Louisa Ziemssen turned sobbing away; it was Hans Castorp who bent over the moveless, breathless form, closed the eyes with the tip of his ring-finger, and laid the hands together on the coverlet. Then he too stood and wept, tears ran down his cheeks, like those that had smarted the skin of the English officer of marines: those clear drops flowing in such bitter abundance every hour of our day all over our world, till in sheer poetic justice we have named the earth we live in after them; that alkaline, salty gland-secretion, which is pressed from our system by the nervous stress of acute pain, whether physical or mental. It contained, as Hans Castorp knew, a certain amount of mucin and albumen as well.
The Hofrat came, summoned by Sister Berta. He had been there a half-hour earlier, and given a camphor injection; had scarcely been absent for more than the moment of the “short crossing.” “Ay,” said he simply, “he has it behind him now,” and lifted the stethoscope from Joachim’s breast. And he pressed both their hands, nodding his head; standing with them awhile by the bed, and looking into Joachim’s moveless visage, with the warrior beard. “Crazy young one,” he said: jerking his head towards the recumbent form. “Crazy chap. Would force it, you know—of course, that’s the way of the service down there, all force, all compulsion—he joined the service while he was febrile, he took a life-and-death chance. Field of honour, you know—slipped away from us, and now he’s dead on the field. Honour was the death of him, and death—well, you might put it the other way round too. At any rate, he’s gone—‘had the honour to take his leave.’ A madman, a crazy chap.” And he left, tall and stooped, his neck-bone very prominent.
It had been decided to take Joachim home; and House Berghof assumed the arrangements, doing all that was necessary or that could add to the dignity or stateliness of the occasion. Mother and cousin needed not to lift a finger. By next day Joachim lay in his silk dress-shirt, with flowers about him on the coverlet, looking, in the midst of all this white, more beautiful than immediately after death. Every trace of strain was gone from the features, they had composed themselves, growing cold, into a silent purity of form. Curling dark locks fell upon the yellowish brow, that seemed to be of some fine brittle stuff between wax and marble; through the crisp hair of the beard, the lips showed full and curling. An antique helmet would have become this head—as many of the guests remarked, who came to take last leave of Joachim. Frau Stöhr, as she looked, wept with abandon. “A hero, he was a hero,” cried she, and demanded that the “Erotica” be played at his grave.
“Be quiet,” hissed Settembrini, at her side. He and Naphta were with her in the room. Greatly moved, with both hands he waved the onlookers toward the bed and summoned them to mourn with him. “Un giovanotto tanto simpatico, tanto stimabile,” said he repeatedly.
And Naphta, without looking at him, or relaxing his contained manner, apparently could not refrain from saying, low and bitingly: “I am glad to see that despite your enthusiasm for freedom and progress, you have some feeling for serious things.”
Settembrini pocketed the affront. Perhaps he felt conscious, under the circumstances of the moment, of the superiority of Naphta’s position over his own; may even have sought to balance this by the lively expression of his grief, especially when Leo Naphta further presumed on his advantage, while he had it, and sententiously added: “The mistake you literary men make is in thinking that only the spirit makes for virtue. It is nearer the truth to say that only where there is no spirit is there true virtue.”
“Goodness,” thought Hans Castorp, “but that was a Pythian remark! Made like that with the lips snapped together afterwards, it quite staggers one—for the moment, that is.”
In the afternoon the metallic coffin arrived. The removal of Joachim to this stately receptacle, decorated with lions’ heads and rings, was the sole affair of the man who came along with it, a black-clad functionary of the undertaking establishment which had the arrangements in hand. He wore a sort of short dress-coat, and the wedding-ring on his plebian hand had almost grown into the flesh. One inclined to feel that he exhaled an odour of death from his garments—pure prejudice, of course, and groundless. This specialist let it be known that all his spiriting had to be done behind the scenes, and a proper and dress-parade appearance presented to the surviving relatives. Hans Castorp felt fairly suspicious of the fellow and all his works. He assented to Frau Ziemssen’s withdrawal, but was not minded to be bowed from the scene himself. He stood by and lent a hand, grasping the figure under the shoulders and helping carry it over to the coffin, upon whose coverlet and tasselled cushions Joachim presently lay ensconced high and solemnly, among candelabra provided by the house.
On the next day but one appeared a phenomenon which determined Hans Castorp to take inward leave of that quiet form, to void the field
