Hans Castorp found bluebells and yarrow on the hillside, like the ones Joachim had put in his room to greet him when he came; and seeing them, realized how the year was rounding out. Those others had been the late blossoms of the declining summer; whereas now the tender emerald grass of the sloping meadows was thick-starred with every sort of bloom, cup-shaped, bell-shaped, star-shaped, any-shaped, filling the sunny air with warm spice and scent: quantities of wild pansies and fly-bane, daisies, red and yellow primulas, larger and finer than any Hans Castorp had ever seen down below, so far as he could recall noticing, and the nodding soldanella, peculiar to the region, with its little eye-lashed bells of rose-colour, purple, and blue.

Hans Castorp gathered a bunch of all this loveliness and took it to his room; by no means with the idea of decoration, but of set and serious scientific intent. He had assembled an apparatus to serve his need: a botanical textbook, a handy little trowel to take up roots, a herbarium, a powerful pocket-lens. The young man set to work in his loggia, clad in one of the light summer suits he had brought up with him when he came⁠—another sign that his first year was rounding out its course.