The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

The wheel revolved. The hand on time's clock moved forward. Orchis and aquilegia were out of bloom, and the mountain pink. The deep-blue, star-shaped gentian and the autumn crocus, pale and poisonous, appeared again among the damp grass, and a reddish hue overspread the forests. The autumn equinox was past. All Souls' was in sight -- and, for practised time-consumers, probably also the Advent season, the solstice, and Christmas. But for the moment there were lovely October days, a succession of them, like that on which the cousins had viewed the Hofrat's paintings.

Since Joachim's departure Hans Castorp sat no more at Frau Stöhr's table, the one with Dr. Blumenkohl's empty place, at which the gay Marusja had been wont to smother her irresponsible mirth in her orange-scented pocket-handkerchief. New guests, strangers, sat there now. Our friend, two months deep in his second year, had been given a new place by the management at a nearby table, diagonally to his old one, between that and the "good" Russian table. In short, Settembrini's table. Yes, Hans Castorp sat in the humanist's vacated seat, again at the end, facing the "doctor's place," which at each of the seven tables was left free for the Hofrat and his famulus to use when they could.