Part + 

IV + 

I + 

A thousand thanks for your letter, in which you tell me of Armgard von Schilling’s betrothal to Herr von Maiboom of Pöppenrade. Armgard herself sent me an invitation (very fine, with a gilt edge), and also a letter in which she expresses herself as enchanted with her bridegroom. He sounds like a very handsome and refined man. How happy she must be! Everybody is getting married. I have had a card from Munich too, from Eva Ewers. I hear she’s getting a director of a brewery. + 

Now I must ask you something, dearest Mamma: Why do I hear nothing of a visit from the Buddenbrooks? Are you waiting for an official invitation from Grünlich? If so, it isn’t necessary; and besides, when I remind him to ask you, he says, “Yes, yes, child, your Father has something else to do.” Or do you think you would be disturbing me? Oh, dear me, no; quite the contrary! Perhaps you think you would make me homesick again? But don’t you know I am a reasonable woman, already middle-aged and experienced? + 

I’ve just been to coffee at Madame Käselau’s, a neighbour of mine. They are pleasant people, and our left-hand neighbours, the Gussmanns (but there is a good deal of space between the houses) are sociable people too. We have two friends who are at the house a good deal, both of whom live out here: Doctor Klaasen, of whom I must tell you more later, and Kesselmeyer, the banker, Grünlich’s intimate friend. You don’t know what a funny old man he is. He has a stubbly white beard and thin black and white hair on his head, that looks like down and waves in the breeze. He makes funny motions with his head, like a bird, and talks all the time, so I call him the magpie, but Grünlich has forbidden me to say that, because magpies steal, and Herr Kesselmeyer is an honourable man. He stoops when he walks, and rows along with his arms. His fuzz only reaches halfway down his head in the back, and from there on his neck is all red and seamy. There is something so awfully sprightly about him! Sometimes he pats me on the cheek and says, “You good little wifey! what a blessing for Grünlich that he has got you.” Then he takes out his eyeglasses (he always wears three of them, on long cords, that are forever getting tangled up in his white waistcoat) and sticks them on his nose, which he wrinkles up to make them stop on, and looks at me with his mouth open, until I have to laugh, right in his face. But he takes no offence at that. + 

Grünlich is very busy; he drives into town in the morning in our little yellow wagon and often does not come back till late. Sometimes he sits down with me and reads the paper. + 

When we go into society⁠—for example, to Kesselmeyer’s, or to Consul Goudstikker on the Alster Dam, or Senator Bock in City Hall Street⁠—we have to take a hired coach. I have begged Grünlich again and again to get a coupé, for it is really a necessity out here. He has half promised, but, strange to say, he does not like to go into society with me and is evidently displeased when I visit people in the town. Do you suppose he is jealous? + 

Our villa, which I’ve already described to you in detail, dear Mamma, is really very pretty, and is much prettier by reason of the new furnishings. You could not find a flaw in the upstairs sitting-room⁠—all in brown silk. The dining-room next is prettily wainscoted. The chairs cost twenty-five marks apiece. I sit in the “pensée-room,” which we use as a sitting-room. There is also a little room for smoking and playing cards. The salon, which takes up the whole other half of the parterre, has new yellow blinds now and looks very well. Above are the bed, bath, and dressing-rooms and the servants’ quarters. We have a little groom for the yellow wagon. I am fairly well satisfied with the two maidservants. I am not sure they are quite honest, but thank God I don’t have to look after every kreuzer. In short, everything is really worthy of the family and the firm. + 

And now, dear Mamma, comes the most important part of my letter, which I have kept till the last. A while ago I was feeling rather queer⁠—not exactly ill and yet not quite well. I told Dr. Klaasen about it when I had the chance. He is a little bit of a man with a big head and a still bigger hat. He carries a cane with a flat round handle made of a piece of bone, and walks with it pressed against his whiskers, which are almost light-green from being dyed so many years. Well, you should have seen him! he did not answer my questions at all, but jerked his eyeglasses, twinkled his little eyes, wrinkled his nose at me⁠—it looks like a potato⁠—snickered, giggled, and stared so impertinently that I did not know what to do. Then he examined me, and said everything was going on well, only I must drink mineral water, because I am perhaps a little anæmic. Oh, Mamma, do tell Papa about it, so he can put it in the family book. I will write you again as soon as possible, you may be sure. + 

Give my love to Papa, Christian, Clara, Clothilde and Ida Jungmann. I wrote to Thomas just lately. + 

I have read with pleasure the news of your meeting with Christian in Amsterdam. It must have been a happy few days for both of you. I have no word as yet of your brother’s further journey to England via Ostende, but I hope that with God’s mercy it has been safely accomplished. It may not be too late, since Christian has decided to give up a professional career, for him to learn much that is valuable from his chief, Mr. Richardson; may he prosper and find blessing in the mercantile line! Mr. Richardson, Threadneedle Street, is, as you know, a close business friend of our house; I consider myself lucky to have placed both my sons with such friendly-disposed firms. You are now experiencing the good result of such a policy; and I feel profound satisfaction that Herr van der Kellen has already raised your salary in the quarter of a year you have been with him, and that he will continue to give you advancement. I am convinced that you have shown and will continue to show yourself, by your industry and good behaviour, worthy of these favours. + 

I regret to hear that your health is not so good as it should be. What you write me of nervousness reminds me of my own youth, when I was working in Antwerp and had to go to Ems to take a cure. If anything of the sort seems best for you, my son, I am ready to encourage you with advice and assistance, although I am avoiding such expense for the rest of us in these times of political unrest. + 

However, your Mother and I took a trip to Hamburg in the middle of June to visit your sister Tony. Her husband had not invited us, but he received us with the greatest cordiality and devoted himself to us so entirely during the two days of our visit, that he neglected his business and hardly left me time for a visit to Duchamps in the town. Antonie is in her fifth month, and her physician assures her that everything is going on in a normal and satisfactory way. + 

I have still to mention a letter from Herr van der Kellen, from which I was pleased to learn that you are a favoured guest in his family circle. You are now, my son, at an age to begin to harvest the fruits of the upbringing your parents gave you. It may be helpful to you if I tell you that at your age, both in Antwerp and Bergen, I formed a habit of making myself useful and agreeable to my principals; and this was of the greatest service to me. Aside from the honour of association with the family of the head of the firm, one acquires an advocate in the person of the principal’s wife; and she may prove invaluable in the undesirable contingency of an oversight at the office or the dissatisfaction of your chief for some slight cause or other. + 

As regards your business plans for the future, my son, I rejoice in the lively interest they indicate, without being able entirely to agree with them. You start with the idea that the market for our native products⁠—for instance, grain, rapeseed, hides and skins, wool, oil, oil-cake, bones, etc.⁠—is our chief concern; and you think it would be of advantage for you to turn yourself to the commission branch of the business. I once occupied myself with these ideas, at a time when the competition was small (it has since distinctly increased), and I made some experiments in them. My journey to England had for its chief purpose to look out connections there for my undertakings. To this end I went as far as Scotland, and made many valuable acquaintances; but I soon recognized the precarious nature of an export trade hither, and decided to discourage further expansion in that direction. Thus I kept in mind the warning of our forefather, the founder of the firm, which he bequeathed to us, his descendants: “My son, attend with zeal to thy business by day, but do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.” + 

This principle I intend to keep sacred, now as in the past, though one is sometimes forced to entertain a doubt, on contemplating the operations of people who seem to get on better without it. I am thinking of Strunk and Hagenström, who have made such notable progress while our own business seems almost at a standstill. You know that the house has not enlarged its business since the setback consequent upon the death of your grandfather; and I pray to God that I shall be able to turn over the business to you in its present state. I have an experienced and cautious adviser in our head clerk Marcus. If only your Mother’s family would hang on to their groschen a little better! The inheritance is a matter of real importance for us. + 

I am unusually full of business and civic work. I have been made alderman of the Board of the Bergen Line; also city deputy for the Finance Department, the Chamber of Commerce, the Auditing Commission, and the Almshouse of St. Anne, one after the other. + 

Your Mother, Clara and Clothilde send greetings. Also several gentlemen⁠—Senator Möllendorpf, Doctor Överdieck, Consul Kistenmaker, Gosch the broker, C. F. Köppen, and Herr Marcus in the office, have asked to be remembered. God’s blessing on you, my dear son. Work, pray, and save. + 

The undersigned is overjoyed to be able to advise you of the happy accouchement, half an hour ago, of your daughter, my beloved wife Antonie. It is, by God’s will, a daughter; I can find no words to express my joyful emotion. The health of the dear patient, as well as of the infant, is unexceptionable. Dr. Klaasen is entirely satisfied with the way things have gone; and Frau Grossgeorgis, the midwife, says it was simply nothing at all. Excitement obliges me to lay down my pen. I commend myself to my worthy parents with the most respectful affection. + 

II + 

“What is the matter, Betsy?” said the Consul, as he came to the table and lifted up the plate with which his soup was covered. “Aren’t you well? You don’t look just right to me.” + 

The round table in the great dining-room was grown very small. Around it there gathered in these days, besides the parents, only little Clara, now ten years old, Mamsell Jungmann, and Clothilde, as humble, lean, and hungry as ever. The Consul looked about him: every face was long and gloomy. What had happened? He himself was troubled and anxious; for the Bourse was unsteady, owing to this complicated Schleswig-Holstein affair. And still another source of disquiet was in the air; when Anton had gone to fetch in the meat course, the Consul heard what had happened. Trina, the cook, who had never before been anything but loyal and dutiful to her mistress, had suddenly shown clear signs of revolt. To the Frau Consul’s great vexation, she had been maintaining relations⁠—a sort of spiritual affinity, it seemed⁠—with the butcher’s apprentice; and that man of blood must have influenced her political views in a most regrettable way. The Consul’s wife had addressed some reproach to her in the matter of an unsuccessful sauce, and she had put her naked arms akimbo and delivered herself as follows: “You jus’ wait, Frau Consul; ’tain’ goin’ t’ be much longer⁠—there’ll come another order inter the world. ’N’ then I’ll be sittin’ on the sofa in a silk gownd, an’ you’ll be servin’ me.” Naturally, she received summary notice. + 

The Consul shook his head. He himself had had similar troubles. The old porters and labourers were of course respectful enough, and had no notions in their heads; but several here and there among the young ones had shown by their bearing that the new spirit of revolt had entered into them. In the spring there had been a street riot, although a constitution corresponding to the demands of the new time had already been drafted; which, a little later, despite the opposition of Lebrecht Kröger and other stubborn old gentlemen, became law by a decree of the Senate. The citizens met together and representatives of the people were elected. But there was no rest. The world was upside down. Everyone wanted to revise the constitution and the franchise, and the citizens grumbled. “Voting by estates,” said some⁠—Consul Johann Buddenbrook among them. “Universal franchise,” said the others; Heinrich Hagenström was one of these. Still others cried “Universal voting by estates”⁠—and dear knew what they meant by that! All sorts of ideas were in the air; for instance, the abolition of disabilities and the general extension of the rights of citizenship⁠—even to non-Christians! No wonder Buddenbrook’s Trina had imbibed such ideas about sofas and silk gowns! Oh, there was worse to come! Things threatened to take a fearful turn. + 

It was an early October day of the year 1848. The sky was blue, with a few light floating clouds in it, silvered by the rays of the sun, the strength of which was indeed not so great but that the stove was already going, behind the polished screen in the landscape-room. Little Clara, whose hair had grown darker and whose eyes had a rather severe expression, sat with some embroidery before the sewing-table, while Clothilde, busy likewise with her needlework, had the sofa-place near the Frau Consul. Although Clothilde Buddenbrook was not much older than her married cousin⁠—that is to say, only twenty-one years⁠—her long face already showed pronounced lines; and with her smooth hair, which had never been blond, but always a dull greyish colour, she presented an ideal portrait of a typical old maid. But she was content; she did nothing to alter her condition. Perhaps she thought it best to grow old early and thus to make a quick end of all doubts and hopes. As she did not own a single sou, she knew that she would find nobody in all the wide world to marry her, and she looked with humility into her future, which would surely consist of consuming a tiny income in some tiny room which her influential uncle would procure for her out of the funds of some charitable establishment for maidens of good family. + 

The Consul’s wife was busy reading two letters. Tony related the good progress of the little Erica, and Christian wrote eagerly of his life and doings in London. He did not give any details of his industry with Mr. Richardson of Threadneedle Street. The Frau Consul, who was approaching the middle forties, complained bitterly of the tendency of blond women to grow old too soon. The delicate tint which corresponded to her reddish hair had grown dulled despite all cosmetics; and the hair itself began relentlessly to grey, or would have done so but for a Parisian tincture of which the Frau Consul had the receipt. She was determined never to grow white. When the dye would no longer perform its office, she would wear a blond wig. On top of her still artistic coiffure was a silk scarf bordered with white lace, the beginning, the first adumbration of a cap. Her silk frock was wide and flowing, its bell-shaped sleeves lined with the softest mull. A pair of gold circlets tinkled as usual on her wrist. + 

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Suddenly there was a noise of running and shouting: a sort of insolent hooting and catcalling, the stamping of feet on the pavement, a hubbub that grew louder and came nearer. + 

“What is that noise, Mamma?” said Clara, looking out of the window and into the gossip’s glass. “Look at the people! What is the matter with them? What are they so pleased about?” + 

“My God!” shouted the Frau Consul, throwing down her letters and springing to the window. “Is it⁠—? My God, it is the Revolution! It is the people!” + 

The truth was that the town had been the whole day in a state of unrest. In the morning the windows of Benthien the draper’s shop in Broad Street had been broken by stones⁠—although God knew what the owner had to do with politics! + 

“Anton,” the Consul’s wife called with a trembling voice into the dining-room, where the servants were bustling about with the silver. “Anton! Go below! Shut the outside doors. Make everything fast. It is a mob.” + 

“Oh, Frau Consul,” said Anton. “Is it safe for me to do that? I am a servant. If they see my livery⁠—” + 

“What wicked people,” Clothilde drawled without putting down her work. Just then the Consul crossed the entrance hall and came in through the glass door. He carried his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand. + 

“You are going out, Jean?” asked the Frau Consul in great excitement and trepidation. + 

“Yes, my dear, I must go to the meeting.” + 

“But the mob, Jean, the Revolution⁠—” + 

“Oh, dear me, Betsy, it isn’t so serious as that! We are in God’s hand. They have gone past the house already. I’ll go down the back way.” + 

“Jean, if you love me⁠—do you want to expose yourself to this danger? Will you leave us here unprotected? I am afraid, I tell you⁠—I am afraid.” + 

“My dear, I beg of you, don’t work yourself up like this. They will only make a bit of a row in front of the Town Hall or in the market. It may cost the government a few windowpanes⁠—but that’s all.” + 

“Where are you going, Jean?” + 

“To the Assembly. I am late already. I was detained by business. It would be a shame not to be there today. Do you think your Father is stepping away, old as he is?” + 

“Then go, in God’s name, Jean. But be careful, I beg of you. And keep an eye on my Father. If anything hit him⁠—” + 

“Certainly, my dear.” + 

“When will you be back?” the Frau Consul called after him. + 

“Well, about half-past four or five o’clock. Depends. There is a good deal of importance on the agenda, so I can’t exactly tell.” + 

“Oh, I’m frightened, I’m frightened,” repeated the Frau Consul, walking up and down restlessly. + 

III + 

Consul Buddenbrook crossed his spacious ground floor in haste. Coming out into Bakers’ Alley, he heard steps behind him and saw Gosch the broker, a picturesque figure in his long cloak and Jesuit hat, also climbing the narrow street to the meeting. He lifted his hat with one thin long hand, and with the other made a deferential gesture, as he said, “Well, Herr Consul⁠—how are you?” His voice sounded sinister. + 

This broker, Siegismund Gosch, a bachelor of some forty years, was, despite his demeanour, the best and most honest soul in the world; but he was a wit and an oddity. His smooth-shaven face was distinguished by a Roman nose, a protruding pointed chin, sharp features, and a wide mouth drooping at the corners, whose narrow lips he was in the habit of pressing together in the most taciturn and forbidding manner. His grey hair fell thick and sombre over his brow, and he actually regretted not being humpbacked. It was his whim to assume the role of a wild, witty, and reckless intrigant⁠—a cross between Mephistopheles and Napoleon, something very malevolent and yet fascinating too; and he was not entirely unsuccessful in his pose. He was a strange yet attractive figure among the citizens of the old city; still, he belonged among them, for he carried on a small brokerage business in the most modest, respectable sort of way. In his narrow, dark little office, however, he had a large bookcase filled with poetry in every language, and there was a story that he had been engaged since his twentieth year on a translation of Lope de Vega’s collected dramas. Once he had played the role of Domingo in an amateur performance of Schiller’s Don Carlos⁠—this was the culmination of his career. A common word never crossed his lips; and the most ordinary business expressions he would hiss between his clenched teeth, as if he were saying “Curses on you, villain,” instead of some commonplace about stocks and commissions. He was, in many ways, the heir and successor to Jean Jacques Hoffstede of blessed memory, except that his character had certain elements of the sombre and pathetic, with none of the playful liveliness of that old 18th century friend of Johann Buddenbrook. One day he lost at a single blow, on the Bourse, six and a half thaler on two or three papers which he had bought as a speculation. This was enough. He sank upon a bench; he struck an attitude which looked as though he had lost the Battle of Waterloo; he struck his clenched fist against his forehead and repeated several times, with a blasphemous roll of the eyes: “Ha, accursed, accursed!” He must have been, at bottom, cruelly bored by the small, safe business he did and the petty transfer of this or that bit of property; for this loss, this tragic blow with which Heaven had stricken him down⁠—him, the schemer Gosch⁠—delighted his inmost soul. He fed on it for weeks. Someone would say, “So you’ve had a loss, Herr Gosch, I’m sorry to hear.” To which he would answer: “Oh, my good friend, ‘uomo non educato dal dolore riman sempre bambino’!” Probably nobody understood that. Was it, possibly, Lope da Vega? Anyhow, there was no doubt that this Siegismund Gosch was a remarkable and learned man. + 

“What times we live in,” he said, limping up the street with the Consul, supported by his stick. “Times of storm and unrest.” + 

“You are right,” replied the Consul. “The times are unquiet. This morning’s sitting will be exciting. The principle of the estates⁠—” + 

“Well, now,” Herr Gosch went on, “I have been about all day in the streets, and I have been looking at the mob. There are some fine fellows in it, their eyes flaming with excitement and hatred⁠—” + 

Johann Buddenbrook began to laugh. “You like that, don’t you? But you have the right end of it after all, let me tell you. It is all childishness! What do these men want? A lot of uneducated rowdies who see a chance for a bit of a scrimmage.” + 

“Of course. Though I can’t deny⁠—I was in the crowd when Berkemeyer, the journeyman butcher, smashed Herr Benthien’s window. He was like a panther.” Herr Gosch spoke the last word with his teeth particularly close together, and went on: “Oh, the thing has its fine side, that’s certain. It is a change, at least, you know; something that doesn’t happen every day. Storm, stress, violence⁠—the tempest! Oh, the people are ignorant, I know⁠—still, my heart, this heart of mine⁠—it beats with theirs!” They were already before the simple yellow-painted house on the ground floor of which the sittings of the Assembly took place. + 

The room belonged to the beer-hall and dance-establishment of a widow named Suerkringel; but on certain days it was at the service of the gentlemen burgesses. The entrance was through a narrow whitewashed corridor opening into the restaurant on the right side, where it smelled of beer and cooking, and thence through a handleless, lockless green door so small and narrow that no one could have supposed such a large room lay behind it. The room was empty, cold, and barnlike, with a whitewashed roof in which the beams showed, and whitewashed walls. The three rather high windows had green-painted bars, but no curtains. Opposite them were the benches, rising in rows like an amphitheatre, with a table at the bottom for the chairman, the recording clerk, and the Committee of the Senate. It was covered with a green cloth and had a clock, documents, and writing materials on it. On the wall opposite the door were several tall hat-racks with hats and coats. + 

The sound of voices met the Consul and his companion as they entered through the narrow door. They were the last to come. The room was filled with burgesses, hands in their trousers pockets, on their hips, or in the air, as they stood together in groups and discussed. Of the hundred and thirty members of the body at least a hundred were present. A number of delegates from the country districts had been obliged by circumstances to stop at home. + 

Near the entrance stood a group composed of two or three small business men, a high-school teacher, the orphan asylum “father,” Herr Mindermann, and Herr Wenzel, the popular barber. Herr Wenzel, a powerful little man with a black moustache, an intelligent face, and red hands, had shaved the Consul that very morning; here, however, he stood on an equality with him. He shaved only in the best circles; he shaved almost exclusively the Möllendorpfs, Langhals, Buddenbrooks, and Överdiecks, and he owed his vote in the Assembly to his omniscience in city affairs, his sociability and ease, and his remarkable power of decision at a division. + 

“Have you heard the latest, Herr Consul?” he asked with round-eyed eagerness as his patron came up. + 

“What is there to hear, my dear Wenzel?” + 

“Nobody knew it this morning. Well, permit me to tell you, Herr Consul, the latest is that the crowd are not going to collect before the Town Hall, or in the market⁠—they are coming here to threaten the burgesses. Editor Rübsam has stirred them up.” + 

“Is it possible?” said the Consul. He pressed through the various groups to the middle of the room, where he saw his father-in-law with Senators Dr. Langhals and James Möllendorpf. “Is it true, gentlemen?” he asked, shaking hands with them. + 

But there was no need to answer. The whole assemblage was full of it: the peace-breakers were coming; they could be heard already in the distance. + 

“Canaille!” said Lebrecht Kröger with cold scorn. He had driven hither in his carriage. On an ordinary day the tall, distinguished figure of the once famous cavalier showed the burden of his eighty years; but today he stood quite erect with his eyes half-closed, the corners of his mouth contemptuously drawn down, and the points of his white moustaches sticking straight up. Two rows of jewelled buttons sparkled on his black velvet waistcoat. + 

Not far from this group was Heinrich Hagenström, a square-built, fleshy man with a reddish beard sprinkled with grey, a heavy watch-chain across his blue-checked waistcoat, and his coat open over it. He was standing with his partner Herr Strunck, and did not greet the Consul. + 

Herr Benthien, the draper, a prosperous looking man, had a large group of gentlemen around him, to whom he was circumstantially describing what had happened to his show-window. “A brick, gentlemen, a brick, or at least half a brick⁠—crack! through it went and landed on a roll of green rep. The rascally mob! Oh, the Government will have to take it up! It’s their affair!” + 

And in every corner of the room unceasingly resounded the voice of Herr Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street. He had on a black coat over his woollen shirt; and he so deeply sympathized with the narrative of Herr Benthien that he never stopped saying, in outraged accents, “Infamous, unheard-of!” + 

Johann Buddenbrook found and greeted his old friend C. F. Köppen, and then Köppen’s rival, Consul Kistenmaker. He moved about in the crowd, pressed Dr. Grabow’s hand, and exchanged a few words with Herr Gieseke the Fire Commissioner, Contractor Voigt, Dr. Langhals, the Chairman, brother of the Senator, and several merchants, lawyers, and teachers. + 

The sitting was not yet opened, but debate was already lively. Everybody was cursing that pestilential scribbler, Editor Rübsam; everybody knew he had stirred up the crowd⁠—and what for? The business in hand was to decide whether they were to go on with the method of selecting representatives by estates, or whether there was to be universal and equal franchise. The Senate had already proposed the latter. But what did the people want? They wanted these gentlemen by the throats⁠—no more and no less. It was the worst hole they had ever found themselves in, devil take it! The Senatorial Committee was surrounded, its members’ opinion eagerly sought. They approached Consul Buddenbrook, as one who should know the attitude of Burgomaster Överdieck; for since Senator Doctor Överdieck, Consul Justus Kröger’s brother-in-law, had been made President last year, the Buddenbrooks were related to the Burgomaster; which had distinctly enhanced the regard in which they were held. + 

All of a sudden the tumult began outside. Revolution had arrived under the windows of the Sitting. The excited exchange of opinions inside ceased simultaneously. Every man, dumb with the shock, folded his hands upon his stomach and looked at his fellows or at the windows, where fists were being shaken in the air and the crowd was giving vent to deafening and frantic yelling. But then, most astonishingly, as though the offenders themselves had suddenly grown aghast at their own behaviour, it became just as still outside as in the hall; and in that deep hush, one word from the neighbourhood of the lowest benches, where Lebrecht Kröger was sitting, was distinctly audible. It rang through the hall, cold, emphatic, and deliberate⁠—the word “Canaille!” And, like an echo, came the word “Infamous,” in a fat, outraged voice from the other corner of the hall. Then the hurried, trembling, whispering utterance of the draper Benthien: “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Listen! I know the house. There is a trapdoor on to the roof from the attic. I used to shoot cats through it when I was a lad. We can climb on to the next roof and get down safely.” + 

“Cowardice,” hissed Gosch the broker between his teeth. He leaned against the table with his arms folded and head bent, directing a bloodcurdling glance through the window. + 

“Cowardice, do you say? How cowardice? In God’s name, sir, aren’t they throwing bricks? I’ve had enough of that.” + 

The noise outside had begun again, but without reaching its former stormy height. It sounded quieter and more continuous, a prolonged, patient, almost comfortable hum, rising and falling; now and then one heard whistles, and sometimes single words like “principle” and “rights of citizens.” The assembly listened respectfully. + 

After a while the chairman, Herr Dr. Langhals, spoke in a subdued tone: “Gentlemen, I think we could come to some agreement if we opened the meeting.” + 

But this humble suggestion did not meet with the slightest support from anybody. + 

“No good in that,” somebody said, with a simple decisiveness that permitted no appeal. It was a peasant sort of man, named Pfahl, from the Ritzerau district, deputy for the village of Little Schretstaken. Nobody remembered ever to have heard his voice raised before in a meeting, but its very simplicity made it weighty at the present crisis. Unafraid and with sure political insight, Herr Pfahl had voiced the feeling of the entire assemblage. + 

“God keep us,” Herr Benthien said despondently. “If we sit on the benches we can be seen from outside. They’re throwing stones⁠—I’ve had enough of that.” + 

“And the cursed door is so narrow,” burst out Köppen the wine-merchant, in despair. “If we start to go out, we’ll probably get crushed.” + 

“Infamous, unheard-of,” Herr Stuht intoned. + 

“Gentlemen,” began the Chairman urgently once more. “I have to put before the Burgomaster in the next three days a draft of today’s protocol, and the town expects its publication through the press. I should at least like to get a vote on that subject, if the sitting would come to order⁠—” + 

But with the exception of a few citizens who supported the chairman, nobody seemed ready to come to the consideration of the agenda. A vote would have been useless anyhow⁠—they must not irritate the people. Nobody knew what they wanted, so it was no good to offend them by a vote, in whatever direction. They must wait and control themselves. The clock of St. Mary’s struck half-past four. + 

They confirmed themselves and each other in this resolve of patient waiting. They began to get used to the noise that rose and fell outside, to feel quieter; to make themselves more comfortable, to sit down on the lower benches and chairs. The natural instinct toward industry, common to all these good burghers, began to assert itself: they ventured to bargain a little, to pick up a little business here and there. The brokers sat down by the wholesale dealers. These beleaguered gentlemen talked together like people shut in by a sudden storm, who speak of other things, and now and then pause to listen with respectful faces to the thunder. It was five o’clock⁠—half-past five. It was getting dark. Now and then somebody sighed and said that the wife would be waiting with the coffee⁠—and then Herr Benthien would venture to mention the trapdoor. But most of them were like Herr Stuht, who said fatalistically, shaking his head, “I’m too fat.” + 

Mindful of his wife’s request Johann Buddenbrook had kept an eye on his father-in-law. He said to him: “This little adventure isn’t disturbing you, is it, Father?” + 

Lebrecht Kröger’s forehead showed two swollen blue veins under his white wig. He looked ill. One aristocratic old hand played with the opalescent buttons on his waistcoat; the other, with its great diamond ring, trembled on his knee. + 

“Fiddlesticks, Buddenbrook,” he said; but his voice showed extreme fatigue. “I am sick of it, that’s all.” Then he betrayed himself by suddenly hissing out: “Parbleu, Jean, this infamous rabble ought to be taught some respect with a little powder and shot. Canaille! Scum!” + 

The Consul hummed assent. “Yes, yes, you are right; it is a pretty undignified affair. But what can we do? We must keep our tempers. It’s getting late. They’ll go away after a bit.” + 

“Where is my carriage? I desire my carriage,” said the old man in a tone of command, suddenly quite beside himself. His anger exploded; he trembled all over. “I ordered it for five o’clock: where is it? This sitting will never be held. Why should I stop any longer? I don’t care about being made a fool of. My carriage! What are they doing to my coachman? Go see after it, Buddenbrook.” + 

“My dear Father-in-Law, for heaven’s sake be calm. You are getting excited. It will be bad for you. Of course I will go and see after the carriage. I think myself we have had enough of this. I will speak to the people and tell them to go home.” + 

Close by the little green door he was accosted by Siegismund Gosch, who grasped his arm with a bony hand and asked in a gruesome whisper: “Whither away, Herr Consul?” + 

The broker’s face was furrowed with a thousand lines. His pointed chin rose almost up to his nose, his face expressed the most desperate resolution; his grey hair streamed distractedly over brow and temples; his head was so drawn in between his shoulders that he really almost achieved his ambition of looking like a dwarf⁠—and he rapped out: “You behold me resolved to speak to the people.” + 

The Consul said: “No, let me do it, Gosch. I really know more of them than you do.” + 

“Be it so,” answered the broker tonelessly. “You are a bigger man than I.” And, lifting his voice, he went on: “But I will accompany you, I will stand at your side, Consul Buddenbrook. Let the wrath of the outraged people tear me in pieces⁠—” + 

“What a day, what a night!” he said as they went out. There is no doubt he had never felt so happy before in his life. “Ha, Herr Consul! Here are the people.” + 

They had gone down the corridor and outside the outer door, where they stood at the top of three little steps that went down to the pavement. The street was indeed a strange sight. It was as still as the grave. At the open and lighted windows of the houses round, stood the curious, looking down upon the black mass of the insurgents before the Burgesses’ House. The crowd was not much bigger than that inside the hall. It consisted of young labourers from the harbour and granaries, servants, school pupils, sailors from the merchant ships, and other people from the little streets, alleys, courts, and rabbit-hutches round about. There were even two or three women⁠—who had probably promised themselves the same millennium as the Buddenbrooks’ cook. A few of the insurrectionists, weary of standing, had sat down with their feet in the gutter and were eating sandwiches. + 

It was nearly six o’clock. Though twilight was well advanced, the oil lamps hung unlighted above the street. This fact, this open and unheard-of interruption of the regular order, was the first thing that really made Consul Buddenbrook’s temper rise, and was responsible for his beginning to speak in a rather short and angry tone and the broadest of pronunciations: + 

“Now then, all of you, what is the meaning of this foolishness?” + 

The picnickers sprang up from the sidewalk. Those in the back ranks, beyond the foot-pavement, stood on their tiptoes. Some navvies, in the service of the Consul, took off their caps. They stood at attention, nudged each other, and muttered in low tones, “ ’Tis Consul Buddenbrook. He be goin’ to talk. Hold yer jaw, there, Chrishan; he can jaw like the devil himself! Ther’s Broker Gosch⁠—look! What a monkey he is! Isn’t he gettin’ o’erwrought!” + 

“Carl Smolt!” began the Consul again, picking out and fastening his small, deep-set eyes upon a bowlegged young labourer of about two-and-twenty, with his cap in his hand and his mouth full of bread, standing in front of the steps. “Here, speak up, Carl Smolt! Now’s the time! I’ve been here the whole afternoon⁠—” + 

“Yes, Herr Consul,” brought out Carl Smolt, chewing violently. “The thing is⁠—ower⁠—it’s a soart o’⁠—we’re makkin’ a rivolution.” + 

“What kind of nonsense is that, then?” + 

“Lord, Herr Consul, ye knaw what that is. We’re not satisfied wi’ things as they be. We demand another order o’ things; tain’t any more’n that⁠—that’s what it is.” + 

“Now, listen, Carl Smolt and the rest of you. Whoever’s got any sense will go home and not bother himself over any revolutions, disturbing the regular order of things⁠—” + 

“The sacred order,” interrupted Herr Gosch dramatically. + 

“The regular order, I say,” finished the Consul. “Why, even the lamps aren’t lighted. That’s going too far with the revolution.” + 

Carl Smolt had swallowed his mouthful by now, and, with the people at his back, stood his ground and made some objections. + 

“Well, Herr Consul, ye may say that. But we’re only agin the principle of the voate⁠—” + 

“God in heaven, you ninny,” shouted the Consul, forgetting, in his excitement, to speak dialect. “You’re talking the sheerest nonsense⁠—” + 

“Lord, Herr Consul,” said Carl Smolt, somewhat abashed, “thet’s oall as it is. Rivolution it has to be. Ther’s rivolution iverywheer, in Berlin, in Paris⁠—” + 

“But, Smolt, what do you want? Just tell me that, if you can.” + 

“Lord, Herr Consul, I say we wants a republic; that’s wat I be sayin’.” + 

“But, you fool, you’ve got one already.” + 

“Well, Herr Consul, then we wants another.” + 

Some of the bystanders, who understood the matter better, began to laugh rudely and heartily; and although few even heard Carl’s answer, the laughter spread until the whole crowd of republicans stood shaking good-naturedly. Some of the gentlemen from inside the hall appeared at the window with curious faces and beer-mugs in their hands. The only person disappointed and pained by this turn of affairs was Siegismund Gosch. + 

“Now, people,” shouted Consul Buddenbrook finally, “I think the best thing for you all to do is to go home.” + 

Carl Smolt, quite crestfallen over the result he had brought about, answered “That’s right, Herr Consul. Then things’ll be quieted down. And Herr Consul doesn’t take it ill of me, do’e, now? Goodbye, Herr Consul!” + 

The crowd began to disperse, in the best of humours. + 

“Wait a minute, Smolt,” shouted the Consul. “Have you seen the Kröger carriage? the calèche from outside the Castle Gate?” + 

“Yes, sir, Herr Consul. He’s here; he be driven up in some court somewhere.” + 

“Then run quick and say he’s to come at once; his master wants to go home.” + 

“Servant, Herr Consul,” and, throwing his cap on his head and pulling the leather visor well down over his brows, Carl Smolt ran with great swinging strides down the street. + 

IV + 

When the Consul and Siegismund Gosch returned to the hall, the scene was a more comfortable one than it had been a quarter of an hour before. It was lighted by two large oil lamps standing on the Committee table, in whose yellow light the gentlemen sat or stood together, pouring out beer into shining tankards, touching glasses and talking loudly, in the gayest of humours. Frau Suerkringel, the widow, had consoled them. She had loyally taken on her enforced guests and given them good advice, recommending that they fortify themselves for the siege, which might endure some while yet. And thus she had profitably employed the time by selling a considerable quantity of her light yet exhilarating beer. As the others entered, the house-boy, in shirtsleeves and good-natured grin, was just bringing in a fresh supply of bottles. While it was certainly late, too late to consider further the revision of the Constitution, nobody seemed inclined to interrupt the meeting and go home. It was too late for coffee, in any case. + 

After the Consul had received congratulatory handshakes on his success, he went up to his father-in-law. Lebrecht Kröger was the only man in the room whose mood had not improved. He sat in his place, cold, remote, and lofty, and answered the information that the carriage would be around at once by saying scornfully, in a voice that trembled more with bitterness than age: “Then the mob permits me to go home?” + 

With stiff movements that no longer had in them anything of the charm that had been his, he had his fur mantle put about his shoulders, and laid his arm, with a careless “Merci,” on that of the Consul, who offered to accompany him home. The majestic coach, with two large lanterns on the box, stood in the street, where, to the Consul’s great satisfaction, the lamps were now being lighted. They both got in. Silent and stiffly erect, with his eyes half-closed, Lebrecht Kröger sat with the rug over his knees, the Consul at his right hand, while the carriage rolled through the streets. Beneath the points of the old man’s white moustaches two lines ran down perpendicularly from the corners of his mouth to his chin. He was gnawed by chagrin at the insult that had been offered him, and he stared, weary and chilled, at the cushions opposite. + 

There was more gayety in the streets than on a Sunday evening. Obviously a holiday temper reigned. The people, delighted at the successful outcome of the revolution, were out in the gayest mood. There was singing. Here and there youngsters shouted “Hurrah!” as the carriage drove past, and threw their caps into the air. + 

“I really think, Father, you let the matter affect you too much,” the Consul said. “When one thinks of it, what a tomfool business the whole thing was⁠—simply a farce.” In order to get some reply from the old man he went on to talk about the revolution in lively tones. “When the propertyless class begin to realize how little they serve their own ends⁠—why, good heavens, it’s the same everywhere. I was talking this afternoon with Gosch the broker, a wonderful man, looking at everything with the eyes of a poet and writer. You see, Father, this revolution was made at the aesthetic tea-tables of Berlin. Then the people take their own skin to market⁠—for, of course, they will be the ones to pay for it!” + 

“It would be a good thing if you would open the window on your side,” said Herr Kröger. + 

Johann Buddenbrook gave him a quick glance and let the glass down hastily. + 

“Aren’t you feeling well, dear Father?” he asked anxiously. + 

“Not at all,” answered Lebrecht Kröger severely. + 

“You need food and rest,” the Consul said; and in order to be doing something he drew up the fur rug closer about his father-in-law’s knees. + 

Suddenly⁠—the carriage was rolling through Castle Street⁠—a wretched thing happened. Fifteen paces from the Castle Gate, in the half-dark, they passed a group of noisy and happy street urchins, and a stone flew through the open window. It was a harmless little stone, the size of a hen’s egg, flung by the hand of some Chris Snut or Heine Voss to celebrate the revolution; certainly not with any bad intent, and probably not directed toward the carriage at all. It came noiselessly through the window and struck Lebrecht Kröger in his chest, which was covered with the thick fur rug. Then it rolled down over the cover and fell upon the floor of the coach. + 

“Clumsy fools!” said the Consul angrily. “Is everybody out of their senses this evening? It didn’t hurt you, did it?” + 

Old Kröger was silent⁠—alarmingly silent. It was too dark in the carriage to see his expression. He sat straighter, higher, stiffer than ever, without touching the cushions. Then, from deep within him, slowly, coldly, dully, came the single word: “Canaille.” + 

For fear of angering him further, the Consul made no answer. The carriage clattered through the gate, and three minutes later was in the broad avenue before the gilt-tipped railings that bounded the Kröger domain. A drive bordered with chestnut trees went from the garden gate up to the terrace; and on either side of the gate a gilt-topped lantern was burning brightly. The Consul saw his father-in-law’s face by this light⁠—it was yellow and wrinkled; the firm, contemptuous set of the mouth had given way: it had changed to the lax, silly, distorted expression of a very old man. The carriage stopped before the terrace. + 

“Help me out,” said Lebrecht Kröger; but the Consul was already out, had thrown back the rug, and offered his arm and shoulder as a support. He led the old man slowly for a few paces across the gravel to the white stone steps that went up to the dining-room. At the foot of these, the old man bent at the knee-joints. His head fell so heavily on his breast that the lower jaw clashed against the upper. His eyes rolled⁠—grew dim; Lebrecht Kröger, the gallant, the cavalier à-la-mode, had joined his fathers. + 

V + 

A year and two months later, on a misty, snowy morning in January of the year 1850, Herr and Madame Grünlich sat at breakfast with their little three-year-old daughter, in the brown wainscoted dining-room, on chairs that cost twenty-five marks apiece. + 

The panes of both windows were opaque with mist; behind them one had vague glimpses of bare trees and bushes. A red glow and a gentle, scented warmth came from the low, green-tiled stove standing in a corner. Through the open door next to it one could see the foliage-plants in the “pensée-room.” On the other wall, half-drawn green stuff portières gave a view of the brown satin salon and of a lofty glass door leading on to a little terrace beyond. The cracks in this door were carefully stopped with cotton-wool, and there was nothing to be seen through its panes but the whitish-grey mist beyond. + 

The snow-white cloth of woven damask on the round table had an embroidered green runner across it, laid with gold-bordered porcelain so translucent that it gleamed like mother-of-pearl. The teakettle was humming. There was a finely worked silver breadbasket in the shape of a curling leaf, with slices and rolls of fine bread; under one crystal bell were little balls of butter, under another different sorts of cheese, white, yellow, and green. There was even a bottle of wine standing before the master of the house; for Herr Grünlich had a full breakfast every morning. + 

His whiskers were freshly curled, and at this early hour his rosy face was rosier than ever. He sat with his back to the salon, already arrayed in a black coat and light trousers with a pattern of large checks, eating a grilled chop, in the English manner. His wife thought this very elegant, but also very disgusting⁠—she had never brought herself to take it instead of her usual breakfast of bread and butter and an egg. + 

Tony was in her dressing-gown. She adored dressing-gowns. Nothing seemed more elegant to her than a handsome negligee, and as she had not been allowed to indulge this passion in the parental house she was the more given to it as a wife. She had three of these dainty clinging garments, to the fashioning of which can go so much more taste and fantasy than to a ball-gown. Today she wore her dark-red one. Its colour toned beautifully with the paper above the wainscoting, and its large-flowered stuff, of a beautiful soft texture, was embroidered all over with sprays of tiny glass beads of the same colour, while row after row of red velvet ribbons ran from neck to hem. + 

Her thick ash-blonde hair, with its dark-red velvet band, curled about her brows. She had now, as she was herself well aware, reached the highest point of her physical bloom; yet her pretty, pouting upper lip retained just the naive, provocative expression of her childhood. The lids of her grey-blue eyes were reddened with cold water. Her hands, the white Buddenbrook hands, finely shaped if a little stumpy, their delicate wrists caressed by the velvet cuffs of her dressing-gown, handled her knife and fork and teacup with motions that were today, for some reason or other, rather jerky and abrupt. Her little daughter Erica sat near her in a high chair. She was a plump child with short blonde hair, in a funny, shapeless, knitted frock of pale-blue wool. She held a large cup in both tiny hands, entirely concealing her face, and drank her milk with little sighs of satisfaction. + 

Frau Grünlich rang, and Tinka, the housemaid, came from the entry to take the child from her high chair and carry her upstairs into the playroom. “You may take her walking outside for a half-hour, Tinka,” said Tony. “But not longer; and put on her thick jacket. It is very damp and foggy.” She remained alone with her husband. + 

“You only make yourself seem absurd,” she said then, after a silence, obviously continuing an interrupted conversation. “What are your objections? Give me some reason. I can’t be always attending to the child.” + 

“You are not fond of children, Antonie.” + 

“Fond of children, indeed! I have no time. I am taken up with the housekeeping. I wake up with twenty things that must be done, and I go to bed with forty that have not been done.” + 

“There are two servants. A young woman like you⁠—” + 

“Two servants. Good. Tinka has to wash up, to clean, to serve. The cook is busy all the time. You have chops early in the morning. Think it over, Grünlich. Sooner or later, Erica must have a bonne, a governess.” + 

“But to get a governess for her so soon is not suited to our means.” + 

“Our means! Goodness, you are absurd! Are we beggars? Are we forced to live within the smallest limits we can? I think I brought you in eighty thousand marks⁠—” + 

“Oh, you and your eighty thousand marks⁠—!” + 

“Yes, I know you like to make light of them. They were of no importance to you because you married me for love! Good. But do you still love me? You deliberately disregard my wishes. The child is not to have a governess. And I don’t even speak any more of the coupé, which we need quite as much as we need food and drink. And why do you insist on our living out here in the country, if it isn’t in accordance with our means to keep a carriage so that we can go into society respectably? Why do you never like it when I go in to town? You would always rather just have me bury myself out here, so I should never see a living soul. I think you are very ill-tempered.” + 

Herr Grünlich poured some wine into his glass, lifted up one of the crystal bells, and began on the cheese. He made no reply. + 

“Don’t you love me any more?” repeated Tony. “Your silence is so insulting, it drives me to remind you of a certain day when you entered our landscape-room. You made a fine figure of yourself! But from the very first day after our marriage you have sat with me only in the evening, and that only to read the paper. Just at first you showed some little regard for my wishes. But that’s been over with for a long while now. You neglect me.” + 

“And you? You are ruining me.” + 

“I? I am ruining you?” + 

“Yes, you are ruining me with your indolence, your extravagance, and love of luxury.” + 

“Oh, pray don’t reproach me with my good upbringing! In my parents’ house I never had to lift a finger. Now I have hard work to get accustomed to the housekeeping; but I have at least a right to demand that you do not refuse me the ordinary assistance. Father is a rich man; he would never dream that I could lack for service.” + 

“Then wait for this third servant until we get hold of some of those riches.” + 

“Oh, you are wishing for my Father’s death. But I mean that we are well-to-do people in our own right. I did not come to you with empty hands.” + 

Herr Grünlich smiled an embarrassed and dejected smile, although he was in the act of chewing his breakfast. He made no other reply, and his silence bewildered Tony. + 

“Grünlich,” she said more quietly, “why do you smile and talk about our ‘means’? Am I mistaken? Has business been bad? Have you⁠—?” + 

Just then somebody drummed on the corridor door, and Herr Kesselmeyer walked in. + 

VI + 

Herr Kesselmeyer entered unannounced, as a friend of the house, without hat or coat. He paused, however, near the door. His looks corresponded exactly to the description Tony had given to her Mother. He was slightly thickset as to figure, but neither fat nor lean. He wore a black, already somewhat shiny coat, short tight trousers of the same material, and a white waistcoat, over which went a long thin watch-chain and two or three eyeglass cords. His clipped white beard was in sharp contrast with his red face. It covered his cheeks and left his chin and lips free. His mouth was small and mobile, with two yellowish pointed teeth in the otherwise vacant gum of his lower jaw, and he was pressing these into his upper lip, as he stood absently by the door with his hands in his trousers pockets and the black and white down on his head waving slightly, although there was not the least perceptible draught. + 

Finally he drew his hands out of his pockets, bowed, released his lip, and with difficulty freed one of the eyeglass cords from the confusion on his waistcoat. He lifted his pince-nez and put it with a single gesture astride his nose. Then he made the most astonishing grimaces, looked at the husband and wife, and remarked: “Ah, ha!” + 

He used this expression with extraordinary frequency and a surprising variety of inflections. He might say it with his head thrown back, his nose wrinkled up, mouth wide open, hands swishing about in the air, with a long-drawn-out, nasal, metallic sound, like a Chinese gong; or he might, with still funnier effect, toss it out, gently, en passant; or with any one of a thousand different shades of tone and meaning. His a was very clouded and nasal. Today it was a hurried, lively “Ah ha!” accompanied with a jerk of the head, that seemed to arise from an unusually pleasant mood, and yet might not be trusted to be so; for the fact was, Banker Kesselmeyer never behaved more gaily than when he was dangerous. When he jumped about emitting a thousand “Ah ha’s,” lifting his glasses to his nose and letting them fall again, waving his arms, chattering, plainly quite beside himself with lightheadedness, then you might be sure that evil was gnawing at his inwards. Herr Grünlich looked at him blinking, with unconcealed mistrust. + 

“Already⁠—so early?” he asked. + 

“Ah, ha!” answered Herr Kesselmeyer, and waved one of his small, red, wrinkled hands in the air, as if to say: “Patience, there is a surprise coming.” “I must speak with you, without any delay; I must speak with you.” + 

The words sounded irresistibly comic as he rolled each one about before giving it out, with exaggerated movements of his little toothless, mobile mouth. He rolled his r’s as if his palate were greased. Herr Grünlich blinked more and more suspiciously. + 

“Come and sit down, Herr Kesselmeyer,” said Tony. “I’m glad you’ve come. Listen. You can decide between us. Grünlich and I have been disagreeing. Now tell me: ought a three-year-old child to have a governess or not?” + 

But Herr Kesselmeyer seemed not to be attending. He had seated himself and was rubbing his stubbly beard with his forefinger, making a rasping sound, his mouth as wide open as possible, nose as wrinkled, while he stared over his glasses with an indescribably sprightly air at the elegantly appointed breakfast-table, the silver breadbasket, the label on the wine-bottle. + 

“Grünlich says I am ruining him,” Tony continued. + 

Herr Kesselmeyer looked at her; then he looked at Herr Grünlich; then he burst out into an astonishing fit of laughter. “You are ruining him?⁠—you? You are ruining him⁠—that’s it, is it? Oh good gracious, heavens and earth, you don’t say! That is a joke. That is a tre‑men‑dous, tre‑men‑dous joke.” He let out a stream of ha ha’s all run in together. + 

Herr Grünlich was plainly nervous. He squirmed on his seat. He ran his long finger down between his collar and his neck and let his golden whiskers glide through his hand. + 

“Kesselmeyer,” he said. “Control yourself, man. Are you out of your head? Stop laughing! Will you have some wine? Or a cigar? What are you laughing at?” + 

“What am I laughing at? Yes, yes, give me a glass of wine, give me a cigar. Why am I laughing? So you think your wife is ruining you?” + 

“She is very luxuriously inclined,” Herr Grünlich said irritably. + 

Tony did not contradict him. She leaned calmly back, her hands in her lap on the velvet ribbons of her frock and her pert upper lip in evidence: “Yes, I am, I know. I have it from Mamma. All the Krögers are fond of luxury.” + 

She would have admitted in the same calm way that she was frivolous, revengeful, or quick-tempered. Her strongly developed family sense was instinctively hostile to conceptions of free will and self-development; it inclined her rather to recognize and accept her own characteristics wholesale, with fatalistic indifference and toleration. She had, unconsciously, the feeling that any trait of hers, no matter of what kind, was a family tradition and therefore worthy of respect. + 

Herr Grünlich had finished breakfast, and the fragrance of the two cigars mingled with the warm air from the stove. “Will you take another, Kesselmeyer?” said the host. “I’ll pour you out another glass of wine.⁠—You want to see me? Anything pressing? Is it important?⁠—Too warm here, is it? We’ll drive into town together afterward. It is cooler in the smoking-room.” To all this Herr Kesselmeyer simply shook his hand in the air, as if to say: “This won’t get us anywhere, my dear friend.” + 

At length they got up; and, while Tony remained in the dining-room to see that the servant-maid cleared away, Herr Grünlich led his colleague through the “pensée-room,” with his head bent, drawing his long beard reflectively through his fingers. Herr Kesselmeyer rowed into the room with his arms and disappeared behind him. + 

Ten minutes passed. Tony had gone into the salon to give the polished nut-wood secretary and the curved table-legs her personal attention with the aid of a gay little feather duster. Then she moved slowly through the dining-room into the living-room with dignity and marked self-respect. The Demoiselle Buddenbrook had plainly not grown less important in her own eyes since becoming Madame Grünlich. She held herself very erect, chin in, and looked down at the world from above. She carried in one hand her little lacquered key-basket; the other was in the pocket of her gown, whose soft folds played about her. The naive expression of her mouth betrayed that the whole of her dignity and importance were a part of a beautiful, childlike, innocent game which she was constantly playing with herself. + 

In the “pensée-room” she busied herself with a little brass sprinkler, watering the black earth around her plants. She loved her palms, they gave so much elegance to the room. She touched carefully a young shoot on one of the thick round stems, examined the majestically unfolded fans, and cut away a yellow tip here and there with the scissors. Suddenly she stopped. The conversation in the next room, which had for several minutes been assuming a livelier tone, became so loud that she could hear every word, though the door and the portières were both heavy. + 

“Don’t shriek like that⁠—control yourself, for God’s sake!” she heard Herr Grünlich say. His weak voice could not stand the strain, and went off in a squeak. “Take another cigar,” he went on, with desperate mildness. + 

“Yes, thanks, with the greatest pleasure,” answered the banker, and there was a pause while he presumably helped himself. Then he said: “In short, will you or won’t you: one or the other?” + 

“Kesselmeyer, give me an extension.” + 

“Ah, ha! No, no, my friend. There is no question of an extension. That’s not the point now.” + 

“Why not? What is stirring you up to this? Be reasonable, for heaven’s sake. You’ve waited this long.” + 

“Not a day longer, my friend. Yes, we’ll say eight days, but not an hour longer. But can’t we rely any longer on⁠—?” + 

“No names, Kesselmeyer.” + 

“No names. Good. But doesn’t someone rely any longer on his estimable Herr Pa⁠—” + 

“No hints, either. My God, don’t be a fool.” + 

“Very good; no hints, either. But have we no claim any longer on the well-known firm with whom our credit stands and falls, my friend? How much did it lose by the Bremen failure? Fifty thousand? Seventy thousand? A hundred thousand? More? The sparrows on the housetops know that it was involved, heavily involved. Yesterday⁠—well, no names. Yesterday the well-known firm was good, and it was unconsciously protecting you against pressure. Today its stock is flat⁠—and B. Grünlich’s stock is the flattest of the flat. Is that clear? Do you grasp it? You are the first man to notice a thing like that. How are people treating you? How do they look at you? Beck and Goudstikker are perfectly agreeable, give you the same terms as usual? And the bank?” + 

“They will extend.” + 

“You aren’t lying, are you? Oh, no! I know they gave you a jolt yesterday⁠—a very, very stimulating jolt eh? You see? Oh, don’t be embarrassed. It is to your interest, of course, to pull the wool over my eyes, so that the others will be quiet. Hey, my dear friend? Well, you’d better write to the Consul. I’ll wait a week.” + 

“A part payment, Kesselmeyer!” + 

“Part payment, rubbish! One accepts part payment to convince oneself for the time of a debtor’s ability to pay. Do I need to make experiments of that kind on you? I am perfectly well-informed about your ability to pay. Ah, ha, ah, ha! Part payment! That’s a very good joke.” + 

“Moderate your voice, Kesselmeyer. Don’t laugh all the time in that cursed way. My position is so serious⁠—yes, I admit, it is serious. But I have such-and-such business in hand⁠—everything may still come out all right. Listen, wait a minute: Give me an extension and I’ll sign it for twenty percent.” + 

“Nothing in it, nothing in it, my friend. Very funny, very amusing. Oh, yes, I’m in favour of selling at the right time. You promised me eight percent, and I extended. You promised me twelve and sixteen percent, and I extended, every time. Now, you might offer me forty percent, and I shouldn’t consider it⁠—not for a moment. Since Brother Westfall in Bremen fell on his nose, everybody is for the moment freeing himself from the well-known firm and getting on a sound basis. As I say, I’m for selling at the right time. I’ve held your signatures as long as Johann Buddenbrook was good⁠—in the meantime I could write up the interest on the capital and increase the percent. But one only keeps a thing so long as it is rising or at least keeping steady. When it begins to fall, one sells⁠—which is the same as saying I want my capital.” + 

“Kesselmeyer, you are shameless.” + 

“Ah, ha, a‑ha! Shameless, am I? That’s very charming, very funny. What do you want? You must apply to your father-in-law. The Credit Bank is raging⁠—and you know you are not exactly spotless.” + 

“No, Kesselmeyer. I adjure you to hear me quietly. I’ll be perfectly frank. I confess that my situation is serious. You and the Credit Bank are not the only ones⁠—there are notes of hand⁠—everything seems to have gone to pieces at once!” + 

“Of course⁠—naturally. It is certainly a cleanup⁠—a liquidation.” + 

“No, Kesselmeyer; hear me out. Do take another cigar.” + 

“This one is not half finished. Leave me alone with your cigars. Pay up.” + 

“Kesselmeyer, don’t let me smash!⁠—You are a friend of mine⁠—you have eaten at my table.” + 

“And maybe you haven’t eaten at mine?” + 

“Yes, yes⁠—but don’t refuse me credit now, Kesselmeyer!” + 

“Credit? It’s credit, now, is it? Are you in your senses? A new loan?” + 

“Yes, Kesselmeyer, I swear to you⁠—A little⁠—a trifle. I only need to make a few payments and advances here and there to get on my feet again and restore confidence. Help me and you will be doing a big business. As I said, I have a number of affairs on hand. They may still all come out right. You know how shrewd and resourceful I am.” + 

“I know what a numbskull you are! A dolt, a nincompoop, my dear friend! Will you have the goodness to tell me what your resourcefulness can accomplish at this stage? Perhaps there is a bank somewhere in the wide world that will lend you a shilling? Or another father-in-law? Ah, no; you have already played your best card. You can’t play it twice.⁠—With all due respect, my dear fellow, and my highest regards.” + 

“Speak lower, devil take you!” + 

“You are a fool. Shrewd and resourceful, are you? Yes, to the other chap’s advantage. You’re not scrupulous, I’ll say that for you, but much good it’s done you! You have played tricks, and wormed capital out of people by hook or crook, just to pay me my twelve or sixteen percent. You threw your honour overboard without getting any return. You have a conscience like a butcher’s dog, and yet you are nothing but a ninny, a scapegoat. There are always such people⁠—they are too funny for words. Why is it you are so afraid to apply to the person we mean with the whole story? Isn’t it because there was crooked work four years ago? Perhaps it wasn’t all quite straight⁠—what? Are you afraid that certain things⁠—?” + 

“Very well, Kesselmeyer; I will write. But suppose he refuses? Suppose he lets me down?” + 

“Oh⁠—ah, ha! Then we will just have a bankruptcy, a highly amusing little bankruptcy. That doesn’t bother me at all. So far as I am concerned, I have about covered my expenses with the interest you have scratched together, and I have the priority with the assets. Oh, you wait; I shan’t come short. I know everything pretty well, my good friend; I have an inventory already in my pocket. Ah, ha! We shall see that no dressing-gown and no silver breadbasket gets away.” + 

“Kesselmeyer, you have sat at my table⁠—” + 

“Oh, be quiet with your table! In eight days I’ll be back for the answer. I shall walk in to town⁠—the fresh air will do me good. Good morning, my friend, good morning!” + 

And Herr Kesselmeyer seemed to depart⁠—yes, he went. She heard his odd, shuffling walk in the corridor, and imagined him rowing along with his arms.⁠ ⁠… + 

Herr Grünlich entered the “pensée-room” and saw Tony standing there with the little watering-can in her hand. She looked him in the face. + 

“What are you looking at? Why are you staring like that?” he said to her. He showed his teeth, and made vague movements in the air with his hands, and wiggled his body from side to side. His rosy face could not become actually pale; but it was spotted red and white like a scarlet-fever patient’s. + 

VII + 

Consul Johann Buddenbrook arrived at the villa at two o’clock in the afternoon. He entered the Grünlich salon in a grey travelling-cloak and embraced his daughter with painful intensity. He was pale and seemed older. His small eyes were deep in their sockets, his large pointed nose stuck out between the fallen cheeks, his lips seemed to have grown thinner, and the beard under his chin and jaws half-covered by his stiff choker and high neckband⁠—he had lately ceased to wear the two locks running from the temples halfway down the cheeks⁠—was as grey as the hair on his head. + 

The Consul had hard, nerve-racking days behind him. Thomas had had a haemorrhage; the Father had learned of the misfortune in a letter from Herr van der Kellen. He had left his business in the careful hands of his clerk and hurried off to Amsterdam. He found nothing immediately dangerous about his son’s illness, but an open-air cure was necessary, in the South, in Southern France; and as it fortunately happened that a journey of convalescence had been prescribed for the young son of the head of the firm, the two young men had left for Pau as soon as Thomas was able to travel. + 

The Consul had scarcely reached home again when he was attacked by a fresh misfortune, which had for the moment shaken his firm to its foundations and by which it had lost eighty thousand marks at one blow. How? Discounted cheques drawn on Westfall Brothers had come back to the firm, liquidation having begun. He had not failed to cover them. The firm had at once showed what it could do, without hesitation or embarrassment. But that could not prevent the Consul from experiencing all the sudden coldness, the reserve, the mistrust at the banks, with “friends,” and among firms abroad, which such an event, such a weakening of working capital, was sure to bring in its train. + 

Well, he had pulled himself together, and had reviewed the whole situation; had reassured, reinforced, made head. And then, in the midst of the struggle, among telegrams, letters, and calculations, this last blow broke upon him as well: B. Grünlich, his daughter’s husband, was insolvent. In a long, whining, confused letter he had implored, begged, and prayed for an assistance of a hundred to a hundred and twenty thousand marks. The Consul replied curtly and non-committally that he would come to Hamburg to meet Herr Grünlich and Kesselmeyer the banker, made a brief, soothing explanation to his wife, and started off. + 

Tony received him in the salon. She was fond of receiving visits in her brown silk salon, and she made no exception now; particularly as she had a very profound impression of the importance of the present occasion, without comprehending in the least what it was about. She looked blooming and yet becomingly serious, in her pale grey frock with its laces at breast and wrists, its bell-shaped sleeves and long train, and little diamond clasp at the throat. “How are you, Papa? At last you have come to see us again. How is Mamma? Is there good news from Tom? Take off your things, Father dear. Will you dress? The guestroom is ready for you. Grünlich is dressing.” + 

“Don’t call him, my child. I will wait for him here. You know I have come for a talk with your husband⁠—a very, very serious talk, my dear Tony. Is Herr Kesselmeyer here?” + 

“Yes, he is in the pensée-room looking at the album.” + 

“Where is Erica?” + 

“Up in the nursery with Tinka. She is very well. She is bathing her doll⁠—of course, not in real water; I mean⁠—she is a wax-doll, she only⁠—” + 

“Of course.” The Consul drew a deep breath and went on: “Evidently you have not been informed as to⁠—to the state of affairs with your husband.” + 

He had sat down in an armchair near the large table, and Tony placed herself at his feet on a little seat made of three cushions on top of one another. The finger of her right hand toyed gently with the diamond at her throat. + 

“No, Papa,” answered Tony. “I must confess I know nothing. Heavens, I am a goose!⁠—I have no understanding at all. I heard Kesselmeyer talking lately to Grünlich⁠—at the end it seemed to me he was just joking again⁠—he always talks so drolly. I heard your name once or twice⁠—” + 

“You heard my name? In what connection?” + 

“Oh, I know nothing of the connection, Papa. Grünlich has been insufferably sulky ever since that day, I must say. Until yesterday⁠—yesterday he was in a good mood, and asked me a dozen times if I loved him, and if I would put in a good word for him with you if he had something to ask you.” + 

“Oh!” + 

“Yes, he told me he had written you and that you were coming here. It is good you have. Everything is so queer. Grünlich had the card-table put in here. There are a lot of paper and pencils on it⁠—for you to sit at, and hold a council together.” + 

“Listen, my dear child,” said the Consul, stroking her hair. “I want to ask you something very serious. Tell me: you love your husband with your whole heart, don’t you?” + 

“Of course, Papa,” said Tony with a face of childlike hypocrisy⁠—precisely the face of the child Tony when she was asked: “You won’t tease the old doll-woman again, Tony?” The Consul was silent a minute. + 

“You love him so much,” he asked again, “that you could not live without him, under any circumstances, even if by God’s will your situation should alter so that he could no longer surround you with all these things?” And his hand described a quick movement over the furniture and portières, over the gilt clock on the étagère, and finally over her own frock. + 

“Certainly, Papa,” repeated Tony, in the soothing tone she nearly always used when anyone spoke seriously to her. She looked past her father out of the window, where a heavy veil of rain was silently descending. Her face had the expression children wear when someone tells them a fairy story and then tactlessly introduces a generalization about conduct and duty⁠—a mixture of embarrassment and impatience, piety and boredom. + 

The Consul looked at her without speaking for a minute. Was he satisfied with her response? He had weighed everything thoroughly, at home and during the journey. + 

It is comprehensible that Johann Buddenbrook’s first impulse was to refuse his son-in-law any considerable payment. But when he remembered how pressing⁠—to use a mild word⁠—he had been about this marriage; when he looked back into the past, and recalled the words: “Are you satisfied with me?” with which his child had taken leave of him after the wedding, he gave way to a burdensome sense of guilt against her and said to himself that the thing must be decided according to her feelings. He knew perfectly that she had not made the marriage out of love, but he was obliged to reckon with the possibility that these four years of life together and the birth of the child had changed matters; that Tony now felt bound body and soul to her husband and would be driven by considerations both spiritual and worldly to shrink from a separation. In such a case, the Consul argued, he must accommodate himself to the surrender of whatever sum was necessary. Christian duty and wifely feeling did indeed demand that Tony should follow her husband into misfortune; and if she actually took this resolve, he did not feel justified in letting her be deprived of all the ease and comfort to which she had been accustomed since childhood. He would feel himself obliged to avert the catastrophe, and to support B. Grünlich at any price. Yet the final result of his considerations was the desire to take his daughter and her child home with him and let Grünlich go his own way. God forbid that the worst should happen! + 

In any case, the Consul invoked the pronouncement of the law that a continued inability to provide for wife and children justified a separation. But, before everything, he must find out his daughter’s real feelings. + 

“I see,” he said, “my dear child, that you are actuated by good and praiseworthy motives. But⁠—I cannot believe that you are seeing the thing as, unhappily, it really is⁠—namely, as actual fact. I have not asked what you would do in this or that case, but what you today, now, will do. I do not know how much of the situation you know or suspect. It is my painful duty to tell you that your husband is obliged to call his creditors together; that he cannot carry on his business any longer. I hope you understand me.” + 

“Grünlich is bankrupt?” Tony asked under her breath, half rising from the cushions and seizing the Consul’s hand quickly. + 

“Yes, my child,” he said seriously. “You did not know it?” + 

“My suspicions were not definite,” she stammered. “Then Kesselmeyer was not joking?” she went on, staring before her at the brown carpet. “Oh, my God!” she suddenly uttered, and sank back on her seat. + 

In that minute all that was involved in the word “bankrupt” rose clearly before her: all the vague and fearful hints which she had heard as a child. “Bankrupt”⁠—that was more dreadful than death, that was catastrophe, ruin, shame, disgrace, misery, despair. “He is bankrupt,” she repeated. She was so cast down and shaken by the fatal word that the idea of escape, of assistance from her father, never occurred to her. He looked at her with raised eyebrows, out of his small deep-set eyes, which were tired and sad and full of an unusual suspense. “I am asking you,” he said gently, “my dear Tony, if you are ready to follow your husband into misery?” He realized at once that he had used the hard word instinctively to frighten her, and he added: “He can work himself up again, of course.” + 

“Certainly, Papa,” answered she. But it did not prevent her from bursting into tears. She sobbed into her batiste handkerchief, trimmed with lace and with the monogram A. G. She still wept just like a child; quite unaffectedly and without embarrassment. Her upper lip had the most touching expression. + 

Her father continued to probe her with his eyes. “That is your serious feeling, my child?” he asked. He was as simple as she. + 

“I must, mustn’t I?” she sobbed. “Don’t I have to⁠—?” + 

“Certainly not,” he said. But with a guilty feeling he added: “I would not force you to it, my dear Tony. If it should be the case that your feelings did not bind you indissolubly to your husband⁠—” + 

She looked at him with uncomprehending, tear-streaming eyes. “How, Papa?” + 

The Consul twisted and turned, and found a compromise. “My dear child, you can understand how painful it would be for me to have to tell you all the hardships and suffering that would come about through the misfortune of your husband, the breaking-up of the business and of your household. I desire to spare you these first unpleasantnesses by taking you and little Erica home with me. You would be glad of that, I think?” + 

Tony was silent a moment, drying her tears. She carefully breathed on her handkerchief and pressed it against her eyes to heal their inflammation. Then she asked tn a firm tone, without lifting her voice: “Papa, is Grünlich to blame? Is it his folly and lack of uprightness that has brought him to this?” + 

“Very probably,” said the Consul. “That is⁠—no, I don’t know, my child. The explanation with him and the banker has not taken place yet.” + 

She seemed not to be listening. She sat crouched on her three silk cushions, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and with her head bowed looked dreamily into the room. + 

“Ah, Papa,” she said softly, almost without moving her lips, “wouldn’t it have been better⁠—?” + 

The Consul could not see her face⁠—but it had the expression it often wore those summer evenings at Travemünde, as she leaned at the window of her little room. One arm rested on her Father’s knee, the hand hanging down limply. This very hand was expressive of a sad and tender abandonment, a sweet, pensive longing, travelling back into the past. + 

“Better?” asked Consul Buddenbrook. “If what, my child?” + 

He was thoroughly prepared for the confession that it would have been better had this marriage not taken place; but Tony only answered with a sigh: “Oh, nothing.” + 

She seemed rapt by her thoughts, which had borne her so far away that she had almost forgotten the “bankrupt.” The Consul felt himself obliged to utter what he would rather only have confirmed. + 

“I think I guess your thoughts, Tony,” he said, “and I don’t on my side hesitate to confess that in this hour I regret the step that seemed to me four years ago so wise and advisable. I believe, before God, I am not responsible. I think I did my duty in trying to give you an existence suitable to your station. Heaven has willed otherwise. You will not believe that your Father played lightly and unreflectingly with your happiness in those days! Grünlich came to us with the best recommendations, a minister’s son, a Christian and a cosmopolitan man. Later I made business inquiries, and it all sounded as favourable as possible. I examined the connections. All that is still very dark; and the explanation is yet to come. But you don’t blame me⁠—?” + 

“No, Papa⁠—how can you say such a thing? Come, don’t take it to heart, poor Papa! You look pale. Shall I give you a little cordial?” She put her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. + 

“Thank you, no,” he said. “There, there! It is all right. Yes, I have bad days behind me. I have had much to try me. These are all trials sent from God. But that does not help my feeling a little guilty toward you, my child. Everything depends on the question I have already asked you. Speak openly, Tony. Have you learned to love your husband in these years of marriage?” + 

Tony wept afresh; and covering her eyes with both hands, in which she held the batiste handkerchief, she sobbed out: “Oh, what are you asking me, Papa? I have never loved him⁠—he has always been repulsive to me. You know that.” + 

It would be hard to say what went on in Johann Buddenbrook. His eyes looked shocked and sad; but he bit his lips hard together, and great wrinkles came in his cheeks, as they did when he had brought a piece of business to a successful conclusion. He said softly: “Four years⁠—” + 

Tony’s tears ceased suddenly. With her damp handkerchief in her hand, she sat up straight on her seat and said angrily: “Four years! Yes! Sometimes, in those four years, he sat with me in the evening and read the paper.” + 

“God gave you a child,” said the Father, moved. + 

“Yes, Papa. And I love Erica very much, although Grünlich says I am not fond of children. I would not be parted from her, that is certain. But Grünlich⁠—no! Grünlich, no. And now he is bankrupt. Ah, Papa, if you will take Erica and me home⁠—oh, gladly.” + 

The Consul compressed his lips again. He was extremely well satisfied. But the main point had yet to be touched upon; though, by the decision Tony showed, he did not risk much by asking. + 

“You seem not to have thought it might be possible to do something, to get help. I have already said to you that I do not feel myself altogether innocent of the situation, and⁠—in case you should expect⁠—hope⁠—I might intervene, to prevent the failure and cover your husband’s debts, the best I could, and float his business⁠—” + 

He watched her keenly, and her bearing filled him with satisfaction. It expressed disappointment. + 

“How much is it?” she asked. + 

“What is that to the point, my child? A very large sum.” And Consul Buddenbrook nodded several times, as though the weight of the very thought of such a sum swung his head back and forth. “I should not conceal from you,” he went on, “that the firm has suffered losses already quite apart from this affair, and that the surrender of a sum like this would be a blow from which it would recover with difficulty. I do not in any way say this to⁠—” + 

He did not finish. Tony had sprung up, had even taken a few steps backward, and with the wet handkerchief still in her hand she cried: “Good! Enough! Never!” She looked almost heroic. The words “the firm” had struck home. It is highly probable that they had more effect than even her dislike of Herr Grünlich. “You shall not do that, Papa,” she went on, quite beside herself. “Do you want to be bankrupt too? Never, never!” + 

At this moment the hall door opened a little uncertainly and Herr Grünlich entered. + 

Johann Buddenbrook rose, with a movement that meant: “That’s settled.” + 

VIII + 

Herr Grünlich’s face was all mottled with red; but he had dressed carefully in a respectable-looking black coat and pea-green trousers like those in which he had made his first visits in Meng Street. He stood still, with his head down, looking very limp, and said in a weak exhausted sort of voice: “Father?” + 

The Consul bowed, not too cordially, and straightened his neckcloth with an energetic movement. + 

“Thank you for coming,” said Herr Grünlich. + 

“It was my duty, my friend,” replied the Consul. “But I am afraid it will be about all I can do for you.” + 

Herr Grünlich threw him a quick look and seemed to grow still more limp. + 

“I hear,” the Consul went on, “that your banker, Herr Kesselmeyer, is awaiting us⁠—where shall the conference be held? I am at your service.” + 

“If you will be so good as to follow me,” Herr Grünlich murmured. Consul Buddenbrook kissed his daughter on the forehead and said, “Go up to your child, Antonie.” + 

Then he went, with Herr Grünlich fluttering in front of and behind him to open the portières, through the dining-room into the living-room. + 

Herr Kesselmeyer stood at the window, the black and white down softly rising and falling upon his cranium. + 

“Herr Kesselmeyer, Herr Consul Buddenbrook, my father-in-law,” said Herr Grünlich, meekly. The Consul’s face was impassive. Herr Kesselmeyer bowed with his arms hanging down, both yellow teeth against his upper lip, and said “Pleasure to meet you, Herr Consul.” + 

“Please excuse us for keeping you waiting, Kesselmeyer,” said Herr Grünlich. He was not more polite to one than to the other. “Pray sit down.” + 

As they went into the smoking-room, Herr Kesselmeyer said vivaciously: “Have you had a pleasant journey? Ah, rain? Yes, it is a bad time of year, a dirty time. If we had a little frost, or snow, now⁠—but rain, filth⁠—very, very unpleasant.” + 

“What a queer creature!” thought the Consul. + 

In the centre of the little room with its dark-flowered wallpaper stood a sizable square table covered with green baize. It rained harder and harder; it was so dark that the first thing Herr Grünlich did was to light the three candles on the table. Business letters on blue paper, stamped with the names of various firms, torn and soiled papers with dates and signatures, lay on the green cloth. There were a thick ledger and a metal inkstand and sand-holder, full of well-sharpened pencils and goose-quills. + 

Herr Grünlich did the honours with the subdued and tactful mien of a man greeting guests at a funeral. “Dear Father, do take the easy-chair,” he said. “Herr Kesselmeyer, will you be so kind as to sit here?” + 

At last they were settled. The banker sat opposite the host, the Consul presided on the long side of the table. The back of his chair was against the hall door. + 

Herr Kesselmeyer bent over, released his upper lip, disentangled a glass from his waistcoat and stuck it on his nose, which he wrinkled for the purpose, and opened his mouth wide. Then he scratched his stubbly beard with an ugly rasping noise, put his hands on his knees, and remarked in a sprightly tone, jerking his head toward the piles of papers: “Well, there we have the whole boiling.” + 

“May I look into matters a little more closely?” asked the Consul, taking up the ledger. But Herr Grünlich suddenly stretched out his hands over the table⁠—long, trembling hands marked with high blue veins⁠—and cried out in a voice that trembled too: “A moment, Father. Just a moment. Let me make just a few explanations. Yes, you will get an insight into everything⁠—nothing will escape your glance; but, believe me, you will get an insight into the situation of an unfortunate, not a guilty man. You see in me a man who fought unwearied against fate, but was finally struck down. I am innocent of all⁠—” + 

“We shall see, my friend, we shall see,” said the Consul, with obvious impatience; and Herr Grünlich took his hands away and resigned himself to his fate. + 

Then there were long dreadful minutes of silence. The three gentlemen sat close together in the flickering candlelight, shut in by the four dark walls. There was not a sound but the rustling of the Consul’s papers and the falling rain outside. + 

Herr Kesselmeyer stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and played piano on his shoulders with his fingers, looking with indescribable jocosity from one to the other. Herr Grünlich sat upright in his chair, hands on the table, staring gloomily before him, and now and then stealing an anxious glance at his father-in-law out of the tail of his eye. The Consul examined the ledger, followed columns of figures with his finger, compared dates, and did indecipherable little sums in lead-pencil on a scrap of paper. His worn features expressed astonishment and dismay at the conditions into which he now “gained an insight.” Finally he laid his left arm on Herr Grünlich’s and said with evident emotion: “You poor man!” + 

“Father,” Herr Grünlich broke out. Two great tears rolled down his cheeks and ran into the golden whiskers. Herr Kesselmeyer followed their course with the greatest interest. He even raised himself a little, bent over, and looked his vis-à-vis in the face, with his mouth open. Consul Buddenbrook was moved. Softened by his own recent misfortunes, he felt himself carried away by sympathy; but he controlled his feelings. + 

“How is it possible?” he said, with a sad head-shake. “In so few years⁠—” + 

“Oh, that’s simple,” answered Herr Kesselmeyer, good-temperedly. “One can easily ruin oneself in four years. When we remember that it took an even shorter time for Westfall Brothers in Bremen to go smash⁠—” The Consul stared at him, but without either seeing or hearing him. He himself had not expressed his own actual thoughts, his real misgivings. Why, he asked himself with puzzled suspicion, why was this happening now? It was as clear as daylight that, just where he stood today, B. Grünlich had stood two years, three years before. But his credit had been inexhaustible, he had had capital from the banks, and for his undertakings continual endorsement from sound houses like Senator Bock and Consul Goudstikker. His paper had passed as current as banknotes. Why now, precisely now⁠—and the head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook knew well what he meant by this “now”⁠—had there come this crash on all sides, this complete withdrawal of credit as if by common consent, this unanimous descent upon B. Grünlich, this disregard of all consideration, all ordinary business courtesy? The Consul would have been naive indeed had he not realized that the good standing of his own firm was to the advantage of his son-in-law. But had the son-in-law’s credit so entirely, so strikingly, so exclusively depended upon his own? Had Grünlich himself been nothing at all? And the information the Consul had had, the books he had examined⁠—? Well, however the thing stood, his resolution was firmer than ever not to lift a finger. They had reckoned without their host. + 

Apparently B. Grünlich had known how to make it appear that he was connected with the firm of Buddenbrook⁠—well, this widely-circulated error should be set right once for all. And this Kesselmeyer⁠—he was going to get a shock too. The clown! Had he no conscience whatever? It was very plain how shamelessly he had speculated on the probability that he, Johann Buddenbrook, would not let his daughter’s husband be ruined; how he had continued to finance Grünlich long after he was unsound, and exacted from him an ever crueller rate of interest. + 

“Now,” he said shortly, “let us get to the point. If I am asked as a merchant to say frankly what I think, I am obliged to say that if the situation is that of an unfortunate man, it is also in a great degree that of a guilty one.” + 

“Father!” stammered Herr Grünlich. + 

“The name does not come well to my ears,” said the Consul, quickly and harshly. “Your demands on Herr Grünlich amount, sir”⁠—turning for a moment to the banker⁠—“to sixty thousand marks, I believe?” + 

“With the back interest they come to sixty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-five marks and fifteen shillings,” answered Herr Kesselmeyer pleasantly. + 

“Very good. And you would not be inclined under any circumstances to be patient for a longer time?” + 

Herr Kesselmeyer simply began to laugh. He laughed with his mouth open, in spasms, without a trace of scorn, even good-naturedly, looking at the Consul as though he were inviting him to join in the fun. + 

Johann Buddenbrook’s little deep eyes clouded over and began to show red rims around them that ran down to the cheekbones. He had only asked for form’s sake, being aware that a postponement on the part of one creditor would not materially alter the situation. But the manner of this man’s refusal was mortifying indeed. With a motion of the hand he pushed away everything from in front of him, laid the pencil down with a jerk on the table, and said, “Then I must express myself as unwilling to concern myself any further with this affair.” + 

“Ah, ha!” cried Herr Kesselmeyer, shaking his hands in the air. “That’s the way to talk. The Herr Consul will settle everything out of hand⁠—we shan’t have any long speeches. Without more ado.” Johann Buddenbrook did not even look at him. + 

“I cannot help you, my friend.” He turned calmly to Herr Grünlich. “Things must go on as they have begun. Pull yourself together, and God will give you strength and consolation. I must consider our interview at an end.” + 

Herr Kesselmeyer’s face took on a serious expression which was vastly becoming to it. But then he nodded encouragingly to Herr Grünlich. The latter sat motionless at the table, only wringing his hands so hard that the fingers cracked. + 

“Father⁠—Herr Consul,” he said, with a trembling voice. “You will not⁠—you cannot desire my ruin. Listen. It is a matter of a hundred and twenty thousand marks in all⁠—you can save me! You are a rich man. Regard it as you like⁠—as a final arrangement, as your daughter’s inheritance, as a loan subject to interest. I will work⁠—you know I am keen and resourceful⁠—” + 

“I have spoken my last word,” said the Consul. + 

“Permit me⁠—may I ask whether you could if you would?” asked Herr Kesselmeyer, looking at him through his glasses, with his nose wrinkled up. “I suggest to the Consul that this would be a most advantageous time to display the strength of the firm of Buddenbrook.” + 

“You would do well, sir, to leave the good name of my house to me. I do not need to throw my money in the nearest ditch in order to show how good my credit is.” + 

“Dear me, no, of course not⁠—ditch, ah, ha!⁠—Ditch is very funny. But doesn’t the gentleman think the failure of his son-in-law places his own credit in a bad light⁠—er⁠—ah⁠—?” + 

“I can only recommend you again to remember that my credit in the business world is entirely my own affair,” said the Consul. + 

Herr Grünlich looked at his banker helplessly and began afresh: “Father! I implore you again: think what you are doing. Is it a question of me alone? I⁠—oh, I myself might be allowed to perish. But your daughter, my wife, whom I love, whom I won after such a struggle⁠—and our child⁠—both innocent children⁠—are they to be brought low as well? No, Father, I will not bear it; I will kill myself. Yes, I would kill myself with this hand. Believe me⁠—and may heaven pardon you if it will.” + 

Johann Buddenbrook leaned back in his armchair quite white, with a fast-beating heart. For the second time the emotions of this man played upon him, and their expression had the stamp of truth; again he heard, as when he told Herr Grünlich the contents of his daughter’s letter from Travemünde, the same terrible threat, and again there shuddered through him all the fanatical reverence of his generation for human feelings, which yet had always been in conflict with his own hard practical sense. But the attack lasted no longer than a moment. “A hundred thousand marks,” he repeated to himself; and then he said quietly and decisively: “Antonie is my daughter. I shall know how to protect her from unmerited suffering.” + 

“What do you mean by that?” asked Herr Grünlich, slowly stiffening. + 

“That you will see,” answered the Consul. “For the present I have nothing to add.” And he got up, pushed back his chair, and turned toward the door. + 

Herr Grünlich sat silent, stiff, irresolute; his mouth opened and closed without a word coming out. But the sprightliness of Herr Kesselmeyer returned at this conclusive action of the Consul. Yes, it got the upper hand entirely, it passed all bounds, it became frightful. The glasses fell from his nose, which went skyward, while his little mouth, with the two triangular yellow teeth, looked as though it were splitting. He rowed with his little red hands in the air, the fuzz on his head waved up and down, his whole face, with its bristly white beard distorted and grotesque with uncontrolled hilarity⁠—had grown the colour of cinnamon. + 

“Ah, ha, ha, ah, ha!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “I find that in the last⁠—degree⁠—funny! You ought to consider, Consul Buddenbrook, before you consign to the grave such a valuable⁠—such a supreme specimen of a son-in-law. Anything so shrewd, so resourceful as he is, won’t be born upon God’s wide earth a second time. Aha! Four years ago⁠—when the knife was at our throat, the rope around our neck⁠—suddenly we made a match with Fräulein Buddenbrook, and spread the news on ’Change, even before it had actually come off! Congratulations, my dear friend; my best respects!” + 

“Kesselmeyer,” groaned Herr Grünlich, making spasmodic motions with his hands, as though waving off an evil spirit. He rushed into one corner of the room, where he sat down and buried his face in his hands. The ends of his whiskers lay on his shanks, and he rocked his knees up and down in his emotion. + 

“How did we do that?” went on Herr Kesselmeyer. “How did we actually manage to catch the little daughter and the eighty thousand marks? O-ho, ah, ha! That is easy. Even if one has no more shrewdness and resourcefulness than a tallow candle, it is easy! You show the saviour Papa nice, pretty, clean books, in which everything is put in the right way⁠—only that they don’t quite correspond with the plain fact⁠—for the plain fact is that three-quarters of the dowry is already debts.” + 

The Consul stood at the door deathly pale, the handle in his hand. Shivers ran up and down his back. He seemed to be standing in this little room lighted by the flickering candles, between a swindler and an ape gone mad with spite. + 

“I despise your words, sir,” he brought out with uncertain emphasis. “I despise your wild utterances the more that they concern me as well. I did not hand my daughter over light-headedly to misfortune; I informed myself as to my son-in-law’s prospects. The rest was God’s will.” + 

He turned⁠—he would not hear any more⁠—he opened the door. But Herr Kesselmeyer shrieked after him: “Aha, inquiries? Where? Of Bock? Of Goudstikker? Of Petersen? Of Massmann and Timm? They were all in it. They were all in it up to their necks. They were all uncommonly pleased to be secured by the wedding⁠—” The Consul slammed the door behind him. + 

IX + 

Dora the cook, about whose honesty Tony had had her doubts, was busy in the dining-room. + 

“Ask Madame Grünlich to come down,” ordered the Consul. “Get yourself ready, my child,” he said as Tony appeared. He went with her into the salon. “Get ready as soon as possible, and get Erica ready too. We are going to the city. We shall sleep tonight in a hotel and travel home tomorrow.” + 

“Yes, Papa,” Tony said. Her face was red; she was distracted and bewildered. She made unnecessary and hurried motions about her waist, as if not knowing where to begin and not grasping the actuality of the occasion. + 

“What shall I take, Papa?” she asked distractedly. “Everything? All our clothes? One trunk or two? Is Grünlich really bankrupt? Oh, my God! But can I take my jewelry, then? Papa, the servants must leave⁠—I cannot pay them. Grünlich was to have given me housekeeping money today or tomorrow.” + 

“Never mind, my child; things will all be arranged here. Just take what is necessary in a small trunk. They can send your own things after you. Hurry, do you hear?” + 

Just then the portières were parted and Herr Grünlich came into the salon. With quick steps, his arms outstretched, his head on one side, with the bearing of a man who says: “Here I am; kill me if you will,” he hurried to his wife and sank down on his knees right in front of her. His appearance was pitiable. His golden whiskers were dishevelled, his coat crumpled, his neckcloth askew, his collar open; little drops stood upon his forehead. + 

“Antonie!” he said. “Have you a heart that can feel? Hear me. You see before you a man who will be utterly ruined, if⁠—yes, who will die of grief, if you deny him your love. Here I lie; can you find it in your heart to say to me: ‘I despise you⁠—I am leaving you’?” + 

Tony wept. It was just the same as that time in the landscape-room. Once more she saw his anguished face, his imploring eyes directed upon her; again she saw, and was moved to see, that this pleading, this anguish, were real and unfeigned. + 

“Get up, Grünlich,” she said, sobbing. “Please, please get up.” She tried to raise his shoulders. “I do not despise you. How can you say such a thing?” Without knowing what else she should say, she turned helplessly to her father. The Consul took her hand, bowed to his son-in-law, and moved with her toward the hall door. + 

“You are going?” cried Herr Grünlich, springing to his feet. + 

“I have told you already,” said the Consul, “that I cannot be responsible for leaving my innocent child in misfortune⁠—and I might add that you cannot, either. No, sir, you have misprized the possession of my daughter. You may thank your Creator that the child’s heart is so pure and unsuspicious that she parts from you without repulsion. Farewell.” + 

But here Herr Grünlich lost his head. He could have borne to hear of a brief parting⁠—of a return and a new life and perhaps the saving of the inheritance. But this was too much for his powers of self-command, his shrewdness and resource. He might have taken the large bronze plaque that stood on the étagère, but he seized instead a thin painted vase with flowers that stood next it, and threw it on the ground so that it smashed into a thousand bits. + 

“Ha, good, good!” he screamed. “Get along with you! Did you think I’d whine after you, you goose? You are very much mistaken, my darling. I only married you for your money; and it was not nearly enough, so you may as well go home. I’m through with you⁠—through⁠—through⁠—through!” + 

Johann Buddenbrook ushered his daughter silently out. Then he turned, went up to Herr Grünlich, who was standing in the window with his hands behind his back staring out at the rain, touched him softly on the shoulder, and spoke with soft admonishment. “Pull yourself together. Pray!” + 

X + 

A chastened mood reigned for some time at the old house in Meng Street after Madame Grünlich and her little daughter returned thither to take up their abode. The family went about rather subdued and did not speak much about “it,” with the exception of the chief actor in the affair, who, on the contrary, talked about “it” inexhaustibly, and was entirely in her element. + 

Tony had moved with Erica into the rooms in the second storey which her parents had occupied in the time of the elder Buddenbrooks. She was a little disappointed to find that it did not occur to her Papa to engage a servant for her, and she had rather a pensive half-hour when he gently explained that it would be fitting for her to live a retired life and give up the society of the town: for though, he said, according to human judgments she was an innocent victim of the fate which God had sent to try her, still her position as a divorced wife made a very quiet life advisable, particularly at first. But Tony possessed the gift of adaptability. She could adjust herself with ease and cheerfulness to any situation. She soon grew charmed with her role of the injured wife returned to the house of her fathers; wore dark frocks, dressed her ash-blonde hair primly like a young girl’s, and felt richly repaid for her lack of society by the weight she had acquired in the household, the seriousness and dignity of her new position, and above all by the immense pleasure of being able to talk about Herr Grünlich and her marriage and to make general observations about life and destiny, which she did with the utmost gusto. + 

Not everybody gave her this opportunity, it is true. The Frau Consul was convinced that her husband had acted correctly and out of a sense of duty; but when Tony began to talk, she would put up her lovely white hand and say: “Assez, my child; I do not like to hear about it.” + 

Clara, now twelve years old, understood nothing, and Cousin Clothilde was just as stupid. “Oh, Tony!”⁠—that was all she could say, with drawling astonishment. But the young wife found an attentive listener in Mamsell Jungmann, who was now thirty-five years old and could boast of having grown grey in the service of the best society. “You don’t need to worry, Tony, my child,” she would say. “You are young; you will marry again.” And she devoted herself to the upbringing of little Erica, telling her the same stories, the same memories of her youth, to which the Consul’s children had listened fifteen years before; and, in particular, of that uncle who died of hiccups at Marienwerder “because his heart was broken.” + 

But it was with her father that Tony talked most and longest. She liked to catch him after the noonday meal or in the morning at early breakfast. Their relations had grown closer and warmer; for her feeling had been heretofore one of awe and respect rather than affection, on account of his high position in the town, his piety, his solid, stern ability and industry. During that talk in her own salon he had come humanly near to her, and it had filled her with pride and emotion to be found worthy of that serious and confidential consultation. He, the infallible parent, had put the decision into her hands: he had confessed, almost humbly, to a sense of guilt. Such an idea would never have entered Tony’s head of itself; but since he said it, she believed it, and her feeling for him had thereby grown warmer and tenderer. As for the Consul, he believed himself bound to make up to his daughter for her misfortune by redoubled love and care. + 

Johann Buddenbrook had himself taken no steps against his untrustworthy son-in-law. Tony and her Mother did hear from him, in the course of conversation, what dishonourable means Grünlich had used to get hold of the eighty thousand marks; but the Consul was careful to give the matter no publicity. He did not even consider going to the courts with it. He felt wounded in his pride as a merchant, and he wrestled silently with the disgrace of having been so thoroughly taken in. + 

But he pressed the divorce suit energetically as soon as the failure of Grünlich came out, which it soon did, thereby causing no inconsiderable losses to certain Hamburg firms. + 

It was this suit, and the thought that she herself was a principal in it, that gave Tony her most delicious and indescribable feelings of importance. + 

“Father,” she said⁠—for in these conversations she never called him “Papa”⁠—“Father, how is our affair going on? Do you think it will be all right? The paragraph is perfectly clear; I have studied it. ‘Incapacity of the husband to provide for his family’: surely they will say that is quite plain. If there were a son, Grünlich would keep him⁠—” + 

Another time she said: “I have thought a great deal about the four years of my marriage, Father. That was certainly the reason the man never wanted us to live in the town, which I was so anxious to do. That was the reason he never liked me even to be in the town or go into society. The danger was much greater there than in Eimsbüttel, of my hearing somehow or other how things stood. What a scoundrel!” + 

“We must not judge, my child,” answered the Consul. + 

Or, when the divorce was finally pronounced: “Have you entered it in the family papers, Father? No? Then I’d better do it. Please give me the key to the secretary.” With bustling pride she wrote, beneath the lines she had set there four years ago under her name: “This marriage was dissolved by law in February, 1850.” Then she put away the pen and reflected a minute. + 

“Father,” she said, “I understand very well that this affair is a blot on our family history. I have thought about it a great deal. It is exactly as if there were a spot of ink in the book here. But never mind. That is my affair. I will erase it. I am still young. Don’t you think I am still quite pretty? Though Frau Stuht, when she saw me again, said to me: ‘Oh, Heavens, Mme. Grünlich, how old you’ve grown!’ Well, I certainly couldn’t remain all my life the goose I was four years ago! Life takes one along with it. Anyhow, I shall marry again. You will see, everything can be put right by a good marriage.” + 

“That is in God’s hand, my child. It is most unfitting to speak of such things.” + 

Tony began at this time to use very frequently the expression “Such is life”; and with the word “life” she would open her eyes wide with a charming serious look, indicating the deep insight she had acquired into human affairs and human destinies. + 

Thomas returned from Pau in August of that year. The dining-table was opened out again, and Tony had a fresh audience for her tale. She loved and looked up to her brother, who had felt for her pain in that departure from Travemünde, and she respected him as the future head of the firm and the family. + 

“Yes, yes,” he said; “we’ve both of us gone through things, Tony.” + 

The corner of his eyebrow went up, and his cigarette moved from one corner of his mouth to the other: his thoughts were probably with the little flower-girl with the Malay face, who had lately married the son of her employer and now herself carried on the shop in Fishers’ Lane. + 

Thomas Buddenbrook, though still a little pale, was strikingly elegant. The last few years had entirely completed his education. His hair was brushed so that it stood out in two clumps above his ears, and his moustache was trimmed in the French mode, with sharp points that were stiffened with the tongs and stuck straight out. His stocky broad-shouldered figure had an almost military air. + 

His constitution was not of the best; the blue veins showed too plainly at the narrow temples, and he had a slight tendency to chills, which good Dr. Grabow struggled with in vain. In the details of his physical appearance⁠—the chin, the nose, and especially the hands, which were wonderfully true to the Buddenbrook type⁠—his likeness to his grandfather was more pronounced than ever. + 

He spoke French with a distinctly Spanish accent, and astonished everybody by his enthusiasm for certain modern writers of a satiric and polemic character. Broker Gosch was the only person in town who sympathized with his tastes. His father strongly reprehended them. + 

But the Father’s pride and joy in his eldest son were plain to be seen; they shone in the Consul’s eyes. He welcomed him joyfully home as his colleague in the firm, and himself began to work with increased satisfaction in his office⁠—especially after the death of old Madame Kröger, which took place at the end of the year. + 

The old lady’s loss was one to be borne with resignation. She had grown very old, and lived quite alone at the end. She went to God, and the firm of Buddenbrooks received a large sum of money, a round hundred thousand thaler, which strengthened the working capital of the business in a highly desirable way. + 

The Consul’s brother-in-law Justus, weary of continual business disappointments, as soon as he had his hands on his inheritance settled his business and retired. The gay son of the cavalier à-la-mode was not a happy man. He had been too careless, too generous to attain a solid position in the mercantile world. But he had already spent a considerable part of his inheritance; and now Jacob, his eldest son, was the source of fresh cares to him. + 

The young man had become addicted to light, not to say disreputable, society in the great city of Hamburg. He had cost his father a huge sum in the course of years, and when Consul Kröger refused to give him more, the mother, a weak, sickly woman, sent money secretly to the son, and wretched clouds had sprung up between husband and wife. + 

The final blow came at the very time when B. Grünlich was making his failure: something happened at Dalbeck and Company in Hamburg, where Jacob Kröger worked. There had been some kind of dishonesty. It was not talked about; no questions were asked of Justus Kröger; but it got about that Jacob had a position as travelling man in New York and was about to sail. He was seen once in the town before his boat left, a foppishly dressed, unwholesome-looking youth. He had probably come hither to get more money out of his mother, besides the passage money his father sent him. + 

It finally came about that Justus spoke exclusively of “my son,” as though he had none but the one heir, his second son, Jürgen, who would certainly never be guilty of a false step, but who seemed on the other hand to be mentally limited. He had had difficulty getting through the High School; after which he spent some time in Jena, studying law⁠—evidently without either pleasure or profit. + 

Johann Buddenbrook felt keenly the cloud on his wife’s family and looked with the more anxiety to the future of his own children. He was justified in placing the utmost confidence in the ability and earnestness of his older son. As for Christian, Mr. Richardson had written that he showed an unusual gift for acquiring English, but no genuine interest in the business. He had a great weakness for the theatre and for other distractions of the great city. Christian himself wrote that he had a longing to travel and see the world. He begged eagerly to be allowed to take a position “over there”⁠—which meant in South America, perhaps in Chile. “That’s simply love of adventure,” the Consul said, and told him to remain with Mr. Richardson for another year and acquire mercantile experience. There followed an exchange of letters on the subject, with the result that in the summer of 1851 Christian Buddenbrook sailed for Valparaiso, where he had hunted up a position. He travelled direct from England, without coming home. + 

So much for his two sons. As for Tony, the Consul was gratified to see with what self-possession she defended her position in the town as a Buddenbrook born; for as a divorced wife she had naturally to overcome all sorts of prejudice on the part of the other families. + 

“Oh!” she said, coming back with flushed cheeks from a walk and throwing her hat on the sofa in the landscape-room. “This Juliet Möllendorpf, or Hagenström⁠—or Semmlinger⁠—whatever she is, the creature!⁠—Imagine, Mamma! She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t say ‘How do you do’: She waits for me to speak first. What do you say to that? I passed her in Broad Street with my head up and looked straight at her.” + 

“You go too far, Tony. There is a limit to everything. Why shouldn’t you speak first? You are the same age, and she is a married woman, just as you were.” + 

“Never, Mamma! Never under the shining sun! Such ragtag and bobtail!” + 

“Assez, my love. Such vulgar expressions⁠—” + 

“Oh, it makes me feel perfectly beside myself!” + 

Her hatred of the upstart family was fed by the mere thought that the Hagenströms might now feel justified in looking down on her⁠—especially considering the present good fortune of the clan. Old Heinrich had died at the beginning of 1851, and his son Hermann⁠—he of the lemon buns and the boxes on the ear⁠—was doing a very brilliant business with Herr Strunk as partner. He had married, less than a year later, the daughter of Consul Huneus, the richest man in town, who had made enough out of his business to leave each of his three children two million marks. Hermann’s brother Moritz, despite his lung trouble, had a brilliant career as student, and had now settled down in the town to practise law. He had a reputation for being able, witty, and literary, and soon acquired a considerable business. He did not look like the Semmlingers, having a yellow face and pointed teeth with wide spaces between. + 

Even in the family Tony had to take care to hold her head up. Uncle Gotthold’s temper toward his fortunate stepbrother had grown more mild and resigned now that he had given up business and spent his time carefree in his modest house, munching lozenges out of a tin box⁠—he loved sweets. Still, considering his three unmarried daughters, he could not have failed to feel a quiet satisfaction over Tony’s unfortunate venture; and his wife, born Stüwing, and his three daughters, twenty-six, twenty-seven, and twenty-eight years old, showed an exaggerated interest in their cousin’s misfortune and the divorce proceedings; more, in fact, than they had in her betrothal and wedding. When the “children’s Thursdays” began again in Meng Street after old Madame Kröger’s death, Tony found it no easy work to defend herself. + 

“Oh, heavens, you poor thing!” said Pfiffi, the youngest, who was little and plump, with a droll way of shaking herself at every word. A drop of water always came in the corner of her mouth when she spoke. “Has the decree been pronounced? Are you exactly as you were before?” + 

“Oh, on the contrary,” said Henriette, who like her elder sister, was extraordinarily tall and withered-looking. “You are much worse off than if you had never married at all.” + 

“Yes,” Friederike chimed in. “Then it is ever so much better never to have married at all.” + 

“Oh, no, dear Friederike,” said Tony, erecting her head, while she bethought herself of a telling and clever retort. “You make a mistake there. Marriage teaches one to know life, you see. One is no longer a silly goose. And then I have more prospect of marrying again than those who have never married at all!” + 

“Oh!” cried the others with one voice. They said it with a long hissing intake of breath which made it sound very sceptical indeed. + 

Sesemi Weichbrodt was too good and tactful even to mention the subject. Tony sometimes visited her former teacher in the little red house at Millbrink No. 7. It was still occupied by a troop of girls, though the boarding-school was slowly falling out of fashion. The lively old maid was also invited to Meng Street on occasion to partake of a haunch of venison or a stuffed goose. She always raised herself on tiptoe to kiss Tony on the forehead, with a little exploding noise. Madame Kethelsen, her simple sister, had grown rapidly deaf and had understood almost nothing of Tony’s affair. She still laughed her painfully hearty laugh on the most unsuitable occasions, and Sesemi still felt it necessary to rap on the table and cry “Nally!” + 

The years went on. Gradually people forgot their feelings over Tony’s affair. She herself would only think now and then of her married life, when she saw on Erica’s healthy, hearty little face some expression that reminded her of Bendix Grünlich. She dressed again in colours, wore her hair in the old way, and made the same old visits into society. + 

Still, she was always glad that she had the chance to be away from the town for some time in the summer. The Consul’s health made it necessary for him to visit various cures. + 

“Oh, what it is to grow old!” he said. “If I get a spot of coffee on my trousers and put a drop of cold water on it, I have rheumatism. When one is young, one can do anything.” He suffered at times also from spells of dizziness. + 

They went to Obersalzbrunn, to Ems and Baden-Baden, to Kissingen, whence they made a delightful and edifying journey to Nuremberg and Munich and the Salzburg neighbourhood, to Ischl and Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and home again. Madame Grünlich had been suffering from a nervous affection of the digestion, and was obliged to take a strenuous cure at the baths; but nevertheless she found the journey a highly desirable change, for she did not conceal her opinion that it was a little slow at home. + 

“Heavens, yes⁠—you know how it is, Father,” she would say, regarding the ceiling with a thoughtful air. “Of course, I have learned what life is like⁠—but just for that reason it is rather a dull prospect for me to be always sitting here at home like a stupid goose. I hope you don’t think I mean I do not like to be with you, Papa. I ought to be whipped if I did, it would be so ungrateful. But I only mean life is like that, you know.” + 

The hardest thing she had to bear was the increasing piety of her parents’ home. The Consul’s religious fervour grew upon him in proportion as he himself felt the weight of years and infirmity; and his wife too, as she got older, began to find the spiritual side to her taste. Prayers had always been customary in the Buddenbrook house, but now for some time the family and the servants had assembled mornings and evenings in the breakfast-room to hear the Master read the Bible. And the visits of ministers and missionaries increased more and more from year to year. The godly patrician house in Meng Street, where, by the way, such good dinners were to be had, had been known for years as a spiritual haven to the Lutheran and reformed clergy and to both foreign and home missions. From all quarters of the Fatherland came long-haired, black-coated gentlemen, to enjoy the pious intercourse and the nourishing meals, and to be furnished with the sinews of their spiritual warfare. The ministers of the town went in and out as friends of the house. + 

Tom was much too discreet and prudent even to let anyone see him smile; but Tony mocked quite openly. She even, sad to say, made fun of these pious worthies whenever she had a chance. + 

Sometimes when the Frau Consul had a headache, it was Tony’s turn to play the housekeeper and order the dinner. One day, when a strange clergyman whose appetite was the subject of general hilarity, was a guest, Tony mischievously ordered “bacon broth,” the famous local dish: a bouillon made with sour cabbage, in which was served the entire meal⁠—ham, potatoes, beetroot, cauliflower, peas, beans, pears, sour plums, and goodness knows what, juice and all⁠—a dish which nobody except those born to it could possibly eat. + 

“I do hope you are enjoying the soup, Herr Pastor,” she said several times. “No? Oh, dear, who would have thought it?” And she made a very roguish face, and ran her tongue over her lips, a trick she had when she thought of some prank or other. + 

The fat man laid down his spoon resignedly and said mildly: “I will wait till the next course.” + 

“Yes,” the Frau Consul said hastily, “there is a little something afterwards.” But a “next course” was unthinkable, after this mighty dish; and despite the French toast and apple jelly which finished the meal, the reverend guest had to rise hungry from table, while Tony tittered, and Tom, with fine self-control, lifted one eyebrow. + 

Another time Tony stood with Stina, the cook, in domestic discourse in the entry, when Pastor Mathias from Kannstadt, who was stopping a few days in the house, came back from a walk and rang at the outer door. Stina ran to open, with her peasant waddle, and the Pastor, with the view of saying an edifying word and testing her a little, asked in a friendly tone: “Do you love the Master?” + 

Perhaps he had the idea of giving her a tip if she professed herself on the side of the Saviour. + 

“Lord, Herr Pastor,” said Stina, trembling and blushing, with wide eyes. “Which one do Herr Pastor mean? T’ old un or t’ young un?” Madame Grünlich did not fail to tell the story at the table, so that even the Frau Consul burst out into her sputtering Kröger laugh. The Consul, however, looked down in displeasure at his plate. + 

“A misunderstanding,” said Herr Mathias, highly embarrassed. + 

XI + 

What follows happened in the late summer of 1855, on a Sunday afternoon. The Buddenbrooks were sitting in the landscape-room waiting for the Consul, who was below dressing himself. They had arranged to take a holiday walk to a pleasure garden outside the City Gate, where, all except Clara and Clothilde, they were to drink coffee and, if the weather permitted, go for a row on the river. Clara and Clothilde went always on Sunday evenings to the house of a friend, where they knitted stockings for little negro children. + 

“Papa is ridiculous,” Tony said, using her habitual strong language. “Can he never be ready on time? He sits and sits and sits at his desk: something or other must be finished⁠—good heavens, perhaps it is something really necessary, I don’t know. But I don’t believe we should actually become bankrupt if he put down his pen a quarter of an hour sooner. Well, when it is already ten minutes too late, he remembers his appointment and comes upstairs, always two steps at a time, although he knows he will get palpitation at the top. And it is like that at every company, before every expedition. Isn’t it possible for him to leave himself time enough? And stop soon enough? It’s so irresponsible of him; you ought to talk to him about it, Mamma.” She sat on the sofa beside her Mother, dressed in the changeable silk that was fashionable that summer; while the Frau Consul wore a heavy grey ribbed silk trimmed with black lace, and a cap of lace and stiffened tulle, tied under her chin with a satin bow. The lappets of her cap fell down on her breast. Her smooth hair was still inexorably reddish-blond in colour, and she held a workbag in both her white delicately veined hands. Tom was lounging in an easy-chair beside her smoking his cigarette, while Clara and Clothilde sat opposite each other at the window. It was a mystery how much good and nourishing food that poor Clothilde could absorb daily without any result whatever! She grew thinner and thinner, and her shapeless black frock did not conceal the fact. Her face was as long, straight, and expressionless as ever, her hair as smooth and ash-coloured, her nose as straight, but full of large pores and getting thick at the end. + 

“Don’t you think it will rain?” said Clara. The young girl had the habit of not elevating her voice at the end of a question and of looking everybody straight in the face with a pronounced and rather forbidding look. Her brown frock was relieved only by a little stiff turnover collar and cuffs. She sat straight up, her hands in her lap. The servants had more respect for her than for anyone else in the family; it was she who held the services morning and evening now, for the Consul could not read aloud without getting a feeling of oppression in the head. + 

“Shall you take your new Bashlik?” she asked again. “The rain will spoil it. It would be a pity. I think it would be better to put off the party.” + 

“No,” said Tom. “The Kistenmakers are coming. It doesn’t matter. The barometer went down so suddenly⁠—. There will be a storm⁠—it will pour, but not last long. Papa is not ready yet; so we can wait till it is over.” + 

The Frau Consul raised a protesting hand. “You think there will be a severe storm, Tom? You know I am afraid of them.” + 

“No,” Tom answered. “I was down at the harbour this morning talking to Captain Kloot. He is infallible. There will be a heavy rain, but no wind.” + 

The second week in September had brought belated hot weather with it. There was a southwest wind, and the city suffered more than in July. A strange-looking dark blue sky hung above the rooftops, pale on the skyline as it is in the desert. After sunset a sultry breath, like a hot blast from an oven, streamed out of the small houses and up from the pavement of the narrow streets. Today the wind had gone round to the west, and at the same time the barometer had fallen sharply. A large part of the sky was still blue, but it was slowly being overcast by heavy grey-blue clouds that looked like feather pillows. + 

Tom added: “It would be a good thing if it did rain, I think. We should collapse if we had to walk in this atmosphere. It is an unnatural heat. Hotter than it ever was in Pau.” + 

Ida Jungmann, with little Erica’s hand in hers, came into the room. The child looked a droll little figure in her stiffly starched cotton frock; she smelled of starch and soap. She had Herr Grünlich’s eyes and his rosy skin, but the upper lip was Tony’s. + 

The good Ida was already quite grey, almost white, although not out of the forties. It was a trait of her family: the uncle that died had had white hair at thirty. But her little brown eyes looked as shrewd and faithful as ever. She had been now for twenty years with the Buddenbrooks, and she realized with pride that she was indispensable. She oversaw kitchen, larders, linen and china cupboards, she made the most important purchases, she read to little Erica, made clothes for her dolls, and fetched her from school, with a slice of French bread, to take her walking on the Mill-wall. Every lady said to Frau Consul or her daughter: “What a treasure your Mamsell is, my dear! Goodness, she is worth her weight in gold! Twenty years⁠—and she will be useful at sixty and more; these wiry people are. What faithful eyes she has! I envy you, my love.” But Ida Jungmann was very reserved. She knew her own position, and when some ordinary nurse-girl came and sat down with her charge on the same bench and tried to enter into conversation, Ida Jungmann would say: “There is a draught here, Erica,” and get up and go. + 

Tony drew her little daughter to her and kissed the rosy cheeks, and the Frau Consul stretched out her hand with rather an absent smile; for she was looking anxiously at the sky, which grew darker and darker. Her left hand fingered the sofa pillows nervously, and her light eyes wandered restlessly to the window. + 

Erica was allowed to sit next her Grandmother, and Ida sat up straight on a chair and began to knit. Thus all waited silently for the Consul. The air was heavy. The last bit of blue had disappeared; the dark grey sky lowered heavy and swollen over them. The colours in the room changed, the yellow of furniture and hangings and the tones of the landscapes on the walls were all quenched, like the gay shades in Tony’s frock and the brightness of their eyes. Even the west wind, which had been playing in the churchyard of St. Mary’s and whirling the dust around in the darkening street, was suddenly quiet. + 

This breathless moment of absolute calm came without warning, like some unexpected, soundless, awful event. The sultriness grew heavier, the atmosphere seemed to increase its weight in a second; it oppressed the brain, it rested on the heart, it prevented the breathing. A swallow flew so low over the pavement that its wings touched. And this pressure that one could not lift, this tension, this growing weight on the whole organism, would have become unbearable had it lasted even the smallest part of a second longer, if at its height there had not come a relief, a release⁠—a little break somewhere, soundless, yet perceptible; and at the same moment, without any premonitory drops, the rain fell down in sheets, filling the gutters and overflowing the pavements. + 

Thomas, whose illness had taught him to pay attention to his nerves, bent over in this second, made a motion toward his head, and flung away his cigarette. He looked around the circle to see if the others had felt anything. He thought his Mother had, perhaps; the others did not seem to be aware. The Frau Consul was looking out now into the thick-streaming rain, which quite hid the church from view; she sighed “Thank God.” + 

“There,” said Tony, “that will cool the air in two minutes. But the drops will be hanging on the trees outside⁠—we can drink coffee in the verandah. Open the window, Tilda.” + 

The noise of the rain grew louder. It almost roared. Everything pattered, streamed, rushed, foamed. The wind came up and blew the thick veils of water, tore them apart, and flung them about. It grew cooler every minute. + 

Lina, the maidservant, came running through the hall and burst so suddenly into the room that Ida Jungmann called out sharply: “I say, what do you mean⁠—?” Lina’s expressionless blue eyes were wide open, her jaws worked without making a sound⁠— + 

“Oh, Frau Consul,” she got out, at last. “Come, come quick! oh, what a scare⁠—” + 

“Yes,” Tony said, “she’s probably broken something again. Very likely the good porcelain. Oh, these servants of yours, Mamma!” + 

But the girl burst out: “Oh, no, Ma’am Grünlich⁠—if that’s all it was!⁠—It’s the Master⁠—I were bringing him his boots, and there he sits and can’t speak, on his chair, and I says to myself, there’s something wrong there; the Herr Consul⁠—” + 

“Get Grabow,” cried Thomas and ran out of the room. + 

“My God⁠—oh, my God!” cried the Frau Consul, putting her hands to her face and hurrying out. + 

“Quick, get a wagon and fetch Grabow,” Tony repeated breathlessly. + 

Everybody flew downstairs and through the breakfast-room into the bedroom. + 

But Johann Buddenbrook was already dead. + 