The assistant had his own office hours, in a special room, which, together with the large examination-rooms, the laboratory, the operating-rooms and X-ray studio, was in the well-lighted basement of the building. We call it the basement, for the stone steps leading down to it from the ground-floor created the impression that it was such⁠—an erroneous impression, for not only was the ground-floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on a sidehill, part way up the mountain, and these “basement” rooms faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circumstance negatived to some extent by the fact of the steps leading down to them. One descended, as one supposed, from the ground-floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically so. Hans Castorp amused himself with this illusion when he accompanied his cousin one afternoon down to the “bathing-master,” that Joachim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance and spotlessness reigned in this sphere. Everything was as white as white; the doors gleamed with white enamel; the one leading to Dr.