“No,” persisted Hans Castorp, with a violence out of proportion to the opposition he met, “I insist that a dying man is above any chap that is going about and laughing and earning his living and eating his three meals a day. It isn’t good enough”⁠—his voice quavered⁠—“it isn’t good enough, for one to calmly⁠—just calmly”⁠—his words trailed off in a fit of laughter that seized and overcame him, the laughter of yesterday, a profound, illimitable, body-shaking laughter, that shut up his eyes and made tears well from beneath their lids.

“ Sh-h! ” went Joachim, suddenly. “Keep quiet,” he whispered, and nudged his uncontrollably hilarious cousin in the side. Hans Castorp looked up through tears.

A stranger was approaching them from the left, a dark man of graceful carriage, with curling black moustaches, wearing light-coloured check trousers. He exchanged a good morning with Joachim in accents agreeable and precise, and then remained standing before them in an easy posture, leaning on his cane, with his legs crossed.