“Placet experiri,” he thought to himself, with a smile. So much Latin he had, without calling himself a homo humanus. The upshot was that he kept his eye on Settembrini, listened keenly and critically to what he had to say when they met on their prescribed walks to the bench on the mountainside, or down to the Platz, or wherever and whenever opportunity offered. Other occasions there were, too: for instance, at the end of a meal Settembrini would rise from table before anyone else and saunter across among the seven tables, in his check trousers, a toothpick between his lips, to where the cousins sat. He did this in defiance of law and custom, standing there in a graceful attitude, with his legs crossed, talking and gesticulating with the toothpick. Or he would draw up a chair and sit down at the corner of the table, between Hans Castorp and the schoolmistress, or between Hans Castorp and Miss Robinson, and look on while they ate their pudding, which he seemed to have forgone.
“May I beg for admission into this charmed circle?” he would say, shaking hands with the cousins, and comprehending the rest of the table in a sweeping bow. “My brewer over there—not to mention the despairing gaze of the breweress!—But, really, this Herr Magnus! Just now he has been delivering a discourse on folk-psychology. Shall I tell you what he said? ‘The Fatherland, it is true, is one enormous barracks. But all the same it’s got a lot of solid capacity, it’s genuine. I wouldn’t change it for the fine manners of the rest of them. What good are fine manners to me if I’m cheated right and left?’ And more of the same kind. I am at the end of my patience. And opposite me I have a poor creature, with churchyard roses blooming in her cheeks, an old maid from Siebenbürgen, who never stops talking about her brother-in-law, a man we none of us either know or wish to know. I could stand it no longer, I shook their dust from my feet, I bolted.”
“You raised your flag and took to your heels,” Frau Stöhr stated.
“Pre‑cisely,” shouted Settembrini. “I fled with my flag. Ah, what an apt phrase! I see I have come to the right place; nobody else here knows how to coin phrases like that.—May I be permitted to inquire after the state of your health, Frau Stöhr?”
It was frightful to see Frau Stöhr preen herself.
“Good land!” she said. “It is always the same, you know yourself: two steps forward and three back. When you have been sitting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on another six. It is like the torment of Tantalus: you shove and shove, and think you are getting to the top—”
“Ah, how delightful of you, to give poor old Tantalus a new job, and let him roll the stone uphill for a change! I call that true benevolence.—But what are these mysterious reports I have been hearing of you, Frau Stöhr? There are tales going about—tales about doubles, astral bodies, and the like. Up to now I have lent them no credence—but this latest story puzzles me, I confess.”
“I know you are poking fun at me.”
“Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind at rest about this dark side of your life; after that it will be time to jest. Last night, between half past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the garden; I looked up at the row of balconies; there was your light gleaming through the dark; you were performing your cure, led by the dictates of duty and reason. ‘Ah,’ thought I, ‘there lies our charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house, for the sake of an early return to the arms of her waiting husband.’—And now what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kurhaus, in the cinematógrafo” (Herr Settembrini gave the word the Italian pronunciation, with the accent on the fourth syllable) “and afterwards in the café, enjoying punch and kisses, and—”
Frau Stöhr wriggled and giggled into her serviette, nudged Joachim and the silent Dr. Blumenkohl in the ribs, winked with coy confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous complacency. She was in the habit of leaving the light burning on her balcony and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter below. Her husband, meanwhile, in Cannstadt, awaited her return. She was not the only patient who practised this duplicity.
“And,” went
