Tous-les-deux is the nickname residents of the Berghof give to a Mexican woman who has come to the sanatorium to be with her eldest son, who is gravely ill and eventually dies. Her other son comes to see visit his brother and falls ill and dies, too. Despondent and grieving, she dresses all in black and spends her days roaming the Berghof’s grounds. Tous-les-deux’s nickname comes from her inability to speak any German and hardly any French—unable to communicate with anyone, she greets every person she encounters with the exclamation “tous les deux!” (“both”), referencing her two dying sons.
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Tous-les-deux Character Timeline in The Magic Mountain
The timeline below shows where the character Tous-les-deux appears in The Magic Mountain. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 3, Chapter 2: Breakfast
...the Russian couple has been making. He asks about an older woman dressed in black (Tous-les-deux) whom he’d seen walking in the garden that morning. Joachim say she’s Mexican and doesn’t...
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Part 4, Chapter 3: He Tries Out His Conversational French
...other person Hans meets is the pale, Mexican lady dressed in black, whom people call Tous-les-deux. Hans and Joachim encounter her on one of their walks one day, and she greets...
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After Tous-les-deux has gone, Hans tells Joachim he does well with people like the woman, getting along...
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Part 5, Chapter 8: Danse Macabre
Hans and Joachim also visit Tous-les-deux’s son, Lauro, having first sent him flowers. But they find the young man’s behavior gaudy,...
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