But this much was true – he had always taken great delight in ships. As a small boy he had filled his notebooks with penciled drawings of fishing cutters, vegetable barges, and five-masters. And when at age fifteen he had the chance to watch from a front-row seat as the Hansa, a new double-screw mail-steamer, was launched from the docks of Blohm and Voss, he painted a strikingly good watercolor of the trim ship, exact down to almost the last detail, which Consul Tienappel had hung in his private office. And he had so lovingly and deftly captured the transparent, glassy-green rolling sea that someone had said to Consul Tienappel that the lad had talent and would make a good painter of seascapes – a pronouncement that the consul had no qualms repeating to his ward, because Hans Castorp simply laughed amiably at the idea and gave not a moment’s thought to a life of eccentricity and starving for art.

“You don’t have much,” his Uncle Tienappel would remind him. “James and Peter will get the lion’s share of my money, that is to say, it stays in the business and Peter will draw an annuity. What belongs to you is invested quite nicely and will yield a secure return. But it’s no fun nowadays trying to live off interest unless one has at least five times as much as you have, and if you fancy living a nice life here in the city, like the one to which you’re accustomed, then you’ll have to earn a tidy sum yourself – take note of that, my boy.”

Hans Castorp took note and looked around for a position in which he could prove himself – both to himself and others. But he thought quite highly of his profession once he had chosen it – at the suggestion of old Wilms, of the firm of Tunder and Wilms, who said to Consul Tienappel over a game of whist one Sunday evening that Hans Castorp should study shipbuilding, that was the ticket, and join his firm, where he would certainly keep his eye on him.