Chapter 17: Necessary Purchases

Necessary Purchases “Is your summer over now?” Hans Castorp ironically asked his cousin, on the third day. There had come a violent change of scene. On the visitor’s second full day up here, the most brilliant summer weather prevailed. Above the aspiring lance-shaped tips of the fir-trees the sky gleamed deepest blue, the village down in the valley glared white in the heat, and the air was filled with the sound, half gay, half pensive, of bells, from the cows that roamed the slopes, cro…