“I’m glad I’m here still, for this,” said Hans Castorp to his cousin. “It has been so wretched at times, and now it is as though we had the winter behind us, and only good weather to look forward to.” He was quite right. There were indeed not many signs that pointed to the true state of the calendar; and even those there were did not strike the eye. Aside from the few oak-trees that had been set out down in the Platz, where they had just managed to survive, and long before now had despondently shed their leaves, the whole region held no deciduous trees to give the landscape an autumnal cast; only the hybrid Alpine alder, which renews its soft needles as though they were leaves, showed a wintry baldness. The other trees of the region, whether towering or stunted, were evergreen pines and firs, invincible against the assaults of this irregular winter, which might scatter its snowstorms through all the months of the year: only the many-shaded, rust-red tone that lay over the forest gave notice, despite the glowing sunshine, of a declining year.