who went about with his nose in the air, and calmly⁠—with particular calm, although at the same time both febrile and fuddled⁠—lumped the members of both tables together under the title of Parthians and Scythians. Hans Castorp understood only too well the sense in which he used it, since he had begun to understand the connection between Frau Chauchat’s illness and her “slackness.” But as he had one day put it to Joachim: one begins by being angry and disgusted, and then all at once “something quite different enters in,” that has “nothing to do with moral judgment,” and it is all up with your severity; you are simply not at home to pedagogic influences, however republican, however eloquent. But, we are impelled to ask, probably again in the spirit of Ludovico Settembrini, what sort of questionable experience is this, which palsies a man’s judgment, robs him of all claim to it, or even makes him waive that claim, and experience in so doing the abandonment of ecstasy? We do not ask its name⁠—for that everyone knows. Our question rather refers to its moral quality; and we confess that we do not anticipate any very self-confident reply.