But that moment, that bold, adventurous situation, into which Hans Castorp found himself transported after all these years, the conversation⁠—an actual conversation with Pribislav Hippe⁠—came about thus. The drawing-lesson was the next period, and Hans Castorp found himself without a pencil. His classmates needed their own, but he had among the other pupils this and that acquaintance, of whom he might have sought a loan. Yet he found it was Pribislav who after all stood nearest to him, with whom, in secret, he had had to do; and with a joyous impulse of his entire being he determined to seize the opportunity⁠—for so he called it⁠—and ask Pribislav for a pencil. It was rather an odd thing to do, since he did not, in reality, “know” Pribislav at all; but this aspect of the affair escaped him in his recklessness, or he chose to disregard it. So there he stood before Pribislav Hippe, among the bustling crowd that filled the tiled courtyard; and he said to him: “Excuse me, can you lend me a pencil?”

And Pribislav looked at him, with his “Kirghiz” eyes above the prominent cheekbones, and spoke, in his pleasantly husky voice, without any surprise, or, at least, without showing any.