Naphta laughed derisively; Hans Castorp protested his readiness to believe Herr Settembrini’s statement. Indeed, as he pictured him smiling beneath his moustaches and fixing the feebleminded with the eye of remorseless reason, he could well understand how the poor fellow had had to pull himself together and behave with “temporary self-control,” though probably finding Herr Settembrini’s presence a most unwelcome incident.⁠—But Naphta too had had experience of asylums for the insane. He recalled a visit to the violent ward, where he had seen such sights as⁠—my God, such sights as would have been a bit too much even for Herr Settembrini’s intelligent eye or disciplinary powers: Dantesque scenes, monstrous tableaux of horror and agony: naked madmen squatting in the continuous bath, in every posture of mental anguish or in the stupor of despair; some shrieking aloud, others with uplifted arms and gaping mouths whence issued laughter that mingled all the elements of hell⁠—