We have introduced these remarks here only because our young Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes: “I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean⁠—of course it isn’t a question of my being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally entertained. But when I look back⁠—in retrospect, that is, you understand⁠—it seems to me I’ve been up here goodness only knows how long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived, and did not quite understand that I was there, and you said: ‘Just get out here’⁠—don’t you remember?⁠—That has nothing whatever to do with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say: ‘I feel I have been up here two months’⁠—it would be silly. All I can say is ‘very long.’ ”

“Yes,” Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, “I profit by it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were.” Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite simply, without explanation.