The other, more observant of his companion than of the cosmos, said to himself that it was perhaps conceivable, it was at least not actually lunatic, to begin a conversation by talking about the stars, but there were other subjects that lay closer to hand. Since when, he asked, had Hans Castorp known so much about matters up aloft; and the young man replied that his knowledge was the fruit of long lying in the evening rest-cure, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. What? He lay out in a balcony at night? Oh, yes. The Consul would too. He would have nothing else to do.

“Certainly, of course,” James Tienappel acquiesced, rather intimidated. His foster-brother spoke on, equably, monotonously. He sat without hat or overcoat, in the air, fresh to frostiness, of the autumn evening. “I suppose you aren’t cold?” James asked him, shivering in his inch-thick ulster. He talked fast and rather indistinctly, his teeth showing a tendency to chatter. “We don’t feel the cold,” Hans Castorp said, with tranquil brevity.