Immediately on the right, between the front door and the porch, was the concierge’s box, and from there a servant of the French type, who had been sitting at the telephone and reading the newspapers, came out to meet them and led them in the gray livery of the limping man at the station through the well-lit hall, on the left side of which were lounges. Hans Castorp looked in passing and found it empty. Where were the guests, he asked, and his cousin answered:

“In the rest cure. I had a day off today because I wanted to pick you up. Otherwise I lie on the balcony after supper.”

It didn’t take long for Hans Castorp to be overwhelmed with laughter again.

“What, you’re still lying on the balcony at night and fog?” he asked with a shaky voice…

“Yes, that’s the rule. From eight to ten. But come now, look at your room and wash your hands.”

They boarded the elevator, the electric motor operated by the Frenchman. Hans Castorp dried his eyes as he glided up.

“I’m all torn and exhausted from laughing,” he said, breathing through his mouth. “You told me so much great stuff… The soul dismembering thing was too strong, it shouldn’t have come. Besides, I’m probably a little exhausted from the trip. Do you also suffer from cold feet? At the same time you have such a hot face, it’s uncomfortable. Shall we eat right away? I seem hungry. Do you eat decently up here?”

They walked silently down the coconut runner of the narrow corridor. Frosted glass bells sent a pale light from the ceiling. The walls shimmered white and hard, coated with a varnish-like oil paint. A nurse showed up somewhere, in a white cap and pince-nez on her nose, the cord of which she had tucked behind her ear. Apparently she was of Protestant denomination, undevoted to her profession, curious and troubled and burdened with boredom. At two points along the corridor, on the floor in front of the white lacquered, numbered doors, were certain balloons, large, bulbous vessels with short necks, and Hans Castorp forgot to ask what they meant at first.

“Here you are,” said Joachim. “Number thirty-four.I’m on the right, and on the left is a Russian couple – a bit casual and loud, one must say, but there was no other way. Well what do you say?

The door was double, with coat hooks in the inner cavity. Joachim had switched on the ceiling light, and in its trembling clarity the room appeared cheerful and peaceful, with its white, practical furniture, its also white, strong, washable wallpaper, its clean linoleum floor covering and the linen curtains, which in modern taste are simple and merrily embroidered. The balcony door was open; one saw the lights of the valley and heard distant dance music. The good Joachim had put some flowers in a small vase on the chest of drawers – what had just been found in the second grass, some yarrow and a few bluebells, which he picked himself on the slope.

“Lovely of you,” said Hans Castorp. “What a nice room! You can easily live here for a few weeks.”

“The day before yesterday an American died here,” said Joachim. “Behrens said right away that it would be ready by the time you came and that you could have the room then. Her fiancé was with her, an English naval officer, but he wasn’t exactly bold. Every moment he came out into the corridor to cry, just like a little boy. And then he rubbed his cheeks with cold cream because he was shaved and the tears burned him so badly. The night before last the American woman had two first-rate haemorrhages, and that was the end of it. But she’s been gone since yesterday morning, and then of course they have a thorough treatment heresmoked out, with formalin, you know, that’s supposed to be good for such purposes.”

Hans Castorp received this story with excited distraction. Standing with his sleeves drawn back in front of the spacious washbasin, whose nickel taps gleamed in the electric light, he scarcely glanced at the white metal, neatly covered bedstead.

“Fumigated out, that’s great,” he said chatty and somewhat incoherently while washing and drying his hands. “Yes, methylaldehyde, even the strongest bacterium can’t stand that, – H₂CO, but it stings your nose, doesn’t it? Of course, the strictest cleanliness is a basic requirement…’ He said ‘Of course’ with the separate st, while his cousin had adopted the more common pronunciation since he was a student, and went on with great fluency: ‘What else can I say wanted … The naval officer probably shaved himself with the security apparatus, I would like to assume, it’s easier to hurt yourself with these things than with a well-sharpened knife, at least that’s my experience, I use one and the other alternately .. Well, and of course the salt water hurts the irritated skin, he was probably used to cold cream from workI don’t notice anything about it…” And he went on chatting, said that he had two hundred pieces of Maria Mancini – his cigar – in his suitcase – the revision had been very pleasant – and addressed greetings from various people in the home from. “Isn’t there heating here?” he suddenly called and ran to the pipes to put his hands on them…

“No, we’re kept pretty cool here,” repliedJoachim. “Things have to change before the central heating is switched on in August.”

“August, August!” said Hans Castorp. “But I’m cold! I’m terribly cold, namely on the body, because I’m noticeably effervescent on my face – feel how I’m burning!”

This impertinence that one should feel his face did not at all suit Hans Castorp’s nature and embarrassed him himself. Joachim didn’t respond either, he just said:

“This is the air and has nothing to say. Behrens himself has bruised cheeks all day. Some never get used to it. Well, go on , we won’t get anything else to eat.”

Outside the nurse showed up again, short-sighted and peering curiously at them. But on the first floor Hans Castorp stopped abruptly, transfixed by a perfectly horrible noise that was heard a short distance around a bend in the corridor, a noise not loud but so decidedly hideous that it made Hans Castorp and his cousin grimace with widened eyes. It was a cough, evidently—a man’s cough; but a cough that resembled no other that Hans Castorp had ever heard, yes, compared to which every other cough he knew had been a splendid and healthy expression of life – a cough completely without pleasure and love, which did not come in real gusts, but only sounded like a terribly powerless digging in the mush of organic dissolution.

“Yes,” said Joachim, “it looks bad there. An Austrian aristocrat, you know, elegant man and quite likeborn to be a gentleman rider. And now it is so with him. But he still walks around.”

As they continued on their way, Hans Castorp talked intently about the Herrenreiter’s cough. “You must remember,” he said, “that I’ve never heard anything like it, that it’s completely new to me, so of course it makes an impression on me. There are so many different types of cough, dry and loose, and the loose one is, if anything, more beneficial, as the saying goes, and better than barking like that. When I was tanning in my youth (“in my youth,” he said) I barked like a wolf and they were all glad when it came off, I remember it. But I haven’t had a cough like this before, at least not for me – that’s no longer a living cough. It’s not dry, but you can’t call it loose either, that’s far from the word. It’s just as if you were looking into people,

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

But Hans Castorp could not calm himself down over the coughing he had heard, he repeatedly assured us that one was actually looking into the gentleman’s rider, and when they entered the restaurant his travel-weary eyes had an excited gleam.