The Magic Mountain

at a table by themselves, rather apart from the others, for Hans Castorp was smoking with his dark beer, which he had brought out from breakfast. From time to time his cigar gave him a little pleasure. Rendered torpid, as often, by the beer and the music, he sat with his head on one side and his mouth slightly open, watching the gay, resortish scene, feeling, not as a disturbing influence, but rather as heightening the general singularity, and lending it one mental fillip the more, the fact that all these people were inwardly attacked by well-nigh resistless decay, and that most of them were feverish. They sat at the little tables drinking effervescent lemonade; the group on the steps were photographing each other. Postage stamps were exchanged. The red-haired Greek girl sketched Herr Rasmussen’s portrait on a drawing-pad, but would not let him see it. She turned this way and that, laughing with wide-open mouth, showing her broad far-apart teeth⁠—it was long before he could snatch it from her. Hermine Kleefeld perched on her step, eyes half open, beating time to the music with a rolled-up newspaper; she permitted Herr Albin to fasten a bunch of wild flowers on the front of her blouse. The youth with the voluptuous lips, sitting at Frau Salomon’s feet, turned his head upwards to talk with her, while behind them the thin-haired pianist directed his unchanging gaze down the back of her neck.

The physicians came and mingled with the guests of the cure, Hofrat Behrens in his white smock, Krokowski in his black. They passed along the row of tables, the Hofrat letting fall a pleasantry at nearly every one, till a wave of merriment followed in his wake; and so down the steps among the young folk, the female element of which straightway trooped up sidling and becking about Dr. Krokowski, while the Hofrat honoured the sabbath by performing a “stunt” with his bootlaces before the gentlemen’s eyes. He rested one mighty foot upon a step, unfastened the laces, gripped them with practised technique in one hand, and without employing the other, hooked them up again crosswise, with such speed and agility that the beholders marvelled, and many of them tried to emulate him, but in vain.

Somewhat later Settembrini appeared on the terrace. He came out of the dining-room leaning on his cane, dressed as usual in his pilot coat and yellow check trousers, looked about him with his critical, alert, and elegant air, and approached the cousins’ table. “Bravo!” he said, and asked permission to sit with them.

“Beer, tobacco, and music,” he went on. “Behold the Fatherland! I rejoice to see you in your element, Engineer⁠—you have a feeling for national atmosphere, it seems. May I bask in the sunshine of your well-being?”

Hans Castorp looked lowering⁠—his features took on that expression directly he set eyes on the Italian. He said: “You are late for the concert, Herr Settembrini; it must be nearly over. You don’t care for music?”

“Not to order,” responded Settembrini. “Not by the calendar week. Not when it reeks of the prescription counter and is doled out to me by the authorities for the good of my health. I cling to my freedom⁠—or rather to such vestiges of freedom and personal dignity as remain to the likes of us. At these affairs I play the guest, as you do up here: I come for a quarter-hour and go away⁠—it gives me the illusion of independence. That it is more than an illusion I do not claim⁠—enough if it please me! It is different with your cousin. For him it all belongs to the service⁠—that is the light, is it not, Lieutenant, in which you regard it? Ah, yes, I know, you have the trick of hugging your pride, even in a state of slavery. A puzzling trick; not everybody in Europe understands it. Music? You were asking if I profess to be an amateur of music? Well, when you say amateur” (Hans Castorp could not recall saying anything of the sort), “the word is perhaps not ill chosen; it has a slight suggestion of superficiality⁠—yes, very well, I am an amateur of music⁠—which is not to say that I set great store by it; not as I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.⁠—Music? It is the half-articulate art, the dubious, the irresponsible, the insensible. Perhaps you will object that she can be clear when she likes. But so can nature, so can a brook⁠—what good is that to us? That is not true clarity, it is a dreamy, inexpressive, irresponsible clarity, without consequences and therefore dangerous, because it betrays one into soft complacence.⁠—Let music play her loftiest role, she will thereby but kindle the emotions, whereas what concerns us is to awaken the reason. Music is to all appearance movement itself⁠—yet, for all that, I suspect her of quietism. Let me state my point by the method of exaggeration: my aversion from music rests on political grounds.”

Hans Castorp could not refrain from slapping his knee as he exclaimed that never in all his life before had he heard the like.

“Pray do not, on that account, refuse to entertain it,” Settembrini said with a smile. “Music, as a final incitement to the spirit of men, is invaluable⁠—as a force which draws onward and upward the spirit she finds prepared for her ministrations. But literature must precede her. By music alone the world would get no further forward. Alone, she is a danger. For you, personally, Engineer, she is beyond all doubt dangerous. I saw it in your face as I came up.”

Hans Castorp laughed.

“Oh, you shouldn’t look at my face, Herr Settembrini. You can’t believe how the air up here sets me on fire. It is harder than I thought to get acclimatized.”

“I fear you deceive yourself.”

“How so? I know, at least, how deucedly hot and tired I am all the time.”

“It seems to me we should be grateful