Thus Herr Ferge; now and then interrupting his narrative with a sigh, and the remark that it was all very well⁠—if only they did not try the pneumothorax again. His talk was devoid of the “higher things,” but it was full of facts, and interesting to listen to, particularly for Hans Castorp, who found it profited him to hear about Russia and life as it was lived there: about samovars and pirogues, Cossacks, and wooden churches with so many towers shaped like onion-tops as to look like a whole colony of mushrooms. He led Herr Ferge to talk about the people, the strange and exotic northern types, with their Asiatic tincture, the prominent cheekbones and Finnish-Mongolian slant to the eye; listening with anthropological interest to all that he heard. At his request, Herr Ferge spoke Russian to him; the outlandish, spineless, washed-out idiom came pouring from under the good-natured moustaches, out of the good-natured Adam’s apple; and Hans Castorp enjoyed it the more, youthlike, because all this was, pedagogically considered, forbidden fruit he was tasting.