Hans Castorp followed the proceedings with his head on one side, absorbed in contemplation of his cousin’s torso. The ribs⁠—thank Heaven, he had them all!⁠—rose under the taut skin as he took deep inhalations, and the stomach fell away. Hans Castorp studied that youthful figure, slender, yellowish-bronze, with a black fell along the breastbone and the powerful arms. On one wrist Joachim wore a gold chain-bracelet. “Those are the arms of an athlete,” thought Hans Castorp. “I never made much of gymnastics, but he always liked them, and that is partly the reason why he wanted to be a soldier. He has always been more inclined than I to the things of the body⁠—or inclined in a different way. I’ve always been a civilian and cared more about warm baths and good eating and drinking, whereas he has gone in for manly exertion. And now his body has come into the foreground in another sense and made itself important and independent of the rest of him⁠—namely, through illness. He is all ‘lit up’ within and can’t get rid of the infection and become healthy, poor Joachim, no matter how much he wants to get down to the valley and be a soldier. And yet look how he is developed, like a picture in a book, a regular Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair.