Toward the end of the meal Settembrini came to sit for a while at the end of the cousins’ table; he wore his everyday clothes, and sported his toothpick. He quizzed Frau Stöhr with spirit, and made a few remarks about the carpenter’s son and rabbi of humanity, whose birthday they fancied they were celebrating today. Whether he had actually lived, Settembrini said, was uncertain; yet his time had given birth to an idea, which had continued its triumphant course even up to today: the idea of the dignity of the human spirit, the idea of equality⁠—in a word, they were celebrating the birth of individualistic democracy, and to it he would empty the glass they gave him. Frau Stöhr found his remarks

équivoque and unfeeling: she rose under protest to the toast, and as the other tables were being emptied, they followed the general movement toward the drawing-rooms.