At all events October was before the door, it might enter any day. The calculation was an easy one for Hans Castorp to make, and he gathered the same result from the conversation of his fellow-patients. “Do you know that in five days it will be the first again?” he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two of her familiars, the student Rasmussen and the thick-lipped young man, whose name was Gänser. It was after luncheon, and the guests lingered chatting in the dining-room, though the air was heavy with the odours of the meal just served, instead of going into the afternoon rest-cure. “The first of October, I saw it on the calendar in the office. That makes the second of its kind I’ve spent in the pleasure resort. Well, summer is over, in so far as there has been a summer, that is⁠—it has really been a sell, like life in general.” She shook her head, fetched a sigh from her one lung, and rolled up to the ceiling her dull and stolid eyes. “Cheer up, Rasmussen,” she said, and slapped her comrade on the drooping shoulder. “Make a few jokes!”

“I don’t know many,” he responded, letting his hands flap finlike before his breast, “and those I do I can’t tell, I’m so tired all the time.”