Hans Castorp had been only half listening to the dialogue, being preoccupied by the fundamental nobility of the soldierly representative then present⁠—or rather by the strange new expression in his eyes. He started slightly as he felt himself challenged by Herr Settembrini’s last words, and made such a face as he had the time the humanist would have solemnly constrained him to a choice between East and West: a face full of reserve and obstinacy. He said nothing. They forced everything to an issue, these two⁠—as perhaps one must when one differed⁠—and wrangled bitterly over extremes, whereas it seemed to him, Hans Castorp, as though somewhere between two intolerable positions, between bombastic humanism and analphabetic barbarism, must be something which one might personally call the human. He did not express his thought, for fear of irritating one or other of them; but, wrapped in his reserve, listened to one goading the other on, each leading the other from hundredthly to thousandthly, and all because of Herr Settembrini’s original little joke about Virgil.