Daily they took their walks together, thrice covering the prescribed distance, to which the Hofrat had now strictly limited Joachim, in order to husband his strength. Hans Castorp walked at his cousin’s left. They had been used to walk as chance had it, but now he held consistently to the left. They did not talk much; uttered the phrases proper to the daily routine, and little else. On the subject that lay between them there is nothing to say, especially between people of traditional reserve, who could scarcely bring themselves to utter each other’s first names. Sometimes it did well up insistently in Hans Castorp’s civilian breast, as though it must out. But it could not: the painful, rebellious feeling sank away again, and he was still.

With bowed head Joachim walked beside him. He gazed earthwards⁠—as though looking at the earth. How strange! He walked so comme il faut , so much as he had always been; he greeted people with his wonted courtliness, he set store, as always, by his outward appearance and bienséance