Part + 

VIII + 

I + 

When Herr Hugo Weinschenk⁠—in his buttoned-up frock-coat, with his drooping lower lip and his narrow black moustaches, which grew, in the most masculine way imaginable, right into the corners of his mouth; with both his fists held out in front of him, and making little motions with his elbows at about the height of his waist⁠—when Herr Hugo Weinschenk, now for some time Director of the City Fire Insurance Company, crossed the great entry in Meng Street and passed, with a swinging, pompous stride, from his front to his back office, he gave an impressive impersonation of an energetic and prosperous man. + 

And Erica Grünlich, on the other hand, was now twenty years old: a tall, blooming girl, fresh-coloured and pretty, full of health and strength. If chance took her up or down the stairs just as Herr Weinschenk passed that way⁠—and chance did this not seldom⁠—the Director took off his top-hat, displaying his short black hair, which was already greying at the temples, minced rather more than ever at the waist of his frock-coat, and greeted the young girl with an admiring glance from his bold and roving brown eye. Whereat Erica ran away, sat down somewhere in a window, and wept for hours out of sheer helpless confusion. + 

Fräulein Grünlich had grown up under Therese Weichbrodt’s care and correction: her thoughts did not fly far afield. She wept over Herr Weinschenk’s top-hat, the way he raised his eyebrows at sight of her and let them fall; over his regal bearing and his balancing fists. Her mother, Frau Permaneder, saw further. + 

Her daughter’s future had troubled her for years; for Erica was at a disadvantage compared with other young girls of her age. Frau Permaneder not only did not go into society, she was actually at war with it. The conviction that the “best people” thought slightingly of her because of her two divorces, had become almost a fixed idea; and she read contempt and aversion where probably there was only indifference. Consul Hermann Hagenström, for instance, simple and liberal-minded man that he was, would very likely have been perfectly glad to greet her on the street; his money had only increased his joviality and good nature. But she stared, with her head flung back, past his “goose-liver-paté” face, which, to use her own strong language, she “hated like the plague”⁠—and her look, of course, distinctly forbade him. So Erica grew up outside her uncle’s social circle; she frequented no balls, and had small chance of meeting eligible young gentlemen. + 

Yet it was Frau Antonie’s most ardent hope, especially after she herself had “failed in business,” as she said, that her daughter might realize her own unfulfilled dream of a happy and advantageous marriage, which should redound to the glory of the family and sink the mother’s failure in final oblivion. Tony longed for this beyond everything, and chiefly now for her brother’s sake, who had latterly shown so little optimism, as a sign to him that the luck of the family was not yet lost, that they were by no means “at the end of their rope.” Her second dowry, the eighteen thousand thaler so magnanimously returned by Herr Permaneder, lay waiting for Erica; and directly Frau Antonie’s practiced glance marked the budding tenderness between her daughter and the Director, she began to trouble Heaven with a prayer that Herr Weinschenk might be led to visit them. + 

He was. He appeared in the first storey, where he was received by the three ladies, mother, daughter, and granddaughter, talked for ten minutes, and promised to return another day for coffee and more leisurely conversation. + 

This too came to pass, and the acquaintance progressed. The Director was a Silesian by birth. His old father, in fact, still lived in Silesia; but the family seemed not to come into consideration, Hugo being, evidently, a “self-made man.” He had the self-consciousness of such men: a not quite native, rather insecure, mistrustful, exaggerated air. His grammar was not perfect, and his conversation was distinctly clumsy. And his countrified frock-coat had shiny spots; his cuffs, with large jet cuff-buttons, were not quite fresh; and the nail on the middle finger of his left hand had been crushed in some accident, and was shrivelled and blackened. The impression, on the whole, was rather unpleasing; yet it did not prevent Hugo Weinschenk from being a highly worthy young man, industrious and energetic, with a yearly salary of twelve thousand marks current; nor from being, in Erica Grünlich’s eyes, handsome to boot. + 

Frau Permaneder quickly looked him over and summed him up. She talked freely with her mother and the Senator. It was clear to her that here was a case of two interests meeting and complementing each other. Director Weinschenk was, like Erica, devoid of every social connection: the two were thus, in a manner, marked out for each other⁠—it was plainly the hand of God himself. If the Director, who was nearing the forties, his hair already sprinkled with grey, desired to found a family appropriate to his station and connections, here was an opening for him into one of the best circles in town, calculated to advance him in his calling and consolidate his position. As for Erica’s welfare, Frau Permaneder could feel confident that at least her own lot would be out of the question. Herr Weinschenk had not the faintest resemblance to Herr Permaneder; and he was differentiated from Bendix Grünlich by his position as an old-established official with a fixed salary⁠—which, of course, did not preclude a further career. + 

In a word, much good will was shown on both sides. Herr Weinschenk’s visits followed each other in quick succession, and by January⁠—January of the year 1867⁠—he permitted himself to make a brief and manly offer for Erica Grünlich’s hand. + 

From now on he belonged to the family. He came on children’s day, and was received civilly by the relatives of his betrothed. He must soon have seen that he did not fit in very well; but he concealed the fact under an increased assurance of manner, while the Frau Consul, Uncle Justus, and the Senator⁠—though hardly the Broad Street Buddenbrooks⁠—practised a tactful complaisance toward the socially awkward, hardworking official. + 

And tact was needed. For pauses would come at the family table, when Director Weinschenk tried to make conversation by asking if “orange marmalade” was a “pudden”; when he gave out the opinion that Romeo and Juliet was a piece by Schiller; when his manner with Erica’s cheek or arm became too roguish. He uttered his views frankly and cheerfully, rubbing his hands like a man whose mind is free from care, and leaning back sidewise against the arm of his chair. Someone always needed to fill in the pause by a sprightly or diverting remark. + 

He got on best with the Senator, who knew how to steer a safe course between politics and business. His relations with Gerda Buddenbrook were hopeless. This lady’s personality put him off to such a degree that he was incapable of finding anything to talk about with her for two minutes on end. The fact that she played the violin made a strong impression upon him; and he finally confined himself, on each Thursday afternoon encounter, to the jovial enquiry, “Well, how’s the fiddle?” After the third time, however, the Frau Senator refrained from reply. + 

Christian, on the other hand, used to look at his new relative down his nose, and the next day imitate him and his conversation with full details. The second son of the deceased Consul Buddenbrook had been relieved of his rheumatism in Öynhausen; but a certain stiffness of the joints was left, as well as the periodic misery in the left side, where all the nerves were too short, and sundry other ills to which he was heir, as difficulty in breathing and swallowing, irregularity of the heart action, and a tendency to paralysis⁠—or at least to a fear of it. He did not look like a man at the end of the thirties. His head was entirely bald except for vestiges of reddish hair at the back of the neck and on the temples; and his small round roving eyes lay deeper than ever in their sockets. And his great bony nose and his lean, sallow cheeks were startlingly prominent above his heavy drooping red moustaches. His trousers, of beautiful and lasting English stuff, flapped about his crooked emaciated legs. + 

He had come back once more to his mother’s house, and had a room on the corridor of the first storey. But he spent more of his time at the club than in Meng Street, for life there was not made any too pleasant for him. Riekchen Severin, Ida Jungmann’s successor, who now reigned over the Frau Consul’s household and managed the servants, had a peasant’s instinct for hard facts. She was a thickset country-bred creature, with coarse lips and fat red cheeks. She perceived directly that it was not worth while to put herself out for this idle storyteller, who was silly and ill by turns, whom his brother, the Senator⁠—the real head of the family⁠—ignored with lifted eyebrows. So she quite calmly neglected Christian’s wants. “Gracious, Herr Buddenbrook,” she would say, “you needn’t think as I’ve got time for the likes of you!” Christian would look at her with his nose all wrinkled up, as if to say “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” and go his stiff-kneed way. + 

“Do you think,” he said to Tony, “that I have a candle to go to bed by? Very seldom. I generally take a match.” The sum his mother could allow him was small. “Hard times,” he would say. “Yes, things were different once. Why, what do you suppose? Sometimes I’ve had to borrow money for tooth-powder!” + 

“Christian!” cried Frau Permaneder. “How undignified! And going to bed with a match!” She was shocked and outraged in her deepest sensibilities⁠—but that did not mend matters. + 

The tooth-powder money Christian borrowed from his old friend Andreas Gieseke, Doctor of Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence. He was fortunate in this friendship, and it did him credit; for Dr. Gieseke, though as much of a rake as Christian, knew how to keep his dignity. He had been elected Senator the preceding winter, for Dr. Överdieck had sunk gently to his long rest, and Dr. Langhals sat in his place. His elevation did not affect Andreas Gieseke’s mode of life. Since his marriage with Fräulein Huneus, he had acquired a spacious house in the centre of the town; but as everybody knew, he also owned a certain comfortable little vine-clad villa in the suburb of St. Gertrude, which was charmingly furnished, and occupied quite alone by a still young and uncommonly pretty person of unknown origin. Above the house door, in ornamental gilt lettering, was the word “Quisisana,” by which name the retired little dwelling was known throughout the town, where they pronounced it with a very soft s and a very broad a. Christian Buddenbrook, as Senator Gieseke’s best friend, had obtained entry into Quisisana, and been successful there, as formerly with Aline Puvogel in Hamburg, and on other occasions in London, Valparaiso, and sundry other parts of the world. He “told a few stories,” and was “a little friendly”; and now he visited the little vine-clad house on the same footing as Senator Gieseke himself. Whether this happened with the latter’s knowledge and consent, is of course doubtful. What is certain is, that Christian found there, without money and without price, the same friendly relaxation as Dr. Gieseke, who, however, had to pay for the same with his wife’s money. + 

A short time after the betrothal of Hugo Weinschenk and Erica Grünlich, the Director proposed to his relative that he should enter the Insurance office; and Christian actually worked for two weeks in the service of the Company. But the misery in his side began to get worse, and his other, indefinable ills as well; and the Director proved to be a domineering superior, who did not hesitate, on the occasion of a little misunderstanding, to call his relative a booby. So Christian felt constrained to leave this post too. + 

Madame Permaneder, at this period of the family’s history, was in such a joyful mood that her happiness found vent in shrewd observations about life: how, when all was said and done, it had its good side. Truly, she bloomed anew in these weeks; and their invigorating activity, the manifold plans, the search for suitable quarters, and the feverish preoccupation with furnishings brought back with such force the memories of her first betrothal that she could not but feel young again⁠—young and boundlessly hopeful. Much of the graceful high spirits of girlhood returned to her ways, and movements; indeed, she profaned the mood of one entire Jerusalem evening by such uncontrollable hilarity that even Lea Gerhardt let the book of her ancestor fall in her lap and stared about the room with the great, innocent, startled eyes of the deaf. + 

Erica was not to be parted from her mother. The Director agreed⁠—nay, it was even his wish⁠—that Frau Antonie should live with the Weinschenks, at least at first, and help the inexperienced Erica with her housekeeping. And it was precisely this which called up in her the most priceless feeling, as though no Bendix Grünlich or Alois Permaneder had ever existed, and all the trials, disappointments, and sufferings of her life were as nothing, and she might begin anew and with fresh hopes. She bade Erica be grateful to God, who bestowed upon her the one man of her desire, whereas the mother had been obliged to offer up her first and dearest choice on the altar of duty and reason. It was Erica’s name which, with a hand trembling with joy, she inscribed in the family book next the Director’s. But she, Tony Buddenbrook, was the real bride. It was she who might once more ransack furniture and upholstery shops and test hangings and carpets with a practised hand; she who once more found and rented a truly “elegant” apartment. It was she who was once more to leave the pious and roomy parental mansion and cease to be a divorced wife; she who might once more lift her head and begin a new life, calculated to arouse general remark and enhance the prestige of the family. Even⁠—was it a dream?⁠—dressing-gowns appeared upon the horizon: two dressing-gowns, for Erica and herself, of soft, woven stuff, with close rows of velvet trimming from neck to hem! + 

The weeks fled by⁠—the last weeks of Erica Grünlich’s maidenhood. The young pair had made calls in only a few houses; for the Director, a serious and preoccupied man, with no social experience, intended to devote what leisure he had to intimate domesticity. There was a betrothal dinner in the great salon of the house in Fishers’ Lane, at which, besides Thomas and Gerda, there were present the bridal pair and Henriette, Friederike and Pfiffi Buddenbrook, and some close friends of the Senator; and the Director continually pinched the bare shoulders of his fiancée, rather to the disgust of the other guests. And the wedding day drew near. + 

The marriage was solemnized in the columned hall, as on that other occasion when it was Frau Grünlich who wore the myrtle. Frau Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street, the same who moved in the best circles, helped to arrange the folds of the bride’s white satin gown and pin on the decorations. The Senator gave away the bride, supported by Christian’s friend Senator Gieseke, and two school friends of Erica’s acted as bridesmaids. Director Hugo Weinschenk looked imposing and manly, and only trod once on Erica’s flowing veil on the way to the improvised altar. Pastor Pringsheim held his hands clasped beneath his chin, and performed the service with his accustomed air of sweet exaltation; and everything went off with dignity and according to rule. When the rings were exchanged, and the deep and the treble “yes” sounded in the hush (both a trifle husky), Frau Permaneder, overpowered by the past, the present, and the future, burst into audible sobs: just the unthinking, unembarrassed tears of her childhood. And the sisters Buddenbrook⁠—Pfiffi, in honour of the day, was wearing a gold chain to her pince-nez⁠—smiled a little sourly, as always on such occasions. But Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, who had grown shorter with the lengthening years, and had the oval brooch with the miniature of her mother around her thin neck⁠—Sesemi said, with the disproportionate solemnity which hides deep emotion: “Be happy, you good che-ild!” + 

Followed a banquet, as solemn as solid, beneath the eyes of the white Olympians, looking down composedly from their blue background. As it drew toward its end, the newly wedded pair disappeared, to begin their wedding journey, which was to include visits to several large cities. All this was at the middle of April; and in the next two weeks, Frau Permaneder, assisted by the upholsterer Jacobs, accomplished one of her masterpieces: she moved into and settled the spacious first storey which she had rented in a house halfway down Baker Alley. There, in a bower of flowers, she welcomed the married pair on their return. + 

And thus began Tony Buddenbrook’s third marriage. + 

Yes, this was really the right way to put it. The Senator himself, one Thursday afternoon when the Weinschenks were not present, had called it that, and Frau Permaneder quite relished the joke. All the cares of the new household fell upon her, but she reaped her reward in pride and pleasure. One day she happened to meet on the street Frau Consul Julchen Möllendorpf, born Hagenström, into whose face she looked with a challenging, triumphant glance; it actually dawned upon Frau Möllendorpf that she had better speak first, and she did. Tony waxed so important in her pride and joy, when she showed off the new house to visiting relatives, that little Erica, beside her, seemed but a guest herself. + 

Frau Antonie displayed the house to their guests, the train of her morning gown dragging behind her, her shoulders up and her head thrown back, carrying on her arm the key-basket with its bow of satin ribbon. She displayed the furniture, the hangings, the translucent porcelain, the gleaming silver, the large oil paintings. These last had been purchased by the Director, and were nearly all still-lifes of edibles or nude figures of women, for such was Hugo Weinschenk’s taste. Tony’s every movement seemed to say: “See, I have managed all this for the third time in my life! It is almost as fine as Grünlich’s, and much finer than Permaneder’s!” + 

The old Frau Consul came, in a black-and-grey striped silk, giving out a discreet odour of patchouli. She surveyed everything with her pale, calm eyes and, without any loud expressions of admiration, professed herself pleased with the effect. The Senator came, with his wife and child; he and Gerda hugely enjoyed Tony’s blissful self-satisfaction, and with difficulty prevented her from killing her adored little Johann with currant bread and port wine. The Misses Buddenbrook came, and were unanimously of opinion that it was all very fine⁠—of course, being modest people themselves, they would not care to live in it. Poor, lean, grey, patient, hungry Clothilde came, submitted to the usual teasing, and drank four cups of coffee, praising everything the while, in her usual friendly drawl. Even Christian appeared now and then, when there was nobody at the club, drank a little glass of Benedictine, and talked about a project he had of opening an agency for champagne and brandy. He knew the business, and it was a light, agreeable job, in which a man could be his own master, write now and then in a notebook, and make thirty thaler by turning over his hand. Then he borrowed a little money from Frau Permaneder to buy a bouquet for the leading lady at the theatre; came, by God knows what train of thought, to Maria and the depravity in London; and then lighted upon the story of the mangy dog that travelled all the way from Valparaiso to San Francisco in a hand-satchel. By this time he was in full swing, and narrated with such gusto, verve, and irresistible drollery that he would have held a large audience spellbound. + 

He narrated like one inspired; he possessed the gift of tongues. He narrated in English, Spanish, low German, and Hamburgese; he depicted stabbing affrays in Chile and pick-pocketings in Whitechapel. He drew upon his repertory of comic songs, and half sang, half recited, with incomparable pantomime and highly suggestive gesture: + 

“I sauntered out one day, + 

In an idle sort o’ way, + 

And chanced to see a maid, ahead o’ me. + 

She’d such a charmin’ air, + 

Her back⁠—was French⁠—I’d swear, + 

And she wore her ’at as rakish as could be. + 

I says, ‘My pretty dear, + 

Since you an’ I are ’ere, + 

Perhaps you’d take me arm and walk along?’ + 

She turned her pretty ’ead, + 

And looked⁠—at me⁠—and said, + 

‘You just get on, my lad, and hold your tongue!’ ” + 

From this he went off on an account of a performance at the Renz Circus, in Hamburg, and reproduced a turn by a troupe of English vaudeville artists, in such a way that you felt you were actually present. There was the usual hubbub behind the curtain, shouts of “Open the door, will you!” quarrels with the ringmaster; and then, in a broad, lugubrious English-German, a whole string of stories: the one about the man who swallowed a mouse in his sleep, and went to the vet, who advised him to swallow a cat; and the one about “my grandmother⁠—lively old girl, she was”⁠—who, on her way to the railway station, encounters all sorts of adventures, ending with the train pulling out of the station in front of the nose of the “lively old girl.” And then Christian broke off with a triumphant “Orchestra!” and made as if he had just waked up and was very surprised that no music was forthcoming. + 

But, quite suddenly, he stopped. His face changed, his motions relaxed. His little deep round eyes began to stray moodily about; he rubbed his left side with his hand, and seemed to be listening to uncanny sounds within himself. He drank another glass of liqueur, which relieved him a little. Then he tried to tell another story, but broke down in a fit of depression. + 

Frau Permaneder, who in these days was uncommonly prone to laugh and had enjoyed the performance hugely, accompanied her brother to the door, in rather a prankish mood. “Adieu, Herr Agent,” said she. “Minnesinger⁠—Ninnysinger! Old goose! Come again soon!” She laughed full-throatedly behind him and went back into her house. + 

But Christian did not mind. He did not even hear her, so deep was he in thought. “Well,” he said to himself, “I’ll go over to Quisisana for a bit.” His hat a little awry, leaning on his stick with the nun’s bust for a handle, he went slowly and stiffly down the steps. + 

II + 

In the spring of 1868, one evening towards ten o’clock, Frau Permaneder entered the first story of her brother’s house. Senator Buddenbrook sat alone in the living-room, which was done in olive-green rep, with a large round centre-table and a great gas-lamp hanging down over it from the ceiling. He had the Berlin Financial Gazette spread out in front of him on the table, and was reading it, with a cigarette held between the first and second fingers of his left hand, and a gold pince-nez on his nose⁠—he had now for some time been obliged to use glasses for reading. He heard his sister’s footsteps as she passed through the dining-room, took off his glasses, and peered into the darkness until Tony appeared between the portières and in the circle of light from the lamp. + 

“Oh, it is you? How are you? Back from Pöppenrade? How are your friends?” + 

“Evening, Tom. Thanks, Armgard is very well. Are you here alone?” + 

“Yes; I’m glad you have come. I ate my dinner all alone tonight like the Pope. I don’t count Mamsell Jungmann, because she is always popping up to look after Hanno. Gerda is at the Casino. Christian fetched her, to hear Tamayo play the violin.” + 

“Bless and save us⁠—as Mother says.⁠—Yes, I’ve noticed lately that Gerda and Christian get on quite well together.” + 

“Yes, I have too. Since he came back for good, she seems to have taken to him. She sits and listens to him when he tells about his troubles⁠—dear me, I suppose he entertains her. She said to me lately: ‘There is nothing of the burgher about Christian, Thomas⁠—he is even less of a burgher than you are, yourself!’ ” + 

“Burgher, Tom? What did she mean? Why, it seems to me there is no better burgher on top of the earth than you are!” + 

“Oh, well⁠—she didn’t mean it just in that sense. Take off your things and sit down a while, my child. How splendid you look! The country air did you good.” + 

“I’m in very good form,” she said, as she took off her mantle and the hood with lilac silk ribbons and sat down with dignity in an easy-chair by the table. “My sleep and my digestion both improved very much in this short time. The fresh milk, and the farm sausages and hams⁠—one thrives like the cattle and the crops. And the honey, Tom, I have always considered honey one of the very best of foods. A pure nature product⁠—one knows just what one’s eating. Yes, it was really very sweet of Armgard to remember an old boarding-school friendship and send me the invitation. Herr von Maiboom was very polite, too. They urged me to stay a couple of weeks longer, but I know Erica is rather helpless without me, especially now, with little Elisabeth⁠—” + 

“How is the child?” + 

“Doing nicely, Tom. She is really not bad at all, for four months, even if Henriette and Friederike and Pfiffi did say she wouldn’t live.” + 

“And Weinschenk? How does he like being a father? I never see him except on Thursdays⁠—” + 

“Oh, he is just the same. You know he is a very good, hardworking man, and in a way a model husband; he never stops in anywhere, but comes straight home from the office and spends all his free time with us. But⁠—you see, Tom⁠—we can speak quite openly, just between ourselves⁠—he requires Erica to be always lively, always laughing and talking, because when he comes home tired and worried from the office, he needs cheering up, and his wife must amuse him and divert him.” + 

“Idiot!” murmured the Senator. + 

“What? Well, the bad thing about it is, that Erica is a little bit inclined to be melancholy. She must get it from me, Tom. Sometimes she is very serious and quiet and thoughtful; and then he scolds and grumbles and complains, and really, to tell the truth, is not at all sympathetic. You can’t help seeing that he is a man of no family, and never enjoyed what one would call a refined bringing-up. To be quite frank⁠—a few days before I went to Pöppenrade, he threw the lid of the soup-tureen on the floor and broke it, because the soup was too salt.” + 

“How charming!” + 

“Oh, no, it wasn’t, not at all! But we must not judge. God knows, we are all weak creatures⁠—and a good, capable, industrious man like that⁠—Heaven forbid! No, Tom, a rough shell with a sound kernel inside is not the worst thing in this life. I’ve just come from something far sadder than that, I can tell you! Armgard wept bitterly, when she was alone with me⁠—” + 

“You don’t say! Is Herr von Maiboom⁠—?” + 

“Yes, Tom⁠—that is what I wanted to tell you. We sit here visiting, but I really came tonight on a serious and important errand.” + 

“Well, what is the trouble with Herr von Maiboom?” + 

“He is a very charming man, Ralf von Maiboom, Thomas; but he is very wild⁠—a hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. He gambles in Rostock, and he gambles in Warnemünde, and his debts are like the sands of the sea. Nobody could believe it, just living a couple of weeks at Pöppenrade. The house is lovely, everything looks flourishing, there is milk and sausage and ham and all that, in great abundance. So it is hard to measure the actual situation. But their affairs are in frightful disorder⁠—Armgard confessed it to me, with heartbreaking sobs.” + 

“Very sad.” + 

“You may well say so. But, as I had already suspected, it turned out that I was not invited over there just for the sake of my beaux yeux.” + 

“How so?” + 

“I will tell you, Tom. Herr von Maiboom needs a large sum of money immediately. He knew the old friendship between his wife and me, and he knew that I am your sister. So, in his extremity, he put his wife up to it, and she put me up to it.⁠—You understand?” + 

The Senator passed his fingertips across his hair and screwed up his face a little. + 

“I think so,” he said. “Your serious and important business evidently concerns an advance on the Pöppenrade harvest⁠—if I am not mistaken. But you have come to the wrong man, I think, you and your friends. In the first place, I have never done any business with Herr von Maiboom, and this would be a rather strange way to begin. In the second place⁠—though, in the past, Grandfather, Father, and I myself have made advances on occasion to the landed gentry, it was always when they offered a certain security, either personally or through their connections. But to judge from the way you have just characterized Herr von Maiboom and his prospects, I should say there can be no security in his case.” + 

“You are mistaken, Tom. I have let you have your say, but you are mistaken. It is not a question of an advance, at all. Maiboom has to have thirty-five thousand marks current⁠—” + 

“Heavens and earth!” + 

“⁠—five-and-thirty thousand marks current, to be paid within two weeks. The knife is at his throat⁠—to be plain, he has to sell at once, immediately.” + 

“In the blade⁠—oh, the poor chap!” The Senator shook his head as he stood, playing with his pince-nez on the tablecloth. “That is a rather unheard-of thing for our sort of business,” he went on. “I have heard of such things, mostly in Hesse, where a few of the landed gentry are in the hands of the Jews. Who knows what sort of cutthroat it is that has poor Herr von Maiboom in his clutches?” + 

“Jews? Cutthroats?” cried Frau Permaneder, astonished beyond measure. “But it’s you we are talking about, Tom!” + 

Thomas Buddenbrook suddenly threw down his pince-nez on the table so that it slid along on top of the newspaper, and turned toward his sister with a jerk. + 

“Me?” he said, but only with his lips, for he made no sound. Then he added aloud: “Go to bed, Tony. You are tired out.” + 

“Why, Tom, that is what Ida Jungmann used to say to us, when we were just beginning to have a good time. But I assure you I was never wider awake in my life than now, coming over here in the dead of night to make Armgard’s offer to you⁠—or rather, indirectly, Ralf von Maiboom’s⁠—” + 

“And I will forgive you for making a proposal which is the product of your naivete and the Maibooms’ helplessness.” + 

“Helplessness? Naivete, Thomas? I don’t understand you⁠—I am very far from understanding you. You are offered an opportunity to do a good deed, and at the same time the best stroke of business you ever did in your life⁠—” + 

“Oh, my darling child, you are talking the sheerest nonsense,” cried the Senator, throwing himself back impatiently in his chair. “I beg your pardon, but you make me angry with your ridiculous innocence. Can’t you understand that you are asking me to do something discreditable, to engage in underhand manoeuvres? Why should I go fishing in troubled waters? Why should I fleece this poor landowner? Why should I take advantage of his necessity to do him out of a year’s harvest at a usurious profit to myself?” + 

“Oh, is that the way you look at it!” said Frau Permaneder, quite taken aback and thoughtful. But she recovered in a moment and went on: “But it is not at all necessary to look at it like that, Tom. How are you forcing him, when it is he who comes to you? He needs the money, and would like the matter arranged in a friendly way, and under the rose. That is why he traced out the connection between us, and invited me to visit.” + 

“In short, he has made a mistake in his calculations about me and the character of my firm. I have my own traditions. We have been in business a hundred years without touching that sort of transaction, and I have no idea of beginning at this late day.” + 

“Certainly, Tom, you have your traditions, and nobody respects them more than I do. And I know Father would not have done it⁠—God forbid! Who says he would? But, silly as I am, I know enough to know that you are quite a different sort of man from Father, and since you took over the business it has been different from what it was before. That is because you were young and had enterprise and brains. But lately I am afraid you have let yourself get discouraged by this or that piece of bad luck. And if you are no longer having the same success you once did, it is because you have been too cautious and conscientious, and let slip your chances for good coups when you had them⁠—” + 

“Oh, my dear child, stop, please; you irritate me!” said the Senator sharply, and turned away. “Let us change the subject.” + 

“Yes, you are vexed, Tom, I can see it. You were from the beginning, and I have kept on, on purpose, to show you you are wrong to feel yourself insulted. But I know the real reason why you are vexed: it is because you are not so firmly decided not to touch the business. I know I am silly; but I have noticed about myself⁠—and about other people too⁠—that we are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.” + 

“Very fine,” said the Senator, bit his cigarette-holder, and was silent. + 

“Fine? No, it’s very simple⁠—one of the simplest things life has taught me. But let it go, Tom. I won’t urge you. Don’t imagine that I think I could persuade you⁠—I know I don’t know enough. I’m only a silly female. It’s a pity. Well, never mind.⁠—It interested me very much. On the one hand I was shocked and upset about the Maibooms, but on the other I was pleased for you. I said to myself: ‘Tom has been going about lately feeling very down in the mouth. He used to complain, but now he does not even complain any more. He has been losing money, and times are poor⁠—and all that just now, when God has been good to me, and I am feeling happier than I have for a long time.’ So I thought, ‘This would be something for him: a stroke of luck, a good coup. It would offset a good deal of misfortune, and show people that luck is still on the side of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook.’ And if you had undertaken it, I should have been so proud to have been the means⁠—for you know it has always been my dream and my one desire, to be of some good to the family name.⁠—Well, never mind. It is settled now. What I feel vexed about is that Maiboom has to sell, in any case, and if he looks around in the town here, he will find a purchaser⁠—and it will be that rascal Hermann Hagenström!” + 

“Oh, yes⁠—he probably would not refuse it,” the Senator said bitterly; and Frau Permaneder answered, three times, one after the other: “You see, you see, you see!” + 

Thomas Buddenbrook suddenly began to shake his head and laugh angrily. + 

“We are silly. We sit here and work ourselves up⁠—at least, you do⁠—over something that is neither here nor there. So far as I know, I have not even asked what the thing is about⁠—what Herr von Maiboom actually has to sell. I do not know Pöppenrade.” + 

“Oh, you would have had to go there,” she said eagerly. “It’s not far from here to Rostock⁠—and from there it is no distance at all. And as for what he has to sell⁠—Pöppenrade is a large estate, I know for a fact that it grows more than a thousand sacks of wheat. But I don’t know details. About rye, oats, or barley, there might be five hundred sacks of them, more or less. Everything is of the best, I can say that. But I can’t give you any figures, I am such a goose, Tom. You would have to go over.” + 

A pause ensued. + 

“No, it is not worth wasting words over,” the Senator said decidedly. He folded his pince-nez and put it into his pocket, buttoned up his coat, and began to walk up and down the room with firm and rapid strides, which studiously betrayed no sign that he was giving the subject any further consideration. + 

He paused by the table and turned toward his sister, drumming lightly on the surface with his bent forefinger as he said: “I’ll tell you a little story, my dear Tony, which will illustrate my attitude toward this affair. I know your weakness for the nobility, and the Mecklenburg nobility in particular⁠—please don’t mind if one of these gentry gets rapped a bit. You know, there is now and then one among them who doesn’t treat the merchant classes with any great respect, though perfectly aware that he can’t do without them. Such a man is too much inclined to lay stress on the superiority⁠—to a certain extent undeniable⁠—of the producer over the middleman. In short, he sometimes acts as if the merchant were like a peddling Jew to whom one sells old clothes, quite conscious that one is being overreached. I flatter myself that in my dealings with these gentry I have not usually made the impression of a morally inferior exploiter; to tell the truth, the boot has sometimes been on the other foot⁠—I’ve run across men who were far less scrupulous than I am! But in one case, it only needed a single bold stroke to bring me into social relations. The man was the lord of Gross-Poggendorf, of whom you have surely heard. I had considerable dealings with him some while back: Count Strelitz, a very smart-appearing man, with a square eyeglass (I could never make out why he did not cut himself), patent-leather top-boots, and a riding-whip with a gold handle. He had a way of looking down at me from a great height, with his eyes half-shut and his mouth half open. My first visit to him was very telling. We had had some correspondence. I drove over, and was ushered by a servant into the study, where Count Strelitz was sitting at his writing-table. He returns my bow, half gets up, finishes the last lines of a letter; then he turns to me and begins to talk business, looking over the top of my head. I lean on the sofa-table, cross my arms and my legs, and enjoy myself. I stand five minutes talking. After another five minutes, I sit down on the table and swing my leg. We get on with our business, and at the end of fifteen minutes he says to me, very graciously, ‘won’t you sit down?’ ‘Beg pardon?’ I say. ‘Oh, don’t mention it⁠—I’ve been sitting for some time!’ ” + 

“Did you say that? Really?” cried Frau Permaneder, enchanted. She had straightway forgotten all that had gone before, and lived for the moment entirely in the anecdote. + 

“ ‘I’ve been sitting for some time’⁠—oh, that is too good!” + 

“Well, and I assure you that the Count altered his tune at once. He shook hands when I came, and asked me to sit down⁠—in the course of time we became very friendly. But I have told you this in order to ask you if you think I should have the right, or the courage, or the inner self-confidence to behave in the same way to Herr von Maiboom if, when we met to discuss the bargain, he were to forget to offer me a chair?” + 

Frau Permaneder was silent. “Good,” she said then, and got up. “You may be right; and, as I said, I’m not going to press you. You know what you must do and what leave undone, and that’s an end of it. If you only feel that I spoke in good part⁠—you do, don’t you? All right. Good night, Tom. Or⁠—no, wait⁠—I must go and say ‘How do you do’ to the good Ida and give Hanno a little kiss. I’ll look in again on my way out.” With that she went. + 

III + 

She mounted the stairs to the second storey, left the little balcony on her right, went along the white-and-gold balustrade and through an antechamber, the door of which stood open on the corridor, and from which a second exit to the left led into the Senator’s dressing-room. Here she softly turned the handle of the door opposite and went in. + 

It was an unusually large chamber, the windows of which were draped with flowered curtains. The walls were rather bare: aside from a large black-framed engraving above Ida’s bed, representing Giacomo Meyerbeer surrounded by the characters in his operas, there was nothing but a few English coloured prints of children with yellow hair and little red frocks, pinned to the window hangings. Ida Jungman sat at the large extension-table in the middle of the room, darning Hanno’s stockings. The faithful Prussian was now at the beginning of the fifties. She had begun early to grow grey, but her hair had never become quite white, having remained a mixture of black and grey; her erect bony figure was as sturdy, and her brown eyes as bright, clear, and unwearied as twenty years ago. + 

“Well, Ida, you good soul,” said Frau Permaneder, in a low but lively voice, for her brother’s little story had put her in good spirits, “and how are you, you old standby, you?” + 

“What’s that, Tony⁠—standby, is it? And how do you come to be here so late?” + 

“I’ve been with my brother⁠—on pressing business. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out.⁠—Is he asleep?” she asked, and gestured with her chin toward the little bed on the left wall, its head close to the door that led into the parents’ sleeping chamber. + 

“Sh-h!” said Ida. “Yes, he is asleep.” Frau Permaneder went on her tiptoes toward the little bed, cautiously raised the curtain, and bent to look down at her sleeping nephew’s face. + 

The small Johann Buddenbrook lay on his back, his little face, in its frame of long light-brown hair, turned toward the room. He was breathing softly but audibly into the pillow. Only the fingers showed beneath the too long, too wide sleeves of his nightgown: one of his hands lay on his breast, the other on the coverlet, with the bent fingers jerking slightly now and then. The half-parted lips moved a little too, as if forming words. From time to time a pained expression mounted over the little face, beginning with a trembling of the chin, making the lips and the delicate nostrils quiver and the muscles of the narrow forehead contract. The long dark eyelashes did not hide the blue shadows that lay in the corners of the eyes. + 

“He is dreaming,” said Frau Permaneder, moved. + 

She bent over the child and gently kissed his slumbering cheek; then she composed the curtains and went back to the table, where Ida, in the golden light from the lamp, drew a fresh stocking over her darning-ball, looked at the hole, and began to fill it in. + 

“You are darning, Ida⁠—funny, I can’t imagine you doing anything else.” + 

“Yes, yes, Tony. The boy tears everything, now he has begun to go to school.” + 

“But he is such a quiet, gentle child.” + 

“Ye‑s, he is. But even so⁠—” + 

“Does he like going to school?” + 

“Oh, no‑o, Tony. He would far rather have gone on here with me. And I should have liked it better too. The masters haven’t known him since he was a baby, the way I have⁠—they don’t know how to take him, when they are teaching him. It is often hard for him to pay attention, and he gets tired so easily⁠—” + 

“Poor darling! Have they whipped him yet?” + 

“No, indeed. Sakes alive, how could they have the heart, if the boy once looked at them⁠—?” + 

“How was it the first time he went? Did he cry?” + 

“Yes, indeed, he did. He cries so easily⁠—not loud, but sort of to himself. And he held your brother by the coat and begged to be allowed to stop at home⁠—” + 

“Oh, my brother took him, did he?⁠—Yes, that is a hard moment, Ida. I remember it like yesterday. I howled, I do assure you. I howled like a chained-up dog; I felt dreadfully. And why? Because I had had such a good time at home. I noticed at once that all the children from the nice houses wept, and the others not at all⁠—they just stared and grinned at us.⁠—Goodness, what is the matter with him, Ida?” + 

She turned in alarm toward the little bed, where a cry had interrupted her chatter. It was a frightened cry, and it repeated itself in an even more anguished tone the next minute; and then three, four, five times more, one after another. “Oh, oh, oh!” It became a loud, desperate protest against something which he saw or which was happening to him. The next moment little Johann sat upright in bed, stammering incomprehensibly, and staring with wide-open, strange golden-brown eyes into a world which he, and he alone, could see. + 

“That’s nothing,” said Ida. “It is the pavor. It is sometimes much worse than that.” She put her work down calmly and crossed the room, with her long heavy stride, to Hanno’s bed. She spoke to him in a low, quieting voice, laid him down, and covered him again. + 

“Oh, I see⁠—the pavor,” repeated Frau Permaneder. “What will he do now? Will he wake up?” + 

But Hanno did not waken at all, though his eyes were wide and staring, and his lips still moved. + 

“ ‘In my⁠—little⁠—garden⁠—go⁠—,’ ” + 

said Hanno, mumblingly, + 

“ ‘All⁠—my⁠—onions⁠—water⁠—’ ” + 

“He is saying his piece,” explained Ida Jungmann, shaking her head. “There, there, little darling⁠—go to sleep now.” + 

“ ‘Little man stands⁠—stands there⁠— + 

He begins⁠—to⁠—sneeze⁠—’ ” + 

He sighed. Suddenly his face changed, his eyes half-closed; he moved his head back and forth on the pillow and said in a low, plaintive singsong: + 

“ ‘The moon it shines, + 

The baby cries, + 

The clock strikes twelve, + 

God help all suff’ring folk to close their eyes.’ ” + 

But with the words came so deep a sob that tears rolled out from under his lashes and down his cheeks and wakened him. He put his arms around Ida, looked about him with tear-wet eyes, murmured something in a satisfied tone about “Aunt Tony,” turned himself a little in his bed, and then went quietly off to sleep. + 

“How very strange,” said Frau Permaneder, as Ida sat down at the table once more. “What was all that?” + 

“They are in his reader,” answered Fräulein Jungmann. “It says underneath ‘The Boys’ Magic Horn.’ They are all rather queer. He has been having to learn them, and he talks a great deal about that one with the little man. Do you know it? It is really rather frightening. It is a little dwarf that gets into everything: eats up the broth and breaks the pot, steals the wood, stops the spinning-wheel, teases everybody⁠—and then, at the end, he asks to be prayed for! It touched the child very much. He has thought about it day in and day out; and two or three times he said: ‘You know, Ida, he doesn’t do that to be wicked, but only because he is unhappy, and it only makes him more unhappy still.⁠ ⁠… But if one prays for him, then he does not need to do it any more!’ Even tonight, when his Mama kissed him good night before she went to the concert, he asked her to ‘pray for the little man.’ ” + 

“And did he pray too?” + 

“Not aloud, but probably to himself.⁠—He hasn’t said much about the other poem⁠—it is called ‘The Nursery Clock’⁠—he has only wept. He weeps so easy, poor little lad, and it is so hard for him to stop.” + 

“But what is there so sad about it?” + 

“How do I know? He has never been able to say any more than the beginning of it, the part that makes him cry in his sleep. And that about the wagoner, who gets up at three from his bed of straw⁠—that always made him weep too.” + 

Frau Permaneder laughed emotionally, and then looked serious. + 

“I’ll tell you, Ida, it’s no good. It isn’t good for him to feel everything so much. ‘The wagoner gets up at three from his bed of straw’⁠—why, of course he does! That’s why he is a wagoner. I can see already that the child takes everything too much to heart⁠—it consumes him, I feel sure. We must speak seriously with Grabow. But there, that is just what it is,” she went on, folding her arms, putting her head on one side, and tapping the floor nervously with her foot. “Grabow is getting old; and aside from that, good as he is⁠—and he really is a very good man, a perfect angel⁠—so far as his skill is concerned, I have no such great opinion of it, Ida, and may God forgive me if I am wrong. Take this nervousness of Hanno’s, his starting up at night and having such frights in his sleep. Grabow knows what it is, and all he does is to tell us the Latin name of it⁠—pavor nocturnus. Dear knows, that is very enlightening, of course! No, he is a dear good man, and a great friend of the family and all that⁠—but he is no great light. An important man looks different⁠—he shows when he is young that there is something in him. Grabow lived through the ’48. He was a young man then. Do you imagine he was the least bit thrilled over it⁠—over freedom and justice, and the downfall of privilege and arbitrary power? He is a cultivated man; but I am convinced that the unheard-of laws concerning the press and the universities did not interest him in the least. He has never behaved even the least little bit wild, never jumped over the traces. He has always had just the same long, mild face, and always prescribed pigeon and French bread, and when anything is serious, a teaspoon of tincture of althaea.⁠—Good night, Ida. No, I think there are other doctors in the world! Too bad I have missed Gerda. Yes, thanks, there is a light in the corridor. Good night.” + 

When Frau Permaneder opened the dining-room door in passing, to call a good night to her brother in the living-room, she saw that the whole storey was lighted up, and that Thomas was walking up and down with his hands behind his back. + 

IV + 

The Senator, when he was alone again, sat down at the table, took out his glasses, and tried to resume his reading. But in a few minutes his eyes had roved from the printed page, and he sat for a long time without changing his position, gazing straight ahead of him between the portières into the darkness of the salon. + 

His face, when he was alone, changed so that it was hardly recognizable. The muscles of his mouth and cheeks, otherwise obedient to his will, relaxed and became flabby. Like a mask the look of vigour, alertness, and amiability, which now for a long time had been preserved only by constant effort, fell from his face, and betrayed an anguished weariness instead. The tired, worried eyes gazed at objects without seeing them; they became red and watery. He made no effort to deceive even himself; and of all the dull, confused, and rambling thoughts that filled his mind he clung to only one: the single, despairing thought that Thomas Buddenbrook, at forty-three years, was an old, worn-out man. + 

He rubbed his hand over his eyes and forehead, drawing a long, deep breath, mechanically lighted another cigarette, though he knew they were bad for him, and continued to gaze through the smoke-haze into the darkness. What a contrast between that relaxed and suffering face and the elegant, almost military style of his hair and beard! the stiffened and perfumed mustaches, the meticulously shaven cheeks and chin, and the careful hairdressing which sedulously hid a beginning thinness. The hair ran back in two longish bays from the delicate temples, with a narrow parting on top; over the ears it was not long and waving, but kept shortcut now, in order not to betray how grey it had grown. He himself felt the change and knew it could not have escaped the eyes of others: the contrast between his active, elastic movements and the dull pallor of his face. + 

Not that he was in reality less of an important and indispensable personage than he always had been. His friends said, and his enemies could not deny, that Senator Buddenbrook was the Burgomaster’s right hand: Burgomaster Langhals was even more emphatic on that point than his predecessor Överdieck had been. But the firm of Johann Buddenbrook was no longer what it had been⁠—this seemed to be common property, so much so that Herr Stuht discussed it with his wife over their bacon broth⁠—and Thomas Buddenbrook groaned over the fact. + 

At the same time, it was true that he himself was mainly responsible. He was still a rich man, and none of the losses he had suffered, even the severe one of the year ’66, had seriously undermined the existence of the firm. But the notion that his luck and his consequence had fled, based though it was more upon inward feelings than upon outward facts, brought him to a state of lowness and suspicion. He entertained, of course, as before, and set before his guests the normal and expected number of courses. But, as never before, he began to cling to money and, in his private life, to save in small and petty ways. He had a hundred times regretted the building of his new house, which he felt had brought him nothing but bad luck. The summer holidays were given up, and the little city garden had to take the place of mountains or seashore. The family meals were, by his express and emphatic command, of such simplicity as to seem absurd by contrast with the lofty, splendid dining-room, with its extent of parquetry floors and its imposing oak furniture. For a long time now, there had been dessert only on Sundays. His own appearance was as elegant as ever; but the old servant, Anton, carried to the kitchen the news that the master only changed his shirt now every other day, as the washing was too hard on the fine linen. He knew more than that. He knew that he was to be dismissed. Gerda protested: three servants were few enough to do the work of so large a house as it should be done. But it was no use: old Anton, who had so long sat on the box when Thomas Buddenbrook drove down to the Senate, was sent away with a suitable present. + 

Such decrees as these were in harmony with the joyless state of affairs in the firm. That fresh enterprising spirit with which young Thomas Buddenbrook had taken up the reins⁠—that was all gone, now; and his partner, Herr Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus⁠—who, with his small capital, could not have had a prepondering influence in any case⁠—was by nature lacking in initiative. + 

Herr Marcus’ pedantry had so increased in the course of years that it had become a distinct eccentricity. It took him a quarter of an hour of stroking his moustaches, casting side-glances, and giving little coughs, just to cut his cigar and put the tip in his pocketbook. Evenings, when the gaslight made every corner of the office as bright as day, he still used a tallow candle on his own desk. Every half-hour he would get up and go to the tap and put water on his head. One morning there had been an empty sack untidily left under his desk. He took it for a cat and began to shoo it out with loud imprecations, to the joy of the office staff. No, he was not the man to give any quickening impulse to the business in the face of his partner’s present lassitude. Mortification and a sort of desperate irritation often seized upon the Senator: as now, when he sat and stared wearily into the darkness, bringing home to himself the petty retail transactions and the pennywise policies to which the firm of Johann Buddenbrook had lately sunk. + 

But, after all, was it not best thus? Misfortune too has its time, he thought. Is it not better, while it holds sway, to keep oneself still, to wait in quiet and assemble one’s inner powers? Why must this proposition come up just now, to shake him untimely out of his canny resignation and make him a prey to doubts and suspicions? Was the time come? Was this a sign? Should he feel encouraged to stand up and strike a blow? He had refused with all the decisiveness he could put into his voice, to think of the proposition; but had that settled it? It seemed not, since here he sat and brooded over it. “We are most likely to get angry in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position.” A deucedly sly little person, Tony was! + 

What had he answered her? He had spoken very impressively, he recollected, about “underhand manoeuvres,” “fishing in troubled waters,” “fleecing the poor landowner,” “usury,” and so on. Very fine! But really one might ask if this were just the right time for so many large words. Consul Hermann Hagenström would not have thought of them, and would not have used them. Was he, Thomas Buddenbrook, a man of action, a business man⁠—or was he a finicking dreamer? + 

Yes, that was the question. It had always been, as far back as he could remember, the question. Life was harsh: and business, with its ruthless unsentimentality, was an epitome of life. Did Thomas Buddenbrook, like his father, stand firmly on his two feet, in face of this hard practicality of life? Often enough, even far back in the past, he had seen reason to doubt it. Often enough, from his youth onwards, he had sternly brought his feelings into line. To inflict punishment, to take punishment, and not to think of it as punishment, but as something to be taken for granted⁠—should he never completely learn that lesson? + 

He recalled the catastrophe of the year 1866, and the inexpressibly painful emotions which had then overpowered him. He had lost a large sum of money in the affair⁠—but that had not been the unbearable thing about it. For the first time in his career he had fully and personally experienced the ruthless brutality of business life and seen how all better, gentler, and kindlier sentiments creep away and hide themselves before the one raw, naked, dominating instinct of self-preservation. He had seen that when one suffers a misfortune in business, one is met by one’s friends⁠—and one’s best friends⁠—not with sympathy, not with compassion, but with suspicion⁠—cold, cruel, hostile suspicion. But he had known all this before; why should he be surprised at it? And in stronger and hardier hours he had blushed for his own weakness, for his own distress and sleepless nights, for his revulsion and disgust at the hateful and shameless harshness of life! + 

How foolish all that was! How ridiculous such feelings had been! How could he entertain them?⁠—unless, indeed, he were a feeble visionary and not a practical business man at all! Ah, how many times had he asked himself that question? And how many times had he answered it: in strong and purposeful hours with one answer, in weak and discouraged ones with another! But he was too shrewd and too honest not to admit, after all, that he was a mixture of both. + 

All his life, he had made the impression on others of a practical man of action. But in so far as he legitimately passed for one⁠—he, with his fondness for quotations from Goethe⁠—was it not because he deliberately set out to do so? He had been successful in the past, but was that not because of the enthusiasm and impetus drawn from reflection? And if he were now discouraged, if his powers were lamed⁠—God grant it was only for a time⁠—was not his depression the natural consequence of the conflict that went on within himself? Whether his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather would have brought the Pöppenrade harvest in the blade was not the point after all. The thing was that they were practical men, more naturally, more vigorously, more impeccably practical than he was himself. + 

He was seized by a great unrest, by a need for movement, space, and light. He shoved back his chair, went into the salon, and lighted several burners of the chandelier over the centre-table. He stood there, pulling slowly and spasmodically at the long ends of his moustaches and vacantly gazing about the luxurious room. Together with the living-room it occupied the whole front of the house; it had light, ornate furniture and looked like a music-room, with the great grand piano, Gerda’s violin-case, the étagère with music books, the carved music-stand, and the bas-reliefs of singing cupids over the doors. The bow-window was filled with palms. + 

Senator Buddenbrook stood for two or three minutes motionless. Then he went back through the living-room into the dining-room and made light there also. He stopped at the sideboard and poured a glass of water, either to be doing something or to quiet his heart. Then he moved quickly on through the house, lighting up as he went. The smoking-room was furnished in dark colours and wainscoted. He absently opened the door of the cigar cabinet and shut it again, and at the table lifted the lid of a little oak box which had playing-cards, scorecards, and other such things in it. He let some of the bone counters glide through his fingers with a rattling sound, clapped the lid shut, and began again to walk up and down. + 

A little room with a small stained-glass window opened into the smoking-room. It was empty except for some small light serving-tables of the kind which fit one within another. On one of them a liqueur cabinet stood. From here one entered the dining-room, with its great extent of parquetry flooring and its four high windows, hung with wine-coloured curtains, looking out into the garden. It also occupied the whole breadth of the house. It was furnished by two low, heavy sofas, covered with the same wine-coloured material as the curtains, and by a number of high-backed chairs standing stiffly along the walls. Behind the fire-screen was a chimney-place, its artificial coals covered with shining red paper to make them look glowing. On the marble mantelshelf in front of the mirror stood two towering Chinese vases. + 

The whole storey was now lighted by the flame of single gas-jets, and looked like a party the moment after the last guest is gone. The Senator measured the room throughout its length, and then stood at one of the windows and looked down into the garden. + 

The moon stood high and small between fleecy clouds, and the little fountain splashed in the stillness over the overhanging boughs of the walnut tree. Thomas looked down on the pavilion which enclosed his view, on the little glistening white terrace with the two obelisks, the regular gravel paths, and the freshly turned earth of the neat borders and beds. But this whole minute and punctilious symmetry, far from soothing him, only made him feel the more exasperated. He held the catch of the window, leaned his forehead on it, and gave rein to his tormenting thoughts again. + 

What was he coming to? He thought of a remark he had let fall to his sister⁠—something he had felt vexed with himself the next minute for saying, it seemed so unnecessary. He was speaking of Count Strelitz and the landed aristocracy, and he had expressed the view that the producer had a social advantage over the middleman. What was the point of that? It might be true and it might not; but was he, Thomas Buddenbrook, called upon to express such ideas⁠—was he called upon even to think them? Should he have been able to explain to the satisfaction of his father, his grandfather⁠—or any of his fellow townsmen⁠—how he came to be expressing, or indulging in, such thoughts? A man who stands firm and confident in his own calling, whatever it may be, recognizes only it, understands only it, values only it. + 

Then he suddenly felt the blood rushing to his face as he recalled another memory, from farther back in the past. He saw himself and his brother Christian, walking around the garden of the Meng Street house, involved in a quarrel⁠—one of those painful, regrettable, heated discussions. Christian, with artless indiscretion, had made a highly undesirable, a compromising remark, which a number of people had heard; and Thomas, furiously angry, irritated to the last degree, had called him to account. At bottom, Christian had said, at bottom every business man was a rascal. Well! was that foolish and trifling remark, in point of fact, so different from what he himself had just said to his sister? He had been furiously angry then, had protested violently⁠—but what was it that sly little Tony said? “When we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No,” said the Senator, suddenly, aloud, lifted his head with a jerk, and let go the window fastening. He fairly pushed himself away from it. “That settles it,” he said. He coughed, for the sound of his own voice in the emptiness made him feel unpleasant. He turned and began to walk quickly through all the rooms, his hands behind his back and his head bowed. + 

“That settles it,” he repeated. “It will have to settle it. I am wasting time, I am sinking into a morass, I’m getting worse than Christian.” It was something to be glad of, at least, that he was in no doubt where he stood. It lay, then, in his own hands to apply the corrective. Relentlessly. Let us see, now⁠—let us see⁠—what sort of offer was it they had made? The Pöppenrade harvest, in the blade? “I will do it!” he said in a passionate whisper, even stretching out one hand and shaking the forefinger. “I will do it!” + 

It would be, he supposed, what one would call a coup: an opportunity to double a capital of, say, forty thousand marks current⁠—though that was probably an exaggeration.⁠—Yes, it was a sign⁠—a signal to him that he should rouse himself! It was the first step, the beginning, that counted; and the risk connected with it was a sort of offset to his moral scruples. If it succeeded, then he was himself again, then he would venture once more, then he would know how to hold fortune and influence fast within his grip. + 

No, Messrs. Strunck and Hagenström would not be able to profit by this occasion, unfortunately for them. There was another firm in the place, which, thanks to personal connections, had the upper hand. In fact, the personal was here the decisive factor. It was no ordinary business, to be carried out in the ordinary way. Coming through Tony, as it had, it bore more the character of a private transaction, and would need to be carried out with discretion and tact. Hermann Hagenström would hardly have been the man for the job. He, Thomas Buddenbrook, as a business man, was taking advantage of the market⁠—and he would, by God, when he sold, know how to do the same. On the other hand, he was doing the hard-pressed landowner a favour which he was called upon to do, by reason of Tony’s connection with the Maibooms. The thing to do was to write, to write this evening⁠—not on the business paper with the firm name, but on his own personal letter-paper with “Senator Buddenbrook” stamped across it. He would write in a courteous tone and ask if a visit in the next few days would be agreeable. But it was a difficult business, none the less⁠—slippery ground, upon which one needed to move with care.⁠—Well, so much the better for him. + 

His step grew quicker, his breathing deeper. He sat down a moment, sprang up again, and began roaming about through all the rooms. He thought it all out again; he thought about Herr Marcus, Hermann Hagenström, Christian, and Tony; he saw the golden harvests of Pöppenrade wave in the breeze, and dreamed of the upward bound the old firm would take after this coup; scornfully repulsed all his scruples and hesitations, put out his hand and said “I’ll do it!” + 

Frau Permaneder opened the door and called out “Goodbye!” He answered her without knowing it. Gerda said good night to Christian at the house door and came upstairs, her strange deep-set eyes wearing the expression that music always gave them. The Senator stopped mechanically in his walk, asked mechanically about the concert and the Spanish virtuoso, and said he was ready to go to bed. + 

But he did not go. He took up his wanderings again. He thought about the sacks of wheat and rye and oats and barley which should fill the lofts of the Lion, the Walrus, the Oak, and the Linden; he thought about the price he intended to ask⁠—of course it should not be an extravagant price. He went softly at midnight down into the countinghouse and, by the light of Herr Marcus’ tallow candle, wrote a letter to Herr von Maiboom of Pöppenrade⁠—a letter which, as he read it through, his head feeling feverish and heavy, he thought was the best and most tactful he had ever written. + 

That was the night of May 27. The next day he indicated to his sister, treating the affair in a light, semi-humorous way, that he had thought it all over and decided that he could not just refuse Herr von Maiboom out of hand and leave him at the mercy of the nearest swindler. On the thirtieth of May he went to Rostock, whence he drove in a hired wagon out to the country. + 

His mood for the next few days was of the best, his step elastic and free, his manners easy. He teased Clothilde, laughed heartily at Christian, joked with Tony, and played with Hanno in the little gallery for a whole hour on Sunday, helping him to hoist up miniature sacks of grain into a little brick-red granary, and imitating the hollow, drawling shouts of the workmen. And at the Burgesses’ meeting of the third of June he made a speech on the most tiresome subject in the world, something connected with taxation, which was so brilliant and witty that everybody agreed with it unanimously, and Consul Hagenström, who had opposed him, became almost a laughingstock. + 

V + 

Was it forgetfulness, or was it intention, which would have made Senator Buddenbrook pass over in silence a certain fact, had not his sister Tony, the devotee of the family papers, announced it to all the world: the fact, namely, that in those documents the founding of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook was ascribed to the date of the 7th of July, 1768, the hundredth anniversary of which was now at hand? + 

Thomas seemed almost disturbed when Tony, in a moving voice, called his attention to the fact. His good mood had not lasted. All too soon he had fallen silent again, more silent than before. He would leave the office in the midst of work, seized with unrest, and roam about the garden, sometimes pausing as if he felt confined in his movements, sighing, and covering his eyes with his hand. He said nothing, gave his feelings no vent⁠—to whom should he speak, then? When he told his partner of the Pöppenrade matter, Herr Marcus had for the first time in his life been angry with him, and had washed his hands of the whole affair. But Thomas betrayed himself to his sister Tony, when they said goodbye on the street one Thursday evening, and she alluded to the Pöppenrade harvest. He gave her hand a single quick squeeze, and added passionately “Oh, Tony, if I had only sold it already!” He broke off abruptly, and they parted, leaving Frau Permaneder dismayed and anxious. The sudden hand-pressure had something despairing, the low words betrayed pent-up feeling. But when Tony, as chance offered, tried to come back to the subject, he wrapped himself in silence, the more forbidding because of his inward mortification over having given way⁠—his inward bitterness at being, as he felt, feeble and inadequate to the situation in hand. + 

He said now, slowly and fretfully: “Oh, my dear child, I wish we might ignore the whole affair!” + 

“Ignore it, Tom? Impossible! Unthinkable! Do you think you could suppress the fact? Do you imagine the whole town would forget the meaning of the day?” + 

“I don’t say it is possible⁠—I only say I wish it were. It is pleasant to celebrate the past, when one is gratified with the present and the future. It is agreeable to think of one’s forefathers when one feels at one with them and conscious of having acted as they would have done. If the jubilee came at a better time⁠—but just now, I feel small inclination to celebrate it.” + 

“You must not talk like that, Tom. You don’t mean it; you know perfectly that it would be a shame to let the hundredth anniversary of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook go by without a sign or a sound of rejoicing. You are a little nervous now, and I know why, though there is really no reason for it. But when the day comes, you will be as moved as all the rest of us.” + 

She was right; the day could not be passed over in silence. It was not long before a notice appeared in the papers, calling attention to the coming anniversary and giving a detailed history of the old and estimable firm⁠—but it was really hardly necessary. In the family, Justus Kröger was the first to mention the approaching event, on the Thursday afternoon; and Frau Permaneder saw to it that the venerable leather portfolio was solemnly brought out after dessert was cleared away, and the whole family, by way of foretaste, perused the dates and events in the life of the first Johann Buddenbrook, Hanno’s great-great-grandfather: when he had varioloid and when genuine smallpox, when he fell out of the third-storey window on to the floor of the drying-house, and when he had fever and delirium⁠—she read all that aloud with pious fervour. Not content with that, she must go back into the 16th century, to the oldest Buddenbrook of whom there was knowledge, to the one who was Councillor in Grabau, and the Rostock tailor who had been “very well off” and had so many children, living and dead. “What a splendid man!” she cried; and began to rummage through yellow papers and read letters and poems aloud. + 

On the morning of the seventh of July, Herr Wenzel was naturally the first with his congratulations. + 

“Well, Herr Sen’ter, many happy returns!” he said, gesturing freely with razor and strop in his red hands. “A hundred years! And nearly half of it, I may say, I have been shaving in the respected family⁠—oh, yes, one goes through a deal with the family, when one sees the head of it the first thing in the morning! The deceased Herr Consul was always the most talkative in the morning, too: ‘Wenzel,’ he would ask me, ‘Wenzel, what do you think about the rye? Should I sell or do you think it will go up again?’ ” + 

“Yes, Wenzel, and I cannot think of these years without you, either. Your calling, as I’ve often said to you, has a certain charm about it. When you have made your rounds, you are wiser than anybody: you have had the heads of nearly all the great houses under your hand, and know the mood of each one. All the others can envy you that, for it is really valuable information.” + 

“ ’s a good bit of truth in that, Herr Sen’ter. But what about the Herr Sen’ter’s own mood, if I may be so bold to ask? Herr Sen’ter’s looking a trifle pale again this morning.” + 

“Am I? Well, I have a headache⁠—and so far as I can see, it will get worse before it gets better, for I suspect they’ll put a good deal of strain on it today.” + 

“I’m afraid so, Herr Sen’ter. The interest is great⁠—the interest is very great. Just look out o’ window when I’ve done with you. Hosts of flags! And down at the bottom of the Street the Wullenwewer and the Friederike Överdieck with all their pennons flying.” + 

“Well, let’s be quick, then, Wenzel; there’s no time to lose, evidently.” + 

The Senator did not don his office jacket, as he usually did of a morning, but put on at once a black cutaway coat with a white waistcoat and light-coloured trousers. There would certainly be visits. He gave a last glance in the mirror, a last pressure of the tongs to his moustache, and turned with a little sigh to go. The dance was beginning. If only the day were well over! Would he have a single minute to himself, a single minute to relax the muscles of his face? All day long he should certainly have to receive, with tact and dignity, the congratulations of a host of people, find just the right word and just the right tone for everybody, be serious, hearty, ironic, jocose, and respectful by turns; and from afternoon late into the night there would be the dinner at the Ratskeller. + 

It was not true that his head ached. He was only tired. Already, though he had just risen, with his nerves refreshed by sleep, he felt his old, indefinable burden upon him. Why had he said his head ached⁠—as though he always had a bad conscience where his own health was concerned? Why? Why? However, there was no time now to brood over the question. + 

He went into the dining-room, where Gerda met him gaily. She too was already arrayed to meet their guests, in a plaid skirt, a white blouse, and a thin silk zouave jacket over it, the colour of her heavy hair. She smiled and showed her white teeth, so large and regular, whiter than her white face; her eyes, those close-set, enigmatic brown eyes, were smiling too, today. + 

“I’ve been up for hours⁠—you can tell from that how excited I am,” she said, “and how hearty my congratulations are.” + 

“Well, well! So the hundred years make an impression on you too?” + 

“Tremendous. But perhaps it is only the excitement of the celebration. What a day! Look at that, for instance.” She pointed to the breakfast-table, all garlanded with garden flowers. “That is Fräulein Jungmann’s work. But you are mistaken if you think you can drink tea now. The family is in the drawing-room already, waiting to make a presentation⁠—something in which I too have had a share. Listen, Thomas. This is, of course, only the beginning of a stream of callers. At first I can stand it, but at about midday I shall have to withdraw, I am sure. The barometer has fallen a little, but the sky is still the most staring blue. It makes the flags look lovely, of course, and the whole town is flagged⁠—but it will be frightfully hot. Come into the salon. Breakfast must wait. You should have been up before. Now the first excitement will have to come on an empty stomach.” + 

The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Ida Jungmann, Frau Permaneder, and Hanno were assembled in the salon, the last two supporting, not without difficulty, the family present, a great commemorative tablet. The Frau Consul, deeply moved, embraced her eldest-born. + 

“This is a wonderful day, my dear son⁠—a wonderful day,” she repeated. “We must thank God unceasingly, with all our hearts, for His mercies⁠—for all His mercies.” She wept. + 

The Senator was attacked by weakness in her embrace. He felt as though something within him freed itself and flew away. His lips trembled. An overwhelming need possessed him to lay his head upon his mother’s breast, to close his eyes in her arms, to breathe in the delicate perfume that rose from the soft silk of her gown, to lie there at rest, seeing nothing more, saying nothing more. He kissed her and stood erect, putting out his hand to his brother, who greeted him with the absentminded embarrassment which was his usual bearing on such occasions. Clothilde drawled out something kindly. Ida Jungmann confined herself to making a deep bow, while she played with the silver watch-chain on her flat bosom. + 

“Come here, Tom,” said Frau Permaneder uncertainly. “We can’t hold it any longer, can we, Hanno?” She was holding it almost alone, for Hanno’s little arms were not much help; and she looked, what with her enthusiasm and her effort, like an enraptured martyr. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks burned, and her tongue played, with a mixture of mischief and nervousness, on her upper lip. + 

“Here I am,” said the Senator. “What in the world is this? Come, let me have it; we’ll lean it against the wall.” He propped it up next to the piano and stood looking at it, surrounded by the family. + 

In a large, heavy frame of carved nut-wood were the portraits of the four owners of the firm, under glass. There was the founder, Johann Buddenbrook, taken from an old oil painting⁠—a tall, grave old gentleman, with his lips firmly closed, looking severe and determined above his lace jabot. There was the broad and jovial countenance of Johann Buddenbrook, the friend of Jean Jacques Hoffstede. There was Consul Johann Buddenbrook, in a stiff choker collar, with his wide, wrinkled mouth and large aquiline nose, his eyes full of religious fervour. And finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself, as a somewhat younger man. The four portraits were divided by conventionalized blades of wheat, heavily gilded, and beneath, likewise in figures of brilliant gilt, the dates 1768⁠–⁠1868. Above the whole, in the tall, Gothic hand of him who had left it to his descendants, was the quotation: “My son, attend with zeal, to thy business by day; but do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.” + 

The Senator, his hands behind his back gazed for a long time at the tablet. + 

“Yes, yes,” he said abruptly, and his tone was rather mocking, “an undisturbed night’s rest is a very good thing.” Then, seriously, if perhaps a little perfunctorily, “Thank you very much, my dear family. It is indeed a most thoughtful and beautiful gift. What do you think⁠—where shall we put it? Shall we hang it in my private office?” + 

“Yes, Tom, over the desk in your office,” answered Frau Permaneder, and embraced her brother. Then she drew him into the bow-window and pointed. + 

Under a deep blue sky, the two-coloured flag floated above all the houses, right down Fishers’ Lane, from Broad Street to the wharf, where the Wullenwewer and the Friederike Överdieck lay under full flag, in their owner’s honour. + 

“The whole town is the same,” said Frau Permaneder, and her voice trembled. “I’ve been out and about already. Even the Hagenströms have a flag. They couldn’t do otherwise.⁠—I’d smash in their window!” He smiled, and they went back to the table together. “And here are the telegrams, Tom, the first ones to come⁠—the personal ones, of course; the others have been sent to the office.” They opened a few of the dispatches: from the family in Hamburg, from the Frankfort Buddenbrooks, from Herr Arnoldsen in Amsterdam, from Jürgen Kröger in Wismar. Suddenly Frau Permaneder flushed deeply. + 

“He is a good man, in his way,” she said, and pushed across to her brother the telegram she had just opened: it was signed Permaneder. + 

“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch. “I’d like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a beehive after a while.” + 

His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back. + 

“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons. He wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now, just as if no one else were here⁠—you remember? Don’t be excited.” + 

It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man in a red beard, with dirty fingernails, was waiting to discipline him in the detested “tables.” But first he was to recite to Papa a poem painfully learned by heart, with Ida Jungmann’s help, in the little balcony on the second floor. + 

He leaned against the piano, in his blue sailor suit with the white V front and the wide linen collar with a big sailor’s knot coming out beneath. His thin legs were crossed, his body and head a little inclined in an attitude of shy, unconscious grace. Two or three weeks before, his hair had been cut, as not only his fellow-pupils, but the master as well, had laughed at it; but his head was still covered with soft abundant ringlets, growing down over the forehead and temples. His eyelids drooped, so that the long brown lashes lay over the deep blue shadows; and his closed lips were a little wry. + 

He knew well what would happen. He would begin to cry, would not be able to finish for crying; and his heart would contract, as it did on Sundays in St. Mary’s, when Herr Pfühl played on the organ in a certain piercingly solemn way. It always turned out that he wept when they wanted him to do something⁠—when they examined him and tried to find out what he knew, as Papa so loved to do. If only Mamma had not spoken of getting excited! She meant to be encouraging, but he felt it was a mistake. There they stood, and looked at him. They expected, and feared, that he would break down⁠—so how was it possible not to? He lifted his lashes and sought Ida’s eyes. She was playing with her watch-chain, and nodded to him in her usual honest, crabbed way. He would have liked to cling to her and have her take him away; to hear nothing but her low, soothing voice, saying “There, little Hanno, be quiet, you need not say it.” + 

“Well, my son, let us hear it,” said the Senator, shortly. He had sat down in an easy-chair by the table and was waiting. He did not smile⁠—he seldom did on such occasions. Very serious, with one eyebrow lifted, he measured little Hanno with cold and scrutinizing glance. + 

Hanno straightened up. He rubbed one hand over the piano’s polished surface, gave a shy look at the company, and, somewhat emboldened by the gentle looks of Grandmamma and Aunt Tony, brought out, in a low, almost a hard voice: “ ‘The Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’ by Uhland.” + 

“Oh, my dear child, not like that,” called out the Senator. “Don’t stick there by the piano and cross your hands on your tummy like that! Stand up! Speak out! That’s the first thing. Here, stand here between the curtains. Now, hold your head up⁠—let your arms hang down quietly at your sides.” + 

Hanno took up his position on the threshold of the living-room and let his arms hang down. Obediently he raised his head, but his eyes⁠—the lashes drooped so low that they were invisible. They were probably already swimming in tears. + 

“ ‘This is the day of our⁠—’ ” + 

he began, very low. His father’s voice sounded loud by contrast when he interrupted: “One begins with a bow, my son. And then, much louder. Begin again, please: ‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn’⁠—” + 

It was cruel. The Senator was probably aware that he was robbing the child of the last remnant of his self-control. But the boy should not let himself be robbed. He should have more manliness by now. “ ‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’ ” he repeated encouragingly, remorselessly. + 

But it was all up with Hanno. His head sank on his breast, and the small, blue-veined right hand tugged spasmodically at the brocaded portière. + 

“ ‘I stand alone on the vacant plain,’ ” + 

he said, but could get no further. The mood of the verse possessed him. An overmastering self-pity took away his voice, and the tears could not be kept back: they rolled out from beneath his lashes. Suddenly the thought came into his mind: if he were only ill, a little ill, as on those nights when he lay in bed with a slight fever and sore throat, and Ida came and gave him a drink, and put a compress on his head, and was kind⁠—He put his head down on the arm with which he clung to the portière, and sobbed. + 

“Well,” said the Senator, harshly, “there is no pleasure in that.” He stood up, irritated. “What are you crying about? Though it is certainly a good enough reason for tears, that you haven’t the courage to do anything, even for the sake of giving me a little pleasure! Are you a little girl? What will become of you if you go on like that? Will you always be drowning yourself in tears, every time you have to speak to people?” + 

“I never will speak to people, never!” thought Hanno in despair. + 

“Think it over till this afternoon,” finished the Senator, and went into the dining-room. Ida Jungmann knelt by her fledgling and dried his eyes, and spoke to him, half consoling, half reproachful. + 

The Senator breakfasted hurriedly, and the Frau Consul, Tony, Clothilde, and Christian meanwhile took their leave. They were to dine with Gerda, as likewise were the Krögers, the Weinschenks, and the three Misses Buddenbrook from Broad Street, while the Senator, willy-nilly, must be present at the dinner in the Ratskeller. He hoped to leave in time to see his family again at his own house. + 

Sitting at the be-garlanded table, he drank his hot tea out of a saucer, hurriedly ate an egg, and on the steps took two or three puffs of a cigarette. Grobleben, wearing his woollen scarf in defiance of the July heat, with a boot over his left forearm and the polish-brush in his right, a long drop pendent from his nose, came from the garden into the front entry and accosted his master at the foot of the stairs, where the brown bear stood with his tray. + 

“Many happy returns, Herr Sen’ter, many happy⁠—’n’ one is rich ’n’ great, ’n’ t’other’s pore⁠—” + 

“Yes, yes, Grobleben, you’re right, that’s just how it is!” And the Senator slipped a piece of money into the hand with the brush, and crossed the entry into the anteroom of the office. In the office the cashier came up to him, a tall man with honest, faithful eyes, to convey, in carefully selected phrases, the good wishes of the staff. The Senator thanked him in a few words, and went on to his place by the window. He had hardly opened his letters and glanced into the morning paper lying there ready for him, when a knock came on the door leading into the front entry, and the first visitors appeared with their congratulations. + 

It was a delegation of granary labourers, who came straddling in like bears, the corners of their mouths drawn down with befitting solemnity and their caps in their hands. Their spokesman spat tobacco-juice on the floor, pulled up his trousers, and talked in great excitement about “a hun’erd year” and “many more hun’erd year.” The Senator proposed to them a considerable increase in their pay for the week, and dismissed them. The office staff of the revenue department came in a body to congratulate their chief. As they left, they met in the doorway a number of sailors, with two pilots at the head, from the Wullenwewer and the Friederike Överdieck, the two ships belonging to the firm which happened at the time to be in port. Then there was a deputation of grain-porters, in black blouses, knee-breeches, and top-hats. And single citizens, too, were announced from time to time: Herr Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street came, with a black coat over his flannel shirt, and Iwersen the florist, and sundry other neighbours. There was an old postman, with watery eyes, earrings, and a white beard⁠—an ancient oddity whom the Senator used to salute on the street and call him Herr Postmaster: he came, stood in the doorway, and cried out “Ah bain’t come fer that, Herr Sen’ter! Ah knows as iverybody gits summat as comes here today, but ah bain’t come fer that, an’ so ah tells ye!” He received his piece of money with gratitude, none the less. There was simply no end to it. At half-past ten the servant came from the house to announce that the Frau Senator was receiving guests in the salon. + 

Thomas Buddenbrook left his office and hurried upstairs. At the door of the salon he paused a moment for a glance into the mirror to order his cravat, and to refresh himself with a whiff of the eau-de-cologne on his handkerchief. His body was wet with perspiration, but his face was pale, his hands and feet cold. The reception in the office had nearly used him up already. He drew a long breath and entered the sunlit room, to be greeted at once by Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer and multimillionaire, his wife, their daughter, and the latter’s husband, Senator Dr. Gieseke. These had all driven in from Travemünde, like many others of the first families of the town, who were spending July in a cure which they interrupted only for the Buddenbrook jubilee. + 

They had not been sitting for three minutes in the elegant armchairs of the salon when Consul Överdieck, son of the deceased Burgomaster, and his wife, who was a Kistenmaker, were announced. When Consul Huneus made his adieux, his place was taken by his brother, who had a million less money than he, but made up for it by being a senator. + 

Now the ball was open. The tall white door, with the relief of the singing cupids above it, was scarcely closed for a moment; there was a constant view from within of the great staircase, upon which the light streamed down from the skylight far above, and of the stairs themselves, full of guests either entering or taking their leave. But the salon was spacious, the guests lingered in groups to talk, and the number of those who came was for some time far greater than the number of those who went away. Soon the maidservant gave up opening and shutting the door that led into the salon and left it wide open, so that the guests stood in the corridor as well. There was the drone and buzz of conversation in masculine and feminine voices, there were handshakings, bows, jests, and loud, jolly laughter, which reverberated among the columns of the staircase and echoed from the great glass panes of the skylight. Senator Buddenbrook stood by turns at the top of the stairs and in the bow-window, receiving the congratulations, which were sometimes mere formal murmurs and sometimes loud and hearty expressions of good will. Burgomaster Dr. Langhals, a heavily built man of elegant appearance, with a shaven chin nestling in a white neckcloth, short grey mutton-chops, and a languid diplomatic air, was received with general marks of respect. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the wine-merchant, his wife, who was a Möllendorpf, and his brother and partner Stephan, Senator Buddenbrook’s loyal friend and supporter, with his wife, the rudely healthy daughter of a landed proprietor, arrive and pay their respects. The widowed Frau Senator Möllendorpf sits throned in the centre of the sofa in the salon, while her children, Consul August Möllendorpf and his wife Julchen, born Hagenström, mingle with the crowd. Consul Hermann Hagenström supports his considerable weight on the balustrade, breathes heavily into his red beard, and talks with Senator Dr. Cremer, the Chief of Police, whose brown beard, mixed with grey, frames a smiling face expressive of a sort of gentle slyness. State Attorney Moritz Hagenström, smiling and showing his defective teeth, is there with his beautiful wife, the former Fräulein Puttfarken of Hamburg. Good old Dr. Grabow may be seen pressing Senator Buddenbrook’s hand for a moment in both of his, to be displaced next moment by Contractor Voigt. Pastor Pringsheim, in secular garb, only betraying his dignity by the length of his frock-coat, comes up the steps with outstretched arms and a beaming face. And Herr Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus is present, of course. Those gentlemen who come as delegates from anybody such as the Senate, the Board of Trade, or the Assembly of Burgesses, appear in frock-coats. It is half-past eleven. The heat is intense. The lady of the house withdrew a quarter of an hour ago. + 

Suddenly there is a hubbub below the vestibule door, a stamping and shuffling of feet, as of many people entering together; and a ringing, noisy voice echoes through the whole house. Everybody rushes to the landing, blocks up the doors to the salon, the dining-room, and the smoking-room, and peers down. Below is a group of fifteen or twenty men with musical instruments, headed by a gentleman in a brown wig, with a grey nautical beard and yellow artificial teeth, which he shows when he talks. What is happening? It is Consul Peter Döhlmann, of course: he is bringing the band from the theatre, and mounts the stairs in triumph, swinging a packet of programmes in his hand! + 

The serenade in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook begins: in these impossible conditions, with the notes all running together, the chords drowning each other, the loud grunting and snarling of the big bass trumpet heard above everything else. It begins with “Now let us all thank God,” goes over into the adaptation of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, and winds up with a potpourri of folk-songs⁠—quite an extensive programme! And a pretty idea of Döhlmann’s! They congratulate him on it; and nobody feels inclined to break up until the concert is finished. They stand or sit in the salon and the corridor; they listen and talk. + 

Thomas Buddenbrook stood with Stephan Kistenmaker, Senator Dr. Gieseke, and Contractor Voigt, beyond the staircase, near the open door of the smoking-room and the flight of stairs up to the second storey. He leaned against the wall, now and then contributing a word to the conversation, and for the rest looking out into space across the balustrade. It was hotter than ever, and more oppressive; but it would probably rain. To judge from the shadows that drove across the skylight there must be clouds in the sky. They were so many and moved so rapidly that the changeful, flickering light on the staircase came in time to hurt the eyes. Every other minute the brilliance of the gilt chandelier and the brass instruments below was quenched, to blaze out the next minute as before. Once the shadows lasted a little longer, and six or seven times something fell with a slight crackling sound upon the panes of the skylight⁠—hailstones, no doubt. Then the sunlight streamed down again. + 

There is a mood of depression in which everything that would ordinarily irritate us and call up a healthy reaction, merely weighs us down with a nameless, heavy burden of dull chagrin. Thus Thomas brooded over the breakdown of little Johann, over the feelings which the whole celebration aroused in him, and still more over those which he would have liked to feel but could not. He sought again and again to pull himself together, to clear his countenance, to tell himself that this was a great day which was bound to heighten and exhilarate his mood. And indeed the noise which the band was making, the buzz of voices, the sight of all these people gathered in his honour, did shake his nerves; did, together with his memories of the past and of his father, give rise in him to a sort of weak emotionalism. But a sense of the ridiculous, of the disagreeable, hung over it all⁠—the trumpery music, spoiled by the bad acoustics, the banal company chattering about dinners and the stock market⁠—and this very mingling of emotion and disgust heightened his inward sense of exhaustion and despair. + 

At a quarter after twelve, when the musical program was drawing to a close, an incident occurred which in no wise interfered with the prevailing good feeling, but which obliged the master of the house to leave his guests for a short time. It was of a business nature. At a pause in the music the youngest apprentice in the firm appeared, coming up the great staircase, overcome with embarrassment at sight of so many people. He was a little, stunted fellow; and he drew his red face down as far as possible between his shoulders and swung one long, thin arm violently back and forth to show that he was perfectly at his ease. In the other hand he had a telegram. He mounted the steps, looking everywhere for his master, and when he had discovered him he passed with blushes and murmured excuses through the crowds that blocked his way. + 

His blushes were superfluous⁠—nobody saw him. Without looking at him or breaking off their talk, they slightly made way, and they hardly noticed when he gave his telegram to the Senator, with a scrape, and the latter turned a little away from Kistenmaker, Voigt, and Gieseke to read it. Nearly all the telegrams that came today were messages of congratulation; still, during business hours, they had to be delivered at once. + 

The corridor made a bend at the point where the stairs mounted to the second storey, and then went on to the back stairs, where there was another, a side entrance into the dining-room. Opposite the stairs was the shaft of the dumbwaiter, and at this point there was a sizable table, where the maids usually polished the silver. The Senator paused here, turned his back to the apprentice, and opened the dispatch. + 

Suddenly his eyes opened so wide that anyone seeing him would have started in astonishment, and he gave a deep, gasping intake of breath which dried his throat and made him cough. + 

He tried to say “Very well,” but his voice was inaudible in the clamour behind him. “Very well,” he repeated; but the second word was only a whisper. + 

As his master did not move or turn round or make any sign, the humpbacked apprentice shifted from one foot to the other, then made his outlandish scrape again and went down the back stairs. + 

Senator Buddenbrook still stood at the table. His hands, holding the dispatch, hung weakly down in front of him; he breathed in difficult, short breaths through his mouth; his body swayed back and forth, and he shook his head meaninglessly, as if stunned. “That little bit of hail,” he said, “that little bit of hail.” He repeated it stupidly. But gradually his breathing grew longer and quieter, the movement of his body less; his half-shut eyes clouded over with a weary, broken expression, and he turned around, slowly nodding his head, opened the door into the dining-room, and went in. With bent head he crossed the wide polished floor and sat down on one of the dark-red sofas by the window. Here it was quiet and cool. The sound of the fountain came up from the garden, and a fly buzzed on the pane. There was only a dull murmur from the front of the house. + 

He laid his weary head on the cushion and closed his eyes. “That’s good, that’s good,” he muttered, half aloud, drawing a deep breath of relief and satisfaction; “Oh, that is good!” + 

He lay five minutes thus, with limbs relaxed and a look of peace upon his face. Then he sat up, folded the telegram, put it in his breast pocket, and rose to rejoin his guests. + 

But in the same minute he sank back with a disgusted groan upon the sofa. The music⁠—it was beginning again; an idiotic racket, meant to be a galop, with the drum and cymbals marking a rhythm in which the other instruments all joined either ahead of or behind time; a naive, insistent, intolerable hullabaloo of snarling, crashing, and feebly piping noises, punctuated by the silly tootling of the piccolo. + 

VI + 

“Oh, Bach, Sebastian Bach, dear lady!” cried Edmund Pfühl, Herr Edmund Pfühl, the organist of St. Mary’s, as he strode up and down the salon with great activity, while Gerda, smiling, her head on her hand, sat at the piano; and Hanno listened from a big chair, his hands clasped round his knees. “Certainly, as you say, it was he through whom the victory was achieved by harmony over counterpoint. He invented modern harmony, assuredly. But how? Need I tell you how? By progressive development of the contrapuntal style⁠—you know it as well as I do. Harmony? Ah, no! By no means. Counterpoint, my dear lady, counterpoint! Whither, I ask you, would experiments in harmony have led? While I have breath to speak, I will warn you against mere experiments in harmony!” + 

His zeal as he spoke was great, and he gave it free rein, for he felt at home in the house. Every Wednesday afternoon there appeared on the threshold his bulky, square, high-shouldered figure, in a coffee-coloured coat, whereof the skirts hung down over his knees. While awaiting his partner, he would open lovingly the Bechstein grand piano, arrange the violin parts on the stand, and then prelude a little, softly and artistically, with his head sunk, in high contentment, on one shoulder. + 

An astonishing growth of hair, a wilderness of tight little curls, red-brown mixed with grey, made his head look big and heavy, though it was poised easily upon a long neck with an extremely large Adam’s apple that showed above his low collar. The straight, bunchy moustaches, of the same colour as the hair, were more prominent than the small snub nose. His eyes were brown and bright, with puffs of flesh beneath them; when he played they looked as though their gaze passed through whatever was in their way and rested on the other side. His face was not striking, but it had at least the stamp of a strong and lively intelligence. His eyelids were usually half drooped, and he had a way of relaxing his lower jaw without opening his mouth, which gave him a flabby, resigned expression like that sometimes seen on the face of a sleeping person. + 

The softness of his outward seeming, however, contrasted strongly with the actual strength and self-respect of his character. Edmund Pfühl was an organist of no small repute, whose reputation for contrapuntal learning was not confined within the walls of his native town. His little book on Church Music was recommended for private study in several conservatories, and his fugues and chorals were played now and then where an organ sounded to the glory of God. These compositions, as well as the voluntaries he played on Sundays at Saint Mary’s, were flawless, impeccable, full of the relentless, severe logicality of the Strenge Satz. Such beauty as they had was not of this earth, and made no appeal to the ordinary layman’s human feeling. What spoke in them, what gloriously triumphed in them, was a technique amounting to an ascetic religion, a technique elevated to a lofty sacrament, to an absolute end in itself. Edmund Pfühl had small use for the pleasant and the agreeable, and spoke of melody, it must be confessed, in slighting terms. But he was no dry pedant, notwithstanding. He would utter the name of Palestrina in the most dogmatic, awe-inspiring tone. But even while he made his instrument give out a succession of archaistic virtuosities, his face would be all aglow with feeling, with rapt enthusiasm, and his gaze would rest upon the distance as though he saw there the ultimate logicality of all events, issuing in reality. This was the musician’s look; vague and vacant precisely because it abode in the kingdom of a purer, profounder, more absolute logic than that which shapes our verbal conceptions and thoughts. + 

His hands were large and soft, apparently boneless, and covered with freckles. His voice, when he greeted Gerda Buddenbrook, was low and hollow, as though a bite were stuck in his throat: “Good morning, honoured lady!” + 

He rose a little from his seat, bowed, and respectfully took the hand she offered, while with his own left he struck the fifths on the piano, so firmly and clear that she seized her Stradivarius and began to tune the strings with practised ear. + 

“The G minor concerto of Bach, Herr Pfühl. The whole adagio still goes badly, I think.” + 

And the organist began to play. But hardly were the first chords struck, when it invariably happened that the corridor door would open gently, and without a sound little Johann would steal across the carpet to an easy-chair, where he would sit, his hands clasped round his knees, motionless, and listen to the music and the conversation. + 

“Well, Hanno, so you want a little taste of music, do you?” said Gerda in a pause, and looked at her son with her shadowy eyes, in which the music had kindled a soft radiance. + 

Then he would stand up and put out his hand to Herr Pfühl with a silent bow, and Herr Pfühl would stroke with gentle affection the soft light-brown hair that hung gracefully about brow and temples. + 

“Listen, now, my child,” he would say, with mild impressiveness; and the boy would look at the Adam’s apple that went up and down as the organist spoke, and then go back to his place with his quick, light steps, as though he could hardly wait for the music to begin again. + 

They played a movement of Haydn, some pages of Mozart, a sonata of Beethoven. Then, while Gerda was picking out some music, with her violin under her arm, a surprising thing happened: Herr Pfühl, Edmund Pfühl, organist at St. Mary’s, glided over from his easy interlude into music of an extraordinary style; while a sort of shamefaced enjoyment showed upon his absent countenance. A burgeoning and blooming, a weaving and singing rose beneath his fingers; then, softly and dreamily at first, but ever clearer and clearer, there emerged in artistic counterpoint the ancestral, grandiose, magnificent march motif⁠—a mounting to a climax, a complication, a transition; and at the resolution of the dominant the violin chimed in, fortissimo. It was the overture to Die Meistersinger. + 

Gerda Buddenbrook was an impassioned Wagnerite. But Herr Pfühl was an equally impassioned opponent⁠—so much so that in the beginning she had despaired of winning him over. + 

On the day when she first laid some piano arrangements from Tristan on the music-rack, he played some twenty-five beats and then sprung up from the music-stool to stride up and down the room with disgust painted upon his face. + 

“I cannot play that, my dear lady! I am your most devoted servant⁠—but I cannot. That is not music⁠—believe me! I have always flattered myself I knew something about music⁠—but this is chaos! This is demagogy, blasphemy, insanity, madness! It is a perfumed-fog, shot through with lightning! It is the end of all honesty in art. I will not play it!” And with the words he had thrown himself again on the stool, and with his Adam’s apple working furiously up and down, with coughs and sighs, had accomplished another twenty-five beats. But then he shut the piano and cried out: + 

“Oh, fie, fie! No, this is going too far. Forgive me, dear lady, if I speak frankly what I feel. You have honoured me for years, and paid me for my services; and I am a man of modest means. But I must lay down my office, I assure you, if you drive me to it by asking me to play these atrocities! Look, the child sits there listening⁠—would you then utterly corrupt his soul?” + 

But let him gesture as furiously as he would, she brought him over⁠—slowly, by easy stages, by persistent playing and persuasion. + 

“Pfühl,” she would say, “be reasonable, take the thing calmly. You are put off by his original use of harmony. Beethoven seems to you so pure, clear, and natural, by contrast. But remember how Beethoven himself affronted his contemporaries, who were brought up in the old way. And Bach⁠—why, good Heavens, you know how he was reproached for his want of melody and clearness! You talk about honesty⁠—but what do you mean by honesty in art? Is it not the antithesis of hedonism? And, if so, then that is what you have here. Just as much as in Bach. I tell you, Pfühl, this music is less foreign to your inner self than you think!” + 

“It is all juggling and sophistry⁠—begging your pardon,” he grumbled. But she was right, after all: the music was not so impossible as he thought at first. He never, it is true, quite reconciled himself to Tristan, though he eventually carried out Gerda’s wish and made a very clever arrangement of the Liebestod for violin and piano. He was first won over by certain parts of Die Meistersinger; and slowly a love for this new art began to stir within him. He would not confess it⁠—he was himself aghast at the fact, and would pettishly deny it when the subject was mentioned. But after the old masters had had their due, Gerda no longer needed to urge him to respond to a more complex demand upon his virtuosity; with an expression of shamefaced pleasure, he would glide into the weaving harmonies of the leitmotif. After the music, however, there would be a long explanation of the relation of this style of music to that of the Strenge Satz; and one day Herr Pfühl admitted that, while not personally interested in the theme, he saw himself obliged to add a chapter to his book on Church Music, the subject of which would be the application of the old key-system to the church- and folk-music of Richard Wagner. + 

Hanno sat quite still, his small hands clasped round his knees, his mouth, as usual, a little twisted as his tongue felt out the hole in a back tooth. He watched his mother and Herr Pfühl with large quiet eyes; and thus, so early, he became aware of music as an extraordinarily serious, important, and profound thing in life. He understood only now and then what they were saying, and the music itself was mostly far above his childish understanding. Yet he came again, and sat absorbed for hours⁠—a feat which surely faith, love, and reverence alone enabled him to perform. + 

When only seven, he began to repeat with one hand on the piano certain combinations of sound that made an impression on him. His mother watched him smiling, improved his chords, and showed him how certain tones would be necessary to carry one chord over into another. And his ear confirmed what she told him. + 

After Gerda Buddenbrook had watched her son a little, she decided that he must have piano lessons. + 

“I hardly think,” she told Herr Pfühl, “that he is suited for solo work; and on the whole I am glad, for it has its bad side apart from the dependence of the soloist upon his accompanist, which can be very serious too;⁠—if I did not have you, for instance!⁠—there is always the danger of yielding to more or less complete virtuosity. You see, I know whereof I speak. I tell you frankly that, for the soloist, a high degree of ability is only the first step. The concentration on the tone and phrasing of the treble, which reduces the whole polyphony to something vague and indefinite in the consciousness, must surely spoil the feeling for harmony⁠—unless the person is more than usually gifted⁠—and the memory as well, which is most difficult to correct later on. I love my violin, and I have accomplished a good deal with it; but to tell the truth, I place the piano higher. What I mean is this: familiarity with the piano, as a means of summarizing the richest and most varied structures, as an incomparable instrument for musical reproduction, means for me a clearer, more intimate and comprehensive intercourse with music. Listen, Pfühl. I would like to have you take him, if you will be so good. I know there are two or three people here in the town who give lessons⁠—women, I think. But they are simply piano-teachers. You know what I mean. I feel that it matters so little whether one is trained upon an instrument, and so much whether one knows something about music. I depend upon you. And you will see, you will succeed with him. He has the Buddenbrook hand. The Buddenbrooks can all strike the ninths and tenths⁠—only they have never set any store by it,” she concluded, laughing. And Herr Pfühl declared himself ready to undertake the lessons. + 

From now on, he came on Mondays as well as Wednesdays, and gave little Hanno lessons, while Gerda sat beside them. He went at it in an unusual way, for he felt that he owed more to his pupil’s dumb and passionate zeal than merely to employ it in playing the piano a little. The first elementary difficulties were hardly got over when he began to theorize, in a simple way, with graphic illustrations, and to give his pupil the foundations of the theory of harmony. And Hanno understood. For it was all only a confirmation of what he had always known. + 

As far as possible, Herr Pfühl took into consideration the eager ambition of the child. He spent much thought upon the problem, how best to lighten the material load that weighed down the wings of his fancy. He did not demand too much finger dexterity or practice of scales. What he had in mind, and soon achieved, was a clear and lively grasp of the key-system on Hanno’s part, an inward, comprehensive understanding of its relationships, out of which would come, at no distant day, the quick eye for possible combinations, the intuitive mastery over the piano, which would lead to improvisation and composition. He appreciated with a touching delicacy of feeling the spiritual needs of this young pupil, who had already heard so much, and directed it toward the acquisition of a serious style. He would not disillusionize the deep solemnity of his mood by making him practise commonplaces. He gave him chorals to play, and pointed out the laws controlling the development of one chord into another. + 

Gerda, sitting with her embroidery or her book, just beyond the portières, followed the course of the lessons. + 

“You outstrip all my expectations,” she told Herr Pfühl, later on. “But are you not going too fast? Aren’t you getting too far ahead? Your method seems to me eminently creative⁠—he has already begun to try to improvise a little. But if the method is beyond him, if he hasn’t enough gift, he will learn absolutely nothing.” + 

“He has enough gift,” Herr Pfühl said, and nodded. “Sometimes I look into his eyes, and see so much lying there⁠—but he holds his mouth tight shut. In later life, when his mouth will probably be shut even tighter, he must have some kind of outlet⁠—a way of speaking⁠—” + 

She looked at him⁠—at this square-built musician with the red-brown hair, the pouches under the eyes, the bushy moustaches, and the inordinate Adam’s apple⁠—and then she put out her hand and said: “Thank you, Pfühl. You mean well by him. And who knows, yet, how much you are doing for him?” + 

Hanno’s feeling for his teacher was one of boundless gratitude and devotion. At school he sat heavy and hopeless, unable, despite strenuous coaching, to understand his tables. But he grasped without effort all that Herr Pfühl told him, and made it his own⁠—if he could make more his own that which he had already owned before. Edmund Pfühl, like a stout angel in a tailcoat, took him in his arms every Monday afternoon and transported him above all his daily misery, into the mild, sweet, grave, consoling kingdom of sound. + 

The lessons sometimes took place at Herr Pfühl’s own house, a roomy old gabled dwelling full of cool passages and crannies, in which the organist lived alone with an elderly housekeeper. Sometimes, too, little Buddenbrook was allowed to sit up with the organist at the Sunday service in St. Mary’s⁠—which was quite a different matter from stopping below with the other people, in the nave. High above the congregation, high above Pastor Pringsheim in his pulpit, the two sat alone, in the midst of a mighty tempest of rolling sound, which at once set them free from the earth and dominated them by its own power; and Hanno was sometimes blissfully permitted to help his master control the stops. + 

When the choral was finished, Herr Pfühl would slowly lift his fingers from the keyboard, so that only the bass and the fundamental would still be heard, in lingering solemnity; and after a meaningful pause, the well-modulated voice of Pastor Pringsheim would rise up from under the sounding-board in the pulpit. Then it happened not infrequently that Herr Pfühl would, quite simply, begin to make fun of the preacher: his artificial enunciation, his long, exaggerated vowels, his sighs, his crude transitions from sanctity to gloom. Hanno would laugh too, softly but with heartfelt glee; for those two up there were both of the opinion⁠—which neither of them expressed⁠—that the sermon was silly twaddle, and that the real service consisted in that which the Pastor and his congregation regarded merely as a devotional accessory: namely, the music. + 

Herr Pfühl, in fact, had a constant grievance in the small understanding there was for his accomplishments down there among the Senators, Consuls, citizens, and their families. And thus, he liked to have his small pupil by him, to whom he could point out the extraordinary difficulties of the passages he had just played. He performed marvels of technique. He had composed a melody which was just the same read forward or backward, and based upon it a fugue which was to be played “crab-fashion.” But after performing this wonder: “Nobody knows the difference,” he said, and folded his hands in his lap with a dreary look, shaking his head hopelessly. While Pastor Pringsheim was delivering his sermon, he whispered to Hanno: “That was a crab-fashion imitation, Johann. You don’t know what that is yet. It is the imitation of a theme composed backward instead of forward⁠—a very, very difficult thing. Later on, I will show you what an imitation in the Strenge Satz involves. As for the ‘crab,’ I would never ask you to try that. It isn’t necessary. But do not believe those who tell you that such things are trifles, without any musical value. You will find the crab in musicians of all ages. But exercises like that are the scorn of the mediocre and the superficial musician. Humility, Hanno, humility⁠—is the feeling one should have. Don’t forget it.” + 

On his eighth birthday, April 15th, 1869, Hanno played before the assembled family a fantasy of his own composition. It was a simple affair, a motif entirely of his own invention, which he had slightly developed. When he showed it to Herr Pfühl, the organist, of course, had some criticism to make. + 

“What sort of theatrical ending is that, Johann? It doesn’t go with the rest of it. In the beginning it is all pretty good; but why do you suddenly fall from B major into the six-four chord on the fourth note with a minor third? These are tricks; and you tremolo here, too⁠—where did you pick that up? I know, of course: you have been listening when I played certain things for your mother. Change the end, child: then it will be quite a clean little piece of work.” + 

But it appeared that Hanno laid the greatest stress precisely on this minor chord and this finale; and his mother was so very pleased with it that it remained as it was. She took her violin and played the upper part, and varied it with runs in demi-semi-quavers. That sounded gorgeous: Hanno kissed her out of sheer happiness, and they played it together to the family on the 15th of April. + 

The Frau Consul, Frau Permaneder, Christian, Clothilde, Herr and Frau Consul Kröger, Herr and Frau Director Weinschenk, the Broad Street Buddenbrooks, and Therese Weichbrodt were all bidden to dinner at four o’clock, with the Senator and his wife, in honour of Hanno’s birthday; and now they sat in the salon and looked at the child, perched on the music-stool in his sailor suit, and at the elegant, foreign appearance his mother made as she played a wonderful cantilena on the G string, and then, with profound virtuosity, developed a stream of purling, foaming cadences. The silver on the end of her bow gleamed in the gaslight. + 

Hanno was pale with excitement, and had hardly eaten any dinner. But now he forgot all else in his absorbed devotion to his task, which would, alas, be all over in ten minutes! The little melody he had invented was more harmonic than rhythmic in its structure; there was an extraordinary contrast between the simple primitive material which the child had at his command, and the impressive, impassioned, almost overrefined method with which that material was employed. He brought out each leading note with a forward inclination of the little head; he sat far forward on the music-stool, and strove by the use of both pedals to give each new harmony an emotional value. In truth, when Hanno concentrated upon an effect, the result was likely to be emotional rather than merely sentimental. He gave every simple harmonic device a special and mysterious significance by means of retardation and accentuation; his surprising skill in effects was displayed in each chord, each new harmony, by a suddenly introduced pianissimo. And he sat with lifted eyebrows, swaying back and forth with the whole upper part of his body. Then came the finale, Hanno’s beloved finale, which crowned the elevated simplicity of the whole piece. Soft and clear as a bell sounded the E minor chord, tremolo pianissimo, amid the purling, flowing notes of the violin. It swelled, it broadened, it slowly, slowly rose: suddenly, in the forte, he introduced the discord C sharp, which led back to the original key, and the Stradivarius ornamented it with its welling and singing. He dwelt on the dissonance until it became fortissimo. But he denied himself and his audience the resolution; he kept it back. What would it be, this resolution, this enchanting, satisfying absorption into the B major chord? A joy beyond compare, a gratification of overpowering sweetness! Peace! Bliss! The kingdom of Heaven: only not yet⁠—not yet! A moment more of striving, hesitation, suspense, that must become well-nigh intolerable in order to heighten the ultimate moment of joy.⁠—Once more⁠—a last, a final tasting of this striving and yearning, this craving of the entire being, this last forcing of the will to deny oneself the fulfilment and the conclusion, in the knowledge that joy, when it comes, lasts only for the moment. The whole upper part of Hanno’s little body straightened, his eyes grew larger, his closed lips trembled, he breathed short, spasmodic breaths through his nose. At last, at last, joy would no longer be denied. It came, it poured over him; he resisted no more. His muscles relaxed, his head sank weakly on his shoulder, his eyes closed, and a pathetic, almost an anguished smile of speechless rapture hovered about his mouth; while his tremolo, among the rippling and rustling runs from the violin, to which he now added runs in the bass, glided over into B major, swelled up suddenly into forte, and after one brief, resounding burst, broke off. + 

It was impossible that all the effect which this had upon Hanno should pass over into his audience. Frau Permaneder, for instance, had not the slightest idea what it was all about. But she had seen the child’s smile, the rhythm of his body, the beloved little head swaying enraptured from side to side⁠—and the sight had penetrated to the depths of her easily moved nature. + 

“How the child can play! Oh, how he can play!” she cried, hurrying to him half-weeping and folding him in her arms. “Gerda, Tom, he will be a Meyerbeer, a Mozart, a⁠—” As no third name of equal significance occurred to her, she confined herself to showering kisses on her nephew, who sat there, still quite exhausted, with an absent look in his eyes. + 

“That’s enough, Tony,” the Senator said softly. “Please don’t put such ideas into the child’s head.” + 

VII + 

Thomas Buddenbrook was, in his heart, far from pleased with the development of little Johann. + 

Long ago he had led Gerda Arnoldsen to the altar, and all the Philistines had shaken their heads. He had felt strong and bold enough then to display a distinguished taste without harming his position as a citizen. But now, the long-awaited heir, who showed so many physical traits of the paternal inheritance⁠—did he, after all, belong entirely to the mother’s side? He had hoped that one day his son would take up the work of the father’s lifetime in his stronger, more fortunate hands, and carry it forward. But now it almost seemed that the son was hostile, not only to the surroundings and the life in which his lot was cast, but even to his father as well. + 

Gerda’s violin-playing had always added to her strange eyes, which he loved, to her heavy, dark-red hair and her whole exotic appearance, one charm the more. But now that he saw how her passion for music, strange to his own nature, utterly, even at this early age, possessed the child, he felt in it a hostile force that came between him and his son, of whom his hopes would make a Buddenbrook⁠—a strong and practical-minded man, with definite impulses after power and conquest. In his present irritable state it seemed to him that this hostile force was making him a stranger in his own house. + 

He could not, himself, approach any nearer to the music practised by Gerda and her friend Herr Pfühl; Gerda herself, exclusive and impatient where her art was concerned, made it cruelly hard for him. + 

Never had he dreamed that music was so essentially foreign to his family as now it seemed. His grandfather had enjoyed playing the flute, and he himself always listened with pleasure to melodies that possessed a graceful charm, a lively swing, or a tender melancholy. But if he happened to express his liking for any such composition, Gerda would be sure to shrug her shoulders and say with a pitying smile, “How can you, my friend? A thing like that, without any musical value whatever!” + 

He hated this “musical value.” It was a phrase which had no meaning for him save a certain chilling arrogance. It drove him on, in Hanno’s presence, to self-assertion. More than once he remonstrated angrily, “This constant harping on musical values, my dear, strikes me as rather tasteless and opinionated.” To which she rejoined: “Thomas, once for all, you will never understand anything about music as an art, and, intelligent as you are, you will never see that it is more than an after-dinner pleasure and a feast for the ears. In every other field you have a perception of the banal⁠—in music not. But it is the test of musical comprehension. What pleases you in music? A sort of insipid optimism, which, if you met with it in literature, would make you throw down the book with an angry or sarcastic comment. Easy gratification of each unformed wish, prompt satisfaction before the will is even roused⁠—that is what pretty music is like⁠—and it is like nothing else in the world. It is mere flabby idealism.” + 

He understood her; that is, he understood what she said. But he could not follow her: could not comprehend why melodies which touched or stirred him were cheap and worthless, while compositions which left him cold and bewildered possessed the highest musical value. He stood before a temple from whose threshold Gerda sternly waved him back⁠—and he watched while she and the child vanished within. + 

He betrayed none of his grief over this estrangement, though the gulf seemed to widen between him and his little son. The idea of suing for his child’s favour seemed frightful to him. During the day he had small time to spare; at meals he treated him with a friendly cordiality that had at times a tonic severity. “Well, comrade,” he would say, giving him a tap or two on the back of the head and seating himself opposite his wife, “well, and how are you? Studying? And playing the piano, eh? Good! But not too much piano, else you won’t want to do your task, and then you won’t go up at Easter.” Not a muscle betrayed the anxious suspense with which he waited to see how Hanno took his greeting and what his reply would be. Nothing revealed his painful inward shrinking when the child merely gave him a shy glance of the gold-brown, shadowy eyes⁠—a glance that did not even reach his father’s face⁠—and bent again over his plate. + 

It was monstrous for him to brood over this childish clumsiness. It was his fatherly duty to occupy himself a little with the child: so, while the plates were changed, he would examine him and try to stimulate his sense for facts. How many inhabitants were there in the town? What streets led from the Trave to the upper town? What were the names of the granaries that belonged to the firm? Out with it, now; speak up! But Hanno was silent. Not with any idea of wounding or annoying his father! But these inhabitants, these streets and granaries, which were normally a matter of complete indifference to him, became positively hateful when they were made the subject of an examination. However lively he was beforehand, however gaily he had laughed and talked with his father, his mood would go down to zero at the first symptom of an examination, and his resistance would collapse entirely. His eyes would cloud over, his mouth take on a despondent droop, and he would be possessed by a feeling of profound regret at the thoughtlessness of Papa, who surely knew that such tests came to nothing and only spoiled the whole meal time for everybody! With eyes swimming in tears he looked down at his plate. Ida would nudge him and whisper to him: the streets, the granaries. Oh, that was all useless, perfectly useless. She did not understand. He did know the names⁠—at least some of them. It would have been easy to do what Papa asked⁠—if only he were not possessed and prevented by an overpowering sadness! A severe word from his father and a tap with the fork against the knife rest brought him to himself with a start. He cast a glance at his mother and Ida and tried to speak. But the first syllables were already drowned in sobs. “That’s enough,” shouted the Senator, angrily. “Keep still⁠—you needn’t tell me! You can sit there dumb and silly all the rest of your life!” And the meal would be finished in uncomfortable silence. + 

When the Senator felt troubled about Hanno’s passionate preoccupation with his music, it was this dreaminess, this weeping, this total lack of freshness and energy, that he fixed upon. + 

All his life the boy had been delicate. His teeth had been particularly bad, and had been the cause of many painful illnesses and difficulties. It had nearly cost him his life to cut his first set; the gums showed a constant tendency to inflammation, and there were abscesses, which Mamsell Jungmann used to open with a needle at the proper time. Now his second teeth were beginning to come in, and the suffering was even greater. He had almost more pain than he could bear, and he spent many sleepless, feverish nights. His teeth, when they came, were as white and beautiful as his mother’s; but they were soft and brittle, and crowded each other out of shape when they came in; so that little Hanno was obliged, for the correction of all these evils, to make the acquaintance early in life of a very dreadful man⁠—no less than Herr Brecht, the dentist, in Mill Street. + 

Even this man’s name was significant: it suggested the frightful sensation in Hanno’s jaw when the roots of a tooth were pulled, lifted, and wrenched out; the sound of it made Hanno’s heart contract, just as it did when he cowered in an easy-chair in Herr Brecht’s waiting-room, with the faithful Jungmann sitting opposite, and looked at the pictures in a magazine, while he breathed in the sharp-smelling air of the room and waited for the dentist to open the door of the operating-room, with his polite and horrible “Won’t you come in, please?” + 

This operating-room possessed one strange attraction, a gorgeous parrot with venomous little eyes, which sat in a brass cage in the corner and was called, for unknown reasons, Josephus. He used to say “Sit down; one moment, please,” in a voice like an old fishwife’s; and though the hideous circumstances made this sound like mockery, yet Hanno felt for the bird a curious mixture of fear and affection. Imagine⁠—a parrot, a big, bright-coloured bird, that could talk and was called Josephus! He was like something out of an enchanted forest; like Grimm’s fairy tales, which Ida read aloud to him. And when Herr Brecht opened the door, his invitation was repeated by Josephus in such a way that somehow Hanno was laughing when he went into the operating-room and sat down in the queer big chair by the window, next the treadle machine. + 

Herr Brecht looked a good deal like Josephus. His nose was of the same shape, above his grizzled moustaches. The bad thing about him was that he was nervous, and dreaded the tortures he was obliged to inflict. “We must proceed to extraction, Fräulein,” he would say, growing pale. Hanno himself was in a pale cold sweat, with staring eyes, incapable of protesting or running away; in short, in much the same condition as a condemned criminal. He saw Herr Brecht, with the forceps in his sleeve, bend over him, and noticed that little beads were standing out on his bald brow, and that his mouth was twisted. When it was all over, and Hanno, pale and trembling, spat blood into the blue basin at his side, Herr Brecht too had to sit down, and wipe his forehead and take a drink of water. + 

They assured little Johann that this man would do him good and save him suffering in the end. But when Hanno weighed his present pains against the positive good that had accrued from them, he felt that the former far outweighed the latter; and he regarded these visits to Mill Street as so much unnecessary torture. They removed four beautiful white molars which had just come in, to make room for the wisdom teeth expected later: this required four weeks of visits, in order not to subject the boy to too great a strain. It was a fearful time!⁠—a long drawn-out martyrdom, in which dread of the next visit began before the last one, with its attendant exhaustion, was fairly over. When the last tooth was drawn, Hanno was quite worn out, and was ill in bed for a week. + 

This trouble with his teeth affected not only his spirits but also the functioning of all his other organs. What he could not chew he did not digest, and there came attacks of gastric fever, accompanied by fitful heart action, according as the heart was either weakened or too strongly stimulated. And there were spells of giddiness, while the pavor nocturnus, that strange affliction beloved of Dr. Grabow, continued unabated. Hardly a night passed that little Johann did not start up in bed, wringing his hands with every mark of unbearable anguish, and crying out piteously for help, as though someone were trying to choke him or some other awful thing were happening. In the morning he had forgotten it all. Dr. Grabow’s treatment consisted of giving fruit-juice before the child went to bed; which had absolutely no effect. + 

The physical arrests and the pains which Hanno suffered made him old for his age; he was what is called precocious; and though this was not very obvious, being restrained in him, as it were, by his own unconscious good taste, still it expressed itself at times in the form of a melancholy superiority. “How are you, Hanno?” somebody would ask: his grandmother or one of the Broad Street Buddenbrooks. A little resigned curl of the lip, or a shrug of the shoulders in their blue sailor suit, would be the only answer. + 

“Do you like to go to school?” + 

“No,” answered Hanno, with quiet candour⁠—he did not consider it worth while to try to tell a lie in such cases. + 

“No? But one has to learn writing, reading, arithmetic⁠—” + 

“And so on,” said little Johann. + 

No, he did not like going to school⁠—the old monastic school with its cloisters and vaulted classrooms. He was hampered by his illnesses, and often absentminded, for his thoughts would linger among his harmonic combinations, or upon the still unravelled marvel of some piece which he had heard his mother and Herr Pfühl playing; and all this did not help him on in the sciences. These lower classes were taught by assistant masters and seminarists, for whom he entertained mingled feelings: a dread of possible future punishments and a secret contempt for their social inferiority, their spiritual limitations, and their physical unkemptness. Herr Tietge, a little grey man in a greasy black coat, who had taught in the school even in the time of the deceased Marcellus Stengel; who squinted abominably and sought to remedy this defect by wearing glasses as thick and round as a ship’s portholes⁠—Herr Tietge told little Johann how quick and industrious his father had been at figures. Herr Tietge had severe fits of coughing, and spat all over the floor of his platform. + 

Hanno had, among his schoolmates, no intimates save one. But this single bond was very close, even from his earliest school days. His friend was a child of aristocratic birth but neglected appearance, a certain Count Mölln, whose first name was Kai. + 

Kai was a lad of about Hanno’s height, dressed not in a sailor suit, but in shabby clothes of uncertain colour, with here and there a button missing, and a great patch in the seat. His arms were too long for the sleeves of his coat, and his hands seemed impregnated with dust and earth to a permanent grey colour; but they were unusually narrow and elegant, with long fingers and tapering nails. His head was to match: neglected, uncombed, and none too clean, but endowed by nature with all the marks of pure and noble birth. The carelessly parted hair, reddish-blond in colour, waved back from a white brow, and a pair of light-blue eyes gleamed bright and keen from beneath. The cheekbones were slightly prominent: while the nose, with its delicate nostrils and slightly aquiline curve, and the mouth, with its short upper lip, were already quite unmistakable and characteristic. + 

Hanno Buddenbrook had seen the little count once or twice, even before they met at school, when he took his walks with Ida northward from the Castle Gate. Some distance outside the town, nearly as far as the first outlying village, lay a small farm, a tiny, almost valueless property without even a name. The passerby got the impression of a dunghill, a quantity of chickens, a dog-hut, and a wretched, kennel-like building with a sloping red roof. This was the manor-house, and therein dwelt Kai’s father, Count Eberhard Mölln. + 

He was an eccentric, hardly ever seen by anybody, busy on his dunghill with his dogs, his chickens, and his vegetable-patch: a large man in top-boots, with a green frieze jacket. He had a bald head and a huge grey beard like the tail of a turnip; he carried a riding-whip in his hand, though he had no horse to his name, and wore a monocle stuck into his eye under the bushy eyebrow. Except him and his son, there was no Count Mölln in all the length and breadth of the land any more: the various branches of a once rich, proud, and powerful family had gradually withered off, until now there was only an aunt, with whom Kai’s father was not on terms. She wrote romances for the family story-papers, under a dashing pseudonym. The story was told of Count Eberhard that when he first withdrew to his little farm, he devised a means of protecting himself from the importunities of peddlers, beggars, and busybodies. He put up a sign which read: “Here lives Count Mölln. He wants nothing, buys nothing, and gives nothing away.” When the sign had served its purpose, he removed it. + 

Motherless⁠—for the Countess had died when her child was born, and the housework was done by an elderly female⁠—little Kai grew up like a wild animal, among the dogs and chickens; and here Hanno Buddenbrook had looked at him shyly from a distance, as he leaped like a rabbit among the cabbages, romped with the dogs, and frightened the fowls by turning somersaults. + 

They met again in the schoolroom, where Hanno probably felt again his first alarm at the little Count’s unkempt exterior. But not for long. A sure instinct had led him to pay no heed to the outward negligence; had shown him instead the white brow, the delicate mouth, the finely shaped blue eyes, which looked with a sort of resentful hostility into his own; and Hanno felt sympathy for this one alone among all his fellows. But he would never, by himself, have taken the first steps; he was too timid for that. Without the ruthless impetuosity of little Kai they might have remained strangers, after all. The passionate rapidity of his approach even frightened Hanno, at first. The neglected little count sued for the favour of the quiet, elegantly dressed Hanno with a fiery, aggressive masculinity impossible to resist. Kai could not, it is true, help Hanno with his lessons. His untamed spirits were as hostile to the “tables” as was little Buddenbrook’s dreamy abstractedness. But he gave him everything he had: glass bullets, wooden tops, even a broken lead pistol which was his dearest treasure. During the recess he told him about his home and the puppies and chickens, and walked with him at midday as far as he dared, though Ida Jungmann, with a packet of sandwiches, was always waiting for her fledgling at the school gate. It was from Ida that Kai heard little Buddenbrook’s nickname; he took it up, and never called him henceforth by anything else. + 

One day he demanded that Hanno, instead of going to the Mill-wall, should take a walk with him to his father’s house to see the baby guinea-pigs. Fräulein Jungmann finally yielded to the teasing of the two children. They strolled out to the noble domain, viewed the dunghill, the vegetables, the fowls, dogs, and guinea-pigs, and even went into the house, where in a long low room on the ground floor, Count Eberhard sat in defiant isolation, reading at a clumsy table. He asked crossly what they wanted. + 

Ida Jungmann could not be brought to repeat the visit. She insisted that, if the two children wished to be together, Kai could visit Hanno instead. So for the first time, with honest admiration, but no trace of shyness, Kai entered Hanno’s beautiful home. After that he went often. Soon nothing but the deep winter snows prevented him from making the long way back again for the sake of a few hours with his friend. + 

They sat in the large playroom in the second storey and did their lessons together. There were long sums that covered both sides of the slate with additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions, and had to come out to zero in the end; otherwise there was a mistake, and they must hunt and hunt till they had found the little beast and exterminated him. Then they had to study grammar, and learn the rules of comparison, and write down very neat, tidy examples underneath. Thus: “Horn is transparent, glass is more transparent, light is most transparent.” They took their exercise-books and conned sentences like the following: “I received a letter, saying that he felt aggrieved because he believed that you had deceived him.” The fell intent of this sentence, so full of pitfalls, was that you should write ei where you ought to write ie, and contrariwise. They had, in fact, done that very thing, and now it must be corrected. But when all was finished they might put their books aside and sit on the window-ledge while Ida read to them. + 

The good soul read about Cinderella, about the prince who could not shiver and shake, about Rumpelstiltskin, about Rapunzel and the Frog Prince⁠—in her deep, patient voice, her eyes half-shut, for she knew the stories by heart, she had read them so often. She wet her finger and turned the page automatically. + 

But after a while Kai, who possessed the constant craving to do something himself, to have some effect on his surroundings, would close the book and begin to tell stories himself. It was a good idea, for they knew all the printed ones, and Ida needed a rest sometimes, too. Kai’s stories were short and simple at first, but they expanded and grew bolder and more complicated with time. The interesting thing about them was that they never stood quite in the air, but were based upon a reality which he presented in a new and mysterious light. Hanno particularly liked the one about the wicked enchanter who tortured all human beings by his malignant art; who had captured a beautiful prince named Josephus and turned him into a green-and-red parrot, which he kept in a gilded cage. But in a far distant land the chosen hero was growing up, who should one day fearlessly advance at the head of an invincible army of dogs, chickens, and guinea-pigs and slay the base enchanter with a single sword-thrust, and deliver all the world⁠—in particular, Hanno Buddenbrook⁠—from his clutches. Then Josephus would be restored to his proper form and return to his kingdom, in which Kai and Hanno would be appointed to high offices. + 

Senator Buddenbrook saw the two friends together now and then, as he passed the door of the playroom. He had nothing against the intimacy, for it was clear that the two lads did each other good. Hanno gentled, tamed, and ennobled Kai, who loved him tenderly, admired his white hands, and, for his sake, let Ida Jungmann wash his own with soap and a nailbrush. And if Hanno could absorb some of his friend’s wild energy and spirits, it would be welcome, for the Senator realized keenly the constant feminine influence that surrounded the boy, and knew that it was not the best means for developing his manly qualities. + 

The faithful devotion of the good Ida could not be repaid with gold. She had been in the family now for more than thirty years. She had cared for the previous generations with self-abnegation; but Hanno she carried in her arms, lapped him in tender care, and loved him to idolatry. She had a naive, unshakable belief in his privileged station in life, which sometimes went to the length of absurdity. In whatever touched him she showed a surprising, even an unpleasant effrontery. Suppose, for instance, she took him with her to buy cakes at the pastry-shop: she would poke among the sweets on the counter and select a piece for Hanno, which she would coolly hand him without paying for it⁠—the man should feel himself honoured, indeed! And before a crowded show-window she would ask the people in front, in her west-Prussian dialect, pleasantly enough, but with decision, to make a place for her charge. He was so uncommon in her eyes that she felt there was hardly another child in the world worthy to touch him. In little Kai’s case, the mutual preference of the two children had been too strong for her. Possibly she was a little taken by his name, too. But if other children came up to them on the Mill-wall, as she sat with Hanno on a bench, Fräulein Jungmann would get up almost at once, make some excuse or other⁠—it was late, or there was a draught⁠—and take her charge away. The pretexts she gave to little Johann would have led him to believe that all his contemporaries were either scrofulous of full of “evil humours,” and that he himself was a solitary exception; which did not tend to increase his already deficient confidence and ease of manner. + 

Senator Buddenbrook did not know all the details; but he saw enough to convince him that his son’s development was not taking the desired course. If he could only take his upbringing in his own hands, and mould his spirit by daily and hourly contact! But he had not the time. He perceived the lamentable failure of his occasional efforts: he knew they only strained the relations between father and son. In his mind was a picture which he longed to reproduce: it was a picture of Hanno’s great-grandfather, whom he himself had known as a boy: a clear-sighted man, jovial, simple, sturdy, humorous⁠—why could not little Johann grow up like that? If only he could suppress or forbid the music, which was surely not good for the lad’s physical development, absorbed his powers, and took his mind from the practical affairs of life! That dreamy nature⁠—did it not almost, at times, border on irresponsibility? + 

One day, some three quarters of an hour before dinner, Hanno had gone down alone to the first storey. He had practised for a long time on the piano, and now was idling about in the living-room. He half lay, half sat, on the chaise-longue, tying and untying his sailor’s knot, and his eyes, roving aimlessly about, caught sight of an open portfolio on his mother’s nut-wood writing-table. It was the leather case with the family papers. He rested his elbow on the sofa-cushion, and his chin in his hand, and looked at the things for a while from a distance. Papa must have had them out after second breakfast, and left them there because he was not finished with them. Some of the papers were sticking in the portfolio, some loose sheets lying outside were weighted with a metal ruler, and the large gilt-edged notebook with the motley paper lay there open. + 

Hanno slipped idly down from the sofa and went to the writing-table. The book was open at the Buddenbrook family tree, set forth in the hand of his various forbears, including his father; complete, with rubrics, parentheses, and plainly marked dates. Kneeling with one knee on the desk-chair, leaning his head with its soft waves of brown hair on the palm of his hand, Hanno looked at the manuscript sidewise, carelessly critical, a little contemptuous, and supremely indifferent, letting his free hand toy with Mamma’s gold-and-ebony pen. His eyes roved all over these names, masculine and feminine, some of them in queer old-fashioned writing with great flourishes, written in faded yellow or thick black ink, to which little grains of sand were sticking. At the very bottom, in Papa’s small, neat handwriting that ran so fast over the page, he read his own name, under that of his parents: Justus, Johann, Kaspar, born April 15, 1861. He liked looking at it. He straightened up a little, and took the ruler and pen, still rather idly; let his eye travel once more over the whole genealogical host; then, with absent care, mechanically and dreamily, he made with the gold pen a beautiful, clean double line diagonally across the entire page, the upper one heavier than the lower, just as he had been taught to embellish the page of his arithmetic book. He looked at his work with his head on one side, and then moved away. + 

After dinner the Senator called him up and surveyed him with his eyebrows drawn together. + 

“What is this? Where did it come from? Did you do it?” + 

Hanno had to think a minute, whether he really had done it; and then he answered “Yes.” + 

“What for? What is the matter with you? Answer me! What possessed you, to do such a mischievous thing?” cried the Senator, and struck Hanno’s cheek lightly with the rolled-up notebook. + 

And little Johann stammered, retreating, with his hand to his cheek, “I thought⁠—I thought⁠—there was nothing else coming.” + 

VIII + 

Nowadays, when the family gathered at table on Thursdays, under the calmly smiling gaze of the immortals on the walls, they had a new and serious theme. It called out on the faces of the female Buddenbrooks, at least the Broad Street ones, an expression of cold restraint. But it highly excited Frau Permaneder, as her manner and gestures betrayed. She tossed back her head, stretched out her arms before her, or flung them above her head as she talked; and her voice showed by turns anger and dismay, passionate opposition and deep feeling. She would pass over from the particular to the general, and talk in her throaty voice about wicked people, interrupting herself with the little cough that was due to poor digestion. Or she would utter little trumpetings of disgust: Teary Trietschke, Grünlich, Permaneder! A new name had now been added to these, and she pronounced it in a tone of indescribable scorn and hatred: “The District Attorney!” + 

But when Director Hugo Weinschenk entered⁠—late, as usual, for he was overwhelmed with work; balancing his two fists and weaving about more than ever at the waist of his frock-coat⁠—and sat down at table, his lower lip hanging down with its impudent expression under his moustaches, then the conversation would come to a full stop, and heavy silence would brood over the table until the Senator came to the rescue by asking the Director how his affair was going on⁠—as if it were an ordinary business dealing. + 

Hugo Weinschenk would answer that things were going very well, very well indeed, they could not go otherwise; and then he would blithely change the subject. He was much more sprightly than he used to be; there was a certain lack of restraint in his roving eye, and he would ask ever so many times about Gerda Buddenbrook’s fiddle without getting any reply. He talked freely and gaily⁠—only it was a pity his flow of spirits prevented him from guarding his tongue; for he now and then told anecdotes which were not at all suited to the company. One, in particular, was about a wet-nurse who prejudiced the health of her charge by the fact that she suffered from flatulence. Too late, or not at all, he remarked that his wife was flushing rosy red, that Thomas, the Frau Consul and Gerda were sitting like statues, and the Misses Buddenbrook exchanging glances that were fairly boring holes in each other. Even Riekchen Severin was looking insulted at the bottom of the table, and old Consul Kröger was the single one of the company who gave even a subdued snort. + 

What was the trouble with Director Weinschenk? This industrious, solid citizen with the rough exterior and no social graces, who devoted himself with an obstinate sense of duty to his work alone⁠—this man was supposed to have been guilty, not once but repeatedly, of a serious fault: he was accused of, he had been indicted for, performing a business manoeuvre which was not only questionable, but directly dishonest and criminal. There would be a trial, the outcome of which was not easy to guess. What was he accused of? It was this: certain fires of considerable extent had taken place in different localities, which would have cost his company large sums of money. Director Weinschenk was accused of having received private information of such accidents through his agents, and then, in wrongful possession of this information, of having transferred the back insurance to another firm, thus saving his own the loss. The matter was now in the hands of the State Attorney, Dr. Moritz Hagenström. + 

“Thomas,” said the Frau Consul in private to her son, “please explain it to me. I do not understand. What do you make of the affair?” + 

“Why, my dear Mother,” he answered, “what is there to say? It does not look as though things were quite as they should be⁠—unfortunately. It seems unlikely to me that Weinschenk is as guilty as people think. In the modern style of doing business, there is a thing they call usance. And usance⁠—well, imagine a sort of manoeuvre, not exactly open and aboveboard, something that looks dishonest to the man in the street, yet perhaps quite customary and taken for granted in the business world: that is usance. The boundary line between usance and actual dishonesty is extremely hard to draw. Well⁠—if Weinschenk has done anything he shouldn’t, he has probably done no more than a good many of his colleagues who will not get caught. But⁠—I don’t see much chance of his being cleared. Perhaps in a larger city he might be, but here everything depends on cliques and personal motives. He should have borne that in mind in selecting his lawyer. It is true that we have no really eminent lawyer in the whole town, nobody with superior oratorical talent, who knows all the ropes and is versed in dubious transactions. All our jurists hang together; they have family connections, in many cases; they eat together; they work together, and they are accustomed to considering each other. In my opinion, it would have been clever to take a town lawyer. But what did Weinschenk do? He thought it necessary⁠—and this in itself makes his innocence look doubtful⁠—to get a lawyer from Berlin, a Dr. Breslauer, who is a regular rake, an accomplished orator and up to all the tricks of the trade. He has the reputation of having got so-and-so many dishonest bankrupts off scot-free. He will conduct this affair with the same cleverness⁠—for a consideration. But will it do any good? I can see already that our town lawyers will band together to fight him tooth and nail, and that Dr. Hagenström’s hearers will already be prepossessed in his favour. As for the witnesses: well, Weinschenk’s own staff won’t be any too friendly to him, I’m afraid. What we indulgently call his rough exterior⁠—he would call it that, himself, too⁠—has not made him many friends. In short, Mother, I am looking forward to trouble. It will be a pity for Erica, if it turns out badly; but I feel most for Tony. You see, she is quite right in saying that Hagenström is glad of the chance. The thing concerns all of us, and the disgrace will fall on us too; for Weinschenk belongs to the family and eats at our table. As far as I am concerned, I can manage. I know what I have to do: in public, I shall act as if I had nothing whatever to do with the affair. I will not go to the trial⁠—although I am sorry not to, for Breslauer is sure to be interesting. And in general I must behave with complete indifference, to protect myself from the imputation of wanting to use my influence. But Tony? I don’t like to think what a sad business a conviction will be for her. She protests vehemently against envious intrigues and calumniators and all that; but what really moves her is her anxiety lest, after all her other troubles, she may see her daughter’s honourable position lost as well. It is the last blow. She will protest her belief in Weinschenk’s innocence the more loudly the more she is forced to doubt it. Well, he may be innocent, after all. We can only wait and see, Mother, and be very tactful with him and Tony and Erica. But I’m afraid⁠—” + 

It was under these circumstances that the Christmas feast drew near, to which little Hanno was counting the days, with a beating heart and the help of a calendar manufactured by Ida Jungmann, with a Christmas tree on the last leaf. + 

The signs of festivity increased. Ever since the first Sunday in Advent a great gaily coloured picture of a certain Ruprecht had been hanging on the wall in grandmama’s dining-room. And one morning Hanno found his covers and the rug beside his bed sprinkled with gold tinsel. A few days later, as Papa was lying with his newspaper on the living-room sofa, and Hanno was reading “The Witch of Endor” out of Gerock’s Palm Leaves, an “old man” was announced. This had happened every year since Hanno was a baby⁠—and yet was always a surprise. They asked him in, this “old man,” and he came shuffling along in a big coat with the fur side out, sprinkled with bits of cotton-wool and tinsel. He wore a fur cap, and his face had black smudges on it, and his beard was long and white. The beard and the big, bushy eyebrows were also sprinkled with tinsel. He explained⁠—as he did every year⁠—in a harsh voice, that this sack (on his left shoulder) was for good children, who said their prayers (it contained apples and gilded nuts); but that this sack (on his right shoulder) was for naughty children. The “old man” was, of course, Ruprecht; perhaps not actually the real Ruprecht⁠—it might even be Wenzel the barber, dressed up in Papa’s coat turned fur side out⁠—but it was as much Ruprecht as possible. Hanno, greatly impressed, said Our Father for him, as he had last year⁠—both times interrupting himself now and again with a little nervous sob⁠—and was permitted to put his hand into the sack for good children, which the “old man” forgot to take away. + 

The holidays came, and there was not much trouble over the report, which had to be presented for Papa to read, even at Christmas-time. The great dining-room was closed and mysterious, and there were marzipan and gingerbread to eat⁠—and in the streets, Christmas had already come. Snow fell, the weather was frosty, and on the sharp clear air were borne the notes of the barrel-organ, for the Italians, with their velvet jackets and their black moustaches, had arrived for the Christmas feast. The shopwindows were gay with toys and goodies; the booths for the Christmas fair had been erected in the marketplace; and wherever you went you breathed in the fresh, spicy odour of the Christmas trees set out for sale. + 

The evening of the twenty-third came at last, and with it the present-giving in the house in Fishers’ Lane. This was attended by the family only⁠—it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the Christmas Eve party given by the Frau Consul in Meng Street. She clung to the old customs, and reserved the twenty-fourth for a celebration to which the whole family group was bidden; which, accordingly, in the late afternoon, assembled in the landscape-room. + 

The old lady, flushed of cheek, and with feverish eyes, arrayed in a heavy black-and-grey striped silk that gave out a faint scent of patchouli, received her guests as they entered, and embraced them silently, her gold bracelets tinkling. She was strangely excited this evening⁠—“Why, Mother, you’re fairly trembling,” the Senator said when he came in with Gerda and Hanno. “Everything will go off very easily.” But she only whispered, kissing all three of them, “For Jesus Christ’s sake⁠—and my blessed Jean’s.” + 

Indeed, the whole consecrated programme instituted by the deceased Consul had to be carried out to the smallest detail; and the poor lady fluttered about, driven by her sense of responsibility for the fitting accomplishment of the evening’s performance, which must be pervaded with a deep and fervent joy. She went restlessly back and forth, from the pillared hall where the choirboys from St. Mary’s were already assembled, to the dining-room, where Riekchen Severin was putting the finishing touches to the tree and the table-full of presents, to the corridor full of shrinking old people⁠—the “poor” who were to share in the presents⁠—and back into the landscape-room, where she rebuked every unnecessary word or sound with one of her mild sidelong glances. It was so still that the sound of a distant hand-organ, faint and clear like a toy music-box, came across to them through the snowy streets. Some twenty persons or more were sitting or standing about in the room; yet it was stiller than a church⁠—so still that, as the Senator cautiously whispered to Uncle Justus, it reminded one more of a funeral! + 

There was really no danger that the solemnity of the feast would be rudely broken in upon by youthful high spirits. A glance showed that almost all the persons in the room were arrived at an age when the forms of expression are already long ago fixed. Senator Thomas Buddenbrook, whose pallor gave the lie to his alert, energetic, humorous expression; Gerda, his wife, leaning back in her chair, the gleaming, blue-ringed eyes in her pale face gazing fixedly at the crystal prisms in the chandelier; his sister, Frau Permaneder; his cousin, Jürgen Kröger, a quiet, neatly-dressed official; Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi, the first two more long and lean, the third smaller and plumper than ever, but all three wearing their stereotyped expression, their sharp, spiteful smile at everything and everybody, as though they were perpetually saying “Really⁠—it seems incredible!” Lastly, there was poor, ashen-grey Clothilde, whose thoughts were probably fixed upon the coming meal.⁠—Every one of these persons was past forty. The hostess herself, her brother Justus and his wife, and little Therese Weichbrodt were all well past sixty; while old Frau Consul Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s widow, born Stüwing, as well as Madame Kethelsen, now, alas almost entirely deaf, were already in the seventies. + 

Erica Weinschenk was the only person present in the bloom of youth; she was much younger than her husband, whose cropped, greying head stood out against the idyllic landscape behind him. When her eyes⁠—the light-blue eyes of Herr Grünlich⁠—rested upon him, you could see how her full bosom rose and fell without a sound, and how she was beset with anxious, bewildered thoughts about usance and bookkeeping, witnesses, prosecuting attorneys, defence, and judges. Thoughts like these, un-Christmaslike though they were, troubled everybody in the room. They all felt uncanny at the presence in their midst of a member of the family who was actually accused of an offence against the law, the civic weal, and business probity, and who would probably be visited by shame and imprisonment. Here was a Christmas family party at the Buddenbrooks’⁠—with an accused man in the circle! Frau Permaneder’s dignity became majestic, and the smile of the Misses Buddenbrook more and more pointed. + 

And what of the children, the scant posterity upon whom rested the family hopes? Were they conscious too of the slightly uncanny atmosphere? The state of mind of the little Elisabeth could not be fathomed. She sat on her bonne’s lap in a frock trimmed by Frau Permaneder with satin bows, folded her small hands into fists, sucked her tongue, and stared straight ahead of her. Now and then she would utter a brief sound, like a grunt, and the nurse would rock her a little on her arm. But Hanno sat still on his footstool at his mother’s knee and stared up, like her, into the chandelier. + 

Christian was missing⁠—where was he? At the last minute they noticed his absence. The Frau Consul’s characteristic gesture, from the corner of her mouth up to her temple, as though putting back a refractory hair, became frequent and feverish. She gave an order to Mamsell Severin, and the spinster went out through the hall, past the choirboys and the “poor” and down the corridor to Christian’s room, where she knocked on the door. + 

Christian appeared straightway; he limped casually into the landscape-room, rubbing his bald brow. “Good gracious, children,” he said, “I nearly forgot the party!” + 

“You nearly forgot⁠—” his mother repeated, and stiffened. + 

“Yes, I really forgot it was Christmas. I was reading a book of travel, about South America.⁠—Dear me, I’ve seen such a lot of Christmases!” he added, and was about to launch out upon a description of a Christmas in a fifth-rate variety theatre in London⁠—when all at once the church-like hush of the room began to work upon him, and he moved on tiptoe to his place, wrinkling up his nose. + 

“Rejoice, O Daughter of Zion!” sang the choirboys. They had previously been indulging in such audible practical jokes that the Senator had to get up and stand in the doorway to inspire respect. But now they sang beautifully. The clear treble, sustained by the deeper voices, soared up in pure, exultant, glorifying tones, bearing all hearts along with them: softening the smiles of the spinsters, making the old folk look in upon themselves and back upon the past; easing the hearts of those still in the midst of life’s tribulations, and helping them to forget for a little while. + 

Hanno unclasped his hands from about his knees. He looked very pale, and cold, played with the fringe of his stool, and twisted his tongue about among his teeth. He had to draw a deep breath every little while, for his heart contracted with a joy almost painful at the exquisite bell-like purity of the chorale. The white folding doors were still tightly closed, but the spicy poignant odour drifted through the cracks and whetted one’s appetite for the wonder within. Each year with throbbing pulses he awaited this vision of ineffable, unearthly splendour. What would there be for him, in there? What he had wished for, of course; there was always that⁠—unless he had been persuaded out of it beforehand. The theatre, then, the long-desired toy theatre, would spring at him as the door opened, and show him the way to his place. This was the suggestion which had stood heavily underlined at the top of his list, ever since he had seen Fidelio; indeed, since then, it had been almost his single thought. + 

He had been taken to the opera as compensation for a particularly painful visit to Herr Brecht; sitting beside his mother, in the dress circle, he had followed breathless a performance of Fidelio, and since that time he had heard nothing, seen nothing, thought of nothing but opera, and a passion for the theatre filled him and almost kept him sleepless. He looked enviously at people like Uncle Christian, who was known as a regular frequenter and might go every night if he liked: Consul Döhlmann, Gosch the broker⁠—how could they endure the joy of seeing it every night? He himself would ask no more than to look once a week into the hall, before the performance: hear the voices of the instruments being tuned, and gaze for a while at the curtain! For he loved it all, the seats, the musicians, the drop-curtain⁠—even the smell of gas. + 

Would his theatre be large? What sort of curtain would it have? A tiny hole must be cut in it at once⁠—there was a peephole in the curtain at the theatre. Had Grandmamma, or rather had Mamsell Severin⁠—for Grandmamma could not see to everything herself⁠—been able to find all the necessary scenery for Fidelio? He determined to shut himself up tomorrow and give a performance all by himself, and already in fancy he heard his little figures singing: for he was approaching the theatre by way of his music. + 

“Exult, Jerusalem!” finished the choir; and their voices, following one another in fugue form, united joyously in the last syllable. The clear accord died away; deep silence reigned in the pillared hall and the landscape-room. The elders looked down, oppressed by the pause; only Director Weinschenk’s eyes roved boldly about, and Frau Permaneder coughed her dry cough, which she could not suppress. Now the Frau Consul moved slowly to the table and sat among her family. She turned up the lamp and took in her hands the great Bible with its edges of faded gold-leaf. She stuck her glasses on her nose, unfastened the two great leather hasps of the book, opened it to the place where there was a bookmark, took a sip of eau sucrée, and began to read, from the yellowed page with the large print, the Christmas chapter. + 

She read the old familiar words with a simple, heartfelt accent that sounded clear and moving in the pious hush. “ ‘And to men good will,’ ” she finished, and from the pillared hall came a trio of voices: “Holy night, peaceful night!” The family in the landscape-room joined in. They did so cautiously, for most of them were unmusical, as a tone now and then betrayed. But that in no wise impaired the effect of the old hymn. Frau Permaneder sang with trembling lips; it sounded sweetest and most touching to the heart of her who had a troubled life behind her, and looked back upon it in the brief peace of this holy hour. Madame Kethelsen wept softly, but comprehended nothing. + 

Now the Frau Consul rose. She grasped the hands of her grandson Johann and her granddaughter Elisabeth, and proceeded through the room. The elders of the family fell in behind, and the younger brought up the rear; the servants and poor joined in from the hall; and so they marched, singing with one accord “Oh, Evergreen”⁠—Uncle Christian sang “Oh, Everblue,” and made the children laugh by lifting up his legs like a jumping-jack⁠—through the wide-open, lofty folding doors, and straight into Paradise. + 

The whole great room was filled with the fragrance of slightly singed evergreen twigs and glowing with light from countless tiny flames. The sky-blue hangings with the white figures on them added to the brilliance. There stood the mighty tree, between the dark-red window-curtains, towering nearly to the ceiling, decorated with silver tinsel and large white lilies, with a shining angel at the top and the manger at the foot. Its candles twinkled in the general flood of light like far-off stars. And a row of tiny trees, also full of stars and hung with comfits, stood on the long white table, laden with presents, that stretched from the window to the door. All the gas-brackets on the wall were lighted too, and thick candles burned in all four of the gilded candelabra in the corners of the room. Large objects, too large to stand upon the table, were arranged upon the floor, and two smaller tables, likewise adorned with tiny trees and covered with gifts for the servants and the poor, stood on either side of the door. + 

Dazzled by the light and the unfamiliar look of the room, they marched once around it, singing, filed past the manger where lay the little wax figure of the Christ-child, and then moved to their places and stood silent. + 

Hanno was quite dazed. His fevered glance had soon sought out the theatre, which, as it stood there upon the table, seemed larger and grander than anything he had dared to dream of. But his place had been changed⁠—it was now opposite to where he had stood last year, and this made him doubtful whether the theatre was really his. And on the floor beneath it was something else, a large, mysterious something, which had surely not been on his list; a piece of furniture, that looked like a commode⁠—could it be meant for him? + 

“Come here, my dear child,” said the Frau Consul, “and look at this.” She lifted the lid. “I know you like to play chorals. Herr Pfühl will show you how. You must tread all the time, sometimes more and sometimes less; and then, not lift up the hands, but change the fingers so, peu à peu.” + 

It was a harmonium⁠—a pretty little thing of polished brown wood, with metal handles at the sides, gay bellows worked with a treadle, and a neat revolving stool. Hanno struck a chord. A soft organ tone released itself and made the others look up from their presents. He hugged his grandmother, who pressed him tenderly to her, and then left him to receive the thanks of her other guests. + 

He turned to his theatre. The harmonium was an overpowering dream⁠—which just now he had no time to indulge. There was a superfluity of joy; and he lost sight of single gifts in trying to see and notice everything at once. Ah, here was the prompter’s box, a shell-shaped one, and a beautiful red and gold curtain rolled up and down behind it. The stage was set for the last act of Fidelio. The poor prisoners stood with folded hands. Don Pizarro, in enormous puffed sleeves, was striking a permanent and awesome attitude, and the minister, in black velvet, approached from behind with hasty strides, to turn all to happiness. It was just as in the theatre, only almost more beautiful. The Jubilee chorus, the finale, echoed in Hanno’s ears, and he sat down at the harmonium to play a fragment which stuck in his memory. But he got up again, almost at once, to take up the book he had wished for, a mythology, in a red binding with a gold Pallas Athene on the cover. He ate some of the sweetmeats from his plate full of marzipan, gingerbread, and other goodies, looked through various small articles like writing utensils and schoolbag⁠—and for the moment forgot everything else, to examine a penholder with a tiny glass bulb on it: when you held this up to your eye, you saw, like magic, a broad Swiss landscape. + 

Mamsell Severin and the maid passed tea and biscuits; and while Hanno dipped and ate, he had time to look about. Everyone stood talking and laughing; they all showed each other their presents and admired the presents of others. Objects of porcelain, silver, gold, nickel, wood, silk, cloth, and every other conceivable material lay on the table. Huge loaves of decorated gingerbread, alternating with loaves of marzipan, stood in long rows, still moist and fresh. All the presents made by Frau Permaneder were decorated with huge satin bows. + 

Now and then someone came up to little Johann, put an arm across his shoulders, and looked at his presents with the overdone, cynical admiration which people manufacture for the treasures of children. Uncle Christian was the only person who did not display this grown-up arrogance. He sauntered over to his nephew’s place, with a diamond ring on his finger, a present from his mother; and his pleasure in the toy theatre was as unaffected as Hanno’s own. + 

“By George, that’s fine,” he said, letting the curtain up and down, and stepping back for a view of the scenery. “Did you ask for it? Oh, so you did ask for it!” he suddenly said after a pause, during which his eyes had roved about the room as though he were full of unquiet thoughts. “Why did you ask for it? What made you think of it? Have you been in the theatre? Fidelio, eh? Yes, they give that well. And you want to imitate it, do you? Do opera yourself, eh? Did it make such an impression on you? Listen, son⁠—take my advice: don’t think too much about such things⁠—theatre, and that sort of thing. It’s no good. Believe your old uncle. I’ve always spent too much time on them, and that is why I haven’t come to much good. I’ve made great mistakes, you know.” + 

Thus he held forth to his nephew, while Hanno looked up at him curiously. He paused, and his bony, emaciated face cleared up as he regarded the little theatre. Then he suddenly moved forward one of the figures on the stage, and sang, in a cracked and hollow tremolo, “Ha, what terrible transgression!” He sat down on the piano-stool, which he shoved up in front of the theatre, and began to give a performance, singing all the roles and the accompaniment as well, and gesticulating furiously. The family gathered at his back, laughed, nodded their heads, and enjoyed it immensely. As for Hanno, his pleasure was profound. Christian broke off, after a while, very abruptly. His face clouded, he rubbed his hand over his skull and down his left side, and turned to his audience with his nose wrinkled and his face quite drawn. + 

“There it is again,” he said. “I never have a little fun without having to pay for it. It is not an ordinary pain, you know, it is a misery, down all this left side, because the nerves are too short.” + 

But his relatives took his complaints as little seriously as they had his entertainment. They hardly answered him, but indifferently dispersed, leaving Christian sitting before the little theatre in silence. He blinked rapidly for a bit and then got up. + 

“No, child,” said he, stroking Hanno’s head: “amuse yourself with it, but not too much, you know: don’t neglect your work for it, do you hear? I have made a great many mistakes.⁠—I think I’ll go over to the club for a while,” he said to the elders. “They are celebrating there today, too. Goodbye for the present.” And he went off across the hall, on his stiff, crooked legs. + 

They had all eaten the midday meal earlier than usual today, and been hungry for the tea and biscuits. But they had scarcely finished when great crystal bowls were handed round full of a yellow, grainy substance which turned out to be almond cream. It was a mixture of eggs, ground almonds, and rose-water, tasting perfectly delicious; but if you ate even a tiny spoonful too much, the result was an attack of indigestion. However, the company was not restrained by fear of consequences⁠—even though Frau Consul begged them to “leave a little corner for supper.” Clothilde, in particular, performed miracles with the almond cream, and lapped it up like so much porridge, with heartfelt gratitude. There was also wine jelly in glasses, and English plum-cake. Gradually they all moved over to the landscape-room, where they sat with their plates round the table. + 

Hanno remained alone in the dining-room. Little Elisabeth Weinschenk had already been taken home; but he was to stop up for supper, for the first time in his life. The servants and the poor folk had had their presents and gone; Ida Jungmann was chattering with Riekchen Severin in the hall⁠—although generally, as a governess, she preserved a proper distance between herself and the Frau Consul’s maid.⁠—The lights of the great tree were burnt down and extinguished, the manger was in darkness. But a few candles still burned on the small trees, and now and then a twig came within reach of the flame and crackled up, increasing the pungent smell in the room. Every breath of air that stirred the trees stirred the pieces of tinsel too, and made them give out a delicate metallic whisper. It was still enough to hear the hand-organ again, sounding through the frosty air from a distant street. + 

Hanno abandoned himself to the enjoyment of the Christmas sounds and smells. He propped his head on his hand and read in his mythology book, munching mechanically the while, because that was proper to the day: marzipan, sweetmeats, almond cream, and plum-cake; until the chest-oppression caused by an overloaded stomach mingled with the sweet excitation of the evening and gave him a feeling of pensive felicity. He read about the struggles of Zeus before he arrived at the headship of the gods; and every now and then he listened into the other room, where they were going at length into the future of poor Aunt Clothilde. + 

Clothilde, on this evening, was far and away the happiest of them all. A smile lighted up her colourless face as she received congratulations and teasing from all sides; her voice even broke now and then out of joyful emotion. She had at last been made a member of the Order of St. John. The Senator had succeeded by subterranean methods in getting her admitted, not without some private grumblings about nepotism, on the part of certain gentlemen. Now the family all discussed the excellent institution, which was similar to the homes in Mecklenburg, Dobberthien, and Ribnitz, for ladies from noble families. The object of these establishments was the suitable care of portionless women from old and worthy families. Poor Clothilde was now assured of a small but certain income, which would increase with the years, and finally, when she had succeeded to the highest class, would secure her a decent home in the cloister itself. + 

Little Hanno stopped awhile with the grownups, but soon strayed back to the dining-room, which displayed a new charm now that the brilliant light did not fairly dazzle one with its splendours. It was an extraordinary pleasure to roam about there, as if on a half-darkened stage after the performance, and see a little behind the scenes. He touched the lilies on the big fir-tree, with their golden stamens; handled the tiny figures of people and animals in the manger, found the candles that lighted the transparency for the star of Bethlehem over the stable; lifted up the long cloth that covered the present-table, and saw quantities of wrapping-paper and pasteboard boxes stacked beneath. + 

The conversation in the landscape-room was growing less and less agreeable. Inevitably, irresistibly, it had arrived at the one dismal theme which had been in everybody’s mind, but which they had thus far avoided, as a tribute to the festal evening. Hugo Weinschenk himself dilated upon it, with a wild levity of manner and gesture. He explained certain details of the procedure⁠—the examination of witnesses had now been interrupted by the Christmas recess⁠—condemned the very obvious bias of the President, Dr. Philander, and poured scorn on the attitude which the Public Prosecutor, Dr. Hagenström, thought it proper to assume toward himself and the witnesses for the defence. Breslauer had succeeded in drawing the sting of several of his most slanderous remarks; and he had assured the Director that, for the present, there need be no fear of a conviction. The Senator threw in a question now and then, out of courtesy; and Frau Permaneder, sitting on the sofa with elevated shoulders, would utter fearful imprecations against Dr. Moritz Hagenström. But the others were silent: so profoundly silent that the Director at length fell silent too. For little Hanno, over in the dining-room, the time sped by on angels’ wings; but in the landscape-room there reigned an oppressive silence, which dragged on till Christian came back from the club, where he had celebrated Christmas with the bachelors and good fellows. + 

The cold stump of a cigar hung between his lips, and his haggard cheeks were flushed. He came through the dining-room and said, as he entered the landscape-room, “Well, children, the tree was simply gorgeous. Weinschenk, we ought to have had Breslauer come to see it. He has never seen anything like it, I am sure.” + 

He encountered one of his mother’s quiet, reproachful side-glances, and returned it with an easy, unembarrassed questioning look. At nine o’clock the party sat down to supper. + 

It was laid, as always on these occasions, in the pillared hall. The Frau Consul recited the ancient grace with sincere conviction: + 

“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, + 

And bless the bread thou gavest us” + 

—to which, as usual on the holy evening, she added a brief prayer, the substance of which was an admonition to remember those who, on this blessed night, did not fare so well as the Buddenbrook family. This accomplished, they all sat down with good consciences to a lengthy repast, beginning with carp and butter sauce and old Rhine wine. + 

The Senator put two fish-scales into his pocket, to help him save money during the coming year. Christian, however, ruefully remarked that he hadn’t much faith in the prescription; and Consul Kröger had no need of it. His pittance had long since been invested securely, beyond the reach of fluctuations in the exchange. The old man sat as far away as possible from his wife, to whom he hardly ever spoke nowadays. She persisted in sending money to Jacob, who was still roaming about, nobody knew where, unless his mother did. Uncle Justus scowled forbiddingly when the conversation, with the advent of the second course, turned upon the absent members of the family, and he saw the foolish mother wipe her eyes. They spoke of the Frankfort Buddenbrooks and the Duchamps in Hamburg, and of Pastor Tibertius in Riga, too, without any ill-will. And the Senator and his sister touched glasses in silence to the health of Messrs. Grünlich and Permaneder⁠—for, after all, did they not in a sense belong to the family too? + 

The turkey, stuffed with chestnuts, raisins, and apples, was universally praised. They compared it with other years, and decided that this one was the largest for a long time. With the turkey came roast potatoes and two kinds of compote, and each dish held enough to satisfy the appetite of a family all by itself. The old red wine came from the firm of Möllendorpf. + 

Little Johann sat between his parents and choked down with difficulty a small piece of white meat with stuffing. He could not begin to compete with Aunt Tilda, and he felt tired and out of sorts. But it was a great thing none the less to be dining with the grownups, and to have one of the beautiful little rolls with poppy-seed in his elaborately folded serviette, and three wineglasses in front of his place. He usually drank out of the little gold mug which Uncle Justus gave him. But when the red, white, and brown meringues appeared, and Uncle Justus poured some oily, yellow Greek wine into the smallest of the three glasses, his appetite revived. He ate a whole red ice, then half a white one, then a little piece of the chocolate, his teeth hurting horribly all the while. Then he sipped his sweet wine gingerly and listened to Uncle Christian, who had begun to talk. + 

He told about the Christmas celebration at the club, which had been very jolly, it seemed. “Good God!” he said, just as if he were about to relate the story of Johnny Thunderstorm, “those fellows drank Swedish punch just like water.” + 

“Ugh!” said the Frau Consul shortly, and cast down her eyes. + 

But he paid no heed. His eyes began to wander⁠—and thought and memory became so vivid that they flickered like shadows across his haggard face. + 

“Do any of you know,” he asked, “how it feels to drink too much Swedish punch? I don’t mean getting drunk: I mean the feeling you have the next day⁠—the aftereffects. They are very queer and unpleasant; yes, queer and unpleasant at the same time.” + 

“Reason enough for describing them,” said the Senator. + 

“Assez, Christian. That does not interest us in the least,” said the Frau Consul. But he paid no attention. It was his peculiarity that at such times nothing made any impression on him. He was silent awhile, and then it seemed that the thing which moved him was ripe for speech. + 

“You go about feeling ghastly,” he said, turning to his brother and wrinkling up his nose. “Headache, and upset stomach⁠—oh, well, you have that with other things, too. But you feel filthy”⁠—here he rubbed his hands together, his face entirely distorted. “You wash your hands, but it does no good; they feel dirty and clammy, and there is grease under the nails. You take a bath: no good, your whole body is sticky and unclean. You itch all over, and you feel disgusted with yourself. Do you know the feeling, Thomas? you do know it, don’t you?” + 

“Yes, yes,” said the Senator, making a gesture of repulsion with his hand. But Christian’s extraordinary tactlessness had so increased with the years that he never perceived how unpleasant he was making himself to the company, nor how out of place his conversation was in these surroundings and on this evening. He continued to describe the evil effects of too much Swedish punch; and when he felt that he had exhausted the subject, he gradually subsided. + 

Before they arrived at the butter and cheese, the Frau Consul found occasion for another little speech to her family. If, she said, not quite everything in the course of the years had gone as we, in our shortsightedness, desired, there remained such manifold blessings as should fill our hearts with gratitude and love. For it was precisely this mingling of trials with blessings which showed that God never lifted his hand from the family, but ever guided its destinies according to His wise design, which we might not seek to question. And now, with hopeful hearts, we might drink together to the family health and to its future⁠—that future when all the old and elderly of the present company would be laid to rest; and to the children, to whom the Christmas feast most properly belonged. + 

As Director Weinschenk’s small daughter was no longer present, little Johann had to make the round of the table alone and drink severally with all the company, from Grandmamma to Mamsell Severin. When he came to his father, the Senator touched the child’s glass with his and gently lifted Hanno’s chin to look into his eyes. But his son did not meet his glance: the long, gold-brown lashes lay deep, deep upon the delicate bluish shadows beneath his eyes. + 

Therese Weichbrodt took his head in both her hands, kissed him explosively on both cheeks, and said with such a hearty emphasis that surely God must have heeded it, “Be happy, you good che-ild!” + 

An hour later Hanno lay in his little bed, which now stood in the antechamber next to the Senator’s dressing-room. He lay on his back, out of regard for his stomach, which feeling was far from pleasant over all the things he had put into it that evening. Ida came out of her room in her dressing-gown, waving a glass about in circles in the air in order to dissolve its contents. He drank the carbonate of soda down quickly, made a wry face, and fell back again. + 

“I think I’ll just have to give it all up, Ida,” he said. + 

“Oh, nonsense, Hanno. Just lie still on your back. You see, now: who was it kept making signs to you to stop eating, and who was it that wouldn’t do it?” + 

“Well, perhaps I’ll be all right. When will the things come, Ida?” + 

“Tomorrow morning, first thing, my dearie.” + 

“I wish they were here⁠—I wish I had them now.” + 

“Yes, yes, my dearie⁠—but just have a good sleep now.” She kissed him, put out the light, and went away. + 

He lay quietly, giving himself up to the operation of the soda he had taken. But before his eyes gleamed the dazzling brilliance of the Christmas tree. He saw his theatre and his harmonium, and his book of mythology; he heard the choirboys singing in the distance: “Rejoice, Jerusalem!” Everything sparkled and glittered. His head felt dull and feverish; his heart, affected by the rebellious stomach, beat strong and irregularly. He lay for long, in a condition of mingled discomfort, excitement, and reminiscent bliss, and could not fall asleep. + 

Next day there would be a third Christmas party, at Fräulein Weichbrodt’s. He looked forward to it as to a comic performance in the theatre. Therese Weichbrodt had given up her pensionnat in the past year. Madame Kethelsen now occupied the first storey of the house on the Mill Brink, and she herself the ground floor, and there they lived alone. The burden of her deformed little body grew heavier with the years, and she concluded, with Christian humility and submission, that the end was not far off. For some years now she had believed that each Christmas was her last; and she strove with all the powers at her command to give a departing brilliance to the feast that was held in her small overheated rooms. Her means were very narrow, and she gave away each year a part of her possessions to swell the heap of gifts under the tree: knickknacks, paperweights, emery-bags, needle-cushions, glass vases, and fragments of her library, miscellaneous books of every shape and size. Books like The Secret Journal of a Student of Himself, Hebel’s Alemannian Poems, Krummacher’s Parables⁠—Hanno had once received an edition of the Pensées de Blaise Pascal, in such tiny print that it had to be read with a glass. + 

Bishop flowed in streams, and Sesemi’s gingerbread was very spicy. But Fräulein Weichbrodt abandoned herself with such trembling emotion to the joys of each Christmas party that none of them ever went off without a mishap. There was always some small catastrophe or other to make the guests laugh and enhance the silent fervour of the hostess’ mien. A jug of bishop would be upset and overwhelm everything in a spicy, sticky red flood. Or the decorated tree would topple off its wooden support just as they solemnly entered the room. Hanno fell asleep with the mishap of the previous year before his eyes. It had happened just before the gifts were given out. Therese Weichbrodt had read the Christmas chapter, in such impressive accents that all the vowels got inextricably commingled, and then retreated before her guests to the door, where she made a little speech. She stood upon the threshold, humped and tiny, her old hands clasped before her childish bosom, the green silk cap-ribbons falling over her fragile shoulders. Above her head, over the door, was a transparency, garlanded with evergreen, that said “Glory to God in the Highest.” And Sesemi spoke of God’s mercy; she mentioned that this was her last Christmas, and ended by reminding them that the words of the apostle commended them all to joy⁠—wherewith she trembled from head to foot, so much did her whole poor little body share in her emotions. “Rejoice!” said she, laying her head on one side and nodding violently: “and again I say unto you, rejoice!” But at this moment the whole transparency, with a puffing, crackling, spitting noise, went up in flames, and Mademoiselle Weichbrodt gave a little shriek and a side-spring of unexpected picturesqueness and agility, and got herself out of the way of the rain of flying sparks. + 

As Hanno recalled the leap which the old spinster performed, he giggled nervously for several minutes into his pillow. + 

IX + 

Frau Permaneder was going along Broad Street in a great hurry. There was something abandoned about her air: she showed almost none of the impressive bearing usual to her on the street. Hunted and harassed, in almost violent haste, she had as it were been able to save only a remnant of her dignity⁠—like a beaten king who gathers what is left of his army about him to seek safety in the arms of flight. + 

She looked pitiable indeed. Her upper lip, that arched upper lip that had always done its share to give charm to her face, was quivering now, and the eyes were large with apprehension. They were very bright and stared fixedly ahead of her, as though they too were hurrying onward. Her hair came in disorder from under her close hat, and her face showed the pale yellow tint which it always had when her digestion took a turn for the worse. + 

Her digestion was obviously worse in these days. The family noticed that on Thursdays. And no matter how hard everyone tried to keep off the rocks, the conversation always made straight for them and stuck there: on the subject of Hugo Weinschenk’s trial. Frau Permaneder herself led up to it. She would call on God and her fellow men to tell her how Public Prosecutor Moritz Hagenström could sleep of nights. For her part, she could not understand it⁠—she never would! Her agitation increased with every word. “Thank you, I can’t eat,” she would say, and push away her plate. She would elevate her shoulders, toss her head, and in the height of her passion fall back upon the practice, acquired in her Munich years, of taking nothing but beer, cold Bavarian beer, poured into an empty stomach, the nerves of which were in rebellion and would revenge themselves bitterly. Toward the end of the meal she always had to get up and go down to the garden or the court, where she suffered the most dreadful fits of nausea, leaning upon Ida Jungmann or Riekchen Severin. Her stomach would finally relieve itself of its contents, and contract with spasms of pain, which sometimes lasted for minutes and would continue at intervals for a long time. + 

It was about three in the afternoon, a windy, rainy January day. Frau Permaneder turned the corner at Fishers’ Lane and hurried down the steep declivity to her brother’s house. After a hasty knock she went from the court straight into the bureau, her eye flying across the desks to where the Senator sat in his seat by the window. She made such an imploring motion with her head that he put down his pen without more ado and went to her. + 

“Well?” he said, one eyebrow lifted. + 

“A moment, Thomas⁠—it’s very pressing; there’s no time to waste.” + 

He opened the baize door of his private office, closed it behind him when they were both inside, and looked at his sister inquiringly. + 

“Tom,” she said, her voice quavering, wringing her hands inside her muff, “you must give it to us⁠—lay it out for us⁠—you will, won’t you?⁠—the money for the bond, I mean. We haven’t it⁠—where should we get twenty-five thousand marks from, I should like to know? You will get them back⁠—you’ll get them back all too soon, I’m afraid. You understand⁠—the thing is this: in short, they have reached a point where Hagenström demands immediate arrest or else a bond of twenty-five thousand marks. And Weinschenk will give you his word not to stir from the spot⁠—” + 

“Has it really come to that?” the Senator said, shaking his head. + 

“Yes, they have succeeded in getting that far, the villains!” Frau Permaneder sank upon the sofa with an impotent sob. “And they will go on; they will go on to the end, Tom.” + 

“Tony,” he said, and sat down sidewise by his mahogany desk, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his head on his hand, “tell me straight out, do you still have faith in his innocence?” + 

She sobbed once or twice before she answered, hopelessly: “Oh, no, Tom. How could I? I’ve seen so much evil in the world. I haven’t believed in it from the beginning, even, though I tried my very best. Life makes it so very hard, you know, to believe in anyone’s innocence. Oh, no⁠—I’ve had doubts of his good conscience for a long time, and Erica has not known what to make of him⁠—she confessed it to me, with tears⁠—on account of his behaviour at home. We haven’t talked about it, of course. He got ruder and ruder, and kept demanding all the time that Erica should be lively and divert his mind and make him forget his troubles. And he broke the dishes when she wasn’t. You can’t imagine what it was like, when he shut himself up evenings with his papers: when anybody knocked, you could hear him jump up and shout ‘Who’s there?’ ” + 

They were silent. + 

“But suppose he is guilty, Tom. Suppose he did do it,” began Frau Permaneder afresh, and her voice gathered strength. “He wasn’t working for his own pocket, but for the company⁠—and then⁠—good Heavens, in this life, people have to realize⁠—there are other things to be taken into consideration. He married into our family⁠—he is one of us, now. They can’t just go and stick him into prison like that!” + 

He shrugged his shoulders. + 

“What are you shrugging your shoulders for, Tom? Do you mean that you are willing to sit down under the last and crowning insult these adventurers think they can offer us? We must do something! He mustn’t be convicted! Aren’t you the Burgomaster’s right hand? My God, can’t the Senate just pardon him if it likes? You know, before I came to you, I nearly went to Cremer, to get him⁠—to implore him to intervene and take a stand in the matter⁠—he is Chief of Police⁠—” + 

“Oh, child, that is all just nonsense.” + 

“Nonsense, Tom? And Erica? And the child?” said she, lifting up her muff, with her two imploring hands inside. She was still a moment, she let her arms fall, her chin began to quiver, and two great tears ran down from under her drooping lids. She added softly, “And me?” + 

“Oh, Tony, be brave,” said the Senator. Her helplessness went through him. He pushed his chair up to hers and stroked her hair, in an effort to console her. “Everything isn’t over, yet. Perhaps it will come out all right. Of course I will give you the money⁠—that goes without saying⁠—and Breslauer’s very clever.” + 

She shook her head, weeping. + 

“No, Tom, it will not come out all right. I’ve no hope that it will. They will convict him, and put him in prison⁠—and then the hard time will come for Erica and me. Her dowry is gone: it all went to the setting-out, the furniture and pictures; we shan’t get a quarter of it back by selling. And the salary was always spent. We never put a penny by. We will go back to Mother, if she will take us, until he is free. And then where can we go? We’ll just have to sit on the rocks.” She sobbed. + 

“On the rocks?” + 

“Oh, that’s just an expression⁠—a figure. What I mean is, it won’t turn out all right. I’ve had too much to bear⁠—I don’t know how I came to deserve it all⁠—but I can’t hope any more. Erica will be like me⁠—with Grünlich and Permaneder. But now you can see just how it is⁠—and how it all comes over you! Could I help it? Could anyone help it, I ask you, Tom?” she repeated drearily, and looked at him with her tear-swimming eyes. “Everything I’ve ever undertaken has gone wrong and turned to misfortune⁠—and I’ve meant everything so well. God knows I have! And now this too⁠—This is the last straw⁠—the very last.” + 

She wept, leaning on the arm which he gently put about her: wept over her ruined life and the quenching of this last hope. + 

A week later, Herr Director Hugo Weinschenk was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment, and arrested at once. + 

There was a very large crowd at the final session. Lawyer Breslauer of Berlin made a speech for the defence the like of which had never been heard before. Gosch the broker went about for weeks afterward bursting with enthusiasm for the masterly pathos and irony it displayed. Christian Buddenbrook heard it too, and afterward got behind a table at the club, with a pile of newspapers in front of him, and reproduced the whole speech. At home he declared that jurisprudence was the finest profession there was, and he thought it would just have suited him. The Public Prosecutor himself, Dr. Moritz Hagenström, who was a great connoisseur, said in private that the speech had been a genuine treat to him. But the famous advocate’s talents did not prevent his colleagues from thumping him on the back and telling him he had not pulled the wool over their eyes. + 

The necessary sale followed upon the disappearance of the Director; and when it was over, people in town began gradually to forget about Hugo Weinschenk. But the Misses Buddenbrook, sitting on Thursday at the family table, declared that they had known the first moment, from the man’s eyes, that he was not straight, that his conscience was bad, and that there would be trouble in the end. Certain considerations, which they wished now they had not regarded, had led them to suppress these painful observations. + 