They laughed over these erudite jests, and looked at Hans Castorp, who laughed back, raising his glass to his “Virgil.” But it is unbelievable what endless academic strife arose in the next hour out of Herr Settembrini’s high-sounding but harmless remark. Naphta, having been in a manner challenged, straightway girded up his loins, and fell foul of the Latin poet, whom Settembrini was known to admire to the point of idolatry, even placing him higher than Homer, while Naphta had more than once expressed contempt for him and for the whole of Latin poetry, and did not fail to seize this opportunity to do so again. It was a complaisant limitation of the great Dante, due to his period, that he took so seriously this mediocre versifier and in his poem assigned him so high a role⁠—even though Herr Ludovico did ascribe rather too freemasonly a meaning to it. But what was there to this courtly laureate and lickspittle of the Julian house, this urban litterateur and eulogist, who was without a spark of creative genius, whose soul, if he had one, was secondhand, and who was certainly no poet, but a Frenchman in an Augustan full-bottomed wig!