“I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat,” Hans Castorp responded, taking the reins again into his hands. “I do, often, when he begins to kick against the pricks⁠—and I think he will listen to reason. But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest characters. For instance, lately⁠—who was it went off? A lady, from the ‘good’ Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She’s gone to Daghestan, they say. Well, Daghestan⁠—I don’t know the climate, it is probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our ideas up here⁠—though for aught I know it may be mountainous, geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But how can a person who isn’t sound live out there, where all the proper ideas are totally lacking, and nobody has a notion of the regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she will be coming back, she told me so herself⁠—happened to.