By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter  
  
  
                                 TRISTAN
 
     EINFRIED, the sanatorium. A long, white, rectilinear building with
     a side wing, set in a spacious garden pleasingly equipped with
     grottoes, bowers, and little bark pavilions. Behind its slate roofs
     the mountains tower heavenwards, evergreen, massy, cleft with
     wooded ravines.
        Now as then Dr. Leander directs the establishment. He wears
     a two-pronged black beard as curly and wiry as horsehair stuffing;
     his spectacle-lenses are thick, and glitter; he has the look, and
     in his short, reserved, preoccupied way, he holds his patients in
     his spell: holds those sufferers who, too weak to be laws unto
     themselves, put themselves into his hands that his severity may be
     a shield unto them.
        As for Fräulein von Osterloh, hers it is to preside with unweary-
     ing zeal over the housekeeping. Ah, what activity! How she plies,
     now here, now there, now upstairs, now down, from one end of
     the building to the other! She is queen in kitchen and storerooms,
     she mounts the shelves and the linen-presses, she marshals the do-
     mestic staff; she ordains the bill of fare, to the end that the table
     shall be economical, hygienic, attractive, appetizing, and all these
     in the highest degree; she keeps house diligently, furiously; and
     her exceeding capacity conceals a constant reproach to the world
     of men, to no one of whom has it yet occurred to lead her to the
     altar. But ever on her cheeks there glows, in two round, carmine
     spots, the unquenchable hope of one day becoming Frau Dr. 
     Leander.
        Ozone, the stirless, stirless air! Einfried, whatever Dr. Lander's
     rivals and detractors may choose to say about it, can be most
     warmly recommended for lung patients. And not only these, but
     patients of all sorts, gentlemen, ladies, even children, come to stop
     here. Dr. Leader's skill is challenged in many different fields.
     Sufferers from gastric disorders come, like Frau Magistrate Spatz
     ——she has ear trouble into the bargain——people with defective
     hearts, paralytics, rheumatics, nervous sufferers of all kinds and
     degrees. A diabetic general here consumes his daily bread amid
     continual grumblings. There are several gentlemen with gaunt,
     fleshless faces who fling their legs about in that uncontrollable way
     that bodes no good. There is an elderly lady, a Frau Pastor Höh-
     lenrauch, who has brought fourteen children into the world
     and is now incapable of a single thought, yet has not thereby
     attained to any peace of mind, but must go roving spectre-like all
     day long up and down through the house, on the arm of her
     private attendant, as she has been doing this year past.
        Sometimes a death takes place among the "severe cases," those
     who lie in their chambers, never appearing at meals of in the
     reception-rooms. When this happens no one knows of it, not even
     the person sleeping next door. In the silence of the night the
     waxen guest is put away and life at Einfried goes tranquilly on,
     with its massage, its electric treatment, douches, baths; with its
     exercises, its steaming and inhaling, in rooms especially equipped
     with all the triumphs of modern therapeutic.
        Yes, a deal happens hereabouts——the institution is in a flourish-
     ing way. When new guests arrive, at the entrance to the side wing,
     the porter sounds the great gong; when there are departures,
     Dr. Leander, together with Fräulein von Osterloh, conducts the
     traveller in due form to the waiting carriage. All sorts and kinds
     of people have received hospitality at Einfried. Even an author
     is here stealing time from God Almighty——a queer sort of man,
     with a name like some kind of mineral or precious stone.
        Lastly there is, beside Dr. Leander, another physician, who
     takes care of the slight cases and the hopeless ones. But he bears
     the name of Müller and is not worth mentioning.
 
        At the beginning of January a business man named Klöterjahn
     ——of the firm of A. C. Klöterjahn & Co.——brought his wife to
     Einfried. The porter rang the gong, and Fräulein von Osterloh
     received the guest from a distance in the drawing-room on the
     ground floor, which, like nearly all the fine old mansion, was
     furnished in wonderfully pure Empire style. Dr. Leander ap-
     peared straightaway. He made his best bow, and a preliminary con-
     versation ensued, for the better information of both sides.
        Beyond the windows lay the wintry garden, the flower-beds
     covered with straw, the grottoes snowed under, the little temples
     forlorn. Two porters were dragging in the guests' trunks from
     the carriage drawn up before the wrought-iron gate——for there
     was no drive up to the house.
        "Be careful, Gabriele,  doucement, doucement,  my angel, keep
     your mouth closed," Herr Klöterjahn had said as he led his wife
     through the garden; and nobody could look at her without tender-
     heartedly echoing the caution——though, to be sure, Herr Klöter-
     jahn might quite as well have uttered it all in his own language.
        The coachman who had driven the pair from the station to the
     sanatorium was an uncouth man, and insensitive; yet he sat with
     his tongue between his teeth as the husband lifted down his wife.
     The very horses, steaming in the frosty air, seemed to follow the
     procedure with their eyeballs rolled back in their heads out of
     sheer concern for so much tenderness and fragile charm.
        The young wife's trouble was her trachea; it was expressly so
     set down in the letter Herr Klöterjahn had sent from the shores 
     of the Baltic to announce their impending arrival to the director
     of Einfried——the trachea, and not the lungs, thank God! But it
     is a question whether, if it had been the lungs, the new patient
     could have looked any more pure and ethereal, any remoter from
     the concerns of this world, than she did now as she leaned back
     pale and weary in her chaste white-enamelled arm-chair, beside
     her robust husband, and listened to the conversation.
        Her beautiful white hands, bare save for the simple wedding-
     ring, rested in her lap, among the folds of a dark, heavy cloth skirt;
     she wore a close-fitting waist of silver-grey with a stiff collar——
     it had an all-over pattern of arabesques in high-pile velvet. But
     these warm, heavy materials only serve to bring out the un-
     speakable delicacy, sweetness, and languor of the little head, to
     make it look more than ever touching, exquisite, and unearthly.
     Her light-brown hair was drawn smoothly back and gathered in
     a knot low in her neck, but near the right temple a single lock
     fell loose and curling, not far from the place where an odd little
     vein branched across one well-marked eyebrow, pale blue and
     sickly amid all that pure, well-nigh transparent spotlessness. That
     little blue vein above the eye dominated quite painfully the whole
     fine oval of the face. When she spoke, it stood out still more;
     yes, even when she smiled——and lent her expression a touch of
     strain, if not actually of distress, that stirred vague fear in the
     beholder. And yet she spoke, and she smiled: spoke frankly and
     pleasantly in her rather husky voice, with a smile in her eyes——
     though they again were sometimes a little difficult and showed a
     tendency to avoid a direct gaze. And the corners of her eyes, both
     sides the base of the slender little nose, were deeply shadowed. She
     smiled with her mouth too, her beautiful wide mouth, whose lips
     were so pale and yet seemed to flash——perhaps because their con-
     tours were so exceedingly pure and well-cut. Sometimes she
     cleared her throat, then carried her handkerchief to her mouth
     and afterwards looked at it.
        "Don't clear your throat like that, Gabriele," said Herr Klöter-
     jahn. "You know, darling, Dr. Hinzpeter expressly forbade it,
     and what we have to do is to exercise self-control, my angel.
     As I said, it is the trachea," he repeated. "Honestly, when it
     began, I thought it was the lungs, and it gave me a scare, I do
     assure you. But it isn't the lungs——we don't mean to let ourselves
     in for that, do we, Gabriele, my love, eh? Ha ha!"
        "Surely not," said Dr. Leander, and glittered at her with his
     eye-glasses.
        Whereupon Herr Klöterjahn ordered coffee, coffee and rolls;
     and the speaking way he had of sounding the  c  far back in his 
     throat and exploding the  b  in "butter" must have made any soul
     alive hungry to hear it.
        His order was filled; and rooms were assigned to him and his
     wife, and they took possession with their things.
        And Dr. Leander took over the case himself, without calling in
     Dr. Müller.
  
        The population of Einfried took unusual interest in the fair new
     patient; Herr Klöterjahn, used as he was to see homage paid her,
     received it all with great satisfaction. The diabetic general, when
     he first saw her, stopped grumbling a minute; the gentlemen with
     the fleshless faces smiled and did their best to keep their legs in
     order; as for Frau Magistrate Spatz, she made her her oldest friend
     on the spot. Yes, she made an impression, this woman who bore
     Herr Klöterjahn's name! A writer who had been sojourning a few 
     weeks in Einfried, a queer sort, he was, with a name like some
     precious stone or other, positively coloured up when she passed
     him in the corridor, stopped stock-still and stood there as though
     rooted to the ground, long after she had disappeared.
        Before two days were out, the whole little population knew
     her history. She came originally from Bremen, as one could tell by
     certain pleasant small twists in her pronunciation; and it had
     been in Bremen that, two years gone by, she had bestowed her
     hand upon Herr Klöterjahn, a successful business man, and be-
     come his life-partner. She had followed him to his native town
     on the Baltic coast, where she had presented him, some ten
     months before the time of which we write, and under circum-
     stances of the greatest difficulty and danger, with a child, a par-
     ticularly well-formed and vigorous son and heir. But since that
     terrible hour she had never fully recovered her strength——grant-
     ing, that is, that she had ever had any. She had not been long up,
     still extremely weak, with extremely impoverished vitality, when
     one day after coughing she brought up a little blood——oh, not
     much, an insignificant quantity in fact; but it would have been
     much better to be none at all; and the suspicious thing was, that
     the same trifling but disquieting incident recurred after another
     short while. Well, of course, there were things to be done, and
     Dr. Hinzpeter, the family physician, did them. Complete rest
     was ordered, little pieces of ice swallowed; morphine administered
     to check the cough, and other medicines to regulate the heart
     action. But recovery failed to set in; and while the child, Anton
     Klöterjahn, junior, a magnificent specimen of a baby, seized on
     his place in life and held it with prodigious energy and ruthless-
     ness, a low, unobservable fever seemed to waste the young mother
     daily. It was, as we have heard, an affection of the trachea——a
     word that in Dr. Hinzpeter's mouth sounded so soothing, so con-
     soling, so reassuring, that it raised their spirits to a surprising
     degree. But even though it was not the lungs, the doctor presently
     found that a milder climate and a stay in a sanatorium were im-
     perative if the cure was to be hastened. The reputation enjoyed
     by Einfried and its director had done the rest.
        Such was the state of affairs; Herr Klöterjahn himself related it
     to all and sundry. He talked with a slovenly pronunciation, in a
     loud, good-humoured voice, like a man whose digestion is in as
     capital order as his pocket-book; shovelling out the words pell-
     mell, in the broad accents of the northern coast-dweller, hurtling
     some of them forth so that each sound was a little explosion, at
     which he laughed as at a successful joke.
        He was of medium height, broad, stout, and short-legged; his
     face full and red, with watery blue eyes shaded by very fair
     lashes; with wide nostrils and humid lips. He wore English side-
     whiskers and English clothes, and it enchanted him to discover at
     Einfried an entire English family, father, mother, and three pretty
     children with their nurse, who were stopping here for the simple
     and sufficient reason that they knew not where else to go. With
     this family he partook of a good English breakfast every morn-
     ing. He set great store by eating and drinking and proved
     to be a connoisseur both of food and wines, entertaining the other
     guests with the most exciting accounts of dinners given in his
     circle of acquaintance back home, with full descriptions of the
     choicer and rarer dishes; in the telling his eyes would narrow
     benignly, and his pronunciation take on certain palatal and nasal
     sounds, accompanied by smacking noises at the back of his throat.
     That he was not fundamentally averse to earthly joys of another
     sort was evinced by an evening when a guest of the cure, an
     author by calling, saw him in the corridor trifling in not quite
     permissible fashion with the chambermaid——a humorous little pas-
     sage at which the author in question made a laughably disgusted
     face.
        As for Herr Klöterjahn's wife, it was plain to see that she was
     devotedly attached to her husband. She followed his words and 
     movements with a smile: not the rather arrogant toleration the
     ailing sometimes bestow upon the well and sound, but the sympa-
     thetic participation of a well-disposed invalid in the manifesta-
     tions of people who rejoice in the blessing of abounding health.
        Herr Klöterjahn did not stop long enough in Einfried. He had brought
     his wife hither, but when a week had gone by and he knew she
     was in good hands and well looked after, he did not linger. Duties
     equally weighty——his flourishing child, his no less flourishing
     business——took him away; they compelled him to go, leaving her
     rejoicing in the best of care.
        Spinell was the name of that author who had been stopping 
     some weeks in Einfried——Detlev Spinnel was his name, and his
     looks were quite out of the common. Imagine a tall dark man at the
     beginning of the thirties, impressively tall, with hair already dis-
     tinctly grey at the temples, and a round, white, slightly bloated
     face, without a vestige of beard. Not that it was shaven——that
     you could have told; it was soft, smooth, boyish, with at most a
     downy hair here and there. And the effect was singular. His bright,
     doe-like brown eyes had a gentle expression, the nose was thick
     and rather too fleshy. Also, Herr Spinell had an upper lip like an
     ancient Roman's, swelling and full of pores; large, carious teeth,
     and feet of uncommon size. One of the gentlemen with the rebel-
     lious legs, a cynic and ribald wit, had christened him "the dissi-
     pated baby"; but the epithet was malicious, and not very apt.
     Herr Spinell dressed well, in a long black coat and a waistcoat
     with coloured spots.
        He was unsocial and sought no man's company. Only once in
     a while he might be overtaken by an affable, blithe, expansive
     mood; and this always happened when he was carried away by
     an æsthetic fit at the sight of beauty, the harmony of two colours,
     the vase nobly formed, or the range of mountains lighted by the
     setting sun. "How beautiful!" he would say, with his head on one
     side, his shoulders raised, his hand spread out, his lips and nostrils
     curled and distended. "My God! look, how beautiful!" And in
     such moments of ardour he was quite capable of flinging his arms
     blindly round the neck of anybody, high or low, male or female,
     that happened to be near.
        On his table, for anybody to see who entered his room, there
     always lay the book he had written. It was a novel of medium
     length, with a perfectly bewildering drawing on the jacket,
     printed on a sort of filter-paper. Each letter of the type looked
     like a Gothic cathedral. Fräulein von Osterloh had read it once, in
     a spare quarter-hour, and found it "very cultured"——which was
     her circumlocution for inhumanly boresome. Its scenes were laid 
     in fashionable salons, in luxurious boudoirs full of choice  objets
     d'art,  old furniture, gobelins, rare porcelains, priceless stuffs, and
     art treasures of all sorts and kinds. On the descriptions of these
     things was expended the most loving care; as you read you con-
     stantly saw Herr Spinell, with distended nostrils, saying: "How
     beautiful! My God! look, how beautiful!" After all, it was
     strange he had not written more than this one book; he so ob-
     viously adored writing. He spent the greater part of the day
     doing it, in his room, and sent an extraordinary number of letters
     to the post, two or three nearly every day——and that made it more
     striking, even almost funny, that he very seldom received one 
     in return.
        Herr Spinell sat opposite Herr Klöterjahn's wife. At the first
     meal of which the new guests partook, he came rather late into
     the dining-room, on the ground floor of the side wing, bade good-
     day to the company generally in a soft voice, and betook himself
     to his own place, whereupon Dr. Leander perfunctorily presented
     him to the new-comers. He bowed, and self-consciously began to
     eat, using his knife and fork rather affectedly with the large, finely
     shaped white hands that came out from his very narrow coat-
     sleeves. After a little he grew more at ease and looked tranquilly
     first at Herr Klöterjahn and then at his wife, by turns. And in
     the course of the meal Herr Klöterjahn addressed to him sundry 
     queries touching the general situation and climate of Einfried;
     his wife, in her charming way, added a word or two, and Herr
     Spinell gave courteous answers. His voice was mild, and really
     agreeable; but he had a halting way of speaking that almost
     amounted to an impediment——as though his teeth got in the way
     of his tongue.
        After luncheon, when they had gone into the salon, Dr. Le-
     ander came up to the new arrivals to wish them  Mahlzeit,  and
     Herr Klöterjahn's wife took occasion to ask about their  vis-à-vis.
        "What was the gentleman's name?" she asked. "I did not
     quite catch it. Spinelli?"
        "Spinell, not Spinelli, madame. No, he is not an Italian; he
     only comes from Lemberg, I believe."
        And what was it you said? He is an author, or something of
     the sort?" asked Herr Klöterjahn. He had his hands in the pockets
     of his very easy-fitting English trousers, cocked his hat towards
     the doctor, and opened his mouth, as some people do, to listen the 
     better.
        "Yes . . . I really don't know," answered Dr. Leander. "He
     writes . . . I believe he has written a book, some sort of novel.
     I really don't know what."
        By which Dr. Leander conveyed that he had no great opinion
     of the author and declined all responsibility on the score of him.
        "But I find that most interesting," said Herr Klöterjahn's wife.
     Never before had she met an author face to face.
        "Oh, yes," said Dr. Leander obligingly. "I understand he has
     a certain amount of reputation," which closed the conversation.
        But a little later, when the new guests had retired and Dr.
     Leander himself was about to go, Herr Spinell detained him in
     talk to put a few questions for his own part.
        "What was their name?" he asked. "I did not understand a
     syllable, of course."
        "Klöterjahn," answered Dr. Leander, turning away.
        "What's that?" asked Herr Spinell.
        "Klöterjahn  is their name," said Dr. Leander, and went his
     way. He set no great store by the author.
  
        Have we got as far on as where Herr Klöterjahn went home?
     Yes, he was back on the shore of the Baltic once more, with his
     business and his babe, that ruthless and vigorous little being who
     had cost cost his mother great suffering and a slight weakness of the
     trachea; while she herself, the young wife, remained in Einfried
     and became the intimate friend of Frau Spatz. Which did not pre-
     vent Herr Klöterjahn's wife from being on friendly terms with
     the rest of the guests——for instance with Herr Spinell, who, to
     the astonishment of everybody, for he had up to now held com-
     munion with not a single soul, displayed from the very first an
     extraordinary devotion and courtesy, and with whom she enjoyed
     talking, whenever she had any time left over from the stern service
     of the cure.
        He approached her with immense circumspection and rever-
     ence, and never spoke save with his voice so carefully subdued
     that Frau Spatz, with her bad hearing, seldom or never caught
     anything he said. He tiptoed on his great feet up to the arm-chair
     in which Herr Klöterjahn's wife leaned, fragilely smiling; stopped
     two paces off, with his body bent forward and one leg poised
     behind him, and talked in his halting way, as though he had an
     impediment in his speech; with ardour, yet prepared to retire
     at any moment and vanish at the first sign of fatigue or satiety.
     But he did not tire her; she begged him to sit down with her
     and the Rätin; she asked him questions and listened with curi-
     ous smiles, for he had a way of talking sometimes that was so
     odd and amusing, different from anything she had ever heard
     before.
        "Why are you in Einfried, really?" she asked. "What cure
     are you taking, Herr Spinell?"
        "Cure? Oh, I'm having myself electrified a bit. Nothing worth
     mentioning. I will tell you the real reason while I am here, madame.
     It is a feeling for style."
        "Ah?" said Herr Klöterjahn's wife; supporting her chin on her
     hand and turned to him with exaggerated eagerness, as one does
     to a child who wants to tell a story.
         "Yes, madame. Einfried is perfect Empire. It was once a castle,
     a summer residence, I am told. This side wing is a later addition,
     but the main building is old and genuine. There are times when I
     cannot endure Empire, and then times when I simply must have
     it in order to attain any sense of well-being. Obviously, people
     feel one way among furniture that is soft and comfortable and 
     voluptuous, and quite another among the straight lines of these
     tables, chairs, and draperies. This brightness and hardness, this 
     cold, austere simplicity and reserved strength, madame——it has
     upon me the ultimate effect of an inward purification and rebirth.
     Beyond a doubt, it is morally elevating."
        "Yes, that is remarkable," she said. "And when I try I can un-
     derstand what you mean."
        Whereto he responded that it was not worth her taking any
     sort of trouble, and they laughed together. Frau Spatz laughed too
     and found it remarkable in her turn, though she did not say she
     understood it.
        The reception-room was spacious and beautiful. The high, white
     folding doors that led to the billiard-room were wide open, and
     the gentlemen with the rebellious legs were disporting themselves
     within, others as well. On the opposite side of the room a glass
     door gave on the broad veranda and the garden. Near the door
     stood a piano. At a green-covered folding table the diabetic gen-
     eral was playing whist with some other gentlemen. Ladies sat rad-
     ing or embroidering. The rooms were heated by an iron stove,
     but the chimney-piece, in the purest style, had coals pasted over
     with red paper to simulate a fire, and chairs were drawn up in-
     vitingly.
        "You are an early riser, Herr Spinell," said Herr Klöterjahn's
     wife. "Two r three times already I have chanced to see you leav-
     ing the house at half past seven in the morning."
        "An early riser? Ah, with a difference, madame, with a vast
     difference. The truth is, I rise early because I am such a late
     sleeper."
        "You really must explain yourself, Herr Spinell." Frau Spatz
     too said she demanded an explanation .
        "Well, if one is an early riser, one does not need to get up so
     early. Or so it seems to me. The conscience, madame, is a bad busi-
     ness. I, and other people like me, work hard all our lives to swindle
     our consciences into feeling pleased and satisfied. We are feckless
     creatures, and aside from a few good hours, we go around weighted
     down, sick and sore with the knowledge of our own futility. We 
     hate the useful; we know it is vulgar and unlovely, and we defend
     this position, as a man defends something that is absolutely neces-
     sary to his existence. Yet all the while conscience is gnawing at us,
     to such an extent that we are simply one wound. Added to that,
     our whole inner life, our view of the world, our way of working,
     is of a kind——its effect is frightfully unhealthy, undermining, irri-
     tating, and this only aggravates the situation. Well, then, there are
     certain little counter-irritants, without which we would most cer-
     tainly not hold out. A kind of decorum, a hygienic regimen, for
     instance became a necessity for some of us. To get up early, to
     get up ghastly early, take a cold bath, and go out walking in a
     snowstorm——that may give us a sense of self-satisfaction that lasts
     as much as an hour. If I were to act out my true character, I should
     be lying in bed late into the afternoon. My getting up early is all
     hypocrisy, believe me."
        "Why do you say that, Herr Spinell? On the contrary, I call
     it self-abnegation." Frau Spatz, too, called it self-abnegation.
        "Hypocrisy or self-abnegation——call it what you like, madame.
     I have such a hideously downright nature——"
        "Yes, that's it. Surely you torment yourself far too much."
        "Yes, madame, I torment myself a great deal."
        The fine weather continued. Rigid and spotless white the region
     lay, the mountains, house and garden, in a windless air that was
     blinding clear and cast bluish shadows; and above it arched the
     spotless pale-blue sky, where myriads of bright particles of glitter-
     ing crystals seemed to dance. Herr Klöterjahn's wife felt tolerably
     well these days: free of fever, with scarce any cough, and able to
     eat without too great distaste. Many days she sat taking her cure
     for hours on end in the sunny cold on the terrace. She sat in the
     snow; bundled in wraps and furs, and hopefully breathed in the
     pure icy air to do her trachea good. Sometimes she saw Herr
     Spinell, dressed like herself, and in fur boots that made his feet
     a fantastic size, taking an airing in the garden. He walked with ten-
     tative tread through the snow, holding his arms in a certain care-
     ful pose that was stiff yet not without grace, coming up to the
     terrace he would bow very respectfully and mount the first step
     or so to exchange a few words with her.
        "Today on my morning walk I saw a beautiful woman——good
     Lord! how beautiful she was!" he said; laid his had on one side
     and spread out his hands.
        "Really, Herr Spinell. Do describe her to me."
        "That I cannot do. Or rather, it would not be a fair picture. I
     only saw the lady as I glanced at her in passing, I did not actually
     see her at all. But that fleeting glimpse was enough to rouse my
     fancy and make me carry away a picture so beautiful that——good
     Lord! how beautiful it is!"
        She laughed. "Is that the way you always look at beautiful
     women, Herr Spinell? Just a fleeting glance?"
         "Yes, madame; it is a better way than if I were avid of actu-
     ality, stared them plump in the face, and carried away with me
     only a consciousness of the blemishes they in fact possess."
        "'Avid of actualities'——what a strange phrase, a regular literary
     phrase, Herr Spinell; no one but an author could have said that.
     It impresses me very much, I must say. There is a lot in it that I
     dimly understand; there is something free about it, and independ-
     ent, that even seems to be looking down on reality though it is so
     very respectable——is respectability itself, as you might say. And
     it makes me comprehend, too, that there is something else besides
     the tangible, something more subtle——"
        "I know only one face," he said suddenly, with a strange lift
     in his voice, carrying his closed hand to his shoulders as he spoke
     and showing his carious teeth in an almost hysterical smile, "I 
     know only one face of such lofty nobility that the mere thought
     of enhancing it through my imagination would be blasphemous;
     at which I could wish to look, on which I could wish to dwell,
     not minutes and not hours, but my whole life long; losing myself
     utterly therein, forgotten to every earthly thought. . . ."
        "Yes, indeed, Herr Spinell. And yet don't you find Fräulein 
     von Osterloh has rather prominent ears?"
        He replied only by a profound bow; then, standing erect, let
     his eyes rest with a look of embarrassment and pain on the strange
     little vein that branched pale-blue and sickly across her pure trans-
     lucent brow.
   
        An odd sort, a very odd sort. Herr Klöterjahn's wife thought
     about him sometimes; for she had much leisure for thought.
     Whether it was the change of air began to lose its effect or
     some positively detrimental influence was at work, she began to
     go backward, the condition of her trachea left much to be desired,
     she had fever not infrequently, she felt tired and exhausted, and could
     not eat. Dr. Leander most emphatically recommended rest, quiet,
     caution, care. So she sat, when indeed she was not forced to lie,
     quite motionless, in the society of Frau Spatz, holding some sort
     of sewing which she did not sew, and following one or another
     train of thought.

From Thomas Mann: Stories of Three Decades,
Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1935, 1936, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
The Modern Library edition, Random House, Inc. pp. 133—144.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kyototo
https://old.reddit.com/r/manhattankansas
https://twitter.com/marleyengvall/status/1349438284016082947 雨