“We?” thought Hans Castorp, breathlessly. “Who are ‘we’? I must certainly ask Settembrini afterwards, whom he means by ‘we.’ ”

“We, for our part,” Naphta was saying, “perhaps no less revolutionary than you, have consistently deduced the supremacy of the Church over the secular power. The temporal nature of the power of the State is, as it were, written on its forehead; but even if it were not, it would be enough to point to the historical fact that its authority goes back to the will of the people, whereas that of the Church rests upon the divine sanction, to establish its character as a device which, if not precisely contrived by the power of evil, is nevertheless a faulty and inadequate makeshift.”

“The State, my dear sir⁠—”