Joachim found him still lying when he entered at eleven o’clock at sound of the gong for second breakfast.
“Well?” he asked in surprise, coming up to his cousin’s chair.
Hans Castorp sat awhile without answering, looking in front of him. Then he said: “Well, the latest is that I have some fever.”
“What do you mean?” Joachim asked. “Do you feel feverish?”
Again Hans Castorp let him wait a little for the answer, then delivered himself airily as follows: “Feverish, my dear fellow, I have felt for a long time—all the time I have been up here, in fact. But at the moment it is not a matter of subjective emotion, but of fact. I have taken my temperature.”
“You’ve taken your temperature? What with?” Joachim cried, startled.
“With a thermometer, naturally,” answered Hans Castorp, not without a caustic tinge to his voice. “Frau Director sold me one. Why she should call me ‘young ’un’ I can’t imagine. It is distinctly not comme il faut. But she lost no time in selling me an excellent thermometer; if you would like to convince yourself, you can; it is there on the wash-hand-stand. It is only slight fever.”
Joachim turned on his heel and went into the bedroom. When he came back, he said hesitatingly: “Yes, it is 99.5½°.”
“Then it has gone down a little,” his cousin responded hastily. “It was six.”
“But you can’t call that slight fever,” Joachim said. “Certainly not for the forenoon. This is a pretty how-d’ye-do!” And he stood by his cousin’s side as one stands before a how-d’ye-do, arms akimbo and head dropped. “You’ll have to go to bed.”
Hans Castorp had his answer ready. “I can’t see,” he remarked, “why I should go to bed with a temperature of 99.6° when the rest of you, who haven’t any less, can run about as you like.”
“But that is different,” Joachim said. “Your fever is acute and harmless, the result of a cold.”
“In the first place,” said Hans Castorp, speaking with dignity and dividing his remarks into categories, “I cannot comprehend why, with a harmless fever—assuming for the moment, that there is such a thing—one must keep one’s bed, while with one that is not harmless you needn’t. And secondly, I tell you the fever has not made me hotter than I was before. My position is that 99.6° is 99.6°. If you can run about with it, so can I.”
“But I had to lie for four weeks when I first came,” objected Joachim, “and they only let me get up when it was clear that the fever persisted even after I had lain in bed.”
Hans Castorp smiled. “Well, and—?” he asked. “I thought it was different with you. It seems to me you are contradicting yourself; first you say our cases are different; then you say they are alike. That seems sheer twaddle to me.”
Joachim made a right-about turn. When he turned round again, his suntanned visage showed an even darker shade.
“No,” he said, “I am not saying they are alike; you’re getting muddled. I only mean that you’ve a very nasty cold. I can hear it in your voice, and you ought to go to bed, to cut it short, if you mean to go home next week. But if you don’t want to—I mean go to bed—why, don’t. I am not prescribing for you. Anyhow, let’s go to breakfast. Make haste, we are late already.”
“Right-oh!” said Hans Castorp, and flung off his covers. He went into his room to run the brush over his hair, and Joachim looked again at the thermometer on the washhand-stand. Hans Castorp watched him. They went down, silently, and took their places in the dining-room, which, as always at this hour, shimmered white with milk.
The dwarf waitress brought Hans Castorp his Kulmbacher beer, as usual, but he put on a long face and waved it away. He would drink no beer today; he would drink nothing at all, or at most a swallow of water. The attention of his tablemates was attracted: they wanted to know the cause of his caprice. Hans Castorp said carelessly that he had a little fever—really minimal: 99.6°.
Then how altogether ludicrous it was to see them! They shook their fingers at him, they winked maliciously, they put their heads on one side, crooked their forefingers beside their ears and waggled them in a pantomime suggestive of their delight at having found him out, who had played the innocent so long.
“Aha,” said the schoolmistress, the flush mounting in her ancient cheek, “what sort of scandal is this?”
And “Aha, aha!” went Frau Stöhr too, holding her stumpy finger next her stumpy nose. “So our respected guest has some temperament too! Foxy-loxy is in the same boat with the rest of us after all!”
Even the great-aunt, when the news travelled up to her end of the table, gave him a meaningful glance and smile; pretty Marusja, who had barely looked at him up to now, leaned over and stared, with her round brown eyes, her handkerchief to her lips—and shook her finger too. Frau Stöhr whispered the news to Dr. Blumenkohl, who could hardly do otherwise than join in the game, though without looking at Hans Castorp. Only Miss Robinson sat as she always did and took no share in what was going on. Joachim kept his eyes on the tablecloth.
It flattered Hans Castorp’s vanity to be taken so much notice of; but he felt that modesty required him to disclaim their attentions. “No, no,” he said. “You are all mistaken, my fever is the most harmless thing in the world; I simply have a cold, my eyes run, and my chest is stopped up. I have coughed half the night; it is thoroughly unpleasant of course.”—But they would not listen; they laughed and flapped their hands at him.
“Yes,
