Chapter 6: Of the Christening Basin, and of Grandfather in His Twofold Guise

Of the Christening Basin, and of Grandfather in His Twofold Guise Hans Castorp retained only pale memories of his parental home. His father and mother he had barely known; they had both dropped away in the brief period between his fifth and seventh birthdays; first the mother, quite suddenly, on the eve of a confinement, of an arterial obstruction following neuritis—an embolus, Dr. Heidekind had called it—which caused instantaneous cardiac arrest. She had just been laughing, sitting up in b…