Chapter 46: Vingt-Et-Un

Vingt-Et-Un A little time passed, some three or four weeks—this on our own reckoning, since on Hans Castorp’s we cannot depend. They brought no great change. On our hero’s part they witnessed an abiding scorn of the unforeseen circumstances which kept him in undeserved exile, of, in particular, that circumstance which called itself Pieter Peeperkorn, when it took unto itself a glass of gin—the disturbing presence of that kingly, incoherent man, which upset Hans Castorp far more than had the…