Revolution, conservation—he looked at Peeperkorn, saw him stalking along, not particularly majestic on foot, with his slumping gait, his hat drawn over his brows; saw his thick lips with their broken line, heard him say, jerking his head mockingly in the direction of the debaters: “Yes, yes—cerebrum, highly cerebral, you understand. Very; that is—it shows”—and behold, in a trice, the current cut off! Dead. As a doornail. They tried another tack, invoked more powerful spells, came on the “aristocratic problem,” on popularity and exclusiveness. Not a spark. Despite itself, what they said sounded personal. Hans Castorp saw Clavdia’s traveling-companion as he lay under the red satin coverlet, in his collarless woollen shirt, half ancient ouvrier, half royal bust. And the nerve of the debate quivered and died. They tried to galvanize it into life. Negation, cult of nihilism on the one hand, on the other the positive assertion of life, and the inclining of the heart unto love. But where was the spark, where the current, directly one looked at Mynheer, as one did, irresistibly, as though magnetized? They simply were not there—which remained, to use Hans Castorp’s expression, neither more nor less than a mystery. He took note, for his collection of aphorisms, that either one expresses a mystery in the simplest words, or leaves it unexpressed. But to get this one expressed, one could only say straight out that Pieter Peeperkorn, with his kingly mask, and bitter, irregular mouth, was both, now this, now that; both seemed to fit him and to neutralize each other when one looked at him—both this and that, the one and the other. Yes, this stupid old man, this commanding cipher! He did not paralyse the opposition by cross-purposes and confusion, like Naphta, he was not like him equivocal, or was so in an entirely different way, in a positive way, this staggering mystery, which so naively set at naught not only cleverness and stupidity, but so much else in the way of opposed views invoked by Settembrini and Naphta, in order to stimulate interest, to their own pedagogical ends. The personality, it appeared, was not pedagogically inclined—yet what a find, what a prize, for inquiring youth on its travels! Fascinating it was to watch riddling royalty when the conversation turned on marriage and sin, indulgences, the guilt or innocence of pleasures of the sense! His head would sink upon his shoulder or chest, the calamitous lips part as the mouth relaxed into pathetic curves, the nostrils dilate as with pain, the folds on the forehead rose until the eyes were fixed in a wide, suffering gaze.—It was a picture of bitterness and woe. And behold, as one looked, this martyr’s visage blossomed into wantonness. The head was roguishly on a side, the still open lips wreathed in wickedly suggestive smiles, the sybaritic little dimple appeared in one cheek—he was again the dancing priest, and jerked his head as before, mockingly, in the direction of so much cerebration, as they heard him say: “Ah, yes, yes, absolutely! But isn’t there a—are there not—sacraments of pleasure—you understand—”
Still, as we said, Hans Castorp’s diminished friends and teachers were always well served when they could wrangle. They were in their element, whereas the personality was not. Though one might have two views of the role he played when wrangling was the order of the day. But on the other hand, when the scene changed from the sphere of the intellectual to the strictly earthly and practical, and dealt with questions, and in fields, where commanding natures prove their worth—then there were no two views possible. For then the others were undone, then they were cast in the shade, then they drew in their horns, and Peeperkorn came out, grasped the sceptre, arranged, decided, “settled.” Was there any wonder, then, that he behaved so as to bring that state of things about, that he sought to override logomachy? He suffered, while it held sway, or if it held sway for long. But not in his vanity. Of that Hans Castorp felt assured. For vanity is not on the grand scale, nor is greatness vain. No, Peeperkorn’s need of reality had other grounds. It sprang, to put it baldly, from fear: from a characteristic infirmity of minds on the grand scale, from the sensitively and passionately cherished point d’honneur which Hans Castorp had struggled to explain to Herr Settembrini, describing it as in a sense a military trait.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Dutchman said, and lifted his sea-captain’s hand, with its nails like lance-heads, in entreaty and monition. “Ladies and gentlemen. Very good. Very. Asceticism. Indulgences. Lust of the flesh. By all means. Most important. Most debatable. But may I—I should like to—I fear we may commit a serious error. Are we not irresponsibly neglecting—one of our highest—” He drew in a deep breath.
“Ladies and gentlemen. This air—this characteristic thawing air, with its somewhat enervating breath, full of memories and promises of spring—we should not breathe it in to breathe it out in—Really.—I must implore you. We must not. It is an insult. We should give it out only in the form of praise—of complete and utter—enough, ladies and gentlemen. I interrupt myself—in honour of—” He did, indeed, stand still, bent backward, shading his brows with his hat. They followed his gaze. “May I,” said he, “may I draw your attention upwards—high in the sky, to that black, circling point against the blue, intensely blue, shading into black—that is a bird of prey. It is, if I am not mistaken—look, ladies and gentlemen, look, my child. It is an eagle. Most emphatically I call your attention—look, it is
