“Her Christian name is Adriatica.”

“Adriatica!” shouted Hans Castorp. “Priceless! Adriatica von Mylendonk! Isn’t that splendid! Sounds as though she had been dead a very long time. It is positively medieval.”

“My dear sir,” Settembrini answered him, “there is a good deal up here that is positively medieval, as you express it. Personally, I am convinced that Rhadamanthus was actuated simply and solely by artistic feeling when he made this fossil head overseer of his Chamber of Horrors. You know he is an artist, by the by. He paints in oils. Why not? There’s no law against it⁠—anybody can paint that likes. Frau Adriatica tells all who will listen to her, not counting those who won’t, that a Mylendonk was abbess of a cloister at Bonn on the Rhine, in the thirteenth century. It can’t have been long after that she herself saw the light of day.”

“Ha ha! Why, Herr Settembrini, I find you are a mocker!”