Of course she did not know whether these memories stemmed from reality or whether they were fictions produced by the fever. “Probably the only remarkable thing about all of it,” she thought with annoyance, “is that these images were able to survive, halfway between truth and fantasy, without my finding them unusual.” —The jolting of the taxi that was driving them across badly paved streets prevented them from talking. Ulrich had suggested taking advantage of the dry winter weather for an outing, and he also had an idea of where they should go—not a destination in the usual sense, but rather an advance into half-imagined landscapes they had known. And now they were in a cab that was to take them to the outskirts of the town.—“I’m sure that’s the only remarkable thing about it!” Agathe repeated to herself what she had thought a moment ago. That was how she had learned her lessons in school, so that she never knew whether she was stupid or clever, willing or unwilling: the answers expected of her imprinted themselves on her mind with ease, but without her ever discovering the purpose of the questions, against which she felt herself to be protected by a deep-seated indifference. After her illness she had liked going to school as much as she had before, and because one of the doctors had hit on the idea that it might be of benefit if she were removed from her father’s house and brought together with children her own age, she had been placed in a convent school. There, too, she was regarded as a cheerful, docile child, and later she attended a secondary school. Whenever she was told that something was necessary or true, she would take her bearings from that and willingly comply with everything that was demanded of her, because that seemed to require the least effort, and it would have seemed pointless to her to undertake anything against institutional arrangements that had nothing to do with her and were clearly part of a world that had been constructed according to the will of fathers and teachers. Nor did she believe a word of anything she had learned, and because, despite her apparent docility, she was far from being a model student, and because wherever her wishes came into conflict with her convictions she casually did what she wished, she enjoyed the respect of her classmates and even that admiring affection that is earned in school by those who know how to get by without undue exertion. It could even be that she had arranged her strange childhood illness for her own comfort, for with this one exception she had always been healthy and not notably nervous. “In short, a dull and useless character,” she concluded uncertainly. She remembered how much more vigorously than herself her friends had often mutinied against the rigid discipline of the boarding school, and with what maxims of revolt they had equipped their assaults against law and order; yet as far as she had come into a position to observe, it was precisely those who had been most passionate in their rebellion against details who later came to be on the best of terms with the whole of life; those girls had developed into well-married women who brought up their children not very differently from the way they themselves had been reared. And so in spite of her dissatisfaction with herself, she was not convinced that it was better to be an active and good character.