It was one thing for our young friend to call “Clavdia” to account for the beatings of his heart; but quite another for him, the grandson of Hans Lorenz Castorp, to be shaken in the smallest degree in the sure inward conviction that this door-slamming, finger-gnawing, bread-pill-making foreigner⁠—who carried herself so badly, who lived apart from her husband, and without a ring on her finger careered from one resort to another⁠—that this foreigner was indubitably not a person for him to cultivate; not, that is, over and above the secret relation we have indicated. A deep gulf divided their two existences; he felt, he knew, that he was not up to defending her in the face of any recognized social authority. Hans Castorp was, for his own person, quite without arrogance; yet a larger arrogance, the pride of caste and tradition, stood written on his brow and in his sleepy-looking eyes, and voiced itself in the conviction of his own superiority, which came over him when he measured Frau Chauchat for what she was. It was this which he neither could, nor wished to, shake off. Strangely enough, he first became vividly conscious of his conviction on a day when he heard Frau Chauchat speaking in his native tongue.