“Yes,” he said. “I must see if I have the fever that goes with the cold.” Quickly he put the thermometer in his mouth, the mercury beneath the tongue, so that the instrument stuck slantingly upwards from his lips. He closed them firmly, that no air might get in. Then he looked at his wristwatch. It was six minutes after the half-hour. And he began to wait for the seven minutes to pass.
“Not a second too long,” he thought, “and not one too short. They can depend on me, in both directions. They needn’t give me a ‘silent sister,’ like that Ottilie Kneifer Settembrini told us of.” He walked about, pressing down the thermometer with his tongue.
The time crept on; the term seemed unending. When he looked at his watch, two and a half minutes had passed—and he had feared the seven minutes were already more than up. He did a thousand things: picked up objects about the room and set them down again, walked out on the balcony—taking care that his cousin should not notice his presence—and looked at the landscape of this high valley, now so familiar to him in all its phases; with its horns, its crests and walls, with the projecting wing of the “Brembühl,” the ridge of which sloped steeply down to the valley, its flanks covered with rugged undergrowth, with its formations on the right side of the valley, whose names were no less familiar than the others, and the Alteinwand, which from this point appeared to close in the valley on the south. He looked down on the garden beds and paths, the grotto and the silver fir; he listened to the murmur that rose from the rest-hall; and he returned to his room, settling the thermometer under his tongue. Then, with a motion of the arm which drew away the sleeve from his wrist, he brought the forearm before his eyes and found that by dint of pushing and shoving, pulling and hauling, he had managed to get rid of full six minutes. The last one he spent standing in the middle of the room—but then, unfortunately, he let his thoughts wander and fell into a “doze,” so that the sixty seconds flew by on the wings of the wind; and, when he looked again, the eighth minute was already past its first quarter. “It doesn’t really matter, so far as the result is concerned,” he thought, and tearing the instrument out of his mouth, he stared at it in confusion.
He was not immediately the wiser. The gleam of the quicksilver fell with the reflection of the glass case where the light struck it, and he could not tell whether the mercury had ascended the whole length of the column, or whether it was not there at all. He brought the instrument close to his eyes, turned it hither and thither—all to no purpose. But at last a lucky turn gave him a clearer view; he hastily arrested his hand and brought his intelligence to bear. Mercurius, in fact, had climbed up again, just as the Frau Directress said. The column was perceptibly lengthened; it stood several of the black strokes above normal. Hans Castorp had 99.6°.
Ninety-nine and six tenths degrees in broad daylight, between ten and half past in the morning. That was too much; it was “temperature.” It was fever consequent on an infection, for which his system had been eager. The question was now, what kind of infection? 99.6°—why, Joachim had no more, nor anyone else up here, except the moribund and bedridden. Not Fräulein Kleefeld with her pneumothorax, nor—nor Madame Chauchat. Naturally, in his case it was not the same kind, certainly not; he had what would have been called at home a feverish cold. But the distinction was not such a simple one to make. Hans Castorp doubted whether the fever had only come on when the cold did, and he regretted not having consulted a thermometer at the outset, when the Hofrat suggested it. He could see now that this had been very reasonable advice; Settembrini had been wrong to sneer at it as he had—Settembrini, with his republic and his bello stile. Hans Castorp loathed and contemned the republic and the bello stile as he stood there consulting his thermometer; he kept on losing the mark and turning the instrument this way and that to find it again. Yes, it registered 99.6° and this in the early part of the day!
He was thoroughly upset. He walked the length of the room twice or thrice, the thermometer held horizontally in his hand, so as not to jiggle it and make it read differently. Then he carefully deposited it on the wash-hand-stand, and went with his overcoat and rugs into the balcony. Sitting down, he threw the covers about him, with practised hand, first from one side, then from the other, and lay still, waiting until it should be time for Joachim to fetch him
