Well, all that young Hans Castorp found worth listening to; not precisely overwhelming, of a value largely experimental, but still worth listening to. He said as much to Joachim Ziemssen later; but Joachim had his thermometer in his mouth and could not reply to his cousin; nor had he afterwards leisure, when, on taking it out, he read the figure and entered it in his notebook. But Hans Castorp good-naturedly took cognizance of Settembrini’s point of view and tested by it his own inner experiences; from which self-examination it principally appeared that the waking man has an advantage over the sleeping and dreaming one. For whereas the sleeping Hans Castorp had more than once upbraided the organ-grinder to his face and done his utmost to drive him away because he felt him a disturbing influence, the waking one lent him an attentive ear and made an honest effort to minimize the opposition which his mentor’s ideas and conceptions persistently aroused in him. For it cannot be denied that there was such opposition; some of it such as he must always have felt from the very beginning, the rest arising from the particular situation and his partly vicarious, partly secret and personal experiences among “those up here.”
What a creature is man, how widely his conscience betrays him! How easy it is for him to think he hears, even in the voice of duty, a licence to passion! Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini out of a sense of duty and fairness, in the idea of hearing both sides; with the best of intentions he tested the latter’s views on the subject of the republic, reason and the bello stile. He was entirely receptive. And all the while he was finding it more and more permissible to give his thoughts and dreams free rein in another and quite opposite direction. Indeed, to give expression to all that we suspect or divine, we think it not unlikely that Hans Castorp hearkened to Herr Settembrini’s discourse in order to get from his own conscience an indulgence which otherwise might not have been forthcoming. But what—or who—was it that drew down the other side of the scales, when weighed over against patriotism, belles-lettres, and the dignity of man? It was—Clavdia Chauchat, “Kirghiz”-eyed, “relaxed,” and tainted within; when he thought of her (though “thinking” is far too tame a word to characterize the impulse that turned all his being in her direction), it was as though he were sitting again in his boat on the lake in Holstein, looking with dazzled eyes from the glassy daylight of the western shore to the mist and moonbeams that wrapped the eastern heavens.
The Thermometer
Hans Castorp’s week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, for on a Tuesday he had arrived. Two or three days before, he had gone down to the office and paid his second weekly bill, a modest account of a round one hundred and sixty francs, modest and cheap enough, even without taking into consideration the nature of some of the advantages of a stay up here—advantages priceless in themselves, though for that very reason they could not be included in the bill—and even without counting extras like the fortnightly concert and Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, which might conceivably have been included. The sum of one hundred and sixty francs represented simply and solely the actual hospitality extended by the Berghof to Hans Castorp: his comfortable lodgment and his five stupendous meals.
“It isn’t much, it is rather cheap than otherwise,” remarked the guest to the old inhabitant. “You cannot complain of being overcharged up here. You need around six hundred and fifty francs a month for board and lodging, treatment included. Let us assume that you spend another thirty francs for tips, if you are decent and like to have friendly faces about you. That makes six hundred and eighty. Good. Of course I know there are fixed fees and other sorts of small expenses: toilet articles, tobacco, drives, and excursions, now and then a bill for shoes or clothing. Very good. But all that won’t bring it up to a thousand francs, say what you like. Not eight hundred even. That isn’t ten thousand francs a year. Certainly not more. That is what it costs you.”
“Mental arithmetic very fair,” Joachim said. “I never knew you were such a shot at doing sums in your head. And how broad-minded of you to calculate it by the year like that! You’ve learned something since you’ve been up here. But your figure is too high. I don’t smoke, and I certainly don’t expect to buy any suits while I am here, thank you.”
“Then it would be lower still,” Hans Castorp answered, rather confused. Why, indeed, he should have included tobacco and a new wardrobe in his calculation of Joachim’s expenses is a puzzle. But for the rest, his brilliant display of arithmetic had simply been so much dust thrown in his cousin’s eyes; for here, as elsewhere, his mental processes were rather slow than fast, and the truth is that a previous calculation with pencil and paper underlay his present facility. One night on his balcony (for he even took the evening cure out of doors now, like the rest) a sudden thought had
