But Hans Castorp said as they walked on: “You see, I didn’t mind it at all, I got on with her quite well; I always do with such people; I understand instinctively how to go at them⁠—don’t you think so? I even think, on the whole, I get on better with sad people than with jolly ones⁠—goodness knows why. Perhaps it’s because I’m an orphan, and lost my parents early; but when people are very serious, or down in the mouth, or somebody dies, it doesn’t deject or embarrass me; I feel quite in my element, a good deal more so than when everything is going on greased wheels. I was thinking just lately that it is pretty flat of the women up here to take on as they do about death and things connected with death, so that they take such pains to shield them from contact with it, and bring the Eucharist at mealtimes, and that. I call it very feeble of them. Don’t you like the sight of a coffin? I really do. I find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty; when someone is lying in it, then, in my eyes, it is positively sublime. Funerals have something very edifying; I always think one ought to go to a funeral instead of to church when one feels the need of being uplifted.