The Magic Mountain Part 7

At tea all the various beverages were served which it is possible to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew made of rose-hips, the grand-niece spooned up her yogurt. There were milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bouillon; 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 b.u.t.ter. 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 b.u.t.ter.

Hans Castorp chose tea, and dipped zwieback 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 of an hour and a half. 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 of an hour and a half.

He dressed conscientiously for the evening meal, and, sitting in his place between Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, he ate: julienne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompaniments, two pieces of a tart made of macaroons, b.u.t.ter-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 gla.s.s, 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- him-though he had taken enormous pains not to give occasion for laughter. Out of the far distance he heard Frau Stohr telling, or a.s.serting, 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 husband had warned her not to talk about it: "Don't talk about it," he had told her; "n.o.body 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 fishsauces 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 chewed and swallowed. When he rose from table, he had it still in his mouth.

They went out through the left-hand gla.s.s 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 standing 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 openings 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 incurable, sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and handled the cards with a supercilious, man-of-the-worldly air. In a corner sat Dr. Krokowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Frau Stohr, Frau Iltis, and Fraulein Levi. The occupants of the "good" Russian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, separated 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s; a young girl of p.r.o.nounced 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 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 wedding march from the Midsummer Night's Dream 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. 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 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 Settembrini's face. "Perfectly idiotic. I can't comprehend how in the world I-"

"Don't disturb yourself, it doesn't matter," responded Settembrini, 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 prefer to call it."

Settembrini smiled. "I may have taken occasion to express myself thus," he said. "Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence?"

"Amusing or dull, whichever you like," responded Hans Castorp. "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?"

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 question 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 listening. 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 I've 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 excitedly-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 precisely 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 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. "The '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 unpleasant. 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 dexterity, 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.

"That's the practice I've had," Joachim answered, holding the thermometer between his teeth in order to speak. "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."

"I shan't lie out on the balcony at night," Hans Castorp declared. "I 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 halfway decently."

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 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 as 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.

"I feel simply wretched," he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and suspense, 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: "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 gargled, washed his hands with his mild and excellent violet soap, and drew on his long batiste night-shirt, with H.C 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 rebelliously 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 of his own heart he heard, quite outside of himself and away in the night, exactly as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker beater. It had not yet grown entirely dark in the room; the light from 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 characteristics-an oddly pathetic facial distortion, and a spotted pallor on the sun-browned cheeks. Hans Castorp saw and understood 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 can whistle in a whisper-and beat time with his cold feet under the whistle in a whisper-and beat time with his cold feet under the plumeau. plumeau.

That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had understood 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 suspense. 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 utterance 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 Castorp 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 expressions 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 confused 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 to the time of distant march-music. As he paused before Hans Castorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 courtyard, where for so many years through he had spent his recesses, and was in the act of borrowing a leadpencil from Madame Chauchat, who seemed to be there too. She gave him a halflength 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 occurrence 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 psychoa.n.a.lysis. He fled from the doctor, but his feet were leaden; past the gla.s.s part.i.tions, along the balconies, 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 away, you are only ahand-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 Miklosich, 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 gla.s.s as the verandah door banged, and Madame Chauchat entered 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 thirdday.

There had come a violent change of scene.

On the visitor's second full day up here, the most brilliant summer 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 gra.s.s. 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 fine weather: they sported mohair coats and linen suits-Joachim Ziemssen had put on white flannel trousers with his blue coat, and thus arrayed looked more military than ever.

As for Settembrini, he had more than once announced his intention 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 explicit 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 sudden reserve; everything turned topsy-turvy. 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 unknown icy region, swept suddenly through the valley; down went the thermometer-a new order obtained. "Snow," said Joachim's voice, behind the gla.s.s part.i.tion,

"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 landscape 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, and 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 overcoat 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 the thought of purchasing a fur sack as well, but gave it up, indeed, 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 Berghof, 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 Settembrini on the road, climbing up to the sanatorium under an umbrella, bare-headed. The Italian looked sallow; his mood was obviously 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 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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, composing in his leisure tales in the most elegant Tuscan prose-he was a master of the idioma gentile 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 barbarous 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 Hofrat, Krokowski"-Settembrini pretended to trip over the name-"Krokowski, the fatherconfessor, 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. 'What has it to offer? Anything but beautiful characters? What have I to do with beautiful characters? 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 G.o.d! His wife sits there opposite him, losing flesh all the time, and sinking further and further into idiocy. It is a filthy shame."