not sus-
ceptible of valuation, and thus defying distinctions which in any
case, it seemed to him, had a strongly moralizing flavour. What

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

667

did Herr Settembrini think about “ delusions which were a mix-
ture of actuality and dream, perhaps less strange in nature than to
our crude, everyday processes of thought? The mystery of life
was literally bottomless. What wonder, then, if sometimes illusions
arose — and so on and so forth, in our hero’s genial, confiding,
loose and flowing style.

Herr Settembrini duly gave him a dressing-down, and did pro-
duce a temporary reaction of the conscience, even something like
a promise to steer clear in the future of such abominations. “ Have
respect,” he adjured him, “ for your humanity, Engineer! Confide
in your God-given power of clear thought, and hold in abhorrence
these luxations of the brain, these miasmas of the spirit! Delusions?
The mystery of life? Caro mio! When the moral courage to make
decisions and distinctions between reality and deception degen-
erates to that point, then there is an end of life, of judgment, of the
creative deed: the process of decay sets in, moral scepsis, and does
its deadly work.” *Man, he went on to say, was the measure of
things. His right to recognize and to distinguish between good and
evil, reality and counterfeit, was indefeasible; woe to them who
dared to lead him astray in his belief in this creative right. Better
for them that a millstone be hanged about their necks and that they
be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Hans Castorp nodded assent — and in fact did for a while keep
aloof from all such undertakings. He heard that Dr. Krokowski
had begun holding seances with Ellen Brand in his subterranean
cabinet, to which certain chosen ones of the guests were invited.
But he nonchalantly put aside the invitation to join them — natu-
rally not without hearing from them and from Krokowski him-
self something about the success they were having. It appeared
that there had been wild and arbitrary exhibitions of power, like
those in Fraulein Kleefeld’s room: knockings on walls and table,
the turning off of the lamp, and these as well as further manifesta-
tions were being systematically produced and investigated, with
every possible safeguarding of their genuineness, after Com-
rade Krokowski had practised the approved technique and put
little Elly into her hypnotic sleep. They had discovered that the
process was facilitated by music; and on these evenings the gramo-
phone was pre-empted by the circle and carried down into the
basement. But the Czech Wenzel who operated it there was a not
unmusical man, and would surely not injure or misuse the instru-
ment; Hans Castorp might hand it over without misgiving. He
even chose a suitable album of records, containing light music,
dances, small overtures and suchlike tunable trifles. Little Elly

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668

made no demands on a higher art, and they served the purpose
admirably.

To their accompaniment, Hans Castorp learned, a handkerchief
had been lifted from the floor, of its own motion, or, rather, that
of the “ hidden hand ” in its folds. The doctor’s waste-paper-
basket had risen to the ceiling; the pendulum of a clock been alter-
nately stopped and set going again “ without anyone touching it,”
a table-bell “ taken ” and rung — these and a good many other
turbid and meaningless phenomena. The learned master of cere-
monies was in the happy position of being able to characterize
them by a Greek word, very scientific and impressive. They were,
so he explained in his lectures and in private conversations, “ tele-
kinetic ’* phenomena, cases of movement from a distance; he asso-
ciated them with a class of manifestations which were scientifically
known as materializations, and toward which his plans and at-
tempts with Elly Brand were directed.

He talked to them about biopsychical projections of subcon-
scious complexes into the objective; about transactions of which
the medial constitution, the somnambulic state, was to be regarded
as the source; and which one might speak of as objectivated dream-
concepts, in so far as they confirmed an ideoplastic property of
nature, a power, which under certain conditions appertained to
thought, of drawing substance to itself, and clothing itself in tem-
porary reality. This substance streamed out from the body of the
medium, and developed extraneously into biological, living end-
organs, these being the agencies which had performed the extraor-
dinary though meaningless feats they witnessed in Dr. Krokowski’s
laboratory. Under some conditions these agencies might be seen or
touched, the limbs left their impression in wax or plaster. But some-
times the matter did not rest with such corporealization. Under
certain conditions, human heads, faces, full-length phantoms mani-
fested themselves before the eyes of the experimenters, even within
certain limits entered into contact with them. And here Dr. Kro-
kowski’s doctrine began, as it were, to squint; to look two ways
at once. It took on a shifting and fluctuating character, like the
method of treatment he had adopted in his exposition of the nature
of love. It was no longer plain-sailing, scientific treatment of the
objectively mirrored subjective content of the medium and her
passive auxiliaries. It was a mixing in the game, at least sometimes,
at least half and half, of entities from without and beyond. It dealt
— at least possibly, if not quite admittedly — with the non-vital,
with existences that took advantage of a ticklish, mysteriously and
momentarily favouring chance to return to substantiality and show

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 669

themselves to their summoners — in brief, with the spiritualistic
invocation of the departed.

Such manifestations it was that Comrade Krokowski, with the
assistance of his followers, was latterly striving to produce; stur-
dily, with his ingratiating smile, challenging their cordial confi-
dence, thoroughly at home, for his own person, in this questionable
morass of the subhuman, and a bom leader for the timid and com-
punctious in the regions where they now moved. He had laid him-
self out to develop and discipline the extraordinary powers of
Ellen Brand and, from what Hans Castorp could hear, fortune
smiled upon his efforts. Some of the party had felt the touch of
materialized hands. Lawyer Paravant had received out of trans-
cendency a sounding slap on the cheek, and had countered with
scientific alacrity, yes, had even eagerly turned the other cheek,
heedless of his quality as gentleman, jurist, and one-time member
of a duelling corps, all of which would have constrained him to
quite a different line of conduct had the blow been of terrestrial
origin. A. K. Ferge, that good-natured martyr, to whom all “ high-
brow ” thought was foreign, had one evening held such a spirit
hand in his own, and established by sense of touch that it was
whole and well shaped. His clasp had been heart-felt to the limits
of respect; but it had in some indescribable fashion escaped him. A
considerable period elapsed, some two months and a half of bi-
weekly sittings, before a hand of other-worldly origin, a young
man’s hand, it seemed, came fingering over the table, in the red
glow of the paper-shaded lamp, and, plain to the eye$ of all the
circle, left its imprint in an earthenware basin full of flour. And
eight days later a troop of Krokowski’s workers, Herr Albin, Frau
Stohr, the Magnuses, burst in upon Hans Castorp where he sat
dozing toward midnight in the biting cold of his balcony, and with
every mark of distracted and feverish delight, their words tum-
bling over one another, announced that they had seen Elly’s Hol-
ger — he had showed his head over the shoulder of the little me-
dium, and had in truth “ beautiful brown, brown curls.” He had
smiled with such unforgettable, gentle melancholy as he vanished!

Hans Castorp found this lofty melancholy scarcely consonant
with Holger’s other pranks, his impish and simple-minded tricks,
the anything but gently melancholy slap he had given Lawyer
Paravant and the latter had pocketed up. It was apparent that one
must not demand consistency of conduct. Perhaps they were deal-
ing with a temperament like that of the little hunch-backed man in
the nursery song, with his pathetic wickedness and his craving
for intercession. Holger’s admirers had no thought for all this.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

670

What they were determined to do was to persuade Hans Castorp
to rescind his decree; positively, now that everything was so bril-
liantly in train, he must be present at the next seance. Elly, it
seemed, in her trance had promised to materialize the spirit of any
departed person the circle chose.

Any departed person they chose? Hans Castorp still showed
reluctance. But that it might be any person they chose occupied
his mind to such an extent that in the next three days he came to
a different conclusion. Strictly speaking it was not three days, but
as many minutes, which brought about the change. One evening,
in a solitary hour in the music-room, he played again the record
that bore the imprint of Valentine’s personality, to him so pro-
foundly moving. He sat there listening to the soldierly prayer of
the hero departing for the field of honour:

“ If God should summon me away,

Thee I would watch and guard alway,

O Marguerite! ”

and, as ever, Hans Castorp was filled by emotion at the sound, an
emotion which this time circumstances magnified and as it were
condensed into a longing; he thought: “ Barren and sinful or no,
it would be a marvellous thing, a darling adventure! And he, as I
know him, if he had anything to do with it, would not mind.” He
recalled that composed and liberal “ Certainly, of course,” he had
heard in the darkness of the x-ray laboratory, when he asked Joa-
chim if he might commit certain optical indiscretions.

The next morning he announced his willingness to take part m
the evening seance; and half an hour after dinner joined the group
of familiars of the uncanny, who, unconcernedly chatting, took
their way down to the basement. They were all old inhabitants,
the oldest of the old, or at least of long standing in the group, like
the Czech Wenzel and Dr. Ting-Fu; Ferge and Wehsal, Lawyer
Paravant, the ladies Kleefeld and Levi, and, in addition, those per-
sons who had come to his balcony to announce to him the appari-
tion of Holger’s head, and of course the medium, Elly Brand.

That child of the north was already in the doctor’s charge when
Hans Castorp passed through the door with the visiting-card: the
doctor, in his black tunic, his arm laid fatherly across her shoulder,
stood at the foot of the stair leading from the basement floor and
welcomed the guests, and she with him. Everybody greeted every-
body else, with surprising hilarity and expansiveness — it seemed to
be the common aim to keep the meeting pitched in a key free from
all solemnity or constraint. They talked in loud, cheery voices.

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

671

poked each other in the ribs, showed everyway how perfectly at
ease they felt. Dr. Krokowski’s yellow teeth kept gleaming in his
beard with every hearty, confidence-inviting smile; he repeated
his “ Wei — come ” to each arrival, with special fervour in Hans
Castorp’s case — who, for his part, said nothing at all, and whose
manner was hesitating. “ Courage, comrade,” Krokowski’s ener-
getic and hospitable nod seemed to be saying, as he gave the young
man’s hand an almost violent squeeze. No need here to hang the
head, here is no cant nor sanctimoniousness, nothing but the blithe
and manly spirit of disinterested research. But Hans Castorp felt
none the better for all this pantomime. He summed up the resolve
formed by the memories of the x-ray cabinet; but the train of
thought hardly fitted with his present frame; rather he was re-
minded of the peculiar and unforgettable mixture of feelings —
nervousness, pridefulness, curiosity, disgust, and awe — with
which, years ago, he had gone with some fellow students, a little
tipsy, to a brothel in Sankt-Pauli.

As everyone was now present, Dr. Krokowski selected two
controls — they were, for the evening, Frau Magnus and the ivory
Levi — to preside over the physical examination of the medium,
and they withdrew to the next room. Hans Castorp and the re-
maining nine persons awaited in the consulting-room the issue of
the austerely scientific procedure — which was invariably without
any result whatever. The room was familiar to him from the hours
he had spent here, behind Joachim’s back, in conversation with the
psycho-analyst. It had a writing-desk, an arm-chair and an easy-
chair for patients on the left, the window side; a library of refer-
ence-books on shelves to right and left of the side door, and in the
further right-hand comer a chaise-longue, covered with oilcloth,
separated by a folding screen from the desk and chairs. The doc-
tor’s glass instrument-case also stood in that corner, in another
was a bust of Hippocrates, while an engraving of Rembrandt’s
“ Anatomy Lesson ” hung above the gas fire-place on the right
side wall. It was an ordinary consulting-room, like thousands more;
but with certain temporary special arrangements. The round ma-
hogany table whose place was in the centre of the room, beneath
the electric chandelier, upon the red carpet that covered most of
the floor, had been pushed forward against the left-hand wall, be-
neath the plaster bust; while a smaller table, covered with a cloth
and bearing a red-shaped lamp, had been set obliquely near the gas
fire, which was lighted and giving out a dry heat. Another electric
bulb, covered with red and further with a black gauze veil, hung
above the table. On this table stood certain notorious objects: two

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

672

table-bells, of different patterns, one to shake and one to press, the
plate with flour, and the paper-basket. Some dozen chairs of dif-
ferent shapes and sizes surrounded the table in a half-circle, one
end of which was formed by the foot of the chaise-longue, the
other ending near the centre of the room, beneath the ceiling light.
Here, in the neighbourhood of the last chair, and about half-way
to the door, stood the gramophone; the album of light trifles lay
on a chair next it. Such were the arrangements. The red lamps were
not yet lighted, the ceiling light was shedding an effulgence as of
common day, for the window, above the narrow end of the writ-
ing-desk, was shrouded in a dark covering, with its open-work
cream-coloured blind hanging down in front of it.

After ten minutes the doctor returned with the three ladies.
Elly’s outer appearance had changed: she was not wearing her
ordinary clothes, but a night-gownlike garment of white crepe ,
girdled about the waist by a cord, leaving her slender arms bare.
Her maidenly breasts showed themselves soft and unconfined be-
neath this garment, it appeared she wore little else.

They all hailed her gaily. “ Hullo, Elly! How lovely she looks
again! A perfect fairy! Very pretty, my angel! ” She smiled at
their compliments to her attire, probably well knowing it became
her. “Preliminary control negative,” Krokowski announced.
“ Let’s get to work, then, comrades,” he said. Hans Castorp, con-
scious of being disagreeably affected by the doctor’s manner of
address, was about to follow the example of the others, who, shout-
ing, chattering, slapping each other on the shoulders, were settling
themselves in the circle of chairs, when the doctor addressed him
personally.

“ My friend,” said he, “ you are a guest, perhaps a novice, in our
midst, and therefore I should like, this evening, to pay you special
honour. I confide to you the control of the medium. Our practice
is as follows.” He ushered the young man toward the end of the
circle next the chaise-longue and the screen, where Elly was seated
on an ordinary cane chair, with her face turned rather toward
the entrance door than to the centre of the room. He himself sat
down close in front of her in another such chair, and clasped her
hands, at the same time holding both her knees firmly between his
own. “ Like that,” he said, and gave his place to Hans Castorp,
who assumed the same position. “ You’ll grant that the arrest is
complete. But we shall give you assistance too. Fraulein Kleefeld,
may I implore you to lend us your aid? ” And the lady thus
courteously and exotically entreated came and sat down, clasping
Elly’s fragile wrists, one in each hand.

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

673

Unavoidable that Hans Castorp should look into the face of the
young prodigy, fixed as it was so immediately before his own.
Their eyes met — but Elly’s slipped aside and gazed with natural
self-consciousness in her lap. She was smiling a little affectedly,
with her lips slightly pursed, and her head on one side, as she had
at the wineglass seance. And Hans Castorp was reminded, as he
saw her, of something else: the look on Karen Karstedt’s face, a
smile just like that, when she stood with Joachim and himself and
regarded the unmade grave in the Dorf graveyard.

The circle had sat down. They were thirteen persons; not count-
ing the Czech Wenzel, whose function it was to serve Polyhymnia,
and who accordingly, after putting his instrument in readiness,
squatted with his guitar at the back of the circle. Dr. Krokowski
sat beneath the chandelier, at the other end of the row, after he
had turned on both red lamps with a single switch, and turned
off the centre light. A darkness, gently aglow, lay over the room,
the comers and distances were obscured. Only the surface of the
little table and its immediate vicinity were illumined by a pale
rosy light. During the next few minutes one scarcely saw one’s
neighbours; then their eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the
darkness and made the best use of the light they had — which was
slightly reinforced by the small dancing flames from the chimney-
piece.

The doctor devoted a few words to this matter of the lighting,
and excused its lacks from the scientific point of view. They must
take care not to interpret it in the sense of deliberate mystifica-
tion and scene-setting. With the best will in the world they could
not, unfortunately, have more light for the present. The nature
of the powers they were to study would not permit of their being
developed with white light, it was not possible thus to produce
the desired conditions. This was a fixed postulate, with which they
must for the present reckon. Hans Castorp, for his part, was quite
satisfied. He liked the darkness, it mitigated the queemess of the
situation. And in its justification he recalled the darkness of the
x-ray room, and how they had collected themselves, and “ washed
their eyes ” in it, before they “ saw.”

The medium, Dr. Krokowski went on, obviously addressing his
words to Hans Castorp in particular, no longer needed to be put
in the trance by the physician. She fell into it herself, as the con-
trol would see, and once she had done so, it would be her guardian
spirit Holger, who spoke with her voice, to whom, and not to her,
they should address themselves. Further, it was an error, which
might result in failure, to suppose that one must bend mind or will

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

674

upon the expected phenomena. On the contrary, a slightly dif-
fused attention, with conversation, was recommended. And Hans
Castorp was cautioned, whatever else he did, not to lose control
of the medium’s extremities.

“ We will now form the chain,” finished Dr. Krokowski; and
they did so, laughing when they could not find each other’s hands
in the dark. Dr. Ting-Fu, sitting next Hermine Kleefeld, laid his
right hand on her shoulder and reached his left to Herr Wehsal,
who came next. Beyond him were Herr and Frau Magnus, then
A. K. Ferge; who, if Hans Castorp mistook not, held the hand of
the ivory Levi on his right — and so on. “ Music! ” the doctor com-
manded, and behind him his neighbour the Czech set the instru-
ment in motion and placed the needle on the disk. “ Talk! ”
Krokowski bade them, and as the first bars of an overture by Mil-
locker were heard, they obediently bestirred themselves to make
conversation, about nothing at all: the winter snow-fall, the last
course at dinner, a newly arrived patient, a departure, “ wild ” or
otherwise — artificially sustained, half drowned by the music, and
lapsing now and again. So some minutes passed.

The record had not run out before Elly shuddered violently.
A trembling ran through her, she sighed, the upper part of her
body sank forward so that her forehead rested against Hans Ca-
storp’s, and her arms, together with those of her guardians, began
to make extraordinary pumping motions to and fro.

“ Trance,” announced the Kleefeld. The music stopped, so also
the conversation. In the abrupt silence they heard the baritone
drawl of the doctor. “ Is Holger present? ”

Elly shivered again. She swayed in her chair. Then Hans Ca-
storp felt her press his two hands with a quick, firm pressure.

“ She pressed my hands,” he informed them.

“ He,” the doctor corrected him. “ He pressed your hands. He
is present. Wei — come, Holger,” he went on with unction. “ Wei
— come, friend and fellow comrade, heartily, heartily wel — come.
And remember, when you were last with us,” he went on, and
Hans Castorp remarked that he did not use the form of address
common to the civilized West — “ you promised to make visible
to our mortal eyes some dear departed, whether brother soul or
sister soul, whose name should be given to you by our circle. Are
you willing? Do you feel yourself able to perform what you
promised? ”

Again Elly shivered. She sighed and shivered as the answer came.
Slowly she carried her hands and those of her guardians to her fore-

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 675

head, where she let them rest. Then close to Hans Castorp’s ear she
whispered: “Yes.”

The warm breath immediately at his ear caused in our friend
that phenomenon of the epidermis popularly called goose-flesh, the
nature of which the Hofrat had once explained to him. We men-
tion this in order to make a distinction between the psychical and
the purely physical. There could scarcely be talk of fear, for our
hero was in fact thinking: “ Well, she is certainly biting off more
than she can chew! ” But then he was straightway seized with a
mingling of sympathy and consternation springing from the con-
fusing and illusory circumstance that a blood-young creature,
whose hands he held in his, had just breathed a yes into his ear.

“ He said yes,” he reported, and felt embarrassed.

“ Very well, then, Holger,” spoke Dr. Krokowski. “ We shall
take you at your word. We are confident you will do your part.
The name of the dear departed shall shortly be communicated to
you. Comrades,” he turned to the gathering, “ out with it, now!
Who has a wish? Whom shall our friend Holger show us? ”

A silence followed. Each waited for the other to speak. Indi-
vidually they had probably all questioned themselves, in these last
few days; they knew whither their thoughts tended. But the call-
ing back of the dead, or the desirability of calling them back, was a
ticklish matter, after all. At bottom, and boldly confessed, the de-
sire does not exist; it is a misapprehension precisely as impossible
as the thing itself, as we should soon see if nature once let it happen.
What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief
at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able
to want to do so.

This was what they were all obscurely feeling; and since it was
here simply a question not of an actual return, but merely a theatri-
cal staging of one, in which they should only see the departed, no
more, the thing seemed humanly unthinkable; they were afraid
to look into the face of him or her of whom they thought, and
each one would willingly have resigned his right of choice to the
next. Hans Castorp too, though there was echoing in his ears that
large-hearted “ Of course, of course ” out of the past, held back,
and at the last moment was rather inclined to pass the choice on.
But the pause was too long; he turned his head toward their leader,
and said, in a husky voice: “I should like to see my departed
cousin, Joachim Ziemssen.”

That was a relief to them all. Of those present, all excepting Dr.
Ting-Fu, Wenzel, and the medium had known the person asked

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676

for. The others, Ferge, Wehsal, Herr Albin, Paravant, Herr and
Frau Magnus, Frau Stohr, Fraulein Levi, and the Kleefeld, loudly
announced their satisfaction with the choice. Krokowski himself
nodded well pleased, though his relations with Joachim had always
been rather cool, owing to the latter’s reluctance in the matter of
psycho-analysis.

“ Very good indeed,” said the doctor. “ Holger, did you hear?
The person named was a stranger to you in life. Do you know him
in the Beyond, and are you prepared to lead him hither? ”

Immense suspense. The sleeper swayed, sighed, and shuddered.
She seemed to be seeking, to be struggling; falling this way and
that, whispering now to Hans Castorp, now to the Kleefeld, some-
thing they could not catch. At last he received from her hands the
pressure that meant yes. He announced himself to have done so,
and —

“ Very well, then,” cried Dr. Krokowski. “ To work, Holger!
Music,” he cried. “ Conversation! ” and he repeated the injunction
that no fixing of the attention, no strained anticipation was in place,
but only an unforced and hovering expectancy.

And now followed the most extraordinary hours of our hero’s
young life. Yes, though his later fate is unclear, though at a certain
moment in his destiny he will vanish from our eyes, we may as-
sume them to have been the most extraordinary he ever spent.

They were hours — more than two of them, to be explicit, count-
ing in a brief intermission in the efforts on Holger’s part which
now began, or rather, on the girl Elly’s — of work so hard and so
prolonged that they were all toward the end inclined to be faint-
hearted and despair of any result; out of pure pity, too, tempted
to resign an attempt which seemed pitilessly hard, and beyond the
delicate strength of her upon whom it was laid. We men, if we do
not shirk our humanity, are familiar with an hour of life when we
know this almost intolerable pity, which, absurdly enough no one
else can feel, this rebellious “ Enough, no more! ” which is wrung
from us, though it is not enough, and cannot or will not be enough,
until it comes somehow or other to its appointed end. The reader
knows we speak of our husband- and fatherhood, of the act of
birth, which Elly’s wrestling did so unmistakably resemble that
even he must recognize it who had never passed through this ex-

f >erience, even our young Hans Castorp; who, not having shirked
ife, now came to know, in such a guise, this act, so full of organic
mysticism. In what a guise! To what an end! Under what circum-
stances! One could not regard as anything less than scandalous
the sights and sounds in this red-lighted lying-in chamber, the

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE

6 77

maidenly form of the pregnant one, bare-armed, in flowing night-
robe; and then by contrast the ceaseless and senseless gramophone
music, the forced conversation which the circle kept up at com-
mand, the cries of encouragement they ever and anon directed at
the struggling one: “ Hullo, Holger! Courage, man! It’s coming,
just keep it up, let it come, that’s the way! ” Nor do we except the

1 >erson and situation of the “ husband ” — if we may regard in that
ight our young friend, who had indeed formed such a wish —
sitting there, with the knees of the little “ mother ” between his
own, holding in his her hands, which were as wet as once little
Leila’s, so that he had constantly to be renewing his hold, not to
let them slip.

For the gas fire in the rear of the circle radiated great heat.
Mystical, consecrate? Ah, no, it was all rather noisy and vulgar,
there in the red glow, to which they had now so accustomed their
eyes that they could see the whole room fairly well. The music
and shouting were so like the revivalistic methods of the Salva-
tion Army, they even made Hans Castorp think of the comparison,
albeit he had never attended at a celebration by these cheerful
zealots. It was in no eerie or ghostly sense that the scene affected
the sympathetic one as mystic or mysterious, as conducing to
solemnity; it was rather natural, organic — by virtue of the inti-
mate association we have already referred to. Elly’s exertions came
in waves, after periods of rest, during which she hung sidewise
from her chair in a totally relaxed and inaccessible condition,
described by Dr. Krokowski as “ deep trance.” From this she
would start up with a moan, throw herself about, strain and
wrestle with her captors, whisper feverish, disconnected words,
seem to be trying, with sidewise, jerking movements, to expel
something; she would gnash her teeth, once even fastened them in
Hans Castorp’s sleeve.

This had gone on for more than an hour when the leader found
it to the interest of all concerned to grant a brief intermission. The
Czech Wenzel, who had introduced an enlivening variation by
closing the gramophone and striking up very expertly on his
guitar, laid that instrument aside. They all drew a long breath and
broke the circle. Dr. Krokowski strode over to the wall and
switched on the ceiling lamp; the light flashed up glaringly, mak-
ing them all blink. Elly, bent forward, her face almost in her lap,
slumbered. She was busy too, absorbed in the oddest activity, with
which the others appeared familiar, but which Hans Castorp
watched with attentive wonder. For some minutes together she
moved the hollow of her hand to and fro in the region of her hips:

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

678

carried the hand away' from her body and then with scooping,
raking motion drew it towards her, as though gathering some-
thing and pulling it in. Then, with a series of starts, she came to
herself, blinked in her turn at the light with sleep-stiffened eyes
and smiled.

She smiled affectedly, rather remotely. In truth, their solicitude
seemed wasted; she did not appear exhausted by her efforts. Per-
haps she retained no memory of them. She sat down in the chair
reserved for patients, by the writing-desk near the window, be-
tween the desk and the screen about the chaise-longue; gave the
chair a turn so that she could support her elbow on the desk and
look into the room; and remained thus, receiving their sympa-
thetic glances and encouraging nods, silent during the whole inter-
mission, which lasted fifteen minutes.

It was a beneficent pause, relaxed, and filled with peaceful satis-
faction in respect of work already accomplished. The lids of
cigarette-cases snapped, the men smoked comfortably, and stand-
ing in groups discussed the prospects of the seance. They were
far from despairing or anticipating a negative result to their efforts.
Signs enough were present to prove such doubting uncalled for.
Those sitting near the doctor, at the far end of the row, agreed that
they had several times felt, quite unmistakably, that current of
cool air which regularly whenever manifestations were under way
streamed in a definite direction from the person of the medium.
Others had seen light-phenomena, white spots, moving congloba-
tions of forces showing themselves at intervals against the screen.
In short, no faint-heartedness! No looking backward now they
had put their hands to the plough. Holger had given his word,
they had no call to doubt that he would keep it.

Dr. Krokowski signed for the resumption of the sitting. He led
Elly back to her martyrdom and seated her, stroking her hair. The
others closed the circle. All went as before. Hans Castorp sug-
gested that he be released from his post of first control, but Dr.
Krokowski refused. He said he laid great stress on excluding, by
immediate contact, every possibility of misleading manipulation
on the part of the medium. So Hans Castorp took up again his
strange position vis-a-vis to Elly; the white light gave place to
rosy twilight, the music began again, the pumping motions; this
time it was Hans Castorp who announced “ trance.” The scandal-
ous lying-in proceeded.

With what distressful difficulty! It seemed unwilling to take its
course — how could it? Madness! What maternity was this, what
delivery, of what should she be delivered? “ Help, help,” the child

HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 679

moaned, and her spasms seemed about to pass over into that dan-
gerous and unavailing stage obstetricians call eclampsia. She called
at intervals on the doctor, that he should put his hands on her.
He did so, speaking to her encouragingly. The magnetic effect, if
such it was, strengthened her to further efforts.

Thus passed the second hour, while the guitar was strummed
or the gramophone gave out the contents of the album of light
music into the twilight to which they had again accustomed their
vision. Then came an episode, introduced by Hans Castorp. He
supplied a stimulus by expressing an idea, a wish; a wish he had
cherished from the beginning, and might perhaps have profitably
expressed before now. Elly was lying with her face on their joined
hands, in “ deep trance.” Herr Wenzel was just changing or re-
versing the record when our friend summoned his resolution and
said he had a suggestion to make, of no great importance, yet per-
haps — possibly — of some avail. He had — that is, the house
possessed among its volumes of records — a certain song, from
Gounod’s Faust , Valentine’s Prayer, baritone with orchestral ac-
companiment, very appealing. He, the speaker, thought they might
try the record.

“ Why that particular one? ” the doctor asked out of the dark-
ness.

“ A question of mood. Matter of feeling,” the young man re-
sponded. The mood of the piece in question was peculiar to itself,
quite special — he suggested they should try it. Just possible, not
out of the question, that its mood and atmosphere might shorten
their labours.

“ Is the record here? ” the doctor inquired.

No, but Hans Castorp could fetch it at once.

“ What are you thinking of? ” Krokowski promptly repelled
the idea. What? Hans Castorp thought he might go and come
again and take up his business where he had left it off? There spoke
the voice of utter inexperience. Oh, no, it was impossible. It would
upset everything, they would have to begin all over. Scientific
exactitude forbade them to think of any such arbitrary going in
and out. The door was locked. He, the doctor, had the key in his
pocket. In short, if the record was not now in the room —

He was still talking when the Czech threw in, from the gramo-
phone: “ The record is here.”

“ Here? ” Hans Castorp asked.

“ Yes, here it is, Faust, Valentine’s Prayer.” It had been stuck
by mistake in the album of light music, not in the green album of
arias , where it belonged; quite by chance — or mismanagement

68o

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

or carelessness, in any case luckily — it had partaken of the general
topsyturvyness, and here it was, needing only to be put on.

What had Hans Castorp to say to that? Nothing. It was the doc-
tor who remarked: “ So much the better,” and some of the others

chimed in. The needle scraped, the lid was put down. The male
voice began to choral accompaniment: “ Now the parting hour

has come.”

No one spoke. They listened. Elly, as the music resumed, re-
newed her efforts. She started up convulsively, pumped, carried
the slippery hands to her brow. The record went on, came to the
middle part, with skipping rhythm, the part about war and dan-
ger, gallant, god-fearing, French. After that the finale, in full
volume, the orchestrally supported refrain of the beginning.

“ O Lord of heaven, hear me pray. . . .”

Hans Castorp had work with Elly. She raised herself, drew in a
straggling breath, sighed a long, long, outward sigh, sank down
and was still. He bent over her in concern, and as he did so, he

heard Frau Stohr say, in a high, whining pipe: “ Ziems — sen! ”
He did not look up. A bitter taste came in his mouth. He heard
another voice, a deep, cold voice, saying: “ I’ve seen him a long
time.”

The record had run off, with a last accord of horns. But no

one stopped the machine. The needle went on scratching in the
silence, as the disk whirred round. Then Hans Castorp raised his
head, and his eyes went, without searching, the right way.

There was one more person in the room than before. There in
the background, where the red rays lost themselves in gloom, so
that the eye scarcely reached thither, between writing-desk and
screen, in the doctor’s consulting-chair, where in the intermission
Elly had been sitting, Joachim sat. It was the Joachim of the last
days, with hollow, shadowy cheeks, warrior’s beard and full,
curling lips. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other.
On his wasted face, shaded though it was by his head-covering,
was plainly seen the stamp of suffering, the expression of gravity
and austerity which had beautified it. Two folds stood on his
brow, between the eyes, that lay deep in their bony cavities; but
there was no change in the mildness of the great dark orbs, whose
quiet, friendly gaze sought out Hans Castorp, and him alone. That
ancient grievance of the outstanding ears was still to be seen under
the head-covering, his extraordinary head-covering, which they
could not make out. Cousin Joachim was not in mufti. His sabre
seemed to be leaning against his leg, he held the handle, one thought
to distinguish something like a pistol-case in his belt. But that was

HYSTERICA PASSIO 68 1

no proper uniform he wore. No colour, no decorations; it had
a collar like a litenjoka jacket, and side pockets. Somewhere low
down on the breast was a cross. His feet looked large, his legs very
thin, they seemed to be bound or wound as for the business of
sport more than war. And what was it, this headgear? It seemed
as though Joachim had turned an army cook-pot upside-down on
his head, and fastened it under his chin with a band. Yet it looked
quite properly warlike, like an old-fashioned foot-soldier, perhaps.

Hans Castorp felt Ellen Brand’s breath on his hands. And near
him the Kleefeld’s rapid breathing. Other sound there was none,
save the continued scraping of the needle on the run-down, ro-
tating record, which nobody stopped. He looked at none of his
company, would hear or see nothing of them; but across the hands
and head on his knee leaned far forward and stared through the
red darkness at the guest in the chair. It seemed one moment as
though his stomach would turn over within him. His throat con-
tracted and a four- or fivefold sob went through and through him.
“ Forgive me! ” he whispered; then his eyes overflowed, he saw
no more.

He heard breathless voices: “ Speak to him! ” he heard Dr. Kro-
kowski’s baritone voice summon him, formally, cheerily, and re-
peat the request. Instead of complying, he drew his hands away
from beneath Elly’s face, and stood up.

Again Dr. Krokowski called upon his name, this time in moni-
tory tones. But in two strides Hans Castorp was at the step by the
entrance door and with one quick movement turned on the white
light.

Fraulein Brand had collapsed. She was twitching convulsively
in the Kleefeld’s arms. The chair over there was empty.

Hans Castorp went up to the protesting Krokowski, close up
to him. He tried to speak, but no words came. He put out his
hand, with a brusque, imperative gesture. Receiving the key, he
nodded several times, threateningly, close into the other’s face;
turned, and went out of the room.

Hysterica Passio

With the swift-changing years, a spirit began to walk in House
Berghof: a spirit of immediate descent, or so Hans Castorp sur-
mised, from that other demon whose baleful name we have spoken.
With the facile curiosity of inquiring youth on its travels, he had
studied this new demon, yes, had even discovered in himself an

682

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

alarming aptitude, in common with the rest of the world up here,
to pay him extensive homage. This new evil genius had, like the
other, always been present, as it were, in the germ, but now it
began to spread itself; Hans Castorp had by nature no great predi-
lection for becoming its slave; yet with something like horror he
observed that even he, when he let himself go ever so little, fell
victim to a contagion so general that scarce anyone in the circle
escaped it.

What was this, then, that was in the air? A rising temper. Acute
irritability. A nameless rancour. A universal tendency to en-
venomed exchange of words, to outbursts of rage — yes, even
to fisticuffs. Embittered disputes, bouts of uncontrolled shriek-
ing, by pairs and by groups, were of daily occurrence; and the
significant thing was that the bystanders, instead of being dis-
gusted with the participants, or seeking to come between them,
actually sympathized with one side or the other to the extent of
being themselves involved in the quarrel. They would pale and
tremble, their eyes would glitter provocatively, their mouths set
with passion. They envied those actively engaged the chance, the
justification for screaming; a gnawing desire to do likewise pos-
sessed mind and body, and he who could not summon strength
to flee apart, was soon willy-nilly in the midst of the melee. The
fruitless dissensions, the mutual recriminations, in the face of
authorities bent on accommodation but themselves falling with
alarming ease a prey to the general temptation to brawl — these
become frequent occurrences in House Berghof. A patient might
issue forth of the house in tolerable tranquillity and not know
at all in what frame he would return. A member of the “ good ”
Russian table, an elegant dame from the provinces, from Minsk,
still young, and a light case, with only three months prescribed,
betook herself one day to the village to make purchases at the
French lingerie shop; fell there into a quarrel with the modiste, of
such dimensions that she came back in a state of violent excite-
ment, suffered a haemorrhage, and was thenceforth incurable. The
husband was summoned, and informed that her stay up here would
terminate only with her life.

Her case aptly illustrates the general mood. Albeit with some
distaste, we cite others. Our readers may remember the greedy
schoolboy in the round spectacles, who sat at Frau Salomon’s
table and had a habit of cutting up all the food on his plate into
a sort of mess, and gulping it down, now and again wiping his
eyes with his serviette behind his heavy spectacle-lenses. He had

HYSTERICA PASSIO

683

sat here, still a schoolboy, or rather still a former schoolboy, all
this time, gobbled and wiped, without drawing upon his person
more than the most cursory attention. But now, one morning at
early breakfast, out of a blue sky, he was overtaken by such a
transport of disorder that half the dining-room started up at the
noise coming from his quarter. He sat there all pale and shrieking,
and it was at the dwarf waitress standing near him that he shrieked.
“ You lie,” he yelled, his voice breaking. “ It’s ice-cold, this tea
you have brought me is ice-cold, I tell you. Try it yourself before
you lie to me again about it — it is just lukewarm wash-water, try
if it isn’t, not fit for a decent person to drink! How do you dare
think of bringing me ice-cold tea and setting it in front of me and
actually persuading yourself that I would drink such hog-wash? 1
won’t drink it! I won’t! ” he screamed, and began pounding with
his fists on the table, till the dishes rang. “ I will have hot tea —
boiling hot — that is my right before God and man — boiling hot;
I’d rather die on the spot than take a drop of this — you damned
dwarf, you! ” he fairly bellowed, and with the words appeared
to fling off the last vestige of restraint and go stark mad, shaking
his fist at Emerentia, literally showing her his foaming teeth. He
went on, stamping, pounding, yelling “ I will ” and “ I won’t
while the dining-room displayed the now usual scene. There was
tense and alarming participation in the schoolboy raving. Some
of the guests even sprang up and glared, fists doubled, teeth
clenched; others sat white and trembling, their eyes cast down.
And they still glared or trembled, long after the schoolboy had
spent himself, and sat in a collapse before his fresh tea, not drink-
ing.

What was all this?

Among the Berghof community was a former business man,
some thirty years old. His case was long-standing, he had wan-
dered for years from one establishment to another. This man was
a confirmed anti-Semite, out of conviction and the sporting in-
stinct. He devoted a joyous consistency to the game, and the
preaching of this negative gospel was the pride and content of his
life. Business man he had been, he was so no more, he was nothing
more in the world, but he was still an anti-Semite. His illness was
serious, he had a burdensome cough, and made a sound as though
he sneezed with his lung, a short, high-pitched, uncanny sound.
But he was no Jew, and that was his one positive characteristic.
His name was Wiedemann, a Christian name, not a filthy Jewish.
He took in a paper called the Avion Sun; and would talk in this

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

684

wise: “ I arrive at the A— sanatorium, in B— . When I go to sit
down in my chair in the rest-hall, whom do I find on my right
hand? Herr Hirsch! And whom do I find on my left? Herr Wolf!
Of course, I leave.” A^nd so on.

Wiedemann had a quick, threatening glance. It was literally as
though he had a punching-ball hanging close in front of his nose,
and squinted at it, seeing nothing whatever beyond. The preju-
dice that haunted him was grown to an itch, a ceaseless persecu-
tion-mania, which led him to smell out the vileness hidden or dis-
guised in his neighbourhood and hold it up to scorn. Wherever
he went, he suspected, he gibed, he vented his spleen; in short,
his days were filled with hunting out and hounding down all his
fellow-creatures who did not possess that inestimable advantage
which was the only one he had.

The prevailing temper in House Berghof, which we have been
indicating, aggravated Wiedemann’s complaint to an abnormal
pitch. Naturally, he could not fail here to come into contact with
persons suffering from the disability of which he was free; and so
it came to a scene, at which Hans Castorp was present, and which
will serve us as further illustration of our theme.

For there was another man. No possibility of concealing what
he was, the case was clear. The man’s name was Sonnenschein,
than which he could bear no filthier; and thus he became for
Wiedemann the punching-ball in front of his nose, at which he
squinted with his threatening glare, at which he struck, not so
much to drive it away as to set it in motion that it might rasp his
nerves the more.

Sonnenschein, like the other, was a business man bom and bred.
He too was critically ill, and illness made him sensitive. A friendly
man, not at all a dull one, by nature rather playful, he hated
Wiedemann for his gibes and stabs as Wiedemann hated him; and
one afternoon things came to a head down in the hall, they fell on
each other like beasts.

It was a horrid sight. They scuffled like small boys, but with the
grimness of grown men when things have got to such a pitch. They
clawed at each other’s faces, clutched throats or noses, grappled,
hewed loose from each other and rolled together on the floor, spat,
kicked, worried, and foamed at the mouth. The “ management ”
came running and by main strength dragged them asunder,
scratched and bitten. Herr Wiedemann, bleeding and frothing, his
face brutish with rage, displayed a phenomenon Hans Castorp had
never before seen and had always supposed a figure of speech: his
hair stood on end. He staggered away. Herr Sonnenschein, with

HYSTERICA PASSIO

685

one black eye, a bleeding lacuna in the curling black locks about
his brow, was led into the bureau, where he sat down, buried his
face in his hands and wept bitterly.

Thus Wiedemann and Sonnenschein. All those who saw the
encounter trembled hours after. Let us turn from it to a real affair
of honour, which by contrast with such ignominy will seem al-
most refreshing. This affair of honour occurred at about the
same period, and, on account of the solemn formality with which
it was conducted, deserved the name, even to the point of ab-
surdity. Hans Castorp did not assist in person at the successive
episodes; but was informed of its involved and dramatic course
by means of certain documents, protocols and formal declara-
tions, touching the affair, circulated not only in the house and
without, not only in the village, the canton, and the country, but
even abroad and in America; and presented for the consideration
of persons who most certainly were not in the faintest degree
interested in the circumstances.

It was a Polish affair, a “ pain in the honour,” having its seat
in the heart of the Polish group which had lately collected in the
Berghof, a little colony, which pre-empted the “ good ” Russian
table — Hans Castorp, be it said in passing, sat there no longer,
having moved thence to the Kleef eld’s, then to Frau Salomon’s,
finally to Fraulein Levi’s. Social relations in the Polish group were
so elegant, so courtly, so polished, that one could only elevate
one’s eyebrows and be prepared for anything. There was a mar-
ried couple, and an unmarried young female who stood in friendly
relations with one of the gentlemen; the rest were male, with such
names as von Zutawski, Cieszynski, von Rosinski, Michael Lody-
gowski, Leo von Asarapetian, and others. Now it fell out that one
of them, named Japoll, drinking champagne in the restaurant
with two others of the party, made, in their presence, remarks
of a certain nature about the wife of Herr von Zutawski, and
about the young lady, named Kryloff, who was the intimate
friend of Herr Lodygowski. And from this circumstance arose
all the proceedings, acts, and formalities, which were the theme
of a widely circulated composition. Hans Castorp read:

“ Declaration, translated from the Polish original: On the 27th
of March, 19—, M. Stanislaw von Zutawski addressed himself
to MM. Dr. Anton Cieszynski and Stefan von Rosinski, with the
request that they should betake themselves to M. Kasimir Japoll
and in his name demand satisfaction in the usual way for the
1 calumny and detraction 9 which the said M. Kasimir Japoll
had been guilty of against M. Stanislaw von Zutawski’s wife,

686

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Mine. Jadwiga von Zutawska, in the presence of and in con-
versation with MM. Janusz Teofil Lenart and Leo von Asara-
petian.

“ When the above conversation, which took place at the end
of November, came, indirectly, to M. von Zutawski’s knowledge,
he took immediate steps to assure himself of the fact and the
circumstances of the calumny and detraction. On the previous
day, the 27th of March, 19—, he was able to confirm the fact
of the said calumny and detraction by the mouth of an im-
mediate witness to tne conversation in which the offensive words
and insinuations had been uttered. And thus M. Stanislaw von
Zutawski was constrained to apply without delay to the under-
signed and to authorize them to institute honourable proceedings
against the said M. Kasimir Japoll.

“ The undersigned make the following statement:

“ 1. On the basis of a protocol of the 9th of April, 19—,
drawn up at the instance of one party, written at Lemberg by
M. Zdzistaw Zygulski and Tadeusz Kadyi in the affair of M.
Ladislaw Goduleczny versus M. Kasimir Japoll; and further, on
the basis of the declaration of the court of honour of the 18th
of June, 19—, drawn up in Lemberg with reference to the
same affair, both which documents agree in establishing that
M. Kasimir Japoll, 4 in consequence of repeated conduct not to
be reconciled with the principles of honour, cannot be regarded
as a gentleman,’

“ 2. the undersigned, having reference to the significant con-
clusions to be deduced from the foregoing, assert and confirm
the absolute impossibility of any longer considering M. Kasimir
Japoll as capable of affording satisfaction,

44 3. and the undersigned, for their own persons, consider it
inadmissible, with reference to a man who stands outside the
pale of honour, to act either as principals or as seconds in any
affair of honour.

“With reference to this state of affairs, the undersigned in-
form M. Stanislaw von Zutawski that it would be fruitless to

E roceed against M. Kasimir Japoll according to the procedure
lid down in affairs of honour; and recommend him instead to
have recourse to a criminal court, in order to prevent further
injury on the part of a person otherwise incapacitated from
giving satisfaction. — Dated and signed: Dr. Anton Cieszynski.
Stefan von Rosinski.”

And further, Hans Castorp read:

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687

“ Protocol

“ of witnesses to the affair between M. Stanislaw von Zutawski,
M. Michael Lodygowski,

“ and MM. Kasimir Japoll and Janusz Teofil Lenart, in the
bar of the Kurhaus in K— and on the 2d of April, 19— , between
7.30 and 7.45.

“ As M. Stanislaw von Zutawski, with reference to the repre-
sentations of his friends, MM. Dr. Anton Cieszynski and Stefan
von Rosinski, in connexion with the occurrences of the 27th of
March, 19—, had after mature consideration come to the con-
clusion that the taking of the judicial steps which they recom-
mended against M. Kasimir Japoll for the calumny and detraction
uttered against his wife Jadwiga would afford him no satisfac-
tion whatever, since

“ 1. There was a justifiable suspicion that M. Kasimir Japoll
would not appear before the court, and since, he being an Austrian
subject, further proceedings would be difficult if not impossible,

“ 2. and since furthermore, a legal chastisement of M. Kasimir
Japoll would in no wise atone for the insult by which he had
sought to injure and defame the name and family of M. Stanislaw
von Zutawski,

“ now therefore, M. Stanislaw von Zutawski took what ap-
peared to him the shortest, most thorough, and in view of the
circumstances most appropriate course, after having indirectly
ascertained that M. Kasimir Japoll purposed leaving the place on
the following day,

“ and, on the 2d of April, 19— , between 7.30 and 7.45 in the
evening, in the presence of his wife Jadwiga and MM. Michael
Lodykowski and Ignaz von Mellin, administered several boxes on
the ear to M. Kasimir Japoll, who was seated in the company of
M. Janusz Teofil Lenart and two unknown young women, in the
American bar of the Kurhaus, imbibing alcoholic drinks.

“ Immediately thereafter, M. Michael Lodygowski boxed the
ears of M. Kasimir Japoll, stating that he did so in return for the
insult offered to Fraulein Kryloff and himself;

“ and immediately thereafter M. Michael Lodygowski boxed
the ears of M. Janusz Teofil Lenart, in return for the unqualifiable
injury offered to M. and Mme. von Zutawski, and further,

“ without losing a moment, M. Stanislaw von Zutawski like-
wise, and repeatedly, boxed the ears of M. Janusz Teofil Lenart
for the calumnious defamation of his wife as well as of Mile.
Kryloff.

688

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“ MM. Kasimir Japoll and Janusz Teofil Lenart remained en-
tirely passive during the whole of the above proceedings.

Dated and signed: Michael Lodygowski, Ign. v. Mellin.”

The prevailing temper did not permit Hans Castorp to laugh,
as he would otherwise surely have done, at this rapid fire of
boxes on the ear. Instead, he quaked as he read. The irreproach-
able bearing of the one side, the contemptibleness and total lack
of self-respect of the other were both apparent in the document,
which was, despite its frigid objectivity, so impressive as to move
him deeply. So it was with them all. The Polish affaire (Thormeur
was conned far and wide, and discussed through clenched teeth.
A counterblast by Herr Kasimir Japoll fell rather flat. The sub-
stance of it was that Zutawski had been perfectly well aware
that he, Japoll, had been declared incapable of giving satisfaction
by some conceited puppy in Lemberg, once on a time, and that
his whole proceeding had been a pretence, since he knew full well
it would not issue in a duel. Furthermore, the sole and only rea-
son Zutawski had declined to institute proceedings was that all
the world, himself included, was aware that his wife Jadwiga had
provided him with a complete assortment of horns; as to the truth
of which fact Japoll would have found nothing easier than to
give evidence; and that lastly the appearance of the Kryloff be-
fore a court would have been little edifying for anybody con-
cerned. Anyhow, it was only his own honour that had been im-
peached, not that of his partner in the famous conversation; von
Zutawski had entrenched himself behind the fact in order not to
involve himself in any danger. As for the role played by Herr
von Asarapetian in the whole affair, he preferred not to speak
of it, but for the encounter in the Kurhaus bar, he, Japoll, though
ready of tongue and wit, was admittedly of very feeble strength;
he was at a great physical disadvantage with Zutawski and his
friends and the uncommonly powerful Zutawska; while the two
young ladies who were in his and Lenart’s society were lively
creatures enough, but timid as rabbits. Under the circumstances,
and in order to avoid a free fight and public scandal, he had com-
pelled Lenart, who would have put himself on the defensive, to
be quiet, and to suffer in God’s name the transient social contact
with MM. von Zutawski and Lodygowski, which had not hurt
them at all, and which had been regarded in the light of a pleas-
antry by the bystanders.

Thus Japoll, for whom, of course, not much could be said.
His defence did not greatly invalidate the elegant contrast of
honour with pusillanimity presented by the document on the

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689

other side; the less because he had not the manifolding facilities
disposed of by his opponents, and could only distribute a few
typed duplicates of ms reply. The protocol, on the contrary,
everyone received, even the most uninterested. Naphta and Set-
tembrini, for instance, had copies sent them, which Hans Castorp
saw in their hands, and remarked, to his surprise, that they too
perused them with bitter concentration. For him the ruling tem-
per of the Berghof was too much — he was powerless to dissi-

E ate its mood by a burst of blithe and cleansing laughter, but this he
ad confidently expected to hear from Herr Settembrini. Alas, no,
even the unclouded eye of the Freemason was dimmed by the pre-
vailing spleen; it weighed on his spirit, stilling his mirth; it made
him susceptible to the rasping provocation of the tale of the ear-
boxing. Moreover he, the protagonist of Life, was suffering in
spirit from the state of his health. Slowly, remorselessly, with
deceptive interludes of brighter hope, it grew worse. He despised,
he scorned it, and himself; but had reached the point where it
obliged him, every few days, to take to his bed.

His housemate and antagonist was no better off. The organic
disease which had been the cause — or must we say pretext —
for the untimely end to his activities within his order, made rapid
progress; even the high and thin conditions of life up here could
not give it pause. Naphta too was often confined to his bed; the
crack in his voice was more cracked than ever when he talked;
and as his fever increased he talked more, and more malignantly,
than ever. That ideal opposition to the forces of disease and death,
the forced surrender of which before the superior power of
abject nature gave Herr Settembrini such pain, was foreign to
little Naphta. His way of taking the deterioration of his physical

[ )art was not with sorrow or aversion, but with a sort of jeering
evity, an unnatural lust of combat, a mania of intellectual doubt,
denial, and distraction, that was a sore irritant to the other’s melan-
choly, and daily embittered more the intellectual quarrel between
them. Hans Castorp, of course, could only speak or those at which
he was present; but he felt tolerably sure he did not miss any; that
his presence, the presence of the bone of pedagogic contention,
was necessary, to give rise to a disputation of any magnitude.
And though he did not spare Herr Settembrini the pain of find-
ing Naphta’s gibes worth hearing, he had to admit that these were
latterly going beyond all bounds and often enough overstepping
the border-line of mental sanity.

For this sufferer possessed neither the power nor the good will
to rise above his illness; but rather saw all the world in its sign

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690

and image. In the presence of Herr Settembrini’s quivering re-
sentment, who would sooner have drawn his nursling away from
the room or even stopped his ears, Naphta declared that matter
was so bad a material that the spirit could not be realized within
it. Any effort in that direction was sheer folly; nothing could
come of it but distortion and fatuity. What had been the net re-
sult of the vainglorious French Revolution — what but the capi-
talistic bourgeois State? A magnificent outcome, truly! And one
it was hoped to improve upon, forsooth, by making the horror
universal! A world-republic! That would bring happiness, beyond
a doubt. Progress? It was the cry of the patient who constantly
changes his position thinking each new one will bring relief. The
unconfessed but secretly quite general desire for war was an-
other manifestation of the same condition. It would come, this
war, and it would be a good thing, though the consequences of it
would not be those anticipated by its authors. Naphta sneered at
the security of the bourgeois State. He took occasion to animad-
vert upon it one day in autumn as they were walking on the main
street. It came on to rain, and suddenly, as though at the word of
command, all the world put up its umbrellas. Which served
Naphta as a symbol of the cowardice and vulgar softness en-
gendered by civilized life. An incident like the going-down of
the Titamc was like the writing on the wall: it flung people back
upon primitive conditions and fears, and thus was salutary. After-
wards, of course, came the great outcry that transportation must
be safeguarded. Always the greatest outcry whenever security
was threatened. It was pathetic; and the flabby humanitarianism
of it went hand in hand with the wolfish cruelty and baseness of
the economic conflict within the bourgeois State. War, war! For
his part, he was for it; the general hankering seemed to him com-
paratively creditable.

Herr Settembrini introduced the word justice into the discus-
sion, and sought to apply this lofty principle as a preventive
measure against political catastrophes both foreign and domestic.
But as soon as he did so, Naphta, who just previously had found
the spiritual too high ever to succeed in manifesting itself in
material form, now set to work to cast doubts on, to derogate
from, that very spiritual. Justice! Was it, as a conception, worth
worshipping? Was it first-class? Was it of divine origin? God
and Nature were not even-handed, they played favourites, they
exercised the right of choice, they graced one individual with
dangerous distinction, to another granted the easy common lot.
And as for the man of action — for him justice was on the one

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691

hand a paralysing weakness, doubt itself, on the other a trumpet-
call to unscrupulous deeds. And since, in order to remain within
the moral coae, such a man had always to correct “ justice ” in
the second sense by “ justice ” in the first, where then was the
Absolute, the radical, in the conception? Moreover, one was
“ just ” according to one standard or according to the other. All
the rest was liberalism — in which nobody nowadays took any
stock. Justice, in short, was an empty husk, a stock-in-trade of
bourgeois rhetoric; to get down to business, one had always to
know which justice one was dealing with: the one which would
give a man his own, or the one which would give everybody
alike.

Out of his shoreless stream of words, we have hit upon these
in illustration of the way he sought to confound the reason. But
even worse was the way he talked about science — in which he
did not believe. He did not believe, he said, in it, because it was
permissible to exercise choice, whether to believe in it or not.
It was a belief, like any other, only worse, stupider than any;
the word science was the expression of the silliest realism, which
did not blush to take at their face value the more than dubious
reflections of objects in the human intellect; to pass them cur-
rent, and to shape out of them the sorriest, most spiritless dogma
ever imposed upon humanity. Was not the idea of a material world
existing by and for itself the most laughable of all self-contradic-
tions? But the modem natural sciences, as dogma, rested upon the
metaphysical postulate that time, space, and causality, the forms
of cognition, in which all phenomena are enacted, are actual con-
ditions, existing independently of our knowledge of them. This
monistic position was an insult to the spirit. Space, time, and
causality — in monistic language, evolution: here was the central
dogma of a free-thinking, atheistical, bastard religion, by virtue
of which one thought to supersede the first book of Moses, and
oppose the pure light of knowledge to a stultifying fable — as
though Haeckel had been present at the creation! Empiricism!
The universal ether — based on exact knowledge, of course? The
atom, that pretty mathematical joke of the smallest, the indivisible
particle of matter — its existence had been demonstrated, undoubt-
edly? The doctrine of the illimitability of time and space was,
surely, based on experience? In fact, anybody with a very little
logic could make very merry over the theory of the endlessness
and the reality of space and time; and could arrive at the result
of — nothing: that is, at the view that realism is your true nihilism.
How? Quite simply; since the relation to infinity of any size you

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chose to postulate was as zero. There was no size to the infinite;
in eternity was neither duration nor change. In the spatially in-
finite, since every distance was, mathematically, as zero, there
could not even be two points close together, to say nothing of two
bodies, or of motion as such. He, Naphta, stated this, in order to
counter the arrogance of materialistic science, which gave out
for absolute knowledge its astronomical quackery, its windbag-
gery about the universe. Pitiable human kind, that by a vain mus-
tering of meaningless figures have let themselves be driven to a
conclusion of their own insignificance, to the destruction of any
emphasis upon their own importance! It might be tolerable that
human reason and knowledge should confine themselves to the
terrestrial, and within this sphere treat as actual their experience
with the subjective object. But let them go beyond that, let them
once attempt to grapple with the riddle of eternity, and invent
so-called cosmologies and cosmogonies, and it was beyond a jest;
the presumptuousness of it reached a climax. What blasphemous
rubbish, to reckon the “ distance ” of any star from the earth in
terms of trillions of kilometres, or in light years, and to imagine
that with such a parade of figures the human spirit was gaining an
insight into the essence of infinity and eternity — whereas infinity
had absolutely nothing whatever to do with size, nor yet eternity
with duration or distance in time; they had nothing in common
with natural science, being, as they were, the abrogation of that
which we called nature! Verily, the simplicity of a child, who
thinks the stars are holes in the tent of heaven, through which the
eternal brightness shines, was a thousand times more to his mind
than the whole hollow, preposterous, overweening drivel of mo-
nistic science on the subject of the “ universe.’’

Settembrini asked him if that about the stars represented his
own personal belief. He answered that on this point he reserved
to himself the freedom, and the humble-mindedness, of doubt.
From which again it might be seen what he understood by free-
dom, and whither such a conception of it might lead. If only
Herr Settembrini had not ground for the fear that Hans Castorp
found all this highly worth listening to!

Naphta’s malicious wit lay in ambush, to spy out the weak-
nesses of the nature-compelling forces of progress, and convict
its standard-bearers and pioneers of human relapses into the ir-
rational. Aviators, flying men, he said, were mostly a bad lot,
untrustworthy, above all exceedingly superstitious. They carried
mascots on board with them, pigs and ravens and such-like; they
spat three times in different directions, they wore the gloves of

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lucky flyers. How could such primitive unreason be reconciled
with the conception of the universe which underlay their calling?
The contradiction diverted him, he held forth upon it in extenso .
But such illustrations of Naphta’s malevolence are without num-
ber — let us abandon them for the all-too-pertinent tale we have
to tell.

One afternoon in February, the gentlemen arranged an ex-
cursion to Monstein, some hour and a half from the village by
sleigh. The party consisted of Naphta and Settembrini, Hans
Castorp, Ferge and Wehsal. In two one-horse sleighs, Hans Ca-
storp with the humanist, Naphta with Ferge and Wehsal, the last-
named sitting with the coachman, they left the greengrocer’s at
about three o’clock in the afternoon, and well bundled up drove
off to the friendly music of bells, that sounds so pleasant through
still, snowy air. They took the right-hand road, past Frauenkirch
and Glaris, southwards. Storm-clouds pushed up rapidly from
that direction, and soon the only streak of blue in the sky lay
behind them, over the Rhatikon. The cold was severe, the moun-
tains misty. The road, a narrow, railingless shelf between moun-
tain wall and abyss, rose steeply into the fir forests. They went at
a foot-pace. Coasting-parties rode downhill toward them, and
had to dismount as they met. Sometimes from round a bend in the
road would come the clear and warning sound of other bells;
sleighs driven tandem would be approaching and some skill was
required to pass in the narrow road. Near their destination was a
beautiful view of a rocky stretch of the Ziigenstrasse. They disen-
tangled themselves from their wraps and climbed out in front of
the little Monstein inn, that called itself a Kurhaus, and went on
foot a few steps further to get the view south-west toward the
Stulsergrat. The gigantic wall, three thousand metres high, was
shrouded in vapours. Only one jagged tooth reared itself heaven-
ward out of the mist — superterrestrial, Valhallan, far and faint
and awesomely inaccessible. Hans Castorp admired it immensely,
and summoned the others to follow suit. It was he who with
due respect dubbed it inaccessible — and afforded Herr Settem-
brini the chance of saying that this particular rock was consider-
ably frequented. And, in general, that there were few spots where
man had not set his foot. That was rather tall talk, retorted Naphta;
and mentioned Mount Everest, which to date had icily refused
to surrender to man’s importunity, and seemed likely to continue
to do so. The humanist was put out. They returned to the Kur-
haus, before which stood other unharnessed sleighs beside their
own.

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694

One might have lodgment here; in the upper story were num-
bered rooms, and on the same floor the dining-room, furnished in
peasant style, and well heated. They ordered a bite from the oblig-
ing landlady: coffee, honey, white bread and “ pear bread,” a sort
of sweetmeat, the speciality of the place; red wine was sent out
to the coachman. At the other tables were sitting Swiss and Dutch
visitors.

We should have been glad to relate that our friends, being
warmed and cheered by the hot and excellent coffee, proceeded
to elevating discourse. But the statement would be inexact. For the
discourse, after the first few words, took the form of a mono-
logue by Naphta, and even as a monologue was conducted in a
manner singularly offensive, from the social point of view; the
ex-Jesuit flatly turning his back on Herr Settembrini, completely
ignoring the other two gentlemen, and devoting himself to Hans
Castorp, to whom he held forth with marked affability.

It would have been hard to give a name to the subject of this
discourse, to which Hans Castorp listened, nodding from time to
time as though in partial agreement. We may presume that it was
scarcely a connected argument, but rather moved loosely in the
realms of the intellectual; in general pointing out, with an accom-
panying comment which we may characterize as cheerless, the
equivocal nature of the spiritual phenomena of life, the changeful
aspects and contentious unserviceability of the great abstract con-
ceptions man has based on them, and indicating in what a rainbow-
hued garment the Absolute appears upon this earth.

At any rate, we might take as the nucleus of his lecture the prob-
lem of freedom, which he treated in the sense of confusion. He
spoke, among other matters, of the Romantic movement, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and its fascinating double
meaning; pointing out how before it the conceptions of reaction
and revolution went down, in so far as they were not incorporated
in a new and higher one. For it was of course utterly absurd to
try to associate the conception of revolution solely with progress
and victoriously advancing enlightenment. The Romantic move-
ment in Europe had been above all a movement of liberation: anti-
classic, anti-academic, directed against French classicism, the old
school of reason, whose defenders it derided as “powdered
wigs.”

And Naphta began upon wars of liberation, talked of Fichtean
enthusiasms, of a singing, frenzied popular uprising against that
unbearable tyranny, as which, unfortunately — he tittered — free-
dom, that is to say the revolutionary idea, had taken shape. Very

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droll it was: singing loudly, the people had set out to shatter the
revolutionary tyranny for the benefit of reactionary princely
authority — and this they did in the name of freedom.

The youthful listener would perceive the distinction, even the
opposition, between foreign and domestic freedom; also note the
ticklish question, which unfreedom was soonest — he he! — which
least compatible with a nation’s honour.

Freedom, indeed, was a conception rather romantic than il-
luminating. Like romanticism, it inevitably limited the human im-
pulse to expansion; and the passionate individualism in them both
had similar repressive results. Individualistic thirst for freedom
had produced the historic and romantic cult of nationalism, which
was warlike in character, and was called sinister by humanitarian
liberalism, though the latter also preached individualism, only the
other way about. Individualism was romantic-mediaeval, in its
conviction of the infinite, the cosmic, importance of the single
human being, whence was deduced the doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul, the geocentric doctrine, and astrology. But on
the other hand, individualism was an aspect of liberalizing human-
ism, which inclined to anarchy and would in any case protect the
precious individual from being offered up on the altar of the gen-
eral. Such was individualism, in its two aspects — all things unto
all men.

One had to admit that the freedom -pathos had produced the
most brilliant enemies of freedom, the most brilliant knights-errant
of tradition at war with irreverent, destructive progress. Naphta
cited Arndt, who cursed industrialism and glorified the nobility;
and Gorres, the author of Christian mysticism. Perhaps his hearer
would ask what mysticism had to do with progress? Had it not
been anti-scholastic, anti-dogmatic, anti-priestly? One was, in-
deed, compelled to recognize in the Hierarchy a force making for
freedom: had it not set limits to the boundless pretensions of
monarchy? But the mysticism of the end of the Middle Ages had
shown its liberal character as forerunner of the Reformation —
he he! — which in its turn had been an inextricable and tangled
weave, a weft of freedom with a warp of medievalism.

Oh, yes, what Luther did possessed the merit of demonstrating
crudely and vividly the dubious character of the deed itself, the
deed in general. Did Naphta’s listener know what a deed was? A
deed, for example, was the murder of Councillor Kotzebue by
Sand, the theological student and member of the Burschenschaft .
What was it, to speak the language of criminology, had put the
weapon into the hand of young Sand? Enthusiasm for freedom, of

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696

course. But looked at more nearly, it had rather been moral fanati-
cism, and the hatred of light foreign ways. Kotzebue had been in
the employ of Russia, in the service of the Holy Alliance, and thus
Sand’s shot had presumably been fired for freedom; which again
declined into improbability by virtue of the circumstance that
there were several Jesuits among his nearest friends. In short,
whatever the “ deed ” might be, it was in any case a poor way of
making one’s meaning clear; as also it contributed little toward
the clarification of intellectual problems.

“ Might I take the liberty or inquiring if you will be bringing
these scurrilities of yours to an end before long? ”

Herr Settembrini put the question in withering tones. He had
been drumming on the table, and twisting his moustaches. But
now his patience was exhausted. It was too much. He sat upright,
and more than upright, he sat, so to speak, on tiptoe, for only his
shanks touched the chair; and with flashing black eyes faced the
enemy, who turned toward him in assumed surprise.

“ What, may I ask, was the expression you were pleased to use? ”
Naphta countered.

was pleased to say,” said the Italian, swallowing, “I am
pleased to say, that I am resolved to prevent you from continuing
to molest a defenceless youth with your equivocations.”

“ I invite you, sir, to take heed to your words.”

“The reminder, sir, is unnecessary. I am accustomed to take
heed to my words. They will precisely fit the fact if I say that your
way of misleading unsettled youth, of dissipating and undermining
his moral and intellectual powers, is infamous, and cannot receive
a stronger chastisement than it merits.”

With the word infamous, Settembrini struck the table with the
flat of his hand, and pushing back his chair, stood up. It was a
signal for the rest to do likewise. People looked across from the
other tables — or, rather, from one, as the Swiss guests had left
and only the Dutchmen remained, listening in amazement.

At our table they all stood there stiffly: Hans Castorp and the
two antagonists, with Ferge and Wehsal opposite. All five were

f )ale and wide-eyed, with twitching lips. Might not the three on-
ookers have made an effort to calm the troubled waters, to lighten
the atmosphere with a jest, or bring affairs to a peaceful con-
clusion with some kind of human appeal? They did not try. The
prevailing temper prevented them. They stood, all trembling, with
hands that clenched involuntarily into fists. Even A. K. Ferge, to
whom all elevated thoughts were foreign, who disclaimed from its
inception any power to measure the seriousness of the dispute —

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697

even he was convinced that this was a quarrel a outrance , and that
there was nothing to do but let it take its course. His good-natured
moustaches worked violently up and down.

There was a stillness, in which could be heard the gnashing of
Naphta’s teeth. To Hans Castorp, this was an experience like the
one with Wiedemann’s hair. He had supposed it to be a figure of
speech, something which did not actually occur. Yet here was
Naphta, and in the silence his teeth could be heard to grate; a
horribly unpleasant, a wild, incredible sound, which yet evinced a
self-control equally fearsome, for he did not storm, but said in
quite a low voice, though with a sort of cackling half-laugh:
“ Infamous? Chastisement? Ah, so the bleating sheep have taken
to butting? Have we driven the policemen of civilization so far
that they draw their weapons? That is a triumph; won in passing,
I must say, considering what mild provocation sufficed to summon
to arms the guardians of our morality! As for the rest, sir, it will
follow in due course. The chastisement too. I hope your civilian
principles will not prevent you from knowing what you owe me
— else I shall be forced to put these principles to a test that — ”

Herr Settembrini drew himself up; the movement was so ex-
pressive that Naphta went on: “ Ah, I see, that will not be neces-
sary. I am in your way, you are in mine — good. We will transfer
the settlement of our differences to a suitable place. For the mo-
ment, only this: your sentimental solicitude for the scholastic
interpretation of the Jacobin Revolution envisages a pedagogic
crime in my manner of leading youth to doubt, of throwing cate-
gories to the winds, of robbing ideas of their academic dignity.
And your anxiety is justified; for it happens on account of your
humanity, be assured of that — happens and is done. For your hu-
manity is to-day nothing but a tail end, a stale classicistic survival,
a spiritual ennui; it is yawning its head off, while the new Revo-
lution, our Revolution, my dear sir, is coming on apace to give it
its quietus. We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the
most up-to-date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of
doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical scep-
sis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed
Terror of which the time has need. This for your instruction, and
my justification. For the rest we must turn over the page. You will
hear from me.”

“ And you will find a hearing, sir,” Settembrini called after
him, as the Jesuit left his place and hurried to the hat-stand to
seek his cloak. Then the Freemason let himself fall back with a
thud on his hard chair, and pressed both hands to his heart.

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698

“ Distruttore! Cane arabbiato! Bisogna ammazzarlo! ” burst
from him, pantingly.

The others still stood at the table. Ferge’s moustaches went on
wagging up and down. Wehsal’s jaw was set hard awry. Hans
Castorp was imitating his grandfather’s famous attitude, for his
neck was all a-tremble. They were thinking how little they had
expected such an outcome as this to their excursion. And all of
them, even Herr Settembrini, felt how fortunate it was that they
had come in two sleighs. It simplified the return. But afterwards?

“ He challenged you,” Hans Castorp said, heavily.

“ Undoubtedly,” answered Herr Settembrini, and cast a glance
upward at his neighbour, only to turn away again at once and
lean his head on his hand.

“ Shall you take it up? ” Wehsal wanted to know.

“ Can you ask? ” answered Settembrini, and looked a moment
at him too. “ Gentlemen,” he said then, and sat up, having brought
himself again to perfect control, “ I regret the outcome of our
pleasure excursion; but in life one must be prepared to reckon
with such events. Theoretically I disapprove of the duel, I am of a
law-abiding temper. In practice, however, it is another matter.
There are situations where — quarrels that — in short, I am at this
man’s service. It is well that in my youth I fenced a little. A few
hours’ practice will make my wrist supple again. Shall we go? The
rendezvous will have to be made. I assume our gentleman will al-
ready have ordered them to put to the horses.”

Hans Castorp had moments, during the drive home, and after-
wards, when he became giddy in contemplation of what lay before
them. Still more, when it subsequently appeared that Naphta
would not hear of cut and thrust, but insisted on a duel with pistols.
And he, as the injured party, had the choice of weapons. There
were moments, we say, when Hans Castorp was able, to a certain
extent, to free himself from embroilment with the prevailing tem-
per and tell himself that all this was madness, and must be pre-
vented.

“ If even there were a real injury,” he cried, in discussion with
Herr Settembrini, Ferge and Wehsal — Naphta, on the way home,
had invited the last-named to be his second, and he acted as inter-
mediary between the factions. “ An affront like that, purely civil-
ian and social! If one of them had dragged the other’s good name
in the dirt, if it was a question of a woman, or anything else really
momentous, that you could take hold of, so that you felt there was
no possibility of reconciliation! For such cases the duel is the last
resort; and when honour is satisfied and the affair has gone off with

HYSTERICA PASSIO

699

credit to all parties, and the antagonists part friends, as they say,
why, then it seems a very good arrangement, quite useful and
practical, too, in complicated cases. But what was it he did? I
don’t mean to stand up for him, I only ask what the insult con-
sisted in. He threw the categories to the winds, as you say, and
robbed conceptions of their academic dignity. And you felt your-
self insulted thereby — justifiably, let us assume — ”

“ Assume? ” repeated Herr Settembrini, and looked at him.

“ Oh, justifiably, quite justifiably! He affronted you. But he did
not insult you. There is a difference. Permit me to say so. It was a
matter of abstractions, an intellectual disagreement. On intellec-
tual topics he could affront you, perhaps, but not insult you. That
is axiomatic, any court of honour would tell you the same, I swear
to God they would. And so neither was your answer to him,
about infamy and chastisement an insult; because it was in an in-
tellectual sense, the whole affair was in the intellectual sphere, and
has nothing to do with the personal, and an insult can only be per-
sonal. The intellectual can never be personal, that is the conclu-
sion and the explanation of the axiom, and therefore — ”

“ You err, my friend,” answered Settembrini, with closed eyes.
“ You err first of all in the assumption that the intellectual cannot
assume a personal character. You should not think that,” he said,
and smiled a peculiarly fine and painful smile. “ The point at which
you go wrong is in your estimation of the things of the mind, in
general. You obviously think they are too feeble to engender con-
flicts and passions comparable for sternness with those real life
brings forth, the only issue of which can be the appeal to force.
AW incontro! The abstract, the refined-upon, the ideal, is at the
same time the Absolute — it is sternness itself; it contains within it
more possibilities of deep and radical hatred, of unconditional and
irreconcilable hostility, than any relation of social life can. It
astonishes you to hear that it leads, far more directly and inexor-
ably than these, to radical intimacy, to grips, to the duel and actual
physical struggle? The duel, my friend, is not an “ arrangement,”
like another. It is the ultimate, the return to a state of nature,
slightly mitigated by regulations which are chivalrous in charac-
ter, but extremely superficial. The essential nature of the thing re-
mains the primitive, the physical struggle; and however civilized
a man is, it is his duty to be ready for such a contingency, which
may any day arise. Whoever is unable to offer his person, his arm,
his blood, in the service of the ideal, is unworthy of it; however
intellectualized, it is the duty of a man to remain a man.”

Thus was Hans Castorp put in his place. What should he answer?

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700

He preserved a depressed and brooding silence. Herr Settembrini
had spoken with composure, logically. But his words sounded
strange in his mouth. His thoughts were not his own thoughts, the
idea of the duel was one he would never have come upon of him-
self. He had only taken it over from the terroristic little Naphta.
And what he said was but an expression of the strength of that
prevailing temper, whose tool and underling Herr Settembrini’s
fine understanding had become. What? The intellectual, simply
because it was so stem, must lead relentlessly to the animal, to the
issue of physical combat? Hans Castorp set himself against it — or
at least he tried, only to discover, in affright, that even he was
powerless to do so. In him too theprevailing temper was strong,
he was not the man to win free. There was an area of his brain
where memory showed him Wiedemann and Sonnenschein grap-
pled like animals; and with horror he understood that at the end
of everything only the physical remained, only the teeth and the
nails. Yes, they must fight; only thus could be assured even that
small mitigation of the primitive by the rules of chivalry. Hans
Castorp offered to act as Herr Settembrini’s second.

The offer was refused. No, it was not fitting, it would not do,
he was told: first by Herr Settembrini himself, with that fine, rue-
ful smile; then, after brief consideration, by Ferge and Wehsal,
who also, without specified reason, found it would not do for
Hans Castorp to assist at the encounter in this capacity. As a neu-
tral party, perhaps — the presence of such an one was a part of the
prescribed chivalrous mitigations — he might be present. Even
Naphta, through his second, let it be known that this was his view,
and Hans Castorp was satisfied. As witness, or as neutral party,
in either case he was able to exert his influence upon the details of
the procedure now to be discussed and settled — an influence
which proved necessary indeed.

For Naphta’s proposals went beyond all bounds. He demanded
a distance of five paces, and, if necessary, three exchanges of fire.
These insane conditions he sent by Wehsal the veiy evening of
the quarrel; Wehsal had succeeded in fully identifying himself
with Naphta’s mad ideas, and partly as representative, but cer-
tainly also in accordance with his personal taste, obstinately in-
sisted upon them. Settembrini, of course, found nothing in them
to object to. But Ferge, as second, and the neutral Hans Castorp,
were beside themselves, and the latter fell heavily upon the
wretched Wehsal. Was he not ashamed to bring forward such
frantic and inhuman ideas to meet a case where the injury was
purely abstract, not sensible at all? As though pistols were not bad

HYSTERICA PASSIO

701

enough, that they must add these murderous conditions! Where
did the chivalrous mitigation come in? He might as well suggest
firing across a handkerchief! He, Wehsal, was not going to be
fired at five paces off — it was easy for him to be blood-thirsty!
And so forth. Wehsal shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say
that precisely that extreme case was a contingency; thus reducing
to silence Hans Castorp, who was inclined to forget the fact. But
he succeeded, during the negotiations of the following day, in
fixing the number of shots at one instead of three, and in dealing
with the question of distance so as to arrange that the combatants
should be placed fifteen paces apart, and have the right to advance
five paces before firing. But in exchange for these concessions, he
had to promise that no attempt should be made at reconciling the
parties. — It was discovered that none of them had any pistols.

Herr Albin had. Besides the shiny little revolver with which he
loved to frighten the ladies, he had a pair of officer’s pistols from
Belgium in a velvet case: Browning automatics, with brown
wooden butts holding the magazine, blued steel mechanism and
shining barrels, with crisp little sights atop. Hans Castorp had seen
them m Herr Albin’s room, and against his own convictions, out
of sheer compulsion from the prevailing temper, offered to bor-
row them. He made no concealment of the purpose they were to
serve, but appealing to the young swaggerer’s honour, readily
swore him to secrecy. Herr Albin instructed him how to load the
pistols, and they tested both weapons with blank shots in the open.

All this took time: two days and three nights intervened be-
tween the quarrel and the meeting. The place was of Hans Ca-
storp’s choosing: that picturesque blue-blossoming scene of his
retreat and stock-taking activities. On this spot the affair should
take place, on the third morning, as soon as there should be light
enough to see. The evening before, rather late, it occurred to Hans
Castorp, by this time thoroughly wrought up, that there ought to
be a physician present.

He immediately advised with Ferge, who foresaw great diffi-
culty. Rhadamanthus himself was an old corps-student; but it
would be impossible to ask the head of the establishment to act in
an illegal affair, and between patients to boot. It was scarcely likely
a doctor could be found who would be willing to lend a hand in
a pistol duel between two severe cases. As for Krokowski, for all
his brain, it was a question whether the technique of wound treat-
ment would be his strong point.

Wehsal, who was present, announced that Naphta had already
expressed himself to the effect that he wanted no doctor. He was

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702

not going to the meeting-place to be salved and bandaged, but
to lay about him, and that in grim earnest. It sounded a sinister
declaration enough; but Hans Castorp tried to interpret it as mean-
ing that Naphta felt there would be no need of a physician. Ferge
too bore back a message from Herr Settembrini, that they might
dispose of the question, it did not interest him. It was thus not un-
reasonable to hope that both antagonists had resolved not to let it
come to the shedding of blood. Two nights had passed since the
quarrel, and there would be yet a third. Time cools, time clarifies;
no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course
of hours. In the early dawn, standing weapon in hand, neither of
the combatants would be the same man as on the evening of the
quarrel. They would be going through it, if at all, mechanically,
in obedience to the demands of honour, not, as they would have
at first, of their own free will, desire, and conviction; and such a
denial of their actual selves in favour of their past ones, it must
somehow be possible to prevent.

Hans Castorp’s reflections proved in the event not far from justi-
fied; but justified in a manner unlike anything he could have
dreamed. So far as Herr Settembrini was concerned, he was en-
tirely right. But had he suspected in what direction Leo Naphta
would have altered his intentions beforehand, or at the decisive
moment, not even the prevailing temper, of which all this was the
outcome, could have ariven him to let the affair go on.

At seven o’clock next morning, the sun showed no sign of
making an appearance above the mountain; yet day was dawning,
difficultly, in a reek of mist, as Hans Castorp, after a restless night,
left the Berghof to go to the rendezvous. The maidservants clean-
ing the hall looked after him in wonder. The house door, however,
was unbolted; Ferge and Wehsal, alone or in company, had un-
doubtedly passed that threshold, the one to accompany Settem-
brini, the other Naphta, to the field of battle. He, Hans, went
alone, his capacity of neutral not permitting him to attach himself
to either party.

He moved mechanically, under the compulsion of honour,
under pressure from the prevailing temper. It was necessary for
him to be present at the encounter — that went without saying.
Impossible to stop away and await the event in bed, in the first place
because — but he did not finish his firstly, but hastened on to sec-
ondly, which was that one could not leave the thing to itself. Thus
far, thank Heaven, nothing dreadful had happened; and nothing
dreadful need happen, it was really highly improbable that any-
thing would. They had had to get up and dress by artificial light.

HYSTERICA PASSIO

703

and breakfastless, in the bitter frost, betake themselves to the ap-
pointed spot. But once there, under the influence of his, Hans Ca-
storp’s presence, the whole thing would surely be turned aside,
work out for good — in some manner not yet foreseen, and best
left unguessed at, since experience showed that even the simplest
events always worked out differently from what one would have
thought beforehand.

All which notwithstanding, this was the unpleasantest morning
within his memory. He felt stale and seedy, his teeth tended to
chatter; in the depth of his being he was prone to mistrust his own
powers of self-control. These were such singular times. The lady
from Minsk, who shattered her health on the point of a quarrel
with her corsetiere , the raging schoolboy, Wiedemann and Son-
nenschein, the Polish ear-boxes — drearily he thought of them.
Simply he could not picture two people, before his eyes, in his
presence, standing up to shoot at each other, spill each other’s
blood. But when he remembered what it had come to, what he had
actually seen, in the case of Wiedemann and Sonnenschein, then
he misdoubted himself, misdoubted all the world, and shivered in
his fur jacket; though at the same time a feeling of the extraor-
dinariness, the abnormality of all this, heightened by the quality
of the early morning air, began now surprisingly to elevate and
stimulate him.

In the dusk of that slow-brightening dawn, moved by such
mingled and fluctuating hopes and feelings, he mounted the narrow
path along the slope, from the village end of the bob-run; arrived
at the deeply drifted woods, crossed the little wooden bridge over
the course, and followed a way among the tree-trunks trodden by
feet in the snow rather than cleared by any shovel. He walked fast,
and very soon overtook Settembrini and Ferge, the latter holding
the case of pistols with one hand under his cloak. Hans Castorp
did not hesitate to join them, and, coming abreast, was aware of
Naphta and Wehsal, only a few paces in advance.

‘^Cold morning; at least eighteen degrees of frost,” said he, in
the purity of his intentions, but started at the frivolity of his own
remark, and added: “ Gentlemen, I am convinced — ”

The others were silent. Ferge’s good-natured moustache wagged
up and down. After a while Settembrini came to a pause, took Hans
Castorp’s hand, laid his own other one upon it, and spoke.

“ My friend, I will not kill. I will not. I will offer myself to his
bullet, that is all that honour can demand. But I will not kill, you
may trust me.”

He released the young man and walked on. Hans Castorp was

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

deeply moved. After a few steps he said: “ That is splendid of

you, Herr Settembrini. Now — on the other side — if he, for his
part — ”

But Herr Settembrini shook his head. Hans Castorp reflected
that if one party did not fire, the other would surely not be able
to bring himself to do it either; and his heart perceptibly lightened.
Everything was going well, his predictions seemed about to be
verified.

They crossed the foot-bridge over the gorge, where the water-
fall hung stiff and silent. Naphta and Wehsal were walking up and
down before the bench now upholstered with thick white cushions
of snow: the bench on which Hans Castorp, lying to await the end
of his nose-bleeding, had experienced such lively memories out of
the distant past. Naphta was smoking a cigarette, and Hans Ca-
storp questioned himself if he should do the same, but found he
had no faintest desire. It seemed to him an affectation in the other.
With the pleasure he always felt in these surroundings, he looked
about at them in their icy state and found them not less beautiful
than in the season of their blue blossom-time. The fir that jutted
so boldly into the picture had its trunk and branches laden with
snow.

44 Good-morning,” he said cheerily, with the idea of lending the
scene a note of the natural, which should help to dissipate its evil
bearing — but was out of luck, for nobody answered. The greet-
ings consisted in silent bows, so stiff as to be almost imperceptible.
However, he was resolved to convert the energy from his walk,
the splendid warmth engendered by brisk motion in the cold air,
at once and without delay to good purpose; and so began:
44 Gentlemen, I am convinced — ”

44 You will develop your convictions another time,” Naphta cut
him off icily. “ The weapons, if you please,” he added, in the same
arrogant tone. Hans Castorp, thus slapped on the mouth, had to
look on while Ferge brought out the fatal etui from beneath his
cloak, and handed one pistol to Wehsal to pass on to Naphta. Set-
tembrini took the other from Ferge’s hand. The latter in a murmur
asked them to make a space, and began measuring off the ground.
He marked off the outer limits by lines dug with his heel in the
snow, the inner by means of two canes, his own and Settembrini’s.

Our good-natured sufferer, what sort of work was this for him?
Hans Castorp could not trust his eyes. Ferge was long-legged, he
took proper strides, the fifteen paces, at least, were a goodly dis-
tance — but the cursed canes, alas, were not far apart at all. Cer-
tainly, he was acting in all honour; but what a grip the prevailing

for his

HYSTERICA PASSIO JO$

temper had upon him, to enforce him to a procedure so monstrous
in its significance!

Naphta had flung his fur cloak on the ground, so that its mink
lining showed. Pistol in hand, he moved to one of the outer bar-
riers directly it was established, and while Ferge was still marking
off the other. When that was fixed, Settembrini took up his posi-
tion, his shabby fur coat open in front. Hans Castorp wrenched
himself out of a stealing paralysis, and flung himself once more
into the breach.

“ Gentlemen,” he said, choking, “ don’t be hasty. It is my duty,
after all — ”

“ Silence! ” cried out Naphta sharply. “ Give the signal.”

But no one gave the signal. It had not been arranged for. Some-
body, of course, ought to say: “ Fire! ” but it had not been realized
that it was the office of the neutral party to give the dread sign —
at least, it had not been mentioned. Hans Castorp remained silent,
and nobody spoke in his place.

“ We will begin,” Naphta declared. “ Come forward, sir, and
fire,” he called across to his antagonist, and began himself to ad-
vance, holding the pistol at arm’s length, directed at Settembrini

— an unbelievable sight. Settembrini did the same. At the third step

— the other, without firing, was already at the barrier — the Italian
raised the pistol very high, and fired. The shot awaked repeated
echoes, the mountains flung back the sound and the rebound, the
valley reverberated with the shock, until it seemed to Hans Ca-
storp people must come running.

“You nred in the air,” Naphta said collectedly to Settembrini,
letting his own weapon sink.

Settembrini answered: “ I fired where it pleased me to fire.”

“ You will fire again! ”

“ I have no such intention. It is your turn.” Herr Settembrini,
lifting his face toward the sky, had turned himself somewhat side-
wise to his opponent. It was touching to realize that he had heard
one should not offer one’s breast full face to an opponent’s fire;
and that he was acting according to the regulations.

“ Coward! ” Naphta shrieked; and with this human shriek con-
fessing that it takes more courage to fire than be fired upon, raised
his pistol in a way that had nothing to do with duelling, and shot
himself in the head.

Piteous, unforgettable sight! He staggered, or tottered, while
the mountains played ball with the sound of his shot, a few steps
backward, flinging out his legs jerkily; executed a right turn with
his whole body, and fell with his face in the snow.

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706

They all stood a moment rigid. Settembrini, hurling his weapon
from him, was first at Naphta’s side.

“ Infelice! ” he cried. “ Che cosa fai , per Vamor di Dio? ”

Hans Castorp helped him turn the body over. They saw the
blackened red hole m the temple. They looked into a face that
one would do well to cover with the silk handkerchief, one corner
of which hung out of Naphta’s breast pocket.

The Thunderbolt

Seven years Hans Castorp remained amongst those up here. Par-
tisans of the decimal system might prefer a round number, though
seven is a good handy figure in its way, picturesque, with a savour
of the mythical; one might even say that it is more filling to the
spirit than a dull academic half-dozen. Our hero had sat at all
seven of the tables in the dining-room, at each about a year, the last
being the “ bad ” Russian table, and his company there two Ar-
menians, two Finns, a Bokharian, and a Kurd. He sat at the “ bad ”
Russian table, wearing a recent little blond beard, vaguish in cut,
which we are disposed to regard as a sign of philosophic indiffer-
ence to his own outer man. Yes, we will even go further, and relate
his carelessness of his person to* the carelessness of the rest of the
world regarding him. The authorities had ceased to devise him
distractions. There was the morning inquiry, as to whether he had
slept well, itself purely rhetorical and summary; and that aside,
the Hofrat did not address him with any particularity; while
Adriatica von Mylendonk — she had, at the time of which we
write, a stye in a perfect state of maturity — did so seldom, in fact
scarcely ever. They let him be. He was like the scholar in the
peculiarly happy state of never being “ asked ” any more; of
never having a task, of being left to sit, since the fact of his being
left behind is established, and no one troubles about him further
— an orgiastic kind of freedom, but we ask ourselves whether, in-
deed, freedom ever is or can be of any other kind. At all events,
here was one on whom the authorities no longer needed to keep
an eye, being assured that no wild or defiant resolves were ripen-
ing in his breast. He was “ settled,” established. Long ago he had
ceased to know where else he should go, long ago he had ceased
to be capable of a resolve to return to the flat-land. Did not the
very fact that he was sitting at the “ bad ” Russian table witness a
certain abandon? No slightest adverse comment upon the said
table being intended by the remark! Among all the seven, no
single one could be said to possess definite tangible advantages or

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707

disadvantages. We make bold to say that here was a democracy
of tables, all honourable alike. The same tremendous meals were
served here as at the others; Rhadamanthus himself occasionally
folded his huge hands before the doctor’s place at the head; and
the nations who ate there were respectable members of the human
race, even though they boasted no Latin, and were not exag-
geratedly dainty at their feeding.

Time — yet not the time told by the station clock, moving
with a jerk five minutes at once, but rather the time of a tiny
timepiece, the hand of which one cannot see move, or the time
the grass keeps when it grows, so unobservably one would say
it does not grow at all, until some morning the fact is undeni-
able — time, a line composed of a succession of dimensionless
points (and now we are sure the unhappy deceased Naphta would
interrupt us to ask how dimensionless points, no matter how
many of them, can constitute a line), time, we say, had gone
on, in its furtive, unobservable, competent way, bringing about
changes. For example, the boy Teddy was discovered, one day —
not one single day, of course, but only rather indefinitely from
which day — to be a boy no longer. No more might ladies take
him on their laps, when, on occasion, he left his bed, changed
his pyjamas for his knickerbockers, and came downstairs. Im-
perceptibly that leaf had turned. Now, on such occasions, he
took them- on his instead, and both sides were as well, or even
better pleased. He was become a youth; scarcely could we say
he had bloomed into a youth; but he had shot up. Hans Castorp
had not noticed it happening, and then, suddenly, he did. The
shooting-up, however, did not suit the lad Teddy; the temporal
became him not. In his twenty-first year he departed this life;
dying of the disease for which he had proved receptive; and they
cleansed and fumigated after him. The fact makes little claim
upon our emotions, the change being so slight between his one
state and his next.

But there were other deaths, and more important; deaths down
in the flat-land, which touched, or would once have touched, our
hero more nearly. We are thinking of the recent decease of old
Consul Tienappel, Hans’s great-uncle and foster-father, of faded
memory. He had carefully avoided unfavourable conditions of
atmospheric pressure, and left it to Uncle James to stultify him-
self; yet an apoplexy carried him off after all; and a telegram,
couched in brief but feeling terms — feeling more for the departed
than for the recipient of the wire — was one day brought to
Hans Castorp where he lay in his excellent chair. He acquired

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708

some black-bordered note-paper, and wrote to his uncle-cousins:
he, the doubly, now, so to say, triply orphaned, expressed him-
self as being the more distressed over the sad news, for that cir-
cumstances forbade him interrupting his present sojourn even to
pay his great-uncle the last respects.

To speak of sorrow would be disingenuous. Yet in these days
Hans Castorp’s eyes did wear an expression more musing than
common. This death, which' could at no time have moved him
greatly, and after the lapse of years could scarcely move him at
all, meant the sundering of yet another bond with the life be-
low; gave to what he rightly called his freedom the final seal.
In the time of which we speak, all contact between him and the
flat-land had ceased. He sent no letters thither, and received none
thence. He no longer ordered Maria Mancini, having found a
brand up here to his liking, to which he was now as faithful as
once to his old-time charmer: a brand that must have carried
even a polar explorer through the sorest and severest trials; armed
with which, and no other solace, Hans Castorp could lie and
bear it out indefinitely, as one does at the sea-shore. It was an
especially well cured brand, with the best leaf wrapper, named
“ Light of Asia ”; rather more compact than Maria, mouse-grey
in colour with a blue band, very tractable and mild, and evenly
consuming to a snow-white ash, that held its shape and still showed
traces of the veining on the wrapper; so evenly and regularly that
it might have served the smoker for an hour-glass, and did so, at
need, for he no longer carried a timepiece. His watch had fallen
from his night-table; it did not go, and he had neglected to have
it regulated, perhaps on the same grounds as had made him long
since give up using a calendar, whether to keep track of the day,
or to look out an approaching feast: the grounds, namely, of his
“ freedom.” Thus he did honour to his abiding-everlasting, his
walk by the ocean of time, the hermetic enchantment to which
he had proved so extraordinarily susceptible that it had become
the fundamental adventure of his life, in which all the alchemisti-
calprocesses of his simple substance had found full play.

Thus he lay; and thus, in high summer, the year was once
more rounding out, the seventh year, though he knew it not, of
his sojourn up here.

Then, like a thunder-peal —

But God forbid and modesty withhold us from speaking over-
much of what the thunder-peal bore us on its wave of sound!
Here rodomontade is out of place. Rather let us lower our voice
to say that then came the peal of thunder we all know so well;

THE THUNDERBOLT

709

that deafening explosion of long-gathering magazines of passion
and spleen. That historic thunder-peal, of which we spealc with
bated breath, made the foundations of the earth to shake; but
for us it was the shock that fired the mine beneath the magic
mountain, and set our sleeper ungently outside the gates. Dazed
he sits in the long grass and rubs his eyes — a man who, despite
many warnings, had neglected to read the papers.

His Mediterranean friend and mentor had ever tried to prompt
him; had felt it incumbent upon him to instruct his nursling, the
object of his solicitude, in what was going on down below; but
his pupil had lent no ear. The young man had indeed, in a stock-
taking way, preoccupied himself with this or that among the
subjective shadows of things; but the things themselves he had
heeded not at all, having a wilful tendency to take the shadow
for the substance, and in the substance to see only shadow. For
this, however, we must not judge him harshly, since the relation
between substance and shadow has never been defined once and
for all.

Long ago it had been Herr Settembrini who brought sudden
illumination into the room, sat down beside the horizontal Hans
and sought to influence and instruct him upon matters of life
and death. But now it was the pupil, who, seated with his hands
between his knees, at the bedside of the humanist, or near his
couch in the cosy and retired little mansard study, with the car -
bonaro chairs and the water-bottle, kept him company and listened
courteously to his utterances upon tne state of Europe — for in
these days Herr Ludovico was seldom on his legs. Naphta’s vio-
lent end, the terroristic deed of that desperate antagonist, had
dealt his sensitive nature a blow from which it could scarcely
rally; weakness and infirmity had since been his portion. He could
no longer work on the Sociological Pathology; the League waited
in vain for that lexicon of all the masterpieces of letters having
human suffering for their central theme. Herr Ludovico had per-
force to limit to oral efforts his contribution to the organization
of progress; and even so much he must have foregone had not
Hans Castorp’s visits given him opportunity to spread his gospel.

His voice was weak, but he spoke with conviction, at length
and beautifully, upon the self-perfecting of the human spirit
through social betterment. Softly, as though on the wings of
doves, came the words of Herr Ludovico. Yet again, when he
came to speak of the unification and universal well-being of the
liberated peoples, there mingled a sound — he neither knew nor
willed it, of course — as of the rushing pinions of eagles. That

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

710

was the political key, the grandfatherly inheritance that united
in him with the humanistic gift of the father, to make up the
litterateur — precisely as humanism and politics united in the lofty
ideal of civilization, an ideal wherein were blended the mildness
of doves and the boldness of eagles. That ideal was only biding
its time, until the day dawned, the Day of the People, when the
principle of reaction should be laid low, and the Holy Alliance
of civic democracies take its place. Yes, here seemed to sound two
voices, with differing counsels. For Herr Settembrini was a hu-
manitarian, yet at the same time, half explicitly, he was warlike
too. In the duel with the outrageous little Naphta he had borne
himself like a man. But in general it still remained rather vague
what his position was to be, when humanity in an outburst of
enthusiasm united itself with politics in support of a triumphant
and dominating world-civilization, and the burgher’s pike was
dedicated upon the altar of humanity. There was some doubt
whether he would then hold back his hand from the shedding of
blood. Yes, it seemed the prevailing temper more and more held
sway in the Italian’s mind and view; the boldness of the eagle
was gradually outbidding the mildness of the dove.

Not infrequently his attitude toward the existing great political
systems was divided, embarrassed, disturbed by scruples. The
diplomatic rapprochement between his country and Austria, their
co-operation in Albania, had reflected itself in his conversation:
a co-operation that raised his spirits in that it was directed against
Latinless half-Asia — knout, Schlusselburg, and all — yet tormented
them in that it was a misbegotten alliance with the hereditary foe,
with the principle of reaction and subjugated nationalities. The
autumn previous, the great French loan to Russia, for the purpose
of building a network of railways in Poland, had awakened in
him similar misgivings. For Herr Settembrini belonged to the Fran-
cophile party in his own country, which was not surprising when
one recalled that his grandfather had compared the six days of
the July Revolution to the six days of the creation, and seen
that they were as good. But the understanding between the en-
lightened republic and Byzantine Scythia was too much for him,
it oppressed his breast, and at the same time made him breathe
quicker for hope and joy at the thought of the strategic meaning
of that network of railways. Then came the Serajevo murder, for
everyone excepting German Seven-Sleepers a storm-signal; de-
cisive for the informed ones, among whom we may reckon Herr
Settembrini. Hans Castorp saw him shudder as a private citizen at
the frightful deed, while in the same moment his breast heaved

THE THUNDERBOLT

71 1

with the knowledge that this was a deed of popular liberation,
directed against the citadel of his loathing. On the other hand,
was it not also the fruit of Muscovite activity, and as such giving
rise to great heart-searchings? Which did not hinder him, three
weeks later, from characterizing the extreme demands of the
monarchy upon Servia as a hideous crime and an insult to human
dignity, the consequences of which he could foresee well enough,
and awaited in breathless excitement.

In short, Herr Settembrini’s feelings were as complex as the
fatality he saw fast rolling up, for which he sought by hints
and half-words to prepare his pupil, a sort of national courtesy
and compunction preventing him from speaking out. In the first
days of mobilization, the first declaration of war, he had a way
of putting out both hands to his visitor, taking Hans Castorp’s
own and pressing them, that fairly went to our young noodle’s
heart, if not precisely to his head. “ My friend,” the Italian would
say, “ gunpowder, the printing-press, yes, you have certainly given
us all that. But if you think we could march against the Revolu-
tion — Caro! . .

During those days of stifling expectation, when the nerves of
Europe were on the rack, Hans Castorp did not see Herr Settem-
brini. The newspapers with their wild, chaotic contents pressed
up out of the depths to his very balcony, they disorganized the
house, filled the dining-room with their sulphurous, stifling breath,
even penetrated the chambers of the dying. These were the mo-
ments when the “ Seven-Sleeper,” not knowing what had hap-
pened, was slowly stirring himself in the grass, before he sat up,
rubbed his eyes — yes, let us carry the figure to the end, in order
to do justice to the movement of our hero’s mind: he drew up
his legs, stood up, looked about him. He saw himself released,
freed from enchantment — not of his own motion, he was fain
to confess, but by the operation of exterior powers, of whose
activities his own liberation was a minor incident indeed! Yet
though his tiny destiny fainted to nothing in the face of the gen-
eral, was there not some hint of a personal mercy and grace for
him, a manifestation of divine goodness and justice? Would Life
receive again her erring and “ delicate ” child — not by a cheap
and easy slipping back to her arms, but sternly, solemnly, peni-
tentially — perhaps not even among the living, but only with three
salvoes fired over the grave of him a sinner? Thus might he return.
He sank on his knees, raising face and hands to a heaven that
howsoever dark and sulphurous was no longer the gloomy grotto
of his state of sin.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

712

And in this attitude Herr Settembrini found him — figura-
tively and most figuratively spoken, for full well we know our
hero's traditional reserve would render such theatricality im-
possible. Herr Settembrini, in fact, found him packing his trunk.
For since the moment of his sudden awakening, Hans Castorp
had been caught up in the hurry and scurry of a “ wild ” de-
parture, brought about by the thunder-peal. “ Home ” — the
Berghof — was the picture of an ant-hill in a panic: its little popu-
lation was flinging itself, heels over head, five thousand feet down-
wards to the catastrophe-smitten flat-land. They stormed the little
trains, they crowded them to the footboard — luggageless, if needs
must, and the stacks of luggage piled high the station platform,
the seething platform, to the height of which the scorching breath
from the flat-land seemed to mount — and Hans Castorp stormed
with them. In the heart of the tumult Ludovico embraced him,
quite literally enfolded him in his arms and kissed him, like a
southerner — but like a Russian too — on both his cheeks; and this,
despite his own emotion, took our wild traveller no little aback.
But he nearly lost his composure when, at the very last, Herr
Settembrini called him “ Giovanni ” and, laying aside the form
of address common to the cultured West, spoke to him with
the thou!

“ E cost in giu ” he said. “ Cost vai in giu finalmente — ad-
dio , Giovanni mio! Quite otherwise had I thought to see thee
go. But be it so, the gods have willed it thus and not otherwise.
I hoped to discharge you to go down to your work, and now
you go to fight among your kindred. My God, it was given to
you and not to your cousin, our Tenente! What tricks lire plays!
Go, then, it is your blood that calls, go and fight bravely. More
than that can no man. But forgive me if I devote the remnant of
my powers to incite my country to fight where the Spirit and
sacro egoismo point the way. Addio! ”

Hans Castorp thrust out his head among ten others, filling the
little open window-frame. He waved. And Herr Settembrini
waved back, with his right hand, while with the ring-finger of
his left he delicately touched the comer of his eye.

What is it? Where are we? Whither has the dream snatched
us? Twilight, rain, filth. Fiery glow of the overcast sky, ceaseless
booming of heavy thunder; the moist air rent by a sharp singing
whine, a raging, swelling howl as of some hound of hell, that ends
its course in a splitting, a splintering and sprinkling, a crackling, a
coruscation; by groans and shrieks, by trumpets blowing fit to

THE THUNDERBOLT

7*3

burst, by the beat of a drum coming faster, faster — There is a
wood, discharging drab hordes, that come on, fall, spring up
again, come on. — Beyond, a line of hill stands out against the
fiery sky, whose glow turns now and again to blowing flames.
About us is rolling plough-land, all upheaved and trodden into
mud; athwart it a bemired high road, disguised with broken
branches and from it again a deeply furrowed, boggy field-path
leading off in curves toward the distant hills. Nude, branchless
trunks of trees meet the eye, a cold rain falls. Ah, a signpost!
Useless, though, to question it, even despite the half-dark, for
it is shattered, illegible. East, west? It is the flat-land, it is the
war. And we are shrinking shadows by the way-side, shamed by
the security of our shadowdom, and noways minded to indulge
in any rodomontade; merely led hither by the spirit of our nar-
rative, merely to see again, among those running, stumbling, drum-
mustered grey comrades that swarm out of yonder wood, one
we know; merely to look once more in the simple face of our
one-time fellow of so many years, the genial sinner whose voice
we know so well, before we lose him from our sight.

They have been brought forward, these comrades, for a final
thrust in a fight that has already lasted all day long, whose ob-
jective is the retaking of the hill position and the burning villages
beyond, lost two days since to the enemy. It is a volunteer regi-
ment, fresh young blood and mostly students, not long in the
field. They were roused in the night, brought up in trains to
morning, then marched in the rain on wretched roads — on no
roads at all, for the roads were blocked, and they went over
moor and ploughed land with full kit for seven hours, their coats
sodden. It was no pleasure excursion. If one did not care to
lose one’s boots, one stooped at every second step, clutched with
one’s fingers into the straps and pulled them out of the quaking
mire. It took an hour of such work to cover one meadow. But at
last they have reached the appointed spot, exhausted, on edge,
yet the reserve strength of their youthful bodies has kept them
tense, they crave neither the sleep nor the food they have been
denied. Their wet, mud-bespattered faces, framed between strap
and grey-covered helmet, are flushed with exertion — perhaps too
with the sight of the losses they suffered on their march through
that boggy wood. For the enemy, aware of their advance, have
concentrated a barrage of shrapnel and large-calibre grenades upon
the way they must come; it crashed among them in the wood,
and howling, flaming, splashing, lashed the wide ploughed land.

They must get through, these three thousand ardent youths;

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

7H

they must reinforce with their bayonets the attack on the burn-
ing villages, and the trenches in front of and behind the line of
hills; they must help to advance their line to a point indicated
in the dispatch their leader has in his pocket. They are three thou-
sand, that they may be two thousand when the hills, the villages
are reached; that is the meaning of their number. They are a
body of troops calculated as sufficient, even after great losses, to
attack and carry a position and greet their triumph with a thou-
sand-voiced huzza— not counting the stragglers that fall out by
the way. Many a one has thus fallen out on the forced march,
for which he proved too young and weak; paler he grew, stag-
gered, set his teeth, drove himself on — and after all he could do
fell out notwithstanding. Awhile he dragged himself in the rear
of the marching column, overtaken and passed by company after
company; at length he remained on the ground, lying where it
was not good to lie. Then came the shattering wood. But there
are so many of them, swarming on — they can survive a blood-
letting and still come on in hosts. They have already overflowed
the level, rain-lashed land; the high road, the field road, the boggy
ploughed land; we shadows stand amid and among them. At
the edge of the wood they fix their bayonets, with the practised
grips; the horns enforce them, the drums roll deepest bass, and
forward they stumble, as best they can, with shrill cries; night-
marishly, for clods of earth cling to their heavy boots and fetter
them.

They fling themselves down before the projectiles that come
howling on, then they leap up again and hurry forward; they
exult, in their young, breaking voices as they run, to discover
themselves still unhit. Or they are hit, they fall, fighting the air
with their arms, shot through the forehead, the heart, the belly.
They lie, their faces in the mire, and are motionless. They lie, their
backs elevated by the knapsack, the crowns of their heads pressed
into the mud, and clutch and claw in the air. But the wood emits
new swarms, who fling themselves down, who spring up, who,
shrieking or silent, blunder forward over the fallen.

Ah, this young blood, with its knapsacks and bayonets, its
mud-befouled boots and clothing! We look at it, our humanistic-
aesthetic eye pictures it among scenes far other than these: we
see these youths watering horses on a sunny arm of the sea; roving
with the beloved one along the strand, the lover’s lips to the
ear of the yielding bride; in happiest rivalry bending the bow.
Alas, no, here they lie, their noses in fiery filth. They are glad
to be here — albeit with boundless anguish, with unspeakable

THE THUNDERBOLT 7 I 5

sickness for home; and this, of itself, is a noble and a shaming
thing — but no good reason for bringing them to such a pass.

There is our friend, there is Hans Castorp! We recognize him
at a distance, by the little beard he assumed while sitting at the
“ bad ” Russian table. Like all the others, he is wet through and
glowing. He is running, his feet heavy with mould, the bayonet
swinging in his hand. Look! He treads on the hand of a fallen
comrade; with his hobnailed boot he treads the hand deep into
the slimy, branch-strewn ground. But it is he. What, singing?
As one sings, unaware, staring stark ahead, yes, thus he spends
his hurrying breath, to sing half soundlessly:

“ And loving words I’ve carven
Upon its branches fair — ”

He stumbles, No, he has flung himself down, a hell-hound is
coming howling, a huge explosive shell, a disgusting sugar-loaf
from the infernal regions. He lies with his face in the cool mire,
legs sprawled out, feet twisted, heels turned down. The product
of a perverted science, laden with death, slopes earthward thirty
paces in front of him and buries its nose in the ground; explodes
inside there, with hideous expense of power, and raises up a
fountain high as a house, of mud, fire, iron, molten metal, scattered
fragments of humanity. Where it fell, two youths had lain, friends
who in their need flung themselves down together — now they
are scattered, commingled and gone.

Shame of our shadow-safety! Away! No more! — But our
friend? Was he hit? He thought so, for the moment. A great clod
of earth struck him on the shin, it hurt, but he smiles at it. Up
he gets, and staggers on, limping on his earth-bound feet, all un-
consciously singing:

“ Its waving branches whi — ispered
A mess — age in my ear — ”

and thus, in the tumult, in the rain, in the dusk, vanishes out ot
our sight.

Farewell, honest Hans Castorp, farewell, Life’s delicate child!
Your tale is told. We have told it to the end, and it was neither
short nor long, but hermetic. We have told it for its own sake,
not for yours, for you were simple. But after all, it was your
story, it befell you, you must have more in you than we thought;
we will not disclaim the pedagogic weakness we conceived for

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

716

you in the telling; which could even lead us to press a finger deli-
cately to our eyes at the thought that we shall see you no more,
hear you no more for ever.

Farewell — and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor.
The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will
last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake
on thy life by the time it ends. We even confess that it is without
great concern we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh
and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee
to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have
done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion
of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a
dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this
extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a
fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?

FINIS OPERIS

The Principal Works of Thomas Mann

First Editions in German

Der kleine Herr Friedemann

[Little Herr Friedemann]. Tales

Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1898

Buddenbrooks

Novel Berlin , S. Fischer Verlag . 1901

Tristan

Contains Tonio Kroger. Tales

Berlin , S. Fischer Verlag. 1903

Fiorenza

Drama Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1905

Konigliche Hoheit

[ Royal Highness ] . Novel Berlin, S. Fischer V erlag. 1 909

Der Tod in Venedig

[Death in Venice]. Short novel

Berlin , S. Fischer V erlag . 1913

Das Wunderkind

[The Infant Prodigy]. Tales

Berlin, S. Fischer V erlag. 1914

Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
Autobiographical reflections

Berlin , S. Fischer V erlag. 1918

Herr und Hund

[A Man and His Dog]. Idyll

Contains also Gesang vom Kindchen, an idyll in verse

Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1919

Walsungenblut

Tale Munchen, Phantasus Verlag. 1921

Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull

Fragment of a novel Stuttgart, Deutsche V erlags-Anstalt .

Bemuhungen
Essays

Berlin, 5 . Fischer Verlag. 192 2

Rede und Antwort

Essays Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1922

Der Zauberberg

[The Magic Mountain]. Novel

Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag . 1924

Unordnung und fruhes Leid

[Disorder and Early Sorrow]. Short novel

Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1926

Kino

Fragment of a novel Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1926

Pariser Rechenschaft

Travelogue Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 192 6

Deutsche Ansprache

Ein Appell an die Vernunft Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1930
Die Forderung des Tages

Essays Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1930

Mario und der Zauberer

[Mario and the Magician]. Short novel

Berlm, S. Fischer Verlag. 1930

Goethe als Reprasentant des

burgerlichen Zeitalters

Lecture Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1932

Joseph und seine Bruder

[Joseph and His Brothers], Novel

I. Die Geschichten Jaakobs. 1933.

II. Der junge Joseph. 1934.

III. Joseph in Agypten. 1936.

IV. Joseph, der Emahrer. 1943.

1, II, Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag.

III, Vienna, Bermann-Fischer Verlag.

IV, Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag.

Leiden und Grosse der Meister

Essays Berlin, S. Fischer Verlag. 1935

Freud und die Zukunft

Lecture Vienna , Bermann-Fischer Verlag. 1936

Ein Briefwechsel

[An Exchange of Letters]

Zurich , Dr. Oprecht & Helbling AG. 1937

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag .

Das Problem der Freiheit
Essay

Schopenhauer

Essay

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag .

Achtung, Europa!

Manifesto Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag .

Die schonsten Erzahlungen

Contains T0/2/0 Kroger , Der Toi m Venedig , Ura-
ordnung und friihes Leid , Mario und der Zauberer

Stockholm Bermann-Fischer Verlag . 1938

Lotte in Weimar

[The Beloved Returns]. Novel

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag . 1939

Die vertauschten Kopfe

Eine indische Legende [The Transposed Heads]

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag . 1940

Deutsche Horer

[Listen, Germany! ] Broadcasts

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag. 1942

Das Gesetz

[The Tables of the Law]

Stockholm , Bermann-Fischer Verlag . 1944

American Editions in T ranslation

published by Alfred A. Knopf, Afe'u? T<?r&

Royal Highness: A Novel of German Court Life

Translated by A. Cecil Curtis 1916

Buddenbrooks

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter 1924

Death in Venice and Other Stories

Translated by Kenneth Burke. Contains translations
of Der Tod in Venedig, Tristan, Tonio Kroger
(out of print)* 1925

* Now included in Stories of Three Decades , translated by H. T. Lowe-
Porter.

The Magic Mountain

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Two volumes 1927
Children and Fools

Translated by Herman George Scheffauer . Nine
stories , including translations of Der kleine Herr
Friedemann and Unordnung und friihes Leid ( out
of print)* 1928

Three Essays

Translated by H. T . Lowe-Porter . Contains transla-
tions of Friedrich und die grosse Koalition from
Rede und Antwort, and of Goethe und Tolstoi and

Okkulte Erlebnisse from Bemiihungen 1929

Early Sorrow

Translated by Herman George Scheffauer . ( out of

print)* 1930

A Man and His Dog

Translated by Herman George Scheffauer. (out of

print)* 1930

Death in Venice

A new translation by H . T. Lowe-Porter , with an In-
troduction by Ludwig Lewisohn. 1930

Mario and the Magician

Translated by H. T . Lowe-Porter. ( out of print)* 1931

Past Masters and Other Papers

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Thirteen essays
(out of print) 1933

Joseph and His Brothers

I. Joseph and His Brothers (The Tales of Jacob) 1934

II. Young Joseph 1935

III. Joseph in Egypt r 93 8

IV. Joseph the Provider 1944

The complete work in 1 volume 1948

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter

Stories of Three Decades

Translated by H . T. Lowe-Porter. Contains all of
Thomas Mann’s fiction prior to 1940 except the
long novels 1936

* Now included in Stories of Three Decades , translated by H. T. Lowe-
Porter.

An Exchange of Letters

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter t 1937

Freud, Goethe, Wagner

Translated by H. T. Low e-Porter and Rita Matthias -
Reil. Three essays 1937

The Coming Victory of Democracy

Translated by Agnes E. Meyer t 1938

This Peace

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter t 1938

This War

Translated by Eric Sutton + 1940

The Beloved Returns

LOTTE IN WEIMAR

Translated by H. T . Lowe-Porter 1940

The Transposed Heads

Translated by H. T . Lowe-Porter 1941

Order of the Day

Political Essays and Speeches of Two Decades
Tratislated by H. T. Lowe-Porter , Agnes E. Meyer,

and Eric Sutton 1942

Listen, Germany!

Twenty-five Radio Messages to the German People

over BBC 1943

The Tables of the Law

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter 1945

Essays of Three Decades

Translated by H . T. Lowe-Porter I947

Doctor Faustus

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter 1948

t Also included in Order of the Day .

printer’s note

This book teas set on the Linotype in Janson, a re cutting
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are now in the possession of the Stempel foundry, Frankfurt
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Janson' s types were first shown in a specimen sheet issued
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ling, issued a specimen sheet of Janson types in' 1689.
Edling's heirs sold the Janson matrices in Holland to Wolff -
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