The lady had mentioned a place in the Pyrenees. A pretty, or at least a charming woman. Pleasant voice, pretty gestures. But free manners, slack, Frau Ziemssen thought. “She spoke to us as though we were old friends, told about herself, asked questions, though it seems Joachim had never actually known her. I thought it rather odd.”

“That is the East⁠—and the illness,” replied Hans Castorp. “One mustn’t try to measure her by humanistic standards.” He thought he remembered that she had intended to make a journey into Spain. H’m, Spain. That country too lay remote from the humanistic mean, though on the side of austerity rather than of softness. There it was not lack but excess of form that obtained; death itself was in the guise of form, not dissolution⁠—black, refined, sanguinary, Inquisition, stiff ruff, Loyola, the Escurial, et cetera⁠—h’m, yes, it was interesting; he wondered what Frau Chauchat would say to Spain. She’d probably get over banging doors⁠—and perhaps a combination of the two extremes would bring her closer to the humane mean. Yet something pretty awful, terroristic, might come to pass if the East went to Spain⁠ ⁠…