Part + 

VI + 

I + 

Thomas Buddenbrook took a solitary early breakfast in his pretty dining-room. His wife usually left her room late, as she was subject to headaches and vapours in the morning. The Consul went at once to Meng Street, where the offices still were, took his second breakfast with his mother, Christian and Ida Jungmann in the entresol, and met Gerda only at dinner, at four in the afternoon. + 

The ground floor of the old house still preserved the life and movement of a great business; but the upper storeys were empty and lonely. Little Erica had been received as a boarder by Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, and poor Clothilde had moved with her few sticks of furniture into a cheap pension with the widow of a high-school teacher, a Frau Dr. Krauseminz. Even Anton had left the house, and gone over to the young pair, where he was more needed. When Christian was at the club, the Frau Consul and Ida Jungmann sat at four o’clock dinner alone at the round table, in which there was now not a single extra leaf. It looked quite lost in the great spaces of the dining-temple with its images of the gods. + 

The social life of Meng Street had been extinguished with the death of Consul Johann Buddenbrook. Except for the visits of this or that man of God, the Frau Consul saw no guests but the members of her family, who still came on Thursday afternoons. But the first great dinner had already been given by the young pair in Broad Street. Tables were laid in both dining- and living-room, and there were a hired cook and waiters and Kistenmaker wines. It began at five o’clock, and its sounds and smells were still in the air at eleven. All the business and professional men were present, married pairs and bachelors as well: all the tribe of Langhals, Hagenströms, Huneus’, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks, and Möllendorpfs. It finished off with whist and music. They talked about it in glowing terms on the Bourse for a whole week. The young Frau Consul certainly knew how to entertain! When she and the Consul were alone, in the room lighted by burned-down candles, with the furniture disarranged and the air thick with heavy odours of rich food, wine, cigars, coffee, perfume, and the scent of the flowers from the ladies’ toilettes and the table decorations, he pressed her hand and said: “Very good, Gerda. We do not need to be ashamed. This sort of thing is necessary. I have no great fondness for balls, and having the young people jumping about here; and, besides, there is not room. But we must entertain the settled people. A dinner like that costs a bit more⁠—but it is well spent.” + 

“You are right,” she had answered, and arranged the laces through which her bosom shimmered like marble. “I much prefer the dinners to the balls myself. A dinner is so soothing. I had been playing this afternoon, and felt a little queer. My brain feels quite dead now. If I were to be struck by lightning I should not change colour.” + 

Next morning at half-past eleven the Consul sat down beside his Mother at the breakfast-table, and she read a letter aloud to him: + 

I must beg your pardon⁠—it is a shame that I have not written before in the eight days I have been here. My time has been so taken up with all the things there are to see⁠—I’ll tell you about them afterwards. Now I must ask if all the dear ones, you and Tom and Gerda and Erica and Christian and Tilda and Ida, are well⁠—that is the most important thing. + 

Ah, what all I have seen in these days!⁠—the Pinakothek and the Glyptothek and the Hofbräuhaus and the Court Theatre and the churches, and quantities of other things! I must tell you of them when I see you; otherwise I should kill myself writing. We have also had a drive in the Isar valley, and for tomorrow an excursion to the Wurmsee is arranged. So it goes on. Eva is very sweet to me, and her husband, Herr Niederpaur, the brewery superintendent, is an agreeable man. We live in a very pretty square in the town, with a fountain in the middle, like ours at home in the market place, and the house is quite near the Town Hall. I have never seen such a house. It is painted from top to bottom, in all colours⁠—St. Georges killing dragons, and old Bavarian princes in full robes and arms. Imagine! + 

Yes, I like Munich extremely. The air is very strengthening to the nerves, and for the moment I am quite in order with my stomach trouble. I enjoy drinking the beer⁠—I drink a good deal, the more so as the water is not very good. But I cannot quite get used to the food. There are too few vegetables and too much flour, for instance in the sauces, which are pathetic. They have no idea of a proper joint of veal, for the butchers cut everything very badly. And I miss the fish. It is quite mad to be eating so much cucumber and potato salad with the beer⁠—my tummy rebels audibly. + 

Yes, one has to get used to a great deal. It is a real foreign country. The strange currency, the difficulty of understanding the common people⁠—I speak too fast to them and they seem to talk gibberish to me⁠—and then the Catholicism. I hate it, as you know; I have no respect for it⁠— + 

Here the Consul began to laugh, leaning back in the sofa with a piece of bread and herb cheese in his hand. + 

“Yes, Tom, you are laughing,” said his Mother, and tapped with her middle finger on the table. “But it pleases me very much that she holds fast to the faith of her fathers and shuns the unevangelical gimcrackery. I know that you felt a certain sympathy for the papal church, while you were in France and Italy: but that is not religion in you, Tom⁠—it is something else, and I understand what. We must be forbearing; yet in these things a frivolous feeling of fascination is very much to be regretted. I pray God that you and your Gerda⁠—for I well know that she does not belong to those firm in the faith⁠—will in the course of time feel the necessary seriousness. You will forgive your mother her words, I know.” + 

On top of the fountain (she continued reading) there is a Madonna, and sometimes she is crowned with a wreath, and the common people come with rose garlands and kneel down and pray⁠—which looks very pretty, but it is written: “Go into your chamber.” You often see monks here in the street; they look very respectable. But⁠—imagine, Mamma!⁠—yesterday in Theatiner Street some high dignitary of the church was driving past me in his coach; perhaps it was an archbishop; anyhow, an elderly man⁠—well, this gentleman throws me an ogling look out of the window, like a lieutenant of the Guard! You know, Mother, I’ve no great opinion of your friends the ministers and missionaries, but Teary Trieschke was certainly nothing compared to this rakish old prince of the Church. + 

“Horrors!” interjected the Frau Consul, shocked. + 

“That’s Tony, to the life,” said the Consul. + 

“How is that, Tom?” + 

“Well, perhaps she just invited him a trifle⁠—to try him, you know. I know Tony. And I am sure the ‘ogling look’ delighted her hugely, which was probably what the old gentleman wanted.” + 

The Frau Consul did not take this up, but continued to read: + 

Day before yesterday the Niederpaurs entertained in the evening. It was lovely, though I could not always follow the conversation, and I found the tone sometimes rather questionable. There was a singer there from the Court opera, who sang songs, and a young artist, who asked me to sit for him, which I refused, as I thought it not suitable. I enjoyed myself most with a Herr Permaneder. Would you ever think there could be such a name? He is a hop dealer, a nice, jolly man, in middle life and a bachelor. I had him at table, and stuck to him, for he was the only Protestant in the party. He is a citizen of Munich, but his family comes from Nuremberg. He assured me that he knew our firm very well by name, and you can imagine how it pleased me, Tom, to hear the respectful tone in which he said that. He asked how many there are of us, and things like that. He asked about Erica and Grünlich too. He comes sometimes to the Niederpaurs’, and is probably going tomorrow to Wurmsee with us. + 

Well, adieu, dear Mamma; I can write no more. If I live and prosper, as you always say, I shall stop here three or four weeks more, and when I come back I will tell you more of Munich, for in a letter it is hard to know where to begin. I like it very much; that I must say⁠—though one would have to train a cook to make decent sauces. You see, I am an old woman, with my life behind me, and I have nothing more to look forward to on earth. But if, for example, Erica should⁠—if she lives and prospers⁠—marry here, I should have nothing against it; that I must say. + 

Again the Consul was obliged to stop eating and lean back in his chair to laugh. + 

“She is simply priceless, Mother. And when she tries to dissimulate, she is incomparable. She is a thousand miles away from being able to carry it off.” + 

“Yes, Tom,” said the Frau Consul, “she is a good child, and deserves good fortune.” And she finished the letter. + 

II + 

At the end of April Frau Grünlich returned home. Another epoch was behind her, and the old existence began again⁠—attending the daily devotions and the Jerusalem evenings and hearing Lea Gerhardt read aloud. Yet she was obviously in a gay and hopeful mood. + 

Her brother, the Consul, fetched her from the station⁠—she had come from Buchen⁠—and drove her through the Holsten Gate into the town. He could not resist paying her the old compliment⁠—how, next to Clothilde, she was the prettiest one in the family; and she answered: “Oh, Tom, I hate you! To make fun of an old lady like that⁠—” + 

But he was right, nevertheless: Madame Grünlich kept her good looks remarkably. You looked at the thick ash-blonde hair, rolled at the sides, drawn back above the little ears, and fastened on the top of the head with a broad tortoiseshell comb; at the soft expression of her grey-blue eyes, her pretty upper lip, the fine oval and delicate colour of her face⁠—and you thought of three-and-twenty, perhaps; never of thirty. She wore elegant hanging gold earrings, which, in a somewhat different form, her grandmother had worn before her. A loose bodice of soft dark silk, with satin revers and flat lace epaulettes, gave her pretty bosom an enchanting look of softness and fullness. + 

She was in the best of tempers. On Thursday, when Consul Buddenbrook and the ladies from Broad Street, Consul Kröger, Clothilde, Sesemi Wiechbrodt and Erica came to tea, she talked vividly about Munich. The beer, the noodles, the artist who wanted to paint her, and the court coaches had made the greatest impressions. She mentioned Herr Permaneder in passing; and Pfiffi Buddenbrook let fall a word or two to the effect that such a journey might be very agreeable, but did not seem to have any practical results. Frau Grünlich passed this by with dignity, though she put back her head and tucked in her chin. She fell into the habit now, whenever the vestibule bell rang through the entry, of hurrying to the landing to see who had come. What might that mean? Probably only Ida Jungmann, Tony’s governess and yearlong confidante, knew that. Ida would say, “Tony, my child, you will see: he’ll come.” + 

The family was grateful to the returned traveller for her cheering presence; for the atmosphere of the house sadly needed brightening. The relations between the head of the firm and his younger brother had not improved. Indeed, they had grown sadly worse. Their Mother, the Frau Consul, followed with anxious misgivings the course of events and had enough to do to mediate between the two. Her hints to visit the office more regularly were received in absent silence by Christian. He met his brother’s remonstrances with a mortified air, making no defence, and for a few days would apply himself with somewhat more zeal to the English correspondence. But there developed more and more in the elder an irritated contempt for the younger brother, not decreased by the fact that Christian received his occasional rebukes without seeming offence, only looking at him with the usual absent disquiet in his eyes. + 

Tom’s irritable activity and the condition of his nerves would not let him listen sympathetically or even patiently to Christian’s detailed accounts of his increasing symptoms. To his mother or sister, he referred to them with disgust as “the silly phenomena of an obstinate introspection.” + 

The ache, the indefinite ache in Christian’s left leg, had yielded by now to treatment; but the trouble in swallowing came on often at table, and there was lately a difficulty in breathing, an asthmatic trouble, which Christian thought for several weeks was consumption. He explained its nature and activity at length to his family, his nose wrinkled up the while. Dr. Grabow was called in. He said the heart and lungs were operating soundly, but the occasional difficulty in breathing was due to muscular sluggishness, and ordered first the use of a fan and secondly that of a green powder which one burned, inhaling the smoke. Christian used the fan in the office, and to a remonstrance on the part of the chief answered that in Valparaiso every man in the office was provided with a fan on account of the heat: “Johnny Thunderstorm⁠—good God!” But one day, after he had been wriggling about on his chair for some time, nervous and restless, he took his powder out of his pocket and made such a strong and violent-smelling reek in the room that some of the men began to cough violently, and Herr Marcus grew quite pale. There was an open explosion, a scandal, a dreadful talking-to which would have led to a break at once, but that the Frau Consul once more covered everything all up, reasoned them out of it, and set things going again. + 

But this was not all. The life Christian led outside the house, mainly with his old schoolmate Lawyer Gieseke, was observed by the Consul with disgust. He was no prig, no spoilsport. He knew very well that his native town, this port and trading city, where men walked the streets proud of their irreproachable reputation as business men, was by no means of spotless morality. They made up to themselves for the tedious hours spent in their offices, by dinners with heavy wines and heavy dishes⁠—and by other things. But the broad mantle of civic respectability concealed this side of their life. Thomas Buddenbrook’s first law was to preserve “the dehors”; wherein he showed himself not so different from his fellow burghers. Lawyer Gieseke was a member of the professional class, whose habits of life were much like those of the merchants. That he was also a “good fellow,” anybody could see who looked at him. But, like the other easy men of pleasure in the community, he knew how to avoid trouble by wearing the proper expression and saying the proper thing. And in political and professional matters, he had a reputation of irreproachable respectability. His betrothal to Fräulein Huneus had just been announced; whereby he married a considerable dowry and a place in the best society. He was active in civic affairs, and he had his eye on a seat in the Council⁠—even, ultimately, on the seat of old Burgomaster Överdieck. + 

But his friend Christian Buddenbrook⁠—the same who could go calmly up to Mlle. Meyer-de-la-Grange, present her his bouquet, and say, “Oh, Fräulein, how beautifully you act!”⁠—Christian had been developed by character and circumstances into a free-liver of the naive and untrammeled type. In affairs of the heart, as in all others, he was disinclined to govern his feelings or to practise discretion for the sake of preserving his dignity. The whole town had laughed over his affair with an obscure actress at the summer theatre. Frau Stuht in Bell Founders’ Street⁠—the same who moved in the best society⁠—told everybody who would listen how Chris had been seen again walking by daylight in the open street with the person from the Tivoli. + 

Even that did not actually offend people. There was too much candid cynicism in the community to permit a display of serious moral disapproval. Christian Buddenbrook, like Consul Peter Döhlmann⁠—whose declining business put him into somewhat the same artless class⁠—was a popular entertainer and indispensable to gentlemen’s companions. But neither was taken seriously. In important matters they simply did not count. It was a significant fact that the whole town, the Bourse, the docks, the club, and the street called them by their first names⁠—Peter and Chris. And enemies, like the Hagenströms, laughed not only at Chris’s stories and jokes; but at Chris himself, too. + 

He thought little or nothing of this. If he noticed it, it passed out of his mind again after a momentary disquiet. But his brother the Consul knew it. Thomas knew that Christian afforded a point of attack to the enemies of the family⁠—and there were already too many such points. The connection with the Överdiecks was distant and would be quite worthless after the Burgomaster’s death. The Krögers played no role now; they lived retired, after the misfortunes with their son. The marriage of the deceased uncle Gotthold was always unpleasant. The Consul’s sister was a divorced wife, even if one did not quite give up hope of her remarrying. And his brother was a laughingstock in the town, a man with whose clownishness industrious men amused their leisure and then laughed good-naturedly or maliciously. He contracted debts, too, and at the end of the quarter, when he had no more money, would quite openly let Dr. Gieseke pay for him⁠—which was a direct reflection on the firm. Thomas’s contemptuous ill will, which Christian bore with quiet indifference, expressed itself in all the trifling situations that come up between members of a family. If the conversation turned upon the Buddenbrook family history, Christian might be in the mood to speak with serious love and admiration of his native town and of his ancestors. It sat rather oddly on him, to be sure, and the Consul could not stand it: he would cut short the conversation with some cold remark. He despised his brother so much that he could not even permit him to love where he did. If Christian had uttered the same sentiments in the dialect of Marcellus Stengel, Tom could have borne it better. He had read a book, a historical work, which had made such a strong impression on him that he spoke about it and praised it in the family. Christian would by himself never have found out the book; but he was impressionable and accessible to every influence; so he also read it, found it wonderful, and described his reactions with all possible detail. That book was spoiled for Thomas forever. He spoke of it with cold and critical detachment. He pretended hardly to have read it. He completely gave it over to his brother, to admire all by himself. + 

III + 

Consul Buddenbrook came from the “Harmony”⁠—a reading-club for men, where he had spent the hour after second breakfast⁠—back into Meng Street. He crossed the yard from behind, entered the side of the garden by the passage which ran between vine-covered walls and connected the back and front courtyards, and called into the kitchen to ask if his brother were at home. They should let him know when he came in. Then he passed through the office (where the men at the desks bent more closely over their work) into the private room; he laid aside his hat and stick, put on his working coat, and sat down in his place by the window, opposite Herr Marcus. Between his pale eyebrows were two deep wrinkles. The yellow end of a Russian cigarette roamed from one corner of his mouth to the other. The movements with which he took up paper and writing materials were so short and jerky that Herr Marcus ran his two fingers up and down his beard and gave his colleague a long, scrutinizing look. The younger men glanced at him with raised eyebrows. The Head was angry. + 

After half an hour, during which nothing was heard but the scratching of pens and the sound of Herr Marcus discreetly clearing his throat, the Consul looked over the green half-blind and saw Christian coming down the street. He was smoking. He came from the club, where he had eaten and also played a bit. He wore his hat a little awry on his head, and swung his yellow stick, which had come from “over there” and had the bust of a nun for a handle. He was obviously in good health and the best of tempers. He came humming into the office, said “Good morning, gentlemen,” although it was a bright spring afternoon, and took his place to “do a bit of work.” But the Consul got up and, passing him, said without looking at him, “Oh, may I have a few words with you?” Christian followed him. They walked rather rapidly through the entry. Thomas held his hands behind his back, and Christian involuntarily did the same, turning his big bony hooked nose toward his brother. The red-blond moustache drooped, English fashion, over his mouth. While they went across the court, Thomas said: “We will walk a few steps up and down the garden, my friend.” + 

“Good,” answered Christian. Then there was a long silence again, while they turned to the left and walked, by the outside way, past the rococo “portal” right round the garden, where the buds were beginning to swell. Finally the Consul said in a loud voice, with a long breath, “I have just been very angry, on account of your behaviour.” + 

“My⁠—?” + 

“Yes. I heard in the ‘Harmony’ about a remark of yours that you dropped in the club last evening. It was so obnoxious, so incredibly tactless, that I can find no words⁠—the stupidity called down a sharp snub on you at once. Do you care to recall what it was?” + 

“I know now what you mean. Who told you that?” + 

“What has that to do with it? Döhlmann.⁠—In a voice loud enough so that all the people who did not already know the story could laugh at the joke.” + 

“Well, Tom, I must say I was ashamed of Hagenström.” + 

“You were ashamed⁠—you were⁠—! Listen to me,” shouted the Consul, stretching out both hands in front of him and shaking them in excitement. “In a company consisting of business as well as professional men, you make the remark, for everybody to hear, that, when one really considers it, every business man is a swindler⁠—you, a business man yourself, belonging to a firm that strains every nerve and muscle to preserve its perfect integrity and spotless reputation!” + 

“Good heavens, Thomas, it was a joke!⁠—although, really⁠—” Christian hesitated, wrinkling his nose and stooping a little. In this position he took a few steps. + 

“A joke!” shouted the Consul. “I think I can understand a joke, but you see how your joke was understood. ‘For my part, I have the greatest respect for my calling.’ That was what Hermann Hagenström answered you. And there you sat, a good-for-nothing, with no respect for yours⁠—” + 

“Tom, you don’t know what you are talking about. I assure you he spoiled the whole joke. After everybody laughed, as if they agreed with me, there sat this Hagenström and brought out with ridiculous solemnity, ‘For my part⁠—’ Stupid fool! I was really ashamed for him. I thought about it a long time in bed last night, and I had a quite remarkable feeling⁠—you know how it feels⁠—” + 

“Stop chattering, stop chattering, I beg you,” interrupted the Consul. He trembled with disgust in his whole body. “I agree⁠—I agree with you that his answer was not in the right key, and that it was tasteless. But that is just the kind of people you pick out to say such things to!⁠—if it is necessary to say them at all⁠—and so you lay yourself open to an insolent snub like that. Hagenström took the opening to⁠—give not only you but us a slap. Do you understand what ‘for my part’ meant? It meant: ‘You may have such ideas going about in your brother’s office, Herr Buddenbrook.’ That’s what it meant, you idiot.” + 

“Idiot⁠—?” said Christian. He looked disturbed and embarrassed. + 

“And finally, you belong not to yourself alone; I’m supposed to be indifferent when you make yourself personally ridiculous⁠—and when don’t you make yourself personally ridiculous?” Thomas cried. He was pale, and the blue veins stood out on his narrow temples, from which the hair went back in two bays. One of his light eyebrows was raised; even the long, stiff pointed ends of his moustache looked angry as he threw his words down at Christian’s feet on the gravel with quick sidewise gestures. “You make yourself a laughingstock with your love affairs, your harlequinades, your diseases and your remedies.” + 

Christian shook his head vehemently and put up a warning finger. “As far as that goes, Tom, you don’t understand very well, you know. The thing is⁠—everyone must attend to his own conscience, so to speak. I don’t know if you understand that.⁠—Grabow has ordered me a salve for the throat muscles. Well⁠—if I don’t use it, if I neglect it, I am quite lost and helpless, I am restless and uncertain and worried and upset, and I can’t swallow. But if I have been using it, I feel that I have done my duty, I have a good conscience, I am quiet and calm and can swallow famously. The salve does not do it, you know, but the thing is that an idea like that, you understand, can only be destroyed by another idea, an opposite one. I don’t know whether you understand me⁠—” + 

“Oh, yes⁠—oh, yes!” cried the Consul, holding his head for a moment with both hands. “Do it, do it, but don’t talk about it⁠—don’t gabble about it. Leave other people alone with your horrible nuances. You make yourself ridiculous with your absurd chatter from morning to night. I must tell you, and I repeat it, I am not interested in how much you make a fool of yourself personally. But I forbid your compromising the firm in the way you did yesterday evening.” + 

Christian did not answer, except to run his hand slowly over his sparse red-brown locks, while his eyes roamed unsteadily and absently, and unrest sat upon his face. Undoubtedly he was still busy with the idea which he had just been expressing. + 

There was a pause. Thomas stalked along with the calmness of despair. “All business men are swindlers, you say,” he began afresh. “Good. Are you tired of it? Are you sorry you are a business man? You once got permission from Father⁠—” + 

“Why, Tom,” said Christian reflectively, “I would really rather study. It must be nice to be in the university. One attends when one likes, at one’s own free will, sits down and listens, as in the theatre⁠—” + 

“As in the theatre! Yes, I think your right place is that of a comedian in a café chantant. I am not joking. I am perfectly convinced that is your secret ideal.” Christian did not deny it; he merely gazed aimlessly about. “And you have the cheek to make such a remark⁠—when you haven’t the slightest notion of work, and spend your days storing up a lot of feelings and sensations and episodes you hear in the theatre and when you are loafing about, God knows where; you take these and pet them and study them and chatter about them shamelessly!” + 

“Yes, Tom,” said Christian. He was a little depressed, and rubbed his hand again over his head. “That is true: you have expressed it quite correctly. That is the difference between us. You enjoy the theatre yourself; and you had your little affairs too, once on a time, between ourselves! And there was a time when you preferred novels and poetry and all that. But you have always known how to reconcile it with regular work and a serious life. I haven’t that. I am quite used up with the other; I have nothing left over for the regular life⁠—I don’t know whether you understand⁠—” + 

“Oh, so you see that?” cried Thomas, standing still and folding his arms on his breast. “You humbly admit that, and still you go on the same old way? Are you a dog, Christian? A man has some pride, by God! One doesn’t live a life that one may not know how to defend oneself. But so you are. That is your character. If you can only see a thing and understand and describe it⁠—. No, my patience is at an end, Christian.” And the Consul took a quick backward step and made a gesture with his arms straight out. “It is at an end, I tell you.⁠—You draw your pay, and stay away from the office. That isn’t what irritates me. Go and trifle your life away, as you have been doing, if you choose. But you compromise us, all of us, wherever you are. You are a growth, a fester, on the body of our family. You are a disgrace to us here in this town, and if this house were mine, I’d show you the door!” he screamed, making a wild sweeping gesture over the garden, the court, and the whole property. He had no more control of himself. A long-stored-up well of hatred poured itself out. + 

“What is the matter with you, Thomas?” said Christian. He was seized with unaccustomed anger, standing there in a position common to bowlegged people, like a questionmark, with head, stomach, and knees all prominent. His little deep eyes were wide open and surrounded by red rims down to the cheekbones, as his Father’s used to be in anger. “How are you speaking to me? What have I done to you? I’ll go, without being thrown out. Shame on you!” he added with downright reproach, accompanying the word with a short, snapping motion in front of him, as if he were catching a fly. + 

Strange to say, Thomas did not meet this outburst by more anger. He bent his head and slowly took his way around the garden. It seemed to quiet him, actually to do him good to have made his brother angry at last⁠—to have pushed him finally to the energy of a protest. + 

“Believe me,” he said quietly, putting his hands behind his back again, “this conversation is truly painful to me. But it had to take place. Such scenes in the family are frightful, but we must speak out once for all. Let us talk the thing over quietly, young one. You do not like your present position, it seems?” + 

“No, Tom; you are right about that. You see, at first I was very well satisfied. I know I’m better off here than in a stranger’s business. But what I want is the independence, I think. I have always envied you when I saw you sit there and work, for it is really no work at all for you. You work not because you must, but as master and head, and let others work for you, and you have the control, make your calculations, and are free. It is quite different.” + 

“Good, Christian. Why couldn’t you have said that before? You can make yourself free, or freer, if you like. You know Father left you as well as me an immediate inheritance of fifty thousand marks current; and I am ready at any moment to pay out this sum for a reasonable and sound purpose. In Hamburg, or anywhere else you like, there are plenty of safe but limited firms where they could use an increase of capital, and where you could enter as a partner. Let us think the matter over quietly, each by himself, and also speak to Mother at a good opportunity. I must get to work, and you could for the present go on with the English correspondence.” As they crossed the entry, he added, “What do you say, for instance, to H. C. F. Burmeester and Company in Hamburg? Import and export. I know the man. I am certain he would snap at it.” + 

That was in the end of May of the year 1857. At the beginning of June Christian travelled via Buchen to Hamburg⁠—a heavy loss to the club, the theatre, the Tivoli, and the liberal livers of the town. All the “good fellows,” among them Dr. Gieseke and Peter Döhlmann, took leave of him at the station, and brought him flowers and cigars, and laughed to split their sides⁠—recalling, no doubt, all the stories Christian had told them. And Lawyer Gieseke, amidst general applause, fastened to Christian’s overcoat a great favour made out of gold paper. This favour came from a sort of inn in the neighbourhood of the port, a place of free and easy resort where a red lantern burned above the door at night, and it was always very lively. The favour was awarded to the departing Chris Buddenbrook for his distinguished services. + 

IV + 

The outer bell rang, and Frau Grünlich appeared on the landing to look down into the court⁠—a habit she had lately formed. The door was hardly opened below when she started, leaned over still more, and then sprang back with one hand pressing her handkerchief to her mouth and the other holding up her gown. She hurried upstairs. + 

On the steps to the second storey she met Ida Jungmann, to whom she whispered in a suffocated voice. Ida gave a joyous shriek and answered with some Polish gibberish. + 

The Frau Consul was sitting in the landscape-room, crocheting a shawl or some such article with two large wooden needles. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. + 

The servant came through the hall, knocked on the glass door, and waddled in to bring the Frau Consul a visiting-card. She took the card, got out her sewing-glasses, and read it. Then she looked again at the girl’s red face; then read again; then looked up again at the girl. Finally she said calmly but firmly: + 

“What is this, my dear? What does it mean?” + 

On the card was printed: “X. Noppe and Company.” The “X. Noppe” and the “and” were crossed out with a lead-pencil, so that only the “Company” was left. “Oh, Frau Consul,” said the maid, “there’s a gentleman, but he doesn’t speak German, and he do go on so⁠—” + 

“Ask the gentleman in,” said the Frau Consul; for she understood now that it was the “Company” who desired admittance. The maid went. Then the glass door was opened again to let in a stocky figure, who remained in the shadowy background of the room for a moment and said with a drawling pronunciation something that seemed as if it might have been: “I have the honour⁠—” + 

“Good morning,” said the Frau Consul. “Will you not come in?” And she supported herself on the sofa-cushion and rose a little; for she did not know yet whether she ought to rise all the way or not. + 

“I take the liberty,” replied the gentleman in a pleasant singsong; while he bowed in the politest manner, and took two steps forward. Then he stood still again and looked around as if searching for something⁠—perhaps for a place to put his hat and stick, for he had brought both⁠—the stick being a horn crutch with the top shaped like a claw and a good foot and a half long⁠—into the room with him. + 

He was a man of forty years. Short-legged and chubby, he wore a wide-open coat of brown frieze and a light flowered waistcoat which covered the gentle protuberant curve of his stomach and supported a gold watch-chain with a whole bouquet of charms made of horn, bone, silver, and coral. His trousers were of an indefinite grey-green colour and too short. The material must have been extraordinarily stiff, for the edges stood out in a circle around the legs of his short, broad boots. He had a bullet head, untidy hair, and a stubby nose, and the light-blond curly moustache drooping over his mouth made him look like a walrus. By way of contrast, the imperial between his chin and his underlip stood out rather bristly. His cheeks were extremely fat and puffy, crowding his eyes into two narrow light-blue cracks with wrinkles at the corners. The whole face looked swollen and had a funny expression of fierceness, mingled with an almost touching good nature. Directly below his tiny chin a steep line ran into the white neckcloth: his goiterous neck could not have endured a choker. In fact, the whole lower part of his face and his neck, the back of his head, his cheeks and nose, all ran rather formlessly in together. The whole skin of the face was stretched to an immoderate tightness and showed a roughness at the ear-joinings and the sides of the nose. In one of his short fat white hands the visitor held his stick; in the other his green Tyrolese hat, decorated with a chamois beard. + 

The Frau Consul had taken off her glasses and was still rising from her sofa-pillow. + 

“What can I do for you?” she asked politely but pointedly. + 

The gentleman, with a movement of decision, laid his hat and stick on the lid of the harmonium. He rubbed his free hands with satisfaction and looked at the Frau Consul out of his kindly, light-blue eyes. “I beg the gracious lady’s pardon for the card,” he said. “I had no other by me. My name is Permaneder⁠—Alois Permaneder, from Munich. Perhaps you might have heard my name from your daughter.” He said all this in a puzzling dialect with a rather loud, coarse voice; but there was a confidential gleam from the cracks of his eyes, which seemed to say: “I’m sure we understand each other already.” + 

The Frau Consul had now risen entirely and went forward with her hand outstretched and her head inclined in greeting. + 

“Herr Permaneder! Is it you? Certainly my daughter has spoken of you. I know how much you contributed to make her visit in Munich pleasant and entertaining. And so some wind has blown you all the way up here?” + 

“That’s it; you’re just right there,” said Herr Permaneder. He sat down by the Frau Consul in the armchair which she gracefully indicated to him, and began to rub his short round thighs comfortably with both hands. + 

“I beg your pardon?” asked the Frau Consul. She had not understood a single word of his remark. + 

“You’ve guessed it, that’s the point,” answered Herr Permaneder, as he stopped rubbing his knees. + 

“How nice!” said the Frau Consul blankly. She leaned back in her chair with feigned satisfaction and folded her hands. Actually, she was quite as much at sea as before, and inly wondering if Antonie were really able to follow the windings of the Bavarian tongue. But Herr Permaneder⁠—though his appearance hardly led one to expect that he possessed acute sensibilities⁠—saw through her at once. He bent forward, making⁠—God knows why⁠—circles in the air with his hand, and, struggling after clarity, enunciated the words: “The gracious lady is surprised?” + 

“Yes, Herr Permaneder, yes!” she cried, with disproportionate joy, for she had really understood him. Perhaps they could manage after all! But now there came a pause. To fill it out, Herr Permaneder gave a sort of groan, and followed it up by an exclamation in the broadest of dialect: something that shocked the Frau Consul because it sounded so like swearing, though it probably wasn’t⁠—at least, she hoped not! Should she ask him to repeat it? + 

“Ah⁠—what did you say?” she ventured, turning her light eyes a little away, that he might not see the bewilderment they expressed. + 

Herr Permaneder obliged by repeating, with extraordinary loudness and coarseness. Surely it was something about a crucifix! Horrors! + 

“How nice!” she stammered again, with desperate finality; and thus this subject also was disposed of. It might be better to talk a little oneself. “May one ask,” she went on, “what brings you so far, Herr Permaneder? It is a good long journey from Munich!” + 

“A little business,” said Herr Permaneder, as before, and waved his broad hand in the air. It was really touching, the efforts he made. “A little business, my dear lady, with the brewery at Walkmill.” + 

“Oh, yes⁠—you are hop merchants, of course, my dear Herr Permaneder: Noppe and Company, isn’t it? I am sure I have heard good things of your firm from my son,” said the Frau Consul cordially. Again she felt as if she were almost upon firm ground. Herr Permaneder waved away the compliment. That was nothing to mention. No, the main thing was, he wanted to pay his respects to the Frau Consul and⁠—see Frau Grünlich again. That was enough to make the journey repay the trouble it cost. + 

The Frau Consul did not understand it all, but she got the general drift, and was glad. “Oh, thank you,” she said, with the utmost heartiness, and again offered him her hand, with the palm outstretched. + 

“But we must call my daughter,” she added, and stood up and went toward the embroidered bellpull near the glass door. + 

“Oh, Lord, yes, I’ll be glad to see her!” cried the hop merchant, and turned his chair and himself toward the door at one and the same time. + 

The Frau Consul said to the servant: “Ask Madame Grünlich to come down, my dear.” + 

Then she went back to her sofa, and Herr Permaneder turned himself and his chair around again. + 

“Lord, yes, I’ll be glad!” he repeated, while he stared at the hangings and the furniture and the great Sèvres inkstand on the secretary. But then he sighed heavily, several times over, rubbed his knees, and gave vent to his favourite outlandish phrase. The Frau Consul thought it more discreet not to inquire again into his meaning; besides, he muttered it under his breath, with a sort of groan, though his mood, otherwise, appeared to be anything but despondent. + 

And now Frau Grünlich appeared. She had made a little toilette, put on a light blouse, and dressed her hair. Her face looked fresher and prettier than ever, and the tip of her tongue played in the corner of her mouth. + 

Scarcely had she entered when Herr Permaneder sprang up and went to meet her with tremendous enthusiasm. He vibrated all over. He seized both her hands, shook them and cried: “Well, Frau Grünlich! Well, well, grüss Gott! Well, and how’s it been going with you? What you been doing up here? Yes, yes! Grüss Gott! Lord, I’m just silly glad to see you. Do you think sometimes of little old Munich and what a gay time we had? Oh, my, oh my! And here we are again. Who would ’a’ thought it?” + 

Tony, on her side, greeted him with great vivacity, drew up a chair, and began to chat with him about her weeks in Munich. Now the conversation went on without hitches, and the Frau Consul followed it, smiling and nodding encouragingly at Herr Permaneder. She would translate this or that expression into her own tongue, and then lean back into the sofa again, well pleased with her own intelligence. + 

Herr Permaneder had to explain to Frau Antonie in her turn the reason of his appearance. But he laid small stress on the “little business” with the brewery, and it was obviously not the occasion of his visit at all. He asked with interest after the second daughter and the sons of the Frau Consul, and regretted loudly the absence of Clara and Christian, as he had always wanted to get acquainted with the whole family. + 

He said his stay in the town was of indefinite length, but when the Frau Consul said: “I am expecting my son for second breakfast at any moment, Herr Permaneder. Will you give us the pleasure of your company?” he accepted the invitation almost before she gave it, with such alacrity that it was plain he had expected it. + 

The Consul came. He had found the breakfast-room empty, and appeared in his office coat, tired and preoccupied, to take a hasty bite. But when he saw the strange guest with the frieze jacket and the fantastic watch-chain, he became all charm. He had heard his name often enough from Frau Antonie, and he threw a quick glance at his sister as he greeted Herr Permaneder in his most fascinating manner. He did not sit down. They went directly down to the entresol, where Mamsell Jungmann had laid the table and set the samovar⁠—a real samovar, a present from Pastor Tiburtius and Clara. + 

“You’ve got it good here,” said Herr Permaneder, as he let himself down in his chair and looked at the variety of cold meats on the table. His grammar, now and then, was of the most artless and disarming quality. + 

“It isn’t Munich beer, of course, Herr Permaneder, but still it is better than our domestic brew.” And the Consul poured him a glass of the brown foaming porter, which he was accustomed to drink himself at midday. + 

“Thank you kindly, neighbour,” said Herr Permaneder, quite unaware of the outraged look Mamsell Jungmann cast at him. But he drank so moderately of the porter that the Frau Consul had a bottle of red wine brought up; whereat he grew visibly gayer and began to talk with Frau Grünlich again. He sat, on account of his prominent stomach, well away from the table, with his legs far apart, and one of his arms, with the plump white hand, hanging down over the chair-back. He put his round head with its walrus moustache on one side and blinked out of the cracks of his eyes naively as he listened to Tony’s conversation. He looked offensively comfortable. As he had had no experience with sprats, she daintily dismembered them for him, commenting the while on life in general. + 

“Oh Heavens, how sad it is, Herr Permaneder, that everything good and lovely in this world is so fleeting,” she said, referring to her Munich visit. She laid down her knife and fork a moment and looked earnestly up at the ceiling. She made charming if unsuccessful efforts to speak Bavarian. + 

During the meal there was a knock at the door, and the office boy brought in a telegram. The Consul read it, letting the long ends of his moustache run through his fingers. He was plainly preoccupied with the contents of the message; but, even as he read it, he asked in the easiest tone: “Well, how is business, Herr Permaneder?⁠—That will do,” he said immediately to the apprentice, who disappeared. + 

“Oh, well, neighbour,” answered Herr Permaneder, turning himself about toward the Consul’s side with the awkwardness of a man who has a thick, stiff neck, and letting his other arm hang over the chair-back. “There’s naught to speak of⁠—it’s a fair plague. You see, Munich”⁠—he pronounced the name of his native city in such a way that one could only guess what he meant⁠—“Munich is no commercial town. Everybody wants his peace and quiet and his beer⁠—nobody gets despatches while he’s eating; not there. You’re a different cut up here⁠—Holy Sacrament! Yes, thank you kindly, I’ll take another glass. Tough luck, that’s what it is; tough luck. My partner, Noppe, wanted to go to Nuremberg, because they have a Bourse there and are keen on business, but I won’t forsake my Munich. Not me! That would be a fine thing to do! You see, there’s no competition, and the export trade is just silly. Even in Russia they’ll be beginning soon to plant and build for themselves.” + 

Then he suddenly threw the Consul a quick, shrewd look and said: “Oh, well, neighbour, ’tain’t so bad as it sounds. Yon’s a fair little business. We make money with the joint-stock brewery, that Niederpaur is director of. That was just a small affair, but we’ve put it on its legs and lent it credit⁠—cash too, four percent on security⁠—and now we can do business at a profit, and we’ve collared a blame good trade already.” Herr Permaneder declined cigars and cigarettes and asked leave to smoke his pipe. He drew the long horn bowl out of his pocket, enveloped himself in a reek of smoke, and entered upon a business conversation with the Consul, which glided into politics, and Bavaria’s relations with Prussia, and King Max, and the Emperor Napoleon. He garnished his views with disjointed sighs and some perfectly unintelligible Munich phrases. + 

Mamsell Jungmann, out of sheer astonishment, continually forgot to chew, even when she had food in her mouth. She blinked speechlessly at the guest out of her bright brown eyes, standing her knife and fork perpendicularly on the table and swaying them back and forth. This room had never before beheld Herr Permaneder’s like. Never had it been filled by such reeking pipe-smoke; such unpleasantly easy manners were foreign to it. The Frau Consul abode in cordial miscomprehension, after she had made inquiries and received information as to the sufferings of the little protestant oasis among the Munich papists. Tony seemed to grow somewhat absent and restive in the course of the meal. But the Consul was highly entertained, asked his mother to order up another bottle of wine, and cordially invited Herr Permaneder to a visit in Broad Street⁠—his wife would be charmed. A good three hours after his arrival the hop dealer began to show signs of leaving⁠—emptied his glass, knocked out his pipe, called something or other “bad luck,” and got up. + 

“I have the honour, madame. Good day, Frau Grünli’ and Herr Consul⁠—servant, servant.” At this Ida Jungmann actually shivered and changed colour. “Good day, Freilein,” he said to her, and he repeated “Good day” at the door. + 

The Frau Consul and her son exchanged a glance. Herr Permaneder had announced his intention of stopping at the modest inn on the Trave whither he had gone on arrival. The Frau Consul went toward him again. “My daughter’s Munich friend,” she began, “lives so far away that we shall have no opportunity to repay her hospitality. But if you, my dear sir, would give us the pleasure of your company while you are in town⁠—you would be very welcome.” She held her hand out to him; and lo! Herr Permaneder accepted this invitation as blithely as he had the one to dinner. He kissed the hands of both ladies⁠—and a funny sight he was as he did so⁠—fetched his hat and stick from the landscape-room, and promised to have his trunk brought at once and to be on the spot at four o’clock, after transacting his business. Then he allowed the Consul to convoy him down the stairs. But even at the vestibule door he turned again and shook hands violently. “No offence, neighbour,” he said⁠—“your sister is certainly a great girl⁠—no doubt about it. Good day,” and he disappeared, still wagging his head. + 

The Consul felt an irresistible drawing to go up again and see the ladies. Ida Jungmann had gone to look after the linen for the guestroom. The Frau Consul still sat at the breakfast-table, her light eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling. She was lightly drumming with her white fingers on the cloth. Tony sat at the window, her arms folded, gazing straight ahead of her with a severe air. Silence reigned. + 

“Well?” said Thomas, standing in the door and taking a cigarette out of the box ornamented with the troika. His shoulders shook with laughter. + 

“A pleasant man,” commented the Frau Consul innocently. + 

“Quite my opinion.” The Consul made a quick, humorous turn toward Tony, as if he were asking her in the most respectful manner for her opinion as well. She was silent, and looked neither to the right nor to the left. + 

“But I think, Tom, he ought to stop swearing,” went on the Frau Consul with mild disapproval. “If I understood him correctly, he kept using the words Sacrament and Cross.” + 

“Oh, that’s nothing, Mother⁠—he doesn’t mean anything by that.” + 

“And perhaps a little too easy-mannered, Tom?” + 

“Oh, yes; that is south-German,” said the Consul, breathing the smoke slowly out into the room. He smiled at his mother and stole glances at Tony. His mother saw the glances not at all. + 

“You will come to dinner today with Gerda. Please do me the favour, Tom.” + 

“Certainly, Mother, with the greatest of pleasure. To tell the truth, I promise myself much pleasure from this guest, don’t you? He is something different from your ministers, in any case.” + 

“Everybody to his taste, Tom.” + 

“Of course. I must go now.⁠—Oh, Tony,” he said, the door-handle in his hand, “you have made a great impression on him. No, no joke. Do you know what he called you down there just now? A great girl! Those were his very words.” + 

But here Frau Grünlich turned around and said clearly: “Very good, Tom. You are repeating his words⁠—and I don’t know that he would mind; but even so I am not sure it was just the nicest thing to do. But this much I do know: and this much I am going to say: that in this life it does not depend on how things are said and expressed, but on how they are felt and meant in the heart; and if you make fun of Herr Permaneder’s language and find him ridiculous⁠—” + 

“Who? Why? Tony, what an idea! Why are you getting excited⁠—?” + 

“Assez,” said the Frau Consul, casting an imploring glance at her son. It meant “Spare her!” + 

“Please don’t be angry, Tony,” he said. “I didn’t mean to provoke you. And now I will go and see that somebody from the warehouse brings Herr Permaneder’s trunk. Au revoir.” + 

V + 

Herr Permaneder moved into Meng Street; he ate dinner with Thomas Buddenbrook and his wife the following day; and on the third, a Thursday, he made the acquaintance of Justus Kröger and his wife, the three ladies from Broad Street, who found him “frightfully funny” (they said fr‑right‑fully), Sesemi Weichbrodt, who was rather stern with him, and poor Clothilde and little Erica, to whom he gave a bag of bonbons. + 

The man was invincibly good-humoured. His sighs, in fact, meant nothing, and seemed to arise out of an excess of comfort. He smoked his pipe, talked in his curious dialect, and displayed an inexhaustible power of sitting still. He kept his place long after the meal was finished, in the most easy attitude possible, and smoked, drank, and chatted. His presence gave to the life in the old home a new and strange tone; his very being brought something unharmonious into the room. But he disturbed none of the traditional customs of the house. He was faithful to morning and evening prayers, asked permission to attend one of the Frau Consul’s Sunday School classes, and even appeared on a Jerusalem evening in the drawing-room and was presented to the guests, but withdrew affrighted when Lea Gerhardt began to read aloud. + 

He was soon known in the town. They spoke in the great houses about the Buddenbrooks’ guest from Bavaria; but neither in the family nor on the Bourse did he make connections, and as it was already the time when people were making ready to go to the shore, the Consul refrained from introducing Herr Permaneder into society. But he devoted himself with zeal to the guest, taking time from his business and civic engagements to show him about the town and point out the medieval monuments⁠—churches, gates, fountains, market, Town Hall, and Ship Company. He made him acquainted with his own nearest friends on Exchange and entertained him in every way. His mother took occasion one day to thank him for his self-sacrifice; but he only remarked drily: “Why, ye‑es, Mother⁠—what wouldn’t one do?” + 

The Frau Consul left this unanswered. She did not even smile or move her eyelids, but shifted the gaze of her light eyes and changed the subject. + 

She preserved an even, hearty friendliness toward Herr Permaneder⁠—which could hardly be said of her daughter. On the third or fourth day after his arrival the hop dealer let it be known that he had concluded his business with the local brewery. But a week and a half had passed since then, and he had been present for two children’s afternoons. On these occasions, Frau Grünlich had sat blushing and watching his every motion, casting quick embarrassed glances at Thomas and the three Buddenbrook cousins. She talked hardly at all, sat for long minutes stiff and speechless, or even got up and left the room. + 

The green blinds in Frau Grünlich’s sleeping-room were gently stirred by the mild air of a June night, for the windows were open. It was a large room, with simple furniture covered in grey linen. On the night-table at the side of the high bed several little wicks burned in a glass with oil and water in it, filling the room with faint, even light. Frau Grünlich was in bed. Her pretty head was sunk softly in the lace-edged pillow, and her hands lay folded on the quilted coverlet. But her eyes, too thoughtful to close themselves, slowly followed the movements of a large insect with a long body, which perpetually besieged the glass with a million soundless motions of his wings. Near the bed there was a framed text hanging on the wall, between two old copperplate views of the town in the Middle Ages. It said: “Commit your ways unto the Lord.” But what good is a text like that when you are lying awake at midnight, and you have to decide for your whole life, and other people’s too, whether it shall be yes or no? + 

It was very still. The clock ticked away on the wall, and the only other sound was Mamsell Jungmann’s occasional cough. Her room was next to Tony’s, divided only by curtains from it. She still had a light. The born-and-bred Prussian was sitting under the hanging lamp at her extension-table, darning stockings for little Erica. The child’s deep, peaceful breathing could be heard in the room, for Sesemi’s pupils were having summer holidays and Erica was at home again. + 

Frau Grünlich sighed and sat up a little, propping her head on her hand. “Ida,” she called softly, “are you still sitting there mending?” + 

“Yes, yes, Tony, my child,” Ida answered. “Sleep now; you will be getting up early in the morning, and you won’t get enough rest.” + 

“All right, Ida. You will wake me at six o’clock?” + 

“Half-past is early enough, child. The carriage is ordered for eight. Go on sleeping, so you will look fresh and pretty.” + 

“Oh, I haven’t slept at all yet.” + 

“Now, Tony, that is a bad child. Do you want to look all knocked up for the picnic? Drink seven swallows of water, and then lie down and count a thousand.” + 

“Oh, Ida, do come here a minute. I can’t sleep, I tell you, and my head aches for thinking. Feel⁠—I think I have some fever, and there is something the matter with my tummy again. Or is it because I am anæmic? The veins in my temples are all swollen and they beat so that it hurts; but still, there may be too little blood in my head.” + 

A chair was pushed back, and Ida Jungmann’s lean, vigorous figure, in her unfashionable brown gown, appeared between the portières. + 

“Now, now, Tony⁠—fever? Let me feel, my child⁠—I’ll make you a compress.” + 

She went with her long firm masculine tread to the chest for a handkerchief, dipped it into the water-basin, and, going back to the bed, laid it on Tony’s forehead, stroking her brow a few times with both hands. + 

“Thank you, Ida; that feels good.⁠—Oh, please sit down a few minutes, good old Ida. Sit down on the edge of the bed. You see, I keep thinking the whole time about tomorrow. What shall I do? My head is going round and round.” + 

Ida sat down beside her, with her needle and the stocking drawn over the darner again in her hand, and bent over them the smooth grey head and the indefatigable bright brown eyes. “Do you think he is going to propose tomorrow?” she asked. + 

“No doubt of it at all. He won’t lose this opportunity. It happened with Clara on just such an expedition. I could avoid it, of course, I could keep with the others all the time and not let him get near me. But then, that would settle it! He is leaving day after tomorrow, he said, and he cannot stay any longer if nothing comes of it today. It must be decided today.⁠—But what shall I say, Ida, when he asks me? You’ve never been married, so of course you know nothing about life, really; but you are a truthful woman, and you have some sense⁠—and you are forty-two years old! Do tell me what you think.⁠—I do so need advice!” + 

Ida Jungmann let the stocking fall into her lap. + 

“Yes, yes, Tony child, I have thought a great deal about it. But what I think is, there is nothing to advise about. He can’t go away without speaking to you and your Mamma, and if you didn’t want him, you should have sent him away before now.” + 

“You are right there, Ida; but I could not do it⁠—I suppose because it is to be! But now I keep thinking: ‘It isn’t too late yet; I can still draw back!’ So I am living here tormenting myself⁠—” + 

“Do you like him, Tony? Tell me straight out.” + 

“Yes, Ida. It would not be the truth if I should say no. He is not handsome⁠—but that isn’t the important thing in this life; and he is as good as gold, and couldn’t do anything mean⁠—at least, he seems so to me. When I think about Grünlich⁠—oh, goodness! He was all the time saying how clever and resourceful he was, and all the time hiding his villainy. Permaneder is not in the least like that. You might say he is too easygoing and takes life too comfortably⁠—and that is a fault too; because he will never be a millionaire that way, and he really is too much inclined to let things go and muddle along⁠—as they say down there. They are all like that down there, Ida⁠—that is what I mean. In Munich, where he was among his own kind and everybody spoke and looked as he does, I fairly loved him, he seemed so nice and faithful and comfy. And I noticed it was mutual⁠—but part of that, I dare say, was that he takes me for a rich woman, richer probably than I am; because Mother cannot do much more for me, as you know. But I hardly think that will make much difference to him⁠—a great lot of money would not be to his taste.⁠—But⁠—what was I saying, Ida?” + 

“That is in Munich, Tony. But here⁠—” + 

“Oh, here, Ida! You know how it was already: up here he was torn right out of his own element and set against everybody here, and they are all ever so much stiffer, and⁠—more dignified and serious. Here I really often blush for him, though it may be unworthy of me. You know⁠—it even happened several times that he said ‘me’ instead of ‘I.’ But they say that down there; even the most cultured people do, and it doesn’t hurt anything⁠—it slips out once in a while and nobody minds. But up here⁠—here sits Mother on one side and Tom on the other, looking at him and lifting their eyebrows, and Uncle Justus gives a start and fairly snorts, the way the Krögers do, and Pfiffi Buddenbrook gives her Mother a look, or Friederike or Henriette, and I feel so mortified I want to run out of the room, and it doesn’t seem as if I could marry him⁠—” + 

“Oh, childie⁠—it would be Munich that you would live in with him.” + 

“You are right, Ida. But the engagement!⁠—and if I have to feel the whole time mortified to death before the family and the Kistenmakers and the Möllendorpfs, because they think he is common⁠—Oh, Grünlich was much more refined, though he was certainly black within, as Herr Stengel would have said.⁠—Oh, Ida, my head! do wet the compress again.” + 

“But it must be so, in the end,” she went on again, drawing a long breath as the compress went on; “for the main point is and remains that I must get married again, and not stick about here any longer as a divorced woman. Ah, Ida, I think so much about the past these days: about the time when Grünlich first appeared, and the scenes he made me⁠—scandalous, Ida!⁠—and then about Travemünde and the Schwarzkopfs⁠—” She spoke slowly, and her eyes rested for a while dreamily on a darn in Erica’s stocking. “And then the betrothal, and Eimsbüttel, and our house. It was quite elegant, Ida. When I think of my morning-gowns⁠—It would not be like that with Permaneder; one gets more modest as life goes on⁠—And Dr. Klaasen and the baby, and Banker Kesselmeyer⁠—and then the end. It was frightful; you can’t imagine how frightful it was. And when you have had such dreadful experiences in life⁠—But Permaneder would never go in for anything filthy like that. That is the last thing in the world I should expect of him, and we can rely on him too in a business way, for I really think he makes a good deal with Noppe at the Niederpaur brewery. And when I am his wife, you’ll see, Ida, I will take care that he has ambition and gets ahead and makes an effort and is a credit to me and all of us. That, at least, he takes upon himself when he marries a Buddenbrook!” + 

She folded her hands under her head and looked at the ceiling. “Yes, ten years ago and more, I married Grünlich. Ten years! And here I am at the same place again, saying yes to somebody else. You know, Ida, life is very, very serious. Only the difference is that then it was a great affair, and they all pressed me and tormented me, whereas now they are all perfectly quiet and take it for granted that I am going to say yes. Of course you know, Ida, that this engagement to Alois⁠—I say Alois, because of course it is to be⁠—has nothing very gay or festive about it, and it isn’t really a question of my happiness at all. I am making this second marriage with my eyes open, to make good the mistake of my first one, as a duty which I owe our name. Mother thinks so, and so does Tom.” + 

“But oh, dear, Tony⁠—if you don’t like him, and if he won’t make you happy⁠—” + 

“Ida, I know life, and I am not a little goose any more. I have the use of my senses. I don’t say that Mother would actually insist on it⁠—when there is a dispute over anything she usually avoids it and says ‘Assez!’ But Tom wants it. I know Tom. He thinks: ‘Anybody! Anybody who isn’t absolutely impossible.’ For this time it is not a question of a brilliant match, but just one that will make good the other one. That is what he thinks. As soon as Permaneder appeared, you may be sure that Tom made all the proper inquiries about his business, and found it was all right⁠—and then, as far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Tom is a politician⁠—he knows what he wants. Who was it threw Christian out? That is strong language, Ida, but that was really the truth of it. And why? Because he was compromising the firm and the family. And in his eyes I do the same thing⁠—not with words or acts, but by my very existence as a divorced woman. He wants that put an end to, and he is right. I love him none the less for that⁠—nor, I hope, does he me. In all these years, I have always longed to be out in the world again; it is so dull here in this house. God punish me if that is a sin: but I am not much more than thirty, and I still feel young. People differ about that. You had grey hair at thirty, like all your family and that uncle that died at Marienwerder.” + 

More and more observations of the same kind followed as the night wore on; and every now and again she would say: “It is to be, after all.” But at length she went to sleep, and slept for five hours on end, deeply and peacefully. + 

VI + 

A mist lay over the town. But⁠—or so said Herr Longuet, the livery man in John Street, as he himself drove the covered charabanc up to the door of the house in Meng Street: “The sun will be out before an hour is over”⁠—which was most encouraging. + 

The Frau Consul, Antonie, Herr Permaneder, Erica, and Ida had breakfast together and gathered one after another, ready for the expedition, in the great entry, to wait for Gerda and Tom. Frau Grünlich, in a cream-coloured frock with a satin tie, looked her best, despite the loss of sleep the night before. Her doubts and fears seemed to be laid to rest, and her manner was assured, calm, and almost formal as she talked with their guest and fastened her glove-button. She had regained the tone of the old days. The well-known conviction of her own importance, of the weightiness of her own decisions, the consciousness that once more a day had come when she was to inscribe herself decisively in the family history⁠—all this filled her heart and made it beat higher. She had dreamed of seeing that page in the family papers on which she would write down the fact of her betrothal⁠—the fact that should obliterate and make void the black spot which the page contained. She looked forward to the moment when Tom would appear and she would greet him with a meaning nod. + 

He came with his wife, somewhat tardily, for the young Frau Consul was not used to make such an early toilette. He looked well and happy in his light-brown checked suit, the broad revers of which showed the white waistcoat beneath; and his eyes had a smile in them as he noted Tony’s incomparably dignified mien. Gerda, with her slightly exotic, even morbid beauty, which was always in great contrast to her sister-in-law’s healthy prettiness, was not in a holiday mood. Probably she had risen too early. The deep lilac background of her frock suited oddly with her dark-red hair and made her skin look whiter and more even-toned than ever, and the bluish shadows deeper and darker in the corners of her close-set brown eyes. She rather coldly offered her mother-in-law her brow to kiss, gave her hand to Herr Permaneder with an almost ironical expression on her face, and answered only by a deprecating smile when Tony clapped her hands and cried out in her hearty way: “Oh, Gerda, how lovely you always look!” + 

She had a real distaste for expeditions like today’s, especially in summer and most especially on Sunday. She lived in the twilight of her curtained living-rooms, and dreaded the sun, the dust, the crowds of townsfolk in their holiday clothes, the smell of coffee, beer, and tobacco; and above everything else in the world she hated getting hot and upset. When the expedition to Swartau and the “Giant Bush” was arranged, in order to give the Munich guest a glimpse of the surroundings of the old town, Gerda said lightly to her husband “Dearest, you know how I am made: I only like peace and quiet. I was not meant for change and excitement. You’ll let me off, won’t you?” + 

She would not have married him if she had not felt sure of his essential agreement with her in these matters. + 

“Oh, heavens, yes; you are right, of course, Gerda. It is mostly imagination that one enjoys oneself on such parties. Still, one goes, because one does not like to seem odd, either to oneself or to the others. Everybody has that kind of vanity; don’t you think so? People get the idea that you are solitary or else unhappy, and they have less respect for you. And then, there is something else, Gerda dear. We all want to pay a little court to Herr Permaneder. Of course you see what the situation is. Something is going on; it would be a real pity if it came to nothing.” + 

“I do not see, my dear friend, why my presence⁠—but no matter. Let it be as you wish. Let us indulge.” + 

They went into the street. And the sun actually began at that moment to pierce the morning mist. The bells of St. Mary’s were ringing for Sunday, and the twittering of birds filled the air. The coachman took off his hat, and the Frau Consul greeted him with the patriarchal kindness which sometimes put Thomas a little on edge: “Good morning, my friend!⁠—Well, get in now, my dears. It is just time for early service, but today we will praise God with full hearts in his own free out-of-doors; shall we not, Herr Permaneder?” + 

“That’s right, Frau Consul.” + 

They climbed one after another up the steps through the narrow back door of the wagon and made themselves comfortable on the cushioned seats, which⁠—doubtless in honour of Herr Permaneder⁠—were striped blue and white, the Bavarian colours. The door slammed, Herr Longuet clucked to the horses and shouted “Gee” and “Haw,” the strong brown beasts tugged at the harness, and the wagon rolled down Meng Street along the Trave and out the Holsten gate and then to the right along the Swartau Road. + 

Fields, meadows, tree-clumps, farmyards. They stared up into the high, thin blue mist above them for the larks they heard singing there. Thomas, smoking his cigarette, looked about keenly, and when they came to the grain he called Herr Permaneder’s attention to its condition. The hop dealer was in a mood of childlike anticipation. He had perched his green hat with the goat’s beard on the side of his head, and was balancing his big stick with the horn handle on the palm of his broad white hand and even on his underlip⁠—a feat which, though he never quite succeeded in accomplishing it, was always greeted with applause from little Erica. He repeated over and over remarks like: “ ’Twon’t be the Zugspitz, but we’ll climb a bit and have a little lark⁠—kind of a little old spree, hey, Frau Grünli’?” + 

Then he began to relate with much liveliness stories of mountain-climbing with knapsack and alpenstock, the Frau Consul rewarding him with many an admiring “You don’t say!” He came by some train of thought or other to Christian, and expressed the most lively regret for his absence⁠—he had heard what a jolly chap he was. + 

“He varies,” the Consul said drily. “On a party like this he is inimitable, it is true.⁠—We shall have crabs to eat, Herr Permaneder,” he said in a livelier tone; “crabs and Baltic shrimps! You have had them a few times already at my Mother’s, but friend Dieckmann, the owner of the ‘Giant Bush,’ serves especially fine ones. And ginger-nuts, the famous ginger-nuts of these parts. Has their fame reached even as far as the Isar? Well, you shall try them.” + 

Two or three times Frau Grünlich stopped the wagon to pick poppies and cornflowers by the roadside, and each time Herr Permaneder testified to his desire to get out and help her, if it were not for his slight nervousness at climbing in and out of the wagon. + 

Erica rejoiced at every crow she saw; and Ida Jungmann, wearing her mackintosh and carrying her umbrella, as she always did even in the most settled weather, rejoiced with her like a good governess who shares not only outwardly but inwardly in the childish emotions of her charge. She entered heartily into Erica’s pleasure, with her rather loud laugh that sounded like a horse neighing. Gerda, who had not seen her growing grey in the family service, looked at her repeatedly with cold surprise. + 

They were in Oldenberg. The beech groves came in sight. They drove through the village, across the market square with its well, and out again into the country, over the bridge that spanned the little river Au, and finally drew up in front of the one-storey inn, “The Giant Bush.” It stood at the side of a flat open space laid out with lawns and sandy paths and country flowerbeds; beyond it, the forest rose gradually like an amphitheatre. Each stage was reached by rude steps formed from the natural rocks and tree roots; and on each one white-painted tables, benches, and chairs stood placed among the trees. + 

The Buddenbrooks were by no means the first guests. A couple of plump maids and a waiter in a greasy dress-coat were hurrying about the square carrying cold meat, lemonades, milk, and beer up to the tables, even the more remote ones, which were already occupied by several families with children. + 

Herr Dieckmann, the landlord, appeared personally, in shirtsleeves and a little yellow-embroidered cap, to help the guests dismount, and Longuet drove off to unhitch. The Frau Consul said: “My good man, we will take our walk first, and after an hour or so we should like luncheon served up above⁠—but not too high up; say perhaps at the second landing.” + 

“You must show what you are made of, Herr Dieckmann,” added the Consul. “We have a guest who is used to good living.” + 

“Oh, no such thing,” Herr Permaneder protested. “A beer and cheese⁠—” + 

But Herr Dieckmann could not understand him, and began with great fluency: “Everything we have, Herr Consul: crabs, shrimps, all sorts of sausages, all sorts of cheese, smoked eel, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon⁠—” + 

“Fine, Dieckmann; give us what you have. And then⁠—six glasses of milk and a glass of beer⁠—if I am not mistaken, Herr Permaneder?” + 

“One beer, six milks⁠—sweet milk, buttermilk, sour milk, clotted milk, Herr Consul?” + 

“Half and half, Herr Dieckmann: sweet milk and buttermilk. In an hour, then.” They went across the square. + 

“First, Herr Permaneder, it is our duty to visit the spring,” said Thomas. “The spring, that is to say, is the source of the Au; and the Au is the tiny little river on which Swartau lies, and on which, in the grey Middle Ages, our own town was situated⁠—until it burned down. There was probably nothing very permanent about it at that time, and it was rebuilt again, on the Trave. But there are painful recollections connected with the Au. When we were schoolboys we used to pinch each other’s arms and say: ‘What is the name of the river at Swartau?’ Of course, it hurt, and the involuntary answer was the right one.⁠—Look!” he interrupted himself suddenly, ten steps from the ascent, “they’ve got ahead of us.” It was the Möllendorpfs and the Hagenströms. + 

There, on the third landing of the wooded terrace, sat the principal members of those affiliated families, at two tables shoved close together, eating and talking with the greatest gusto. Old Senator Möllendorpf presided, a pallid gentleman with thin, pointed white mutton-chops; he suffered from diabetes. His wife, born Langhals, wielded her lorgnon; and, as usual, her hair stood up untidily all over her head. Her son Augustus was a blond young man with a prosperous exterior, and there was Julie his wife, born Hagenström, little and lively, with great blank black eyes and diamond earrings that were nearly as large. She sat between her brothers, Hermann and Moritz. Consul Hermann Hagenström had begun to get very stout with good living: people said he began the day with paté de foie gras. He wore a full, short reddish-blond beard, and he had his mother’s nose, which came down quite flat on the upper lip. Dr. Morris was narrow-chested and yellow-skinned, and he talked very gaily, showing pointed teeth with gaps between them. Both brothers had their ladies with them⁠—for the lawyer had married, some years since, a Fräulein Puttfarken from Hamburg, a lady with butter-coloured hair and wonderful cold, regular, English features of more than common beauty; Dr. Hagenström had not been able to reconcile with his reputation as connoisseur the idea of taking a plain wife. And, finally, there were the little daughter of Hermann and the little son of Moritz, two white-frocked children, already as good as betrothed to each other, for the Huneus-Hagenström money must be kept together, of course. They all sat there eating ham and scrambled eggs. + 

Greetings were exchanged when the Buddenbrook party passed at a little distance the company seated at the table. The Frau Consul bowed confusedly; Thomas lifted his hat, his lips moving in a courteous and conventional greeting, and Gerda inclined her head with formal politeness. But Herr Permaneder, stimulated by the climb, swung his green hat unaffectedly and shouted in a loud, hearty voice: “Hearty good morning to all of you!” whereat Frau Senator Möllendorpf made use of her lorgnon. Tony, for her part, flung back her head and tucked in her chin as much as possible, while her shoulders went up ever so slightly, and she greeted the party as if from some remote height⁠—which meant that she stared straight ahead directly over the broad brim of Julie Möllendorpf’s elegant hat. Precisely at this moment, her decision of the night before became fixed, unalterable resolve. + 

“Thanks be to goodness, Tom, we are not going to eat for another hour. I’d hate to have that Julie watching us. Did you see how she spoke? Hardly at all. I only had a glimpse of her hat, but it looked frightfully bad taste.” + 

“Well, as far as that goes, I don’t know about the hat⁠—but you were certainly not much more cordial than she was, my love. And don’t get irritated⁠—it makes for wrinkles.” + 

“Irritated, Tom? Not at all. If these people think they are the first and foremost, why, one can only laugh at them, that’s all. What difference is there between this Julie and me, if it comes to that? She only drew a fool, instead of a knave, for a husband; and if she were in my position now, we should see if she would find another one.” + 

“How can you tell that you will find another one?” + 

“A fool, Thomas?” + 

“Very much better than a knave.” + 

“It doesn’t have to be either. But it is not a fit subject for discussion.” + 

“Quite right. The others are ahead of us⁠—Herr Permaneder is climbing lustily.” + 

The shady forest road grew level, and it was not long before they reached the “spring,” a pretty, romantic spot with a wooden bridge over a little ravine, steep cliffs, and overhanging trees with their roots in the air. The Frau Consul had brought a silver collapsible cup, and they scooped up the water from the little stone basin directly under the source and refreshed themselves with the iron-impregnated spring. And here Herr Permaneder had a slight attack of gallantry, and insisted on Frau Grünlich tasting his cup before presenting it to him. He ran over with friendliness and displayed great tact in chatting with the Frau Consul and Thomas, as well as with Gerda and Tony, and even with little Erica. Gerda, who had up to now been suffering from the heat and a kind of silent and rigid nervousness, began to feel like herself again. They came back to the inn by a shorter way, and sat down at a groaning table on the second of the wooded terraces; and it was Gerda who gave expression in friendly terms to the general regret over Herr Permaneder’s early departure, now that they were just becoming a little acquainted and finding less and less difficulty with the language. She was ready to swear that she had heard her friend and sister-in-law, Tony, use several times the most unadulterated Munich dialect! + 

Herr Permaneder forebore to commit himself on the subject of his departure. Instead, he devoted himself for the time to the dainties that weighted down the table⁠—dainties such as he seldom saw the other side of the Danube. + 

They sat and consumed the good things at their leisure⁠—what little Erica liked far better than anything else were the serviettes made of tissue paper, much nicer than the big linen ones at home. With the waiter’s permission she put a few in her pocket as a souvenir. When they had finished, they still sat; Herr Permaneder smoked several very black cigars with his beer, Thomas smoked cigarettes, and the whole family chatted a long time with their guest. It was noticeable that Herr Permaneder’s leaving was not mentioned again; in fact, the future was left shrouded in darkness. Rather, they turned to memories of the past or talked of the political events of recent years. Herr Permaneder shook with laughter over some dozens of stories of the late Herr Consul, which his widow related, and then in his turn told about the Munich Revolution, and about Lola Montez, in whom Frau Grünlich displayed an unbounded interest. The hour after luncheon slowly wore on, and little Erica came back laden with daisies, grasses, and ladies’ smocks from an expedition with Ida Jungmann, and recalled the fact that the ginger-nuts were still to be bought. They started on their walk down to the village, not before the Frau Consul, who was the hostess of the occasion, had paid the bill with a good-sized gold-piece. + 

They gave orders at the inn that the wagon should be ready in half an hour, so that there would be time for a rest in town before dinner, and then they rambled slowly down, in the dusty sunshine, to the handful of cottages that formed the village. + 

After they crossed the bridge they fell naturally into little groups, in which they continued after that to walk: Mamsell Jungmann with her long stride in the van, with little Erica jumping tirelessly alongside, hunting for butterflies; then the Frau Consul, Thomas, and Gerda together; and lastly, at some distance, Frau Grünlich and Herr Permaneder. The first pair made considerable noise, for the child shouted for joy, and Ida joined in with her neighing, good-natured laugh. In the middle, all three were silent; for the dust had driven Gerda into another fit of depression, and the old Frau Consul, and her son as well, were plunged in thought. The couple behind were quiet too, but their quietness was only apparent, for in reality Tony and her Bavarian guest were conversing in subdued and intimate tones. And what was the subject of their discourse? It was Herr Grünlich.⁠ ⁠… + 

Herr Permaneder had made the pointed remark that little Erica was a dear and pretty child, but that she had not the slightest resemblance to her mother. To which Tony had answered: “She is altogether like her father in looks, and one may say that it is not at all to her disadvantage, for as far as looks go, Grünlich was a gentleman. He had golden-yellow whiskers⁠—very uncommon; I never saw anything like them.” When Tony visited the Niederpaurs in Munich, she had already told Herr Permaneder in considerable detail the story of her first marriage; but now he asked again all the particulars of it, listening with anxiously sympathetic blinks to the details of the bankruptcy. + 

“He was a bad man, Herr Permaneder, or Father would never have taken me away from him⁠—of that you may be sure. Life has taught me that not everybody in the world has a good heart. I have learned that, young as I am for a person who, as you might say, has been a widow for ten years. He was a bad man, and his banker, Kesselmeyer, was a worse one⁠—and a silly puppy into the bargain. I won’t say that I consider myself an angel and perfectly free from all blame⁠—don’t misunderstand me. Grünlich neglected me, and even when he was with me he just sat and read the paper; and he deceived me, and kept me in Eimsbüttel, because he was afraid if I went to town I would find out the mess he was in. But I am a weak woman, and I have my faults too, and I’ve no doubt I did not always go the right way to work. I know I gave him cause to worry and complain over my extravagance and silliness and my new dressing-gowns. But it is only fair to say one thing: I was just a child when I was married, a perfect goose, a silly little thing. Just imagine: only a short time before I was engaged, I didn’t even so much as know that the Confederation decrees concerning the universities and the press had been renewed four years before! And fine decrees they were, too! Ah, me, Herr Permaneder! The sad thing is that one lives but once⁠—one can’t begin life over again. And one would know so much better the second time!” + 

She was silent; she looked down at the road⁠—but she was very intent on the reply Herr Permaneder would make, for she had not unskilfully left him an opening, it being only a step to the idea that, even though it was impossible to begin life anew, yet a new and better married life was not out of the question. Herr Permaneder let the chance slip and confined himself to laying the blame on Herr Grünlich, with such violence that his very chin-whiskers bristled. + 

“Silly ass! If I had the fool here I’d give it to him! What a swine!” + 

“Fie, Herr Permaneder! No, you really mustn’t. We must forgive and forget⁠—‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Ask Mother. Heaven forbid⁠—I don’t know where Grünlich is, nor what state his affairs are in, but I wish him the best of fortune, even though he doesn’t deserve it.” + 

They had reached the village and stood before the little house which was at the same time the bakery. They had stopped walking, almost without knowing it, and were hardly aware that Ida, Erica, the Frau Consul, Thomas, and Gerda had disappeared through the funny, tiny little door, so low that they had to stoop to enter. They were absorbed in their conversation, though it had not got beyond these trifling preliminaries. + 

They stood by a hedge with a long narrow flowerbed beneath it, in which some mignonette was growing. Frau Grünlich, rather hot, bent her head and poked industriously with her parasol in the black loam. Herr Permaneder stood close to her, now and then assisting her excavations with his walking-stick. His little green hat with the tuft of goat’s beard had slid back on his forehead. He was stooping over the bed too, but his small, bulging pale-blue eyes, quite blank and even a little reddish, gazed up at her with a mixture of devotion, distress, and expectancy. It was odd to see how his very moustache, drooping down over his mouth, took the same expression. + 

“Likely, now,” he ventured, “likely, now, ye’ve taken a silly fright, and are too damned scared of marriage ever to try it again⁠—hey, Frau Grünlich?” + 

“How clumsy!” thought she. “Must I say yes to that?” Aloud she answered: “Well, dear Herr Permaneder, I must confess that it would be hard for me to yield anybody my consent for life; for life has taught me, you see, what a serious step that is. One needs to be sure that the man in question is a thoroughly noble, good, kind soul⁠—” + 

And now he actually ventured the question whether she could consider him such a man⁠—to which she answered: “Yes, Herr Permaneder, I do.” Upon which there followed the few short murmured words which clinched the betrothal and gave Herr Permaneder the assurance that he might speak to Thomas and the Frau Consul when they reached home. + 

When the other members of the party came forth, laden with bags of ginger-nuts, Thomas let his eye rove discreetly over the heads of the two standing outside, for they were embarrassed to the last degree. Herr Permaneder simply made no effort to conceal the fact, but Tony was hiding her embarrassment under a well-nigh majestic dignity. + 

They hurried back to the wagon, for the sky had clouded over and some drops began to fall. + 

Tony was right: her brother had, soon after Herr Permaneder appeared, made proper inquiries as to his situation in life. He learned that X. Noppe and Company did a thoroughly sound if somewhat restricted business, operating with the joint-stock brewery managed by Herr Niederpaur as director. It showed a nice little income, Herr Permaneder’s share of which, with the help of Tony’s seventeen thousand, would suffice for a comfortable if modest life. The Frau Consul heard the news, and there was a long and particular conversation among her, Herr Permaneder, Antonie, and Thomas, in the landscape-room that very evening, and everything was arranged. It was decided that little Erica should go to Munich too, this being her Mother’s wish, to which her betrothed warmly agreed. + 

Two days later the hop dealer left for home⁠—“Noppe will be raising the deuce if I don’t,” he said. But in July Frau Grünlich was again in his native town, accompanied by Tom and Gerda. They were to spend four or five weeks at Bad Kreuth, while the Frau Consul with Erica and Ida were on the Baltic coast. While in Munich, the four had time to see the house in Kaufinger Street which Herr Permaneder was about to buy. It was in the neighbourhood of the Niederpaurs’⁠—a perfectly remarkable old house, a large part of which Herr Permaneder thought to let. It had a steep, ladderlike pair of stairs which ran without a turning from the front door straight up to the first floor, where a corridor led on each side back to the front rooms. + 

Tony went home the middle of August to devote herself to her trousseau. She had considerable left from her earlier equipment, but new purchases were necessary to complete it. One day several things arrived from Hamburg, among them a morning-gown⁠—this time not trimmed with velvet but with bands of cloth instead. + 

Herr Permaneder returned to Meng Street well on in the autumn. They thought best to delay no longer. As for the wedding festivities, they went off just as Tony expected and desired, no great fuss being made over them. “Let us leave out the formalities,” said the Consul. “You are married again, and it is simply as if you always had been.” Only a few announcements were sent⁠—Madame Grünlich saw to it that Julie Möllendorpf, born Hagenström, received one⁠—and there was no wedding journey. Herr Permaneder objected to making “such a fuss,” and Tony, just back from the summer trip, found even the journey to Munich too long. The wedding took place, not in the hall this time, but in the church of St. Mary’s, in the presence of the family only. Tony wore the orange-blossom, which replaced the myrtle, with great dignity, and Doctor Kölling preached on moderation, with as strong language as ever, but in a weaker voice. + 

Christian came from Hamburg, very elegantly dressed, looking a little ailing but very lively. He said his business with Burmeester was “top-top”; thought that he and Tilda would probably get married “up there”⁠—that is to say, “each one for himself, of course”; and came very late to the wedding from the visit he paid at the club. Uncle Justus was much moved by the occasion, and with his usual lavishness presented the newly-wedded pair with a beautiful heavy silver epergne. He and his wife practically starved themselves at home, for the weak woman was still paying the disinherited and outcast Jacob’s debts with the housekeeping money. Jacob was rumoured to be in Paris at present. The Buddenbrook ladies from Broad Street made the remark: “Well, let’s hope it will last, this time.” The unpleasant part of this lay in the doubt whether they really hoped it. Sesemi Weichbrodt stood on her tiptoes, kissed her pupil, now Frau Permaneder, explosively on the forehead, and said with her most pronounced vowels: “Be happy, you good che-ild!” + 

VII + 

In the morning at eight o’clock Consul Buddenbrook, so soon as he had left his bed, stolen through the little door and down the winding stair into the bathroom, taken a bath, and put on his nightshirt again⁠—Consul Buddenbrook, we say, began to busy himself with public affairs. For then Herr Wenzel, barber and member of the Assembly, appeared, with his intelligent face and his red hands, his razors and other tools, and the basin of warm water which he had fetched from the kitchen; and the Consul sat in a reclining-chair and leaned his head back, and Herr Wenzel began to make a lather; and there ensued almost always a conversation that began with the weather and how you had slept the night before, went on to politics and the great world, thence to domestic affairs in the city itself, and closed in an intimate and familiar key on business and family matters. All this prolonged very much the process in hand, for every time the Consul said anything Herr Wenzel had to stop shaving. + 

“Hope you slept well, Herr Consul?” + 

“Yes, thanks, Wenzel. Is it fine today?” + 

“Frost and a bit of snow, Herr Consul. In front of St. James’s the boys have made another slide, more than ten yards long⁠—I nearly sat down, when I came from the Burgomaster’s. The young wretches!” + 

“Seen the papers?” + 

“The Advertiser and the Hamburg News⁠—yes. Nothing in them but the Orsini bombs. Horrible. It happened on the way to the opera. Oh, they must be a fine lot over there.” + 

“Oh, it doesn’t signify much, I should think. It has nothing to do with the people, and the only effect will be that the police will be doubled and there will be twice as much interference with the press. He is on his guard. Yes, it must be a perpetual strain, for he has to introduce new projects all the time, to keep himself in power. But I respect him, all the same. At all events, he can’t be a fool, with his traditions, and I was very much impressed with the cheap bread affair. There is no doubt he does a great deal for the people.” + 

“Yes, Herr Kistenmaker says so too.” + 

“Stephan? We were talking about it yesterday.” + 

“It looks bad for Frederick William of Prussia. Things won’t last much longer as they are. They say already that the prince will be made Regent in time.” + 

“It will be interesting to see what happens then. He has already shown that he has liberal ideas and does not feel his brother’s secret disgust for the Constitution. It is just the chagrin that upsets him, poor man. What is the news from Copenhagen?” + 

“Nothing new, Herr Consul. They simply won’t. The Confederation has declared that a united government for Holstein and Lauenburg is illegal⁠—they won’t have it at any price.” + 

“Yes, it is unheard-of, Wenzel. They dare the Bundestag to put it into operation⁠—and if it were a little more lively⁠—oh, these Danes!⁠—Careful with that chapped place, Wenzel.⁠—There’s our direct-line Hamburg railway, too. That has cost some diplomatic battles, and will cost more before they get the concession from Copenhagen.” + 

“Yes, Herr Consul. The stupid thing is that the Altona-Kiel Railway Company is against it⁠—and, in fact, all Holstein is. Dr. Överdieck, the Burgomaster, was saying so just now. They are dreadfully afraid of Kiel prospering much.” + 

“Of course, Wenzel. A new connection between the North Sea and the Baltic.⁠—You’ll see, the Kiel-Altona line will keep on intriguing. They are in a position to build a rival railway: East Holstein, Neuminster, Neustadt⁠—yes, that is quite on the cards. But we must not let ourselves be bullied, and we must have a direct route to Hamburg.” + 

“Herr Consul must take the matter up himself.” + 

“Certainly, so far as my powers go, and wherever I have any influence. I am interested in the development of our railways⁠—it is a tradition with us from 1851 on. My Father was a director of the Buchen line, which is probably the reason why I was elected so young. I am only thirty-three years old, and my services so far have been very inconsiderable.” + 

“Oh, Herr Consul! How can the Herr Consul say that after his speech in the Assembly⁠—?” + 

“Yes, that made an impression, and I’ve certainly shown my good will, at least. I can only be grateful that my Father, Grandfather, and great-Grandfather prepared the way for me, and that I inherited so much of the respect and confidence they received from the town; for without it I could not move as I am now able to. For instance, after ’48 and the beginning of this decade, what did my Father not do towards the reform of our postal service? Think how he urged in the Assembly the union of the Hamburg diligences with the postal service; and how in 1850 he forced the Senate by continuous pressure to join the German-Austrian Postal Union! If we have cheap letter postage now, and stamps and book post, and letter-boxes, and telegraphic connection with Hamburg and Travemünde, he is not the last one to be grateful to. Why, if he and a few other people had not kept at the Senate continually, we should most likely still be behind the Danish and the Thurn-and-Taxis postal service! So when I have an opinion nowadays on these subjects, people listen to me.” + 

“The Herr Consul is speaking God’s truth. About the Hamburg line, Doctor Överdieck was saying to me only three days ago: ‘When we get where we can buy a suitable site for the station in Hamburg, we will send Consul Buddenbrook to help transact the business, for in such dealings he is better than most lawyers.’ Those were his very words.” + 

“Well, that is very flattering to me, Wenzel.⁠—Just put a little more lather on my chin, will you? It wants a bit more cleaning up.⁠—Yes, the truth is, we mustn’t let the grass grow under our feet. I am saying nothing against Överdieck, but he is getting on. If I were Burgomaster I’d make things move a little faster. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that they are installing gas for the street-lighting, and the miserable old oil lamps are disappearing⁠—I admit I had a little something to do with that change. Oh, how much there is to do! Times are changing, Wenzel, and we have many responsibilities toward the new age. When I think back to my boyhood⁠—you know better than I do what the town looked like then: the streets without sidewalks, grass growing a foot high between the paving-stones, and the houses with porticos and benches sticking out into the streets⁠—and our buildings from the time of the Middle Ages spoilt with clumsy additions, and all tumbling down because, while individuals had money and nobody went hungry, the town had none at all and just muddled along, as my brother-in-law calls it, without ever thinking of repairs. That was a happy and comfortable generation, when my grandfather’s crony, the good Jean Jacques Hofstede, strolled about the town and translated improper little French poems. They had to end, those good old times; they have changed, and they will have to change still more. Then the population was thirty-seven thousand: now it is fifty, you know, and the whole character of the place is altering. There is so much building, and the suburbs are spreading out, and we are able to have good streets and restore the old monuments out of our great period. Yet even all that is merely superficial. The most important matter is still outstanding, my dear Wenzel. I mean, of course, the ceterum censeo of my dear Father: the customs union. We must join, Wenzel; there should be no longer any question about it, and you must all help me fight for it. As a business man, believe me, I am better informed than the diplomats, and the fear that we should lose independence and freedom of action is simply laughable in this case. The Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein Inland would take us in, which is the more desirable for the reason that we do not control the northern trade quite to the extent that we once did.⁠—That’s enough. Please give me the towel, Wenzel,” concluded the Consul. + 

Then the market price of rye, which stood at fifty-five thaler and showed disquieting signs of falling still further, was talked about, and perhaps there was a mention of some event or other in the town; and then Herr Wenzel vanished by the basement route and emptied the lather out of his shiny basin on to the pavement in the street. And the Consul mounted the winding stair into the bedroom, and found Gerda awake, and kissed her on the forehead. Then he dressed. + 

These little morning sessions with the lively barber formed the introduction to busy days, full to running over with thinking, talking, writing, reckoning, doing business, going about in the town. Thanks to his travel, his interests, and his knowledge of affairs, Thomas Buddenbrook’s mind was the least provincial in the district; and he was certainly the first to realize the limitations of his lot. The lively interest in public affairs which the years of the Revolution had brought in, was suffering throughout the whole country from a period of prostration and arrest, and that field was too sterile to occupy a vigorous talent; but Thomas Buddenbrook possessed the spirit to take to himself that wise old saying that all human achievement is of a merely symbolic value, and thus to devote all that he had of capacity, enthusiasm, energy, and strength of will to the service of the community as well as to the service of his own name and firm. He stood in the front rank of his small society and was seriously ambitious to give his city greatness and power within her sphere⁠—though he had the intellect too, to smile at himself for the ambition even while he cherished it. + 

He ate his breakfast, served by Anton, and went to the office in Meng Street, where he remained about an hour, writing two or three pressing letters and telegrams, giving this or that instruction, imparting to the wheels of industry a small push, and then leaving them to revolve under the cautious eye of Herr Marcus. + 

He went to assemblies and committee meetings, visited the Bourse, which was held under the Gothic arcades in the Market square, inspected dockyards and warehouses, talked with the captains of the ships he owned, and transacted much and various business all day long until evening, interrupted only by the hasty luncheon with his Mother and dinner with Gerda; after which he took a half-hour’s rest on the sofa with his cigarette and the newspaper. Customs, rates, construction, railways, posts, almonry⁠—all this as well as his own business occupied him; and even in matters commonly left to professionals he acquired insight and judgment, especially in finance, where he early showed himself extremely gifted. + 

He was careful not to neglect the social side. True, he was not always punctual, and usually appeared at the very last minute, when the carriage waited below and his wife sat in full toilette. “I’m sorry, Gerda,” he would say; “I was detained”; and he would dash upstairs to don his evening clothes. But when he arrived at a dinner, a ball, or an evening company, he showed lively interest and ranked as a charming causeur. And in entertaining he and his wife were not behind the other rich houses. In kitchen and cellar everything was “tip-top,” and he himself was considered a most courteous and tactful host, whose toasts were wittier than the common run. His quiet evenings he spent at home with Gerda alone, smoking, listening to her music, or reading with her some book of her selection. + 

Thus his labours enforced success, his consequence grew in the town, and the firm had excellent years, despite the sums drawn out to settle Christian and to pay Tony’s second dowry. And yet there were troubles which had, at times, the power to lame his courage for hours, weaken his elasticity, and depress his mood. + 

There was Christian in Hamburg. His partner, Herr Burmeester, had died quite suddenly of an apoplectic stroke, in the spring of the year 1858. His heirs drew their money out of the business, and the Consul strongly advised Christian against trying to continue it with his own means, for he knew how difficult it is to carry on a business already established on definite lines if the working capital be suddenly diminished. But Christian insisted upon the continuation of his independence. He took over the assets and the liabilities of H. C. F. Burmeester and Company, and trouble was to be looked for. + 

Then there was the Consul’s sister Clara in Riga. Her marriage with Pastor Tiburtius had remained unblest with children⁠—but then, as Clara Buddenbrook she had never wanted children, and probably had very little talent for motherhood. Now her husband wrote that her health left much to be desired. The severe headaches from which she had suffered even as a girl were now recurring periodically, to an almost unbearable extent. + 

That was disquieting. And even here at home there was another source of worry⁠—for, as yet, there was no certainty whatever that the family name would live. Gerda treated the subject with sovereign indifference which came very near to being repugnance. Thomas concealed his anxiety. But the old Frau Consul took the matter in hand and consulted Grabow. + 

“Doctor⁠—just between ourselves⁠—something is bound to happen sometime, isn’t it? A little mountain air at Kreuth, a little seashore at Glucksberg or Travemünde⁠—but they don’t seem to work. What do you advise?” Dr. Grabow’s pleasant old prescription: “a nourishing diet, a little pigeon, a slice of French bread,” didn’t seem strong enough, either, to fit the case. He ordered Pyrmont and Schlangenbad. + 

Those were three worries. And Tony? Poor Tony! + 

VIII + 

She wrote: “… And when I say ‘croquettes,’ she doesn’t understand me, because here they are called ‘meaties’; and when she says ‘broccoli,’ how could any Christian know she means cauliflower? When I say ‘baked potatoes,’ she screams ‘How?’ at me, until I remember to say ‘roast potatoes,’ which is what they call them here. ‘How’ means ‘What did you say?’ And she is the second one I’ve had⁠—I sent away the first one, named Katy, because she was so impertinent⁠—or at least, I thought she was. I’m getting to see now that I may have been mistaken, for I’m never quite sure whether people here mean to be rude or friendly. This one’s name is Babette. She has a very pleasing exterior, with something southern, the way of some of them have here; black hair and eyes, and teeth that anyone might envy. She is willing, too, and I am teaching her how to make some of our home dishes. Yesterday we had sorrel and currants, but I wish I hadn’t, for Permaneder objected so much to the sorrel⁠—he picked the currants out with a fork⁠—that he would not speak to me the whole afternoon, but just growled; and I can tell you, Mother, that life is not so easy.” + 

Alas, it was not only the sorrel and the “meaties” that were embittering Tony’s life. Before the honeymoon was over she had had a blow so unforeseen, so unexpected, so incomprehensible, that it took away all her joy in life. She could not get over it. And here it was. + 

Not until after the Permaneder couple had been some weeks in Munich had Consul Buddenbrook liquidated the sum fixed by his Father’s will as his sister’s second marriage portion. That sum, translated into gulden, had at last safely reached Herr Permaneder’s hands, and Herr Permaneder had invested it securely and not unprofitably. But then, what he had said, quite unblushingly and without embarrassment, to his wife, was this: “Tonerl”⁠—he called her “Tonerl”⁠—“Tonerl, that’s good enough for me. What do we want of more? I been working my hide off all my days; now I’d like to sit down and have a little peace and quiet, damned if I wouldn’t. Let’s rent the parterre and the second floor, and still we’ll have a good house, where we can sit and eat our bit of pig’s meat without screwing ourselves up and putting on so much lug. And in the evening I can go to the Hofbräu house. I’m no swell⁠—I don’t care about scraping money together. I want my comfort. I quit tomorrow and go into private life.” + 

“Permaneder!” she had cried; and for the first time she had spoken his name with that peculiar throaty sound which her voice always had when she uttered the name of Grünlich. + 

“Oh, shut up! Don’t take on!” was all he answered. There had followed, thus early in their life together, a quarrel, serious and violent enough to endanger the happiness of any marriage. He came off victorious. Her passionate resistance was shattered upon his urgent longing for “peace and quiet.” It ended in Herr Permaneder’s withdrawing the capital he had in the hop business, so that now Herr Noppe, in his turn, could strike the “and Company” off his card. After which Tony’s husband, like most of the friends whom he met around the table in the Hofbräu House, to play cards and drink his regular three litres of beer, limited his activities to the raising of rents in his capacity of landlord, and to an undisturbed cutting of coupons. + 

The Frau Consul was notified quite simply of this fact. But Frau Permaneder’s distress was evident in the letters which she wrote to her brother. Poor Tony! Her worst fears were more than realized. She had always known that Herr Permaneder possessed none of that “resourcefulness” of which her first husband had had so much; but that he would so entirely confound the expectations she had expressed to Mamsell Jungmann on the eve of her betrothal⁠—that he would so completely fail to recognize the duties he had taken upon himself when he married a Buddenbrook⁠—that she had never dreamed. + 

But these feelings must be overcome; and her family at home saw from her letters how she resigned herself. She lived on rather monotonously with her husband and Erica, who went to school; she attended to her housekeeping, kept up friendly relations with the people who rented the parterre and the first storey and with the Niederpaur family in Marienplatz; and she wrote now and then of going to the theatre with her friend Eva. Herr Permaneder did not care for the theatre. And it came out that he had grown to more than forty years of age in his beloved Munich without ever having seen the inside of the Pinakothek. + 

Time passed. But Tony could feel no longer any true happiness in her new life, since the day when Herr Permaneder received her dowry and settled himself down to enjoy his ease. Hope was no more. She would never be able to write home to announce new ventures and new successes. Just as life was now⁠—free from cares, it was true, but so limited, so lamentably “unrefined,”⁠—just so it would remain until the end. It weighed upon her. It was plain from her letters that this very lowness of tone was making it harder for her to adapt herself to the south-German surroundings. In small matters, of course, things grew easier. She learned to make herself understood by the servants and errand-boys, to say “meaties” instead of “croquettes,” and to set no more fruit soup before her husband after the one he had called a “sickening mess.” But, in general, she remained a stranger in her new home; and she never ceased to taste the bitterness of the knowledge that to be a born Buddenbrook was not to enjoy any particular prestige in her adopted home. She once related in a letter the story of how she met in the street a mason’s apprentice, carrying a mug of beer in one hand and holding a large white radish by its tail in the other; who, waving his beer, said jovially: “Neighbour, can ye tell us the time?” She made a joke of it, in the telling; yet even so, a strong undercurrent of irritation betrayed itself. You might be quite certain that she threw back her head and vouchsafed to the poor man neither answer nor glance in his direction. But it was not alone this lack of formality and absence of distinctions that made her feel strange and unsympathetic. She did not live deeply, it is true, into the life or affairs of her new home; but she breathed the Munich air, the air of a great city, full of artists and citizens who habitually did nothing: an air with something about it a little demoralizing, which she sometimes found it hard to take good-humouredly. + 

The days passed. And then it seemed that there was after all a joy in store⁠—in fact, the very one which was longed for in vain in Broad Street and Meng Street. For not long after the New Year of 1859 Tony felt certain that she was again to become a mother. + 

The joy of it trembled in her letters, which were full of the old childish gaiety and sense of importance. The Frau Consul, who, with the exception of the summer holiday, confined her journeyings more and more to the Baltic coast, lamented that she could not be with her daughter at this time. Tom and Gerda made plans to go to the christening, and Tony’s head was full of giving them an elegant reception. Alas, poor Tony! The visit which took place was sad indeed, and the christening⁠—Tony had cherished visions of a ravishing little feast, with flowers, sweetmeats, and chocolate⁠—never took place at all. The child, a little girl, only entered into life for a tiny quarter of an hour; then, though the doctor did his best to set the pathetic little mechanism going, it faded out of being. + 

Consul Buddenbrook and his wife arrived in Munich to find Tony herself not out of danger. She was far more ill than before, and a nervous weakness from which she had already suffered prevented her from taking any nourishment at all for several days. Then she began to eat, and on their departure, the Buddenbrooks felt reassured as far as her health was concerned. But in other ways there was much reason for anxiety; for it had been all too plain, especially to the Consul’s observant eye, that not even their common loss would suffice to bring husband and wife together again. + 

There was nothing against Herr Permaneder’s good heart. He was truly shaken by the death of the child; big tears rolled down out of his bulging eyes upon his puffy cheeks and on into his frizzled beard. Many times he sighed deeply and gave vent to his favourite expression. But, after all, Tony felt that his “peace and quiet” had not suffered any long interruption. After a few evenings, he sought the Hofbräu House for consolation, and was soon, as he always said, “muddling along” again in his old, good-natured, comfortable, grumbling way, with the easy fatalism natural to him. + 

But from now on Tony’s letters never lost their hopeless, even complaining tone. “Oh, Mother,” she wrote, “why do I have to bear everything like this? First Grünlich and the bankruptcy, and then Permaneder going out of business⁠—and then the baby! How have I deserved all these misfortunes?” + 

When the Consul read these outpourings, he could never quite forego a little smile: for, nothwithstanding all the real pain they showed, he heard an undertone of almost comic pride, and he knew that Tony Buddenbrook, as Madame Grünlich or as Madame Permaneder, was and would remain a child. She bore all her mature experiences almost with a child’s unbelief in their reality, yet with a child’s seriousness, a child’s self-importance, and, above all, with a child’s power to throw them off at will. + 

She could not understand how she had deserved her misfortunes; for even while she mocked at her mother’s piety, she herself was so full of it that she fervently believed in justice and righteousness on this earth. + 

Poor Tony! The death of her second child was neither the last nor the hardest blow that fell upon her. As the year 1859 drew to a close, something frightful indeed happened. + 

IX + 

It was a day toward the end of November⁠—a cold autumn day with a hazy sky. It looked almost as if there would be snow, and a mist was rising, pierced through every now and then by the sun. It was one of those days, common in a seaport town, when a sharp northeast wind whistled round the massive church corners and influenzas were to be had cheap. + 

Consul Thomas Buddenbrook entered the breakfast-room toward midday, to find his Mother, with her spectacles on her nose, bent over a paper on the table. + 

“Tom,” she said; and she looked at him, holding the paper with both hands, as if she hesitated to show it to him. “Don’t be startled. But it is not very good news. I don’t understand⁠—It is from Berlin. Something must have happened.” + 

“Give it to me, please,” he said shortly. He lost colour, and the muscles stood out on his temples as he clenched his teeth. His gesture as he stretched out his hand was so full of decision that it was as if he said aloud: “Just tell me quickly. Don’t prepare me for it!” + 

He read the lines still standing; one of his light eyebrows went up, and he drew the long ends of his moustache through his fingers. It was a telegram, and it said: “Don’t be frightened. Am coming at once with Erica. All is over. Your unhappy Antonie.” + 

“ ‘At once⁠ ⁠… at once,’ ” he said, with irritation, looking at the Frau Consul and giving his head a quick shake. “What does she mean by ‘at once’?” + 

“That is just a way of putting it, Tom; it doesn’t mean anything particular. She means by the next train, or something like that.” + 

“And from Berlin! What is she doing in Berlin? How did she get to Berlin?” + 

“I don’t know, Tom; I don’t understand it. The dispatch only came ten minutes ago. But something must have happened, and we must just wait to see what it is. God in his mercy will turn it all to good. Sit down, my son, and eat your luncheon.” + 

He took his chair, and mechanically he poured out a glass of porter. + 

“ ‘All is over,’ ” he repeated. And then “ ‘Antonie.’ How childish!” + 

He ate and drank in silence. + 

After a while the Frau Consul ventured to say: “It must be something about Permaneder, don’t you think, Tom?” + 

He shrugged his shoulders without looking up. + 

As he went away he said, with his hand on the doorknob, “Well, we must wait and see. As she is not likely to burst into the house in the middle of the night, she will probably reach here sometime tomorrow. You will let me know, won’t you?” + 

The Frau Consul waited from hour to hour. She had slept very badly, and in the night she rang for Ida Jungmann, who now slept in the back room of the entresol. She had Ida make her some eau sucrée; and she sat up in bed for a long time and embroidered. And now the forenoon passed in nervous expectancy. When the Consul came to second breakfast, he said that Tony could not arrive before the three-thirty-three train from Buchen. At that hour the Frau Consul seated herself in the landscape-room and tried to read, out of a book with a black leather cover decorated with a gold palm-leaf. + 

It was a day like its predecessor: cold, mist, wind. The stove crackled away behind its wrought-iron screen. The old lady trembled and looked out of the window whenever she heard a wagon. At four o’clock, when she had stopped watching and almost stopped thinking about her daughter, there was a stir below in the house. She hastily turned toward the window and wiped away the damp with her handkerchief. Yes, a carriage had stopped below, and someone was coming up the steps. + 

She grasped the arms of her chair with both hands to rise. But then she thought better of it and sank back. She only turned her head as her daughter entered, and her face wore an almost defensive expression. Tony burst impetuously into the room: Erica remained outside at the glass door, with her hand in Ida Jungmann’s. + 

Frau Permaneder wore a fur wrap and a large felt hat with a veil. She looked very pale and ailing, and her upper lip trembled as it used to when the little Tony was about to weep. Her eyes were red. She raised her arms and let them drop, and then she fell on her knees at her Mother’s side, burying her face in the folds of her gown and sobbing bitterly. It was as though she had rushed straight hither from Munich all in one breath, and now lay there, having gained the goal of her headlong flight, exhausted but safe. The Frau Consul sat a moment quite still. + 

“Tony!” she said then, with gentle remonstrance. She drew the long hatpins out of Frau Permaneder’s hat and laid it on the window-seat; then she stroked gently and soothingly her daughter’s thick ash-blonde hair. + 

“What is it, my child? What has happened?” + 

But she saw that patience was her only weapon; for it was long before her question drew out any reply. + 

“Mother!” uttered Frau Permaneder. “Mamma!” But that was all. + 

The Frau Consul looked toward the glass door and, still embracing her daughter, stretched out her hand to her grandchild, who stood there shyly with her finger to her mouth. + 

“Come, child; come here and say how do you do. You have grown so big, and you look so strong and well, for which God be thanked. How old are you now, Erica?” + 

“Thirteen, Grandmama.” + 

“Good gracious! A young lady!” She kissed the little maiden over Tony’s head and told her: “Go up with Ida now⁠—we shall soon have dinner. Just now Mamma and I want to talk.” + 

They were alone. + 

“Now, my dear Tony? Can you not stop crying? When God sends us a heavy trial, we must bear it with composure. ‘Take your cross upon you,’ we are told. Would you like to go up first and rest a little and refresh yourself, and then come down to me again? Our good Jungmann has your room ready. Thanks for your telegram⁠—of course, it shocked us a good deal⁠—” + 

She stopped. For Tony’s voice came, all trembling and smothered, out of the folds of her gown: “He is a wicked man⁠—a wicked man! Oh, he is⁠—” + 

Frau Permaneder seemed not able to get away from this dreadful phrase. It possessed her altogether. She buried her face deeper and deeper in the Frau Consul’s lap and clenched her fist beside the Frau Consul’s chair. + 

“Do you mean your husband, my child?” asked the old lady, after a pause. “It ought not to be possible for me to have such a thought in my mind, I know; but you leave me nothing else to think, Tony. Has Herr Permaneder done you an injury? Are you making a complaint of him?” + 

“Babette” Frau Permaneder brought out. “Babette⁠—” + 

“Babette?” repeated the Frau Consul, inquiringly. Then she leaned back in her chair, and her pale eyes wandered toward the window. She understood now. There was a pause, broken by Tony’s gradually decreasing sobs. + 

“Tony,” said the Frau Consul after a little space, “I see now that there has been an injury done you⁠—that you have cause to complain. But was it necessary to give the sense of injury such violent expression? Was it necessary to travel here from Munich, with Erica, and to make it appear⁠—for other people will not be so sensible as we are⁠—that you have left him permanently; that you will not go back to him?” + 

“But I won’t go back to him⁠—never!” cried Frau Permaneder, and she lifted up her head with a jerk and looked at her Mother wildly with tear-stained eyes, and then buried her face again. The Frau Consul affected not to have heard. + 

“But now,” she went on, in a louder key, slowly nodding her head from one side to the other, “now that you are here, I am glad you are. For you can unburden your heart, and tell me everything, and then we shall see how we can put things right, by taking thought, and by mutual forbearance and affection.” + 

“Never,” Tony said again. “Never!” And then she told her story. It was not all intelligible, for she spoke into the folds of her Mother’s stuff gown, and broke into her own narrative with explosions of passionate anger. But what had happened was somewhat as follows: + 

On the night of the twenty-fourth of the month, Madame Permaneder had gone to sleep very late, having been disturbed during the day by the nervous digestive trouble to which she was subject. She had been awakened about midnight, out of a light slumber, by a confused and continuous noise outside on the landing⁠—a half-suppressed, mysterious noise, in which one distinguished the creaking of the stairs, a sort of giggling cough, smothered, protesting words, and, mixed with these, the most singular snarling sounds. But there was no doubt whence they proceeded. Frau Permaneder had hardly, with her sleepy senses, taken them in before she interpreted them as well, in such a way that she felt the blood leave her cheeks and rush to her heart, which contracted and then went on beating with heavy, oppressed pulsations. For a long, dreadful minute she lay among the pillows as if stunned, as if paralysed. Then, as the shameless disturbance did not stop, she had with trembling hands kindled a light, had left her bed, thrilling with horror, repulsion, and despair, had opened the door and hurried out on to the landing in her slippers, the light in her hand⁠—to the top of the “ladder” that went straight up from the house door to the first storey. And there, on the upper steps, in all its actuality, was indeed the very scene she had pictured in her mind’s eye as she listened to the compromising noises. It was an unseemly and indecent scuffle, a sort of wrestling match between Babette the cook and Herr Permaneder. The girl must have been busied late about the house, for she had her bunch of keys and her candle in her hand as she swayed back and forth in the effort to fend her master off. He, with his hat on the back of his head, held her round the body and kept making essays, now and then successfully, to press his face, with its great walrus moustache, against hers. As Antonie appeared, Babette exclaimed something that sounded like “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”⁠—and “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” echoed Herr Permaneder likewise, as he let go. Almost in the same second the girl vanished, and there was Herr Permaneder left standing before his wife, with drooping head, drooping arms, drooping moustaches too; and all he could get out was some idiotic remark like “Holy Cross, what a mess!” When he ventured to lift his eyes, she was no longer there. She was in the bedchamber, half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, repeating over and over again with frantic sobbing, “Shame, shame!” He leaned rather flabbily in the doorway and jerked his shoulder in her direction⁠—had he been closer, the gesture would have been a nudge in the ribs. “Hey, Tonerl⁠—don’t be a fool, you know. Say⁠—you know Franz, the Ramsau Franz, he had his name-day today, and we’re all half-seas over.” Strong alcoholic fumes pervaded the room as he spoke; and they brought Frau Permaneder’s excitement to a climax. She sobbed no more, she was no longer weak and faint. Carried away by frenzy, incapable of measuring her words, she poured out her disgust, her abhorrence, her complete and utter contempt and loathing of him and all his ways. Herr Permaneder did not take it meekly. His head was hot; for he had treated his friend Franz not only to many beers, but to “champagne wine” as well. He answered and answered wildly⁠—the quarrel reached a height far greater than the one that had signalized Herr Permaneder’s retirement into private life, and it ended in Frau Antonie gathering her clothes together and withdrawing into the living-room for the night. And at the end he had flung at her a word⁠—a word which she would not repeat⁠—a word that should never pass her lips⁠—a word.⁠ ⁠… + 

This was the major content of the confession which Frau Permaneder had sobbed into the folds of her mother’s gown. But the “word,” the word that in that fearful night had sunk into her very depths⁠—no, she would not repeat it; no, she would not, she asseverated⁠—although her mother had not in the least pressed her to do so, but only nodded her head, slowly, almost imperceptibly, as she looked down on Tony’s lovely ash-blond hair. + 

“Yes, yes,” she said; “this is very sad, Tony. And I understand it all, my dear little one, because I am not only your Mamma, but I am a woman like you as well. I see now how fully your grief is justified, and how completely your husband, in a moment of weakness, forgot what he owed to you and⁠—” + 

“In a moment⁠—?” cried Tony. She sprang up. She made two steps backward and feverishly dried her eyes. “A moment, Mamma! He forgot what he owed to me and to our name? He never knew it, from the very beginning! A man that quietly sits down with his wife’s dowry⁠—a man without ambition or energy or willpower! A man that has some kind of thick soup made out of hops in his veins instead of blood⁠—and I verily believe he has! And to let himself down to such common doings as this with Babette⁠—and when I reproached him with his good-for-nothingness, to answer with a word that⁠—a word⁠—” + 

And, arrived once more at the word, the word she would not repeat, quite suddenly she took a step forward and said, in a completely altered, a quieter, milder, interested tone: “How perfectly sweet! Where did you get that, Mamma?” She motioned with her chin toward a little receptacle, a charming basket-work stand woven out of reeds and decorated with ribbon bows, in which the Frau Consul kept her fancywork. + 

“I bought it, some time ago,” answered the old lady. “I needed it.” + 

“Very smart,” Tony said, looking at it with her head on one side. The Frau Consul looked at it too, but without seeing it, for she was in deep thought. + 

“Now, my dear daughter,” she said at last, putting out her hand again, “however things are, you are here, and welcome a hundred times to your old home. We can talk everything over when we are calmer. Take your things off in your room and make yourself comfortable. Ida!” she called into the dining-room, lifting her voice, “lay a place for Madame Permaneder, and one for Erica, my dear.” + 

X + 

Tony returned to her bedchamber after dinner. During the meal her Mother had told her that Thomas was aware of her expected arrival; and she did not seem particularly anxious to meet him. + 

The Consul came at six o’clock. He went into the landscape-room and had a long talk with his Mother. + 

“How is she?” he asked. “How does she seem?” + 

“Oh, Tom, I am afraid she is very determined. She is terribly wrought up. And this word⁠—if I only knew what it was he said⁠—” + 

“I will go up and see her.” + 

“Yes, do, Tom. But knock softly, so as not to startle her, and be very calm, will you? Her nerves are upset. That is the trouble she has with her digestion⁠—she has eaten nothing. Do talk quietly with her.” + 

He went up quickly, skipping a step in his usual way. He was thinking, and twisting the ends of his moustache, but as he knocked his face cleared⁠—he was resolved to handle the situation as long as possible with humour. + 

A suffering voice said “Come in,” and he opened the door, to find Frau Permaneder lying on the bed fully dressed. The bed curtains were flung back, the down quilt was underneath her back, and a medicine bottle stood on the night-table. She turned round a little and propped her head on her hand, looking at him with her pouting smile. He made a deep bow and spread out his hands in a solemn gesture. + 

“Well, dear lady! To what are we indebted for the honour of a visit from this personage from the royal city of⁠—?” + 

“Oh, give me a kiss, Tom,” she said, sat up to offer him her cheek, and then sank back again. “Well, how are you, my dear boy? Quite unchanged, I see, since I saw you in Munich.” + 

“You can’t tell much about it with the blinds down, my dear. And you ought not to steal my thunder like that, either. It is more suitable for me to say⁠—” he held her hand in his, and at the same time drew up a chair beside the bed⁠—“as I so often have, that you and Tilda⁠—” + 

“Oh, for shame, Tom!⁠—How is Tilda?” + 

“Well, of course. Madame Krauseminz sees she doesn’t starve. Which doesn’t prevent her eating for the week ahead when she comes here on Thursday.” + 

She laughed very heartily⁠—as she had not for a long time back, in fact. Then she broke off with a sigh, and asked “And how is business?” + 

“Oh, we get on. Mustn’t complain.” + 

“Thank goodness, here everything is as it should be. Oh, Tom, I don’t feel much like chatting pleasantly about trifles!” + 

“Pity. One should preserve one’s sense of humour, quand même.” + 

“All that is at an end, Tom.⁠—You know all?” + 

“ ‘You know all’!” he repeated. He dropped her hand and pushed back his chair. “Goodness gracious, how that sounds! ‘All’! What-all lies in that ‘all’? ‘My love and grief I gave thee,’ eh? No, listen!” + 

She was silent. She swept him with an astonished and deeply offended glance. + 

“Yes, I expected that look,” he said, “for without that look you would not be here. But, dear Tony, let me take the thing as much too lightly as you take it too seriously. You will see we shall complement each other very nicely⁠—” + 

“Too seriously, Thomas? I take it too seriously?” + 

“Yes.⁠—For heaven’s sake, don’t let’s make a tragedy of it! Let us take it in a lower key, not with ‘all is at an end’ and ‘your unhappy Antonie.’ Don’t misunderstand me, Tony. You well know that no one can be gladder than I that you have come. I have long wished you would come to us on a visit by yourself, without your husband, so that we could be en famille together once more. But to come now, like this⁠—my dear child, I beg your pardon, but it was⁠—foolish. Yes⁠—let me finish! Permaneder has certainly behaved very badly, as I will give him to understand pretty clearly⁠—don’t be afraid of that⁠—” + 

“As to how he has behaved himself, Thomas,” she interrupted him, raising herself up to lay a hand upon her breast, “as far as that goes, I have already given him to understand that⁠—and not only ‘given him to understand,’ I can tell you! I am convinced that further discussion with that man is entirely out of place.” And she let herself fall back again and looked sternly and fixedly at the ceiling. + 

He bowed, as if under the weight of her words, and kept on looking down at his knee and smiling. + 

“Well, then, I won’t send him a stiff letter. It is just as you say. In the end it is after all your affair, and it is quite enough if you put him in his place⁠—it is your duty as his wife. After all, there are some extenuating circumstances. There was a birthday celebration, and he came home a little bit exalted, so to speak, and was guilty of a false step, an unseemly blunder⁠—” + 

“Thomas,” said she, “I do not understand you. I do not understand your tone. You⁠—a man with your principles! But you did not see him. You did not see how drunk he looked⁠—” + 

“He looked ridiculous enough, I’m sure. But that is it, Tony. You will not see how comic it was⁠—but probably that is the fault of your bad digestion. You caught your husband in a moment of weakness, and you have seen him make himself look ridiculous. But that ought not to outrage you to such an extent. It ought to amuse you a little, perhaps, but bring you closer together as human beings. I will say that I don’t mean you could have just let it pass with a laugh and said nothing about it⁠—not at all. You left home; that was a demonstration of a rather extreme kind, perhaps⁠—a bit too severe⁠—but, after all, he deserved it. I imagine he is feeling pretty down in the mouth. I only mean that you must get to take the thing differently⁠—not so insulted⁠—a little more politic point of view. We are just between ourselves. Let me tell you something, Tony. In any marriage, the important thing is, on which side the moral ascendency lies. Understand? Your husband has laid himself open, there is no doubt of that. He compromised himself and made a laughable spectacle⁠—laughable, precisely because what he did was actually so harmless, so impossible to take seriously. But, after all, his dignity is impaired⁠—and the moral advantage has passed over to you. If you know how to use it wisely, your happiness is assured. If you go back, say in a couple of weeks⁠—certainly I must insist on keeping you for ourselves as long as that⁠—if you go back to Munich in a couple of weeks, you will see⁠—” + 

“I will not go back to Munich, Thomas.” + 

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, putting his hand to his ear and screwing up his face as he bent forward. + 

She was lying on her back with her head sunk in the pillow, so that her chin stood out with an effect of severity. “Never,” she said. And she gave a long, audible outward breath and cleared her throat, also at length and deliberately. It was like a dry cough, which had of late become almost a habit with her, and had probably to do with her digestive trouble. There followed a pause. + 

“Tony,” he said suddenly, getting up and slapping his hand on the arm of his chair, “you aren’t going to make a scandal!” + 

She gave a side-glance and saw him all pale, with the muscles standing out on his temples. Her position was no longer tenable. She bestirred herself and, to hide the fear she really felt of him, grew angry in her turn. She sat up quickly and put her feet to the floor. With glowing cheeks and a frowning brow, making hasty motions of the head and hands, she began: “Scandal, Thomas! You want to tell me not to make a scandal, when I have been insulted, and people spit in my face? Is that worthy of a brother, you will permit me to ask? Circumspection, tact⁠—they are very well in their place. But there are limits, Tom⁠—I know just as much of life as you do, and I tell you there is a point where the care for appearances leaves off, and cowardice begins! I am astonished that such a stupid goose as I am have to tell you this⁠—yes, I am a stupid goose, and I should not be surprised if Permaneder never loved me at all, for I am an ugly old woman, very likely, and Babette is certainly prettier than I am! But did that give him a right to forget the respect he owed to my family, and my upbringing, and all my feelings? You did not see the way he forgot himself, Tom; and since you did not see it, you cannot understand, for I can never tell you how disgusting he was. You did not hear the word that he called after me, your sister, when I took my things and went out of the room, to sleep on the sofa in the living-room. But I heard it, and it was a word that⁠—a word⁠—Oh, it was that word, let me tell you, Thomas, that caused me, to spend the whole night packing my trunk, to wake Erica early in the morning, and to leave the place, rather than to remain in the neighbourhood of a man who could utter such words. And to such a man, as I said before, I will never, never return, not so long as I have any self-respect, or care in the least what becomes of me in my life on this earth.” + 

“And will you now have the goodness, to tell me what this cursed word was? Yes or no?” + 

“Never, Thomas! Never would I permit that word to cross my lips. I know too well what I owe to you and to myself within these walls.” + 

“Then it’s no use talking with you!” + 

“That may easily be. I am sure I do not want to discuss it any further.” + 

“What do you expect to do? Get a divorce?” + 

“Yes, Tom; such is my firm determination. I feel that I owe it to myself, my child, and my family.” + 

“That is all nonsense, of course,” he said in a dispassionate tone. He turned on his heel and moved away, as if his words had settled the matter. “It takes two to make a divorce, my child. Do you think Permaneder will just say yes and thank you kindly? The idea is absurd.” + 

“Oh, you can leave that to me,” she said, quite undismayed. “You mean he will refuse on account of the seventeen thousand marks current. But Grünlich wasn’t willing, either, and they made him. There are ways and means, I’m sure. I’ll go to Dr. Gieseke. He is Christian’s friend, and he will help me. Oh, yes, of course, I know it was not the same thing then. It was ‘incapacity of the husband to provide for his family.’ You see, I know my way about in these affairs. Dear me, you act as if this were the first time in my life that I got a divorce! But even so, Tom. Perhaps there is nothing that applies to this case. Perhaps it is impossible⁠—you may be right. But it is all the same; my resolve is fixed. Let him keep the money. There are higher things in life. He will never see me again, either way.” + 

She coughed again. She had left the bed and seated herself in an easy-chair, resting one elbow on its arm. Her chin was so deeply buried in her hand that her four bent fingers clutched her under lip. She sat with her body turned to the right, staring with red, excited eyes out of the window. + 

The Consul walked up and down, sighed, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. He paused in front of her, fairly wringing his hands. + 

“You are a child, Tony, a child,” said he in a discouraged, almost pleading tone. “Every word you have spoken is the most utter childish nonsense. Will you make an effort, now, if I beg you, to think about the thing for just one minute like a grown woman? Don’t you see that you are acting as if something very serious and dreadful had happened to you⁠—as if your husband had cruelly betrayed you and heaped insults on you before all the world? Do try to realize that nothing of the sort has happened! Not a single soul in the world knows anything about that silly affair that happened at the top of your staircase in Kaufinger Street. Your dignity, and ours, will suffer no slightest diminution if you go calmly and composedly back to Permaneder⁠—of course, with your nose in the air! But, on the other hand, if you don’t go back, if you give this nonsense so much importance as to make a scandal out of it, then you will be wounding our dignity indeed.” + 

She jerked her chin out of her hand and stared him in the face. + 

“That’s enough, Thomas Buddenbrook. Be quiet now; it’s my turn. Listen. So you think there is no shame and no scandal so long as people don’t get to hear it? Ah, no! The shame that gnaws at us secretly and eats away our self-respect⁠—that is far, far worse. Are we Buddenbrooks the sort of people to be satisfied if everything looks ‘tip-top,’ as you say here, on the outside, no matter how much mortification we have to choke down, inside our four walls? I cannot help feeling astonished at you, Tom. Think of our Father and how he would act today⁠—and then judge as he would! No, no! Clean and open dealings must be the rule. Why, you can open your books any day, for all the world to see, and say, ‘Here they are, look at them.’ We should all of us be just the same. I know how God has made me. I am not afraid. Let Julchen Möllendorpf pass me in the street and not speak, if she wants to. Let Pfiffi Buddenbrook sit here on Thursday afternoons and shake all over with spite, and say, ‘Well, that is the second time! But, of course, both times the men were to blame!’ I feel so far above all that now, Thomas⁠—farther than I can tell you! I know I have done what I thought was right. But if I am to be so afraid of Julchen Möllendorpf and Pfiffi Buddenbrook as to swallow down all sorts of insults and let myself be cursed out in a drunken dialect that isn’t even grammar⁠—to stop with a man in a town where I have to get used to that kind of language and the kind of scenes I saw that night at the top of the stairs⁠—where I have to forget my origin and my upbringing and everything that I am, and learn to disown it altogether in order to act as if I were satisfied and happy⁠—that is what I call undignified⁠—that is what I call scandalous, I tell you!” + 

She broke off, buried her chin once more in her hand, and stared out of the window. He stood before her, his weight on one leg, his hands in his trousers pockets. His eyes rested on her unseeing, for he was in deep thought, and slowly moving his head from side to side. + 

“Tony,” he said. “You’re telling the truth. I knew it all along; but you betrayed yourself just now. It is not the man at all. It is the place. It isn’t this other idiotic business⁠—it is the whole thing all together. You couldn’t get used to it. Tell the truth.” + 

“Thomas,” she cried, “it is the truth!” She sprang up as she spoke, and pointed straight into his face with her outstretched hand. Her own face was red. She stood there in a warlike pose, one hand grasping the chair, gesticulating with the other, and made a long, agitated, passionate speech that welled up in a resistless tide. The Consul stared at her amazed. Scarcely would she pause to draw breath, when new words would come gushing and bubbling forth. Yes, she found words for everything; she gave full expression to all the accumulated disgust of her Munich years. Unassorted, confused, she poured it all out, one thing after another; she kept nothing back. It was like the bursting of a dam⁠—an assertion of desperate integrity; something elemental, a force of nature, that brooked no restraint. + 

“It is the truth!” she cried. “Say it again, Thomas! Oh, I can tell you plainly, I am no stupid goose any longer; I know what I have to expect. I don’t faint away at my time of life, to hear that dirty work goes on now and then. I’ve known people like Teary Trieschke, and I was married to Bendix Grünlich, and I know the dissipated creatures there are here in this town. I am no country innocent, I tell you; and the affair with Babette wouldn’t have made me go off the handle like that, just by itself. No, Thomas, the thing was that it filled the cup to overflowing⁠—and that didn’t take much, for it was full already, and had been for a long time⁠—a long time. It would have taken very little to make it run over. And then this happened! The knowledge that I could not depend on Permaneder even in that way⁠—that put the top on everything. It knocked the bottom out of the cask. It brought to a head all at once my intention to get away from Munich, that had been slowly growing in my mind a long time before that, Tom; for I cannot live down there⁠—I swear it before God and all His heavenly hosts! How wretched I have been, Thomas, you can never know. When you were there on a visit, I concealed everything, for I am a tactful woman and do not burden others with my complainings, nor wear my heart on my sleeve on a weekday. I have always been rather reserved. But I have suffered, Tom, suffered with my entire being⁠—with my whole personality, so to speak. Like a plant, a flower that has been transplanted into a foreign soil⁠—if I may make such a comparison. You will probably find it a most unsuitable one, for I am really an ugly old woman⁠—but I could not be planted in a more foreign soil than that, and I would just as lief go and live in Turkey! Oh, we should never be transplanted, we northern folk! We should stick to the shore of our own bay; we can only really thrive upon our native soil! You all used to laugh at my taste for the nobility. Yes, in these years I have often thought of what somebody said to me once, in times gone by. A very clever man. ‘Your sympathies are with the nobility,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell you why? Because you yourself belong to the nobility. Your father is a great gentleman, and you are a princess. A gulf lies between you and the rest of us who do not belong to the governing classes.’ Yes, Tom. We feel like the nobility, and we realize the difference; we should never try to live where we are not known, where no one understands our worth, for we shall have nothing but chagrin, and be laughed at for our arrogance. Yes, they all found me ridiculously arrogant. They did not say so, but I felt it every minute, and that made me suffer, too. Do you think I feel arrogant, Tom⁠—in a place where they eat cake with a knife, and the very princes speak bad grammar, and if a gentleman picks up a lady’s fan it is supposed to be a love-affair. Get used to it? To people without dignity, morals, energy, ambition, self-respect, or good manners, lazy and frivolous, stupid and shallow at the same time?⁠—no, never, never, as long as I am a Buddenbrook and your sister! Eva Ewers managed it⁠—but Eva is not a Buddenbrook, and she has a husband that amounts to something. It was different with me. You think back, Tom, from the very beginning: I come from a home where people work and get things accomplished and have a purpose in life, and I go down there to Permaneder⁠—and he sits himself down with my dowry⁠—Oh, that was genuine enough, that was characteristic⁠—but it was the only good thing there was about it! And then? I was going to have a baby; that would have made everything up to me. And what happens? It dies. I don’t blame Permaneder for that, of course; I don’t mean that. God forbid. He did everything he could⁠—and he didn’t go to the café for several days. But, after all, it belonged to the same thing. It made me no happier, as you can well believe. But I didn’t give in, and I didn’t grumble. I was alone, and misunderstood, and pointed at for being arrogant; but I said to myself: ‘You yielded him your consent for life. He is lumpy and lazy, and he caused you a cruel disappointment. But his heart is pure, and he means well.’ And then I had to bear the sight of him in that last unspeakable minute. And I said to myself: ‘He understands you no better and respects you no more and no less than the others do, and he calls you names that one of our workmen up here wouldn’t throw at a dog!’ I knew then that nothing bound me to him any more, and that it was an indignity for me to stay. When I was driving from the station this afternoon, I passed Nielsen the porter, and he took off his hat and made me a deep bow, and I bowed back to him⁠—not arrogantly, not a bit⁠—I waved my hand, just the way Father used to. And here I am. You can do what you like: you can harness up all your workhorses⁠—but you can never drag me back to Munich again. And tomorrow I go to Gieseke!” + 

Thus she spoke; and, finishing, sank back exhausted in her chair and stared again out of the window. + 

Tom was alarmed, shaken, stupefied. He stood before her and found no words. He raised his arms up shoulder-high, drawing a long breath. Then he let them fall against his thighs. + 

“Well, that’s an end of it,” he said. His voice was calm, and he turned and went toward the door. + 

Her face wore now the same expression, the same half-pouting, half-injured smile, as when he entered. + 

“Tom?” she said, with a rising inflection. “Are you vexed with me?” + 

He held the oval doorknob in one hand and made a gesture of weary protest with the other. “Oh, no. Not at all.” + 

She put out her hand and tipped her head on one side. “Come here, Tom. Your poor sister has had a hard time. Life is hard on her. She has much to bear. And at this minute she has nobody, in all the world⁠—” + 

He came back; he took her hand; but wearily, indifferently, not looking at her face. Suddenly her lip began to quiver. + 

“You must go on alone now,” she said. “There’s nothing good to be looked for from Christian, and I am finished. Failed. Gone to pieces. I can do no more. I am a poor, useless woman, dependent on you all for my living. I could never have dreamed, Tom, that I should be no help to you at all. Now you stand quite alone, and upon you it depends to keep up the honour and dignity of the family. May God help you in the task.” + 

Two large, clear, childish tears rolled down over her cheeks, which were beginning to show, very faintly, the first signs of age. + 

XI + 

Tony lost no time. She went resolutely about her affair. In the hope of quieting her, of bringing her slowly to a different frame of mind, the Consul said but little. He asked only one thing: that she should be very quiet and stop entirely in the house⁠—and Erica as well. Perhaps it would blow over. The town did not need to know. The family Thursday afternoon was put off on some pretext. + 

But on the very next day she wrote to Dr. Gieseke and summoned him to Meng Street. She received him alone, in the middle corridor room on the first floor, where a fire was laid, and she had arranged a heavy table with ink and writing materials and a quantity of foolscap paper from the office. They sat down in two easy-chairs. + 

“Doctor Gieseke,” said Tony. She folded her arms, flung back her head, and looked at the ceiling while she spoke. “You are a man of experience, both professionally and personally. I can speak openly with you.” And thereupon she revealed to him the whole story about Babette and what had happened in her sleeping-chamber. Dr. Gieseke regretted being obliged to explain to her that neither the affair on the stairs nor the insult she had undoubtedly received, the precise nature of which she hesitated to divulge, was sufficient ground for a divorce. + 

“Very good,” she said. “Thank you.” + 

And then, at her request, he gave an exposition of the existing legal grounds for divorce, and an even longer discourse after it, which had for its subject-matter the law touching dowry rights. She listened with open mind and strained attention; and then, with cordial thanks, dismissed Dr. Gieseke for the time being. + 

She went downstairs and demanded audience of her brother in his private office. + 

“Thomas,” she said, “please write to the man at once⁠—I do not like to mention his name. As far as the money goes, I am perfectly informed on that subject. Let him speak. Me he shall never see again, whatever he decides. If he agrees to a divorce, we will ask him to give an accounting and restore my dos. If he refuses, we need not be discouraged. For, as you probably know, Permaneder’s right to my dos, is, legally speaking a property right. We grant that. But on the other hand, thank goodness, I have certain material rights on my side⁠—” + 

The Consul walked up and down with his hands behind his back, his shoulders twitching nervously. Tony’s face, as she uttered the word dos was too unutterably self-satisfied! + 

He had no time. Heaven knew he had no time. Let her have patience, and wait, and bethink herself a hundred times. His nearest duty was a journey to Hamburg⁠—indeed, he must go the very next day, for the purpose of a personal interview with Christian. Christian had written for help, for money which would have to come out of the Frau Consul’s inheritance. His business was in frightful condition; he was in constant difficulties. Yet he seemed to amuse himself royally and went everywhere, to theatres, restaurants, and concert halls. To judge from the debts now coming to light, which he had been able to pile up on the credit of his family name, he had been living far, far beyond his means. And they knew in Meng Street, and at the club⁠—yes, the whole town knew⁠—who was responsible. It was a certain female, a certain Aline Puvogel, who lived alone with her two pretty children. Christian was not the only Hamburg business man who possessed her favours and spent money on her. + 

In short, Tony’s intentions in the matter of her divorce were not the only dark spot in the Consul’s sky; and the journey to Hamburg was pressing. Besides, it was altogether likely that they would hear from Herr Permaneder. + 

The Consul went to Hamburg, and came back angry and depressed. No word had come from Munich, and he felt obliged to take the first step. He wrote; wrote rather coldly, with curt condescension, to this effect: Antonie, during her life with Permaneder, had been subjected to great disappointments⁠—that would not be denied. Without going into detail, it was evident that she could never find happiness in this marriage. Her wish that it should be dissolved must be justified, to the mind of any reasonable person; and her determination not to return to Munich was entirely unshakable. And he put the question as to what were Herr Permaneder’s feelings in view of the facts which he had just stated. + 

There were more days of suspense. And then came Herr Permaneder’s reply. + 

He answered as no one had expected him to answer⁠—not Dr. Gieseke, nor the Frau Consul, not Thomas, nor Antonie herself. He agreed, quite simply, to a divorce. + 

He wrote that he deeply regretted what had happened, but that he respected Antonie’s wishes, as he saw that he and she had “never hit it off.” If it were true that she had suffered during those years through him, he begged her to forget and forgive. As he would probably never see her and Erica again, he sent them both his hearty good-wishes for all happiness on this earth. And he signed himself, Alois Permaneder. In a postscript he offered to make immediate restitution of the dowry. He had enough without it to lead a life free from care. He did not require to have notice given, for business there was none to wind up, the house belonged to him, and the money was ready any time. + 

Tony felt a slight twinge of shame, and was almost inclined, for the first time, to admit that Herr Permaneder’s indifference to money matters might have something good about it. + 

Now it was Dr. Gieseke’s turn again. He communicated with the husband, and a plea of “mutual incompatibility” was set up as ground for the divorce. The hearing began⁠—Tony’s second divorce case. She talked about it night and day, and the Consul lost his temper several times. Tony was in no state to share his feelings. She was entirely taken up with words like “tangibilities,” “improvabilities,” “accessions,” “productivity,” “dowry rights,” and the like, which she used in season and out of season, with marvellous fluency, her shoulders slightly raised. One point in Dr. Gieseke’s long disquisitions had made a great impression on her: it had to do with “treasure” found in any piece of property that has constituted part of a dowry, which was to be regarded as a component part of the dowry, to be liquidated if the marriage came to an end. About this “treasure”⁠—which was, of course, nonexistent⁠—she talked to every soul she knew: Ida Jungmann, Uncle Justus, poor Clothilde, the Broad Street Buddenbrooks⁠—and they, when they heard how matters stood, just folded their hands in their laps and looked at each other in speechless joy that this satisfaction, too, had been vouchsafed them. Therese Weichbrodt was told of it⁠—Erica had gone to stay at the pension again⁠—and Madame Kethelsen too, though this last, for more than one reason, understood not a single word. + 

Then came the day when the divorce was pronounced; when the last formalities were gone through, and Tony asked Thomas for the family papers and set down this last event with her own hand. Yes, it was done. All that remained was to get used to it. + 

She did it gallantly. She bore, with unscathed dignity, the tiny dagger-thrusts of the ladies from Broad Street; she met the Hagenströms and Möllendorpfs on the street and looked with chilling indifference straight over their heads; and she quite gave up going into society⁠—the more easily that it had for some years past forsaken her Mother’s house for her brother’s. She had her own immediate family, the Frau Consul, Tom, and Gerda; she had Ida Jungmann and her motherly friend Sesemi Weichbrodt; and she had Erica, upon whose future she probably built her own last secret hopes, and upon whose aristocratic upbringing she expended much care and thought. + 

Thus she lived, and thus time went on. + 

Later, in some way that was never quite clear, there came to certain members of the family knowledge of that “word,” the desperate word which had escaped from Herr Permaneder on that never-to-be-forgotten night. + 

What was it, then, that he had said? + 

“Go to the devil, you filthy sprat-eating slut!” + 

And thus Tony Buddenbrook’s second marriage came to an end. + 