The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Mynheer Peeperkorn remained in House Berghof the whole winter -- what there was left of it -- and on into the spring; and there took place, among others, a memorable excursion (in which Settembrini and Naphta joined) into the Flüela valley, to see the waterfall. This occurred at the end of his stay. At the end? Did he remain no longer, then? No. He went away? Yes -- and no. How yes and no? Pray let us have no prying into secrets -- in the fullness of time we shall know. We are aware that Lieutenant Ziemssen died, not to speak of other less admirable performers of the dance of death. Then Peeperkorn's malignant tropical fever carried him off? No, not so -- but why so impatient? Let us not forget the condition of life as of narration: that we can never see the whole picture at once -- unless we propose to throw overboard all the God-conditioned forms of human knowledge. Let us at least pay time so much honour as the nature of our story permits -- little enough, in all conscience; for it has begun to rush pell-mell and helter-skelter; or, if the words suggest too much noise and confusion, shall we say it is going like the wind? The little hand on time's clock trips away as though measuring seconds; but God knows how much time it is covering when it whisks round heedless of the divisions it passes over! So much is certain, that we have been up here years. Our brains reel, surely this is an evil dream, though dreamed with nor hashish nor opium; a censor of morals would rebuke us for it. Yet how much logical clarity, how much pure light of reason have we opposed to the stealing vague? Not by chance, may we say, have we kept company with intellectual lights like Naphta and Settembrini, instead of surrounding ourselves with incoherent Peeperkorns! And this leads us to a comparison, which in many respects, notably that of scale, must result in favour of this latest arrival on the scene. It did so in Hans Castorp's own mind. He lay, considering matters, in his loge, and admitted to himself that his two over-vocal mentors, the self-elected guardians of his soul, were dwarfed beside Pieter Peeperkorn. Almost he inclined to call them what Peeperkorn in his royal cups had called him, Hans Castorp -- chatterboxes. He was well pleased that hermetic pedagogy should have given him this too: contact with an out-and-out personality.

True, this personality was the companion of Clavdia Chauchat's travels, and as such a greatly disturbing element. But that was another matter, and one which Hans Castorp did not allow to prejudice his judgment. He persisted in his sincere and respectful if also rather forward sympathy for this man on the grand scale, regardless of his partnership in the travelling-trunks of the woman of whom once, on a carnival night, Hans Castorp had borrowed a lead-pencil. That was his way; though we know some people, male and female, will not understand such a lack of sensibility, preferring that our hero should hate Peeperkorn, avoid him, call him an old dotard, a drivelling old sot. Instead of which we see him by Peeperkorn's bedside in his attacks of fever -- prattling to him (the word applies to his own share in the conversation, not the majestic Peeperkorn's) and with the receptivity of inquiring youth on his travels, letting himself be played on by the power of the personality. All this Hans Castorp did, and all this we report of him, indifferent to the danger that someone may thereby be reminded of Ferdinand Wehsal, who once was wont to carry Hans Castorp's overcoat. The comparison is not pertinent -- for our hero was no Wehsal. Depths of self-abasement were not his line. But he was no "hero" either: which is to say, he would never let his relation to the masculine be conditioned by the feminine. True to our principle of making him out neither better nor worse than he was, we assert that he simply declined -- not expressly and consciously, but quite naively, declined to let his judgment of his own sex be perverted by romantic considerations. Nor his sense of what was formative in experience. The female sex may find this offensive; we believe Frau Chauchat did feel some involuntary chagrin over the fact -- a biting remark or so escaped her, to which we shall refer later on. But surely it was this very characteristic of his which rendered him so irresistible an object for pedagogic rivalry.