The weather was ridiculously bad – in this respect Hans Castorp had no luck with his fleeting stay in these regions. It wasn’t exactly snowing, but it rained heavily and ugly for days, thick mists filled the valley, and thunderstorms of ridiculous superfluity – for it was so cold anyway that the dining room had even been heated – erupted with awkward rolling echoes.

“Too bad,” said Joachim. “I thought we wanted to do something with breakfast on the Schatzalp or something else. But it seems it’s not meant to be. Hopefully your last week will be better.”

But Hans Castorp answered:

“Let it be. I’m not at all keen on things to do. I didn’t particularly like my first one. I recover best if I live like this for the day, without much variety. Variety is for the long-timers. But I with my three weeks, why do I need variety. “

That’s how it was, he felt fulfilled and engaged on the spot. If he harbored hopes, fulfillment and disappointment blossomed here, and not on some Schatzalp. Boredom wasn’t what bothered him; on the contrary, he began to fear that the end of his stay might seem too elated. The second week was advancing, two-thirds of his time would soon be gone, and as the third week began, one was already thinking about the suitcase. The first refreshment of Hans Castorp’s sense of time was long gone; already the days began to fly by, and they didthey, although every single one of them stretched out in renewed expectation and swelled with quiet, secretive experiences… Yes, time is a mysterious thing, there is something about it that is difficult to clarify!

Will it be necessary to describe more closely those secret experiences that both weighed on and exhilarated Hans Castorp’s days? But everyone knows them, they were the ordinary ones in their sensitive insignificance, and in a more reasonable and promising case, to which the absurd little song “How touches me wondrous” would have been applicable, they could not have played out differently.

It is impossible that Madame Chauchat should not have noticed something of the threads which stretch from a certain table to hers; and that she should notice something, indeed as much as possible, was unrestrainedly in Hans Castorp’s intentions. We call it rampant because he was fully aware of the irrationality of his case. But whoever it is, how it was or began to be, wants people over there to know about his condition, even if there is no sense or understanding in the matter. Such is man.

So after Mrs. Chauchat had turned towards that table two or three times while eating, either accidentally or under the influence of a magnet, and each time met the eyes of Hans Castorp, she deliberately looked across for the fourth time and met his eyes this time too. In a fifth case she did not catch him directly; he wasn’t at his post. But he felt it at once that she was looking at him, and looked at her so eagerly that sheturned away smiling. He was filled with suspicion and delight at that smile. If she thought he was childish, she was mistaken. His need for refinement was significant. On the sixth occasion, when he suspected, felt the inner knowledge gaining that she was looking across, he pretended to look with intense displeasure at a Finny lady who had come to his table to chat with her great-aunt, held out staunchly, probably for two or three minutes, and wouldn’t budge until he was sure that the Kyrgyz eyes over there had left him—a whimsical play that Mrs. Chauchat not only liked to see through, but was expressly meant to see through, so that Hans Castorp’s great delicacy and self-control might make her think… It came to the following. During a break from eating, Mrs. Chauchat turned casually and surveyed the room. Hans Castorp had been on the lookout: their eyes met. While they look at each other – the patient vaguely peering and mocking, Hans Castorp with excited firmness (he even clenched his teeth while holding her eyes) – wants to slip her napkin, is about to slip from her lap to the floor. She grabs it, twitching nervously, but it grabs his limbs too, it pulls him halfway off his chair, and blindly he wants to rush eight meters and around an intervening table to help her, as if it meant a catastrophe. when the napkin hit the ground… Just above the screed she gets hold of it. But from her stooped posture, leaning across the floor, napkin at the end and scowling, apparently angry at the irrational little panic she was feelinginferior and for which she seems to blame him – she looks back at him once more, notices his lopsided posture, his raised eyebrows and turns away with a smile.

Hans Castorp triumphed over this event to the point of exuberance. However, there was a setback, for Madame Chauchat did not look at the hall at all for a full two days, i.e. for the duration of ten meals, and even refrained from looking at her entrance, as was her custom been to “present” to the audience. That was hard. But since these omissions undoubtedly related to him, a connection was clearly there, albeit in a negative form; and that might suffice.

He could see that Joachim had been absolutely right when he remarked that it was not at all easy to make acquaintances here, except with people at table. For during the one hour or so after dinner, during which a certain amount of conviviality regularly took place, but which often dwindled to twenty minutes, Madame Chauchat sat without exception with her surroundings, the hollow-chested gentleman, the humorous woolly woman, the quiet Dr. Cauliflower and the stoop-shouldered youths in the background of the small salon, which seemed to be reserved for the “Good Russian Table”. Joachim also always urged him to leave as soon as possible so as not to shorten the evening rest cure, as he said, and perhaps for other dietary reasons which he did not mention, but which Hans Castorp suspected and respected. We accused him of licentiousness,Acquaintance with Frau Chauchat was not what he aspired to, and he basically agreed with the circumstances that worked against it. The vaguely tense relationships which his seeing and doing had created between him and the Russian were of a non-social nature; they did not and should not oblige anyone to do anything. Because a considerable amount of social rejection was compatible with them, on his side, and the fact that he put the thought of “Clawdia” under the pounding of his heart was by no means enough to make the grandson Hans Lorenz Castorps waver in his conviction make that he let the door slam behind him with this stranger, who spent her life separated from her husband and without a wedding ring on her finger in all sorts of health resorts, rolling bread balls and no doubt chewing his fingers – that, let’s say, in reality, that is: beyond those secret relationships, he could have nothing to do with her, that deep chasms separated her existence from his, and that he before no criticism he acknowledged would stand with her. Understandably, Hans Castorp was entirely without personal arrogance; but a arrogance of a general and more general kind was written on his forehead and around his somewhat sleepy eyes, and from it sprang the feeling of superiority which he could not and would not refrain from looking at Frau Chauchat’s being and nature. It was strange that he should become particularly aware of this widespread feeling of superiority, and perhaps for the first time,in the hall and, as Hans Castorp noticed in passing, struggled in conversation with another patient, probably a fellow patient, in a charming way, by the way, for the German language, Hans Castorp’s mother tongue, as he felt with sudden and unprecedented pride – if nor without a simultaneous inclination to sacrifice that pride to the delight with which her graceful bungling and wheel-breaking filled him.

In a word: Hans Castorp saw in his quiet relationship with the neglectful member of those up here a holiday adventure which before the tribunal of reason – his own reasonable conscience – could lay no claim to approval: mainly because Mrs. Chauchat was ill , limp, feverish and wormy inside, a circumstance that was closely connected with the dubious nature of her entire existence and also played a major part in Hans Castorp’s feelings of caution and distance … No, it never occurred to him to seek her real acquaintance, and As for the rest, it would be over in a week and a half when he went into practice at Tunder & Wilms, for better or for worse, without any consequences.

For the time being, however, things were going so well for him that he had begun to regard the emotions, tensions, fulfillments and disappointments that arose from his tender relationship with the patient as the real meaning and content of his vacation stay, to live entirely for them and his making mood dependent on their thriving. Circumstances gave her the most benevolent encouragement, because with a fixed agenda that was binding on everyone, they lived together in a limited space,and even if Mrs. Chauchat was at home on another floor – on the first floor (by the way, as Hans Castorp heard from the teacher, she kept her rest cure in a common rest hall, namely the one on the roof, the same one in which Captain Miklosich had recently turned off the light), the five meals alone, but also everything else at every step, from morning to evening made it possible, indeed inevitable, to meet. And this, as well as the other thing, that no worries and troubles blocked the view, Hans Castorp found splendid, even if such being locked up with the favorable vagueness had something oppressive at the same time.

But he even helped a little, calculated and put his head to work to improve luck. As Mrs. Chauchat was habitually late for dinner, he made a point of being too late to meet her on the way. He missed the toilet, wasn’t ready when Joachim came in to pick him up, let his cousin go ahead and said he’d be right behind. Advised by the instinct of his condition, he waited for a certain moment that seemed the right one and hurried down to the first floor, where he did not use the staircase that was the continuation of the one that had brought him down, but the corridor almost to it to the end, to the other staircase, which was close to a well-known room door – it was the one of No. 7. On this way,who, as far as she was concerned, had stepped out silently and slid silently to the stairs… Then she walked in front of him and supported his hair with his hand, or Hans Castorp walked in front of her and felt her eyes on his back, feeling a tear in his limbs and pins and needles running down his spine, but wanting to pose in front of her, pretended not to know her and lived his solitary life with vigorous independence, – dug his hands into his coat pockets and unnecessarily rolled his shoulders or cleared his throat violently and hit his chest with his fist – all to show his impartiality.

Twice he carried the subtlety even further. After he had already sat down at the dining table, he said in dismay and annoyance, touching himself with both hands: “There, I forgot my handkerchief! Now it’s time to settle down again.” And he went back so that he and “Clawdia” could meet, which was something else, more dangerous and more stimulating than if she walked in front of or behind him. The first time he performed this manoeuvre, she measured him from a distance with her eyes, quite ruthlessly and without shame, from top to bottom, but when she approached she turned her face away indifferently and walked past, so that the The result of this meeting was not to be overestimated. The second time, however, she looked at him, and not only from afar – the whole time she looked at him, during the whole process, looked steadily and even a little darkly into his face and even turned her head to look at him as she passed – it went through the marrow and bone of poor Hans Castorp. By the way, you shouldn’t feel sorry for himbecause he didn’t want it any other way and had arranged everything himself. But the encounter gripped him powerfully, both while it was taking place and later on; for only when it was all over did he see quite clearly how it had been. He had never had Frau Chauchat’s face so close before him, so clearly recognizable in every detail: he had been able to distinguish the short hairs emerging from the braid of her blond braid, which had a slightly metallic reddish tinge and was simply looped around her head loosened, and there was only a few hand’s breadth of space between his face and hers in his wondrous education, which he had known for a long time, and which appealed to him like nothing in the world: an education, strange and full of character (because only the strange seems to have character) of northern exoticism and mysterious, begging to be explored inasmuch as their characteristics and relationships could not be easily determined. The decisive factor was probably the emphasis on the high cheekbones: they pressed the unusually flat, unusually wide set eyes and skewed them a little, while at the same time providing the cause for the soft concave of the cheeks, which in turn, from his side and indirectly , which caused the slightly puffed-out voluptuousness of the lips. But then there were the eyes themselves, these narrow and (as Hans Castorp thought) absolutely enchantingly cut Kyrgyz eyes, the color of which was the gray-blue or blue-grey of distant mountains, and which sometimes, with a certain sideways glance that did not serve to see,somewhat darkly at close range and were so strikingly and frighteningly similar to Pribislav Hippes in position, colour, expression! “Similar” wasn’t the right word at all – they were the same eyes; and also the width of the upper half of the face, the pinched nose, everything except the flushed whiteness of the skin, the healthy color of the cheeks, which in Mrs. Chauchat only feigned health and, like everyone up here, nothing but a superficial product the rest cure was outdoors – everything was just like Pribislav’s, and he hadn’t looked at him any differently when they passed each other in the schoolyard.

That was harrowing in every sense; Hans Castorp was enthusiastic about the encounter, and at the same time he felt something like rising fear, an oppression of the same kind as being locked up in a small space with the favorable vagueness caused him: also this, that the long-forgotten Pribislav was coming back to him up here as Frau Chauchat met him and looked at him with Kyrgyz eyes, was like being imprisoned with the unavoidable or inescapable – inevitable in a happy and anxious sense. It was hopeful and at the same time uncanny, even threatening, and the young Hans Castorp felt a need for help – vague and instinctive movements took place inside him, which one saw as looking around, as groping and searching for help, for advice and support; he thought in succession of various people who it might be beneficial to think of.

There was Joachim at his side, the good, honorable Joachim, whose eyes were so sad during those monthsExpression accepted, and who at times shrugged his shoulders so violently and dismissively as he had never done before – Joachim with the “Blauer Heinrich” in his pocket, as Frau Stöhr used to call this device: with such a stubbornly shameless one Face that it horrified Hans Castorp in the soul every time … So the honest Joachim was there, the Hofrat Behrens tangled and toiled to get on and in the “level” or in the “flat land”, as one does here the world of the healthy with with a faint but clear accent of contempt, to be able to do his desired service. So that he could get there more quickly and save time, which was wasted so lavishly here, he conscientiously kept to the spa service for the time being – he did it for the sake of his speedy recovery, without question, but, as Hans Castorp sometimes thought he felt, a little for the sake of the spa service, which in the end was a service like any other, and the fulfillment of one’s duty was the fulfillment of one’s duty. So in the evening, after only a quarter of an hour, Joachim pressed away from his social life to take a rest cure, and that was good, because his military accuracy came to the aid of Hans Castorp’s civil sense, who otherwise, probably, pointlessly and hopelessly, would like to spend even longer would have taken part in the conviviality, with a view of the little Russian salon. But the fact that Joachim was so anxious to shorten the evening social time had another, secret reason, which Hans Castorp knew perfectly well, since he had noticed Joachim’s blotchy pallor and that peculiar pitiful way in which his mouth twisted at certain moments , learned to understand so well. Because also Marusja, the always laughing Marusja with the little oneRuby on her beautiful finger, the orange perfume and the high, worm-eaten breast were usually present at the social gatherings, and Hans Castorp understood that this circumstance drove Joachim away because it attracted him too much, in a terrible way. Was Joachim also “locked up” – even more tightly and oppressively than he himself, since Marusja, with her little orange handkerchief, sat with them five times a day at the same dining table? In any case, Joachim had far too much to do with himself for his existence to be of any real help to Hans Castorp. His daily escape from social life, while honorable, was nothing less than reassuring to him, and then for a moment it also seemed to him as if Joachim’s good example of faithfulness to duty in the spa service,

Hans Castorp hadn’t been there two weeks, but it seemed longer to him, and the agenda of those up here, whom Joachim watched so devoutly at his side, had begun to take on the stamp of a holy and self-evident inviolability in his eyes, so that life in the lowlands below, seen from here, seemed almost strange and wrong to him. He had already gained considerable dexterity in handling the two blankets with which one made an even package, a real mummy of oneself in the cold weather in the rest cure; not much was missing, so he did the same as Joachim with the sure skill and art of hitting them around according to the regulations, and he almost had to be surprised at the thought that down on the plain nobody knew anything about this art and regulationknew. Yes, that was strange; – but at the same time Hans Castorp was surprised that he found it strange, and that restlessness that made him look around inwardly for advice and support rose up in him again.

He had to think of Hofrat Behrens and his sine pecuniagave advice to live exactly like the patients and even to measure themselves – and to Settembrini, who laughed so loudly at this advice and then quoted something from the “Magic Flute”. Yes, he thought about these two as well, to see if it would do him any good. Hofrat Behrens was a white-haired man, he could have been Hans Castorp’s father. He was also head of the institution, the supreme authority – and it was paternal authority for which young Hans Castorp felt a restless heart’s need. And yet he did not succeed when he tried to commemorate the privy councilor with childlike trust. He had buried his wife here, a grief that had temporarily made him a bit strange, and then he stayed where he was because the grave bound him, and also because he’d been hit himself. Was that over now? Was he sane, and unequivocally intent on making the people sane, so that they might soon return to the plains and serve? His cheeks were consistently blue and he actually looked like he was overheated. But that might be based on deception and only the air to blame for this complexion: Hans Castorp himself felt dry heat here day in and day out, without having a fever, as far as he could tell without a thermometer. Admittedly, when you heard the Hofrat talking, you could sometimes get overheated and actually he looked like he was overheated. But that might be based on deception and only the air to blame for this complexion: Hans Castorp himself felt dry heat here day in and day out, without having a fever, as far as he could tell without a thermometer. Admittedly, when you heard the Hofrat talking, you could sometimes get overheated and actually he looked like he was overheated. But that might be based on deception and only the air be to blame for this complexion: Hans Castorp himself felt dry heat here day in and day out, without having a fever, as far as he could tell without a thermometer. Admittedly, when you heard the Hofrat talking, you could sometimes get overheatedbelieve; there was something wrong with his way of speaking: it sounded so brisk and jolly and easy-going, but there was something odd about it, something exalted, especially considering the blue cheeks and the tearing eyes that looked like he was crying still about his wife. Hans Castorp recalled what Settembrini had said about the Hofrat’s “sadness” and “vices” and that he had called him a “confused soul”. That might be malice and windbags; but he still found that it was not particularly invigorating to think of Hofrat Behrens.

But then, of course, there was this Settembrini himself, the opposition man, cream puff and “ homo humanus“, as he called himself, who had rebuked him in many blunt words from calling illness and stupidity together a contradiction and a dilemma for human feelings. How about him? And was it beneficial to think of him? Hans Castorp well remembered how, in several of the excessively vivid dreams that filled his nights up here, he had been annoyed by the Italian’s fine, dry smile, which creased under the beautiful curve of his moustache, how he had scolded him for being an organ grinder and tried to push him away because he was a nuisance here. But that had been in the dream, and the waking Hans Castorp was different, less uninhibited than the one in the dream. While awake it might be something else – perhaps he would do well to try Settembrini’s new nature inwardly, – with his rebelliousness and criticism, though she was moaning and garrulous. He himself had a teachercalled; evidently he wished to influence; and young Hans Castorp heartily wanted to be influenced – which of course did not have to go so far as to let Settembrini tell him to pack his suitcase and leave early, as he seriously suggested recently had brought.

Placet experiri , he thought to himself, smiling, because he understood so much Latin without being a homo humanusto be allowed to name. And so he kept an eye on Settembrini and listened willingly and not without examining attention to everything he said during encounters that happened casually on the measured spa promenades to the bank on the mountain wall or down to “Platz”, or on other occasions, for example when Settembrini was the first to get up after the meal was over and, in his plaid trousers, with a toothpick between his lips, strolled through the hall with the seven tables, against all regulations and practice, to sit a little at the cousins’ table observe. He did it by standing in a graceful stance with crossed feet and chatting, gesturing with a toothpick. Or he pulled up a chair

“I request entry into this noble circle,” he said, shaking hands with the cousins ​​and embracing the rest of the people with a bow. “That brewer over there… from the despairing sight of thebeer brewer to be silent. But this Herr Magnus – he has just given a lecture on folk psychology. Do you want to hear? ‘Our dear Germany is one big barracks, of course. But there’s a lot of skill behind it, and I won’t trade our solidity for the politeness of others. Of what avail is all politeness if I am deceived before and after?’ In this style. I’m at the limit of my strength. Then there sits across from me a poor creature with graveyard roses on her cheeks, an old maid from Transylvania, who keeps talking about her ‘brother-in-law’, a person nobody knows anything about, nor wants to know anything about. In short, I can’t take it anymore, I’ve run away.”

“You took hold of the banner in a hurry,” said Frau Stoehr; “I can imagine.”

“Exactly!” Settembrini exclaimed. “The banner! I see a different wind is blowing here – no doubt I have come to the right forge. So I grabbed it like a fugitive… Who would know how to put his words like that! – May I inquire about the progress of your health, Ms. Stöhr?”

It was horrible how shy Frau Stohr was. “Good God,” she said, “it’s always the same, the Lord knows himself. You take two steps forward and three steps back – if you’ve served five months, the old man comes and gives you half a year. Ah, it is Tantalus torment. You push and push, and you think you’re on top…”

“Oh, that’s nice of you! They finally treat poor Tantalus to some change! They let him roll the famous marble in exchange! That’s what I call true goodness of heart. But how is it, Madame, itmysterious things are happening to you. There are tales of doppelgangers, astral bodies… I didn’t believe it until now, but what’s happening to you drives me crazy…”

“It seems the Lord wants to please me.”

“Not at all! I do not think about it! First, reassure me about certain dark sides of your existence, and we shall be able to talk of amusement! Yesterday evening between nine-thirty and ten o’clock I do a little exercise in the garden – I look along the balconies – the electric lamp on yours glows through the darkness. They were consequently in the rest cure, according to duty, reason and regulation. ‘There lies our beautiful patient’, I say to myself, ‘and faithfully observes the prescription so that I can return home to Herr Stöhr’s arms as soon as possible.’ And a few minutes ago, what am I hearing? That you at the same hour in the cinematógrafo (Mr Settembrini pronounced the word Italian, with the accent on the fourth syllable) – in the cinematógrafoof the Kurhaus arcades and afterwards in the pastry shop with sweet wine and some meringues, namely …”

Frau Stöhr wriggled her shoulders, giggled into her napkin, pushed Joachim Ziemßen and the quiet Dr. Cauliflower elbowed his hips, winked in a slyly familiar manner, and showed a foolish smugness in every way. In the evenings, to deceive the supervisor, she used to put her lighted table lamp out on the balcony, sneak away and pursue her amusements down in the English Quarter. Her husbandwas waiting for her in Cannstatt. Incidentally, she was not the only patient who practiced this practice.

‘… namely,’ continued Settembrini, ‘had you tasted these meringues – in whose company? In the company of Captain Miklosich from Bucharest! I’m assured he’s wearing a corset, but my God, how little it matters here! I beg you madame, where have you been? You are double! In any case, you fell asleep, and while the earthly part of your being took a solitary resting cure, the spiritual part of you was enjoying the company of Captain Miklosich and his meringues…”

Frau Stohr squirmed and struggled like someone being tickled.

“You don’t know if you should want the opposite,” Settembrini said. “That you enjoyed the meringues alone and practiced the rest cure with Captain Miklosich…”

“Hi, hey, hey…”

“Do you gentlemen know the story of the day before yesterday?” asked the Italian abruptly. “Someone has been picked up – taken by the devil, or actually by his mother, an energetic lady, I liked her. It’s young Schneermann, Anton Schneermann, who was sitting at Mademoiselle Kleefeld’s table in front – you see, his place is empty. He’ll be occupied again soon enough, I’m not worried, but Anton is gone on Stormwings, in the Hui and before that thought. He was here a year and a half – at his sixteen; he had just been added six months. And what happens? I don’t know who sent a word to Madame Schneermannin any case she had gotten wind of her little son’s change in baccho et ceteris . She appears on the plan unannounced, a matron – three heads taller than me, white-haired and wrathful, without speaking, slaps Herr Anton down a couple of times, takes him by the collar and sets him on the track. ‘If he should go to the ground,’ she says, ‘he can also go down below.’ And off we go home.”

People laughed as far as they sat within earshot, because Mr. Settembrini was telling funny stories. He kept himself up to date on the latest news, although he was so critical and mocking of the communal life of those up here. He knew everything. He knew the names and roughly the living conditions of newcomers; he reported that yesterday a rib resection was performed on so-and-so and he had it from the best source that from the autumn onwards patients over 38.5 degrees would no longer be admitted. Last night, according to him, Madame Capatsoulias of Mytilene’s little dog sat on the button of the electric light signal on his mistress’ bedside table, which caused a great deal of running and commotion, especially since Madame Capatsoulias was not alone, but found it in the company of Assessor Düstmund from Friedrichshagen. even dr Cauliflower had to smile at this story, pretty Marusja almost wanted to suffocate in her little orange handkerchief, and Frau Stoehr screamed shrilly, squeezing her left breast with both hands.

But Lodovico Settembrini also talked to his cousins ​​about himself and his origins, be it on walks, occasionally at evening socials or after lunch,when the great majority of the patients had already left the room and the three gentlemen sat at their end of the table for a while while the room maids cleared away and Hans Castorp smoked his Maria Mancini, the flavor of which he began to taste a little again in the third week. Carefully examining, alienated, but willing to be influenced, he listened to the Italian’s stories, which opened up a strange and entirely new world to him.

Settembrini spoke of his grandfather, who was a lawyer in Milan, but was mainly a great patriot and represented something like a political agitator, speaker and magazine contributor – he too was an opposition man, like his grandson, but he had the thing in a bigger way, operated in a bolder style. For while Lodovico, as he himself remarked bitterly, found himself dependent on panting about life and goings-on in the International Sanatorium Berghof, sneering at it and protesting against it in the name of a beautiful and active humanity, the latter had to deal with the governments made, conspired against Austria and the Holy Alliance, who had then held his dismembered fatherland in the thrall of dull servitude, and was a zealous member of certain secret societies spread over Italy – a carbonaro, as Settembrini declared in a suddenly lowered voice, as if it were still dangerous to talk about it now. In short, this Giuseppe Settembrini, according to the tales of the grandson, presented himself to the two listeners as a dark, passionate and seditious existence, as a ringleader and conspirator, and with all due respect,which they politely took care of, they did not quite succeed in banishing from their features an expression of suspicious aversion, even disgust. Admittedly, things were special: what they heard was a long time ago, almost a hundred years, it was history, and from history, especially the old ones, the nature of which they heard here, the appearance of desperate courage for freedom and indomitable hatred of tyrants, was theoretical to them familiar, although they had never imagined that they would come into direct contact with him in such a human way. As you heard, this grandfather’s rebelliousness and conspiracy was connected with a great love for his fatherland, which he wanted to see united and free – yes, his subversive activities were the fruit and outcome of this respectable connection,

But Grandfather Settembrini was not only an Italian patriot, but a fellow citizen and comrade-in-arms of all peoples thirsting for freedom. Because after the failure of a certain attempted coup d’etat in Turin, in which he was involved in word and deed, only barely escaping Prince Metternich’s captors, he used the time of his banishment to go to Spain for the constitution andto fight and bleed in Greece for the independence of the Hellenic people. This is where Settembrini’s father was born – which is probably why he became such a great humanist and lover of classical antiquity – born, by the way, of a mother of German blood, because Giuseppe had married the girl in Switzerland and accompanied her on his further adventures guided. Later, after ten years of fleeing the country, he was able to return home and worked as a lawyer in Milan, but by no means refrained from calling on the nation through the spoken and written word, in verse and prose, to freedom and the establishment of a unified republic. to draw up programs that would revolutionize the state with passionate dictatorial verve and to proclaim in a clear style the unification of the liberated peoples for the establishment of general happiness. One detail mentioned by Settembrini, the grandson, made a special impression on the young Hans Castorp: namely, that all his life grandfather Giuseppe appeared among his fellow citizens only in black mourning clothes, for he was a mourner, he said, for Italy , his fatherland languishing in misery and bondage. When he heard this news, Hans Castorp had to think of his own grandfather, as he had done a couple of times before, who had also always worn black as long as the grandson had known him, but in a completely different sense than this grandfather here :adapted until it had solemnly died in its true and proper form (with the ruff). It really had been two strikingly different grandfathers! Hans Castorp thought about it, while his eyes locked and he shook his head cautiously, so that it could be interpreted as a sign of admiration for Giuseppe Settembrini as well as alienation and denial. He also honestly took care not to condemn what was strange, but instead insisted on making comparisons and determinations. He saw the narrow head of old Hans Lorenz in the hall, pondering over the pale golden round of the baptismal font, the standing-wandering heirloom, – rounded mouth, because his lips formed the prefix “Ur”, that dull and pious sound, reminiscent of places where one fell into a respectful forward rocking gait. And he saw Giuseppe Settembrini, with the tricolor in his arms, with a curved saber and his black eyes vowing heavenward, leading a crowd of freedom fighters to storm against the phalanx of despotism. Both had their beauty and honor, he thought, striving to be fair all the more because he personally or semi-personally felt a little partisan. Because grandfather Settembrini had fought for political rights, but his own grandfather or at least his forefathers had originally belonged to all the rights, and the Krapules had snatched them from them over the course of four centuries with violence and rhetoric … So they were both always in Gone black, the grandfather in the north and the one in the south, and both for the purposeto put present. But one had done it out of piety, to honor the past and death to which his nature belonged; the other, on the other hand, out of rebellion and in honor of anti-pious progress. Yes, those were two worlds or parts of the heavens, thought Hans Castorp, and the way he stood between them as it were while Herr Settembrini was telling the story, examining now one and now the other, he thought he had experienced it before . He remembered a lonely boat trip in the twilight on a Holstein lake, in late summer, a few years ago. It was seven o’clock, the sun had already set, the almost full moon had already risen over the bushy banks in the east. For ten minutes, while Hans Castorp rowed his way across the still waters, a confusing and dreamy constellation prevailed. It had been broad daylight in the west, a glassy, ​​sober, decided daylight; but if he turned his head, he had looked into an equally clear, highly enchanting moonlit night, interspersed with damp mists. The strange relationship must have existed for almost a quarter of an hour before it evened itself out in favor of the night and the moon, and Hans Castorp’s dazzled and bewildered eyes moved from one light and landscape to another, from day to night and out of night again with cheerful amazement gone into the day. So that was what he had to think about. seen a moonlit night spun by damp mists. The strange relationship must have existed for almost a quarter of an hour before it evened itself out in favor of the night and the moon, and Hans Castorp’s dazzled and bewildered eyes moved from one light and landscape to another, from day to night and out of night again with cheerful amazement gone into the day. So that was what he had to think about. seen a moonlit night spun by damp mists. The strange relationship must have existed for almost a quarter of an hour before it evened itself out in favor of the night and the moon, and Hans Castorp’s dazzled and bewildered eyes moved from one light and landscape to another, from day to night and out of night again with cheerful amazement gone into the day. So that was what he had to think about.

A great legal scholar, he thought further, Advocate Settembrini could not have become good with his way of life and his extensive practice. But the general principle of law had him, as the grandson made credible,inspired from childhood to the end of his life, and Hans Castorp, although not exactly sharp in the head at the time and organically occupied by a six-course Berghof meal, tried to understand what Settembrini meant when he used this principle “the Source of freedom and progress”. By the latter, Hans Castorp had hitherto understood something like the development of the hoist in the nineteenth century; and he found that M. Settembrini did not underestimate such things, which evidently his grandfather did not either. The Italian paid tribute to the fatherland of both his listeners, in that gunpowder had been invented there, which had turned the armor of feudalism into junk, as well as the printing press: because this enabled the democratic dissemination of ideas – that is, the dissemination of democratic ideas. He therefore praised Germany in this respect and, as far as the past was concerned, even if he thought he should give his own country the palm tree, because while the other peoples were still slumbering in superstition and slavery, the flag of enlightenment was the first there , education and freedom unrolled. But if he paid a lot of respect to technology and traffic, Hans Castorp’s personal areas of work, as he did when he first met his cousins ​​at the bank on the hillside, it did not seem to be for the sake of these powers themselves, but Considering their importance for the moral perfection of human beings, – for such an importance he gladly declared to attach to them. As technology, he said, more and more subdues nature, through the connections,which it creates, the expansion of the road network and telegraphs, and conquers climatic differences, it proves to be the most reliable means of bringing peoples closer together, promoting their mutual acquaintance, paving the way for human compromise between them, destroying their prejudices and finally theirs bring about general unification. The human race comes from darkness, fear and hate, but on a brilliant path it moves forward and upwards towards a final state of sympathy, inner brightness, goodness and happiness, and on this path technology is the most beneficial vehicle, he said. But while he was speaking like this, he grasped at oneomission of breath categories that Hans Castorp had hitherto only been used to think of as widely separated. Technique and morality! he said. And then he truly spoke of the Savior of Christianity, who first revealed the principle of equality and union, whereupon the printing press mightily promoted the promulgation of this principle, and finally the great French revolution made it law. This struck young Hans Castorp, if for indefinite reasons, in fact as the most certain confusion, although Herr Settembrini put it in such clear and full words. Once, he said, once in his life, at the beginning of his prime, his grandfather felt genuinely happy, and that was at the time of the July Revolution in Paris. Loudly and publicly he said at that time that all people would one day place those three days of Paris next to the six days of the creation of the world. Here Hans Castorp could not avoid putting his hand on the tablehit and wonder to the bottom of his soul. That three summer days of the year 1830, on which the Parisians gave themselves a new constitution, should be placed next to the six in which the Lord God separated the firmament from the water and the eternal lights of heaven as well as flowers, trees, birds, fish and all life what he had created seemed strong to him, and even afterwards, alone with his cousin Joachim, explicitly and in conversation, he found it exceedingly strong, even downright offensive.

But he was willing to be influenced, in the sense that it was agreeable to make experiments, and so he reined in the protest which his piety and taste raised against the Settembrian arrangement of things, in which Considering that what struck him as blasphemous might be called boldness, and what struck him as absurd might have been generosity and generous exuberance, at least there and then: as, for example, when Grandfather Settembrini called the barricades the “People’s Throne” and declared it is important to “consecrate the pike of the citizen at the altar of humanity”.

Hans Castorp didn’t specifically know why he was listening to Herr Settembrini, but he did. There was something like a sense of duty, apart from that holiday irresponsibility of the traveler and guest who refuses to react to any impressions and lets things come to him, in the knowledge that tomorrow or the day after he will lift his wings again and return to his usual order : – So something like a prescription of conscience, to be precise, the prescription and admonition of a somehow bad conscience, determined him to listen to the Italian, a leghitting the other and pulling at his Maria Mancini, or when the three of them climbed up from the English Quarter towards the Berghof.

According to Settembrini’s arrangement and presentation, there were two principles in the struggle for the world: might and justice, tyranny and liberty, superstition and knowledge, the principle of perseverance and that of fermenting movement, of progress. One could be called the Asiatic principle, but the other the European, for Europe was the land of rebellion, criticism, and transformative activity, while the eastern continent embodied immobility, idle rest. There was absolutely no doubt which of the two powers would finally win the victory – it was that of enlightenment, of rational perfection. For humanity always snatched away new peoples on its brilliant path; it conquered more and more land in Europe itself and began to penetrate into Asia. But there was still a long way to go before they were fully victorious, and the well-meaning, those who had received the light, still had to make great and generous efforts until the day came when, in the countries of our continent, those in truth had seen neither an eighteenth century nor a 1789 that would bring down monarchies and religions. But that day will come, said Settembrini and smiled faintly under his mustache – it would come, if not on dove’s feet, then on eagle’s wings and dawn as the dawn of the general brotherhood of nations in the sign of reason, science and justice; he will bring the holy alliance of bourgeois democracy, the shining who had received the light, until the day came when the monarchies and religions would collapse in the countries of our continent, which in truth had lived neither in the eighteenth century nor in 1789. But that day will come, said Settembrini and smiled faintly under his mustache – it would come, if not on dove’s feet, then on eagle’s wings and dawn as the dawn of the general brotherhood of nations in the sign of reason, science and justice; he will bring the holy alliance of bourgeois democracy, the shining who had received the light, until the day came when the monarchies and religions would collapse in the countries of our continent, which in truth had lived neither in the eighteenth century nor in 1789. But that day will come, said Settembrini and smiled faintly under his mustache – it would come, if not on dove’s feet, then on eagle’s wings and dawn as the dawn of the general brotherhood of nations in the sign of reason, science and justice; he will bring the holy alliance of bourgeois democracy, the shining But that day will come, said Settembrini and smiled faintly under his mustache – it would come, if not on dove’s feet, then on eagle’s wings and dawn as the dawn of the general brotherhood of nations in the sign of reason, science and justice; he will bring the holy alliance of bourgeois democracy, the shining But that day will come, said Settembrini and smiled faintly under his mustache – it would come, if not on dove’s feet, then on eagle’s wings and dawn as the dawn of the general brotherhood of nations in the sign of reason, science and justice; he will bring the holy alliance of bourgeois democracy, the shiningThe counterpart to that thrice infamous alliance of princes and cabinets, whose personal mortal enemy was grandfather Giuseppe—in a word, the world republic. For this ultimate goal, however, it was necessary above all to hit the Asiatic, the servile principle of perseverance in the center and lifeblood of his resistance, namely in Vienna. Austria must be struck on the head and destroyed, firstly to take revenge for the past and secondly to initiate the rule of law and happiness on earth.

This last turn and conclusion of Settembrini’s well-sounding outpourings no longer interested Hans Castorp at all, he disliked it, indeed it embarrassed him like a personal or national doggedness whenever it recurred – not to mention Joachim Ziemßen, who, when the Italian in this Drove the tide, turned his head away with darkened brows and no longer listened, probably reminded him to go to the spa or tried to divert the conversation. Even Hans Castorp did not feel compelled to pay attention to such aberrations – apparently they were beyond the limits of what a rule of conscience warned him to try to allow himself to be influenced by, and indeed warned so audibly that he himself, when Herr Settembrini went to them sat down or joined them outdoors, asked him to

These ideas, ideals and wills, Settembrini remarked, were family traditions in his home. For all three would have given them their lives and their intellectual powers, the grandfather, father and grandson, each according to his kind: the father no less than grandfather Giuseppe,although he was not, like the latter, a political agitator and freedom fighter, but a quiet and gentle scholar, a humanist at his desk. But what is humanism? He is love for people, nothing more, and thus he is also politics, he is also rebellion against everything that soils and degrades the idea of ​​man. He was accused of an exaggerated estimate of form; but he also cultivated the beautiful form only for the sake of human dignity, in stark contrast to the Middle Ages, which were not only sunk in misanthropy and superstition, but also in shameful formlessness, and from the very beginning he had the cause of the human being, the earthly interests, he had championed freedom of thought and joie de vivre and held that that heaven is fair to leave to the sparrows. Prometheus! He was the first humanist, and he was identical with that Satanas to which Carducci wrote his hymn… Oh, my God, the cousins ​​should have heard the old enemy of the Church in Bologna taunting and railing against the Christian sensitivity of the romantics! Against Manzoni’s sacred chants! Against the shadow and moonlight poetry of Romanticismo, which he compared to the “pale heavenly nun Luna”!Per Bacco , it was a treat! And they should also have heard how he, Carducci, interpreted Dante – he celebrated him as a citizen of a big city, who defended the revolutionary and world-improving energy against asceticism and world negation. For the poet did not honor Beatrice’s sickly and mystagogical shadow with the name of ” Donna gentile e pietosa “; that is the name of his wife, who is impoem embodies the principle of this-worldly knowledge, of practical life work…

Hans Castorp had now also heard this and that about Dante, and from the best source. He didn’t count on it entirely, considering the gossip of the agent; but it was still worth hearing that Dante was an alert city dweller. And then he continued to listen as Settembrini spoke of himself and explained that in his person, the grandson Lodovico, the tendencies of his immediate ancestors, the civic tendencies of his grandfather and the humanistic tendencies of his father, had united in that he man of letters, had become a freelance writer. For literature is nothing other than precisely this: it is the union of humanism and politics, which takes place all the more freely since humanism itself is already politics and politics is humanism… Here Hans Castorp listened and made an effort to understand it correctly; because he could now hope to see the complete ignorance of the brewer Magnussen and to find out to what extent literature is something other than “beautiful characters”. Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this to understand it rightly; because he could now hope to see the complete ignorance of the brewer Magnussen and to find out to what extent literature is something other than “beautiful characters”. Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this to understand it rightly; because he could now hope to see the complete ignorance of the brewer Magnussen and to find out to what extent literature is something other than “beautiful characters”. Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this Beer brewer Magnussen’s complete ignorance and to learn to what extent literature is something other than “beautiful characters”. Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this Beer brewer Magnussen’s complete ignorance and to learn to what extent literature is something other than “beautiful characters”. Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this Had his listeners, Settembrini asked, ever heard of Mr. Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, city clerk of Florence around 1250, who wrote a book on virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this who wrote a book about virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only this who wrote a book about virtues and vices? This master first polished the Florentines and taught them to speak and the art of governing their republic according to the rules of politics. “There you have it, gentlemen!” exclaimed Settembrini. “There you have it!” And he spoke of the “word”, of the cult of the word, of eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. For the word is the honor of man, and do only thislife humane. Not only humanism – humanity in general,All human dignity, human respect and human self-respect is inextricably linked to words, to literature – (“You see,” said Hans Castorp later to his cousin, “Do you see that beautiful words are important in literature? I have I noticed it right away.”), – and so politics is also connected with it, or rather: it emerges from the alliance, the unity of humanity and literature, because the beautiful word produces the beautiful deed. ‘You had in your country,’ said Settembrini, ‘two hundred years ago a poet, a splendid old chatterer, who attached great importance to a beautiful handwriting, because he thought it led to a beautiful style. He should have gone a little further and said that a beautiful style leads to beautiful actions.” Writing beautifully, that almost means thinking nicely, and from there it’s not far to nice action. All manners and moral perfection derive from the spirit of literature, this spirit of human honor, which is at the same time the spirit of humanity and politics. Yes, all this is one, is one and the same power and idea, and inone name could sum it up. What’s that name? Well, this name is made up of familiar syllables, the meaning and majesty of which my cousins ​​had certainly never really understood – it read: Civilization! And as Settembrini let that word slip from his lips, he threw up his little yellow right hand, like one offering a toast.

The young Hans Castorp found all this worth hearing, not without obligation and more as an experiment, but still worth hearingIn any case, he thought it was, and in this sense spoke out against Joachim Ziemssen, who, however, had the thermometer in his mouth and could only answer vaguely, after which he was too busy reading the digit and writing it Enter the table to comment on Settembrini’s aspects. Hans Castorp, as we said, willingly took note of it and opened his heart to them for examination: from which it becomes clear above all how advantageously the waking person differs from the stupid dreaming one – as which Hans Castorp has already repeatedly punched Mr. Settembrini in the face with a barrel organ cursed and tried to push him from the spot with all his might, because he “is disturbing here”; as a watcher, however, he listened to him politely and attentively and tried to balance and suppress the resistance that wanted to rise up in him against the mentor’s instructions and representations in a legally minded manner. For the fact that certain resistances arose in his soul should not be denied: there were some that had existed in the past, originally and had always been there, as well as some that arose from the current state of affairs, from his partly indirect, partly concealed experiences with those up here.

What is man, how easily his conscience is deceived! How well he understands how to hear permission for passion even in the voice of duty! Out of a sense of duty, for the sake of equity, for the sake of balance, Hans Castorp listened to Mr. Settembrini and sympathetically examined his aspects of reason, the republic and beautiful style, ready to be influenced by them. The more properbut afterwards he found it again to give his thoughts and dreams free rein in the opposite direction – yes, in order to express our entire suspicion or our entire insight, he probably had M. Settembrini just for that purposeeavesdropped on obtaining a license from his conscience, which it had not originally wished to give him. But what or who was on this other side, opposed to patriotism, human dignity and fine literature, to which Hans Castorp now believed he could direct his thoughts and activities again? There was… Clawdia Chauchat, – limp, wormy, and Kyrgyz-eyed; and when Hans Castorp thought of her (by the way, “commemorate” is a too restrained expression for his way of turning to her inwardly), he again felt as if he were sitting in a boat on that Holstein lake and looking out of the glassy daylight of the western shore in a puzzled way and blinded eyes across into the mist-spun moonlit night of the eastern heavens.