It was quite possible⁠—but so was the opposite. He was an engineer, studying shipbuilding; on the technical side, in touch with world commerce. He might turn out to be a radical, a reckless spender, a profane destroyer of old buildings and landscape beauties. He might be as unfettered as a Jew, as irreverent as an American; he might prefer a ruthless break with tradition to a considered development of natural resources; he might incline to plunge the state into foolhardy experimentation. All that was conceivable. Was it in his blood to feel that their Worships in the Senate, before whom the double sentry at the

Rathaus presented arms, were likely to know best in all contingencies; or would he side with the opposition in the Assembly? In his blue eyes, under their reddish-brown brows, his fellow citizens read no answer to their curious questioning. And he probably knew none himself, Hans Castorp, this still unwritten page.