Pages 397 /398 .

              "Text: (1)  THE CHAPTER OF HAVING EXISTENCE NIGH UNTO RA. 1"


                            And I say, 'On every road
                                                            "and among (11) these millions of years is Ra the lord,
                                                             "and his path is in the fire; and they go round about
                                                             "behind him, and they go round about behind him

Page 98  9 x 8 = 72

                                    "(Re is another form of the more familiar Ra.)"
 
Hereonin, yonder scribe inserted the word                              PRAYER
 
Page 104

13th    L/D        "...G. R. S. Mead, at the beginning of his work Thrice greatest Hermes,
explains fully what 'the  Trismegistic Literature' is. He calls it Tris-megistic' instead of by its earlier designation 'Hermetic' (from the name of the Greek god Hermes) in order to distinguish it from other less interesting writings such as the Egyptian Hermes prayers and also the ' Hermetic Alchemical Literature'."  

Page 105

"...Mead quotes an Egyptian magic papyrus, this being an uncontested Egyptian document which he compares to a passage in the Tris-megistic literature: 'I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the good Daimon doth unite, He who is Lord in the perfect black' 34"
"...he cited this magic papyrus in order to shed comparitive light on some extra-ordinary passages in a Trismegistic treatise he translated which has the title 'The Virgin of the World'. In his comments on the magic papyrus Mead says: 'It is natural to make the Agathodaimon ("the Good Daimon") of the Papyrus refer to Osiris; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Morever it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called "underworld", the un-seen world, the "mysterious dark". He is lord there. . .  and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, "Osiris is a dark God.' "  

What a majestic way to treat eyes, said the scribe.

Page 105

"...' The Virgin of the world' is an extraordinary Trismegistic treatise  in the form of a dialogue between the hierophant  (high priest) as spokesman for Isis and the neophyte who represents Horus. Thus the priest instructing the initiate is portrayed as Isis instructing her son Horus.
      The treatise begins by claiming it is 'her holiest discourse' which 'so speaking Isis doth pour forth'. There is, throughout, a b emphasis on the hierarchical principle of lower and higher beings in the universe - that earthly mortals are presided over at intervals by other, higher beings who interfere in Earth's affairs when things here become hopeless, etc. Isis says in the treatise: 'It needs must, therefore, be the the less should give way to the greater mysteries.' What she is to disclose to Horus is a great mystery. Mead describes it as the mystery practised by the arch-hierophant. It was the 'degree' (here degree' is in the sense  

/ Page 106 1 + 6 = 7  /

of 'degree' in the Masonic 'mysteries, of earlier times) 'called the Dark Mystery" or "Black Rite".It was a rite performed only for those who were judged worthy of it after long probation in lower degrees, something of a far more sacred character, apparently than the instruction in the mysteries enacted in the light.'
     Mead adds: I would suggest, therefore, that we have here a reference to the most esoteric institution of the Isaic tradition . . . ', meaning of course 'Isis-tradition', and not to be confused with the book of Isaiah in the bible (so that perhaps it is best for us not to use the word Isiac).     It is in attempting to explain the mysterious 'Black Rite' of Isis at the highest degree of the Egyptian mysteries that Mead cited the magic papyrus which I have already quoted. He explains the black Rite as being connected with Osiris being a
'dark god' who is Lord of the perfect black' which is the unseen world, the mysterious black..."
 

        " Flowers, that grow beautiful in the sunlight, whither and die in the darkness of a cellar"
 

Page 106 continues    

"  'This treatise ' The Virgin of the World' describes a personage called Hermes who seems to represent a race of beings who taught earthly mankind the arts of civilization after which: And thus, with charge unto his kinsman of the Gods to keep sure watch, he mounted to the Stars'.

Page 113

Chapter Three

"We must return to the treatise 'The Virgin of the World' This treatise is quite explicit in saying that Isis and Osiris were sent to help the earth by giving primitive mankind the arts of civilization:        And Horus thereon said: 'How was it mother, then that Earth received God's Efflux ?'
       And  Isis said:
        'I may not tell the story of (this) birth: for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent,O Horus (son) of mighty power, lest afterwards the way-of-birth of the immortal gods should be known unto men - except so far that God the Monarch, the uni-versal Orderer and Architect, sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris, and the mightiest goddess Isis, that they might help the world , for all things needed them.
         Tis they who filled life full of life. 'Tis they who caused the savagery of mutual slaughtering of men to cease. 'Tis they who hallowed the precincts to the Gods their ancestors and spots for holy rites. 'Tis they who gave to men laws, food and shelter. Etc.'
         They are also described as teaching men how to care for the dead in a specifically Egyptian way, which inclines one to wonder how a Greek could conceivably have written this unless during the Ptolemaic period: ''Tis they who taught men how to wrap up those who ceased to live, as they should be.'          Now anyone knows this is Egyptian and not Greek practice. What Neoplatanist would include such a statement unless it were actually taken from an early source which be used, and which had been written by someone actually living in Egypt?
          The treatsie ends this long section with:
               ''Tis they alone who,taught by Hremes in God's hidden codes, became the authors of the arts, and sciences, and all pursuits which men do practice, and givers of their laws.
               ''Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established  

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on the earth the sacred rites over which the mysteries in Heaven preside...."
               ''Tis they who, knowing the destructibility of (mortal) frames, devised the grade of prophets, in all things perfected, in order that no prophet who stretched forth his hands unto the Gods, should be in ignorance of anything, that magic and philosophy should feed the soul, and medicine preserve the body when it suffered pain.                 'And having done all this , my son Osiris and myself perceiving that the world was (now) quite full, were thereupon demanded back by those who dwell in Heaven . . .'
 
      And in the treatise Isis claims that the 'Black Rite' honours her and 'gives perfection'. It is also concerned with the mysterious thing called 'Night'- 'who weaves her webb with rapid light though it be less than Sun's'. It is made plain that 'Night' is not the night sky because it moves in the Heaven along with 'the other mysteries in turn that move in Heaven, with ordered motions and with perids of times, with certain hidden influences bestowing order on things below and co-increasing them'      We must scrutinize the description of what is labelled 'Night' in this treatise. This description makes it perfectly clear that 'Night' is not 'night', but a code word. For it is said to have light though it be less than the sun's'.
 
Meanwhile within that other reality of The Magic Mountain, continued another story. The story of  toiL, within a tale.
At which the all and sundries of the blindfold, eyeless shadows, held on for dear life to yonder slivering thread of gold.
 

Page 88

" Hans Castorp went into his cousin's room. The corridor floor, with its strip of narrow coco matting,billowed beneath his feet, but this, apart from its singularity was not un-pleasant. He sat down in Joachim's great flowered arm-chair -
There was one just like it in his own room - and lighted his Maria Mancini. It tasted like glue, like coal, like anything but what it should taste like. Still he smoked on, as he watched Joachim making ready for his cure, putting on his house jacket, then an old overcoat, then, armed with his night-lamp and Russian primer, going into the balcony. He turned on the light, lay down with his thermometer in his mouth, and began, with astonishing dex-terity to wrap himself in the two camel's-hair rugs that were spread out over his chair. Hans Castorp looked on with honest admiration for his skill. He flung the covers over him, one after the other: first from the left side, all their length up to his shoulders, then from the right side, so that he formed when finished, a neat compact parcel, out of which stuck only his head shoulders and arms.
     "How well you do that" Hans Castorp said. That's the practice I've had Joachim answered, holding the thermometer between his teeth in order to speak. "You'll learn. To-morrow we must certainly get you a pair of rugs. You can use them afterwards at home, and up here they are indispensable, particularly as you have no sleeping-sack."
      "I shan't lie out on the balcony at night," Hans Castorp de-clared. "I can tell you that at once. It would seem perfectly weird to me. Everything has its limits. I must draw the line somewhere, since I'm really only up here on a visit. Iwill sit here awhile and smoke my cigar in the regular way. It tastes vile, but I know it's good, and that will have to do me for to-day. It is close on nine - it isn't even quite nine yet, more's the pity - but when it is half past, that is late enough for a man to go to bed at least half-way decently."  

/ Page 89  8 x 9 = 72 /

A shiver ran over him, then several, one after the other. Hans Castorp sprang up and ran to the thermometer on the wall, as if to catch it in flagrante. According to the mercury, there were fifty degrees of heat in the room. He clutched the radiator; it was cold and dead. He murmered something incoherent, to the effect that it was a scandal to have no heating, even if it was August. It wasn't a question of the name of the month, but of the temperature that obtained, which was such that actually he was as cold as a dog. Yet his face burned. He sat down, stood up again, and with a murmured request for permission fetched Joachim's coverlet and spread it out over himself as he sat in the chair. And thus he remained, hot and cold by tuns, torturing himself with his nauseous cigar. He was overcome by a wave of wretchedness; it seemed to him he had never in his life before felt quite so miserable.  
    "I feel simply wretched," he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and sus-pense, of which he was so conscious that he sat motionless waiting for it to come again. It did not - only the misery remained. He stood up at last, flung Joachim's coverlet on the bed, and got something out that sounded like a good night: Don't freeze to death call me again in the morning," his lips hardly shaping the words: then he staggered along the corridor to his own room."
"...He had thought to fall asleep at once, but he was wrong. His eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to hold up now declined to close: they twitched rebelliously open whenever he shut them. He told himself that it was not his regular bed-time;  
that during the day he had probably rested too much. Someone seemed to be beating a carpet out of doors - which was not very probable, and proved not to be the case, for it was the beating of his own heart he heard, quite outside of himself and away in the night, ex-actly as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker beater.  

/ Page 90  9 x 0 = 9    9 + 0 = 9  /  

the little lamp in the loggias, Joachim's and the Russian pair's, fell through the open balcony door. As Hans Castorp lay there on his back blinking, he recalled an impression amongst the host received that day, an observation he had made, and then, with shrinking and delicacy, sought to forget. It was the look on Joachim's face when they spoke of Marusja and her physical characteristics - an oddly pathetic facial distortion, and a spotted pallor on the sun- browned cheeks. Hans Castorp saw and understood what it meant, saw and understood in a manner so new, so sympathetic, so intimate, that the carpet-beater outside redoubled the swiftness and severity of its blows and almost drowned out the sound of the evening serenade down in the Platz - for their was a concert again in the same hotel as before, and they were playing a symmetrically constructed insipid melody that came up through the darkness. Hans Castorp whistled a bar of it in a whisper -
One can whistle a bar of it in a whisper - and beat time with his cold feet under the plumeau.
     That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had understood in that new, penetrating sense why Joachim had changed colour, the whole world seemed altered to him, he felt pierced for the second time by that feeling of extravagant joy and suspense. And he waited for, expected something, without asking himself what..."
"...Later he went to sleep. But with sleep returned the involved dreams, even more involved than those of the first night - out
of which he often started up in fright, or pursuing some con-fused fancy. He seemed to see Hofrat Behrens walking down the garden path, with bent knees and arms hanging stiffly in front of him, adapting his long and somehow solitary-looking stride  

Page 91 /

to the time of distant march-music. As he paused before Hans Castorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of glasses with thick, round lenses. He was uttering all sorts of nonsense. "A civilian, of course," he said, and without saying by your leave, drew down Hans Castorp's eyelid with the first and middle fingers of his huge hand. "Respectable civilian, as I saw at once. But not without talent, not at all without talent for a heightened degree of oxidization. Wouldn't grudge us a year, he wouldn't, just one little short year of service up here. Well, hullo-ullo! Gentleman, on with the exercise," he shouted, and putting his two enormous first fingers in his mouth, emitted a whistle of such peculiarly pleasing quality that from opposite directions Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, much smaller than life size, came flying through the air and perched themselves right and left on the Hofrat's shoulders, just as they sat right and left of Hans Castorp in the dining room. And the Hofrat skipped away, wiping his eyes behind his glasses with a table-napkin - but whether it was tears or sweat he wiped could not be told.
"...Then sleep and dream once more overpowered him, and he saw himself in the act of flight from Dr. Krokowski, who had lain in wait for him to undertake some psychoanalysis. He fled from the doctor, but his feet were leaden; past the glass partitions, along the balconies, into the garden; in his extremity he tried to climb the red-brown flagstaff - and woke perspiring at the moment when the pursuer seized him by his trouser leg.
       Hardly was he calm when slumber claimed him once more. The content of his dream entirely changed, and he stood trying to shoulder Settembrini away from the spot where they stood, the Italian smiling in his subtle, mocking way, under the full, upward-curving moustaches - and it was precisely this smile which Hans Castorp found so injurious.
       "You are a nuisance," he distinctly heard himself say. "Get  

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away, you are only a hand-organ man, and you are in the way here. " But Settembrini would not let himself be budged; Hans Castorp was still standing considering what was to be done when he was unexpectedly vouchsafed a signal
Insight into the true nature of time; it proved to be nothing more or less than a "silent sister," a mercury column without degrees, to be used by those who wanted to cheat. He awoke with the thought in his mind that he must certainly tell Joachim of this discovery on the morrow..."
      "... In such adventures, among such discoveries, the night wore away. Hermine Kleefeld, as well as Herr Albin and Captain Mik-losich, played fantastic roles - the last carried off Frau Stohr in his fury, and was pierced through and through with a lance by Lawyer Paravant. One particular dream , however, Hans Castorp dreamed twice over during the night, both times in precisely the same form the second time towards morning. He sat in the dining-hall with the seven tables when there came a great crashing of glass as the verandah door banged, and Madame Chauchat en-tered in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket, the other at the back of her head. But instead of going to the "good" Russian table, the unmannerly female glided noiselessly to Hans Castorp's side and without a word reached him her hand - not the back but the palm - to kiss. Hans Castorp kissed that hand which was not overly well kept, but rather broad with stumpy fingers, the skin roughened next the nails. And at that there swept over him anew, from head to foot, the feeling of reckless sweetness he had felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joys of shame. This feeling he experienced anew in his dream, only a thousand-fold ber than in his waking hour.  

Page 93

   "Is your summer over now?" Hans Castorp ironically asked his cousin, on the third day.
          There had come a violent change of scene.
          On the visitor's second full day up here, the most brilliant summer weather prevailed. Above the aspiring lance-shaped
tips of the fir-trees the sky gleamed deepest blue, the village down in the valley glared white in the heat, and the air was filled
with the sound, half gay, half pensive, of bells, from the cows that roamed the slopes, cropping the short, sun-warmed meadow grass..."
    "...As for Settembrini, he had more than once announced his in-tention of changing. "Heavens, how hot the sun is! He said ,as he and the cousins strolled down to the village after luncheon..."
     "...But on the third day it seemed as though nature suffered a sudden reserve; everything turned topsy turvy. Hans Castorp could scarcely trust his eyes. It happened when they were lying in their balconies, some twenty minutes after the evening meal. Swiftly the sun hid its face, ugly turf-coloured clouds drew up over the south-western ridge, and a wind from a strange quarter, whose chill pierced to the marrow, as though it came out of some un-  

/ Page 94   9 x 4 = 36   3 x 6 = 18    1+ 8 = 9   /

known icy region, swept suddenly through the valley; down went the thermometer - a new order obtained.
   "Snow," said Joachim's voice, behind the glass partition.
   "What do you mean, snow?" Hans Castorp asked him. You don't mean to say it is going to snow now ? "
   "Certainly," answered Joachim. "We know that wind. When it comes, it means sleighing."
   "Rubbish!" Hans Castorp said. "If Iremember rightly, it is the beginning of August."
   "But Joachim, versed in the signs of the region, knew whereof he spoke. For in a few minutes accompanied by repeated claps of thunder, a furious snow-storm set in, so heavy that the land-scape seemed wrapped in white smoke, and of village and valley scarcely anything could be seen.
     It snowed away all the afternoon. The heat was turned on Joachim availed himself of his fur sack, and was not deterred from the service of the cure; but Hans Castorp took refuge in his room, pushed up a chair to the hot pipes, and remained there, looking with frequent head-shakings at the enormity outside. By next morning the storm had ceased. The thermometer showed a few degrees above freezing, but the snow lay a foot deep, and a completely wintry landscape spread itself before Hans Castorp's astonished eyes. They had turned off the heat. The temperature of the room was 45º
     "Is your summer over now? " Hans Castorp asked his cousin in bitter irony.
     "You can't tell," answered the matter-of-fact Joachim. "We may have fine weather yet. Even in September it is very possible. The truth is, the seasons here are not so distinct from each other; they run in together, so to speak and don't keep  
to the calendar. The sun in winter is often so b that you take off your coat and perspire as you walk, And in summer - well, you see for yourself! And then the snow, that puts out all one's calculations. It snows in January, but in may not much less, and, as you observe, it snows in August too. On the whole, one may say there is never a month without snow; you may take that for a rule. In short, there are winter days and summer days, spring and autumn days; but regular seasons we don't actually have up here."
     "A fine mixed-up state of affairs," said Hans Castorp. In over-coat and galoshes he went with his cousin down to the village, to buy himself blankets for the out-of-doors cure, since it was plain his plaid would not suffice. For the moment he even weighed  

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the thought of purchasing a fur sack as well, but gave it up, in-deed felt a certain revulsion from the idea
      "No, no" he said, "we'll stop at the covers. I'll have use for them down below, and everybody has covers; there's nothing strange or exciting about them. But a fur sack is altogether too special - if I buy one, it is as if I were going to settle down here, as if I belonged, understand what Imean? No, for the present we'll let it go at that; it would absolutely not be worth while to buy a sack for the few weeks I'm up here."
      "Joachim agreed, and they aquired two camel's hair rugs like his own, in a fine and well-stocked shop in the English quarter. They were in natural colour, long, broad, and delightfully soft, and were to be sent at once to the Internationa Sanitorium Berg-hof, Room 34: Hans Castorp looked forward to using them that very afternoon..."
"...It was raining now, and the snow in the streets had turned to a slush that spattered as they walked. They overtook Settem-brini on the road, climbing up to the sanatorium under an um-brella, bare headed. The italian looked sallow; his mood was obviously elegiac. In well-chosen, clearly enunciated phrases he complained of the cold and damp from which he suffered so bitterly! But the ruling powers, in their penuriousness, had the fire go out directly it stopped snowing - an idiotic rule, an insult to human intelligence. Hans Castorp objected that presumably a moderate temperature was part of the regimen of the cure; it would certainly not do to coddle the patients. But Settembrini answered with embittered scorn. Oh, of course, the regimen of the cure! Those august and inviolat rules! Hans Castorp was right in referring to them, as he did, with bated breath. Yet it was rather striking ( of course only in the pleasentest sense) that the rules most honoured in the observance were precisely those which chimed with the financial interest of the proprietors of the establishment; whereas, on the other hand, to those less favourable they were inclined to shut an eye. The cousins laughed, and Settembrini began to speak of
his deceased father, who had been brought to his mind in connexion with the talk about heated rooms."



It has to be said, in the hear and now, that the comrades of the Golden thread, joined the two cousins, Settembrini, and the good Wah brother Thomas in the he who laughs last laugh, afore attending solicitously, to the words of their fellow traveller, Satana Settembrini.  



  "My father," he said slowly, in tones replete with filial piety, "my father was a most delicately organized man, sensitive
in body as in soul. How he did love his tiny, warm little study! In winter a temperature of twenty degrees Reaumer must always

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obtain there, by means of a small red-hot stove. When you entered it from the corridor on a day of cold and damp, or when the cutting tramonta blew, the warmth of it laid itself about you like a shawl, so that for your very pleasure your eyes would fill with tears. The little room was stuffed with books and manuscripts, some of them of great value;.."
"...And what a Romanist, my friends! One of the first of his time, with a rare mastery of our own tongue and a Latin stylist such as no longer exists - ah, a 'uomo letterato' after Boccaccio's own heart! From far and wide scholars came to converse with him - one from Haparanda, another from Cracow - they came to our city of Padua, expressly to pay him homage, and he received them with dignified friendliness. He was a poet of distinction too, com-posing in his leisure tales in the most elegant Tuscan prose - he was a master of the idioma gentile," Settembrini said, rolling his native syllables with the utmost relish on his tongue and turning his head from side to side. "He laid out his little garden after Virgil's own plan - and all that he said was sane and beautiful. But warm, warm he must have it in his little room; otherwise he would tremble with cold, and could weep with anger if they let him freeze. And now imagine, Engineer, and you Lieutenant, what I, the son of my father, must suffer in this accursed and bar-barous land, where even at summer's height the body shakes with cold, and the spirit is tortured and debased by the sights it sees. - Oh it is hard! What types about us! This frantic devil of a Hofrat, Krokowski" -
Settembrini pretended to trip over the name - Krokowski, the father-confessor, who hates me because I've too much human dignity to lend myself to his papish practices. - And at my table - what sort of society is that in which Iam forced to take my food? At my right sits a brewer from Halle - Magnus by name - with a moustache like a bundle of hay. 'Don't talk to me about literature,' says he. 'What has it to offer? Anything but beautiful characters? What have I to do with beautiful characters? Iam a practical man, and in life Icome into contact with precious few.' That is the idea he has of literature - beautiful characters! Mother of God His wife sits there opposite him, losing flesh all the time, and sinking further and further into idiocy. It's a filthy shame."
     Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this  

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talk of Settembrini's: they found it querolous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and "plastic" in its verbal pun-gency and animus. Hans Castorp laughed good-humouredly over the "bundle of hay," likewise over the beautiful characters" - or rather the drolly despairing way Settembrini spoke of them.
     Then he said: Good Lord, yes, the society is always mixed in a place like this, I suppose. One's not allowed to choose one's table-mates - that would lead to goodness knows what! At our table there is a woman of the same sort, a Frau Stohr
- Ithink you know her? Ghastly ignorant, Imust say - sometimes when she rattles on, one doesn't know where to look.. But she complains a lot about her temperature, and how relaxed she feels, and Im afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to me: diseased and stupid both - Idont exactly know how to ex-press it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling, when someone is so stupid, and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most melancholy thing in life. One doesn't
know what to make of it; one wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course - after all there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such asinity comes on top of it - 'cosmic' for 'cosmetic,' and other howlers like that - one doesn't know whether to laugh or to weep. It is a regular dilemma for the human feelings - I find it more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it's not con-sistent, it doesn't hang together; Icant get used to the idea. One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and un-usual. At least as a rule - or I don't know, perhaps I am saying more than I could stand for," he finished."It was only because we happened to speak of it -"
He stopped in confusion."
 
This medicinal demonstration of karmic munificence, the scribe found hard to swallow. N'er-the-less what had to be done had to be done. And who knows if two swallows, would a summer make.



     "Joachim too looked rather uncomfortable,, and Settembrini lifted his eyebrows and said not a word, with an air of waiting politely for the end of his speech. He was in fact, holding off until Hans Castorp should break down entirely before he an-swered But now he said: "Sapristi, Engineer! You are display-ing a most unexpected gift of philosophy! By your own theory, you must be yourself more ailing than you look, you are so obviously possessed of esprit. But, if you will permit me to say so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions; I must deny them; my position is one of absolute dissent.I am as you see, rather intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect; I would rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pass unchallenged a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours" "But, Herr Settembrini, I -  

/Page 98   9 x 8 = 72   7 + 2 = 9   /  

Per - mit me. I know what you would say: that the views you represent are not of necessity, your own; that you have only chanced upon that one of all the possible ones there are, as it were, in the air, and you try it on, without personal responsibility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled convictions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experiri ," he quoted, giving the Italian pronunciation to the c. "That is a good saying. But what troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this direction. I doubt if it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the presence of a general tendency, which threatens to crystallize into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. Ifeel it my duty, therefore to correct you. You said that the sight of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that. I too prefer an intelligent ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of nature, a 'dilemma for the human feelings,' as you were pleased to express yourself. When you professed to regard disease as something so refined, so - what did you call it? - possessing a 'certain dignity'- that it doesn't 'go with' stupidity. That was the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing refined about it, nothing dignified. Such a conception is in itself pathological, or at least tends in that direction. Perhaps I may best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly the conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with superstition, in which the idea of humanity had degenerated into sheer caricature; a past full of fears, in which well- being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pass to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man - nor entirely, for even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear sirs, means work, earthly labour, labour for the earth, for the honour and the interests of mankind; and by that conflict daily steeled anew , the powers of reason and enlightenment will in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of progress and civilization towards an even brighter, milder and purer light."       "Lord bless us," thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced conster-nation." " What a homily! How I wonder did I call all that down on my head ? Imust say I find it rather prosy. And why does he  

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talk so much about work all the time ? It is his constant theme; not a very pertinent one up here, one would think." Aloud he said How beautifully you do talk, Herr Settembrini! What you say is very well worth hearing - and could not be more - more plastically expressed, I should think."


Such a hypocrite az I, said the scribe more to the self, than others, Thank you for nothing scribe, said wah Hans requesting the scribe vacate the premises of that story.


The Zed aliz Zed said to the scribe I will thank you in the future to keep a sybil tongue when talking for me. The scribe agormanghast at this riposte, suddenly understood, once the Alizzed had moon struck that head, and that head had then seen, good, and fit to burst a starzburst.


Page 99  

"Backsliding," continued Settembrini, as he lifted his umbrella away above the head of a passer-by, spiritual backsliding in the direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me Engineer, is disease - a disease already sufficiently studied, to which various names have been given: one from the terminology of aesthetics and psychology, another from the domain of politics - all of them academic terms which are not to the point, and which I will spare you. But as in the spiritual
life everything is interrelated, one thing growing out of another, and since one may not reach out one's little finger to the devil, lest he take the whole hand, and therewith the whole man; since, on the other side, a sound prin-ciple can produce only sound results, no matter which end one begins at - so disease, far from being something too refined, too worthy of reverence, to be associated with dullness, is, in itself a degradation of mankind, a degradation painful and offensive to conceive. It may, in the individual case, be treated with consider-ation; but to pay it homage is - mark my words - an aberration, and the beginning of intellectual confusion. This woman you have mentioned to me - you will pardon me if Ido not trouble to recall her name - ah, thank you, Frau Stohr - it is not it seems to me, the case of this ridiculous woman which places the human feelings in the dilemma to which you refer. She is ill, and she is limited her case is hopeless, and the matter is simple. There is nothing left but to pity and shrug one's shoulders. The dilemma, my dear sir, the tradgedy, begins where nature has been cruel enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by im-prisoning a noble and ardent spirit within a body not fit for the stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you Lieutenant ? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ail-ing man, born with a great soul, which his sufferings were con-stantly humiliating and dragging down into the depths of irony - its lamentations rend the heart to hear."      And Settembrini began to recite in Italian, letting the beauti-ful syllables melt upon his tongue, as he closed his eyes and swayed his head from side to side, heedless that his hearers understood not a syllable. Obviously it was all done for the sake of impressing his companions with his memory and his pronunciation.  

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" But you don't understand; you hear the words, yet without grasping their tragic import. My dear sirs, can you comprehend what it means when I tell you that it was the love of woman which the crippled Leopardi was condemned to renounce; that this it principally was which rendered him incapable of avoid-ing the embitterment of his soul ? Fame and virtue were shadows to him, nature an evil power - and so she is, stupid and evil both, I agree with him  there he even despaired of science and progress! Here Engineer is the true tragedy. Here you have your 'dilemma for the human feel-ings,' here, and not in the case of that wretched woman, with whose name I really cannot burden my memory. Do not, for heaven's sake, speak to me of the enobling effects of physical suffering! Asoul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul - though the latter is the rule and the former the exception. It is the body, as a rule, which flourshes exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the pre-dominant place and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debasement. In most cases he is little better than a carcass - "



Should the Zed Aliz Zed feel sad. the scribe writ, then the scribe writ. He azin S he, addressing the balance, however Alizzed still entertained reservations so the scribe reserved them, within the varying blindness of an own minds eye  And that's the truth of it.  



      "Funny," Joachim said, bending forward to look at his cousin, on Herr Settembrini's farther side. "You were saying something quite like that just lately."
     "Was I ? "  said Hans Castorp. "Yes, it may be something of the kind went through my head."
       Settembrini was silent a few paces. Then he said: "So much the better. So much the better if that is true. I am far from claim-ing to expound an original philosophy - such is not my office. If our engineer here has been making observations in harmony with my own, that only confirms my surmise that he is an in-tellectual amateur and up to the present, as is the wont of gifted youth, still experimenting with various points of view. The young man with parts is no unwritten page, he is rather one upon which all the writing has already been done, in sympathetic ink, the good and the bad together; it is the schoolmaster's task to bring out the good, to obliterate forever the bad, by the methods of his profession. - You have been making purchases ? " he asked in a lighter tone.
      "No Hans Castorp said. "That is nothing but - "      
      "We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin, Joachim an-swered unconcernedly.
    "For the afternoon cure - it's got so beastly cold; and I am  

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supposed to do as the Romans do, up here," Hans Castorp said laughing and looking at the ground.
      "Ah ha Blankets - the cure," Settembrini said. "Yes, yes. In fact: placet experiri," he repeated, with his Italian pronun-ciation, and took his leave, for their conversation had brought them to the door of the sanatorium, where they had greeted the lame concierge in his lodge. Settembrini turned off into one of the sitting-rooms, to read the newspapers before luncheon. He evidently meant to cut the second rest period.
   "...Bless us and keep us!" Hans Castorp said to Jochim as they stood in the lift. "What a pedagogue it is! He said himself that he had the 'pedagogic itch.' One has to watch out with him, not to say more than one means, or he is down on you at once with all his doctrines. But after all, it is worth listening to, he talks so well; the words come jumping out of his mouth so round and appetizing - when I listen to him, I keep seeing a picture of fresh hot rolls in my mind's eye."
      Joachim laughed. "Better not tell him that. He'd be very put out I'm sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your mind."
    "Think so ? I'm not so sure. I get the impression that it is not simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks; per-haps that's only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes the words roll out, so resilient, just like a lot of rubber balls! He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his 'beautiful characters'; but I do think Settembrini might have said what the point really is in literature. Idid not like to ask, for fear of putting my foot in it; I am not just clear about it, and this is the first time Ihave ever known a literary man. But if it isn't the beautiful characters, then ob-viously it must be the beautiful words, and that is the impression Iget from being in Settembrini's society. What a vocabulary! And he uses the word virtue just like that, without the slightest em-barrassment. What do you make of that? I've never taken the word in my mouth as long as I've lived; in school, when the book said 'virtus,' we always just said 'valour' or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him. And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once, down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impression that the person is spoilt - I can't help it."  /

Zed Aliz again marvelled, and the scribe writ, that, that Thomas, missed not a trick

Page 102

"You say that," Joachim answered consideringly, "and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether dif-ferent impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself, or for humanity in general; and Ilike that about him; it has some-thing good in my eyes."
      "You are right, there," Hans Castorp answered. "He's even austere; he makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were - well, shall Isay as if you were being taken to task ? That's not such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it, I had the feel-ing he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets ? He had something against it, and he kept on dwelling on it."
     "Oh, no," Joachim said after reflecting, in some surprise. "How could he have ? I shouldnt think so." And then, ther-mometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while Hans Castorp began at once to wash and change for dinner - which was rather less than an hour away.



At this another point in that point which is forever now The scribe thought of The Great Pyramid and the brilliance of the idea to leave an empty sarcophagus. The scribe in agreement,writ cor blimey, t'wer fair art a  this world,


Page 102        
                                                                 Excursus on the Sense of time
"...When they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets, lay on a chair in Hans Castorp's room; and that aftern-oon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up as practised in the sanitorium; they all did it, and each new-comer had to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other, over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you: first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the
folded-over end, first from one side and then from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length,
in order to ensure the greatest pos-sible smoothness and eveness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket - it was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arms to practise the grips his cousin showed him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self-assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practise, but a certain knack as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too.  

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"There he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; "there nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero." He withdrew behind the partition, to do himself up in his turn.
       That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatedly as he lay look-ing out through the wooden arch at the reeking , dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an over-heated room. He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs; actually, as he held up Ocean Steamships to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not - and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the unalysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining chair,, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which re-asserted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for re-laxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this ex-cellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the principal cure of the day; he felt it - though himself but a guest up here - to be a most suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament passive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time spacious before him, and not to have the sense of its passing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o'clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper - which, like all the other meal-times, afforded a certain stimulus for eye an d brain, and a certain strain; after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereo-scope,    
The kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might be still too much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to life up here; but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers' ends.
     There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habit-  

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uating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long thereafter, and to return to one's former state. It is an interval, an interlude, inserted, with the object of recreation, into the tenor of lifes main concerns; its purpose the relief of the organism, which is perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal, and which was in dan-ger,almost in process, of
being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is the cause of this relaxation, this slowing-down that takes place when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather something psychical; it means that the perception of time tends, through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away; the percep-tion of time so closely bound up with the consciousness of life that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interesting-ness and novelty of the time-content are what "make the time pass"; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have indeed,
the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventual years to flow far more slowly than those poor empty ones over which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call te-dium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uni-formity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habitu-ation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which ex-plains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercala-tion of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejue-nate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is  

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the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns at cures and bathing resorts; it is the secret of the healing power of change and incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping, flow, persisting for some six or eight days. Then, as one "gets used to the place," a gradual shrinkage makes itself felt." He who clings or, better ex-pressed, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until the last week, of some four, perhaps is uncannily fugitive and fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will flow out beyond the interval and reassert itself after the return to ordinary existence: the first days at home after the holiday will be lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully - but only the first few, for one adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to the exception; and if the sense of time be already weakened by age, or - and this is a sign of low vitality - it was never very well developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life, and after four-and twenty hours it as though one has never been away, and the journey has been but a watch in the night.  
       We have introduced these remarks here only because our young Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes:
      "I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean - of course it isn't a question of my being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally enter-tained. But when I look back in retrospect, that is, you under-stand - it seems to me I've been up here goodness only knows how long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived , and did not quite understand that Iwas there, and you said: 'Just get out here' - don't you remember? -  
That has nothing whatever to do with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is purely a matter of feeling.
Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say: 'I feel I have been up here two months' - all  I can say is very long. ' "
     "Yes," Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, "I profit by it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were." Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite simply without explanation."  

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"Hans Castorp made but one other aquaintance in these days: the pale, black-clad Mexican lady he had seen in the garden, whose nickname was Tous-les-deux. It came to pass that he heard from her own lips the tragic formula; and being forearmed, preserved a suitable demeanour and was satisfied with himself afterwards. The  

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cousins met her before the front door, as they were setting forth on their prescribed walk after early breakfast. She was restlessly ranging there with her pacing step, her legs bent at the knee-joints, wrapped in a black cashmere shawl, a
black veil wound about her disordered silver hair and tied under her chin, her ageing face, with the large writhen mouth, gleaming dead-white against her mourning. Joachim, bare headed as usual greeted her with a bow, which she slowly acknowledged, the furrows deepening in her narrow forehead as she looked at him. Then, seeing a new face, she paused and waited, nodding gently as they came up to her; obviously she found it of importance to learn if the stranger was aquainted with her sad case, and to hear what he would say about it Joachim presented his cousin. She drew her hand out of her shawl and gave it to him, a veined, emaciated, yellowish hand, with many rings, as she continued to gaze in his face. Then it came: "Tous les de, monsieur," she said. "Tous les de, vous savez."
       "Je le sais, madame," Hans Castorp answered gently, "et je le regrette beaucoup."
     The lax pouches of skin under her jet-black eyes were larger and heavier than he had ever seen. She exhaled a faint odour as of fading flowers. Amild and pensive feeling stole about his heart.  
       "Merci," she said with a loose, clacking pronunciation, oddly consonant with her broken appearance. Her large mouth drooped tragically at on corner. She drew her hand back beneath her mantle, inclined her head, and turned away. But Hans Castorp said as they walked on: "You see, I didn't mind it at all, Igot on with her quite well; I always do with such people; I understand instinctively how to go at them - don't you think so ? I even think, on the whole, Iget on better with sad peo-ple than with jolly ones - goodness knows why. Perhaps it's be-cause Im an orphan, and lost my parents early; but when people are very serious, or down in the mouth, or somebody dies, it doesn't deject or embarrass me; I feel quite in my element, a good deal more so than when everything is going on greased wheels. I was thinking just lately that it is pretty flat of the woman up here to take on as they do about death and things connected with death, so that they take such pains to shield them from contact with it, and bring the Eucharist at meal-times, and that. Icall it very feeble of them. Don't you like the sight of a coffin ? Ireally do. I find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty; when someone is lying in it, then, in my eyes, it is possibly sublime. Funerals have something very edifying; I always think one ought to go to  

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a funeral instead of to a church when one feels the need of being uplifted. People have on good black clothes, and they take off their hats and look at the coffin, and behave serious and reverent, and nobody dares to make a bad joke, the way they do in ordinary life. It's good for people to be serious, once in a way. I've some-times asked myself if I ought not to have become a clergyman - in a certain way it wouldn't have suited me so badly. - I hope I didn't make any mistake in my French
      "No," Joachim answered, ' Je le regrette beaucoup ' was per-fectly right as far as it went."
 
Page 115  

"THUS Sunday passed..."
 
And, writ the scribe.

Page 116

"The Sunday was not further remarkable, except perhaps for the meals, which since they could not well be more abundant than they already were, displayed greater refinement in the menu..."
"...In the evening, after he had drunk his beer, Hans Castorp felt heavier in the limbs and more chilled and exhausted than on the day before: toward nine o' clock he bade his cousin good-night, drew his plumeau up to his chin, and slept like the dead        But next day, the first Monday spent by the guest up here, there came another regularly recurring variation in the daily routine: the lectures, one of which Dr Krokowski delivered every other Monday morning in the dining-room, before the entire adult population of the sanatorium,, with exception of the "moribund" and those who could not understand the language. The course, Hans Castorp learned from his cousin, consisted of a series of popular-scientific lectures, under the
General title: "Love as a force contributory to disease." These instructive entertainments took place after second breakfast; it was not permissible, Joachim reiterated, to absent oneself from them - or at least, absence was frowned upon. It was thus very daring of Settembrini, who surely must have more command of the language than anyone else, not only never to appear, but to refer to the entertainment in the most disparaging terms. For Hans Castorp's part, he straightway re-solved to be present, in the first place out of courtesy, but also with unconcealed curiosity as to what he should hear. Before the appointed hour, however, he did something quite perverse and ill-judged, which proved worse for him than one could possibly have guessed: he went for a long solitary walk.
     "Now listen to me,"had been his first words, when Joachim entered his room that morning. "I can see that it can't go on with me like this. I've had enough of the horizontal for the present;  

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one's very blood goes to sleep. Of course it is different with you; you are a patient, and I have no intention of tempting you. But I mean to take a proper walk after breakfast, if you don't mind, just walking at random for a couple of hours. I'll stick a little some-thing in my pocket for second breakfast; then I shall be inde-pendent. We shall see if I am not quite a different chap when I come back
       Joachim warmly agreed, as he saw his cousin was in earnest in his desire and his project. "But don't overdo it," he said; that's my advice. It's not the same thing up here as at home. And be sure to come back in time for the lecture."
       In reality young Hans Castorp had more ground than the phys-ical for his present resolve. His over-heated head, the prevailing bad taste in his mouth, the fitful throbbing of his heart, were, or so he felt, less evil accompaniments to the process of acclimatisa-tion ..."
"...it would be good to escape awhile from the Berghof circle, to breathe the air deep into his lungs, to get some proper exercise - and then, when he felt tired at night, he would at least know why. He took leave of Joachim in a spirit of enterprise, when his cousin addressed himself, after breakfast, to the usual round as far as the bench by the water-course; then, swinging his walking-stick, he took his own way down the road
        It was about nine o' clock of a cool morning, with a covered sky. According to programme, Hans Castorp drew in deep draughts of the pure morning air, the fresh, light atmosphere that breathed in so easily, that held no hint of damp, that was without associations, without content. He crossed the stream and the nar-row-gauge road to the street, with its scattered buildings; but left this again soon to strike into a meadow path, which went only a short way on the level and then slanted steeply up on the right. The climbing rejoiced Hans Castorp's heart, his chest expanded, he pushed his hat back on his forehead with the crook of his stick; having gained some little height he looked back, and, seeing in the distance the mirror- like lake he had passed on his journey hither he began to sing.
       He sang what songs he had at his command, all kinds of senti-  /
 
I wonder if he sang black iz the colour of my true loves hair, wondered the scribe absentmindedly.
 
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mental folk-ditties, out of collections of national ballads and stu-dents' song books; one of them, that went:


                                            Let poets all of love and wine,
                                            Yet oft of virtue sing the praises,


He sang at first softly, in a humming tone, then louder, finally at the top of his voice. His baritone lacked flexibility, yet to-day he found it good and sang on with mounting enthusiasm. When he found he had pitched the beginning too high, he shifted into fal-setto, and even that pleased him. When his memory left him in the lurch, he helped himself out by setting to the melody whatever words and syllables came to hand, heedless of the sense, giving them out like an operatic singer with arching lips and b pala-tal r. He even began to improvise both words and music, accom-panying his performance with theatrical gesturings. It is a good deal of a strain to sing and climb at the same time, and Hans Ca-storp found his breath growing scant, and scanter. Yet for sheer pleasure in the idea, for the joy of singing, he forced his voice and sang on with frequent gasps for breath, until he could no more, and sank, quite out of wind, half blind, with coloured sparks be-fore his eyes and racing pulses, beneath a sturdy pine. His exalta-tion gave way on the sudden to a pervading gloom; he fell prey
To dejection bordering on despair.
     When, his nerves being tolerably restored, he got to his feet again to continue his walk, he found his neck trembling; indeed his head shook in precisely the same way now, at his age, in which the head of old Hans Lorenz Castorp once had shaken. The phe-nomenon so freshly called up to him the memory of his dead grandfather that, far from finding it offensive, he took a certain pleasure in availing himself of that remembered and dignified method of supporting the chin, by means of which his grandfather had been wont to control the shaking of his head, and to which the boy had responded with such inward sympathy.
       He mounted still higher on the zigzag path, drawn by the sound of cow-bells, and came at length upon the herd, grazing near a hut whose roof was weighted with stones. Two bearded men ap-proached him, with axes on their shoulders. They parted, a little way off him, and "Thank ye kindly and God be with ye," said the one to the other, in a deep guttural voice, shifted his axe to the other shoulder, and began breaking a path through crackling pine-boughs to the valley. The words sounded strange in this lonely spot: they came dreamlike to Hans Castorp's senses, strained and benumbed. He repeated them softly, trying to reproduce the gut-tural, rustically formal syllables of the mountain tongue, as he climbed another stretch higher, above the hut. He had in mind to reach the hight where the trees left off, but on glancing at his watch resisted.
       He took the left hand-path in the direction of the village. It ran level for some way, then led downhill, among tall-trunked pines, where, as he went, he once more began to sing, tentatively, and despite the fact that he felt his knees to tremble more than they had during the ascent. On issuing from the wood he paused, struck by the charm of the small enclosed landscape before him, a scene composed of elements both peacefull and sublime.
       A mountain stream came flowing in its shallow, stony bed down the right-hand slope, poured itself foaming over the terraced boulders lying in its path, then coursed more calmly toward the valley, crossed at this point by a picturesque railed wooden foot-bridge  The ground all about was blue with the bell-like blossoms of a profusely growing, bushy plant. Sombre fir-trees of even, mighty growth stood in the bed of the ravine and climbed its sides to the height. One of them, rooted in the steep bank at the side of the torrent, thrust itself aslant into the picture, with bizzarre effect. The whole remote and lovely spot was wrapped in a sounding solitude by the noise of the rushing waters. Hans Castorp re-marked a bench that stood on the farther bank of the stream.
      He crossed the foot-bridge and sat down to regale himself with the sight of the foaming, rushing waterfall and the idyllic sound of its monotonous yet modulated prattle. For Hans Castorp loved like music the sound of rushing water - perhaps he loved it even more. But hardly had he settled himself when he was overtaken by a bleeding at the nose, which came on so suddenly he had barely time to save his clothing from soilure. The bleeding was violent and persistent, taking to staunch it nearly half an hour of going to and fro between bench and brook, snuffing water up his nostrils, rinsing his handkerchief and lying flat on his back upon the wooden seat with the damp cloth on his nose. He lay there, after the blood at length was staunched. His knees elevated, hands folded behind his head, eyes closed, and ears full of the noise of water. He felt no unpleasant sensation, the blood-letting had had a soothing effect, but he found himself in a state of extraordinarily reduced vitality, so that when he exhaled the air, he felt no need to draw it in again, and lay there moveless, for the space of several quiet heart-beats, before taking another slow and superficial breath.  

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Quite suddenly he found himself in the far distant past, trans-ported to a scene which had come back to him in a dream some nights before, summoned by certain impressions of the last few days. But so bly, so resistlessly, to the annihalation of time and space, was he rapt back into the past, one might have said it was a lifeless body lying here on the bench by the waterside, while the actual Hans Castorp moved in that far-away time and place - in a situation which was for him, despite its childishness, vibrant with daring and adventure..."



It will be out of context said the scribe. Within the this and that of that work, said Zed Aliz, nothing iz out of context. And so the scribe took the fact similar and opened it at just the right place.
A fortuitous juxtoposition for the eye that sees.