No little reading was done, in the rest-halls and private loggias of the International Sanatorium Berghof; largely, however, by the newcomers and “short-timers,” for the patients of many months’ or years’ standing had long learned to kill time without mental effort or means of distraction, by dint of a certain inner virtuosity they came to possess. They even considered it beginners’ awkwardness to glue yourself to a book. It was enough to have one lying in your lap or on your little table, in case of need. The collection of the establishment was an amplification of the literature found in a dentist’s waiting-room⁠—in many languages, profusely illustrated, and offered free of charge. The guests exchanged volumes from the loan-library down in the Platz; now and again there would be a book for which everybody scrambled, even the condescending old inhabitants reaching out their hands with ill-concealed eagerness. At the moment it was a cheap paper-backed volume, introduced by Herr Albin, and entitled The Art of Seduction