“Monsieur is still the philosophizing fainéant, I see. But Rhadamanthus? Who is that?”
“Behrens. That is Settembrini’s name for him.”
“Ah, Settembrini. Him I know. That Italian who—whom I did not like. He was not hu‑man. He had—arrogance.” The voice dwelt on the word “human”—dreamily, fanatically; and accented arrogance on the final syllable. “He is no longer here? And I am so stupid, I do not know what is Rhadamanthus.”
“A humanistic allusion. Settembrini has moved away. We’ve philosophized a lot of late, he and I and Naphta.”
“Who is Naphta?”
“His adversary.”
“If he is that, then I would gladly make his acquaintance.—Did I not tell you your cousin would die if he went down to be a soldier?”
And Hans Castorp answered as he had vowed and dreamed: “Tu l’as su,” he said.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked him.
There was a long pause. He did not retract, he waited, with the crown of his head pressed against the chair-back, and his gaze half tranced, to hear her voice again; and again he was not sure she was still there, again he was afraid the broken music might have drowned her departing footsteps. At last it came again: “And Monsieur did not go down to his cousin’s funeral?”
He replied: “No, I bade him adieu up here, before they shut him away, when he had begun to smile in his beard. His brow was cold—tu sais comme les fronts des morts sont froids?”
“Again! What a way is that to address a lady whom one hardly knows!”
“Must I speak not humanly, but humanistically?”
“Quelle blague! You were here all the time?”
“Yes. I waited.”
“Waited—for what?”
“For thee!”
A laugh came from above him, a word that sounded like “Madman!”—“For me? How absurd it is—ils ne t’auraient pas laissé partir.”
“Oh, yes, Behrens would have, once—he was furious. But it would have been folly. I have not only the old scars that come from my schooldays, but the fresh places that give me my fever.”
“Still fever?”
“Yes, still, a little—or nearly always. It is intermittent. But not an intermittent fever.”
“Des allusions?”
He was silent. He still gazed somnambulantly, but his brows were gathered. After a while he asked: “Et toi—où as-tu été?”
A hand struck the back of the chair. “Toujours ce tutoyer! Mais c’est un sauvage!—Where have I been? All over. In Moscow”—the voice pronounced it “Muoscow”—“in Baku—in some German baths, in Spain.”
“Oh, in Spain. Did you like it?”
“So-so. The travelling is bad. The people are half Moorish. Castile is bare and stark. The Kremlin is finer than that castle or monastery, or whatever it is, at the foot of the mountains—”
“Yes, the Escurial.”
“Yes, Philip’s castle. An inhuman place. I preferred the folk-dancing in Catalonia, the sardana to the bagpipes. Moi, j’ai dansé aussi moi! they take each other’s hands and dance in a ring—the whole square is full of dancing people. C’est charmant. That is hu‑man. I bought a little blue cap, such as all the men and boys of the people wear down there, almost like a fez—the boina. I shall wear it in the rest-cure, and other places, perhaps. Monsieur shall judge if it becomes me.”
“What monsieur?”
“Sitting here in this chair.”
“Not Mynheer Peeperkorn?”
“He has already pronounced judgment—he says I look charming in it.”
“He said that—all of it? Did he really finish the sentence, so it could be understood?”
“Ah! It seems Monsieur is out of temper? Monsieur would be spiteful, cutting? He would laugh at people who are much greater and better, and—more hu‑man than himself and his—his ami bavard de la Méditerranée, son maître et grand parleur—put together. But I cannot listen—”
“Have you my X-ray portrait?” he interrupted, crestfallen.
She laughed. “I must look it out.”
“I carry yours here. And on my bedside table I have a little easel—”
He did not finish. Before him stood Peeperkorn. He had searched for his travelling-companion, entered through the portières and stood in front of Hans Castorp’s chair, behind which he saw her talking; stood like a tower, so close to Hans Castorp as to rouse the latter from his trance, and make him realize that it was in place to get up and be mannerly. But they were so close he had to slide sidewise from his seat, and then the three stood in a triangle, the centre of which was the chair.
Frau Chauchat complied with the requirements of the civilized West, by presenting the gentlemen to each other, Hans Castorp to Peeperkorn as “an acquaintance of a former stay.” Superfluous to account for Herr Peeperkorn. She gave his name, and the Dutchman bent a look upon the young man, out of his colourless eyes, beneath the astonishing arabesque of wrinkles that made his face so like an old idol’s; gave him a look, and put out his hand, which was freckled on the back, and would have looked like a sea-captain’s, Hans Castorp thought, but for the lanceolate fingernails. For the first time, he stood under the immediate influence of Peeperkorn’s impressive personality (“personality” was the word that always occurred to one in reference to this man, one knew straightway that this was a personality; and the more one saw of him the more one was convinced that a personality must look not otherwise than as he did) and his unstable youth felt the weight of this broad-shouldered, red-faced man in the sixties, with his aureole of white hair, his cracked lips and the chin-whisker that strayed long and scanty over the clerical waistcoat. Peeperkorn’s manner was courtesy itself.
“My dear sir,” he said, “with the greatest of pleasure. Don’t mention it. I am entirely your man. In making your acquaintance, I distinctly feel—as a young man, you inspire me with confidence. I like you. I—don’t mention it. Settled,
