narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of songbirds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level floor of the valley.

It was about eight o’clock, and still daylight. A lake was visible in the distant landscape, its waters grey, its shores covered with black fir-forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out, and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a small station. Hans Castorp heard the name called out: it was “Davos-Dorf.” Soon he would be at his journey’s end. And suddenly, close to him, he heard a voice, the comfortable Hamburg voice of his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, saying: “Hullo, there you are! Here’s where you get out!” and peering through the window saw his cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown ulster, bareheaded, and looking more robust than ever in his life before. He laughed and said again: “Come along out, it’s all right!”

“But I’m not there yet!” said Hans Castorp, taken aback, and still seated.

“Oh, yes, you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sanatorium from here. I have a carriage. Just give us your things.”

And laughing, confused, in the excitement of arrival and meeting, Hans Castorp reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick and umbrella, and finally Ocean Steamships out of the window. Then he ran down the narrow corridor and sprang out upon the platform to greet his cousin properly. The meeting took place without exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and reserve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of showing too much feeling. And, as they could not well address each other by their last names, they confined themselves, by established custom, to the “thou.”

A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook hands, quickly, not without embarrassment, young Ziemssen in military position, heels together. Then he came forward to ask for Hans Castorp’s luggage ticket; he was the concierge of the International Sanatorium Berghof, and would fetch the guest’s large trunk from the other station while the gentlemen drove directly up to supper. This man limped noticeably; and so, curiously enough, the first thing Hans Castorp said to his cousin was: “Is that a war veteran? What makes him limp like that?”

“War veteran! No fear!” said Joachim, with some bitterness. “He’s got it in his knee⁠—or, rather, he had it⁠—the kneepan has been removed.”

Hans Castorp bethought himself hastily.

“So that’s it?” he said, and as he walked on turned his head and gave a quick glance back. “But you can’t make me believe you’ve still got anything like that the matter with you! Why, you look as if you had just come from manoeuvres!” And he looked sidelong at his cousin.

Joachim was taller and broader than he, a picture of youthful vigour, and made for a uniform. He was of the very dark type which his blond-peopled country not seldom produces, and his already nut-brown skin was tanned almost to bronze. With his large, black eyes and small, dark moustache over the full, well-shaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears had not stood out. Up to a certain period they had been his only trouble in life. Now, however, he had others.

Hans Castorp went on: “You’re coming back down with me, aren’t you? I see no reason why not.”

“Back down with you?” asked his cousin, and turned his large eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five months they had taken on a tired, almost sad expression. “When?”

“Why, in three weeks.”

“Oh, yes, you are already on the way back home, in your thoughts,” answered Joachim. “Wait a bit. You’ve only just come. Three weeks are nothing at all, to us up here⁠—they look like a lot of time to you, because you are only up here on a visit, and three weeks is all you have. Get acclimatized first⁠—it isn’t so easy, you’ll see. And the climate isn’t the only queer thing about us. You’re going to see some things you’ve never dreamed of⁠—just wait. About me⁠—it isn’t such smooth sailing as you think, you with your ‘going home in three weeks.’ That’s the class of ideas you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly snow-burning. It doesn’t mean much, as Behrens always says; he told me at the last regular examination it would take another half year, pretty certainly.”

“Half a year? Are you crazy?” shouted Hans Castorp. They had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions. “Half a year! You’ve been up here half a year already! Who’s got so much time to spend⁠—”

“Oh, time⁠—!” said Joachim, and nodded repeatedly, straight in front of him, paying his cousin’s honest indignation no heed. “They make pretty free with a human being’s idea of time, up here. You wouldn’t believe it. Three weeks are just like a day to them. You’ll learn all about it,” he said, and added: “One’s ideas

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