Settembrini enjoined him to be calm⁠—his own voice shaking with passion. He found Herr Naphta’s talk about bourgeoisiedom simply insufferable⁠—and God knew why he should put on that contemptuous, aristocratic air! As if the opposite of life⁠—and we all knew what that was⁠—was likely to be more refined than life itself!

New cries, new catchwords! Now it was the “aristocratic principle.” Hans Castorp, all flushed and depleted from taxing his brains in the cold, shaky as to his capacity for clear expression, hot and cold with his own audacity, heard himself babble that always since a child he had pictured death to himself as wearing a starched ruff, or at least a sort of half-uniform, with a stand-up collar, while life, on the other hand, wore an ordinary collar. His words sounded, even to himself, like a drunken impropriety; he hastened to assure the company that that was not at all what he had meant to say. And yet⁠—wasn’t it a fact that one couldn’t imagine certain people dead, simply because they were so very ordinary? That must mean they were very fit for life, but could not die, because unfit for the consecration of death.