The present state of his feelings, however, had put on one side any such sentiments as these; it was now the Italian who was the object of his irritation, because he, in his benightedness, had spoken of Parthians and Scythians and had not meant thereby the persons at the “bad” Russian table, the shock-headed, linenless students, who sat there disputing endlessly in their outlandish tongue, which was obviously the only one they knew, and which, in its soft, spineless character reminded Hans Castorp of the thorax without ribs Hofrat Behrens had described to him. True, the manners and customs of such people might readily awaken feelings of disgust in the breast of a humanist. They ate with their knives, and unmentionably messed the front of their blouses. Settembrini asserted that one of them, a medical student well on in his training, was so ignorant of Latin, as not to know, for example, what the word “vacuum” meant. As for the married couple in number thirty-two, Hans Castorp’s own daily experience of them was such as to render quite credible Frau Stöhr’s report, that when the bathing-master entered their room in the morning for the usual massage, they received him lying in bed together.