“Why not? Did you think it successful, my portrait?” “Don’t you mean, when he was painting your portrait?” “Possibly, when he let me see his paintings.” “By which you mean to say: a thoroughly steadfast nature, secure in itself? But your poor cousin is seriously ill.” “Not prone?” she repeated with difficulty. But he is not a bourgeois, he is a military man.” “No, he is truly a good soul, his is a simple temperament, not prone to intellectual dangers, you understand. Was it really your cousin who got you thinking such strange things?” What all Europe refers to as liberty is, perhaps, something rather pedantic, rather bourgeois in comparison to our need for order-that’s the point!” I’ll tell you in French what it is I’ve been thinking. “That is, I heard the word mentioned so often, that I started thinking about it. “I have been giving freedom some thought of late,” he continued. What one man has, the other loves, as the German proverb puts it,” Hans Castorp contended. What is it, exactly? The word lacks definition. You love order more than liberty, all Europe knows that.” But it’s true, you are all a little bourgeois. Do you consider us Germans pedantic-us other Germans?” What you mean to say is that he’s pedantic. “I understand French better than I speak it. “He is a very rigid, very respectable, very ‘German’ young man.” “I also noticed a while ago that he had left. “Yes, he is my cousin,” he confirmed quite unnecessarily. When he dismissed this with a laugh, she added, “Your cousin has already gone.”

“You’re not quite as well-mannered as I thought you were,” she said. “Would you like to?” she asked, her brows raised in surprise, but still with a smile. “Very much,” he said, letting his gaze pass over her again before casting his eyes down. He does work for many of the ladies up here. I recently had it made here, by Lukaček, the tailor in the village. “New? You are conversant with my wardrobe?” “You’re wearing a new dress,” he said, as an excuse for gazing at her.

Mann thomas the magic mountain