The Magic Mountain Part 21

"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. he said. "Sit tibi terra levis "Sit tibi terra levis. Requiem aeternam dona ei Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine Domine. You see, when death is in question, when 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 pedagogues, it comes from quite another point of the compa.s.s. 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 ceremony; more, in fact, than the free-thinking, when you remember it has our human infirmity and p.r.o.neness to err directly in mind, and thoughts of death and decay play such an important role in it. Have you seen Don Carlos 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? Everything is human. I find all that strict punctilio and G.o.d-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 G.o.d knows what loose and slovenly ways-you know that yourself." 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? Everything is human. I find all that strict punctilio and G.o.d-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 G.o.d knows what loose and slovenly ways-you know that yourself."

"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 uniform, with a stiff collar-there's your bienseance 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 bottom. 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 'practical lifework' and Sunday services in the name of 'progress'-as though one hadn't something else to think about, on Sundays, besides progress!-and his '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: 'I warn you, Engineer.' But a person can take leave to think what he pleases, at least: '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- " let me tell you something I propose 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 prevent 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 ' 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 bottom. 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 'practical lifework' and Sunday services in the name of 'progress'-as though one hadn't something else to think about, on Sundays, besides progress!-and his '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: 'I warn you, Engineer.' But a person can take leave to think what he pleases, at least: '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- " let me tell you something I propose 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 prevent 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 'Leise, leise leise, fromme Weise' fromme Weise' comes out of comes out of Tannhauser Tannhauser, 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 twentyfive, 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 two fellow-guests, who prefer to remain anonymous, with best wishes for recovery; it is always polite to say that. Then afterwards, 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 human 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 suffering 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 subjected, and which he felt the more keenly on account of the Settembrinian 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 pa.s.sing. Her pa.s.sion 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 compet.i.tions, 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 pa.s.sion 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 uphold it in his own eyes-though now, after nearly half a year 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 pa.s.sed 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 our of Lawyer Einhuf's room, clad in a fur coat with combinations underneath, and nothing more. That was a scandal; not only to the general, but even more to Hans Castorp's private sense, and derogatory to his spiritual endeavours. It even came to this: that the thought of Lawyer Einhuf could not enter his mind without calling up there, by an a.s.sociation 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 arrival, 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 instance 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, 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 partic.i.p.ant. This, at least, was Frau Stohr's demeanour, her ethical reaction to the affair in question.

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, "Schiller'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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 prost.i.tuted, 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 bobrun, the sweet for dinner, her own temperature-and this sounded equally offensive in her mouth. She had a boundless appet.i.te 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 impression 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 a.s.sertion 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 statement 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 sometimes seized by attacks of panic and whimpering, caused by the la.s.situde 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 G.o.d'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 Castorp'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 dreadfully 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 indescribable. The ladies, Frau Stohr in the lead, with Mesdames Salomon, Redisch, Hessenfeld, Magnus, Iltis, 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, however, took a peculiar cast, offensive even beyond the horror of it, through an a.s.sociation of ideas due to Dr. Krokowski's latest lecture. In the course of his exposition of love as a power making for disease, the psycho-a.n.a.lyst had touched upon the "falling sickness." This affliction, which, in pre-a.n.a.lytic times, he said, men 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 o.r.g.a.s.m 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 ill.u.s.tration of the lecture, an awful manifestation and mysterious scandal. The flight on the part of the ladies was, accordingly, 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 thereafter Herr Popoff, quite happy and serene, with his equally serene and happy wife, was to be seen sitting at the "good" Russian table, finis.h.i.+ng 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, G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 att.i.tude, 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 hemorrhages, 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 offering 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, scentladen 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 exquisite 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 symbolic value.

Leila Gerngross had no private nursing, she was under the immediate supervision of Fraulein von Mylendonk and the physicians. 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 attention. The little one, in her hopeless and circ.u.mscribed 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 coughing rested her tortured gaze upon it. Likewise the parents, retired 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' ident.i.ty. 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-menot 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 distressing. 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 copious draughts of lemonade, a carafe of which stood on the bedside 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 burdened 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 selfreproachings, 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 a.s.sured 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 suns.h.i.+ne-my G.o.d, 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 affaire de cur; cur; she, the mother, had seen it. she, the mother, had seen it.

All this impressed Hans Castorp rather painfully-and she had p.r.o.nounced 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 his 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 distaste; which the latter, moreover, could only manifest by silence and averted eyes, since he could not stand for it except by betraying a lack of Christian feeling. Hans Castorp saw that very well, and drew advantage from it. Equally he perceived the military grounds for the distaste; but if he himself felt the happier and stronger for such undertakings, if they seemed to him conducive 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 s.e.x 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, scentladen 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 unto 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 talk about the European flower trade, and its everincreasing proportions-about the enormous exportation from the nurseries of Nice and Cannes, the s.h.i.+pments by train-load and post that went off daily from these places all over Europe; about the wholesale 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 anesthesia 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 evening, next morning they proceeded to operate, and after that young Fritz was in no condition to receive callers. Two days later, pa.s.sing 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 moribundus in another establishment. Heaving a sigh, her eye-gla.s.s ribbon behind her ear, she had betaken herself thither, since such and only such was the prospect life held out to her. in another establishment. Heaving a sigh, her eye-gla.s.s ribbon 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 pa.s.sing, 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 "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 pa.s.sed by and saw Leila Gerngross's room in just that condition; and in this instance his understanding 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, considering 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 t.i.tle?

"Quite literally," said the Hofrat. "Quite exactly, no metaphors. 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 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 disappeared, 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 fluttering bosom. "Frightfully funny man, is Behrens; killingly funny, makes you die of laughing. But sit down, Herr Kasten, or Garsten, 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 nightdress 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 otherwise she would not have come; perhaps not quite a slight case, but rather slight than grave. The pneumothorax, that newest triumph of modern surgical technique, so rapidly become popular, had been brilliantly successful in her case. She made most gratifying progress, her condition was entirely satisfactory. Her husband-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 indeed 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 irresponsibility 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 hurriedly 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, for the room of the first had long since been swept and garnished and fumigated with H2CO. 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 Farlowitsch 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 activities? 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 respect; exposed to no intellectual perils, the sort that gives a schoolmaster 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 delicate 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. '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 t.i.tle, 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: '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 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, heavenlysmelling violets from Nice, "from two sympathetic 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 corridor. 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 fils, qui allait mourir aussi qui allait mourir aussi. They went at once. Lauro proved to be an astonis.h.i.+ngly 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. Tousles-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 corner of her large mouth pathetically drooping. Sometimes she approached them as they sat by the bed, to reiterate her parrotlike speech: "Tous les de, vous vous comprenez comprenez, messies-premierement l'un et maintenant l'autre." messies-premierement l'un et maintenant l'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: 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 comme heros heros, a l'espagnol a l'espagnol, like his young brother, de meme quo son fier jeune frere de meme quo son fier jeune frere Fernando, who likewise had died like a Spanish hero. He gesticulated, he tore open his s.h.i.+rt 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. Fernando, who likewise had died like a Spanish hero. He gesticulated, he tore open his s.h.i.+rt 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-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 pleurashock-a quite frequent occurrence in cases where this fas.h.i.+onable technique was applied. But Herr Ferge's shock had been exceptionally dangerous, a total collapse and critical loss of consciousness, 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 ashencoloured, when he came to speak of the operation, which must have been horrible indeed. "No anesthesia, 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 squeezing. I lie there with my face covered, so I can't see anything: the a.s.sistant 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: '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; n.o.body and nothing ought to come near it. And now he uncovers it and feels all over it. My G.o.d, I was sick at my stomach. Horrible, awful; never in my life have I imagined there could be such a sickening feeling, outside h.e.l.l and its torments. I fainted; I had three faintingfits 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 off-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 infernal torment of the pleura-shock is like, and may G.o.d 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 extended 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 mushrooms. He led Herr Ferge to talk about the people, the strange and exotic northern types, with their Asiatic tincture, the prominent cheek-bones and FinnishMongolian slant to the eye; listening with anthropological interest to all that he heard. At his request, Herr Ferge spoke Russian to him; the outlandish, spineless, washed-out idiom came pouring from under the good-natured moustaches, out of the goodnatured Adam's apple; and Hans Castorp enjoyed it the more, youthlike, because all this was, pedagogically considered, forbidden fruit he was tasting.

He and Joachim spent many a quarter-hour with Anton Karlowitsch. 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 moment 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d had been pleased to afflict with every kind of infirmity. 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 inflammations 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 mouthful 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, whichever it was, seeing herself quite humbly as a dishonoured and sinful creature; and so bore all the plagues of Job with astounding patience and resilience, with the elementary powers of resistance of her s.e.x, 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 delighted her; she obviously regarded them as the expression of gallant 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 illness, 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 perform 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 Castorp and Joachim felt peculiarly drawn to 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 unfeeling relatives-once, in fact, they had taken her away, since she was sure to die in any case; and only at the Hofrat's intercession 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 behalf-they were such kind-hearted chaps-and they made her their especial ward; beginning with the gift of flowers, following 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 compet.i.tion. For the winter sport season was now at its height, there was a special week overcrowded with "events"-those feats and displays to which the cousins had previously paid only cursory attention. 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 subst.i.tute-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 Karstedt made some change in these views-and Joachim could hardly dissent without seeming unChristian. 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 luxurious 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 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 Kurhaus; 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 pa.s.sed 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 tricot with furred and braided jackets, cut figures, hovered and balanced, leaped and spun. A pair of virtuosi, male and female, professionals and with furred and braided jackets, cut figures, hovered and balanced, leaped and spun. A pair of virtuosi, male and female, professionals and hors concours hors concours, performed feats which they alone in all the world could perform, and evoked storms of applause and fanfares of trumpets. 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 handkerchiefs 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 woollens-some of them even wore knickerbockers; Americans with small, neat heads, on which the hair "was plastered down, pipe in mouth, and wearing s.h.a.ggy furs the skin-side out; bearded, elegant Russians, looking barbarically rich, and Malayan Dutchmen, 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 certain weakness for this motley semibarbarous 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 families: 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 grat.i.tude 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.