(from Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann)
". . . the draught from him had got abruptly stronger, so that it went through my overcoat and pierced me to my marrow. Angrily I ask: "Cannot you away with this nuisance, this icy draught?" . . . He: Alas, no, I regret not to be able to gratify you. But the fact is, I am cold. How otherwise could I hold out and find it possible to dwell where I dwell?" . . . I (involuntarily): "You mean in the brining pit of fire?" . . . He (laughs as though tickled): "Capital! Said in the good robust and merry German way. It has indeed many other pretty names, scholarly, pathetical, the Herr Doctor ex-Theolugus knows them all, as Carter, exitium, confutatio, pernicies, condemnatio, and so on. But there is no remedy, the familiar German, the comic ones are still my favorites. . . "
