The Magic Mountain Part 10

fas.h.i.+on, in his left hand, against his shoulder.

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

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

"Oh, very nice," Hans Castorp answered. "Yes, I went rather a long way. But I must confess, it did me less good than I thought it would. I won't repeat it for the present." Joachim did not ask how he liked the lecture; neither did Hans Castorp express an opinion. By common consent they let the subject rest, both then and thereafter.

Doubts and Considerations

TUESDAY was the last day of our hero's week up here, and accordingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return from the morning walk. It was a clear and businesslike doc.u.ment, in a green envelope, with a picture of the Berghof building at the top, and extracts from the prospectus carried in a narrow column down the lefthand side of the sheet. "Psycho-a.n.a.lytic treatment, by the most modern methods" was called attention to by means of s.p.a.ced type. The items, set down in a calligraphic hand, came to one hundred and eighty francs almost exactly: eight francs a day for his chamber, twelve for board and medical attendance, entrance fee twenty, disinfection of room ten, while small charges for laundry, beer, and the late dinner of the first evening made up the sum.

Hans Castorp went over the bill with Joachim and found naught to object to. "Of course I made no use of the medical attendance," he said, "but that was my own affair. It is included in the price of pension, and I couldn't expect them to make any deduction; how could they? As regards the disinfection, they must show a neat profit there, they never could have used ten francs' worth of H2CO to smoke the American woman out. But on the whole I must say I find it cheap rather than dear, considering what they offer," And before second breakfast they went down to the management in order that Hans Castorp might acquit himself of his debt.

The management was on the ground-floor. You reached it after pa.s.sing the hall, the garderobe, the kitchens and domestic offices; you could not miss the door, it had a porcelain s.h.i.+eld. Hans Castorp took an interest in this glimpse into the business side of the enterprise. There was a neat little office, with a typist busy at her machine and three clerks bending over desks. In an adjoining office a man who looked like a head or director was working at a desk in the middle of the room; he flung a cool and calculating glance at the clients over the top of his gla.s.ses. Their affair was dispatched at the cas.h.i.+er's window, a note changed, money received, the bill receipted; the cousins preserving throughout these transactions the solemn, discreet, almost overawed bearing which the young German's respect for authority leads him to a.s.sume in the presence of pens, ink, and paper, or anything else which bears to his mind an official stamp. But on the way to breakfast, and later in the course of the day, they talked about the direction of the Berghof sanatorium, and Joachim, in his character as inmate, answered his cousin's questions.

Hofrat Behrens was not-though he gave the impression of being-owner and proprietor of the establishment. Above and behind him stood invisible powers, which to a certain extent manifested their existence in the office they had just visited. They consisted of a supervisory head and a stock company-in which it was not a bad thing to hold shares, according to Joachim, since the members of it divided a fat dividend each year. The Hofrat was a dependent, he was merely an agent, a functionary, an a.s.sociate of higher powers; the first and highest, of course, and the soul of the enterprise, with a well-defined influence upon it and upon the management itself- though of course as directing physician he was relieved of all preoccupation with the business side. He was a native of north-western Germany, and it was common knowledge that when he took the position, years ago, he had done so contrary to his previous intention and plans. He had come here on account of his wife-whose remains had long reposed in the village churchyard, that picturesque churchyard of Dorf Davos, which lay high up on the right-hand slope, nearer the entrance of the valley. She had been a charming person, to judge from her likenesses, though too large-eyed and asthenic-looking. Photographs of her stood about everywhere in the Hofrat's house; even oil portraits by his own amateur hand hung on the walls. Two children, a son and a daughter, had been born; then they had brought her up here, the fragile body already fever-smitten; a few months had seen the completion of the wasting-away process. Behrens, they said, had adored her. He was brought so low by the blow that he got very odd and melancholy; people saw him gesturing, sn.i.g.g.e.ring, and talking to himself, on the street. He did not go back to his original place, but remained where he was-in part, no doubt, because he could not tear himself away from her grave, but also for the less sentimental reason that he was himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually belonged belonged here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal security, but who themselves bear her mark-an odd, but by no means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet-can true spiritual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own partic.i.p.ation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-eyed hostility to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as can a man who is himself entirely sound. here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal security, but who themselves bear her mark-an odd, but by no means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet-can true spiritual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own partic.i.p.ation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-eyed hostility to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as can a man who is himself entirely sound.

Hans Castorp expressed some of these doubts and speculations, as he and Joachim gossiped about the Berghof and its professional head. But Joachim answered that n.o.body knew whether the Hofrat was still a patient-he was probably long since cured. It was ages ago that he had first begun to practise here; independently at first, and early winning a name for himself as an extraordinarily gifted auscultator and skilful surgeon. Then the Berghof had secured him; it would soon be ten years that he had been in intimate a.s.sociation with it. His private residence was in the end of the north-west wing of the building (Dr. Krokowski's was not far off), and that lady of the lofty lineage, the nursing sister and directress of the establishment, of whom Settembrini had made such utter fun, and whom thus far Hans Castorp had scarcely seen, presided over the small household. The Hofrat was otherwise alone, for his son was at the university and his daughter already married, to a lawyer in one of the French cantons. Young Behrens sometimes visited his father in the holidays; he had done so once during Joachim's time up here. The ladies, he related, had been quite thrilled; their temperatures had gone up, petty jealousies had led to bickering and quarrels in the rest-hall and an increase of visits to Dr. Krokowski's private office. The a.s.sistant had his own office hours, in a special room, which, together with the large examination-rooms, the laboratory, the operating-rooms and x-ray studio, was in the well-lighted bas.e.m.e.nt of the building. We call it the bas.e.m.e.nt, for the stone steps leading down to it from the ground-floor created the impression that it was such-an erroneous impression, for not only was the ground-floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on a sidehill, part way up the mountain, and these "bas.e.m.e.nt" rooms faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circ.u.mstance negatived to some extent by the fact of the steps leading down to them. One descended, as one supposed, from the ground-floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically so. Hans Castorp amused himself with this illusion when he accompanied his cousin one afternoon down to the "bathing-master," that Joachim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance and spotlessness reigned in this sphere. Everything was as white as white; the doors gleamed with white enamel; the one leading to Dr. Krokowski's receiving-room, with the doctor's visiting-card tacked on it, was reached by two more steps down from the corridor, which gave the room behind it an air of being more s.p.a.cious and withdrawn than the rest. This door was at the end of the corridor, on your right as you came downstairs. Hans Castorp kept his eye on it as he walked up and down waiting for his cousin. He saw a lady come out, a recent arrival, whose name he did not know: a small, dainty person, with curls on her forehead, and gold ear-rings. She bent over as she mounted the stairs, and held up her frock with one beringed hand, while with the other she pressed her tiny handkerchief to her lips and, all stooped as she was, stared up over it into nothing, with great blue, distracted eyes. She hurried with small tripping steps, her petticoat rustling, to the stairs, paused suddenly as though something had occurred to her, then went on tripping upward, and disappeared, still bending over and holding her handkerchief to her mouth.

Behind her, when she opened the office door, it had been much darker than in the white corridor. Obviously the brilliant lighting of these lower regions did hot extend so far; Hans Castorp remarked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight, prevailed in Dr. Krokowski's private sanctum.

Table-Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Fraulein Engelhart, however much she would have liked to, could tell him practically nothing about Frau Chauchat. She knew no more than the whole sanatorium knew, and his conversations with her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaintance. Her only t.i.tle to importance was that she lived in Konigsberg, not very far from the Russian border; also that she knew a few sc.r.a.ps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions; yet Hans Castorp was prepared to see in them something resembling an extensive personal connexion with Frau Chauchat.

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

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

"You must not attach importance to that," she finally said. "I'm positive she is married. There is no doubt of it. Of course I know some foreigners do use the Madame when they are getting a little on in years, for the sake of the greater respect people pay a married woman. But it is not the case here. Everyone knows she really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was not French but Russian, something in anow anow or or ukov- ukov-I did know it, but I have forgotten. I will ask if you like; there must be several people here who know it. No, she wears no ring, I have noticed it myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too broad. Or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a plain gold wedding-ring. She might as well carry a key basket. No, she is built on broader lines than that-Russian women all have something free and large about them. And then, a wedding-ring seems so prosaic, it is almost repellent! It is a symbol of possession; it is always saying 'Hands off'; it turns every woman into a nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Frau Chauchat thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth-why should she, every time she gives a man her hand to kiss, tell him straightway that she is bound in wedlock?"

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

At length he said: "And her husband? He doesn't trouble himself about her? Does he never visit her up here? Do you know what he does?"

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

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

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

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

This was the line he sometimes took. With a cunning otherwise foreign to his nature he would make out that the schoolmistress's ravings over Madame Chauchat were not what he very well knew them to be, but an independent phenomenon, of a quaint and amusing kind; about which he, Hans Castorp, made free to tease the old spinster, feeling his own withers unwrung. He risked nothing by this att.i.tude, being confident that his accomplice would agree to anything he said, no matter how wide of the mark. "Good-morning," he greeted her, "I hope you slept well and dreamed of your charmer? Mistress Mary, quite contrary-or whatever her name is! Upon my word, one has only to speak of her to make you blus.h.!.+ You have completely lost your head over her-you can't deny it."

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

It was an extraordinary game the two of them were playing; each perfectly aware that they lied and double-lied, each knowing that Hans Castorp teased the schoolmistress only in order to be able to talk about Frau Chauchat. He took a morbid and extravagant pleasure in thus trifling with Fraulein Engelhart, and she on her side reciprocated; first out of a natural instinct to be the go-between in a love-affair, secondly because to oblige Hans Castorp she had actually contrived to fall victim to Frau Chauchat's charms; and finally because she felt a pathetic joy in having him tease her and make her blush. He well knew, and she well knew, all this about each other and themselves; each knew that the other knew and that the whole situation was equivocal and almost questionable. Equivocal and questionable situations were, in general, repugnant to Hans Castorp's taste, and the present one was no exception. He felt disgusted, yet for all that he went on fis.h.i.+ng in these troubled waters, quieting his conscience with the a.s.surance that he was only up here on a visit and would soon be leaving. He p.r.o.nounced upon the young woman's charms with the air of a connoisseur; said she was "sloppy," that she looked younger and prettier full face than profile; that her eyes were too far apart; that she carried herself in a way that left much to be desired; that her arms, on the other hand, were pretty and soft-looking. He felt his head shaking as he talked; he tried to suppress the trembling, and realized not only that the schoolmistress must see his efforts, but, with profound disgust, that her head was actually shaking too! But he went on-he had purposely called Frau Chauchat Mistress Mary, in order that he might put the question of her name; so now he said: "I suppose her name is not Mary at all; do you know what it is? I mean her given name. You must know it, being as much smitten as you are!"

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

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

Hans Castorp did not grasp it at first. He had to have her repeat the name, even to spell it, before he understood. Then he p.r.o.nounced it twice or thrice, turning his bloodshot eyes in Frau Chauchat's direction, in order, as it were, to try if it suited. "Clavdia," he said. "Yes, that is probably it; it fits her quite well." He could not hide his pleasure in the degree of intimacy thus achieved, and from now on referred always to Frau Chauchat as Clavdia. "Your Clavdia appears to be making bread pills. That's not very elegant, I should think."

"It depends on who does it," the schoolmistress would answer. "Clavdia it becomes."

Yes, unquestionably the meal-times in the hall with the seven tables had great charm for Hans Castorp. He hated to have one come to an end, and his consolation was that soon, in two or three hours, he would be back again. While he was sitting there, it was as though he had never risen. And for the time in between? It was nothing. A short turn as far as the watercourse or the Platz, a little rest on his balcony: no great burden, no serious interruption. Not as though he had to look forward to some interest or effort, which would not have been so easy to overleap in spirit. Effort was not the rule in the well-regulated Berghof life. Hans Castorp, when he rose from one meal, could straightway by antic.i.p.ation begin to rejoice in the next-if, indeed, rejoicing is not too facile, too pleasant and unequivocal a word for the sentiments with which he looked forward to another meeting with the afflicted fair one. The reader, on the other hand, may very likely find such adjectives the only ones suitable to describe Hans Castorp's personality or emotions. But we suggest that a young man with a wellregulated conscience and sense of fitness could not, whatever else he did, simply "rejoice in" Frau Chauchat's proximity. In fact, we-who must surely know-are willing to a.s.sert that he himself would have repudiated any such expression if it had been suggested to him.

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

One word from thy sweet lips Can strangely thrill me.

He was about to go on:

Within my heart it slips And raptures fill me-

but broke off instead, with a disdainful shrug. "Idiotic!" he said, suddenly finding the tender ditty altogether tasteless, wishy-washy, and sentimental. He put it from him with manly sobriety, almost with regret. It was the sort of thing to satisfy a young man who had "given his heart," as we say, given it wholly, legitimately, and with quite definite intentions, to some healthy little goose in the flat-land and thus might be justified in abandoning himself to his orthodox and gratifying sensations, with all the consequences they entailed. But for him and for his relations with Madame Chauchat (we are not responsible for the word relations; it was the word Hans Castorp used, not we), such songs had nothing to do with them. "Silly!" he said sententiously, and put his nose in the air. But after p.r.o.nouncing this aesthetic judgment he lay silent in his deck-chair, not thinking of anything more suitable to sing in its place.

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

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

"Too bad," Joachim said. "I thought we might take our luncheons and climb up to the Schatzalp, or something like that. But it seems it is not to happen. Let us hope the last week will be better."

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

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

Must we put plainer name to those inward experiences which at once both weighted and gave wings to Hans Castorp's days? We all know them; their emotional inanity ran true to type. They would have taken no different course even had their origin been such as to make applicable the silly song on which he had p.r.o.nounced his severe aesthetic judgment.

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