“As now, for example?”
“Now? Oh, now I am so new up here, I am still rather bewildered—you can imagine.”
“Ah—bewildered.”
“Yes, and I did not sleep so very well, and the early breakfast was really too solid.—I am accustomed to a fair breakfast, but this was a little too rich for my blood, as the saying goes. In short, I feel a sense of oppression—and for some reason or other, my cigar this morning hasn’t the right taste, something that as good as never happens to me, or only when I am seriously upset—and today it is like leather. I had to throw it away, there was no use forcing it. Are you a smoker, may I ask? No? Then you cannot imagine the annoyance and disappointment it is for anyone like me, who have smoked from my youth up, and taken such pleasure in it.”
“I am without experience in the field,” Settembrini answered, “but I find that my lack of it is in no poor company. So many fine, self-denying spirits have refrained. Carducci had no use for the practice. But you will find our Rhadamanthus a kindred spirit. He is a devotee of your vice.”
“Vice, Herr Settembrini?”
“Why not? One must call things by their right names; life is enriched and ennobled thereby. I too have my vices.”
“So Hofrat Behrens is a connoisseur? A charming man.”
“You find him so? Then you have already made his acquaintance?”
“Yes, just now, as we came out. It was almost like a professional visit—but gratis, you know—sine pecunia. He saw at once that I am anaemic. He advised me to follow my cousin’s regimen entirely: to lie out on the balcony a good deal—he even said I should take my temperature.”
“Did he indeed?” Settembrini cried out. “Capital!” He laughed and threw back his head. “How does it go, that opera of yours? ‘A fowler bold in me you see, forever laughing merrily!’ Ah, that is most amusing! And you will follow his advice? Of course, why shouldn’t you? He’s a devil of a fellow, our Rhadamanthus! ‘Forever laughing’—even if it is rather forced at times. He is inclined to melancholia, you know. His vice doesn’t agree with him—of course, else it would be no vice. Smoking gives him fits of depression; that is why our respected Frau Directress has taken charge of his supplies, and only deals him out daily rations. It even happens sometimes that he yields to the temptation to steal it, and then he gets an attack of melancholia. A troubled spirit, in short. Do you know your Directress already, too? No? You have made a mistake. You must remedy it at the earliest opportunity. My dear sir, she comes of the noble race of von Mylendonk. And she is distinguished from the Medici Venus by the fact that where the goddess has a bosom, she has a cross.”
“Ah, ha ha!—capital!” Hans Castorp laughed.
“Her Christian name is Adriatica.”
“Adriatica!” shouted Hans Castorp. “Priceless! Adriatica von Mylendonk! Isn’t that splendid! Sounds as though she had been dead a very long time. It is positively medieval.”
“My dear sir,” Settembrini answered him, “there is a good deal up here that is positively medieval, as you express it. Personally, I am convinced that Rhadamanthus was actuated simply and solely by artistic feeling when he made this fossil head overseer of his Chamber of Horrors. You know he is an artist, by the by. He paints in oils. Why not? There’s no law against it—anybody can paint that likes. Frau Adriatica tells all who will listen to her, not counting those who won’t, that a Mylendonk was abbess of a cloister at Bonn on the Rhine, in the thirteenth century. It can’t have been long after that she herself saw the light of day.”
“Ha ha! Why, Herr Settembrini, I find you are a mocker!”
“A mocker? You mean I am malicious? Well, yes, perhaps I am a little,” said Settembrini. “My great complaint is that it is my fate to spend my malice upon such insignificant objects. I hope, Engineer, you have nothing against malice? In my eyes, it is reason’s keenest dart against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism; and criticism is the beginning of progress and enlightenment.” And he began to talk about Petrarch, whom he called the father of the modern spirit.
“I think,” Joachim said thoughtfully, “that we ought to be going to lie down.”
The man of letters had been speaking to an accompaniment of graceful gestures, one of which he now rounded off in Joachim’s direction and said: “Our lieutenant presses on to the service. Let us go together, our way is the same: the ‘path on the right that shall lead to the halls of the mightiest Dis’—ah, Virgil, Virgil! He is unsurpassable. I am a believer in progress, certainly, gentlemen; but Virgil—he has a command of epithet no modern can approach.” And on their homeward path he recited Latin verse with an Italian pronunciation; interrupting himself, however, as he saw coming towards them a young girl—a girl of the village, as it seemed, and by no means remarkable for her looks—whom he laid himself out to smile at and ogle most killingly: “O la, la, sweet, sweet, sweet!” he chirruped. “Pretty, pretty, pretty! ‘Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,’ ” he quoted as they passed, and kissed his hand at the poor girl’s embarrassed back.
“What a windbag it is,” Hans Castorp thought. He remained of that opinion still, after the Italian had recovered from his attack of gallantry and begun to scoff again. His animadversions were chiefly directed upon Herr Hofrat Behrens: he jeered at the size of his feet, and at the title he had received from a certain prince who suffered from tuberculosis of the brain. Of the scandalous courses of that royal personage the whole neighbourhood still talked; but Rhadamanthus had shut his eye—both eyes, in fact—and behaved every inch a Hofrat. Did the gentlemen know that
