He signed his name. It was done. This last letter was exhaustive, it covered the case; not according to the time-conceptions of down below, but according to those obtaining up here; it asserted Hans Castorp’s freedom . This was his own word, albeit not expressed; he would hardly have shaped the syllables even in his mind; but he felt the full sense of its meaning, as he had come to know it during his stay up here⁠—a sense which had little to do with the Settembrinian significance⁠—and his breast was shaken with that excited alarm, which swept over him in a wave, as it had done before.

His head was hot with the blood that had gone to it as he wrote, his cheeks burned. He took the thermometer from his lamp-stand and “measured,” as though to make use of an opportunity. Mercurius had gone up to 100°.