When he came up, he asked, in a still, small voice: “Did you ever hear the like of that?”

But it was plain that Hans Castorp had. It was plain that whatever James could tell him would not make him “feel the cold.” So James broke off, and to his nephew’s further, mildly interested query answered: “Oh, nothing.” But from hour to hour he developed a new habit: of peering diagonally upwards, with drawn brows and puckered lips, then suddenly turning his head to repeat the same gaze in the opposite direction. Had the interview with the Hofrat also gone off differently from James’s expectations? Had it lost its character as a private interview, had the subject shifted from Hans Castorp to James Tienappel? One might think so. The Consul showed himself in high spirits. He talked a great deal, laughed without reason, struck his nephew with his fist in the pit of the stomach, shouting: “Hullo there, old fellow!” Between times he had that look, first here and then suddenly there. But there came to be another, more definite goal to his glances, at table, on their walks, and in the salon of an evening.