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Title: Buddenbrooks, volume 2 of 2

Author: Thomas Mann

Translator: H. T. Lowe-Porter

Release date: February 15, 2024 [eBook #72962]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924

Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUDDENBROOKS, VOLUME 2 OF 2 ***





BUDDENBROOKS

·II·




  Other Books by

  THOMAS MANN

  DEATH IN VENICE
  ROYAL HIGHNESS
  MAGIC MOUNTAIN




  THOMAS MANN

  BUDDENBROOKS

  VOLUME TWO

  [Illustration]

  Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter

  ALFRED·A·KNOPF·NEW YORK
  1927




  COPYRIGHT 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

  _Published, February, 1924_
  _Second Printing, July, 1924_
  _Third Printing, March, 1927_

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




PART SEVEN




CHAPTER I


A christening--a christening in Broad Street!

All, everything is there that was dreamed of by Madame Permaneder in
the days of her expectancy. In the dining-room, the maid-servant,
moving noiselessly so as not to disturb the services in the next room,
is filling the cups with steaming hot chocolate and whipped cream.
There are quantities of cups, crowded together on the great round tray
with the gilded shell-shaped handles. And Anton the butler is cutting
a towering layer-cake into slices, and Mamsell Jungmann is arranging
flowers and sweets in silver dessert-dishes, with her head on one side,
and both little fingers stuck out.

Soon the company will have seated themselves in the salon and
sitting-room, and all these delicacies will be handed round. It is
to be hoped they will hold out, since it is the whole family which
has gathered here, in the broader, if not quite in the broadest sense
of the word. For it is, through the Överdiecks, connected distantly
with the Kistenmakers, and through them with the Möllendorpfs--and so
on. One simply must draw the line somewhere! But the Överdiecks are
represented, and, indeed, by no less a personage than the head of the
family, the venerable Doctor Kaspar Överdieck, reigning Burgomaster,
more than eighty years old.

He came in a carriage, and mounted the steps leaning on his staff and
Thomas Buddenbrook’s arm. His presence enhances the dignity of the
occasion--and, beyond a question, this occasion is worthy of every
dignity!

For within, in the salon, there is a flower-decked small table, serving
as an altar, with a young priest in black vestments and a stiff
snowy ruff like a millstone round his neck, reciting the service;
and there is a great, strapping, particularly well-nourished person,
richly arrayed in red and gold, bearing upon her billowing arms a
small something, half smothered in laces and satin bows: an heir--a
first-born son! A Buddenbrook! Do we really grasp the meaning of the
fact?

Can we realize the thrill of that first whisper, that first little hint
that travelled from Broad Street to Mengstrasse? Or Frau Permaneder’s
speechless ecstasy, as she embraced her mother, her brother, and--very
gently--her sister-in-law? And now, with the spring--the spring of the
year 1861--he has come: he, the heir of so many hopes, whom they have
expected for so many years, talked of him, longed for him, prayed to
God and tormented Dr. Grabow for him; at length he has come--and looks
most unimposing.

His tiny hands play among the gilt trimmings of his nurse’s waist;
his head, in a lace cap trimmed with pale blue ribbons, lies sidewise
on the pillow, turned heedlessly away from the preacher; he stares
out into the room, at all his relatives, with an old, knowing look.
Those eyes, under their long-lashed lids, blend the light blue of the
Father’s and the brown of the Mother’s iris into a pale, indefinite,
changeful golden-brown; but bluish shadows lie in the deep corners
on both sides of the nose, and these give the little face, which is
hardly yet a face at all, an aged look not suited to its four weeks of
existence. But, please God, they mean nothing--for has not his Mother
the same? And she is in perfectly good health. And anyhow, he lives--he
lives, and is a son; which was the cause, four weeks ago, for great
rejoicing.

He lives--and it might have been otherwise. The Consul will never
forget the grip of good Dr. Grabow’s hand, as he said to him, four
weeks ago, when he could leave the mother and child: “Give thanks
to God, my dear friend--there wasn’t much to spare.” The Consul
has not dared to ask his meaning. He put from him in horror the
thought that his son--this tiny creature, yearned for in vain so
many years--had slipped into the world without breath to cry out,
almost--_almost_--like Antonie’s second daughter. But he knows that
that hour, four weeks ago, was a desperate one for mother and child;
and he bends tenderly over Gerda, who reclines in an easy-chair in
front of him, next his Mother, her feet, in patent-leather shoes,
crossed before her on a velvet cushion.

How pale she still is! And how strangely lovely in her pallor, with
that heavy dark-red hair and those mysterious eyes that rest upon the
preacher in half-veiled mockery! Herr Andreas Pringsheim, _pastor
marianus_, succeeded thus young to the headship of St. Mary’s after
old Kölling’s sudden death. He holds his chin in the air and his
hands prayerfully folded beneath it. He has short, curly blond hair
and a smooth-shaven, bony face, with a somewhat theatrical range of
expression, from fanatical zeal to an exalted serenity. He comes from
Franconia, where he has been for some years, serving a small Lutheran
community among Catholics; and his effort after a clear and moving
delivery has resulted in exaggerated mannerisms; an _r_ rolled upon his
front teeth and long, obscure, or crudely accented vowel-sounds.

He gives thanks to God, in a voice now low and soft, now loud and
swelling--and the family listen: Frau Permaneder, clothed in a dignity
that hides her pride and her delight; Erica Grünlich, now almost
fifteen years old, a blooming young girl with a long braid and her
father’s rosy skin; and Christian, who has arrived that morning, and
sits letting his deep-set eyes rove from side to side all over the
room. Pastor Tiburtius and his wife have not shrunk from the long
journey, but have come from Riga to be present at the ceremony. The
ends of Sievert Tiburtius’ long, thin whiskers are parted over his
shoulders, and his small grey eyes now and then open wider and wider,
most unexpectedly, and grow larger and more prominent till they almost
jump out of his head. Clara’s gaze is dark and solemn and severe, and
she sometimes lifts her hand to a head that always seems to ache. But
they have brought a splendid present to the Buddenbrooks: a huge brown
bear stuffed in a standing position. A relative of the Pastor’s shot
him somewhere in the heart of Russia, and now he stands below in the
vestibule with a card-tray between his paws.

The Krögers have their son Jürgen visiting them; he is a post-office
official in Rostock, a quiet, simply-dressed man. Where Jacob is,
nobody knows but his mother, who was an Överdieck. She, poor, weak
woman, secretly sells the household silver to send money to the
disinherited son. And the ladies Buddenbrook are there, deeply
rejoiced over the happy family event--which does not prevent Pfiffi
from remarking that the child looks rather unhealthy: a view which
the Frau Consul, born Stüwing, and likewise Friederike and Henriette,
feel bound to endorse. But poor Clothilde, lean, grey, resigned, and
hungry, is moved by the words of Pastor Pringsheim and the prospect of
layer-cake and chocolate. The guests not belonging to the family are
Herr Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus and Sesemi Weichbrodt.

Now the Pastor turns to the god-parents and instructs them in their
duty. Justus Kröger is one. Consul Buddenbrook refused at first to ask
him. “Why invite the old man to commit a piece of folly?” he says. “He
has frightful scenes with his wife every day over Jacob; their little
property is slowly melting away--out of pure worry he is even beginning
to be careless in his dress! But you know what will happen: if we ask
him, he will send the child a heavy gold service and refuse to be
thanked for it!” But when Uncle Justus heard who was to be asked in his
place--Stephan Kistenmaker had been mentioned--he was so enormously
piqued that they had to ask him after all. The gold mug he presented
was, to Thomas’s great relief, not exaggeratedly heavy.

And the second god-father? It is this dignified old gentleman with the
snow-white hair, high neck-band, and soft black broadcloth coat with
the red handkerchief sticking out of the back pocket, sitting here
bent over his stick, in the most comfortable arm-chair in the house.
It is, of course, Burgomaster Dr. Överdieck. It is a great event--a
triumph! Good heavens, how could it have come about? he is hardly even
a relative! The Buddenbrooks must have dragged the old man in by the
hair! In fact, it _is_ rather a feat: a little intrigue planned by
the Consul and Madame Permaneder. At first it was merely a joke, born
of the great relief of knowing that mother and child were safe. “A
boy, Tony,” cried the Consul. “He ought to have the Burgomaster for
god-father!” But she took it up in earnest, whereupon he considered
the matter seriously and agreed to make a trial. They hid behind Uncle
Justus, and got him to send his wife to her sister-in-law, the wife of
Överdieck the lumber dealer. She accepted the task of preparing the old
father-in-law; then Thomas Buddenbrook made a visit to the head of the
state and paid his respects--and the thing was done.

Now the nurse lifts up the child’s cap, and the Pastor cautiously
sprinkles two or three drops out of the gilt-lined silver basin in
front of him, upon the few hairs of little Buddenbrook, as he slowly
and impressively names the names with which he is baptizing him:
Justus, Johann, Kaspar. Follows a short prayer, and then the relatives
file by to bestow a kiss upon the brow of the unconcerned little
creature. Therese Weichbrodt comes last, to whom the nurse has to stoop
with her burden; in return for which Sesemi gives him two kisses,
that go off with small explosions, and says, between them: “You good
che-ild!”

Three minutes later, the guests have disposed themselves in salon and
living-room, and the sweets are passed. Even Pastor Pringsheim, the
toes of his broad, shiny boots showing under his black vestments,
sits and sips the cool whipped cream off his hot chocolate, chatting
easily the while, and wearing his serene expression, which is most
effective by way of contrast with his sermon. His manner says, as
plainly as words: “See how I can lay aside the priest and become the
jolly ordinary guest!” He is a versatile, an accommodating sort of
man. To the Frau Consul he speaks rather unctuously, to Thomas and
Gerda like a man of the world, and with Frau Permaneder he is downright
jocose, making jokes and gesturing fluently. Now and then, whenever he
thinks of it, he folds his hands in his lap, tips back his head, glooms
his brows, and makes a long face. When he laughs he draws the air in
through his teeth in little jerks.

Suddenly there is a stir in the corridor, the servants are heard
laughing, and in the doorway appears a singular figure, come to offer
congratulations. It is Grobleben: Grobleben, from whose thin nose, no
matter what the time of year, there ever hangs a drop, which never
falls. Grobleben is a workman in one of the Consul’s granaries, and
he has an extra job, too, at the house, as boots. Every morning early
he appears in Broad Street, takes the boots from before the door, and
cleans them below in the court. At family feasts he always appears in
holiday attire, presents flowers, and makes a speech, in a whining,
unctuous voice, with the drop pendent from his nose. For this, he
always gets a piece of money--but that is _not_ why he does it!

He wears a black coat--an old one of the Consul’s--greased leather
top-boots, and a blue woollen scarf round his neck. In his wizened
red hand he holds a bunch of pale-coloured roses, which are a little
past their best, and slowly shed their petals on the carpet. He blinks
with his small red eyes, but apparently sees nothing. He stands still
in the doorway, with his flowers held out in front of him, and begins
straightway to speak. The old Frau Consul nods to him encouragingly and
makes soothing little noises, the Consul regards him with one eyebrow
lifted, and some of the family--Frau Permaneder, for instance--put
their handkerchiefs to their mouths.

“I be a poor man, yer honour ’n’ ladies ’n’ gentlemen, but I’ve a
feelin’ hairt; ’n’ the happiness of my master comes home to me, it do,
seein’s he’s allus been so good t’ me; ’n’ so I’ve come, yer honour
’n’ ladies ’n’ gentlemen, to congratulate the Herr Consul ’n’ the Frau
Consul, ’n’ the whole respected family, from a full hairt, ’n’ that
the child may prosper, for that they desarve fr’m God ’n’ man, for
such a master as Consul Buddenbrook there aren’t so many, he’s a noble
gentleman, ’n’ our Lord will reward him for all....”

“Splendid, Grobleben! That was a beautiful speech. Thank you very much,
Grobleben. What are the roses for?”

But Grobleben has not nearly done. He strains his whining voice and
drowns the Consul out.

“... ’n’ I say th’ Lord will reward him, him and the whole respected
family; ’n’ when his time has come to stan’ before His throne, for
stan’ we all must, rich _and_ poor, ’n’ one’ll have a fine polished
hard-wood coffin ’n’ ’tother ’n old box, yet all on us must come to
mother earth at th’ last, yes, we must all come to her at th’ last--to
mother earth--to mother--”

“Oh, come, come, Grobleben! This isn’t a funeral, it’s a christening.
Get along with your mother earth!”

“... ’n’ these be a few flowers,” concludes Grobleben.

“Thank you, Grobleben, thank you. This is too much--what did you pay
for them, man? But I haven’t heard such a speech as that for a long
time! Wait a minute--here, go out and give yourself a treat, in honour
of the day!” And the Consul puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder and
gives him a thaler.

“Here, my good man,” says the Frau Consul. “And I hope you love our
blessed Lord?”

“I be lovin’ him from my hairt, Frau Consul, thet’s the holy truth!”
And Grobleben gets another thaler from her, and a third from Frau
Permaneder, and retires with a bow and a scrape, taking the roses with
him by mistake, except for those already fallen on the carpet.

The Burgomaster takes his leave now, and the Consul accompanies him
down to his carriage. This is the signal for the party to break
up--for Gerda Buddenbrook must rest. The old Frau Consul, Tony, Erica,
and Mamsell Jungmann are the last to go.

“Well, Ida,” says the Consul, “I have been thinking it over: you took
care of us all, and when little Johann gets a bit older-- He still has
the monthly nurse now, and after that he will still need a day-nurse,
I suppose--but will you be willing to move over to us when the time
comes?”

“Yes, indeed, Herr Consul, if your wife is satisfied.”

Gerda is content to have it so, and thus it is settled.

In the act of leaving, however, and already at the door, Frau
Permaneder turns. She comes back to her brother and kisses him on both
cheeks, and says: “It has been a lovely day, Tom. I am happier than I
have been for years. We Buddenbrooks aren’t quite at the last gasp yet,
thank God, and whoever thinks we are is mightily mistaken. Now that we
have little Johann--it is so beautiful that he is christened Johann--it
looks to me as if quite a new day will dawn for us all!”




CHAPTER II


Christian Buddenbrook, proprietor of the firm of H. C. F. Purmeister
and Company of Hamburg, came into his brother’s living-room, holding
in his hand his modish grey hat and his walking-stick with the nun’s
bust. Tom and Gerda sat reading together. It was half-past nine on the
evening of the christening day.

“Good evening,” said Christian. “Oh, Thomas, I must speak with you at
once.--Please excuse me, Gerda.--It is urgent, Thomas.”

They went into the dark dining-room, where the Consul lighted a gas-jet
on the wall, and looked at his brother. He expected nothing good.
Except for the first greeting, he had had no opportunity to speak with
Christian, but he had looked at him, during the service, and noted that
he seemed unusually serious, and even more restless than common: in
the course of Pastor Pringsheim’s discourse he had left the room for
several minutes. Thomas had not written him since the day in Hamburg
when he had paid over into his brother’s hands an advance of 10,000
marks current on his inheritance, to settle his indebtedness. “Just go
on as you are going,” he had said, “and you’ll soon run through all
your money. As far as I am concerned, I hope you will cross my path
very little in future. You have put my friendship to too hard a test in
these three years.” Why was he here now? Something must be driving him.

“Well?” asked the Consul.

“I’m done,” Christian said. He let himself down sidewise on one of the
high-backed chairs around the dining-table, and held his hat and stick
between his thin knees.

“May I ask what it is you are done with, and what brings you to me?”
said the Consul. He remained standing.

“I’m done,” repeated Christian, shaking his head from side to side
with frightful earnestness and letting his little round eyes stray
restlessly back and forth. He was now thirty-three years old, but he
looked much older. His reddish-blond hair was grown so thin that nearly
all the cranium was bare. His cheeks were sunken, the cheek-bones
protruded sharply, and between them, naked, fleshless, and gaunt, stood
the huge hooked nose.

“If it were only this--!” he went on, and ran his hand down the
whole of his left side, very close, but not touching it. “It isn’t a
pain, you know--it is a misery, a continuous, indefinite ache. Dr.
Drögemuller in Hamburg tells me that my nerves on this side are all too
short. Imagine, on my whole left side, my nerves aren’t long enough!
Sometimes I think I shall surely have a stroke here, on this side, a
permanent paralysis. You have no idea. I never go to sleep properly. My
heart doesn’t beat, and I start up suddenly, in a perfectly terrible
fright. That happens not once but ten times before I get to sleep.
I don’t know if you know what it is. I’ll tell you about it more
precisely. It is--”

“Not now,” the Consul said coldly. “Am I to understand that you have
come here to tell me this? I suppose not.”

“No, Thomas. If it were only that--but it is not that--alone. It is the
business. I can’t go on with it.”

“Your affairs are in confusion again?” The Consul did not start, he did
not raise his voice. He asked the question quite calmly, and looked
sidewise at his brother, with a cold, weary glance.

“No, Thomas. For to tell you the truth--it is all the same now--I never
really was in order, even with the ten thousand, as you know yourself.
They only saved me from putting up the shutters at once. The thing
is--I had more losses at once, in coffee--and with the failure in
Antwerp-- That’s the truth. So then I didn’t do any more business; I
just sat still. But one has to live--so now there are notes and other
debts--five thousand thaler. You don’t know the hole I’m in. And on top
of everything else, this agony--”

“Oh, so you just sat still, did you?” cried the Consul, beside himself.
His self-control was gone now. “You let the wagon stick in the mud and
went off to enjoy yourself! You think I don’t know the kind of life
you’ve been living--theatres and circus and clubs--and women--”

“You mean Aline. Yes, Thomas, you have very little understanding for
that sort of thing, and it’s my misfortune, perhaps, that I have so
much. You are right when you say it has cost me too much; and it will
cost me a goodish bit more, for--I’ll tell you something, just here
between two brothers--the third child, the little girl, six months old,
she is my child.”

“You fool, you!”

“Don’t say that, Thomas. You should be just, even if you are angry, to
her and to--why shouldn’t it be my child? And as for Aline, she isn’t
in the least worthless, and you ought not to say she is. She is not
at all promiscuous; she broke with Consul Holm on my account, and he
has much more money than I have. That’s how decent she is. No, Thomas,
you simply can’t understand what a splendid creature she is--and
_healthy_--she is as _healthy_--!” He repeated the word, and held up
one hand before his face with the fingers crooked, in the same gesture
as when he used to tell about “Maria” and the depravity of London. “You
should see her teeth when she laughs. I’ve never found any other teeth
to compare with them, not in Valparaiso, or London, or anywhere else
in the world. I’ll never forget the evening I first met her, in the
oyster-room, at Uhlich’s. She was living with Consul Holm then. Well,
I told her a story or so, and was a bit friendly; and when I went home
with her afterwards--well, Thomas, that’s a different sort of feeling
from the one you have when you do a good stroke of business! But you
don’t like to hear about such things--I can see that already--and
anyhow, it’s over with. I’m saying good-bye to her, though I shall
keep in touch with her on account of the child. I’ll pay up everything
I owe in Hamburg, and shut up shop. I can’t go on. I’ve talked with
Mother, and she is willing to give me the five thousand thaler to start
with, so I can put things in order; and I hope you will agree to it,
for it is much better to say quite simply that Christian Buddenbrook
is winding up his business and going abroad, than for me to make a
failure. You think so too, don’t you? I intend to go to London again,
Thomas, and take a position. It isn’t good for me to be independent--I
can see that more and more. The responsibility--whereas in a situation
one just goes home quite care-free, at the end of the day. And I liked
living in London. Do you object?”

During this exposition, the Consul had turned his back on his brother,
and stood with his hands in his pockets, describing figures on the
floor with his foot.

“Very good, go to London,” he said, shortly, and without turning more
than half-way toward his brother, he passed into the living-room.

But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who sat there alone,
reading, and put out his hand.

“Good night, Gerda. Well, Gerda, I’m off for London. Yes, it’s
remarkable how one gets tossed about hither and yon. Now it’s again
into the unknown, into a great city, you know, where one meets an
adventure at every third step, and sees so much of life. Strange--do
you know the feeling? One gets it here--sort of in the pit of the
stomach--it’s very odd.”




CHAPTER III


James Möllendorpf, the oldest of the merchant senators, died in a
grotesque and horrible way. The instinct of self-preservation became
very weak in this diabetic old man; and in the last years of his life
he fell a victim to a passion for cakes and pastries. Dr. Grabow, as
the Möllendorpf family physician, had protested energetically, and
the distressed relatives employed gentle constraint to keep the head
of the family from committing suicide with sweet bake-stuffs. But
the old Senator, mental wreck as he was, rented a room somewhere, in
some convenient street, like Little Groping Alley, or Angelswick, or
Behind-the-Wall--a little hole of a room, whither he would secretly
betake himself to consume sweets. And there they found his lifeless
body, the mouth still full of half-masticated cake, the crumbs upon his
coat and upon the wretched table. A mortal stroke had supervened, and
put a stop to slow dissolution.

The horrid details of the death were kept as much as possible from the
family, but they flew about the town, and were discussed at length
on the Bourse, in the club, and at the Harmony, in all the business
offices, in the Assembly of Burgesses--likewise at all the balls,
dinners, and evening parties, for the death occurred in February of
the year ’62, and the season was in full swing. Even the Frau Consul’s
friends talked about it, on the Jerusalem evenings, in the pauses
of Lea Gerhardt’s reading aloud; the little Sunday-school children
discussed it in awesome whispers as they crossed the Buddenbrook entry;
and Herr Stuht, in Bell-Founders’ Street, went into ample detail over
it with his wife, who moved in the highest circles.

But interest could not long remain concentrated upon the past. And even
with the first rumour of the old man’s death, the great question had at
once sprung up: who was to succeed him?

What suspense, what subterranean activity! A stranger, intent on the
sights of the mediaeval town, would have noticed nothing; but beneath
the surface there was unimaginable bustle and commotion, as one firm
and unassailable honest conviction after another was exploded; and
slowly, slowly the while, divergent views approached each other!
Passions are stirred, Ambition and Vanity wrestle together in silence.
Dead and buried hopes spring once more to life--and again are blasted.
Old Kurz, the merchant, in Bakers’ Alley, who gets three or four votes
at every election, will sit quaking at home on the fatal day, and
listen to the shouting, but he will not be elected this time either. He
will continue to take his walks abroad, displaying outwardly his usual
mingling of civic pride and self-satisfaction: but he will bear down
with him into the grave the secret chagrin of never having been elected
Senator.

James Möllendorpf’s death was discussed at the Buddenbrook Thursday
dinner-table; and Frau Permaneder, after the proper expressions of
sympathy, began to let her tongue play upon her upper lip and look
across artfully at her brother. The Buddenbrook ladies marked the
look. They exchanged piercing glances, and with one accord shut their
eyes and their lips tightly together. The Consul had, for a second,
responded to the sly smile his sister gave him, and then given the talk
another turn. He knew that the thought which Tony hugged to her breast
in secret was being spoken in the street.

Names were suggested and rejected, others came up and were sifted out.
Henning Kurz in Bakers’ Alley was too old. They needed new blood.
Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer, whose millions would have weighted
the scale heavily in his favour, was constitutionally ineligible, as
his brother already sat in the Senate. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the
wine dealer, and Consul Hermann Hagenström were names that kept their
places on the list. But from the very first was heard the name of
Thomas Buddenbrook; and as election-day approached, it grew constantly
plainer that he and Hermann Hagenström were the favoured candidates.

Hermann Hagenström had his admirers and hangers-on--there was no doubt
of that. His zeal in public affairs, the spectacular rise of the
firm of Strunck and Hagenström, the showy house the Consul kept, the
luxurious life he led, the pâtés-de-foie-gras he ate for breakfast--all
these could not fail to make an impression. This large, rather
over-stout man with the short, full, reddish beard and the snub nose
coming down flat on his upper lip, this man whose grandfather nobody
knew, not even himself, and whose father had made himself socially
impossible by a rich but doubtful marriage; this man had become a
brother-in-law of the Huneus’ and the Möllendorpfs, had ranged his
name alongside those of the five or six reigning families in the town,
and was undeniably a remarkable and a respected figure. The novel and
therewith the attractive element in his personality--that which singled
him out for a leading position in the eyes of many--was its liberal
and tolerant strain. His light, large way of making money and spending
it again differed fundamentally from the patient, persistent toil and
the inherited principles of his fellow merchants. This man stood on
his own feet, free from the fetters of tradition and ancestral piety;
and all the old ways were foreign to him. His house was not one of the
ancient patrician mansions, built with senseless waste of space, in
tall white galleries mounting above a stone-paved ground floor. His
home on Sand Street, the southern extension of Broad Street, was a
modern dwelling, not conforming to any set style of architecture, with
a simple painted façade, but furnished inside with every luxury and
planned with the cleverest economy of space. Recently, on the occasion
of one of his large evening parties, he had invited a prima donna from
the government theatre, to sing after dinner to his guests--among
them his witty, art-loving brother--and had paid her an enormous fee
for her services. Hermann Hagenström was not the man to vote in the
Assembly for the application of large sums of money to preserve and
restore the town’s mediaeval monuments. But it was a fact that he
was the first, absolutely the first man in town to light his house
and his offices with gas. Yes, if Consul Hagenström could be said
to represent any tradition whatever, it was the free, progressive,
tolerant, unprejudiced habit of thought which he had inherited from his
father, old Heinrich--and on this was based all the admiration people
undoubtedly felt for him.

Thomas Buddenbrook’s prestige was of a different kind. People honoured
in him not only his own personality, but the personalities of his
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather as well: quite apart from
his own business and public achievement, he was the representative of
a hundred years of honourable tradition. And the easy, charming way,
indeed, with which he carried the family standard made no small part
of his success. What distinguished him, even among his professional
fellow-citizens, was an unusual degree of formal culture, which,
wherever he went, aroused both wonder and respect in about equal
degrees.

On Thursdays at the Buddenbrooks’, the coming election received only
brief and passing comment in the presence of the Consul. Whenever it
was mentioned, the old Frau Consul discreetly averted her light eyes.
But Frau Permaneder, now and then, could not refrain from displaying
her astonishing knowledge of the Constitution. She had gone very
thoroughly into the decrees touching the election of a member of the
Senate, precisely as once she thoroughly informed herself on the laws
governing divorce. She talked about voting chambers, ballots, and
electors, she weighed all the possible eventualities, she could recite
verbatim and glibly the oath taken by the voters. She spoke of the
“free and frank discussion” which the Constitution ordains must be held
over each name upon the list of candidates, and vivaciously wished
she might be present when Hermann Hagenström’s character was being
pulled to pieces! A moment later she leaned over and began to count the
prune-pits on her brother’s dessert-plate: tinker, tailor, soldier,
sailor--finishing triumphantly with “senator” when she came to the last
pit. But after dinner she could not hold in any longer. She took her
brother’s arm and drew him into the bow-window.

“Oh, Tom! _Tom!_ Suppose you are really elected--if our coat-of-arms is
put up in the Senate-chamber at the Town Hall I shall just die of joy,
I know I shall. I shall fall dead at the news--you’ll see!”

“Now, Tony dear! Have a little self-control, a little dignity, I beg
of you. You are not usually lacking in dignity. Am I going around like
Henning Kurz? We amount to something even without the ‘Senator.’ And I
hope you won’t die, whichever way it turns out!”

And the agitations, the consultations, the struggles of opinion
took their course. Consul Peter Döhlmann, the rake with a
business now entirely ruined, which existed only in name, and the
twenty-seven-year-old daughter whose inheritance he was eating
up, played his part by attending two dinners, one given by Thomas
Buddenbrook and the other by Herman Hagenström, and both times
addressing his host, in his loud, resounding voice, as “Senator.” But
Siegismund Gosch, old Gosch the broker, went about like a raging lion,
and engaged to throttle anybody, out of hand, who wasn’t minded to vote
for Consul Buddenbrook.

“Consul Buddenbrook, gentlemen--ah, there’s a man for you! I stood at
his father’s side in the ’48, when, with a word, he tamed the unleashed
fury of the mob. His father, and his father’s father before him, would
have been Senator were there any justice on this earth!”

But at bottom it was not so much Consul Buddenbrook himself whose
personality fired Gosch’s soul to its innermost depths. It was rather
the young Frau Consul, Gerda Arnoldsen. Not that the broker had ever
exchanged a word with her. He did not belong to her circle of wealthy
merchant families, nor sit at their tables, nor pay visits to them.
But, as we have seen, Gerda Buddenbrook had but to arrive in the town
to be singled out by the roving fancy of the sinister broker, ever
on the look-out for the unusual. With unerring instinct he divined
that this figure was calculated to add content to his unsatisfied
existence, and he made himself the slave of one who had scarcely ever
heard his name. Since then he encompassed in his reveries this nervous,
exceedingly reserved lady, to whom he had not even been presented: he
lifted his Jesuit hat to her, on the street, to her great surprise, and
treated her to a pantomime of cringing treachery, gloating over her
the while in his thoughts as a tiger might over his trainer. This dull
existence would afford him no chance of committing atrocities for this
woman’s sake--ah, if it only would, with what devilish indifference
would he answer for them! Its stupid conventions prevented him from
raising her, by deeds of blood and horror, to an imperial throne!--And
thus, nothing was left but for him to go to the Town Hall and cast his
vote in favour of her furiously respected husband--and, perhaps, one
day, to dedicate to her his forthcoming transition of Lope de Vega.




CHAPTER IV


Every vacant seat in the Senate must, according to the Constitution,
be filled within four weeks. Three of them have passed, and this is
election-day--a day of thaw, at the end of February.

It is about one o’clock, and people are thronging into Broad Street.
They are thronging before the Town Hall, with its ornamental
glazed-brick façade, its pointed towers and turrets mounting toward
a whitish grey sky, its covered steps supported on outstanding
columns, its pointed arcades, through which there is a glimpse of the
market-place and the fountain. The crowd stands steadfastly in the
dirty slush that melts beneath their feet; they look into each other’s
faces and then straight ahead again, and crane their necks. For beyond
that portal, in the Council Room, in fourteen arm-chairs arranged in a
semicircle sit the electors, who have been chosen from the Senate and
the Assembly and await the proposals of the voting chambers.

The affair has spun itself out. It appears that the debate in the
chambers will not die down; the struggle is so bitter that up
to now not one single unanimous choice has been put before the
Council--otherwise the Burgomaster would at once announce an election.
Extraordinary! Rumours--nobody knows whence, nobody knows how--come
from within the building and circulate in the street. Perhaps Herr
Kaspersen, the elder of the two beadles, who always refers to himself
as a “servant of the State,” is standing inside there and telling what
he hears, out of the corner of his mouth, through his shut teeth, with
his eyes turned the other way! The story goes that proposals have
been laid before the sitting, but that each of the three chambers
has turned in a different name: namely Hagenström, Kistenmaker, and
Buddenbrook. A secret ballot must now be taken, with ballot-papers--it
is to be hoped that it will show a clear plurality! For people without
overshoes are suffering, and stamping their feet to warm them.

The waiting crowd is made up of all sorts and conditions. There are
sea-faring characters, with bare tattoed necks and their hands in the
pockets of their sailor trousers; grain-porters with their incomparably
respectable countenances, and their blouses and knee-breeches of black
glazed calico; drivers who have clambered down from their wagons of
piled-up sacks, and stand whip in hand to wait for the decision;
servant-maids in neckerchiefs, aprons and thick striped petticoats
with little white caps perched on the backs of their heads and
market-baskets hanging on their bare arms; fish and vegetable women
with their flat straw baskets--even a couple of pretty farm girls with
Dutch caps, short skirts, and long flowing sleeves coming out from
their gaily-embroidered stay-bodies. Mingled among these, burghers,
shop-keepers who have come out hatless from neighbouring shops to
exchange their views, sprucely-dressed young men who are apprentices in
the business of their fathers or their fathers’ friends--and schoolboys
with satchels and bundles of books.

Two labourers with bristling sailor beards, stand chewing their
tobacco; behind them is an excited lady, craning her neck this way
and that to get a glimpse of the Town Hall between their powerful
shoulders. She wears a long evening cloak trimmed with brown fur,
which she holds together from the inside with both hands. Her face is
well covered with a thick brown veil. She shifts her feet about in the
melting snow.

“Gawd! Kurz bain’t gettin’ it this time, nuther, be he?” says the one
labourer to the other.

“Naw, ye mutton-head, ’tis certain he bain’t. There’s no more talk o’
him. Th’ votin’s between Hagenström, Buddenbrook, ’n’ Kistenmaker. ’Tis
all about they,--now.”

“’Tis whether which one o’ th’ three be ahead o’ the others, eh?”

“So ’tis; yes, they do say so.”

“Then I’m minded they’ll be choosin’ Hagenström.”

“Eh, smarty--so they’ll be choosin’ Hagenström? Ye can tell that to
yer grandmother!” And therewith he spits his tobacco-juice on the
ground close to his own feet, the crowd being too dense to admit of
a trajectory. He takes hold of his trousers in both hands and pulls
them up higher under his belt, and goes on: “Hagenström, he’s a great
pig--he be so fat he can’t breathe through his own nose! If so be it’s
all o’er wi’ Kurz then I’m fer Buddenbrook. ’Tis a very shrewd chap.”

“So ’tis, so ’tis. But Hagenström, he’s got the money.”

“That bain’t the question--’tis no matter o’ riches.”

“’n’ then this Buddenbrook--he be so devilish fine wi’ his cuffs ’n’
his silk tie ’n’ his stickin’-out moustaches; hast seen him walk? He
hops along like a bird.”

“Ye ninny, that bain’t the question, no more’n th’ other.”

“They say his sister’ve put away two men a’ready.” The lady in the fur
cloak trembles visibly.

“Eh, that soart o’ thing--what do we know about it? Likely the Consul
he couldn’t help it hisself.”

The lady in the veil thinks to herself, “He couldn’t, indeed! Thank God
for that,” and presses her hands together, inside her cloak.

“’n’ then,” adds the Buddenbrook partisan, “didn’t the Burgomaster his
own self stan’ godfeyther to his son? Can’t ye tell somethin’ by that?”

“Yes, can’t you indeed?” thinks the lady. “Thank heaven, that did do
some good.” She starts. A fresh rumour from the Town Hall, running
zigzag through the crowd, has reached her ears. The balloting, it
seems, has not been decisive. Eduard Kistenmaker, indeed, has received
fewer votes than the other two candidates, and his name has been
dropped. But the struggle goes on between Buddenbrook and Hagenström.
A sapient citizen remarks that if the voting continues to be even, it
will be necessary to appoint five arbitrators.

A voice, down in front at the entrance steps, shouts suddenly: “Heine
Seehas is ’lected--’rah for Heine Seehas!” Heine Seehas, be it known,
is an habitual drunkard, who peddles hot bread on a little wagon
through the streets. Everybody roars with laughter, and stands on
tip-toe to see the wag who is responsible for the joke. The lady in the
veil is seized with a nervous giggle; her shoulders shake for a moment,
and then give a shrug which expresses as plainly as words: “Is this the
time for tom-foolery like that?” She collects herself again, and stares
with intensity between the two labourers at the Town Hall. But almost
at the same moment her hands slip from her cloak, so that it opens
in front, her figure relaxes, her shoulders droop, she stands there
entirely crushed.

Hagenström!--The word seems to have come from nobody knows where--down
from the sky, or up from the earth. It is everywhere at once. There is
no contradiction. So it is decided. Hagenström! Hagenström it is, then.
One may as well go home. The lady in the veil might have known. It was
ever thus. She will go home--she feels the tears rising in her throat.

This state of things has lasted a second or so, when there occurs a
shouting and a backward jostling of the throng. It runs through the
whole assemblage, as those in front press back those behind, and at the
same time something red appears in the doorway. It is the coats of the
beadles Kaspersen and Uhlefeldt. They are in full-dress uniform, with
white riding breeches, three-cornered hats, yellow gauntlet gloves,
and short dress swords. They appear side by side, and make their way
through the crowd, which falls back before them.

They move like fate: silent, resolved, inexorable, not looking to
right or left, with gaze directed toward the ground. They take,
according to instructions, the route marked out by the election. And
it is _not_ in the direction of Sand Street! They have turned to the
right--they are going down Broad Street!

The lady in the veil cannot believe her eyes. However, all about
her, people are seeing just what she sees; they are pushing on after
the beadles, and saying to each other: “It isn’t Hagenström, it’s
Buddenbrook!” And a group of gentlemen emerge from the portal, in
excited conversation, and hurry with rapid steps down Broad Street, to
be the first to offer congratulations.

Then the lady holds her cloak together and runs for it. She runs,
indeed, as seldom lady runs. Her veil blows up, revealing her flushed
face--no matter for that; and one of her furred goloshes keeps flapping
open in the sloppy snow and hindering her frightfully: yet she outruns
them all! She gains the house at the corner of Bakers’ Street, she
rings the alarm-bell at the vestibule door--fire, murder, thieves!--she
shouts at the maid who opens: “They’re coming, Kathrin, they’re
coming,” takes the stairs, and storms into the living-room. Her brother
himself sits there, certainly a little pale. He puts down his paper and
makes a gesture, almost as if to ward her off. But she puts her arms
about him, and repeats: “They’re coming, Tom, they’re coming! You are
the man--and Hermann Hagenström is out!”

That was Friday. On the following day, Senator Buddenbrook stood in the
Council Hall, in the seat of the deceased James Möllendorpf, and in the
presence of the City Fathers there assembled, and the Delegation of
Burgesses, he took the oath: “I will conscientiously perform the duties
of my office, strive with all my power for the good of the State,
faithfully obey the Constitution, honourably pursue the public weal,
and in the discharge of my office, regard neither my own advantage nor
that of my relatives and friends. I will support the laws of the State
and do justice on all alike, whether rich or poor. In all things where
secrecy is needful, I will not speak, and especially will I not reveal
what is given me to keep silent. So help me God!”




CHAPTER V


Our desires and our performance are conditioned by certain needs of
our nervous systems which are very hard to define in words. What
people called Thomas Buddenbrook’s “vanity”--his care for his personal
appearance, his extravagant dressing--was at bottom not vanity but
something else entirely. It was, originally, no more than the effort
of a man of action to be certain, from head to toe, of the adequacy
and correctness of his bearing. But the demands made by himself and by
others upon his talents and his capacities were constantly increased.
He was overwhelmed by public and private affairs. When the Senate
sat to appoint its committees, one of the main departments, the
administration of the taxes, fell to his lot. But tolls, railways, and
other administrative business claimed his time as well; and he presided
at hundreds of committees that called into play all the capacities
he possessed: he had to summon every ounce of his flexibility, his
foresight, his power to charm, in order not to wound the sensibilities
of his elders, to defer constantly to them, and yet to keep the reins
in his own hands. If his so-called vanity notably increased at the same
time, if he felt a greater and greater need to refresh himself bodily,
to renew himself, to change his clothing several times a day, all this
meant simply that Thomas Buddenbrook, though he was barely thirty-seven
years old, was losing his elasticity, was wearing himself out fast.

When good Dr. Grabow begged him to relax a little, he answered, “Oh,
my dear Doctor, I haven’t reached that point yet!” By which he meant
that he still had an interminable deal of work to do before he arrived
at the goal and could settle back to enjoy himself. The truth was,
he hardly believed himself in such a condition. Yet it drove him on,
it left him no peace. Even when he seemed to rest, as he sat with the
paper after dinner, a thousand ideas whirled about in his brain, while
the veins stood out on his temples, and he twisted the ends of his
moustaches with a certain still intensity of passion. He concentrated
with equal violence whether the subject of his thought was a business
manœuvre, a public speech, or a decision to renew his entire stock of
body linen, in order to be sure that he had enough, for a while, at
least.

If such wholesale buying afforded him passing relief and satisfaction,
he could indulge himself in it without scruple, for his business at
this time was as brilliant as ever it had been in his grandfather’s
day. The repute of the firm grew, not only in the town but round about,
and throughout the whole community he continued to be held in ever
greater regard. His talents were admitted on all hands, with admiration
or envy as the case might be; while he himself wrestled ceaselessly, at
times despairingly, to evolve an order and method of work which should
enable him to overtake the flights of his own restless imagination.

Thus, when, in the summer of 1863, Senator Buddenbrook went about with
his mind full of plans for the building of a great new house, it was
not arrogance which impelled him. He was driven by his own inability to
be quiet--which his fellow-burghers would have been right in ascribing
to his “vanity”--for it was another manifestation of the same thing.
To make a new home, and a radical change in his outward life; to pack
up, to re-install himself afresh, to weed out all the accumulations
of bygone years and set aside everything old or superfluous: all
this, even in imagination, gave him feelings of freshness, newness,
spotlessness, stimulation. All of which he must have craved indeed, for
he attacked the plan with great enthusiasm, and already had his eye on
a suitable location.

There was a property of considerable extent at the lower end of
Fishers’ Lane. The house, grey with age, in bad repair, was offered
for sale on the death of its owner, an ancient spinster, the relic
of a forgotten family, who had dwelt there alone. On this piece of
land the Senator thought to build his house; and he surveyed it with
a speculative eye when he passed the spot on his way to the harbour.
The neighbourhood was pleasant enough--good burgher-houses, the most
modest among them being the narrow little façade opposite, with a small
flower-shop on the ground floor.

He threw himself into the affair. He made a rough estimate of the
expense involved, and though the sum he fixed provisionally was by no
means a small one, he felt he could compass it without undue effort.
But then he would suddenly have the thought that the whole thing was
a senseless folly, and confess to himself that his present house had
plenty of room for himself, his wife, their child, and their servants.
But the half-conscious cravings were stronger; and in the desire to
have them strengthened and justified from outside, he first revealed
his plan to his sister.

“Well, Tony, what do you say to it? The whole house is a sort of
hand-box, isn’t it?--and the winding stair is really a joke. It isn’t
quite the thing, is it? and now that you’ve had me made Senator--in a
word, don’t you think I owe it to myself?”

Ah, in the eyes of Madame Permaneder, what was there he did not owe to
himself? She was full of practical enthusiasm. She crossed her arms on
her breast and walked up and down with her shoulders raised and her
head in the air.

“Of course you do, Tom; goodness gracious, yes! What possible objection
could there be? And when you have married an Arnoldsen, with a hundred
thousand thaler to boot-- I’m very proud to be the first you’ve told it
to. It was lovely of you. And if you do do it, Tom, why, you must do it
well, that’s what I say. It must be grand.”

“H’m, well, yes, I agree with you. I’m willing to spend something on
it. I’ll have Voigt, and we’ll go over the plans together. Voigt has a
great deal of taste.”

The second opinion which Thomas called in was Gerda’s. She praised
the idea unreservedly. The confusion of moving would not be pleasant,
but the prospect of a large music-room with good acoustic properties
impressed her most happily. As for the old Frau Consul, she was quite
prepared to think of the new house as a logical consequence of all
the other blessings which had fallen to her lot, and to give thanks
to God therefor, accordingly. Since the birth of the heir, and the
recent election, she gave freer expression to her motherly pride, and
had a way of saying “my son, the Senator,” which the Broad Street
Buddenbrooks found most offensive.

These aging spinsters felt that all too little shadow set off the
sunshine through which Thomas’s outward life ran its brilliant course.
It was no great consolation--at the Thursday family gatherings--to pour
contempt on poor, good-natured Clothilde. As for Christian--Christian,
through the good offices of Mr. Richardson, his former chief, had found
a situation in London, whence he had lately telegraphed a fantastic
desire to marry Fräulein Puvogel, an idea upon which his mother had
firmly set her foot--Christian now belonged, quite simply, to Jacob
Kröger’s class, and was, as it were, a dead issue. They consoled
themselves, to some extent, with the little weaknesses of the old Frau
Consul and Frau Permaneder. They would bring the conversation round to
the subject of coiffures: the Frau Consul was capable of saying, in the
blandest way, that she always wore “her” hair very simply, whereas it
was plain to any one gifted by God with intelligence, and certainly to
the Misses Buddenbrook, that the immutable red-blonde hair under the
old lady’s cap could no longer by any stretch be called “her” hair.
Still more gratifying was it to get Cousin Tony started on the subject
of those nefarious persons who had formerly had an influence on her
life. Teary Trietschke! Grünlich! Permaneder! Hagenström!--Tony, when
she was egged on to it, would utter these names into the air like so
many little trumpetings of disgust, with her shoulders well up. They
had a sweet sound in the ears of the daughters of Uncle Gotthold.

They could not dissimulate, and they would accept no responsibility for
omitting to say that little Johann was frightfully slow about learning
to walk and talk. They were really quite right: it was an admitted fact
that Hanno--this was the nickname adopted by the Frau Senator for her
son--at a time when he was able to call all the members of his family
by name with fair correctness, was incapable of pronouncing the names
Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi so that any one could understand what
he said. And at fifteen months he had not taken a single step alone.
The Misses Buddenbrook, shaking their heads pessimistically, declared
that the child would be halt and tongue-tied to the end of his days.

They later admitted the error of their gloomy prophecy; but nobody,
in fact, denied that Hanno was a little backward. His early infancy
was a struggle for life, and his family was in constant anxiety. At
birth he had been too feeble to cry out; and soon after the christening
a three-day attack of cholera-infantum was almost enough to still
for ever the little heart set pumping, in the first place, with such
difficulty. But he survived; and good Dr. Grabow did his best, by
the most painstaking care and nourishment, to strengthen him for the
difficult period of teething. The first tiny white point had barely
pricked through the gum, when the child was attacked by convulsions,
which repeated themselves with greater and greater violence, until
again the worst was to be feared. Once more the old doctor speechlessly
pressed the parents’ hands. The child lay in profound exhaustion, and
the vacant look in the shadowy eyes indicated an affection of the
brain. The end seemed almost to be wished for.

But Hanno regained some little strength, consciousness returned; and
though the crisis which he had survived greatly hindered his progress
in walking and talking, there was no longer any immediate danger to be
feared.

The child was slender of limb, and rather tall for his age. His
hair, pale brown and very soft, began to grow rapidly, and fell
waving over the shoulders of his full, pinafore-like frocks. The
family likenesses were abundantly clear, even now. From the first he
possessed the Buddenbrook hand, broad, a little too short, but finely
articulated, and his nose was precisely the nose of his father and
great-grandfather, though the nostrils would probably remain more
delicate. But the whole lower part of his face, longish and narrow,
was neither Buddenbrook nor Kröger, but from the mother’s side of the
house. This was true of the mouth in particular, which, when closed,
began very early to wear an anxious, woebegone expression that later
matched the look of his strange, gold-brown, blue-shadowed eyes.

So he began to live: brooded over by his father’s reserved tenderness,
clothed and nurtured under his mother’s watchful eye; prayed over by
Aunt Antonie, presented with tops and hobby-horses by the Frau Consul
and Uncle Justus; and when his charming little perambulator appeared on
the streets, it was looked after with interest and expectation. Madame
Decho, the stately nurse, had attended the child up to now; but it had
been settled that when they moved into the new house, not she, but Ida
Jungmann, should move in with them, and the latter’s place with the old
Frau Consul be filled by somebody else.

Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. He had no difficulty in
obtaining title to the property in Fishers’ Lane. The Broad Street
house was turned over to Gosch the broker, who dramatically declared
himself prepared to assume the task of disposing of it. Stephan
Kistenmaker, who had a growing family, and, with his brother Eduard,
made good money in the wine business, bought it at once. Herr Voigt
undertook the new building, and soon there was a clean plan to unroll
before the eyes of the family on Thursday afternoons, when they could,
in fancy, see the façade already before them: an imposing brick façade
with sandstone caryatides supporting the bow-window, and a flat roof,
of which Clothilde remarked, in her pleasant drawl, that one might
drink afternoon coffee there. The Senator planned to transfer the
business offices to his new building, which would, of course, leave
empty the ground floor of the house in Meng Street. But here also
things turned out well: for it appeared that the City Fire Insurance
Company wanted to rent the rooms by the month for their offices--which
was quickly arranged.

Autumn came, and the grey walls crumbled to heaps of rubbish, and
Thomas Buddenbrook’s new house rose above its roomy cellars, while
winter set in and slowly waned again. In all the town there was no
pleasanter topic of conversation. It was “tip-top”--it was the finest
dwelling-house far and wide. But it must cost like the deuce--the old
Consul would never have spent money so recklessly. Thus the neighbours,
the middle-class dwellers in the gabled houses, looking out at the
workmen on the scaffoldings, enjoying the sight of the rising walls,
and speculating on the date of the carpenters’ feast.

It came at length, and was celebrated with due circumstance. Up on the
flat-topped roof an old master mason made the festal speech and flung
the champagne bottle over his shoulder, while the tremendous wreath,
woven of roses, green garlands, and gay-coloured leaves, swayed between
standards, heavily in the breeze. The workmen’s feast was held at a
neighbouring inn, at long tables, with beer, sandwiches, and cigars;
and Senator Buddenbrook and his wife and his little son on Madame
Decho’s arm, walked through the narrow space between the tables and
bowed his thanks at the cheers they gave him.

When they got outside, they put little Hanno back into his carriage,
and Thomas and Gerda crossed the road to have another look at the red
façade with the white caryatides. They stood before the flower-shop
with the narrow door and the poor little show-window, in which only
a few pots of onions stood on a green glass slab. Iwersen, the
proprietor, a blond giant of a man, in a woollen jacket, was in the
doorway with his wife. She was of a quite different build, slender
and delicate, with a dark, southern-looking face. She held a four- or
five-year-old boy by one hand, while with the other she was pushing a
little carriage back and forth, in which a younger child lay asleep;
and she was plainly expecting a third blessing.

Iwersen made a low, awkward bow; his wife, continuing to push the
little carriage back and forth, looked calmly and observantly at the
Frau Senator with her narrow black eyes, as the lady approached them on
her husband’s arm.

Thomas paused and pointed with his walking-stick at the great garland
far above them.

“You did a good job, Iwersen,” said he.

“No, Herr Sen’tor. That’s the wife’s work. She’s the one fer these
affairs.”

“Oh,” said the Senator, raised his head with a little jerk, and gave,
for a second, a clear friendly look straight into Frau Iwersen’s face.
Then, without adding a word, he courteously waved his hand, and they
moved on their way.




CHAPTER VI


One Sunday at the beginning of July--Senator Buddenbrook had moved some
four weeks before--Frau Permaneder appeared at her brother’s house
toward evening. She crossed the cool ground floor, paved with flags and
decorated with reliefs by Thorwaldsen, whence there was a door leading
into the bureau; she rang at the vestibule door--it could be opened
from the kitchen by pressing on a rubber bulb--and entered the spacious
lobby, where, at the foot of the steps, stood the bear presented by
Tiburtius and Clara. Here she learned from Anton that the Senator was
still at work.

“Very good, Anton,” she said. “I will go to him.”

Yet she did not go at once into the office, but passed the door that
led into it and stood at the bottom of the splendid staircase, which as
far as the first storey had a cast-iron balustrade, but at the distance
of the second storey became a wide pillared balcony in white and gold,
with a great gilt chandelier hanging down from the skylight’s dizzy
height.

“Very elegant,” said Frau Permaneder, softly, in a tone of great
satisfaction, gazing up into this spacious magnificence. To her it
meant, quite simply, the power, the brilliance, and the triumph of the
Buddenbrook family. But now it occurred to her that she was not, in
fact, come upon a very cheerful errand, and she slowly turned away and
passed through the door into the office.

Thomas sat there quite alone, in his place by the window, writing a
letter. He glanced up, raised an eyebrow, and put out his hand to his
sister.

“’Evening, Tony. What’s the good word?”

“Oh, nothing very good, Tom. Oh, your staircase--it’s just _too_
splendid! Why are you sitting here writing in the dark?”

“It was a pressing letter. Well--nothing very good, eh? Come into the
garden, a little. It is pleasanter out there.”

As they crossed the entry, a violin adagio came trillingly down from
the storey above.

“Listen,” said Tony, and paused a moment. “Gerda is playing. How
heavenly! What a woman! She isn’t a woman, she’s a fairy. How is Hanno,
Tom?”

“Just having his supper, with Jungmann. Too bad he is so slow about
walking--”

“Oh, that will come, Tom, that will come. Are you pleased with Ida?”

“Why not?”

They crossed the flags at the back, leaving the kitchen on the right,
went through a glass door and up two steps into the lovely, scented
flower-garden.

“Well?” the Senator asked.

It was warm and still. The fragrance from the neat beds and borders
hung in the evening air, and the fountain, surrounded by tall pale
purple iris, sent its stream gently plashing heavenward, where the
first stars began to gleam. In the background, an open flight of steps
flanked by low obelisks, led up to a gravelled terrace, with an open
wooden pavilion, a closed marquee, and some garden chairs. On the left
hand was the property wall between them and the next garden; on the
right the side-wall of the next house was covered with a wooden trellis
intended for climbing plants. There were a few currant and gooseberry
bushes at the sides of the terrace steps, but there was only one tree,
a large, gnarled walnut by the left-hand wall.

“The thing is this,” answered Frau Permaneder, with some hesitation, as
the brother and sister began to pace the gravel path of the fore part
of the garden. “Tiburtius has written--”

“Clara?” questioned Thomas. “Please don’t make a long story of it.”

“Yes, Tom. She is in bed; she is very bad--the doctor is afraid of
tuberculosis--of the brain.--I can hardly speak the words. Here is
the letter Tiburtius wrote me, and enclosed another for Mother, which
we are to give her when we have prepared her a little. It tells the
same story. And there is this second enclosure, to Mother, from Clara
herself--written in pencil, in a shaky hand. And Tiburtius wrote that
she herself said they were the last she should write, for it seems the
sad thing is she makes no effort to live. She was always longing for
Heaven--” finished Frau Permaneder, and wiped her eyes.

The Senator walked at her side, his hands behind his back, his head
bowed.

“You are so quiet, Tom. But you are right--what is there to say? Just
now, too, when Christian lies ill in Hamburg--”

For this was, in fact, the state of things. Christian’s “misery” in
the left side had increased so much of late that it had become actual
pain, severe enough to make him forget all smaller woes. He was quite
helpless, and had written to his mother from London that he was coming
home, for her to take care of him. He quit his situation in London and
started off; but at Hamburg had been obliged to take to his bed; the
doctor diagnosed his ailment as rheumatism of the joints, and he had
been removed from his hotel to a hospital. Any further journey was
for the time impossible. There he lay, and dictated to his attendant
letters that betrayed extreme depression.

“Yes,” said the Senator, quietly. “It seems as if one thing just
followed on another.”

She put her arm for an instant across his shoulders.

“But _you_ musn’t give way, Tom. This is no time for you to be
down-hearted. You need all your courage--”

“Yes, God knows I need it.”

“What do you mean, Tom? Tell me, why were you so quiet Thursday
afternoon at dinner, if I may ask?”

“Oh--business, my child. I had to sell no very small quantity of grain
not very advantageously--or, rather, I had to sell a large quantity
very much at a loss.”

“Well, that happens, Tom. You sell at a loss to-day, and to-morrow you
make it good again. To get discouraged over a thing of that kind--”

“Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head. “My courage does not go
down to zero because I have a piece of bad luck. It’s the other way on.
I believe in that, and events show it.”

“But what is the matter with it, then?” she asked, surprised and
alarmed. “One would think you have enough to make you happy, Tom.
Clara is alive, and with God’s help she will get better. And as for
everything else--here we are, walking about, in your own garden,
and it all smells so sweet--and yonder is your house, a dream of a
house--Hermann Hagenström’s is a dog-kennel beside it! And you have
done all that--”

“Yes, it is almost too beautiful, Tony. I’ll tell you--it is too
new. It jars on me a little--perhaps that is what is the matter with
me. It may be responsible for the bad mood that comes over me and
spoils everything. I looked forward immensely to all this; but the
anticipation was the best part of it--it always is. Everything gets
done too slowly--so when it is finished the pleasure is already gone.”

“The pleasure is gone, Tom? At your age?”

“A man is as young, or as old, as he feels. And when one gets one’s
wish too late, or works too hard for it, it comes already weighted with
all sorts of small vexatious drawbacks--with all the dust of reality
upon it, that one did not reckon with in fancy. It is so irritating--so
_irritating_--”

“Oh yes.--But what do you mean by ‘as old as you feel’?”

“Why, Tony--it is a mood, certainly. It may pass. But just now I feel
older than I am. I have business cares. And at the Directors’ meeting
of the Buchen Railway yesterday, Consul Hagenström simply talked
me down, refuted my contentions, nearly made me appear ridiculous.
I feel that could not have happened to me before. It is as though
something had begun to slip--as though I haven’t the firm grip I had
on events.--What is success? It is an inner, an indescribable force,
resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere
existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. It is my
belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends. Fortune and success
lie with ourselves. We must hold them firmly--deep within us. For as
soon as something begins to slip, to relax, to get tired, _within
us_, then everything without us will rebel and struggle to withdraw
from our influence. One thing follows another, blow after blow--and
the man is finished. Often and often, in these days, I have thought
of a Turkish proverb; it says, ‘When the house is finished, death
comes.’ It doesn’t need to be death. But the decline, the falling-off,
the beginning of the end. You know, Tony,” he went on, in a still
lower voice, putting his arm underneath his sister’s, “when Hanno was
christened, you said: ‘It looks as if quite a new life would dawn for
us all!’ I can still hear you say it, and I thought then that you were
right, for I was elected Senator, and was fortunate in my business, and
this house seemed to spring up out of the ground. But the ‘Senator’
and this house are superficial after all. I know, from life and from
history, something you have not thought of: often, the outward and
visible material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show
themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer
manifestations take time--like the light of that star up there, which
may in reality be already quenched, when it looks to us to be shining
its brightest.”

He ceased to speak, and they walked for a while in silence, while the
fountain gently murmured, and a whispering sounded from the top of the
walnut tree. Then Frau Permaneder breathed such a heavy sigh that it
sounded like a sob.

“How sadly you talk, Tom. You never spoke so sadly before. But it
is good to speak out, and it will help you to put all that kind of
thoughts out of your mind.”

“Yes, Tony, I must try to do that, I know, as well as I can. And now
give me the enclosures from Clara and the Pastor. It will be best,
won’t it, for me to take over the matter, and speak to-morrow morning
with Mother? Poor Mother! If it is really tuberculosis, one may as well
give up hope.”




CHAPTER VII


“You don’t even ask me? You go right over my head?”

“I have done as I had to do.”

“You have acted like a distracted person, in a perfectly unreasonable
way.”

“Reason is not the highest thing on earth.”

“Please don’t make phrases. The question is one of the most ordinary
justice, which you have most astonishingly ignored.”

“Let me suggest to you, my son, that you yourself are ignoring the duty
and respect which you owe to your mother.”

“And I answer you, my dear Mother, by telling you that I have never for
a moment forgotten the respect I owe you; but that my attributes as a
son became void when I took my father’s place as head of the family and
of the firm.”

“I desire you to be silent, Thomas!”

“No, I will not be silent, so long as you fail to realize the extent of
your own weakness and folly.”

“I have a right to dispose of my own property as I choose!”

“Within the limits of justice and reason.”

“I could never have believed you would have the heart to wound me like
this!”

“And I could never have believed that my own Mother would slap me in
the face!”

“Tom! Why, Tom!” Frau Permaneder’s anguished voice got itself a
hearing at last. She sat at the window of the landscape-room, wringing
her hands, while her brother paced up and down in a state of high
excitement, and the Frau Consul, beside herself with angry grief, sat
on the sofa, leaning with one hand on its upholstered arm, while the
other struck the table to emphasize her words. All three wore mourning
for Clara, who was now no longer of this earth; and all three were pale
and excited.

What was going on? Something amazing, something dreadful, something
at which the very actors in the scene themselves stood aghast and
incredulous. A quarrel, an embittered disagreement between mother and
son!

It was a sultry August afternoon. Only ten days after the Senator had
gently prepared his mother and given her the letters from Clara and
Tiburtius, the blow fell, and he had the harder task of breaking to
the old lady the news of death itself. He travelled to Riga for the
funeral, and returned with his brother-in-law, who spent a few days
with the family of his deceased wife, and also visited Christian in the
hospital at Hamburg. And now, two days after the Pastor had departed
for home, the Frau Consul, with obvious hesitation, made a certain
revelation to her son.

“One hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred marks current,”
cried he, and shook his clasped hands in front of him. “If it were the
dowry, even! If he wanted to keep the eighty thousand marks! Though,
considering there’s no heir, even that--! But to promise him Clara’s
whole inheritance, right over my head! Without saying aye, yes, or no!”

“Thomas, for our blessed Lord’s sake, do me some sort of justice,
at least. Could I act otherwise? Tell me, could I? She who has been
taken from us, and is now with God, she wrote me from her death-bed,
with faltering hand, a pencilled letter. ‘Mother,’ she wrote, ‘we
shall see each other no more on this earth, and these are, I know, my
dying words to you. With my last conscious thoughts, I appeal to you
for my husband. God gave us no children; but when you follow me, let
what would have been mine if I had lived go to him to enjoy during
his lifetime. Mother, it is my last request--my dying prayer. You
will not refuse it.’--No, Thomas, I did not refuse it--I could not. I
sent a dispatch to her, and she died in peace.” The Frau Consul wept
violently.

“And you never told me a syllable. Everybody conceals things from me,
and acts without my authority,” repeated the Senator.

“Yes, Thomas, I have kept silent. For I felt I _must_ fulfil the last
wish of my dying child, and I knew you would have tried to prevent me!”

“Yes! By God, I would have!”

“You would have had no right to, for three of my children would have
been on my side.”

“I think my opinion has enough weight to balance that of two women and
a degenerate fool.”

“You speak of your brother and sisters as heartlessly as you do to me.”

“Clara was a pious, ignorant woman, Mother. And Tony is a child--and,
anyhow, she knew nothing about the affair at all until now--or she
might have talked at the wrong time, eh? And Christian? Oh, he got
Christian’s consent, did Tibertius! Who would have thought it of him?
Do you know now, or don’t you grasp it yet--what he is, this ingenious
pastor? He is a rogue, and a fortune-hunter!”

“Sons-in-law are always rogues,” said Frau Permaneder, in a hollow
voice.

“He is a fortune-hunter! What does he do? He travels to Hamburg, and
sits down by Christian’s bed. He talks to him--‘Yes,’ says Christian,
‘yes, Tibertius, God bless you! Have you any idea of the pain I suffer
in my left side?’--Oh, the idiots, the scoundrels! They joined hands
against me!” And the Senator, perfectly beside himself, leaned against
the wrought-iron fire-screen and pressed his clenched hands to his
temples.

This paroxysm of anger was out of proportion to the circumstances.
No, it was not the hundred and twenty-seven thousand marks that had
brought him to this unprecedented state of rage. It was rather that his
irritated senses connected this case with the series of rebuffs and
misfortunes which had lately attended him in both public and private
business. Nothing went well any more. Nothing turned out as he intended
it should. And now, had it come to this, that in the house of his
fathers they “went over his head” in matters of the highest importance?
That a pastor from Riga could thus bamboozle him behind his back? He
could have prevented it if he had only been told! But events had taken
their course without him. It was this which he felt could not have
happened earlier--would not have dared to happen earlier! Again his
faith tottered--his faith in himself, his luck, his power, his future.
And it was nothing but his own inward weakness and despair that broke
out in this scene before mother and sister.

Frau Permaneder stood up and embraced her brother. “Tom,” she said,
“do control yourself. Try to be calm. You will make yourself ill.
Are things so very bad? Tibertius doesn’t need to live so very long,
perhaps, and the money would come back after he dies. And if you want
it to, it can be altered--can it not be altered, Mamma?”

The Frau Consul answered only with sobs.

“Oh, no, no,” said the Consul, pulling himself together, and making
a weak gesture of dissent. “Let it be as it is. Do you think I would
carry it into court and sue my own mother, and add a public scandal
to the family one? It may go as it is,” he concluded, and walked
lifelessly to the glass door, where he paused and stood.

“But you need not imagine,” he said in a suppressed voice, “that things
are going so brilliantly with us. Tony lost eighty thousand marks, and
Christian, beside the setting up of fifty thousand that he has run
through with, has already had thirty thousand in advance, and will need
more, as he is not earning anything, and will have to take a cure at
Öynhausen. And now Clara’s dowry is permanently lost, and her whole
inheritance besides for an indefinite period. And business is poor; it
seems to have gone to the devil precisely since the time when I spent
more than a hundred thousand marks on my house. No, things are not
going well in a family where there are such scenes as this to-day. Let
me tell you one thing; if Father were alive, if he were here in this
room, he would fold his hands and commend us to the mercy of God.”




CHAPTER VIII


Wars and rumours of war, billeting and bustle! Prussian officers tread
the parquetry floors of Senator Buddenbrook’s bel-étage, kiss the hand
of the lady of the house, and frequent the club with Christian, who is
back from Öynhausen. In Meng Street Mamsell Severin, Riekchen Severin,
the Frau Consul’s new companion, helps the maids to drag piles of
mattresses into the old garden-house, which is full of soldiers.

Confusion, disorder, and suspense reign. Troops march off through the
gate, new ones come in. They overrun the town; they eat, sleep, fill
the ears of the citizens with the noise of rolling drums, commands,
and trumpet calls--and march off again. Royal princes are fêted, entry
follows entry. Then quiet again--and suspense.

In the late autumn and winter the victorious troops return. Again they
are billeted in the town for a time, are mustered out and go home--to
the great relief of the cheering citizens. Peace comes--the brief
peace, heavy with destiny, of the year 1865.

And between two wars, little Johann played. Unconscious and tranquil,
with his soft curling hair and voluminous pinafore frocks, he played
in the garden by the fountain, or in the little gallery partitioned
off for his use by a pillared railing from the vestibule of the second
storey--played the plays of his four and a half years--those plays
whose meaning and charm no grown person can possibly grasp: which need
no more than a few pebbles, or a stick of wood with a dandelion for
a helmet, since they command the pure, powerful, glowing, untaught
and unintimidated fancy of those blissful years before life touches
us, when neither duty nor remorse dares to lay upon us a finger’s
weight, when we may see, hear, laugh, dream, and feel amazement, when
the world yet makes upon us not one single demand; when the impatience
of those whom we should like so much to love does not yet torment us
for evidence of our ability to succeed in the impending struggle. Ah,
only a little while, and that struggle will be upon us--and they will
do their best to bend us to their will and cut us to their pattern, to
exercise us, to lengthen us, to shorten us, to corrupt us....

Great things happened while little Hanno played. The war flamed up, and
its fortunes swayed this way and that, then inclined to the side of the
victors; and Hanno Buddenbrook’s native city, which had shrewdly stuck
to Prussia, looked on not without satisfaction at wealthy Frankfort,
which had to pay with her independence for her faith in Austria.

But with the failure in July of a large firm of Frankfort wholesale
dealers, immediately before the armistice, the firm of Johann
Buddenbrook lost at one fell sweep the round sum of twenty thousand
thaler.




PART EIGHT




CHAPTER I


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And thus began Tony Buddenbrook’s third marriage.

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

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

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

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

  “I sauntered out one day,
  In an idle sort o’ way,
  And chanced to see a maid, ahead o’ me.
    She’d such a charmin’ air,
  Her back--was French--I’d swear,
    And she wore her ’at as rakish as could be.
  I says, ‘My pretty dear,
    Since you an’ I are ’ere,
  Perhaps you’d take me arm and walk along?’
    She turned her pretty ’ead,
    And looked--at me--and said,
  ‘You just get on, my lad, and hold your tongue!”’

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER II


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How is the child?”

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

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

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

“Idiot!” murmured the Senator.

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

“How charming!”

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

“You don’t say! Is Herr von Maiboom--?”

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

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

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

“Very sad.”

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

“How so?”

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

The Senator passed his finger-tips across his hair and screwed up his
face a little.

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

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

“Heavens and earth!”

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

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

“Jews? Cut-throats?” cried Frau Permaneder, astonished beyond measure.
“But it’s _you_ we are talking about, Tom!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pause ensued.

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER III


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

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

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

“What’s that, Tony--stand-by, is it? And how do you come to be here so
late?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ye-s, he is. But even so--”

“Does he like going to school?”

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

“Poor darling! Have they whipped him yet?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I see--the _pavor_,” repeated Frau Permaneder. “What will he do
now? Will he wake up?”

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

  “‘In my--little--garden--go--,’”

said Hanno, mumblingly,

  “‘All--my--onions--water--’”

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

  “‘Little man stands--stands there--
  He begins--to--sneeze--’”

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

  “‘The moon it shines,
  The baby cries,
  The clock strikes twelve,
  God help all suff’ring folk to close their eyes.’”

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

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

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

“And did he pray too?”

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

“But what is there so sad about it?”

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

Frau Permaneder laughed emotionally, and then looked serious.

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

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




CHAPTER IV


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER V


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “‘This is the day of our--’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I never _will_ speak to people, never!” thought Hanno in despair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VI


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you like to go to school?”

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

“No? But one has to learn writing, reading, arithmetic--”

“And so on,” said little Johann.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VIII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You nearly forgot--” his mother repeated, and stiffened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,
  And bless the bread thou gavest us”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To-morrow morning, first thing, my dearie.”

“I wish they were here--I wish I had them now.”

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER IX


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

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

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

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

“Well?” he said, one eyebrow lifted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were silent.

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

He shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

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

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

She shook her head, weeping.

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

“On the rocks?”

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

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

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

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

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




PART NINE




CHAPTER I


Senator Buddenbrook followed the two gentlemen, old Dr. Grabow and
young Dr. Langhals, out of the Frau Consul’s bed-chamber into the
breakfast-room and closed the door.

“May I ask you to give me a moment, gentlemen?” he said, and led them
up the steps, through the corridor, and into the landscape-room, where,
on account of the raw, damp weather, the stove was already burning.
“You will understand my anxiety,” he said. “Sit down and tell me
something reassuring, if possible.”

“Zounds, my dear Senator,” answered Dr. Grabow, leaning back
comfortably, his chin in his neck-cloth, his hat-brim propped in both
hands against his stomach. Dr. Langhals put his top-hat down on the
carpet beside him and regarded his hands, which were exceptionally
small and covered with hair. He was a heavy dark man with a pointed
beard, a pompadour hair-cut, beautiful eyes, and a vain expression.

“There is positively no reason for serious disquiet at present,” Dr.
Grabow went on. “When we take into consideration our honoured patient’s
powers of resistance--my word, I think, as an old and tried councillor,
I ought to know what that resistance is--it is simply astonishing, for
her years, I must say.”

“Yes, precisely: for her years,” said the Senator, uneasily, twisting
his moustaches.

“I don’t say,” went on Dr. Grabow, in his gentle voice, “that your dear
Mother will be walking out to-morrow. You can tell that by looking at
her, of course. There is no denying that the inflammation has taken a
disappointing turn in the last twenty-four hours. The chill yesterday
afternoon did not please me at all, and to-day there is actually pain
in the side. And some fever--oh, nothing to speak of, but still-- In
short, my dear Senator, we shall probably have to reckon with the
troublesome fact that the lung is slightly affected.”

“Inflammation of the lungs then?” asked the Senator, and looked from
one physician to the other.

“Yes--pneumonia,” said Dr. Langhals, with a solemn and correct bow.

“A slight inflammation, however, and confined to the right side,”
answered the family physician. “We will do our best to localize it.”

“Then there is ground for serious concern, after all?” The Senator sat
quite still and looked the speaker full in the face.

“Concern--oh, we must be concerned to limit the affection. We must ease
the cough, and go at the fever energetically. The quinine will see to
that. And by the by, my dear Senator, let me warn you against feeling
alarm over single symptoms, you know. If the difficulty in breathing
increases, or there should be a little delirium in the night, or a good
deal of discharge to-morrow--a sort of rusty-looking mucous, with a
little blood in it--well, all that is to be expected, entirely regular
and normal. Do reassure dear Madame Permaneder on this point too--she
is nursing the patient with such devotion.--How is she feeling? I quite
forgot to ask how she has been, in the last few days.”

“She is about as usual,” the Senator said. “I have not heard of
anything new. She is not taking much thought for her own condition,
these days--”

“Of course, of course. And, apropos: your sister needs rest, especially
at night, and Mamsell Severin has not time to give her all the rest
she needs. What about a nurse, my dear Senator? Why not have one of
our good Grey Sisters, in whom you feel such an interest? The Mother
Superior would be glad to send you one.”

“You consider it necessary?”

“I am only suggesting it. The sisters are invaluable--their experience
and calmness are always so soothing to the patient, especially in an
illness like this, where there is a succession of disquieting symptoms.
Well--let me repeat, no anxiety, my dear Senator. And we shall see, we
shall see. We will have another talk this evening.”

“Positively,” said Dr. Langhals, took his hat and got up, with his
colleague. But the Senator had not finished: he had another question,
another test to make.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “one word more. My brother Christian is a nervous
man. He cannot stand much. Do you advise me to send him word? Should I
suggest to him to come home?”

“Your brother Christian is not in town?”

“No, he is in Hamburg--for a short time, on business, I understand.”

Dr. Grabow gave his colleague a glance. Then he laughingly shook the
Senator’s hand and said, “Well, we’ll let him attend to his business in
peace. No use upsetting him unnecessarily. If any change comes which
seems to make it advisable, to quiet the patient, or to raise her
spirits--well, there is plenty of time still, plenty of time.”

The gentlemen traversed the pillared hall and stood on the steps
awhile, talking about other matters: politics, and the agitations and
changes due to the war just then ended.

“Well, good times will be coming now, eh, Herr Senator? Money in the
country, and fresh confidence everywhere.”

And the Senator partially agreed with him. He said that the grain
trade with Russia had been greatly stimulated since the outbreak of
war, and mentioned the dimensions to which the import trade in oats
had attained--though the profit, it was true, had been very unevenly
divided.

The physicians took their leave, and Senator Buddenbrook turned to
go back to the sick-room. He revolved what Dr. Grabow had said. He
had spoken with reserve--he gave the impression of avoiding anything
definite. The single plain word was “inflammation of the lungs”; which
became no more reassuring after Dr. Langhals added the scientific
terminology. Pneumonia--at the Frau Consul’s age. The fact that there
were two physicians coming and going was in itself disquieting. Grabow
had arranged that very unobtrusively. He intended to retire before
long, and as young Dr. Langhals would then be taking over the practice,
he, Dr. Grabow, would be pleased if he might bring him in now and again.

When the Senator entered the darkened room, his mien appeared alert and
his bearing energetic. He was used to hiding his cares and weariness
under an air of calmness and poise; and the mask glided over his
features as he opened the door, almost as though by a single act of
will.

Frau Permaneder sat by the high bed, the hangings of which were thrust
back, and held her mother’s hand. The old lady was propped up on
pillows. She turned her head as her son came in, and looked searchingly
with her pale blue eyes into his face--a look of calm self-control, yet
of deliberate insistence. Coming as it did, slightly sidewise, there
was almost something sinister about it, too. Two red spots stood out
upon the pallor of her cheeks, but there were no signs of weakness or
exhaustion. The old lady was very wide awake, more so in fact than
those around her--for, after all, she was the person most concerned.
And she mistrusted this illness; she was not at all disposed to lie
down and let it have its own way.

“What did they say, Thomas?” she asked in a brisk, decided voice which
made her cough directly. She tried to keep the cough behind her closed
lips, but it burst out and made her put her hand to her side.

“They said,” answered the Senator, when the spasm was over, stroking
her hand, “they said that our dear, good mother will be up again in a
few days. The wretched cough is responsible for your lying here. The
lung is of course slightly affected--it is not exactly inflammation,”
he hastened to say, as he saw her narrowing gaze, “but even if it
were, that needn’t necessarily be so bad. It might be much worse,” he
finished. “In short, the lung is somewhat irritated, and they may be
right--where is Mamsell Severin?”

“Gone to the chemist’s,” said Frau Permaneder.

“Yes, you see. She has gone to the chemist’s again, and you look as
though you might go to sleep any minute, Tony. No, it isn’t good
enough. If only for a day or so, we should have a nurse in, don’t you
think so? I will find out if my Mother Superior up at the Grey Sisters
has any one free.”

“Thomas,” said the Frau Consul, this time in a more cautious voice, so
as not to let loose another cough, “believe me, you cause a good deal
of feeling by your protection of the Catholic order against the black
Protestant Sisters. You have shown the Catholics a distinct preference.
Pastor Pringsheim complained to me about it very strenuously a little
time ago.”

“Well, he needn’t. I am convinced that the Grey Sisters are more
faithful, devoted, and self-sacrificing than the Black ones are. The
Protestants aren’t the real thing. They all marry the first chance
they get. They are worldly, egotistical, and ordinary, while the Grey
Sisters are perfectly disinterested. I am sure they are much nearer
Heaven. And they are better for us for the very reason that they owe me
some gratitude. What should we have done without Sister Leandra when
Hanno had convulsions? I only hope she is free!”

And Sister Leandra came. She put down her cloak and little handbag,
took off the grey veil which she wore on the street over her white one,
and went softly about her work, in her gentle, friendly way, the rosary
at her waist clicking as she moved. She remained a day and a night with
the querulous, not always patient sufferer, and then withdrew, almost
apologetic over the human weakness that enforced a little repose. She
was replaced by another sister, but came back again after she had slept.

The Frau Consul required constant attendance at her bedside. The worse
her condition grew, the more she bent all her thoughts and all her
energies upon her illness, for which she felt a naïve hatred. Nearly
all her life she had been a woman of the world, with a quiet, native,
and permanent love of life and good living. Yet she had filled her
latter years with piety and charitable deeds: largely out of loyalty
toward her dead husband, but also, perhaps, by reason of an unconscious
impulse which bade her make her peace with Heaven for her own strong
vitality, and induce it to grant her a gentle death despite the
tenacious clutch she had always had on life. But the gentle death was
not to be hers. Despite many a sore trial, her form was quite unbowed,
her eyes still clear. She still loved to set a good table, to dress
well and richly, to ignore events that were unpleasant, and to share
with complacency in the high regard that was everywhere felt for her
son. And now this illness, this inflammation of the lungs, had attacked
her erect form without any previous warning, without any preparation
to soften the blow. There had been no spiritual anticipation, none of
that mining and sapping of the forces which slowly, painfully estranges
us from life and rouses in us the sweet longing for a better world,
for the end, for peace. No, the old Frau Consul, despite the spiritual
courses of her latter years, felt scarce prepared to die; and she was
filled with agony of spirit at the thought that if this were indeed the
end, then this illness, of itself, in awful haste, in the last hour,
must, with bodily torments, break down her spirit and bring her to
surrender.

She prayed much; but almost more she watched, as often as she
was conscious, over her own condition: felt her pulse, took her
temperature, and fought her cough. But the pulse was poor, the
temperature mounted after falling a little, and she passed from
chills to fever and delirium; her cough increased, bringing up a
blood-impregnated mucous, and she was alarmed by the difficulty she
had in breathing. It was accounted for by the fact that now not only a
lobe of the right lung, but the whole right lung, was affected, with
even distinct traces of a process in the left, which Dr. Langhals,
looking at his nails, called hepatization, and about which Dr. Grabow
said nothing at all. The fever wasted the patient relentlessly. The
digestion failed. Slowly, inexorably, the decline of strength went on.

She followed it. She took eagerly, whenever she could, the concentrated
nourishment which they gave her. She knew the hours for her medicines
better than the nurse; and she was so absorbed in watching the progress
of her case that she hardly spoke to any one but the physicians, and
displayed actual interest only when talking with them. Callers had
been admitted in the beginning, and the old ladies of her social
circle, pastors’ wives and members of the Jerusalem evenings, came to
see her; but she received them with apathy and soon dismissed them.
Her relatives felt the difference in the old lady’s greeting: it was
almost disdainful, as though she were saying to them: “You can’t do
anything for me.” Even when little Hanno came, in a good hour, she only
stroked his cheek and turned away. Her manner said more plainly than
words: “Children, you are all very good--but--perhaps--I may be dying!”
She received the two physicians, on the other hand, with very lively
interest, and went into the details of her condition.

One day the Gerhardt ladies appeared, the descendants of Paul Gerhardt.
They came in their mantles, with their flat shepherdess hats and their
provision-baskets, from visiting the poor, and could not be prevented
from seeing their sick friend. They were left alone with her, and God
only knows what they said as they sat at her bedside. But when they
departed, their eyes and their faces were more gentle, more radiant,
more blissfully remote than ever; while the Frau Consul lay within,
with just such eyes and just such an expression, quite still, quite
peaceful, more peaceful than ever before; her breath came very softly
and at long intervals, and she was visibly declining from weakness to
weakness. Frau Permaneder murmured a strong word in the wake of the
Gerhardt ladies, and sent at once for the physicians. The two gentlemen
had barely entered the sick-chamber when a surprising alteration took
place in the patient. She stirred, she moved, she almost sat up. The
sight of her trusted and faithful professional advisers brought her
back to earth at a bound. She put out her hands to them and began:
“Welcome, gentlemen. To-day, in the course of the day--”

The illness had attacked both lungs--of that there was no more room for
doubt.

“Yes, my dear Senator,” Dr. Grabow said, and took Thomas Buddenbrook by
the hand, “it is now both lungs--we have not been able to prevent it.
That is always serious, you know as well as I do. I should not attempt
to deceive you. No matter what the age of the patient, the condition
is serious; and if you ask me again to-day whether in my opinion your
brother should be written to--or perhaps a telegram would be better--I
should hesitate to deter you from it. How is he, by the way? A good
fellow, Christian; I’ve always liked him immensely.--But for Heaven’s
sake, my dear Senator, don’t draw any exaggerated conclusions from what
I say. There is no immediate danger--I am foolish to take the word in
my mouth! But still--under the circumstances, you know, one must reckon
with the unexpected. We are very well satisfied with your mother as a
patient. She helps all she can, she doesn’t leave us in the lurch; no,
on my word, she is an incomparable patient! So there is still great
hope, my dear sir. And we must hope for the best.”

But there is a moment when hope becomes something artificial and
insincere. There is a change in the patient. He alters--there is
something strange about him--he is not as he was in life. He speaks,
but we do not know how to reply: what he says is strange, it seems to
cut off his retreat back to life, it condemns him to death. And when
that moment comes, even if he is our dearest upon this earth, we do not
know how to wish him back. If we could bid him arise and walk, he would
be as frightful as one risen from his coffin.

Dreadful symptoms of the coming dissolution showed themselves, even
though the organs, still in command of a tenacious will, continued
to function. It had now been weeks since Frau Consul first took to
her bed with a cold; and she began to have bed sores. They would
not heal, and grew worse and worse. She could not sleep, because of
pain, coughing and shortness of breath, and also because she herself
clung to consciousness with all her might. Only for minutes at a time
did she lose herself in fever; but now she began, even when she was
conscious, to talk to people who had long been dead. One afternoon, in
the twilight, she said suddenly, in a loud, fervent, anxious voice,
“Yes, my dear Jean, I am coming!” And the immediacy of the reply was
such that one almost thought to hear the voice of the deceased Consul
calling her.

Christian arrived. He came from Hamburg, where he had been, he said,
on business. He only stopped a short time in the sick-room, and left
it, his eyes roving wildly, rubbing his forehead, and saying “It’s
frightful--it’s frightful--I can’t stand it any longer.”

Pastor Pringsheim came, measured Sister Leandra with a chilling glance,
and prayed with a beautifully modulated voice at the bedside.

Then came the brief “lightening”: the flickering up of the dying flame.
The fever slackened; there was a deceptive return of strength, and a
few plain, hopeful words, that brought tears of joy to the eyes of the
watchers at the bedside.

“Children, we shall keep her; you’ll see, we shall keep her after all!”
cried Thomas Buddenbrook. “She will be with us next Christmas!”

But even in the next night, shortly after Gerda and her husband
had gone to bed, they were summoned back to Meng Street by Frau
Permaneder, for the mother was struggling with death. A cold rain was
falling, and a high wind drove it against the window-panes.

The bed-chamber, as the Senator and his wife entered it, was lighted
by two sconces burning on the table; and both physicians were present.
Christian too had been summoned from his room, and sat with his back
to the bed and his forehead bowed in his hands. They had sent for the
dying woman’s brother, Justus Kröger, and he would shortly be here.
Frau Permaneder and Erica were sobbing softly at the foot of the bed.
Sister Leandra and Mamsell Severin had nothing more to do, and stood
gazing in sadness on the face of the dying.

The Frau Consul lay on her back, supported by a quantity of pillows.
With both her blue-veined hands, once so beautiful, now so emaciated,
she ceaselessly stroked the coverlet in trembling haste. Her head in
the white nightcap moved from side to side with dreadful regularity.
Her lips were drawn inward, and opened and closed with a snap at every
tortured effort to breathe, while the sunken eyes roved back and forth
or rested with an envious look on those who stood about her bed, up and
dressed and able to breathe. They were alive, they belonged to life;
but they could help her no more than this, to make the sacrifice that
consisted in watching her die.... And the night wore on, without any
change.

“How long can it go on, like this?” asked Thomas Buddenbrook, in a low
tone, drawing Dr. Grabow away to the bottom of the room, while Dr.
Langhals was undertaking some sort of injection to give relief to the
patient. Frau Permaneder, her handkerchief in her hand, followed her
brother.

“I can’t tell, my dear Senator,” answered Dr. Grabow. “Your dear mother
may be released in the next few minutes, or she may live for hours. It
is a process of strangulation: an oedema--”

“I know,” said Frau Permaneder, and nodded while the tears ran down her
cheeks. “It often happens in cases of inflammation of the lungs--a
sort of watery fluid forms, and when it gets very bad the patient
cannot breathe any more. Yes, I know.”

The Senator, his hands folded, looked over at the bed.

“How frightfully she must suffer,” he whispered.

“No,” Dr. Grabow said, just as softly, but in a tone of authority,
while his long, mild countenance wrinkled more than ever. “That is a
mistake, my dear friend, believe me. The consciousness is very clouded.
These are largely reflex motions which you see; depend upon it.” And
Thomas answered: “God grant it”--but a child could have seen from
the Frau Consul’s eyes that she was entirely conscious and realized
everything.

They took their places again. Consul Kröger came and sat bowed over his
cane at the bedside, with reddened eyelids.

The movements of the patient increased. This body, delivered over to
death, was possessed by a terrible unrest, an unspeakable craving, an
abandonment of helplessness, from head to foot. The pathetic, imploring
eyes now closed with the rustling movement of the head from side to
side, now opened with a heart-breaking expression, so wide that the
little veins of the eyeballs stood out blood-red. And she was still
conscious!

A little after three, Christian got up. “I can’t stand it any more,” he
said, and went out, limping, and supporting himself on the furniture on
his way to the door. Erica Weinschenk and Mamsell Severin had fallen
asleep to the monotonous sound of the raucous breathing, and sat rosy
with slumber on their chairs.

About four it grew much worse. They lifted the patient and wiped
the perspiration from her brow. Her breathing threatened to
stop altogether. “Let me sleep,” she managed to say. “Give me a
sleeping-draught.” Alas, they could give her nothing to make her sleep.

Suddenly she began again to reply to voices which the others could not
hear. “Yes, Jean, not much longer now.” And then, “Yes, dear Clara, I
am coming.”

The struggle began afresh. Was this a wrestling with death? Ah, no, for
it had become a wrestling with life for death, on the part of the dying
woman. “I want--,” she panted, “I want--I cannot--let me sleep! Have
mercy, gentlemen--let me sleep!”

Frau Permaneder sobbed aloud as she listened, and Thomas groaned
softly, clutching his head a moment with both hands. But the physicians
knew their duty: they were obliged, under all circumstances, to
preserve life just as long as possible; and a narcotic would have
effected an unresisting and immediate giving-up of the ghost. Doctors
were not made to bring death into the world, but to preserve life at
any cost. There was a religious and moral basis for this law, which
they had known, once, though they did not have it in mind at the
moment. So they strengthened the heart action by various devices, and
even improved the breathing by causing the patient to retch.

By five the struggle was at its height. The Frau Consul, erect in
convulsions, with staring eyes, thrust wildly about her with her arms
as though trying to clutch after some support or to reach the hands
which she felt stretching toward her. She was answering constantly in
every direction to voices which she alone heard, and which evidently
became more numerous and urgent. Not only her dead husband and
daughter, but her parents, parents-in-law, and other relatives who had
passed before her into death, seemed to summon her; and she called them
all by name--though the names were some of them not familiar to her
children. “Yes,” she cried, “yes, I am coming now--at once--a moment--I
cannot--oh, let me sleep!”

At half-past five there was a moment of quiet. And then over her aged
and distorted features there passed a look of ineffable joy, a profound
and quivering tenderness; like lightning she stretched up her arms and
cried out, with an immediate suddenness swift as a blow, so that one
felt there was not a second’s space between what she heard and what she
answered, with an expression of absolute submission and a boundless and
fervid devotion: “Here I am!” and parted.

They were all amazed. What was it? Who had called her? To whose summons
had she responded thus instantly?

Some one drew back the curtains and put out the candles, and Dr. Grabow
gently closed the eyes of the dead.

They all shivered in the autumn dawn that filled the room with its
sallow light. Sister Leandra covered the mirror of the toilet table
with a cloth.




CHAPTER II


Through the open door Frau Permaneder could be seen praying in the
chamber of death. She knelt there alone, at a chair near the bed, with
her mourning garments flowing about her on the floor. While she prayed,
her hands folded before her on the seat of the chair, she could hear
her brother and sister-in-law in the breakfast-room, where they stood
and waited for the prayer to come to an end. But she did not hurry
on that account. She finished, coughed her usual little dry cough,
gathered her gown about her, and rose from the chair, then moved toward
her relatives with a perfectly dignified bearing in which there was no
trace of confusion.

“Thomas,” she said, with a note of asperity in her voice, “it strikes
me, that as far as Severin is concerned, our blessed mother was
cherishing a viper in her bosom.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I am perfectly furious with her. I shall try to behave with dignity,
but--has the woman any right to disturb us at this solemn moment by her
common ways?”

“What has she been doing?”

“Well in the first place, she is outrageously greedy. She goes to the
wardrobe and takes out Mother’s silk gowns, folds them over her arm,
and starts to retire. ‘Why, Riekchen,’ I say, ‘what are you doing with
those?’ ‘Frau Consul promised me.’ ‘My dear Severin!’ I say, and show
her, in a perfectly ladylike way, what I think of her unseemly haste.
Do you think it did any good? She took not only the silk gowns, but
a bundle of underwear as well, and went out. I can’t come to blows
with her, can I? And it isn’t Severin alone. There are wash-baskets
full of stuff going out of the house. The servants divide up things
before my face--Severin has the keys to the cupboards. I said to her:
‘Fräulein Severin, I shall be much obliged for the keys.’ And she told
me, in good set terms, that I’ve nothing to say to her, she’s not in
my service, I didn’t engage her, and she will keep the keys until she
leaves!”

“Have you the keys to the silver-chest? Good. Let the rest go. That
sort of thing is inevitable when a household breaks up, especially when
the rule has been rather lax already. I don’t want to make any scenes.
The linen is old and worn. We can see what there is there. Have you the
lists? Good. We’ll have a look at them.”

They went into the bed-chamber and stood a while in silence by the
bed; Frau Antonie removed the white cloth from the face of the dead.
The Frau Consul was arrayed in the silk garment in which she would
that afternoon lie upon her bier in the hall. Twenty-eight hours had
passed since she drew her last breath. The mouth and chin, without the
false teeth, looked sunken and senile, and the pointed chin projected
sharply. All three tried their best to recognize their mother’s face
in this sunken countenance before them, with its eyelids inexorably
closed. But under the old lady’s Sunday cap there showed, as in life,
the smooth, reddish-brown wig over which the Misses Buddenbrook had so
often made merry. Flowers were strewn on the coverlet.

“The most beautiful wreaths have come,” said Frau Permaneder. “From all
the families in town, simply from everybody. I had everything carried
up to the corridor. You must look at them afterwards, Gerda and Tom.
They are heart-breakingly lovely.”

“How are they progressing down in the hall?” asked the Senator.

“They will soon be done, Tom. Jacobs has taken the greatest pains.
And the--” she choked down a sob--“the coffin has come. But you must
take off your things, my dears,” she went on, carefully replacing
the white cloth over the face of the dead. “It is cold in here, but
there is a little fire in the breakfast-room. Let me help you, Gerda.
Such an elegant mantle, one must be careful with it. Let me give you
a kiss--you know I love you, even if you have always despised me. No,
I won’t make your hair untidy when I take off your hat-- Your lovely
hair! Such hair Mother had too, when she was young. She was never so
splendid as you are, but there was a time, and since I was born, too,
when she was really beautiful. How true it is, isn’t it, what your old
Grobleben always says: we must all return to earth at last: such a
simple man, too. Here, Tom. These are the most important lists.”

They returned to the next room and sat down at the round table, while
the Senator took up the paper, on which was a list of the objects
to be divided among the nearest heirs. Frau Permaneder’s eyes never
left her brother’s face, and her own wore a strained, excited look.
There was something in her mind, a question hard to put, upon which,
nevertheless, all her thoughts were bent, and which must, in the next
few hours, come up for discussion.

“I think,” said the Senator, “we may as well keep to the usual rule,
that presents go back; so--”

His wife interrupted him.

“Pardon me, Thomas. It seems to me--where is Christian?”

“Oh, goodness, yes, Christian!” cried Frau Permaneder. “We’ve forgotten
him!”

She went to ring the bell. But at the same moment Christian opened the
door. He entered rather quickly, closed it behind him with a slight
bang, and stood there frowning, his little deep round eyes not resting
on anybody, but rolling from side to side. His mouth opened and shut
under the bushy red moustaches. His mood seemed irritated and defiant.

“I heard you were here,” he said. “If the things are to be talked
about, it is proper that I should be told.”

“We were just about to call you,” the Senator said indifferently. “Sit
down.”

His eyes rested, as he spoke, on the white studs in Christian’s shirt.
He himself was in irreproachable mourning: a black cloth coat, blinding
white shirt set off at the collar with a black tie, and black studs
instead of the gold ones he usually wore. Christian saw his glance. He
drew up a chair to the table and sat down, saying as he did so, with a
gesture toward his shirt, “I know I have on white studs. I haven’t got
round to buying black--or rather, I haven’t bothered. In the last few
years I’ve seen times when I had to borrow money for tooth-powder, and
go to bed by the light of a match. I don’t know that I am altogether
and entirely to blame. Anyhow, there are other things in the world more
important than black studs. I don’t set much store by appearances--I
never have.”

Gerda looked at him as he spoke, and now she gave a little laugh. The
Senator remarked: “I doubt if you could bear out the truth of that last
statement.”

“No? Perhaps you know better than I do, Thomas. I say I don’t set much
store by them. I’ve seen too much of the world, and lived with too
many different sorts of men, with too many different ways, to care
what--and anyhow, I am a grown man”--his voice grew suddenly loud--“I
am forty-three years old, and my own master and in a position to warn
everybody not to mix in my affairs.”

The Senator was quite astonished. “It seems to me you have something on
your mind, my friend,” he said. “As far as the studs go, I haven’t so
much as mentioned them, if my memory serves me. Wear whatever mourning
you choose, or none at all if that pleases you; but don’t imagine you
make any impression on me with your cheap broad-mindedness--”

“I am not trying to make an impression on you.”

“Tom--Christian!” said Frau Permaneder. “Don’t let us have any hard
words--not to-day--when in the next room-- Just go on, Thomas.
Presents are to be returned? That is only right.”

And Thomas went on. He began with the large things, and wrote down for
himself the articles he could use in his own house: the candelabra in
the dining-room, the great carved chest that stood in the downstairs
entry. Frau Permaneder paid extraordinarily close attention. No matter
what the article was, the future possession of which was at the moment
in question, she would say with an incomparable air, “Oh, well, I’m
willing to take it”--as if the whole world owed her thanks for her act
of self-sacrifice. She accepted for herself, her daughter, and her
granddaughter far and away the largest share of the furnishings.

Christian had some pieces of furniture, an Empire table-clock and the
harmonium. He seemed satisfied enough. But when they came to dividing
the table-linen and silver and the sets of dishes, he displayed, to the
great astonishment of the others, an eagerness that was almost avidity.

“What about me?” he would say. “I must ask you not to forget me,
please.”

“Who is forgetting you? Look: I’ve put a whole tea-service and a
silver tray down to you. I’ve taken the gilt Sunday service, as we are
probably the only ones who would have a use for it.”

“I’m willing to take the everyday onion pattern,” said Frau Permaneder.

“And what about me?” cried Christian. He was possessed now by that
excitement which sometimes seized him and sat so extraordinarily on his
haggard cheek. “I certainly want a share in the dishes. And how many
forks and spoons do I get? Almost none at all, it seems to me.”

“But, my dear man, what do you want of them? You have no use for them
at all. I don’t understand. It is better the things should continue in
the family--”

“But suppose I say I want them--if only in remembrance of Mother,”
Christian cried defiantly.

To which the Senator impatiently replied, “I don’t feel much like
making jokes; but am I to judge from your words that you would like
to put a soup-tureen on your chest of drawers and keep it there in
memory of Mother? Please don’t get the idea that we want to cheat you
out of your share. If you get less of the effects, you will get more
elsewhere. The same is true of the linen.”

“I don’t want the money. I want the linen and dishes.”

“Whatever for?”

Christian’s reply to this was one that made Gerda Buddenbrook turn
and gaze at him with an enigmatic expression in her eyes. The Senator
hastily donned his pince-nez to look the better, and Frau Permaneder
simply folded her hands. He said: “Well, I am thinking of getting
married, sooner or later.”

He said this rather low and quickly, with a short gesture, as though he
were tossing something to his brother across the table. Then he leaned
back, avoiding their eyes, looking surly, defiant, and yet extremely
embarrassed. There was a long pause. At last the Senator broke it by
saying:

“I must say, Christian, your ideas come rather late. That is, of
course, if this really is anything serious, and not the same kind of
thing you proposed to Mother a while ago.”

“My intentions have remained what they were,” Christian said. He did
not look at anybody or change his expression.

“That is impossible, I should think. Were you waiting for Mother’s
death--?”

“I had that amount of consideration, yes. You seem to think, Thomas,
that you have a monopoly of all the tact and feeling in the world--”

“I don’t know what justifies you in making remarks like that. And,
moreover, I must admire the extent of your consideration. On the day
after Mother’s death, you propose to display your lack of filial
feeling by--”

“Only because the subject came up. But the point is that now Mother
cannot be affected by any step I may take--no more to-day than she
would be a year from now. Good Lord, Thomas, Mother couldn’t have
any actual _right_--but I saw it from her point of view, and had
consideration for that, as long as she lived. She was an old woman, a
woman of a past generation, with different views about life--”

“I can only say that I concur with her absolutely in this particular
view.”

“I cannot be bothered about that.”

“But you will be bothered about it, my dear sir.”

Christian looked at him.

“No,” he shouted. “I won’t! I can’t do it. Suppose I tell you I can’t?
I must know what I have to do, mustn’t I? I am a grown man--”

“You don’t in the least know what you have to do. Your being what you
call a grown man is only very external.”

“I know very well what I have to do. In the first place, I have to act
like a man of honour! You don’t know how the thing stands. With Tony
and Gerda here we can’t really talk--but I have already told you I have
responsibilities-- The last child, little Gisela--”

“I know nothing about any little Gisela--and I don’t care to. I am
perfectly convinced they are making a fool of you. In any case, what
sort of responsibility can you have toward a person like the one you
have in mind--other than the legal one, which you can perform as
before--?”

“Person, Thomas, _person_? You are making a mistake about her. Aline--”

“Silence!” roared Senator Buddenbrook in a voice like thunder. The two
brothers glared across the table into each other’s faces. Thomas was
pale and trembling with scorn; the rims of Christian’s deep little eyes
had got suddenly red, his mouth and eyes spread wide open, his lean
cheeks seemed nothing but hollows, and a pair of red patches showed
just under the cheek-bones. Gerda looked rather disdainfully from one
to the other, and Tony wrung her hands, imploring--“Tom, Christian!
And Mother lying there in the next room!”

“You have no sense of shame,” went on the Senator. “How can you bring
yourself--what must it cost you--to mention that name, on this spot,
under these circumstances? You have a lack of feeling that amounts to a
disease!”

“Will you tell me why I should not mention Aline’s name?” Christian was
so beside himself that Gerda looked at him with increasing intentness.
“I do mention it, as you hear, Thomas; I intend to marry her--for I
have a longing for a home, and for peace and quiet--and I insist--you
hear the word I use--I insist that you keep out of my affairs. I am
free. I am my own master!”

“Oh, you fool, you! When you hear the will read, you will see just how
much you are your own master! You won’t get the chance to squander
Mother’s inheritance as you have run through with the thirty thousand
marks already! I have been made the guardian of your affairs, and I
will see to it that you never get your hands on more than a monthly sum
at a time--that I swear!”

“Well, you know better than I who it was that instigated Mother to make
such a will! But I am surprised, very much so, that Mother did not give
the office to somebody that had a little more brotherly feeling for me
than you have.” Christian no longer knew what he was saying; he leaned
over the table, knocking on it all the while with his knuckle, glaring
up, red-eyed, his moustaches bristling, at his brother, who, on his
side, stood looking down at him, pale, and with half-closed lids.

Christian went on, and his voice was hollow and rasping. “Your heart
is full of coldness and ill-will toward me, all the while. As far back
as I can remember I have felt cold in your presence--you freeze me
with a perfect stream of icy contempt. You may think that is a strange
expression, but what I feel is just like that. You repulse me, just by
looking at me--and you hardly ever even so much as look at me. How
have you got a right to treat me like that? You are a man too, you
have your own weaknesses. You have always been a better son to our
parents; but if you really stood so much closer to them than I do, you
might have absorbed a little of their Christian charity. If you have
no brotherly love to spare for me, you might have had some Christlike
love. But you are entirely without affection. You never came near me in
the hospital, when I lay there and suffered with rheumatism--”

“I have more serious things to think about than your illnesses. And my
own health--”

“Oh, come, Thomas, your health is magnificent. You wouldn’t be sitting
here for what you are, if your health weren’t far and away better than
mine.”

“I may be perhaps worse off than you are!”

“Worse than I am--come, that’s too much! Gerda, Tony! He says he is
worse off than I am. Perhaps it was you that came near dying, in
Hamburg, of rheumatism. Perhaps you have had to endure torments in your
left side, perfectly indescribable torments, for every little trifling
irregularity! Perhaps all your nerves are short on the left side! All
the authorities say that is what is the matter with me. Perhaps it
happens to you that you come into your room when it is getting dark and
see a man sitting on the sofa, nodding at you, when there is no man
there?”

“Christian!” Frau Permaneder burst out in horror. “What are you saying?
And, my God! what are you quarrelling about? Is it an honour for one
to be worse off than the other? If it were, Gerda and I might have
something to say, too.--And with Mother lying in there! How can you?”

“Don’t you realize, you fool,” cried Thomas Buddenbrook, in a passion,
“that all these horrors are the consequence and effect of your vices,
your idleness, and your self-tormenting? Go to work! Stop petting your
condition and talking about it! If you do go crazy--and I tell you
plainly I don’t think it at all unlikely--I shan’t be able to shed a
tear; for it will be entirely your own fault.”

“No, and when I die you won’t shed any tears either.”

“You won’t die,” said the Senator bitingly.

“I shan’t die? Very good, I shan’t die, then. We’ll see who dies first.
Work! Suppose I can’t work? My God! I can’t do the same thing long
at a time! It kills me. If you have been able to, and are able to,
thank God for it, but don’t sit in judgment on others, for it isn’t
a virtue. God gives strength to one, and not to another. But that is
the way you are made, Thomas. You are self-righteous. Oh, wait, that
is not what I am going to say, nor what I accuse you of. I don’t know
where to begin, and however much I can say is only a millionth part of
the feeling I have in my heart against you. You have made a position
for yourself in life; and there you stand, and push everything away
which might possibly disturb your equilibrium for a moment--for your
equilibrium is the most precious thing in the world to you. But it
isn’t the most precious thing in life, Thomas--no, before God, it is
not. You are an egotist, that is what you are. I am still fond of you,
even when you are angry, and tread on me, and thunder me down. But
when you get silent: when somebody says something and you are suddenly
dumb, and withdraw yourself, quite elegant and remote, and repulse
people like a wall and leave the other fellow to his shame, without
any chance of justifying himself--! Yes, you are without pity, without
love, without humility.--Oh,” he cried, and stretched both arms in
front of him, palms outward, as though pushing everything away from
him, “Oh, how sick I am of all this tact and propriety, this poise and
refinement--sick to death of it!”

The outburst was so genuine, so heart-felt, it sounded so full of
loathing and satiety, that it was actually crushing. Thomas shrank a
little and looked down in front of him, weary and without a word.

At last he said, and his voice had a ring of feeling, “I have become
what I am because I did not want to become what you are. If I have
inwardly shrunk from you, it has been because I needed to guard
myself--your being, and your existence, are a danger to me--that is the
truth.”

There was another pause, and then he went on, in a crisper tone: “Well,
we have wandered far away from the subject. You have read me a lecture
on my character--a somewhat muddled lecture, with a grain of truth in
it. But we are not talking about me, but about you. You are thinking of
marrying; and I should like to convince you that it is impossible for
you to carry out your plan. In the first place, the interest I shall be
able to pay you on your capital will not be a very encouraging sum--”

“Aline has put some away.”

The Senator swallowed, and controlled himself. “You mean you would
mingle your mother’s inheritance with the--savings of this lady?”

“Yes. I want a home, and somebody who will be sympathetic when I am
ill. And we suit each other very well. We are both rather damaged
goods, so to speak--”

“And you intend, further, to adopt the existing children and legitimize
them?”

“Yes.”

“So that after your death your inheritance would pass to them?” As
the Senator said this, Frau Permaneder laid her hand on his arm and
murmured adjuringly, “Thomas! Mother is lying in the next room!”

“Yes,” answered Christian. “That would be the way it would be.”

“Well, you shan’t do it, then,” shouted the Senator, and sprang up.
Christian got behind his chair, which he clutched with one hand. His
chin went down on his breast; he looked apprehensive as well as angry.

“You shan’t do it,” repeated Thomas, almost senseless with anger;
pale, trembling, jerking convulsively. “As long as I am alive it
won’t happen. I swear it--so take care! There’s enough money gone
already, what with bad luck and foolishness and rascality, without
your throwing a quarter of Mother’s inheritance into this creature’s
lap--and her bastards’--and that after another quarter has been snapped
up by Tiburtius! You’ve brought enough disgrace on the family already,
without bringing us home a courtesan for a sister-in-law, and giving
our name to her children. I forbid it, do you hear? I forbid it!”
he shouted, in a voice that made the room ring, and Frau Permaneder
squeeze herself weeping into the corner of the sofa. “And I advise
you not to attempt to defy me! Up to now I have only despised you and
ignored you: but if you try any tricks, if you bring the worse to
the worst, we’ll see who will come out ahead! You can look out for
yourself! I shan’t have any mercy! I’ll have you declared incompetent,
I’ll get you shut up, I’ll ruin you--I’ll ruin you, you understand?”

“And I tell _you_--” Thus it all began over again, and went on and on:
a battle of words, destructive, futile, lamentable, without any purpose
other than to insult, to wound, to cut one another to the quick.
Christian came back to his brother’s character and cited examples of
Thomas’s egotism--painful anecdotes out of the distant past, which he,
Christian, had never forgotten, but carried about with him to feed his
bitterness. And the Senator retorted with scorn, and with threats which
he regretted a moment later. Gerda leaned her head on her hand and
watched them, with an expression in her eyes impossible to read. Frau
Permaneder repeated over and over again, in her despair: “And Mother
lying there in the next room!”

Christian, who at the end had been walking up and down in the room, at
last forsook the field.

“Very good, we shall see!” he shouted. With his eyes red, his
moustaches ruffled, his handkerchief in his hand, his coat wide open,
hot and beside himself, he went out of the door and slammed it behind
him.

In the sudden stillness the Senator stood for a moment upright and
gazed after his brother. Then he sat down without a word and took up
the papers jerkily. He went curtly through the remaining business, then
leaned back and twisted his moustaches through his fingers, lost in
thought.

Frau Permaneder’s anxiety made her heart beat loudly. The question, the
great question, could now not be put off any longer. It must come up,
and he must answer; but was her brother now in a mood to be governed by
gentleness and filial piety? Alas, she feared not.

“And--Tom--,” she began, looking down into her lap, and then up, as
she made a timid effort to read his thoughts. “The furniture--you have
taken everything into consideration of course--the things that belong
to us, I mean to Erica and me and the little one, they remain here with
us? In short, the house--what about it?” she finished, and furtively
wrung her hands.

The Senator did not answer at once. He went on for a while twisting his
moustaches and drearily meditating. Then he drew a deep breath and sat
up.

“The house?” he said. “Of course it belongs to all of us, to you and
me, and Christian--and, queerly enough, to Pastor Tiburtius too. I
can’t decide anything about it by myself. I have to get your consent.
But obviously the thing to do is to sell as soon as possible,” he
concluded, shrugging his shoulders. Yet something crossed his face,
after all, as though he were startled by his own words.

Frau Permaneder’s head sank deep on her breast; her hands stopped
pressing themselves together; she relaxed all over.

“Our consent,” she repeated after a pause, sadly, and rather bitterly
as well. “Dear me, Tom, you know you will do whatever you think
best--the rest of us are not likely to withhold our consent for long.
But if we might put in a word--to beg you,” she, went on, almost dully,
but her lip was trembling too--“the house--Mother’s house--the family
home, in which we have all been so happy! We must sell it--?”

The Senator shrugged his shoulders again. “Child, you will believe
me when I tell you that I feel everything you can say, as much as
you do yourself. But those are only our feelings; they aren’t actual
objections. What has to be done, remains the problem. Here we have this
great piece of property--what shall we do with it? For years back, ever
since Father’s death, the whole back part has been going to pieces. A
family of cats is living rent-free in the billiard-room, and you can’t
walk there for fear of going through the floor. Of course, if I did
not have my house in Fishers’ Lane-- But I have, and what should I do
with it? Do you think I might sell that instead? Tell me yourself, to
whom? I should lose half the money I put into it. We have property
enough, Tony; we have far too much, in fact. The granary buildings, and
two great houses. The invested capital is out of all proportion to the
value of the property. No, no, we must sell.”

But Frau Permaneder was not listening. She was sitting bent over on the
sofa, withdrawn into herself with her own thoughts.

“Our house,” she murmured. “I remember the housewarming. We were no
bigger than that. The whole family was there. And Uncle Hoffstede
read a poem. It is in the family papers. I know it by heart. Venus
Anadyomene. The landscape-room. The dining-hall! And strange people--!”

“Yes, Tony. They must have felt the same--the family of whom
Grandfather bought the house. They had lost their money and had to give
up their home, and they are all dead and gone now. Everything has its
time. We ought to be grateful to God that we are better off than the
Ratenkamps, and are not saying good-bye to the house under such sorry
circumstances as theirs.”

Sobs, long, painful sobs, interrupted him. Frau Permaneder so abandoned
herself to her grief that she did not even dry the tears that ran down
her cheeks. She sat bent over, and the warm drops fell unheeded upon
the hands lying limp in her lap.

“Tom,” said she, and there was a gentle, touching decision in her
voice, which, a moment before her sobs had threatened to choke, “you
can’t understand how I feel at this hour--you cannot understand your
sister’s feelings! Things have not gone well with her in this life.--I
have had everything to bear that fate could think of to inflict upon
me. But I have borne it all without flinching, Tom: all my troubles
with Grünlich and Permaneder and Weinschenk. For, however my life
seemed to go awry, I was never quite lost. I had always a safe haven to
fly to. Even this last time, when everything came to an end, when they
took away Weinschenk to prison, ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘may we come to you?’
And she said, ‘Yes, my children, come!’ Do you remember, Tom, when we
were little, and played war, there was always a little spot marked off
for us to run to, where we could be safe and not be touched until we
were rested again? Mother’s house, this house, was my little spot, my
refuge in life, Tom. And now--it must be sold--”

She leaned back, buried her face in her handkerchief, and wept
unrestrainedly.

He drew down one of her hands and held it in his own.

“I know, dear Tony, I know it all. But we must be sensible. Our
dear good Mother is gone. We cannot bring her back. And so-- It is
madness to keep the house as dead capital. Shall we turn it into a
tenement-house? I know it is painful to think of strangers living here;
but after all it is better you should _not_ see it. You must take a
nice, pretty little house or flat somewhere for yourself and your
family--outside the Castle Gate, for example. Or would you rather stop
on here and let out floors to different families? And you still have
the family: Gerda and me, and the Buddenbrooks in Broad Street, and the
Krögers, and Therese Weichbrodt, and Clothilde--that is, if Clothilde
will condescend to associate with us, now that she’s become a lady of
the Order of St. John--it’s so very exclusive, you know!”

She gave a sigh that was already partly a laugh, and mopped her
eyes with her handkerchief, looking like a hurt child whom somebody
is helping, with a jest, to forget its pain. Then she resolutely
cleared her face and put herself to rights, tossing her head with the
characteristic gesture and bringing her chin down on her breast.

“Yes, Tom,” she said, and blinked with her tear-reddened eyes,
“I’ll be good now; I am already. You must forgive me--and you too,
Gerda--for breaking down like that. But it may happen to any one, you
know. It is a weakness. But, believe me, it is only outward. I am a
woman steeled by misfortunes. And that about the dead capital is very
convincing to me, Tom--I’ve enough intelligence to understand that
much, anyhow. I can only repeat that you must do what you think best.
You must think and act for us all; for Gerda and I are only women, and
Christian--well, God help him, poor soul! We cannot oppose you, for
whatever we could say would be only sentiment, not real objections, it
is very plain. To whom will you sell it, Tom? Do you think it will go
off right away?”

“Ah, child--how do I know? But I talked a little this morning with
old Gosch the broker; he did not seem disinclined to undertake the
business.”

“That is a good idea, Tom. Siegismund Gosch has his weaknesses,
of course. That thing about his translation from the Spanish--I
can’t remember the man’s name, but it is very odd, one must admit.
However, he was Father’s friend, and he is an honest man through and
through.--What shall you ask? A hundred thousand marks would be the
least, I should think.”

And “A hundred thousand marks would be the least, wouldn’t it, Tom?”
she was still asking, the door-knob in her hand, as the Senator and his
wife went down the steps. Then she was alone, and stood there in the
middle of the room with her hands clasped palms down in front of her,
looking all around with large, helpless eyes. Her head, heavy with the
weight of her thoughts, adorned with the little black lace cap, sank
slowly, shaking all the while, deeper and deeper on one shoulder.




CHAPTER III


Little Johann was to go to take his farewell of his grandmother’s
mortal remains. His father so arranged it, and, though Hanno was
afraid, he made not a syllable of objection. At table, the day after
the Frau Consul’s dying struggle, the Senator, in his son’s presence
and apparently with design, had commented harshly upon the conduct
of Uncle Christian, who had slipped away and gone to bed when the
patient’s suffering was at its height. “That was his nerves, Thomas,”
Gerda had answered. But with a glance at Hanno, which had not escaped
the child, the Senator had severely retorted that an excuse was not in
place. The agony of their departed mother had been so sore that one had
felt ashamed even to be sitting there free from pain--not to mention
entertaining the cowardly thought of trying to escape any suffering of
mind called up by the sight. From which, Hanno had gathered that it
would not be safe to object to the visit to the open coffin.

The room looked as strange to him as it had at Christmas, when, on the
day before the funeral, between his father and his mother, he entered
it from the hall. There was a half-circle of potted plants, arranged
alternately with high silver candelabra; and against the dark green
leaves gleamed from a black pedestal the marble copy of Thorwaldsen’s
Christ, which belonged in the corridor outside. Black crape hangings
fluttered everywhere in the draught, hiding the sky-blue tapestries and
the smiling immortals who had looked down from these walls upon so many
festive dinner-tables. Little Johann stood beside the bier among his
black-clad relatives. He had a broad mourning band on his own sailor
suit, and his senses felt misty with the scent from countless bouquets
and wreaths--and with another odour that came wafted now and then on a
current of air, and smelled strange, yet somehow familiar.

He stood beside the bier and looked at the motionless white figure
stretched out there severe and solemn, amid white satin. This was not
Grandmamma. There was her Sunday cap with the white silk ribbons, and
her red-brown hair beneath it. But the pinched nose was not hers, nor
the drawn lips, nor the sharp chin, nor the yellow, translucent hands,
whose coldness and stiffness one could see. This was a wax-doll--to
dress it up and lay it out like that seemed rather horrible. He looked
across to the landscape-room, as though the real Grandmamma might
appear there the next minute. But she did not come: she was dead. Death
had turned her for ever into this wax figure that kept its lids and
lips so forbiddingly closed.

He stood resting on his left leg, the right knee bent, balancing
lightly on the toe, and clutched his sailor knot with one hand, the
other hanging down. He held his head on one side, the curly light-brown
locks swaying over the temples, and looked with his gold-brown,
blue-encircled eyes in brooding repugnance upon the face of the dead.
His breath came long and shuddering, for he kept expecting that
strange, puzzling odour which all the scent of the flowers sometimes
failed to disguise. When the odour came, and he perceived it, he drew
his brows still more together, his lip trembled, and the long sigh
which he gave was so like a tearless sob that Frau Permaneder bent over
and kissed him and took him away.

And after the Senator and his wife, and Frau Permaneder and Erica, had
received for long hours the condolences of the entire town, Elisabeth
Buddenbrook, born Kröger, was consigned to earth. The out-of-town
families, from Hamburg and Frankfort, came to the funeral and, for the
last time, received hospitality in Meng Street. And the hosts of the
sympathizers filled the hall and the landscape-room, the corridor
and the pillared hall; and Pastor Pringsheim of St. Mary’s, erect
among burning tapers at the head of the coffin, turning his face up to
heaven, his hands folded beneath his chin, preached the funeral sermon.

He praised in resounding tones the qualities of the departed: he
praised her refinement and humility, her piety and cheer, her
mildness and her charity. He spoke of the Jerusalem evenings and the
Sunday-school; he gilded with matchless oratory the whole long rich and
happy earthly course of her who had left them; and when he came to the
end, since the word “end” needed some sort of qualifying adjective, he
spoke of her “peaceful end.”

Frau Permaneder was quite aware of the dignity, the representative
bearing, which she owed to herself and the community in this hour. She,
her daughter Erica, and her granddaughter Elisabeth occupied the most
conspicuous places of honour, close to the pastor at the head of the
coffin; while Thomas, Gerda, Clothilde, and little Johann, as likewise
old Consul Kröger, who had a chair to sit in, were content, as were
the relatives of the second class, to occupy less prominent places.
Frau Permaneder stood there, very erect, her shoulders elevated, her
black-bordered handkerchief between her folded hands; and her pride
in the chief rôle which it fell to her lot to perform was so great as
sometimes entirely to obscure her grief. Conscious of being the focus
of all eyes, she kept her own discreetly cast down; yet now and again
she could not resist letting them stray over the assembly, in which she
noted the presence of Julchen Möllendorpf, born Hagenström, and her
husband. Yes, they had all had to come: Möllendorpfs, Kistenmakers,
Langhals, Överdiecks--before Tony Buddenbrook left her parental roof
for ever, they had all gathered here, to offer her, despite Grünlich,
despite Permaneder, despite Hugo Weinschenk, their sympathy and
condolences.

Pastor Pringsheim’s sermon went on, turning the knife in the wound that
death had made: he caused each person present to remember his own
dead, he knew how to make tears flow where none would have flowed of
themselves--and for this the weeping ones were grateful to him. When he
mentioned the Jerusalem evenings, all the old friends of the dead began
to sob--excepting Madame Kethelsen, who did not hear a word he said,
but stared straight before her with the remote air of the deaf, and
the Gerhardt sisters, the descendants of Paul, who stood hand in hand
in a corner, their eyes glowing. They were glad for the death of their
friend, and could have envied her but that envy and unkindness were
foreign to their natures.

Poor Mademoiselle Weichbrodt blew her nose all the time, with a short,
emphatic sound. The Misses Buddenbrook did not weep. It was not their
habit. Their bearing, less angular than usual, expressed a mild
satisfaction with the impartial justice of death.

Pastor Pringsheim’s last “amen” resounded, and the four bearers, in
their black three-cornered hats, their black cloaks billowing out
behind them with the swiftness of their advance, came softly in and
put their hands upon the coffin. They were four lackeys, known to
everybody, who were engaged to hand the heavy dishes at every large
dinner in the best circles, and who drank Möllendorpf’s claret out of
the carafes, between the courses. But, also, they were indispensable at
every funeral of the first or second class, being of large experience
in this kind of work. They knew that the harshness of this moment,
when the coffin was laid hold upon by strange hands and borne away
from the survivors, must be ameliorated by tact and swiftness. Their
movements were quick, agile, and noiseless; hardly had any one time to
be sensible of the pain of the situation, before they had lifted the
burden from the bier to their shoulders, and the flower-covered casket
swayed away smoothly and with decorum through the pillared hall.

The ladies pressed tenderly about Frau Permaneder and her daughter to
offer their sympathy. They took her hand and murmured, with drooping
eyes, precisely no more and no less than what on such occasions must be
murmured; while the gentlemen made ready to go down to the carriages.

Then came, in a long, black procession, the slow drive through the
grey, misty streets out through the Burg Thor, along the leafless
avenue in a cold driving rain, to the cemetery, where the funeral march
sounded behind half-bare shrubbery on the edge of the little grove, and
the great sandstone cross marked the Buddenbrook family lot. The stone
lid of the grave, carven with the family arms, lay close to the black
hole framed in dripping greens.

A place had been prepared down below for the new-comer. In the last few
days, the Senator had supervised the work of pushing aside the remains
of a few early Buddenbrooks. The music sounded, the coffin swayed on
the ropes above the open depth of masonry; with a gentle commotion it
glided down. Pastor Pringsheim, who had put on pulse-warmers, began to
speak afresh, his voice ringing fervid and emotional above the open
grave. He bent over the grave and spoke to the dead, calling her by
her full name, and blessed her with the sign of the cross. His voice
ceased; all the gentlemen held their top-hats in front of their faces
with their black-gloved hands; and the sun came out a little. It had
stopped raining, and into the sound of the single drops that fell
from the trees and bushes there broke now and then the short, fine,
questioning twitter of a bird.

All the gentlemen turned a moment to press the hands of the sons and
brother of the dead once more.

Thomas Buddenbrook, as the others filed by, stood between his brother
Christian and his uncle Justus. His thick dark woollen overcoat was
dewed with fine silver drops. He had begun of late to grow a little
stout, the single sign of age in his carefully preserved exterior,
and his cheeks, behind the pointed protruding ends of his moustaches,
looked rounder than they used; but it was a pale and sallow roundness,
without blood or life. He held each man’s hand a moment in his own, and
his slightly reddened eyes looked them all, with weary politeness, in
the face.




CHAPTER IV


A week later there sat in Senator Buddenbrook’s private office, in
the leather chair beside the writing-desk, a little smooth-shaven old
man with snow-white hair falling over his brow and temples. He sat in
a crouching position, supporting both hands on the white top of his
crutch-cane, and his pointed chin on his hands; while he directed at
the Senator a look of such malevolence, such a crafty, penetrating
glance, that one wondered why the latter did not avoid contact with
such a man as this. But the Senator sat apparently at ease, leaning
back in his chair, talking to this baleful apparition as to a harmless
ordinary citizen. Broker Siegismund Gosch and the head of the firm of
Johann Buddenbrook were discussing the price of the Meng Street house.

It took a long time. The offer of twenty-eight thousand thaler made
by Herr Gosch seemed too low to the Senator, and the broker called
heaven to witness that it would be an act of madness to add a single
groschen to the sum. Thomas Buddenbrook spoke of the central position
and unusual extent of the property; but Herr Gosch, with picturesque
gestures, in low and sibilant tones, expatiated upon the criminal risk
he would be running. He waxed almost poetic. Ha! Could his honoured
friend tell him when, to whom, for how much, he would be able to get
rid of the house again? How often, in the course of the century, would
there be a demand for such a house? Perhaps his friend and patron could
assure him that to-morrow, on the train from Buchen, there was arriving
an Indian nabob who wished to establish himself in the Buddenbrook
mansion? He, Siegismund Gosch, would have it on his hands, simply on
his hands, and it would be the ruin of him. He would be a beaten man,
his race would be run, his grave dug--yes, it would be dug--and, as the
phrase enchanted him, he repeated it, and added something more about
chattering apes and clods of earth falling upon the lid of his coffin.

But the Senator was not satisfied. He spoke of the ease with which the
property could be divided, emphasized his responsibility toward his
sister, and remained by the sum of thirty thousand thaler. After which
he had to listen, with a mixture of enjoyment and impatience, to a
rejoinder from Herr Gosch, which lasted some two hours, during which
the broker sounded, as it were, all the registers of his character. He
played two rôles at once: first, the hypocritical villain, with a sweet
voice, his head on one side, and a smile of open-hearted simplicity.
Stretching out his large, white hand, with the long, trembling fingers,
he said “Agree, my dear young patron: eighty-four thousand marks--it is
the offer of an honest old man.” But a child could have seen that this
was all lies and treachery--a deceiving mask, behind which the man’s
deep villainy peeped forth.

Thomas Buddenbrook finally declared that he must take time to think,
and that in any case he must consult his sister, before he accepted the
twenty-eight thousand thaler--which was unlikely. Then he turned the
conversation to indifferent topics and asked Herr Gosch about business
and his health.

Things were going badly with Herr Gosch. He made a fine, sweeping
gesture to wave away the imputation that he was a prosperous man.
The burdens of old age approached, they were at hand even now; as
aforesaid, his grave was dug. He could not even carry his glass of grog
to his lips without spilling half of it, his arm trembled so like the
devil. It did no good to curse. The will no longer availed. And yet--!
He had his life behind him--not such a poor life, after all. He had
looked at the world with his eyes open. Revolutions had thundered by,
their waves had beat upon his heart--so to speak. Ha! Those were other
times, when he had stood at the side of Consul Johann Buddenbrook,
the Senator’s father, at that historic sitting, and defied the fury
of the raging mob. A frightful experience! No, his life had not been
poor, either outwardly or inwardly. Hang it--he had been conscious of
powers--and as the power is, so is the ideal--as Feuerbach says. And
even now--even now, his soul was not impoverished, his heart was still
young: it had never ceased, and would never cease, to be capable of
great emotions, to live fervently in and for his ideals. They would
go with him to his grave.--But were ideals, after all, meant to be
realized? No, a thousand times no! We might long for the stars, but
should we ever reach them? No, hope, not realization, was the most
beautiful thing in life: “L’espérance, tout trompeuse qu’elle est,
sert au moins à nous mener à la fin de la vie par un chemin agréable.”
La Rochefoucauld said that, and it was fine, wasn’t it? Oh, yes, his
honoured friend and patron, of course, did not need to console himself
with that sort of thing. The waves of life had lifted him high on their
shoulders, and fortune played about his brow. But for the lonely and
submerged, who dreamed alone in the darkness--

Suddenly--“_You_ are happy,” he said, laying his hand on the Senator’s
knee, and looking up at him with swimming eyes. “Don’t deny it--it
would be sacrilege. You are happy. You hold fortune in your arms.
You have reached out your strong arms and conquered her--your strong
hands,” he corrected himself, not liking the sound of “arms” twice so
close together. He was silent, and the Senator’s deprecating, patient
reply went unheard. He seemed to be darkly dreaming for a moment; then
he got up.

“We have been chatting,” he said, “but we came together on business.
Time is money. Let us not waste it in hesitation. Listen to me. Since
it is you: since it is you, you understand--” here it almost looked as
though Herr Gosch was about to give way again to another rhapsody; but
he restrained himself. He made a wide, sweeping gesture, and cried:
“Twenty-nine thousand thaler, eighty-seven thousand marks current, for
your mother’s house! Is it a bargain?” And Senator Buddenbrook agreed.

Frau Permaneder, of course, found the sum ridiculously small.
Considering the memories that clung about it, she would have thought
a million down no more than an honest price for their old home. But
she rapidly adjusted herself--the more readily that her thoughts and
efforts were soon taken up by plans for the future.

She rejoiced from the bottom of her heart over all the good furniture
that had fallen to her share. And though there was no idea of bustling
her away from under the parental roof, she plunged at once, with the
greatest zest, into the business of finding and renting a new home. The
leave-taking would be hard--the very thought of it brought tears to
her eyes. But the prospect of a change was not without its own charm
too. It was almost like another setting-out--the fourth one! And so
again she looked at houses and visited Jacob’s; again she bargained for
portières and stair-carpets. And while she did all that, her heart beat
faster--yes, even the heart of this old woman who was steeled by the
misfortunes of life!

Weeks passed like this: four, five, six weeks. The first snow fell,
the stoves crackled. Winter was here again; and the Buddenbrooks began
to consider sadly what sort of Christmas feast they should have this
year. But now something happened: something surprising and dramatic
beyond all words, something that simply knocked you off your feet. Frau
Permaneder paused in the midst of her business, like one paralyzed.

“Thomas,” she said, “am I crazy? Is Gosch dreaming? It is too absurd,
too outlandish--” She held her temples with both her hands. The Senator
shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear child, nothing at all is decided yet. But there is the
possibility--and if you think it over quietly, you will see that there
is nothing so extraordinary about it, after all. It is a little
startling, I admit. It gave me a start when Gosch first told me. But
absurd? What makes it absurd?”

“I should die,” said she. She sat down in a chair and stopped there
without moving.

What was going on? Simply that a buyer had appeared for the house; or,
rather, a possible purchaser showed a desire to go over it, with a view
to negotiations. And this possible purchaser was--Hermann Hagenström,
wholesale dealer and Consul for the Kingdom of Portugal.

When the first rumour reached Frau Permaneder, she was stunned,
incredulous, incapable of grasping the idea. But when the rumour became
concrete, when it actually took shape in the person of Consul Hermann
Hagenström, standing, as it were, before the door, then she pulled
herself together, and animation came back to her.

“This must not happen, Thomas. As long as I live, it must not happen.
When one sells one’s house, one is bound to look out for the sort of
master it gets. Our Mother’s house! Our house! The landscape-room!”

“But what stands in the way?”

“What stands in the way? Heavens, Thomas! Mountains stand in the
way--or they ought to! But he doesn’t see them, this fat man with
the snub nose! He doesn’t care about them. He has no delicacy and no
feeling--he is like the beasts that perish. From time immemorial the
Hagenströms and we have been rivals. Old Heinrich played Father and
Grandfather some dirty tricks; and if Hermann hasn’t tripped you up
yet, it is only because he hasn’t had a chance. When we were children,
I boxed his ears in the open street, for very good reasons; and his
precious little sister Julchen nearly scratched me to pieces for it.
That was all childishness, then. But they have always looked on and
enjoyed it whenever we had a piece of bad luck--and it was mostly I
myself who gave them the pleasure. God willed it so. Whatever the
Consul did to injure you or overreach you in a business way, that I
can’t speak of, Tom. You must know better than I. But the last straw
was when Erica made a good marriage and he wormed around and wormed
around until he managed to spoil it and get her husband shut up,
through his brother, who is a cat! And now they have the nerve--”

“Listen, Tony. In the first place, we have nothing more to say in the
matter. We made our bargain with Gosch, and he has the right to deal
with whomever he likes. But there is a sort of irony about it, after
all--”

“Irony? Well, if you like to call it that--but what I call it is a
disgrace, a slap in the face; because that is just what it would be.
You don’t realize what it would be like, in the least. But it would
mean to everybody that the Buddenbrook family are finished and done
for: they clear out, and the Hagenströms squeeze into their place,
rattlety-bang! No, Thomas, never will I consent to sit by while this
goes on. I will never stir a finger in such baseness. Let him come here
if he dares. I won’t receive him, you may be sure of that. I will sit
in my room with my daughter and my granddaughter, and turn the key in
the door, and forbid him to enter.--That is just what I will do.”

“I know, Tony, you will do what you think best; and you will probably
consider well beforehand if it will be wise not to preserve the
ordinary social forms. For of course you don’t imagine that Consul
Hagenström would feel wounded by your conduct? Not in the least, my
child. It would neither please nor displease him--he would simply be
mildly surprised, that is all. The trouble is, you imagine he has the
same feelings toward you that you have toward him. That is a mistake,
Tony. He does not hate us in the least. He doesn’t hate anybody. He
is highly successful and extremely good-natured. As I’ve told you
more than ten times already, he would speak to you on the street with
the utmost cordiality if you didn’t put on such a belligerent air.
I’m sure he is surprised at it--for two minutes; of course not enough
to upset the equilibrium of a man to whom nobody can do any harm.
What is it you reproach him with? Suppose he has outstripped me in
business, and even now and then got ahead of me in some public affair?
That only means he is a better business man and a cleverer politician
than I am.--There’s no reason at all for you to laugh in that scornful
way.--But to come back to the house. The truth is, it has lost most of
its old significance for us--that has gradually passed over to mine.
I say this to console you in advance; on the other hand, it is plain
why Consul Hagenström is thinking of buying. These people have come
up in the world, their family is growing, they have married into the
Möllendorpf family, and become equal to the best in money and position.
But so far, there has been something lacking, the outward sign of their
position, which they were evidently willing to do without: the historic
consecration--the legitimization, so to speak. But now they seem to
have made up their minds to have that too; and some of it they will get
by moving into a house like this one. You wait and see: mark my words,
the Consul will preserve everything as much as possible as it is, he
will even keep the ‘Dominus providebit’ over the door--though, to do
him justice, it hasn’t been the Lord at all, but Hermann Hagenström
himself, single-handed, that has put the family and the firm where they
are!”

“Bravo, Tom! Oh, it does do me good to hear you say something spiteful
about them once in a while! That’s really all I want! Oh, if I only had
your head! Wouldn’t I just give it to him! But there you stand--”

“You see, my head doesn’t really do me much good.”

“There you stand, I say, with that awful calmness, which I simply don’t
understand at all, and tell me how Hermann Hagenström does things. Ah,
you may talk as you like, but you have a heart in your body, the same
as I have myself, and I simply don’t believe you feel as calm inside as
you make out. All the things you say are nothing but your own efforts
to console yourself.”

“Now, Tony, you are getting pert. What I _do_ is all you have anything
to do with--what I think is my own affair.”

“Tell me one thing, Tom: wouldn’t it be like a nightmare to you?”

“Exactly.”

“Like something you dreamed in a fever?”

“Why not?”

“Like the most ridiculous kind of farce?”

“There, there, now, that’s enough!”

And Consul Hagenström appeared in Meng Street, accompanied by Herr
Gosch, who held his Jesuit hat in his hand, crouched over like a
conspirator, and peered past the maid into the landscape-room even
while he handed her his card.

Hermann Hagenström looked the City man to the life: an imposing Stock
Exchange figure, in a coat the fur of which seemed a foot long,
standing open over an English winter suit of good fuzzy yellow-green
tweed. He was so uncommonly fat that not only his chin, but the whole
lower part of his face, was double--a fact which his full short-trimmed
blond beard could not disguise. When he moved his forehead or eyebrows,
deep folds came even in the smoothly shorn skin of his skull. His
nose lay flatter upon his upper lip than ever, and breathed down into
his moustaches. Now and then his mouth had to come to the rescue and
fly open for a deep breath. When it did this it always made a little
smacking noise, as the tongue came away from the roof of his mouth.

Frau Permaneder coloured when she heard this once well-known sound. A
vision of lemon-buns with truffled sausage on top, almost threatened,
for a moment, the stony dignity of her bearing. She sat on the sofa,
her arms crossed and her shoulders lifted, in an exquisitely fitting
black gown with flounces up to the waist, and a dainty mourning cap on
her smooth hair. As the two gentlemen entered, she made a remark to
her brother the Senator, in a calm, indifferent tone. He had not had
the heart to leave her in the lurch at this hour; and he now walked to
the middle of the room to meet their guests, while Tony remained on
the sofa. He exchanged a hearty greeting with Herr Gosch and a correct
and courteous one with the Consul; then Tony rose of her own accord,
performed a measured bow to both of them at once, and, without any
excess of zeal, associated herself with her brother’s invitation to the
two gentlemen to be seated.

They all sat down, and the Consul and the broker talked by turns for
the next few minutes. Herr Gosch’s voice was offensively obsequious as
he begged them to pardon the intrusion on their privacy--you could hear
a malign undercurrent in it none the less--but Herr Consul Hagenström
was anxious to go through the house with a view to possible purchase.
And the Consul, in a voice that again called up visions of lemon-bun
and goose-liver, said the same thing in different words. Yes, in
fact, this was the idea he had in mind and hoped to be able to carry
out--provided the broker did not try to drive too hard a bargain with
him, ha, ha! He did not doubt but the matter could be settled to the
satisfaction of everybody concerned.

His manner was free and easy and like a man of the world’s, which did
not fail to make a certain impression on Madame Permaneder; the more so
that he nearly always turned to her as he spoke. His tone was almost
apologetic when he went into detail upon the grounds for his desire
to purchase. “Room!” he said. “We need more room. My house in Sand
Street--you wouldn’t believe it, my dear madam, nor you, Herr Senator,
but in fact, it is getting so small we can’t turn round in it. I’m not
speaking of company. It only takes the family, and the Huneus, and the
Möllendorpfs and my brother Moritz’s family, and there we are--in fact,
packed in like sardines. So, then--well, why should we, you know!”

He spoke in an almost fretful tone, while manner and gestures
expressed: “You see for yourselves, there’s no reason why I should put
up with that sort of thing, when there is plenty of money to do what we
like!”

“I thought of waiting,” he went on, “till Zerline and Bob should want a
house. Then they could take mine, and I could find something larger for
myself. But in fact--you know,” he interrupted himself, “my daughter
Zerline has been engaged to Bob, my brother the attorney’s eldest, for
years. The wedding won’t be put off much longer--two years at most.
They are young--so much the better. Well--in fact--why should I wait
for them and let slip a good chance when it offers? There would be no
sense in that.”

Everybody agreed. The conversation paused for a while on the subject
of the approaching wedding. Marriages--advantageous marriages--between
first cousins were not uncommon in the town, and this one excited no
disapproval. The plans of the young pair were inquired into--with
reference to the wedding journey. They thought of going to the Riviera,
to Nice and so on. That was what they seemed to want to do--and why
shouldn’t they, you know? The younger children were mentioned, and the
Consul spoke of them with easy satisfaction, shrugging his shoulders.
He himself had five children, and his brother Moritz had four sons and
daughters. Yes, they were all flourishing, thanks. Why shouldn’t they
be,--you know? In fact, they were all very well. And he came back to
the growing up of the family, and to their narrow quarters. “Yes, this
is something else entirely,” he said. “I’ve seen that already, on the
way upstairs. This house is a pearl, certainly a pearl--if you can
compare anything so large with anything so small, ha, ha! Why, even the
hangings here--I own up to having had my eye on the hangings all the
time I’ve been talking. A most charming room--in fact. When I think
that you have passed all your life in these surroundings--in fact--”

“With some interruptions,” said Frau Permaneder, in that
extraordinarily throaty voice of which she sometimes availed herself.

“Oh, yes, interruptions,” repeated the Consul, with a civil smile.
Then he glanced at Senator Buddenbrook and the broker; and, as those
gentlemen were in conversation together, he drew up his chair to Frau
Permaneder’s sofa and leaned toward her, so that she felt his heavy
breathing close under her nose. Being too polite to turn away, she
sat as stiff and erect as possible and looked down at him under her
drooping lids. But he was quite unconscious of her discomfort.

“Let me see, my dear Madame Permaneder,” he said. “Seems to me we’ve
done business together before now. In fact--what was it we were
dickering over then? Sweetmeats, wasn’t it, or tit-bits of some
sort--and now a whole house!”

“I don’t remember,” said Frau Permaneder. She held her neck as stiff as
she could, for his face was really disgustingly, indecently near.

“You don’t remember?”

“No, really, I don’t remember anything at all about sweetmeats. I have
a sort of hazy recollection of lemon-buns, with sausage on top--some
disgusting sort of school luncheon--I don’t know whether it was yours
or mine. We were all children then.--But this matter of the house is
entirely Herr Gosch’s affair. I have nothing to do with it.”

She gave her brother a quick, grateful look, for he had seen her need
and come to her rescue by asking if the gentlemen were ready to make
the round of the house. They were quite ready, and took temporary
leave of Frau Permaneder, expressing the hope of seeing her again when
they had finished. The Senator led the two gentlemen out through the
dining-room.

He took them upstairs and down, and showed them the rooms in the second
storey as well as those on the corridor of the first, and the ground
floor, including the kitchen and cellars. As the visit fell in business
hours, they refrained from visiting the offices of the Insurance
Company. But the new Director was mentioned, and Consul Hagenström
declared him to be a very honest chap--a remark which was received by
the Senator in silence.

They went through the garden, lying bare and wretched under
half-melting snow, looked at the Portal, and returned to the laundry,
in the front courtyard; and thence by the narrow paved walk that
led between walls to the back courtyard with the oak-tree, and the
“back-building.” Here there was nothing but old age, neglect, and
dilapidation. Grass and moss grew between the paving-stones, the steps
were in a state of advanced decay, and they could only look into the
billiard-room without entering,--the floor was so bad--so the family of
cats that lived there rent-free was not disturbed.

Consul Hagenström said very little--he was obviously planning. “Well,
yes,” he kept saying, as he looked and turned away, suggesting by his
manner that in case he bought the house all this would of course be
different. He stood, with the same air, on the ground floor of the back
building and looked up at the empty attic. “Yes, well,” he repeated,
and set in motion the thick, rotting cable with a rusty iron hook on
the end that had been hanging there for years. Then he turned on his
heel.

“Best thanks for your trouble, Herr Senator,” he said. “We’re at the
end, I suppose.” He scarcely uttered a word on the rapid return to the
front building, or later when the two gentlemen paid their respects to
Frau Permaneder in the landscape-room and the Senator accompanied them
down the steps and across the entry. But hardly had they said good-bye
and Consul Hagenström turned with his companion to walk down the
street, when it was seen that a very lively conversation began at once
between the two.

The Senator returned to the room where Frau Permaneder, with her
severest manner, sat bolt upright in the window, knitting with two huge
wooden needles a black worsted frock for her granddaughter Elisabeth,
and now and then casting a glance into the gossip’s glass. Thomas
walked up and down a while in silence, with his hands in his trousers
pockets.

“Yes, we have put it in the broker’s hands,” he said at length. “We
must wait and see what comes of it. My opinion is that he will buy the
whole property, live here in the front, and utilize the back part in
some other way.”

She did not look at him, or change her position, or cease to knit. On
the contrary, the needles flew back and forth faster than ever.

“Oh, certainly--of course he’ll buy it. He’ll buy the whole thing,”
she said, and it was her throaty voice she used. “Why shouldn’t he buy
it--you know? In fact, there would be no sense in that at all!”

She raised her eyebrows and looked severely through her
pince-nez--which she now used for sewing, but never managed to put on
straight--at her knitting-needles. They flew like lightning round and
round each other, clacking all the while.

       *       *       *       *       *

Christmas came: the first Christmas without the Frau Consul. They spent
the evening of the twenty-fourth at the Senator’s house, without the
old Krögers and without the Misses Buddenbrook; for the old children’s
day had now ceased to exist, and Thomas Buddenbrook did not feel like
making presents to everybody who used to attend the Frau Consul’s
celebration. Only Frau Permaneder and Erica, with little Elisabeth,
Christian, Clothilde, and Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, were invited.
The latter insisted on holding the customary present-giving on the
twenty-fifth, in her own stuffy little rooms, where it was attended
with the usual mishap.

There was no troop of poor retainers to receive shoes and woollen
underwear, and there were no choir-boys, when they assembled in
Fishers’ Lane on the twenty-fourth. They joined quite simply together
in “Holy Night,” and Therese Weichbrodt read the Christmas chapter
instead of the Frau Senator, who did not particularly care for such
things. Then they went through the suite of rooms into the hall,
singing in a subdued way the first stanza of “O Evergreen.”

There was no special ground for rejoicing. Nobody’s face was beaming
with joy, there was no lively conversation. What was there to talk
about? They thought of the departed mother, discussed the sale of the
house and the well-lighted apartment which Frau Permaneder had rented
in a pleasant house outside Holsten Gate, with a view on the green
square of Linden Place, and what would happen when Hugo Weinschenk came
out of prison. At intervals little Johann played on the piano something
which he had been learning with Herr Pfühl, or accompanied his mother,
not faultlessly, but with a lovely singing tone, in a Mozart sonata. He
was praised and kissed, but had to be taken off to bed by Ida Jungmann,
for he was pale and tired on account of a recent stomach upset.

Even Christian was disinclined to talk or joke. After the violent
altercation in the breakfast-room he had not let fall another syllable
about getting married. He lived on in the old way, on terms with his
brother which were not very honourable to himself. He made a brief
effort, rolling his eyes about, to awaken sympathy in the company
for the misery in his side; went early to the club; and came back to
supper, which was held after the prescribed traditions. And then the
Buddenbrooks had this Christmas too behind them, and were glad of it.

In the beginning of the year 1872, the household of the deceased Frau
Consul was broken up. The servants went, and Frau Permaneder thanked
God to see the last of Mamsell Severin, who had continued to question
her authority in the most unpleasant manner, and now departed with the
silk gowns and linen which she had accumulated. Furniture wagons stood
before the door, and the old house was emptied of its contents. The
great carved chest, the gilt candelabra, and the other things that had
fallen to his share, the Senator took to his house in Fishers’ Lane;
Christian moved with his into a three-room bachelor apartment near the
club; and the little Permaneder-Weinschenk family took possession with
theirs of the well-lighted flat in Linden Place, which was after all
not without some claims to elegance. It was a pretty little apartment,
and the front door of it had a bright copper plate with the name A.
Permaneder-Buddenbrook, Widow, in ornamental lettering.

The house in Meng Street was hardly emptied when a host of workmen
appeared and began to tear down the back-building; the dust from the
old mortar darkened the air. The property had passed into the hands
of Consul Hermann Hagenström. He had set his heart upon it, and had
outbid an offer which Sigmund Gosch received for it from Bremen. He
immediately began to turn it to the best advantage, in the ingenious
way for which he had been so long admired. In the spring he moved
with his family into the front house, where he left everything almost
untouched, save for the necessary renovations and certain very modern
improvements. For instance, he had the old bell-pulls taken out and
the house fitted throughout with electric bells. And hardly had the
back-building been demolished when a new, neat, and airy structure rose
in its place, which fronted on Bakers’ Alley and was intended for shops
and warehouses.

Frau Permaneder had frequently sworn to her brother that no power on
earth could bring her ever to look at the parental home again. But
it was hardly possible to carry out this threat. Her way sometimes
led her of necessity past the shops which had been quickly and
advantageously rented, and past the show-windows of the back-building,
or the dignified gable front on the other side, where now, beneath
the “Dominus Providebit,” was to be read the name of Consul Hermann
Hagenström. When she saw that, Frau Permaneder, on the open street,
before ever so many people, simply began to weep aloud. She put back
her head like a bird beginning to sing, pressed her handkerchief to her
eyes, uttered a wail of mingled protest and lament, and, giving no
heed to the passers-by or to the remonstrances of her daughter, gave
her tears free vent.

They were the unashamed, refreshing tears of her childhood, which she
still retained despite all the storms and shipwrecks of her life.




PART TEN




CHAPTER I


Often, in an hour of depression, Thomas Buddenbrook asked himself what
he was, or what there was about him to make him think even a little
better of himself than he did of his honest, limited, provincial
fellow-burghers. The imaginative grasp, the brave idealism of his youth
was gone. To work at his play, to play at his work, to bend an ambition
that was half-earnest, half-whimsical, toward the accomplishment of
aims that even to himself possessed but a symbolic value--for such
blithe scepticism and such an enlightened spirit of compromise, a great
deal of vitality is necessary, as well as a sense of humour. And Thomas
Buddenbrook felt inexpressibly weary and disgusted.

What there was in life for him to reach, he had reached. He was well
aware that the high-water mark of his life--if that were a possible way
to speak of such a commonplace, humdrum sort of existence--had long
since passed.

As for money matters, his estate was much reduced and the business,
in general, on the decline. Counting his mother’s inheritance and his
share of the Meng Street property, he was still worth more than six
hundred thousand marks. But the working capital of the firm had lain
fallow for years, under the pennywise policies of which the Senator
had complained at the time of the affair of the Pöppenrade harvest.
Since the blow he had then received, they had grown worse instead
of better; until now, at a time when prospects were brighter than
ever--when everybody was flushed with victory, the city had at last
joined the Customs Union, and small retail firms all over the country
were growing within a few years into large wholesale ones--the firm of
Johann Buddenbrook rested on its oars and reaped no advantage from
the favourable time. If the head of the firm were asked after his
business, he would answer, with a deprecating wave of the hand, “Oh,
it’s not much good, these days.” As a lively rival, a close friend of
the Hagenströms, once put it, Thomas Buddenbrook’s function on ’Change
was now largely decorative! The jest had for its point a jeer at the
Senator’s carefully preserved and faultless exterior--and it was
received as a masterpiece of wit by his fellow-citizens.

Thus the Senator’s services to the old firm were no longer what they
had been in the time of his strength and enthusiasm; while his labours
for the good of the community had at the same time reached a point
where they were circumscribed by limitations from without. When he
was elected to the Senate, in fact, he had reached those limitations.
There were thereafter only places to keep, offices to hold, but nothing
further that he could achieve: nothing but the present, the narrow
reality; never any grandiose plans to be carried out in the future. He
had, indeed, known how to make his position and his power mean more
than others had made them mean in his place: even his enemies did
not deny that he was “the Burgomaster’s right hand.” But Burgomaster
himself Thomas Buddenbrook could never become. He was a merchant,
not a professional man; he had not taken the classical course at the
gymnasium, he was not a lawyer. He had always done a great deal of
historical and literary reading in his spare time, and he was conscious
of being superior to his circle in mind and understanding, in inward
as well as outward culture; so he did not waste much time in lamenting
the lack of external qualifications which made it impossible for him
to succeed to the first place in his little community. “How foolish we
were,” he said to Stephan Kistenmaker--but he really only meant himself
by “we”--“that we went into the office so young, and did not finish our
schooling instead.” And Stephan Kistenmaker answered: “You’re right
there. But how do you mean?”

The Senator now chiefly worked alone at the great mahogany writing-desk
in his private office. No one could see him there when he leaned his
head on his hand and brooded, with his eyes closed. But he preferred
it, also, because the hair-splitting pedantries of Herr Marcus had
become unendurable to him. The way the man for ever straightened his
writing-materials and stroked his beard would in itself have driven
Thomas Buddenbrook from his seat in the counting-room. The fussiness of
the old man had increased with the years to a positive mania; but what
made it intolerable to the Senator was the fact that of late he had
begun to notice something of the same sort in himself. He, who had once
so hated all smallness and pettiness, was developing a pedantry which
seemed to him the outgrowth of anybody else’s character rather than his
own.

He was empty within. There was no stimulus, no absorbing task into
which he could throw himself. But his nervous activity, his inability
to be quiet, which was something entirely different from his father’s
natural and permanent fondness for work, had not lessened, but
increased--it had indeed taken the upper hand and become his master.
It was something artificial, a pressure on the nerves, a depressant,
in fact, like the pungent little Russian cigarettes which he was
perpetually smoking. This craving for activity had become a martyrdom;
but it was dissipated in a host of trivialities. He was harassed by a
thousand trifles, most of which had actually to do with the upkeep of
his house and his wardrobe; small matters which he could not keep in
his head, over which he procrastinated out of disgust, and upon which
he spent an utterly disproportionate amount of time and thought.

What outsiders called his vanity had lately increased in a way of
which he was himself ashamed, though he was without the power to shake
off the habits he had formed. Nowadays it was nine o’clock before he
appeared to Herr Wenzel, in his nightshirt, after hours of heavy,
unrefreshing sleep; and quite an hour and a half later before he felt
himself ready and panoplied to begin the day, and could descend to
drink his tea in the first storey. His toilette was a ritual consisting
of a succession of countless details which drove him half mad: from the
cold douche in the bathroom to the last brushing of the last speck of
dust off his coat, and the last pressure of the tongs on his moustache.
But it would have been impossible for him to leave his dressing-room
with the consciousness of having neglected a single one of these
details, for fear he might lose thereby his sense of immaculate
integrity--which, however, would be dissipated in the course of the
next hour and have to be renewed again.

He saved in everything, so far as he could--without subjecting himself
to gossip. But he did not save where his clothes were concerned--he
still had them made by the best Hamburg tailor, and spared no expense
in the care and replenishing of his wardrobe. A spacious cabinet, like
another room, was built into the wall of his dressing-room; and here,
on long rows of hooks, on wooden hangers, were coats, smoking jackets,
frock-coats, evening clothes, clothes for all occasions, all seasons,
and all grades of formality; the carefully creased trousers were
arranged on chairs beneath. The top of his chest of drawers was covered
with combs, brushes, and toilet preparations for hair and beard; while
within it was the supply of body linen of all possible kinds, which was
constantly changed, washed, worn out, and renewed.

He spent in this dressing-room not only the early hours of each
morning, but also a long time before every dinner, every sitting of
the Senate, every public appearance--in short, before every occasion
on which he had to show himself among his fellow men--even before the
daily dinner with his wife, little Johann, and Ida Jungmann. And when
he left it, the fresh underwear on his body, the faultless elegance of
his clothing, the smell of the brilliantine on his moustache, and the
cool, astringent taste of the mouth-wash he used--all this gave him a
feeling of satisfaction and adequacy, like that of an actor who has
adjusted every detail of his costume and make-up and now steps out
upon the stage. And, in truth, Thomas Buddenbrook’s existence was no
different from that of an actor--an actor whose whole life has become
one long production, which, but for a few brief hours for relaxation,
consumes him unceasingly. In the absence of any ardent objective
interest, his inward impoverishment oppressed him almost without any
relief, with a constant, dull chagrin; while he stubbornly clung to
the determination to be worthily representative, to conceal his inward
decline, and to preserve “the _dehors_” whatever it cost him. All
this made of his life, his every word, his every motion, a constant
irritating pretence.

And this state of things showed itself by peculiar symptoms and strange
whims, which he observed with surprise and disgust. People who have
no rôle to perform before the public, who do not conceive themselves
as acting a part, but as standing unobserved to watch the performance
of others, like to stand with the light at their backs. But Thomas
Buddenbrook could not endure the feeling of standing in the shadow
while the light streamed full upon the faces of those whom he wished to
impress. He wanted his audience, before whom he was to act the rôle of
a social light, a public orator, or a representative business man, to
stand before him in a confused and shadowy mass while a blinding light
played upon his own face. Only this gave him a feeling of separation
and safety, an intoxicating sense of self-production, which was the
atmosphere in which he achieved success. It had come to be the case
that precisely this intoxication was the most bearable condition he
knew. When he stood up at table, wine-glass in hand, to reply to a
toast, with his charming manner, easy gestures, and witty turns of
phrase, which struck unerringly home and released waves of merriment
down the length of the table, then he might feel, as well as seem,
the Thomas Buddenbrook of former days. It was much harder to keep the
mastery over himself when he was sitting idle. For then his weariness
and disgust rose up within him, clouded his eyes, relaxed his bearing
and his facial muscles. At such times, he was possessed by one desire:
to steal away, to be alone, to lie in silence, with his head resting on
a cool pillow.

       *       *       *       *       *

Frau Permaneder had dined that evening in Fishers’ Lane. She was the
only guest, for her daughter, who was to have gone, had visited her
husband that afternoon in the prison, and felt, as she usually did,
exhausted and incapable of further effort. So she had stayed at home.

Frau Antonie had spoken at table of the mental condition of her
son-in-law, which, it appeared, was very bad; and the question arose
whether one might not, with some hope of success, petition the Senate
for a pardon. After dinner the three relatives sat in the living-room,
at the round table beneath the great gas-lamp. The Frau Senator bent
her lovely face over some embroidery, and the gas-light lit up gleams
in her dark hair; Frau Permaneder, with careful fingers, fastened
an enormous red satin bow on to a tiny yellow basket, intended as a
birthday present for a friend. Her glasses were stuck absolutely awry
and useless on her nose. The Senator sat with his legs crossed, partly
turned away from the table, in a large upholstered easy-chair, reading
the paper; he drew in the smoke of his Russian cigarette and let it out
again in a light grey stream between his moustaches.

It was a warm summer Sunday evening. The lofty window was open, and the
lifeless, rather damp air flowed into the room. From where they sat at
the table they could look between the grey gables of intervening houses
at the stars and the slowly moving clouds. There was still light in
Iwersen’s little flower-shop across the way. Further on in the quiet
street a concertina was being played with a good many false notes,
probably by the son of Dankwart the driver. But sometimes the street
was noisy with a troop of sailors, singing, smoking, arm in arm,
going, no doubt, from one doubtful waterside public-house to another
still more doubtful one, and obviously in a jovial mood. Their rough
voices and swinging tread would die off down a cross-street.

The Senator laid down his newspaper, put his glasses in his waistcoat
pocket, and rubbed his hand over his eyes and forehead.

“Feeble--very feeble indeed, this paper,” he said. “I always think when
I read it of what Grandfather used to say about a dish that had no
particular taste or consistency: it tastes as if you were hanging your
tongue out of the window. One, two, three, and you’ve finished with the
whole stupid thing.”

“You are certainly right about that, Tom,” said Frau Permaneder,
letting fall her work and looking at her brother sidewise, past her
glasses but not through them. “What is there in it? I’ve always said,
ever since I was a mere slip of a girl, that this town paper is a
wretched sheet! I read it too, of course, for want of a better one;
but it isn’t so very thrilling to hear that wholesale dealer Consul
So-and-so is going to celebrate his silver wedding! We ought to read
other papers: the _Königsberg Gazette_, or the _Rhenish Gazette_; then
we’d--”

She interrupted herself. She had taken up the paper as she spoke,
and let her eye run contemptuously down the columns. But her glance
was arrested by a short notice of four or five lines, which she read
through, clutching her eye-glasses, her mouth slowly opening. Then she
uttered two shrieks, with the palms of her hands pressed against her
cheeks, and her elbows held out straight.

“Oh, impossible--impossible! Imagine your not seeing that at all. It is
frightful! Oh, _poor_ Armgard! It had to come to her like that!”

Gerda had lifted her head from her work, and Thomas, startled, looked
at his sister. Much upset, Frau Permaneder read the notice aloud, in a
guttural, portentous tone. It came from Rostock, and it said that, the
night before, Herr Ralf von Maiboom, owner of the Pöppenrade estate,
had committed suicide by shooting himself with a revolver, in the study
of the manor-house. “Pecuniary difficulties seem to have been the cause
of the act. Herr von Maiboom leaves a wife and three children.” She
finished and let the paper fall in her lap, then leaned back and looked
at her brother and sister with wide, piteous eyes.

Thomas Buddenbrook had turned away while he listened, and looked past
his sister between the portières, into the dark salon.

“With a revolver?” he asked, after silence had reigned some two
minutes. And then, after another pause, he said in a low voice, slowly
and mockingly: “That is the nobility for you!”

Then he fell again to musing, and the rapidity with which he drew the
ends of his moustaches through his fingers was in remarkable contrast
to the vacant fixity of his gaze. He did not listen to the lamentations
of his sister, or to her speculations on what poor Armgard would do
now. Nor did he notice that Gerda, without turning her head in his
direction, was fixing him with a searching and steady gaze from her
close-set, blue-shadowed eyes.




CHAPTER II


Thomas Buddenbrook did not contemplate the future of little Johann with
the weary dejection which was now his settled mood when he thought
about his own life and his own end. The family feeling which led him
to cherish the past history of his house extended itself even more
strongly into its future; and he was influenced, too, by the loving
and expectant curiosity concentrated upon his son by his family and
his friends and acquaintances, even by the Buddenbrook ladies in Broad
Street. He said to himself that, however hopeless and thwarted he
himself felt, he was still, wherever his son was concerned, capable of
inexhaustible streams of energy, endurance, achievement, success--yes,
that at this one spot his chilled and artificial life could still
be warmed into a genuine and glowing warmth of hopes and fears and
affections.

Perhaps, some day, it would be granted to him to look back upon his
past from a quiet corner and watch the renascence of the old time, the
time of Hanno’s great-grandfather! Was such a hope, after all, entirely
vain? He had felt that the music was his enemy; but it had almost begun
to look as if it had no such important bearing upon the situation.
Granted that the child’s fondness for improvising, without notes, was
evidence of a not quite common gift; in the systematic lessons with
Herr Pfühl he had not showed by any means extraordinary progress. The
preoccupation with music was no doubt due to his mother’s influence;
and it was not surprising that during his early years this influence
had been preponderant. But the time was close at hand when it would be
the father’s turn to influence his son, to draw him over to his side,
to neutralize the feminine influence by introducing a masculine one in
its place. And the Senator determined not to let any such opportunities
pass without improving them.

Hanno was now eleven years old. The preceding Easter, he had, by the
skin of his teeth and by dint of two extra examinations in mathematics
and geography, been passed into the fourth form--as had likewise his
young friend Count Mölln. It had been settled that he should attend the
mercantile side of the school--for it went without saying that he would
be a merchant and take over the family business. When his father asked
him if he felt any inclination toward his future career, he answered
yes--a simple, unadorned, embarrassed “yes,” which the Senator tried to
make a little more convincing by asking leading questions, but mostly
without success.

If the Senator had had two sons, he would assuredly have allowed the
second to go through the gymnasium and study. But the firm demanded
a successor. And, besides, he was convinced he was doing the boy a
kindness in relieving him of the unnecessary Greek. He was of opinion
that the mercantile course was the easier to master, and that Hanno
would therefore come through with greater credit and less strain if he
took it, considering his defects--his slowness of comprehension, his
absent, dreaming ways, and his physical delicacy, which often obliged
him to be absent from school. If little Johann Buddenbrook were to
achieve the position in life to which he was called, they must be
mindful before everything else, by care and cherishing on the one hand,
by sensible toughening on the other, to strengthen his far from robust
constitution.

Hanno had grown sturdier in the past year; but, despite his blue sailor
suit, he still looked a little strange in the playground of the school,
by contrast with the blond Scandinavian type that predominated there.
He now wore his brown hair parted on the side and brushed away from his
white forehead. But it still inclined to fall in soft ringlets over
the temples; and his eyes were as golden-brown as ever, and as veiled
with their brown lashes. His legs, in long black stockings, and his
arms, in the loose quilted blue sleeves of his suit, were small and
soft like a girl’s, and he had, like his mother, the blue shadows under
his eyes. And still, in those eyes, especially when they gave a side
glance, as they often did, there was that timid and defensive look;
while the mouth closed with the old, woebegone expression which he
had had even as a baby, or went slightly crooked when he explored the
recesses of his mouth for a defective tooth. And there would come upon
his face when he did this a look as if he were cold.

Dr. Langhals had now entirely taken over Dr. Grabow’s practice and had
become the Buddenbrook family physician. From him they learned the
reason why the child’s skin was so pale and his strength so inadequate.
It seemed that Hanno’s organism did not produce red corpuscles in
sufficient number. But there was a remedy for this defect: cod-liver
oil, which, accordingly, Dr. Langhals prescribed in great quantities:
good, thick, greasy, yellow cod-liver oil, to be taken from a porcelain
spoon twice a day. The Senator gave the order, and Ida Jungmann, with
stern affection, saw it carried out. In the beginning, to be sure,
Hanno threw up after each spoonful. His stomach seemed to have a
prejudice against the good cod-liver oil. But he got used to it in
the end--and if you held your breath and chewed a piece of rye bread
immediately after, the nausea was not so severe.

His other troubles were all consequent upon this lack of red
corpuscles, it appeared: secondary phenomena, Dr. Langhals called them,
looking at his fingernails. But it was necessary to attack these other
enemies ruthlessly. As for the teeth, for these Herr Brecht and his
Josephus lived in Mill Street: to take care of them, to fill them; when
necessary, to extract them. And for the digestion there was castor-oil,
thick, clear castor-oil that slipped down your throat like a lizard,
after which you smelled and tasted it for three days, sleeping and
waking. Oh, why were all these remedies of such surpassing nastiness?
One single time--Hanno had been rather ill, and his heart action had
shown unusual irregularity--Dr. Langhals had with some misgiving
prescribed a remedy which little Hanno had actually enjoyed, and which
had done him a world of good. These were arsenic pills. But however
much he asked to have the dose repeated--for he felt almost a yearning
for these sweet, soothing little pills--Dr. Langhals never prescribed
them again.

Castor-oil and cod-liver oil were excellent things. But Dr. Langhals
was quite at one with the Senator in the view that they could not of
themselves make a sound and sturdy citizen of little Johann if he
did not do his part. There was gymnasium drill once a week in the
summer, out on the Castle Field, where the youth of the city were
given the opportunity to develop their strength and courage, their
skill and presence of mind, under the guidance of Herr Fritsche, the
drill-master. But to his father’s annoyance, Hanno showed a distinct
distaste for the manly sports--a silent, pronounced, almost haughty
opposition. Why was it that he cared so little for playmates of his
own class and age, with whom he would have to live, and was for ever
sticking about with this little unwashed Kai, who was a good child, of
course, but not precisely a proper friend for the future? Somehow or
other a boy must know from the beginning how to gain the confidence
and respect of his comrades, upon whose good opinion of him he will
be dependent for the rest of his life! There were, on the other hand,
the two sons of Consul Hagenström, two fine strapping boys, twelve
and fourteen years old, strong and full of spirits, who instituted
prize-fights in the neighbouring woods, were the best gymnasts in
the school, swam like otters, smoked cigars, and were ready for any
deviltry. They were popular, feared, and respected. Their cousins,
the two sons of Dr. Moritz Hagenström, the State Attorney, were of a
more delicate build, and gentler ways. They distinguished themselves
in scholarship, and were model pupils: zealous, industrious, quiet,
attentive, devoured by the ambition to bring home a report card marked
“Number 1.” They achieved their ambition, and were respected by their
stupider and lazier colleagues. But--not to speak of his masters--what
must his fellow-pupils think of Hanno, who was not only a very mediocre
scholar, but a weakling into the bargain; who tried to get out of
everything for which a scrap of courage, strength, skill, and energy
were needed? When Senator Buddenbrook passed the little balcony on his
way to his dressing-room, he would hear from Hanno’s room, which was
the middle one of the three on that floor since he had grown too large
to sleep with Ida Jungmann, the notes of the harmonium, or the hushed
and mysterious voice of Kai, Count Mölln telling a story.

Kai avoided the drill classes, because he detested the discipline
which had to be observed there. “No, Hanno,” he said, “I’m not going.
Are you? Deuce take it! Anything that would be any fun is forbidden.”
Expressions like “deuce take it” he got from his father. Hanno
answered: “If Herr Fritsche ever one single day smelled of anything but
beer and sweat, I might consider it. Don’t talk about it, Kai. Go on.
Tell that one about the ring you got out of the bog--you didn’t finish
it.” “Very good,” said Kai. “But when I nod, then you must play.” And
he went on with his story.

If he was to be believed, he had once, on a warm evening, in a strange,
unrecognizable region, slid down a slippery, immeasurable cliff, at the
foot of which, by the flickering, livid light from will-o’-the-wisps,
he saw a black marsh, from which silvery bubbles mounted with a hollow
gurgling sound. One of these bubbles, which kept coming up near the
bank, took the form of a ring when it burst; and he had succeeded in
seizing it, after long and dangerous efforts--after which it burst no
more, but remained in his grasp, a firm and solid ring, which he put
on his finger. He rightly ascribed unusual powers to this ring; for by
its help he climbed up the slippery cliff and saw, a little way off
in the rosy mist, a black castle. It was guarded to the teeth, but he
had forced an entrance, always by the help of the ring, and performed
miracles of rescue and deliverance. All this Hanno accompanied with
sweet chords on his harmonium. Sometimes, if the difficulties were
not too great, these stories were acted in the marionette theatre, to
musical accompaniment. But Hanno attended the drill class only on his
father’s express command--and then Kai went too.

It was the same with the skating in the wintertime, and with the
bathing in summer at the wooden bathing establishment of Herr Asmussen,
down on the river. “Bathing and swimming--let the boy have bathing
and swimming--he must bathe and swim,” Dr. Langhals had said. And the
Senator was entirely of the same opinion. But Hanno had a reason for
absenting himself from the bathing, as well as from the skating and the
drill class. The two sons of Consul Hagenström, who took part in all
such exercises with great skill and credit, singled Hanno out at once.
And though they lived in his own grandmother’s house, that fact did not
prevent them from making his life miserable. They lost no opportunity
of tormenting him. At drill they pinched him and derided him. They
rolled him in the dirty snow at the ice-rink; and in the water they
came up to him with horrid noises. Hanno did not try to escape. It
would have been useless anyhow. He stood, with his girlish arms, up to
his middle in the turbid water of the pool, which had large patches of
duck-weed growing on it, and awaited his tormentors with a scowl--a
dark look and twisted lips. They, sure of their prey, came on with long
splashing strides. They had muscular arms, these two young Hagenströms,
and they clutched him round his body and ducked him--ducked him a good
long time, so that he swallowed rather a lot of the dirty water and
gasped for breath a long time after. One single time he was a little
avenged. One afternoon the two Hagenströms were holding him down under
the water, when one of them suddenly gave a shriek of pain and fury
and lifted his plump leg, from which drops of blood were oozing. Beside
him rose the head of Kai, Count Mölln, who had somehow got hold of the
price of admission, swum up invisible in the water, and bitten young
Hagenström--bitten with all his teeth into his leg, like a furious
little dog. His blue eyes flashed through the red-blond hair that hung
down wet all over his face. He paid richly for the deed, did the little
Count, and left the swimming-pool much the worse for the encounter. But
Consul Hagenström’s son limped perceptibly when he went home.

Nourishing remedies and physical exercise were the basis of the
treatment calculated to turn Senator Buddenbrook’s son into a strong
and healthy lad. But no less painstakingly did the Senator strive to
influence his mind and give him lively impressions of the practical
world in which he was to live.

He began gradually to introduce him into the sphere of his future
activities. He took him on business expeditions down to the harbour
and let him stand by on the quay while he spoke to the dockers in
a mixture of Danish and dialect or gave orders to the men who with
hollow, long-drawn cries were hauling up the sacks to the granary
floor. He took him into dark little warehouse offices to confer with
superintendents. All this life of the harbours, ships, sheds, and
granaries, where it smelled of butter, fish, sea-water, tar, and
greasy iron, had been to Thomas Buddenbrook from childhood up the
most fascinating thing on earth. But his son gave no spontaneous
expression of his own enchantment with the sight; and so the father
was fain to arouse it in him. “What are the names of the boats that
ply to Copenhagen? The _Naiad_, the _Halmstadt_, the _Friederike
Överdieck_--why, if you know those, my son, at least that’s something!
You’ll soon learn the others. Some of those people over there hauling
up the grain have the same name as you--they were named after your
grandfather, as you were. And their children are often named after
me--or Mamma. We give them little presents every year.--Now this next
granary--we don’t stop at it; we go past and don’t talk to the men; it
is a rival business.”

“Should you like to come, Hanno?” he said another time. “There is a
ship of our line being launched to-day, and I shall christen it. Do you
want to go?” And Hanno signified that he wanted to go. He went with his
father, listened to his speech, and saw him break a bottle of champagne
on the prow of the ship; saw how she glided down the ways, which had
been smeared with green soap, and into the water.

On certain days of the year, as New Year’s and Palm Sunday, when
there were confirmations, Senator Buddenbrook drove out on a round
of visits to particular houses in which he had social relations. His
wife did not like these visits, and excused herself on the ground of
headache and nervousness, so Hanno would be asked to go along in her
place; and here, too, he signified his desire to go. He climbed into
the carriage beside his father, and sat silent by his side in the
reception-rooms, watching his easy, tactful, assured, and carefully
graduated manner toward their hosts. He heard District Commander
Colonel Herr von Rinnlingen tell his father how greatly he appreciated
the honour of his visit, and saw how his father, in reply, put on an
air of amiable depreciation and laid his arm an instant across the
Colonel’s shoulders. In another place the same remark was made, and he
received it with quiet seriousness, and in a third with an ironically
exaggerated compliment in return. All this with a floridity of speech
and gesture which he obviously liked to produce for the admiration of
his son, and from which he promised himself the most edifying results.

But the little boy saw more than he should have seen; the shy,
gold-brown, blue-shadowy eyes observed too well. He saw not only the
unerring charm which his father exercised upon everybody: he saw as
well, with strange and anguished penetration, how cruelly hard it
was upon him. He saw how his father, paler and more silent after each
visit, would lean back in his corner of the carriage with closed
eyes and reddened eyelids; he realized with a sort of horror that on
the threshold of the next house a mask would glide over his face, a
galvanized activity take hold of the weary frame. Thus the visits, the
social intercourse with one’s kind, instead of giving little Johann,
quite simply, the idea that one has practical interests in common with
one’s fellow men, which one looks after oneself, expecting others to
do the same, appeared to him like an end in themselves; instead of
straightforward and single-minded participation in the common business,
he saw his father perform an artificial and complicated part, by dint
of a fearful effort and an exaggerated, consuming virtuosity. And when
he thought that some day he should be expected to perform the same
part, under the gaze of the whole community, Hanno shut his eyes and
shivered with rebellion and disgust.

Ah, that was not the effect Thomas Buddenbrook looked for from the
influence of his own personality upon his son’s! What he had hoped to
do was to stimulate self-confidence in the boy, and a sense of the
practical side of life. This was what he had in mind--and nothing else.

“You seem to enjoy good living, my boy,” said he, when Hanno asked for
a second portion of the sweet or a half-cup of coffee after dinner.
“Well, then, you must become a merchant and earn a lot of money. Should
you like to do that?” Little Johann said he would.

Sometimes when the family were invited to dinner, Aunt Antonie or Uncle
Christian would begin to tease Aunt Clothilde and imitate her meek,
drawling accents. Then little Johann, stimulated by the heavy red wine
which they gave him, would ape his elders and make some remarks to
Aunt Clothilde in the same vein. And then how Thomas Buddenbrook would
laugh! He would give a loud, hearty, jovial roar, like a man put in
high spirits by some unexpected piece of good luck, and join in on
his son’s side against poor Aunt Clothilde, though for his own part he
had long since given up these witticisms at the expense of his poor
relative. It was so easy, so safe, to tease poor, limited, modest,
lean and hungry Clothilde, that, harmless though it was, he felt it
rather beneath him. But he wished he did not, for it was the same story
over again: too many considerations, too many scruples. Why must he be
for ever opposing these scruples against the hard, practical affairs
of life? Why could he never learn that it was possible to grasp a
situation, to see around it, as it were, and still to turn it to one’s
own advantage without any feeling of shame? For precisely this, he said
to himself, is the essence of a capacity for practical life!

And thus, how happy, how delighted, how hopeful he felt whenever he saw
even the least small sign in little Johann of a capacity for practical
life!




CHAPTER III


The extended summer trip which had once been customary with the
Buddenbrooks had now been given up for some years. Indeed, when the
Frau Senator, in the previous spring, had wished to make her old father
in Amsterdam a visit and play a few duets with him, the Senator had
given his consent rather curtly. But it had become the rule for Gerda,
little Johann, and Fräulein Jungmann to spend the holidays at the
Kurhouse, in Travemünde, for the sake of Hanno’s health.

Summer holidays at the seashore! Did anybody really understand the joy
of that? After the dragging monotony and worry of the endless school
terms came four weeks of peaceful, care-free seclusion, full of the
good smell of seaweed and the whispering of the gentle surf. Four
weeks! At the beginning it seemed endless; you could not believe that
it would end; it was almost indelicate to suggest such a thing! Little
Johann could not comprehend the crudity of a master who could say:
“After the holidays we shall take up our work at--” this or that point!
After the holidays! He appeared to be already rejoicing in the thought,
this strange man in the shiny worsted suit! After the holidays! What a
thought! And how far, far off in the grey distance lay everything that
was on the other side of the holidays, on the other side of those four
weeks!

The inspection of the school report, with its record of examinations
well or badly got through, would be at last over, and the journey in
the overcrowded carriage. Hanno would wake the first morning in his
room at the Kurhouse, in one of the Swiss cottages that were united
by a small gallery to the main building and the pastry-shop. He would
have a vague feeling of happiness that mounted in his brain and made
his heart contract. He would open his eyes and look with eager pleasure
at the old-fashioned furniture of the cleanly little room. A moment
of dazed and sleepy bliss: then he would be conscious that he was in
Travemünde--for four immeasurable weeks in Travemünde. He did not stir.
He lay on his back in the narrow yellow wooden bed, the linen of which
was extremely thin and soft with age. He even shut his eyes again and
felt his chest rising in deep, slow breaths of happy anticipation.

The room lay in yellow daylight that came in through the striped blind.
Everything was still--Mamma and Ida Jungmann were asleep. Nothing was
to be heard but a measured, peaceful sound which meant that the boy was
raking the gravelled paths of the Kurgarden below, and the buzzing of
a fly that had got between the blind and the window and was storming
the pane--you could see his shadow shooting about in long zigzag lines.
Peace! Only the sound of the rake and the dull buzzing noise. This
gently animated quiet filled little Johann with a priceless sensation:
the feeling of quiet, well-cared-for, elegant repose which was the
atmosphere of the resort, and which he loved better than anything
else. Thank God, none of the shiny worsted-coats who were the chosen
representatives of grammar and the rule of three on this earth was in
the least likely to come here--for here it was rather exclusive and
expensive.

An access of joy made him spring up and run barefoot to the window. He
put up the blind and unfastened the white-painted hook of the window;
and as he opened it the fly escaped and flew away over the flower-beds
and the gravelled paths. The music pavilion, standing in a half-circle
of beech-trees opposite the main building, was still empty and quiet.
The Leuchtenfield, which took its name from the lighthouse that stood
on it, somewhere off to the right, stretched its extent of short sparse
grass under the pale sky, to a point where the grass passed into a
growth of tall, coarse water-plants; and then came the sand, with its
rows of little wooden huts and tall wicker beach-chairs looking out to
the sea. It lay there, the sea, in peaceful morning light, striped blue
and green; and a steamer came in from Copenhagen, between the two red
buoys that marked its course, and one did not need to know whether it
was the _Naiad_ or the _Friederike Överdieck_. Hanno Buddenbrook drew
in a deep, quiet, blissful breath of the spicy air from the sea and
greeted her tenderly, with a loving, speechless, grateful look.

Then the day began, the first of those paltry twenty-eight days,
which seemed in the beginning like an eternity of bliss, and which
flew by with such desperate haste after the first two or three. They
breakfasted on the balcony or under the great chestnut tree near the
children’s playground, where the swing hung. Everything--the smell of
the freshly washed table-cloth when the waiter shook it out, the tissue
paper serviettes, the unaccustomed bread, the eggs they ate out of
little metal cups, with ordinary spoons instead of bone ones like those
at home--all this, and everything, enchanted little Johann.

And all that followed was so easy and care-free--such a wonderfully
idle and protected life. There was the forenoon on the beach, while
the Kurhouse band gave its morning programme; the lying and resting at
the foot of the beach-chair, the delicious, dreamy play with the soft
sand that did not make you dirty, while you let your eyes rove idly
and lose themselves in the green and blue infinity beyond. There was
the air that swept in from that infinity--strong, free, wild, gently
sighing and deliciously scented; it seemed to enfold you round, to veil
your hearing and make you pleasantly giddy, and blessedly submerge all
consciousness of time and space. And the bathing here was a different
affair altogether from that in Herr Asmussen’s establishment. There was
no duck-weed here, and the light green water foamed away in crystalline
clearness when you stirred it up. Instead of a slimy wooden floor there
was soft sand to caress the foot--and Consul Hagenström’s sons were
far away, in Norway or the Tyrol. The Consul loved to make an extended
journey in the holidays, and--why shouldn’t he?

A walk followed, to warm oneself up, along the beach to Sea-gull Rock
or Ocean Temple, a little lunch by the beach-chair; then the time came
to go up to one’s room for an hour’s rest, before making a toilette
for the table-d’hôte. The table-d’hôte was very gay, for this was a
good season at the baths, and the great dining-room was filled with
acquaintances of the Buddenbrooks, Hamburg families, and even some
Russians and English people. A black-clad gentleman sat at a tiny table
and served the soup out of a silver tureen. There were four courses,
and the food tasted nicer and more seasoned than that at home, and
many people drank champagne. These were the single gentlemen who did
not allow their business to keep them chained in town all the week,
and who got up some little games of roulette after dinner: Consul
Peter Döhlmann, who had left his daughter at home, and told such
extremely funny stories that the ladies from Hamburg laughed till
their sides ached and they begged him for mercy; Senator Dr. Cremer,
the old Superintendent of Police; Uncle Christian, and his friend Dr.
Gieseke, who was also without his family, and paid everything for
Uncle Christian. After dinner, the grown-ups drank coffee under the
awnings of the pastry-shop, and the band played, and Hanno sat on a
chair close to the steps of the pavilion and listened unwearied. He
was settled for the afternoon. There was a shooting-gallery in the
Kurgarden, and at the right of the Swiss cottage were the stables,
with horses and donkeys, and the cows whose foaming, fragrant milk one
drank warm every evening. One could go walking in the little town or
along the front; one could go out to the Prival in a boat and look for
amber on the beach, or play croquet in the children’s playground, or
listen to Ida Jungmann reading aloud, sitting on a bench on the wooded
hillside where hung the great bell for the table-d’hôte. But best of
all was it to go back to the beach and sit in the twilight on the end
of the breakwater, with your face turned to the open horizon. Great
ships passed by, and you signalled them with your handkerchief; and you
listened to the little waves slapping softly against the stones; and
the whole space about you was filled with a soft and mighty sighing.
It spoke so benignly to little Johann! it bade him close his eyes, it
told him that all was well. But just then Ida would say, “Come, little
Hanno. It’s supper-time. We must go. If you were to sit here and go to
sleep, you’d die.” How calm his heart felt, how evenly it beat, after
a visit to the sea! Then he had his supper in his room--for his mother
ate later, down in the glass verandah--and drank milk or malt extract,
and lay down in his little bed, between the soft old linen sheets, and
almost at once sleep overcame him, and he slept, to the subdued rhythm
of the evening concert and the regular pulsations of his quiet heart.

On Sunday the Senator appeared, with the other gentlemen who had
stopped in town during the week, and remained until Monday morning.
Ices and champagne were served at the table-d’hôte, and there were
donkey-rides and sailing-parties out to the open sea. Still, little
Johann did not care much for these Sundays. The peaceful isolation
of the bathing-place was broken in upon. A crowd of townsfolk--good
middle-class trippers, Ida Jungmann called them--populated the
Kurgarden and crowded the beach, drank coffee and listened to the
music. Hanno would have liked to stay in his room until these
kill-joys in their Sunday clothes went away again. No, he was glad
when everything returned to its regular course on Monday--and he felt
relieved to feel his father’s eyes no more upon him.

Two weeks had passed; and Hanno said to himself, and to every one
who would listen to him, that there was still as much time left as
the whole of the Michaelmas holidays amounted to. It consoled him to
say this, but after all it was a specious consolation, for the crest
of the holidays had been reached, and from now on they were going
downhill--so quickly, so frightfully quickly, that he would have liked
to cling to every moment, not to let it escape; to lengthen every
breath he drew of the sea air; to taste every second of his joy.

But the time went on, relentless: in rain and sun, sea-wind and
land-wind, long spells of brooding warmth and endless noisy storms
that could not get away out to sea and went on for ever so long. There
were days on which the north-east wind filled the bay with dark green
floods, covered the beach with seaweed, mussels, and jelly-fish, and
threatened the bathing-huts. The turbid, heavy sea was covered far
and wide with foam. The mighty waves came on in awful, awe-inspiring
calm, and the under side of each was a sharp metallic green; then they
crashed with an ear-splitting roar, hissing and thundering along the
sand. There were other days when the west wind drove back the sea for
a long distance, exposing a gently rolling beach and naked sand-banks
everywhere, while the rain came down in torrents. Heaven, earth, and
sea flowed into each other, and the driving wind carried the rain
against the panes so that not drops but rivers flowed down, and made
them impossible to see through. Then Hanno stayed in the salon of the
Kurhouse and played on the little piano that was used to play waltzes
and schottisches for the balls and was not so good for improvising on
as the piano at home: still one could sometimes get amusing effects
out of its muffled and clacking keys. And there were still other days,
dreamy, blue, windless, broodingly warm, when the blue flies buzzed
in the sun above the Leuchtenfield, and the sea lay silent and like a
mirror, without stir or breath. When there were only three days left
Hanno said to himself, and to everybody else, that the time remaining
was just as long as a Whitsuntide holiday; but, incontestable as this
reckoning was, it did not convince even himself. He knew now that the
man in the worsted coat was right, and that they would, in very truth,
begin again where they had left off, and go on to this and that.

The laden carriage stood before the door. The day had come. Early in
the morning Hanno had said good-bye to sea and strand. Now he said it
to the waiters as they received their fees, to the music pavilion, the
rose-beds, and the whole long summer as well. And amid the bows of the
hotel servants the carriage drove off.

They passed the avenue that led to the little town, and rolled along
the front. Ida Jungmann sat, white-haired, bright-eyed, and angular,
opposite Hanno on the back seat, and he squeezed his head into the
corner and looked past her out of the window. The morning sky was
overcast; the Trave was full of little waves that hurried before the
wind. Now and then rain-drops spattered the pane. At the farther end
of the front, people sat before their house doors and mended nets;
barefoot children ran past, and stared inquisitively at the occupants
of the carriage. _They_ did not need to go away!

As they left the last houses behind, Hanno bent forward once more to
look after the lighthouse; then he leaned back and closed his eyes.
“We’ll come back again next year, darling,” Ida Jungmann said in her
grave, soothing voice. It needed only that to make Hanno’s chin tremble
and the tears run down beneath his long dark lashes.

His face and hands were brown from the sea air. But if his stay at the
baths had been intended to harden him, to give him more resistance,
more energy, more endurance, then it had failed of its purpose; and
Hanno himself was aware of this lamentable fact. These four weeks of
sheltered peace and adoration of the sea had not hardened him: they had
made him softer than ever, more dreamy and more sensitive. He would
be no better able to endure the rigours of Herr Tietge’s class. The
thought of the rules and history dates which he had to get by heart
had not lost its power to make him shudder; he knew the feeling too
well, and how he would fling them away in desperation and go to bed,
and suffer next day the torments of the unprepared. And he would be
exactly as much afraid of catastrophes at the recitation hour, of his
enemies the Hagenströms, and of his father’s injunctions not to be
faint-hearted whatever else he was.

But he felt cheered a little by the fresh morning drive through flooded
country roads, amid the twitterings of birds. He thought of seeing
Kai again, and Herr Pfühl; of his music lessons, the piano and his
harmonium. And as the morrow was Sunday, a whole day still intervened
between him and the first lesson-hour. He could feel a few grains
of sand from the beach, still inside his buttoned boot--how lovely!
He would ask old Grobleben to leave them there. Let it all begin
again--the worsted-coats, the Hagenströms, and the rest. He had what
he had. When the waves of tribulation went over him once more he would
think of the sea and of the Kurgarden, and of the sound made by the
little waves, coming hither out of the mysterious slumbering distance.
One single memory of the sound they made as they plashed against the
breakwater could make him oppose an invincible front to all the pains
and penalties of his life.

Then came the ferry, and Israelsdorfer Avenue, Jerusalem Hill, and the
Castle Field, on the right side of which rose the walls of the prison
where Uncle Weinschenk was. Then the carriage rolled along Castle
Street and over the Koberg, crossed Broad Street, and braked down the
steep decline of Fishers’ Lane. There was the red house-front with the
bow-window and the white caryatides; and as they went from the midday
warmth of the street into the coolness of the stone-flagged entry the
Senator, with his pen in his hand, came out of the office to greet them.

Slowly, slowly, with secret tears, little Johann learned to live
without the sea; to lead an existence that was frightened and bored by
turns; to keep out of the way of the Hagenströms; to console himself
with Kai and Herr Pfühl and his music.

The Broad Street Buddenbrooks and Aunt Clothilde, directly they saw
him again, asked him how he liked school after the holidays. They
asked it teasingly, with that curiously superior and slighting air
which grown people assume toward children, as if none of their affairs
could possibly be worthy of serious consideration; but Hanno was proof
against their questions.

Three or four days after the home-coming, Dr. Langhals, the family
physician, appeared in Fishers’ Lane to observe the results of the
cure. He had a long consultation with the Frau Senator, and then Hanno
was summoned and put, half undressed, through a long examination of
his “status praesens,” as Dr. Langhals called it, looking at his
fingernails. He tested Hanno’s heart action and measured his chest and
his lamentable muscular development. He inquired particularly after
all his functions, and lastly, with a hypodermic syringe, took a drop
of blood from Hanno’s slender arm to be tested at home. He seemed, in
general, not very well satisfied.

“We’ve got rather brown,” he said, putting his arm around Hanno as he
stood before him. He arranged his small black-felled hand upon the
boy’s shoulder, and looked up at the Frau Senator and Ida Jungmann.
“But we still look very down in the mouth.”

“He is homesick for the sea,” said Gerda Buddenbrook.

“Oh, so you like being there?” asked Dr. Langhals, looking with his
shallow eyes into Hanno’s face. Hanno coloured. What did Dr. Langhals
mean by his question, to which he plainly expected an answer? A
fantastic hope rose up in him, inspired by the belief that nothing was
impossible to God--despite all the worsted-coated men there were in the
world.

“Yes,” he brought out, with his wide eyes full upon Dr. Langhals’ face.
But after all, it seemed, the physician had nothing particular in mind
when he asked the question.

“Well, the effect of the bathing and the good air is bound to show
itself in time,” Dr. Langhals said. He tapped little Johann on the
shoulder and then put him away, with a nod toward the Frau Senator and
Ida Jungmann--a superior, benevolent nod, the nod of the omniscient
physician, used to have people hanging on his lips. He got up, and the
consultation was at an end.

It was Aunt Antonie who best understood his yearning for the sea, and
the wound in his heart that healed so slowly and was so likely to bleed
afresh under the strain of everyday life. Aunt Antonie loved to hear
him talk about Travemünde, and entered freely into his longings and
enthusiasm.

“Yes, Hanno,” she said, “the truth is the truth, and Travemünde is and
always will be a beautiful spot. Till I go down to my grave I shall
remember the weeks I spent there when I was a slip of a girl--and such
a silly young girl! I lived with people I was fond of, and who seemed
to care for me; I was a pretty young thing in those days,--though
I’m an old woman now--and full of life and high spirits. They were
splendid people, I can tell you, respectable and kind-hearted and
straight-thinking; and they were cleverer and better educated, too,
than any I’ve known since, and they had more enthusiasm. Yes, my life
seemed very full when I lived with them, and I learned a great deal
which I’ve never forgotten--information, beliefs, opinions, ways of
looking at things. If other things hadn’t interfered--as all sorts
of things did, the way life does, you know--I might have learned a
great deal more from them. Shall I tell you how silly I was in those
days? I thought I could get the pretty star out of the jelly-fish, and
I carried a quantity home with me and spread them in the sun on the
balcony to dry. But when I looked at them again, of course there was
nothing but a big wet spot, and a smell of rotten seaweed.”




CHAPTER IV


In the beginning of the year 1873 the Senate pardoned Hugo Weinschenk,
and the former Director left prison, six months before his time was up.

Frau Permaneder, if she had told the truth, would have admitted that
she was not so very glad. She had been living peacefully with her
daughter and granddaughter in Linden Place, and had for society the
house in Fishers’ Lane and her friend Armgard von Maiboom, who had
lived in the town since her husband’s death. Frau Antonie had long
been aware that there was no place for her outside the walls of her
native city. She had her Munich memories, her weak digestion, and
an increasing need of quiet and repose; and she felt not the least
inclination to move to a large city of the united Fatherland, still
less to migrate to another country.

“My dear child,” she said to her daughter, “I must ask you something
very serious. Do you still love your husband with your whole heart?
Would you follow him with your child wherever he went in the wide
world--as, unfortunately, it is not possible for him to remain here?”

And Frau Erica Weinschenk, amid tears that might have meant anything
at all, replied just as dutifully as Tony herself, in similar
circumstances, had once replied to the same question, in the villa
outside Hamburg. So it was necessary to contemplate a parting in the
near future.

On a day almost as dreadful as the day when he had been arrested,
Frau Permaneder brought her son-in-law from the prison, in a closed
carriage, to her house in Linden Place. And there he stayed, after he
had greeted his wife and child in a dazed, helpless way, in the room
that had been prepared for him, smoking from early to late, without
going out, without even taking his meals with his family--a broken
grey-haired man.

He had always had a very strong constitution, and the prison life could
hardly have impaired his physical health. But his condition was, none
the less, pitiable in the extreme. This man had in all probability done
no more than his business colleagues did every day and thought nothing
of; if he had not been caught, he would have gone on his way with head
erect and conscience clear. Yet it was dreadful to see how his ruin as
a citizen, the judicial correction, and the three years’ imprisonment,
had operated to break down his morale. His testimony before the court
had been given with the most sincere conviction; and people who
understood the technicalities of the case supported his contention
that he had merely executed a bold manœuvre for the credit of his firm
and himself--a manœuvre known in the business world as usance. The
lawyers who had convicted him knew, in his opinion, nothing whatever
about such things and lived in quite a different world. But their
conviction, endorsed by the governing power of the state, had shattered
his self-esteem to such a degree that he could not look anybody in the
face. Gone was his elastic tread, the way he had of wriggling at the
waist of his frock-coat and balancing with his fists and rolling his
eyes about. Gone was the ignorant self-assurance with which he had
delivered his uninformed opinions and put his questions. The change was
such that his family shuddered at it--and indeed it was frightful to
see such cowardice, dejection, and lack of self-respect.

Herr Hugo Weinschenk spent eight or ten days doing nothing but smoking:
then he began to read the papers and write letters. The consequence
of the letters was that after another eight or ten days he explained
vaguely that there seemed to be a position for him in London, whither
he wished to travel alone to arrange matters personally, and then to
send for wife and child.

Accompanied by Erica, he drove to the station in a closed carriage and
departed without having once seen any other members of the family.

Some days later a letter addressed to his wife arrived from Hamburg.
It said that he had made up his mind not to send for his wife and
child, or even to communicate with them, until such time as he could
offer them a life fitting for them to live. And this letter was
the very last sign of life from Hugo Weinschenk. No one from then
henceforward heard anything from him. The experienced Frau Permaneder
made several energetic attempts to get into touch with him, in order,
as she importantly explained, to get evidence upon which to sue him for
divorce on the ground of wilful desertion. But he was, and remained,
missing. And thus it came about that Erica Weinschenk and her small
daughter Elisabeth remained now, as before, with Erica’s mother, in the
light and airy apartment in Linden Place.




CHAPTER V


The marriage of which little Johann had been the issue had never lost
charm in the town as a subject for conversation. Since both of the
parties to it were still felt to have something queer about them,
the union itself must partake of that character of the strange and
uncanny which they each possessed. To get behind it even a little, to
look beneath the scanty outward facts to the bottom of this relation,
seemed a difficult, but certainly a stimulating task. And in bedrooms
and sitting-rooms, in clubs and casinos, yes, even on ’Change itself,
people still talked about Gerda and Thomas Buddenbrook.

How had these two come to marry, and what sort of relationship was
theirs? Everybody remembered the sudden resolve of Thomas Buddenbrook
eighteen years ago, when he was thirty years old. “This one or no
one,” he had said. It must have been something of the same sort with
Gerda, for it was well known that she had refused everybody up to her
twenty-seventh year, and then forthwith lent an ear to this particular
wooer. It must have been a love match, people said: they granted that
the three hundred thousand thaler had probably not played much of a
rôle. But of that which any ordinary person would call love, there was
very little to be seen between the pair. They had displayed from the
very beginning a correct, respectful politeness, quite extraordinary
between husband and wife. And what was still more odd it seemed not to
proceed out of any inner estrangement, but out of a peculiar, silent,
deep mutual knowledge. This had not at all altered with the years. The
one change due to the passage of time was an outward one. It was only
this: that the difference in years began to make itself plainly visible.

When you saw them together you felt that here was a rapidly aging
man, already a little heavy, with his young wife at his side. Thomas
Buddenbrook was going off very much, and this despite the now almost
laughable vanity by which he kept himself up. On the other hand, Gerda
had scarcely altered in these eighteen years. She seemed to be, as it
were, conserved in the nervous coldness which was the essence of her
being. Her lovely dark-red hair had kept its colour, the white skin
its smooth texture, the figure its lofty aristocratic slimness. In the
corners of her rather too small and close-set brown eyes were the same
blue shadows. You could not trust those eyes. Their look was strange,
and what was written in it impossible to decipher. This woman’s
personality was so cool, so reserved, so repressed, so distant, she
showed so little human warmth for anything but her music--how could one
help feeling a vague mistrust? People unearthed wise old saws on the
subject of human nature and applied them to Senator Buddenbrook’s wife.
Still waters were known to run deep. Some people were slyer than foxes.
And as they searched for an explanation, their limited imaginations
soon led them to the theory that the lovely Gerda was deceiving her
aging husband.

They watched, and before long they felt sure that Gerda’s conduct, to
put it mildly, passed the bounds of propriety in her relations with
Herr Lieutenant von Throta.

Renée Maria von Throta came from the Rhineland. He was second
lieutenant of one of the infantry battalions quartered in the town.
The red collar went well with his black hair, which he wore parted on
the side and combed back in a high, thick curling crest from his white
forehead. He looked big and strong enough, but was most unmilitary in
speech and manner. He had a way of running one hand in between the
buttons of his half-open undress coat and of sitting with his head
supported on the back of his hand. His bows were devoid of military
stiffness, and you could not hear his heels click together as he made
them. And he had no more respect for his uniform than for ordinary
clothes. Even the slim youthful moustaches that ran slantwise down to
the corners of his mouth had neither point nor consistency; they only
confirmed the unmartial impression he gave. The most remarkable thing
about him was his eyes, so large, black, and extraordinarily brilliant
that they seemed like glowing bottomless depths when he visited
anything or anybody with his glance which was sparkling, ardent, or
languishing by turns.

He had probably gone into the army against his will, or at least
without any inclination for it; and despite his physique he was no
good in the service. He was unregarded by his comrades, and shared
but little in their interests--the interests and pleasures of young
officers lately back from a victorious campaign. And they found him a
disagreeable oddity, who did not care for horses or hunting or play
or women. All his thoughts were bent on music. He was to be seen at
all the concerts, with his languishing eyes and his lax, unmilitary,
theatrical attitudes; on the other hand he despised the club and the
casino and never went near them.

He made the duty calls which his position demanded; but the Buddenbrook
house was the only one at which he visited--too much, people thought,
and the Senator himself thought so too.

No one dreamed what went on in Thomas Buddenbrook. No one must
guess. But it was just this keeping everybody in ignorance of his
mortification, his hatred, his powerlessness, that was so cruelly hard!
People were beginning to find him a little ludicrous; but perhaps their
laugh would have turned to pity if they had even dimly suspected how
much he was on his guard against their laughter! He had seen it coming
long before, he had felt it beforehand, before any one else had such
an idea in his head. His much-carped-at vanity had its source largely
in this fear. He had been first to see, with dismay, the growing
disparity between himself and his lovely wife, on whom the years had
not laid a finger. And now, since the advent of Herr von Throta, he had
to fight with the last remnant of his strength to dissimulate his own
misgivings, in order that they might not make him a laughing-stock in
the eyes of the community.

Gerda Buddenbrook and the eccentric young officer met each other,
naturally, in the world of music. Herr von Throta played the piano,
violin, viola, cello, and flute, and played them all unusually well.
Often the Senator became aware of an impending visit when Herr von
Throta’s man passed the office-door with his master’s cello-case on his
back. Thomas Buddenbrook would sit at his desk and watch until he saw
his wife’s friend enter the house. Then, overhead in the salon, the
harmonies would rise and surge like waves, with singing, lamenting,
unearthly jubilation; would lift like clasped hands outstretched toward
Heaven; would float in vague ecstasies; would sink and die away into
sobbing, into night and silence. But they might roll and seethe, weep
and exult, foam up and enfold each other, as unnaturally as they liked!
They were not the worst. The worst, the actually torturing thing,
was the silence. It would sometimes reign so long, so long, and so
profoundly, above there in the salon, that it was impossible not to
feel afraid of it. There would be no tread upon the ceiling, not even a
chair would move--simply a soundless, speechless, deceiving, _secret_
silence. Thomas Buddenbrook would sit there, and the torture was such
that he sometimes softly groaned.

What was it that he feared? Once more people had seen Herr von Throta
enter his house. And with their eyes he beheld the picture just as
they saw it: Below, an aging man, worn out and crotchety, sat at his
window in the office; above, his beautiful wife made music with her
lover. _And not that alone._ Yes, that was the way the thing looked
to them. He knew it. He was aware, too, that the word “lover” was not
really descriptive of Herr von Throta. It would have been almost a
relief if it were. If he could have understood and despised him as an
empty-headed, ordinary youth who worked off his average endowment of
high spirits in a little music, and thus beguiled the feminine heart!
He tried to think of him like that. He tried to summon up the instincts
of his father to meet the case: the instincts of the thrifty merchant
against the frivolous, adventurous, unreliable military caste. He
called Herr von Throta “the lieutenant,” and tried to think of him as
that; but in his heart he was conscious that the name was inappropriate.

What was it that Thomas Buddenbrook feared? Nothing--nothing to put
a name to. If there had only been something tangible, some simple,
brutal fact, something to defend himself against! He envied people the
simplicity of their conceptions. For while he sat there in torments,
with his head in his hands, he knew all too well that “betrayal,”
“adultery,” were not words to describe the singing things, the
abysmally silent things, that were happening up there.

He looked up sometimes at the grey gables, at the people passing by,
at the jubilee present hanging above his desk with the portraits of
his forefathers: he thought of the history of his house, and said to
himself that this was all that was wanting: that his person should
become a byword, his name and family life a scandal among the people.
This was all that was lacking to set the crown upon the whole. And
the thought, again, almost did him good, because it was a simple,
comprehensible, normal thought, that one could think and express--quite
another matter from this brooding over a mysterious disgrace, a blot
upon his family ’scutcheon.

He could bear it no more. He shoved back his chair, left the office,
and went upstairs. Whither should he go? Into the salon, to be greeted
with unembarrassed slight condescension by Herr von Throta, to ask him
to supper and be refused? For one of the worst features of the case was
that the lieutenant avoided him, refused all official invitations from
the head of the house, and confined himself to the free and private
intercourse with its mistress.

Should he wait? Sit down somewhere, perhaps in the smoking-room,
until the lieutenant went, and then go to Gerda and speak out, and
call her to account? Ah, one did not speak out with Gerda, one did
not call her to account. Why should one? Their alliance was based on
mutual consideration, tact, and silence. To become a laughing-stock
before her, too--no, surely he was not called upon to do that. To
play the jealous husband would be to grant that outsiders were right,
to proclaim a scandal, to cry it aloud. Was he jealous? Of whom? Of
what? Alas, no! Jealousy--the word meant action: mistaken, crazy,
wrong action, perhaps, but at least action, energetic, fearless, and
conclusive. No, he only felt a slight anxiety, a harassing worry, over
the whole thing.

He went into his dressing-room and bathed his face with eau-de-cologne.
Then he descended to the music-room, determined to break the silence
there, cost what it would. He laid his hand on the door-knob--but now
the music struck up again with a stormy outburst of sound, and he
shrank back.

One day in such an hour, he was leaning over the balcony of the second
floor, looking down the well of the staircase. Everything was quite
still. Little Johann came out of his room, down the gallery steps, and
across the corridor, on his way to Ida Jungmann’s room. He slipped
along the wall with his book, and would have passed his father with
lowered eyes, and a murmured greeting; but the Senator spoke to him.

“Well, Hanno, and what are you doing?”

“Studying my lessons, Papa. I am going to Ida, to have her hear my
translation--”

“Well, and what do you have to-morrow?”

Hanno, still looking down, made an obvious effort to give a prompt,
alert, and correct answer to the question. He swallowed once and said,
“We have Cornelius Nepos, some accounts to copy, French grammar, the
rivers of North America, German theme-correcting--”

He stopped and felt provoked with himself; he could not remember any
more, and wished he had said _and_ and let his voice fall, it sounded
so abrupt and unfinished. “Nothing else,” he said as decidedly as he
could, without looking up. But his father did not seem to be listening.
He held Hanno’s free hand and played with it absently, unconsciously
fingering the slim fingers.

And then Hanno heard something that had nothing to do with the lessons
at all: his father’s voice, in a tone he had never heard before, low,
distressed, almost imploring: “Hanno--the lieutenant has been more than
two hours with Mamma--”

Little Hanno opened wide his gold-brown eyes at the sound: and they
looked, as never before, clear, large, and loving, straight into his
father’s face, with its reddened eyelids under the light brows, its
white puffy cheeks and long stiff moustaches. God knows how much he
understood. But one thing they both felt: in the long second when their
eyes met, all constraint, coldness, and misunderstanding melted away.
Hanno might fail his father in all that demanded vitality, energy and
strength. But where fear and suffering were in question, there Thomas
Buddenbrook could count on the devotion of his son. On that common
ground they met as one.

He did not realize this--he tried not to realize it. In the days
that followed, he urged Hanno on more sternly than ever to practical
preparations for his future career. He tested his mental powers,
pressed him to commit himself upon the subject of his calling, and grew
irritated at every sign of rebellion or fatigue. For the truth was that
Thomas Buddenbrook, at the age of forty-eight, began to feel that his
days were numbered, and to reckon with his own approaching death.

His health had failed. Loss of appetite, sleeplessness, dizziness,
and the chills to which he had always been subject forced him several
times to call in Dr. Langhals. But he did not follow the doctor’s
orders. His will-power had grown flabby in these years of idleness or
petty activity. He slept late in the morning, though every evening
he made an angry resolve to rise early and take the prescribed walk
before breakfast. Only two or three times did he actually carry out the
resolve; and it was the same with everything else. And the constant
effort to spur on his will, with the constant failure to do so,
consumed his self-respect and made him a prey to despair. He never even
tried to give up his cigarettes; he could not do without the pleasant
narcotic effect; he had smoked them from his youth up. He told Dr.
Langhals to his vapid face: “You see, Doctor, it is your duty to forbid
me cigarettes--a very easy and agreeable duty. But I have to obey the
order--that is my share, and you can look on at it. No, we will work
together over my health; but I find the work unevenly divided--too much
of yours falls to me. Don’t laugh; it is no joke. One is so frightfully
alone--well, I smoke. Will you have one?” He offered his case.

All his powers were on the decline. What strengthened in him was the
conviction that it could not last long, that the end was close at hand.
He suffered from strange apprehensive fancies. Sometimes at table
it seemed to him that he was no longer sitting with his family, but
hovering above them somewhere and looking down upon them from a great
distance. “I am going to die,” he said to himself. And he would call
Hanno to him repeatedly and say: “My son, I may be taken away from you
sooner than you think. And then you will be called upon to take my
place. I was called upon very young myself. Can you understand that I
am troubled by your indifference? Are you now resolved in your mind?
Yes? Oh, ‘yes’ is no answer! Again you won’t answer me! What I ask you
is, have you resolved, bravely and joyfully, to take up your burden?
Do you imagine that you won’t have to work, that you will have enough
money without? You will have nothing, or very, very little; you will be
thrown upon your own resources. If you want to live, and live well, you
will have to work hard, harder even than I did.”

But this was not all. It was not only the burden of his son’s future,
the future of his house, that weighed him down. There was another
thought that took command, that mastered him and spurred on his weary
thoughts. And it was this: As soon as he began to think of his mortal
end not as an indefinite remote event, almost a contingency, but as
something near and tangible for which it behoved him to prepare, he
began to investigate himself, to examine his relations to death and
questions of another world. And his earliest researches in this kind
discovered in himself an irremediable unpreparedness.

His father had united with his hard practical sense a literal faith,
a fanatic Bible-Christianity which his mother, in her latter years,
had adhered to as well; but to himself it had always been rather
repellant. The worldly scepticism of his grandfather had been more
nearly his own attitude. But the comfortable superficiality of old
Johann could not satisfy his metaphysical and spiritual needs, and he
ended by finding in evolution the answer to all his questions about
eternity and immortality. He said to himself that he had lived in his
forbears and would live on in his descendants. And this line which he
had taken coincided not only with his sense of family, his patrician
self-consciousness, his ancestor-worship, as it were; it had also
strengthened his ambitions and through them the whole course of his
existence. But now, before the near and penetrating eye of death, it
fell away; it was nothing, it gave him not one single hour of calm, of
readiness for the end.

Thomas Buddenbrook had played now and then throughout his life with an
inclination to Catholicism. But he was at bottom, none the less, the
born Protestant: full of the true Protestant’s passionate, relentless
sense of personal responsibility. No, in the ultimate things there
was, there could be, no help from outside, no mediation, no absolution,
no soothing-syrup, no panacea. Each one of us, alone, unaided, of his
own powers, must unravel the riddle before it was too late, must wring
for himself a pious readiness before the hour of death, or else part in
despair. Thomas Buddenbrook turned away, desperate and hopeless, from
his only son, in whom he had once hoped to live on, renewed and strong,
and began in fear and haste to seek for the truth which must somewhere
exist for him.

It was high summer of the year 1874. Silvery, high-piled clouds drifted
across the deep blue sky above the garden’s dainty symmetry. The birds
twittered in the boughs of the walnut tree, the fountain splashed
among the irises, and the scent of the lilacs floated on the breeze,
mingled, alas, with the smell of hot syrup from a sugar-factory nearby.
To the astonishment of the staff, the Senator now often left his work
during office hours, to pace up and down in the garden with his hands
behind his back, or to work about, raking the gravel paths, tying up
the rose-bushes, or dredging mud out of the fountain. His face, with
its light eyebrows, seemed serious and attentive as he worked; but his
thoughts travelled far away in the dark on their lonely, painful path.

Sometimes he seated himself on the little terrace, in the pavilion now
entirely overgrown with green, and stared across the garden at the red
brick rear wall of the house. The air was warm and sweet; it seemed as
though the peaceful sounds about him strove to lull him to sleep. Weary
of loneliness and silence and staring into space, he would close his
eyes now and then, only to snatch them open and harshly frighten peace
away. “I must think,” he said, almost aloud. “I must arrange everything
before it is too late.”

He sat here one day, in the pavilion, in the little reed rocking-chair,
and read for four hours, with growing absorption, in a book which
had, partly by chance, come into his hands. After second breakfast,
cigarette in mouth, he had unearthed it in the smoking-room, from
behind some stately volumes in the corner of a bookcase, and recalled
that he had bought it at a bargain one day years ago. It was a large
volume, poorly printed on cheap paper and poorly sewed; the second
part, only, of a famous philosophical system. He had brought it out
with him into the garden, and now he turned the pages, profoundly
interested.

He was filled with a great, surpassing satisfaction. It soothed
him to see how a master-mind could lay hold on this strong, cruel,
mocking thing called life and enforce it and condemn it. His
was the gratification of the sufferer who has always had a bad
conscience about his sufferings and concealed them from the gaze of
a harsh, unsympathetic world, until suddenly, from the hand of an
authority, he receives, as it were, justification and license for his
suffering--justification before the world, this best of all possible
worlds which the master-mind scornfully demonstrates to be the worst of
all possible ones!

He did not understand it all. Principles and premises remained unclear,
and his mind, unpractised in such readings, was not able to follow
certain trains of thought. But this very alternation of vagueness and
clarity, of dull incomprehension with sudden bursts of light, kept him
enthralled and breathless, and the hours vanished without his looking
up from his book or changing his position in his chair.

He had left some pages unread in the beginning of the book, and hurried
on, clutching rapidly after the main thesis, reading only this or that
section which held his attention. Then he struck on a comprehensive
chapter and read it from beginning to end, his lips tightly closed
and his brows drawn together with a concentration which had long
been strange to him, completely withdrawn from the life about him.
The chapter was called “On Death, and its Relation to our Personal
Immortality.”

Only a few lines remained when the servant came through the garden at
four o’clock to call him to dinner. He nodded, read the remaining
sentences, closed the book, and looked about him. He felt that his
whole being had unaccountably expanded, and at the same time there
clung about his senses a profound intoxication, a strange, sweet, vague
allurement which somehow resembled the feelings of early love and
longing. He put away the book in the drawer of the garden table. His
hands were cold and unsteady, his head was burning, and he felt in it a
strange pressure and strain, as though something were about to snap. He
was not capable of consecutive thought.

What was this? He asked himself the question as he mounted the stairs
and sat down to table with his family. What is it? Have I had a
revelation? What has happened to me, Thomas Buddenbrook, Councillor of
this government, head of the grain firm of Johann Buddenbrook? Was this
message meant for me? Can I bear it? I don’t know what it was: I only
know it is too much for my poor brain.

He remained the rest of the day in this condition, this heavy lethargy
and intoxication, overpowered by the heady draught he had drunk,
incapable of thought. Evening came. His head was heavy, and since
he could hold it up no longer, he went early to bed. He slept for
three hours, more profoundly than ever before in his life. And, then,
suddenly, abruptly, with a start, he awoke and felt as one feels on
realizing, suddenly, a budding love in the heart.

He was alone in the large sleeping chamber; for Gerda slept now in Ida
Jungmann’s room, and the latter had moved into one of the three balcony
rooms to be nearer little Johann. It was dark, for the curtains of
both high windows were tightly closed. He lay on his back, feeling the
oppression of the stillness and of the heavy, warm air, and looked up
into the darkness.

And behold, it was as though the darkness were rent from before his
eyes, as if the whole wall of the night parted wide and disclosed
an immeasurable, boundless prospect of light. “I shall live!” said
Thomas Buddenbrook, almost aloud, and felt his breast shaken with
inward sobs. “This is the revelation: that I shall live! For _it_
will live--and that this _it_ is not I is only an illusion, an error
which death will make plain. This is it, this is it! Why?” But at
this question the night closed in again upon him. He saw, he knew, he
understood, no least particle more; he let himself sink deep in the
pillows, quite blinded and exhausted by the morsel of truth which had
been vouchsafed.

He lay still and waited fervently, feeling himself tempted to pray
that it would come again and irradiate his darkness. And it came. With
folded hands, not daring to move, he lay and looked.

What _was_ Death? The answer came, not in poor, large-sounding words:
he felt it within him, he possessed it. Death was a joy, so great, so
deep that it could be dreamed of only in moments of revelation like the
present. It was the return from an unspeakably painful wandering, the
correction of a grave mistake, the loosening of chains, the opening of
doors--it put right again a lamentable mischance.

End, dissolution! These were pitiable words, and thrice pitiable he who
used them! What would end, what would dissolve? Why, this his body,
this heavy, faulty, hateful incumbrance, which _prevented him from
being something other and better_.

Was not every human being a mistake and a blunder? Was he not in
painful arrest from the hour of his birth? Prison, prison, bonds and
limitations everywhere! The human being stares hopelessly through
the barred window of his personality at the high walls of outward
circumstance, till Death comes and calls him home to freedom!

Individuality?--All, all that one is, can, and has, seems poor, grey,
inadequate, wearisome; what one is not, can not, has not, that is what
one looks at with a longing desire that becomes love because it fears
to become hate.

I bear in myself the seed, the tendency, the possibility of all
capacity and all achievement. Where should I be were I not here? Who,
what, how could I be, if I were not I--if this my external self, my
consciousness, did not cut me off from those who are not I? Organism!
Blind, thoughtless, pitiful eruption of the urging will! Better,
indeed, for the will to float free in spaceless, timeless night than
for it to languish in prison, illumined by the feeble, flickering light
of the intellect!

Have I hoped to live on in my son? In a personality yet more feeble,
flickering, and timorous than my own? Blind, childish folly! What
can my son do for me--what need have I of a son? Where shall I be
when I am dead? Ah, it is so brilliantly clear, so overwhelmingly
simple! I shall be in all those who have ever, do ever, or ever shall
say “I”--_especially, however, in all those who say it most fully,
potently, and gladly_!

Somewhere in the world a child is growing up, strong, well-grown,
adequate, able to develop its powers, gifted, untroubled, pure, joyous,
relentless, one of those beings whose glance heightens the joy of
the joyous and drives the unhappy to despair. _He_ is my son. He is
I, myself, soon, soon; as soon as Death frees me from the wretched
delusion that I am not he as well as myself.

Have I ever hated life--pure, strong, relentless life? Folly and
misconception! I have but hated myself, because I could not bear it. I
love you, I love you all, you blessed, and soon, soon, I shall cease to
be cut off from you all by the narrow bonds of myself; soon will that
in me which loves you be free and be in and with you--in and with you
all.

He wept, he pressed his face into the pillows and wept, shaken through
and through, lifted up in transports by a joy without compare for its
exquisite sweetness. This it was which since yesterday had filled him
as if with a heady, intoxicating draught, had worked in his heart in
the darkness of the night and roused him like a budding love! And in
so far as he could now understand and recognize--not in words and
consecutive thoughts, but in sudden rapturous illuminations of his
inmost being--he was already free, already actually released and free
of all natural as well as artificial limitations. The walls of his
native town, in which he had wilfully and consciously shut himself up,
opened out; they opened and disclosed to his view the entire world,
of which he had in his youth seen this or that small portion, and of
which Death now promised him the whole. The deceptive perceptions of
space, time and history, the preoccupation with a glorious historical
continuity of life in the person of his own descendants, the dread of
some future final dissolution and decomposition--all this his spirit
now put aside. He was no longer prevented from grasping eternity.
Nothing began, nothing left off. There was only an endless present; and
that power in him which loved life with a love so exquisitely sweet
and yearning--the power of which his person was only the unsuccessful
expression--that power would always know how to find access to this
present.

“I shall live,” he whispered into his pillow. He wept, and in the next
moment knew not why. His brain stood still, the vision was quenched.
Suddenly there was nothing more--he lay in dumb darkness. “It will come
back,” he assured himself. And before sleep inexorably wrapped him
round, he swore to himself never to let go this precious treasure, but
to read and study, to learn its powers, and to make inalienably his own
the whole conception of the universe out of which his vision sprang.

But that could not be. Even the next day, as he woke with a faint
feeling of shame at the emotional extravagances of the night, he
suspected that it would be hard to put these beautiful designs into
practice.

He rose late and had to go at once to take part in the debate at an
assembly of burgesses. Public business, the civic life that went on in
the gabled narrow streets of this middle-sized trading city, consumed
his energies once more. He still planned to take up the wonderful
reading again where he had left it off. But he questioned of himself
whether the events of that night had been anything firm and permanent;
whether, when Death approached, they would be found to hold their
ground.

His middle-class instincts rose against them--and his vanity, too:
the fear of being eccentric, of playing a laughable rôle. Had he
really seen these things? And did they really become him--him, Thomas
Buddenbrook, head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook?

He never succeeded in looking again into the precious volume--to say
nothing of buying its other parts. His days were consumed by nervous
pedantry: harassed by a thousand details, all of them unimportant, he
was too weak-willed to arrive at a reasonable and fruitful arrangement
of his time. Nearly two weeks after that memorable afternoon he gave it
up--and ordered the maid-servant to fetch the book from the drawer in
the garden table and replace it in the bookcase.

And thus Thomas Buddenbrook, who had held his hands stretched
imploringly upward toward the high ultimate truth, sank now weakly back
to the images and conceptions of his childhood. He strove to call back
that personal God, the Father of all human beings, who had sent a part
of Himself upon earth to suffer and bleed for our sins, and who, on the
final day, would come to judge the quick and the dead; at whose feet
the justified, in the course of the eternity then beginning, would be
recompensed for the sorrows they had borne in this vale of tears. Yes,
he strove to subscribe to the whole confused unconvincing story, which
required no intelligence, only obedient credulity; and which, when the
last anguish came, would sustain one in a firm and childlike faith.--
But would it, really?

Ah, even here there was no peace. This poor, well-nigh exhausted man,
consumed with gnawing fears for the honour of his house, his wife, his
child, his name, his family, this man who spent painful effort even
to keep his body artificially erect and well-preserved--this poor man
tortured himself for days with thoughts upon the moment and manner of
death. How would it really be? Did the soul go to Heaven immediately
after death, or did bliss first begin with the resurrection of the
flesh? And, if so, where did the soul stay until that time? He did not
remember ever having been taught this. Why had he not been told this
important fact in school or in church? How was it justifiable for them
to leave people in such uncertainty? He considered visiting Pastor
Pringsheim and seeking advice and counsel; but he gave it up in the end
for fear of being ridiculous.

And finally he gave it all up--he left it all to God. But having come
to such an unsatisfactory ending of his attempts to set his spiritual
affairs in order, he determined at least to spare no pains over his
earthly ones, and to carry out a plan which he had long entertained.

One day little Johann heard his father tell his mother, as they drank
their coffee in the living-room after the midday meal, that he expected
Lawyer So-and-So to make his will. He really ought not to keep on
putting it off. Later, in the afternoon, Hanno practised his music for
an hour. When he went down the corridor after that, he met, coming up
the stairs, his father and a gentleman in a long black overcoat.

“Hanno,” said the Senator, curtly. And little Johann stopped,
swallowed, and said quickly and softly: “Yes, Papa.”

“I have some important business with this gentleman,” his father went
on. “Will you stand before the door into the smoking-room and take care
that nobody--absolutely nobody, you understand--disturbs us?”

“Yes, Papa,” said little Johann, and took up his post before the door,
which closed after the two gentlemen.

He stood there, clutching his sailor’s knot with one hand, felt with
his tongue for a doubtful tooth, and listened to the earnest subdued
voices which could be heard from inside. His head, with the curling
light-brown hair, he held on one side, and his face with the frowning
brows and blue-shadowed, gold-brown eyes, wore that same displeased
and brooding look with which he had inhaled the odour of the flowers,
and that other strange, yet half-familiar odour, by his grandmother’s
bier.

Ida Jungmann passed and said, “Well, little Hanno, why are you hanging
about here?”

And the hump-backed apprentice came out of the office with a telegram,
and asked for the Senator.

But, both times, little Johann put his arm in its blue sailor sleeve
with the anchor on it horizontally across the door; both times he shook
his head and said softly, after a pause, “No one may go in. Papa is
making his will.”




CHAPTER VI


In the autumn Dr. Langhals said, making play like a woman with his
beautiful eyes: “It is the nerves, Senator; the nerves are to blame for
everything. And once in a while the circulation is not what it should
be. May I venture to make a suggestion? You need another little rest.
These few Sundays by the sea, during the summer, haven’t amounted to
much, of course. It’s the end of September, Travemünde is still open,
there are still a few people there. Drive over, Senator, and sit on the
beach a little. Two or three weeks will do you a great deal of good.”

And Thomas Buddenbrook said “yes” and “amen.” But when he told his
family of the arrangement, Christian suggested going with him.

“I’ll go with you, Thomas,” he said, quite simply. “You don’t mind, I
suppose.” And the Senator, though he did mind very much, said “yes” and
“amen” to this arrangement as well.

Christian was now more than ever master of his own time. His
fluctuating health had constrained him to give up his last undertaking,
the champagne and spirit agency. The man who used to come and sit on
his sofa and nod at him in the twilight had happily not recurred of
late. But the misery in the side had, if anything, grown worse, and
added to this was a whole list of other infirmities of which Christian
kept the closest watch, and which he described in all companies,
with his nose wrinkled up. He often suffered from that long-standing
dread of paralysis of the tongue, throat, and œsophagus, even of the
extremities and of the brain--of which there were no actual symptoms,
but the fear in itself was almost worse. He told in detail how, one
day when he was making tea, he had held the lighted match not over the
spirit-lamp, but over the open bottle of methylated spirit instead;
so that not only himself, but the people in his own and the adjacent
buildings, nearly went up in flames. And he dwelt in particular
detail, straining every resource he had at his command to make himself
perfectly clear, upon a certain ghastly anomaly which he had of late
observed in himself. It was this: that on certain days, i.e., under
certain weather conditions, and in certain states of mind, he could not
see an open window without having a horrible and inexplicable impulse
to jump out. It was a mad and almost uncontrollable desire, a sort of
desperate foolhardiness. The family were dining on Sunday in Fishers’
Lane, and he described how he had to summon all his powers, and crawl
on hands and knees to the window to shut it. At this point everybody
shrieked; his audience rebelled, and would listen no more.

He told these and similar things with a certain horrible satisfaction.
But the thing about himself which he did not know, which he never
studied and described, but which none the less grew worse and worse,
was his singular lack of tact. He told in the family circle anecdotes
of such a nature that the club was the only possible place for them.
And even his sense of personal modesty seemed to be breaking down.
He was on friendly terms with his sister-in-law, Gerda. But when he
displayed to her the beautiful weave and texture of his English socks,
he did not stop at that, but rolled up his wide, checkered trouser-leg
to far above the knee: “Look,” he said, wrinkling his nose in distress:
“Look how thin I’m getting. Isn’t it striking and unusual?” And there
he sat, sadly gazing at his crooked, bony leg and the gaunt knee
visible through his white woollen drawers.

His mercantile activity then, was a thing of the past. But such hours
as he did not spend at the club he liked to fill in with one sort of
occupation or another; and he would proudly point out that he had
never actually ceased to work. He extended his knowledge of languages
and embarked upon a study of Chinese--though this was for the sake of
acquiring knowledge, simply, with no practical purpose in view. He
worked at it industriously for two weeks. He was also, just at this
time, occupied with a project of enlarging an English-German dictionary
which he had found inadequate. But he really needed a little change,
and it would be better too for the Senator to have somebody with him;
so he did not allow his business to keep him in town.

The two brothers drove out together to the sea along the turnpike,
which was nothing but a puddle. The rain drummed on the carriage-top,
and they hardly spoke. Christian’s eyes roved hither and yon; he was
as if listening to uncanny noises. Thomas sat muffled in his cloak,
shivering, gazing with bloodshot eyes, his moustaches stiffly sticking
out beyond his white cheeks. They drove up to the Kurhouse in the
afternoon, their wheels grating in the wet gravel. Old Broker Gosch
sat in the glass verandah, drinking rum punch. He stood up, whistling
through his teeth, and they all sat down together to have a little
something warm while the trunks were being carried up.

Herr Gosch was a late guest at the cure, and there were a few other
people as well: an English family, a Dutch maiden lady, and a Hamburg
bachelor, all of them presumably taking their rest before table-d’hôte,
for it was like the grave everywhere but for the sound of the rain.
Let them sleep! As for Herr Gosch, he was not in the habit of sleeping
in the daytime. He was glad enough to get a few hours’ sleep at night.
He was far from well; he was taking a late cure for the benefit of
this trembling which he suffered from in all his limbs. Hang it, he
could hardly hold his glass of grog; and more often than not he could
not write at all--so that the translation of Lope da Vega got on but
slowly. He was in a very low mood indeed, and even his curses lacked
relish. “Let it go hang!” was his constant phrase, which he repeated
on every occasion and often on none at all.

And the Senator? How was he feeling? How long were the gentlemen
thinking of stopping?

Oh, Dr. Langhals had sent him out on account of his nerves. He had
obeyed orders, of course, despite the frightful weather--what doesn’t
one do out of fear of one’s physician? He was really feeling more or
less miserable, and they would probably remain till there was a little
improvement.

“Yes, I’m pretty wretched too,” said Christian, irritated at Thomas’s
speaking only of himself. He was about to fetch out his repertoire--the
nodding man, the spirit-bottle, the open window--when the Senator
interrupted him by going to engage the rooms.

The rain did not stop. It washed away the earth, it danced upon the
sea, which was driven back by the south-west wind and left the beaches
bare. Everything was shrouded in grey. The steamers went by like
wraiths and vanished on the dim horizon.

They met the strange guests only at table. The Senator, in mackintosh
and goloshes, went walking with Gosch; Christian drank Swedish punch
with the barmaid in the pastry-shop.

Two or three times in the afternoon it looked as though the sun were
coming out; and a few acquaintances from town appeared--people who
enjoyed a holiday away from their families: Senator Dr. Gieseke,
Christian’s friend, and Consul Peter Döhlmann, who looked very ill
indeed, and was killing himself with Hunyadi-Janos water. The gentlemen
sat together in their overcoats, under the awnings of the pastry-shop,
opposite the empty bandstand, drinking their coffee, digesting their
five courses, and talking desultorily as they gazed over the empty
garden.

The news of the town--the last high water, which had gone into the
cellars and been so deep that in the lower part of the town people
had to go about in boats; a fire in the dockyard sheds; a senatorial
election--these were the topics of conversation. Alfred Lauritzen, of
the firm of Stürmann & Lauritzen, tea, coffee, and spice merchants, had
been elected, and Senator Buddenbrook had not approved of the choice.
He sat smoking cigarettes, wrapped in his cloak, almost silent except
for a few remarks on this particular subject. One thing was certain,
he said, and that was that _he_ had not voted for Herr Lauritzen.
Lauritzen was an honest fellow and a good man of business. There was
no doubt of that; but he was middle-class, respectable middle-class.
His father had fished herrings out of the barrel and handed them
across the counter to servant-maids with his own hands--and now they
had in the Senate the proprietor of a retail business. His, Thomas
Buddenbrook’s father had disowned his eldest son for “marrying a shop”;
but that was in the good old days. “The standard is being lowered,” he
said. “The social level is not so high as it was; the Senate is being
democratized, my dear Gieseke, and that is no good. Business ability
is one thing--but it is not everything. In my view we should demand
something more. Alfred Lauritzen, with his big feet and his boatswain’s
face--it is offensive to me to think of him in the Senate-house. It
offends something in me, I don’t know what. It goes against my sense of
form--it is a piece of bad taste, in short.”

Senator Gieseke demurred. He was rather piqued by this expression of
opinion. After all, he himself was only the son of a Fire Commissioner.
No, the labourer was worthy of his hire. That was what being a
republican meant. “You ought not to smoke so much, Buddenbrook,” he
ended. “You won’t get any sea air.”

“I’ll stop now,” said Thomas Buddenbrook, flung away the end of his
cigarette, and closed his eyes.

The conversation dragged on; the rain set in again and veiled the
prospect. They began to talk about the latest town scandal--about P.
Philipp Kassbaum, who had been falsifying bills of exchange and now
sat behind locks and bars. No one felt outraged over the dishonesty:
they spoke of it as an act of folly, laughed a bit, and shrugged their
shoulders. Senator Dr. Gieseke said that the convicted man had not lost
his spirits. He had asked for a mirror, it seemed, there being none in
his cell. “I’ll need a looking-glass,” he was reported to have said:
“I shall be here for some time.” He had been, like Christian and Dr.
Gieseke, a pupil of the lamented Marcellus Stengel.

They all laughed again at this, through their noses, without a sign
of feeling. Siegismund Gosch ordered another grog in a tone of voice
that was as good as saying, “What’s the use of living?” Consul Döhlmann
sent for a bottle of brandy. Christian felt inclined to more Swedish
punch, so Dr. Gieseke ordered some for both of them. Before long Thomas
Buddenbrook began to smoke again.

And the idle, cynical, indifferent talk went on, heavy with the food
they had eaten, the wine they drank, and the damp that depressed their
spirits. They talked about business, the business of each one of those
present; but even this subject roused no great enthusiasm.

“Oh, there’s nothing very good about mine,” said Thomas Buddenbrook
heavily, and leaned his head against the back of his chair with an air
of disgust.

“Well, and you, Döhlmann,” asked Senator Gieseke, and yawned. “You’ve
been devoting yourself entirely to brandy, eh?”

“The chimney can’t smoke, unless there’s a fire,” the Consul retorted.
“I look into the office every few days. Short hairs are soon combed.”

“And Strunck and Hagenström have all the business in their hands
anyhow,” the broker said morosely, with his elbows sprawled out on the
table and his wicked old grey head in his hands.

“Oh, nothing can compete with a dung-heap, for smell,” Döhlmann said,
with a deliberately coarse pronunciation, which must have depressed
everybody’s spirits the more by its hopeless cynicism. “Well, and you,
Buddenbrook--what are you doing now? Nothing, eh?”

“No,” answered Christian, “I can’t, any more.” And without more ado,
having perceived the mood of the hour, he proceeded to accentuate it.
He began, his hat on one side, to talk about his Valparaiso office and
Johnny Thunderstorm. “Well, in that heat--‘Good God! Work, Sir? No,
Sir. As you see, Sir.’ And they puffed their cigarette-smoke right in
his face. Good God!” It was, as always, an incomparable expression of
dissolute, impudent, lazy good-nature. His brother sat motionless.

Herr Gosch tried to lift his glass to his thin lips, put it back on the
table again, cursing through his shut teeth, and struck the offending
arm with his fist. Then he lifted the glass once more, and spilled half
its contents, draining the remainder furiously at a gulp.

“Oh, you and your shaking, Gosch!” Peter Döhlmann exclaimed. “Why
don’t you just let yourself go, like me? I’ll croak if I don’t drink
my bottle every day--I’ve got as far as that; and I’ll croak if I do.
How would you feel if you couldn’t get rid of your dinner, not a single
day--I mean, after you’ve got it in your stomach?” And he favoured
them with some repulsive details of his condition, to which Christian
listened with dreadful interest, wrinkling his nose as far as it could
go and countering with a brief and forcible account of his “misery.”

It rained harder than ever. It came straight down in sheets and filled
the silence of the Kurgarden with its ceaseless, forlorn, and desolate
murmur.

“Yes, life’s pretty rotten,” said Senator Gieseke. He had been drinking
heavily.

“I’d just as lief quit,” said Christian.

“Let it go hang,” said Herr Gosch.

“There comes Fike Dahlbeck,” said Senator Gieseke. The proprietress of
the cow-stalls, a heavy, bold-faced woman in the forties, came by with
a pail of milk and smiled at the gentlemen.

Senator Gieseke let his eyes rove after her.

“What a bosom,” he said. Consul Döhlmann added a lewd witticism, with
the result that all the gentlemen laughed once more, through their
noses.

The waiter was summoned.

“I’ve finished the bottle, Schröder,” said Consul Döhlmann. “May as
well pay--we have to some time or other. You, Christian? Gieseke pays
for you, eh?”

Senator Buddenbrook roused himself at this. He had been sitting there,
hardly speaking, wrapped in his cloak, his hands in his lap and his
cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Now he suddenly started up and
said sharply, “Have you no money with you, Christian? Then I’ll lend it
to you.”

They put up their umbrellas and emerged from their shelter to take a
little stroll.

Frau Permaneder came out once in a while to see her brother. They
would walk as far as Sea-Gull Rock or the little Ocean Temple; and
here Tony Buddenbrook, for some reason or other, was always seized
by a mood of vague excitement and rebellion. She would repeatedly
emphasize the independence and equality of all human beings, summarily
repudiate all distinctions of rank or class, use some very strong
language on the subject of privilege and arbitrary power, and demand
in set terms that merit should receive its just reward. And then she
talked about her own life. She talked well, she entertained her brother
capitally. This child of fortune, so long as she walked upon this
earth, had never once needed to suppress an emotion, to choke down or
swallow anything she felt. She had never received in silence either
the blows or the caresses of fate. And whatever she had received, of
joy or sorrow, she had straightway given forth again, in a flow of
childish, self-important trivialities. Her digestion was not perfect,
it is true. But her heart--ah, her heart was light, her spirit was
free; freer than she herself comprehended. She was not consumed by
the inexpressible. No sorrow weighed her down, or strove to speak
but could not. And thus it was that her past left no mark upon her.
She knew that she had led a troubled life--she knew it, that is, but
at bottom she never believed in it herself. She recognized it as a
fact, since everybody else believed it--and she utilized it to her
own advantage, talking of it and making herself great with it in
her own eyes and those of others. With outraged virtue and dignity
she would call by name all those persons who had played havoc with
her life and, in consequence, with the prestige of the Buddenbrook
family; the list had grown long with time: Teary Trietschke! Grünlich!
Permaneder! Tiburtius! Weinschenk! the Hagenströms! the State Attorney!
Severin!--“What _filoux_, all of them, Thomas! God will punish
them--that is my firm belief.”

Twilight was falling as they came up to the Ocean Temple, for the
autumn was far advanced. They stood in one of the little chambers
facing the bay--it smelled of wood, like the bathing cabins at the Kur,
and its walls were scribbled over with mottoes, initials, hearts and
rhymes. They stood and looked out over the dripping slope across the
narrow, stony strip of beach, out to the turbid, restless sea.

“Great waves,” said Thomas Buddenbrook. “How they come on and break,
come on and break, one after another, endlessly, idly, empty and vast!
And yet, like all the simple, inevitable things, they soothe, they
console, after all. I have learned to love the sea more and more. Once,
I think, I cared more for the mountains--because they lay farther off.
Now I do not long for them. They would only frighten and abash me.
They are too capricious, too manifold, too anomalous--I know I should
feel myself vanquished in their presence. What sort of men prefer the
monotony of the sea? Those, I think, who have looked so long and deeply
into the complexities of the spirit, that they ask of outward things
merely that they should possess one quality above all: simplicity.
It is true that in the mountains one clambers briskly about, while
beside the sea one sits quietly on the shore. This is a difference, but
a superficial one. The real difference is in the look with which one
pays homage to the one and to the other. It is a strong, challenging
gaze, full of enterprise, that can soar from peak to peak; but the
eyes that rest on the wide ocean and are soothed by the sight of its
waves rolling on forever, mystically, relentlessly, are those that
are already wearied by looking too deep into the solemn perplexities
of life.--Health and illness, that is the difference. The man whose
strength is unexhausted climbs boldly up into the lofty multiplicity of
the mountain heights. But it is when one is worn out with turning one’s
eyes inward upon the bewildering complexity of the human heart, that
one finds peace in resting them on the wideness of the sea.”

Frau Permaneder was silent and uncomfortable,--as simple people
are when a profound truth is suddenly expressed in the middle of a
conventional conversation. People don’t say such things, she thought to
herself; and looked out to sea so as not to show her feeling by meeting
his eyes. Then, in the silence, to make amends for an embarrassment
which she could not help, she drew his arm through hers.




CHAPTER VII


Winter had come, Christmas had passed. It was January, 1875. The snow,
which covered the foot-walks in a firm-trodden mass, mingled with sand
and ashes, was piled on either side of the road in high mounds that
were growing greyer and more porous all the time, for the temperature
was rising. The pavements were wet and dirty, the grey gables dripped.
But above all stretched the heavens, a cloudless tender blue, while
millions of light atoms seemed to dance like crystal motes in the air.

It was a lively sight in the centre of the town, for this was Saturday,
and market-day as well. Under the pointed arches of the Town Hall
arcades the butchers had their stalls and weighed out their wares
red-handed. The fish-market, however, was held around the fountain in
the market-square itself. Here fat old women, with their hands in muffs
from which most of the fur was worn off, warming their feet at little
coal-braziers, guarded their slippery wares and tried to cajole the
servants and housewives into making purchases. There was no fear of
being cheated. The fish would certainly be fresh, for the most of them
were still alive. The luckiest ones were even swimming about in pails
of water, rather cramped for space, but perfectly lively. Others lay
with dreadfully goggling eyes and labouring gills, clinging to life and
slapping the marble slab desperately with their tails--until such time
as their fate was at hand, when somebody would seize them and cut their
throats with a crunching sound. Great fat eels writhed and wreathed
about in extraordinary shapes. There were deep vats full of black
masses of crabs from the Baltic. Once in a while a big flounder gave
such a desperate leap that he sprang right off his slab and fell down
upon the slippery pavement, among all the refuse, and had to be picked
up and severely admonished by his possessor.

Broad Street, at midday, was full of life. Schoolchildren with
knapsacks on their backs came along the street, filling it with
laughter and chatter, snowballing each other with the half-melting
snow. Smart young apprentices passed, with Danish sailor caps or suits
cut after the English model, carrying their portfolios and obviously
pleased with themselves for having escaped from school. Among the
crowd were settled, grey-bearded, highly respectable citizens, wearing
the most irreproachable national-liberal expression on their faces,
and tapping their sticks along the pavement. These looked across with
interest to the glazed-brick front of the Town Hall, where the double
guard was stationed; for the Senate was in session. The sentries trod
their beat, wearing their cloaks, their guns on their shoulders,
phlegmatically stamping their feet in the dirty half-melted snow.
They met in the centre of their beat, looked at each other, exchanged
a word, turned, and moved away each to his own side. Sometimes a
lieutenant would pass, his coat-collar turned up, his hands in his
pockets, on the track of some grisette, yet at the same time permitting
himself to be admired by young ladies of good family; and then each
sentry would stand at attention in front of his box, look at himself
from head to foot, and present arms. It would be a little time yet
before they would perform the same salute before the members of the
Senate, the sitting lasted some three quarters of an hour, it would
probably adjourn before that.

But one of the sentries suddenly heard a short, discreet whistle from
within the building. At the same moment the entrance was illumined
by the red uniform of Uhlefeldt the beadle, with his dress sword
and cocked hat. His air of preoccupation was simply enormous as he
uttered a stealthy “Look out” and hastily withdrew. At the same moment
approaching steps were heard on the echoing flags within.

The sentries front-faced, inflated their chests, stiffened their
necks, grounded their arms, and then, with a couple of rapid motions,
presented arms. Between them there had appeared, lifting his top-hat,
a gentleman of scarcely medium height, with one light eyebrow higher
than the other and the pointed ends of his moustaches extending beyond
his pallid cheeks. Senator Thomas Buddenbrook was leaving the Town Hall
to-day long before the end of the sitting. He did not take the street
to his own house, but turned to the right instead. He looked correct,
spotless, and elegant as, with the rather hopping step peculiar to him,
he walked along Broad Street, constantly saluting people whom he met.
He wore white kid gloves, and he had his stick with the silver handle
under his left arm. A white dress tie peeped forth from between the
lapels of his fur coat. But his head and face, despite their careful
grooming, looked rather seedy. People who passed him noticed that
his eyes were watering and that he held his mouth shut in a peculiar
cautious way; it was twisted a little to one side, and one could see by
the muscles of his cheeks and temples that he was clenching his jaw.
Sometimes he swallowed, as if a liquid kept rising in his mouth.

“Well, Buddenbrook, so you are cutting the session? That is something
new,” somebody said unexpectedly to him at the beginning of Mill
Street. It was his friend and admirer Stephan Kistenmaker, whose
opinion on all subjects was the echo of his own. Stephan Kistenmaker
had a full greying beard, bushy eyebrows, and a long nose full of large
pores. He had retired from the wine business a few years back with a
comfortable sum, and his brother Eduard carried it on by himself. He
lived now the life of a private gentleman; but, being rather ashamed of
the fact, he always pretended to be overwhelmed with work. “I’m wearing
myself out,” he would say, stroking his grey hair, which he curled with
the tongs. “But what’s a man good for, but to wear himself out?” He
stood hours on ’Change, gesturing imposingly, but doing no business.
He held a number of unimportant offices, the latest one being Director
of the city bathing establishments; but he also functioned as juror,
broker, and executor, and laboured with such zeal that the perspiration
dripped from his brow.

“There’s a session, isn’t there, Buddenbrook--and you are taking a
walk?”

“Oh, it’s you,” said the Senator in a low voice, moving his lips
cautiously. “I’m suffering frightfully--I’m nearly blind with pain.”

“Pain? Where?”

“Toothache. Since yesterday. I did not close my eyes last night. I have
not been to the dentist yet, because I had business in the office this
morning, and then I did not like to miss the sitting. But I couldn’t
stand it any longer. I’m on my way to Brecht.”

“Where is it?”

“Here on the left side, the lower jaw. A back tooth. It is decayed, of
course. The pain is simply unbearable. Good-bye, Kistenmaker. You can
understand that I am in a good deal of a hurry.”

“Yes, of course--don’t you think I am, too? Awful lot to do. Good-bye.
Good luck! Have it out--get it over with at once--always the best way.”

Thomas Buddenbrook went on, biting his jaws together, though it made
the pain worse to do so. It was a furious burning, boring pain,
starting from the infected back tooth and affecting the whole side of
the jaw. The inflammation throbbed like red-hot hammers; it made his
face burn and his eyes water. His nerves were terribly affected by the
sleepless night he had spent. He had had to control himself just now,
lest his voice break as he spoke.

He entered a yellow-brown house in Mill Street and went up to the first
storey, where a brass plate on the door said, “Brecht, Dentist.” He
did not see the servant who opened the door. The corridor was warm
and smelled of beefsteak and cauliflower. Then he suddenly inhaled
the sharp odour of the waiting-room into which he was ushered. “Sit
down! One moment!” shrieked the voice of an old woman. It was Josephus,
who sat in his shining cage at the end of the room and regarded him
sidewise out of his venomous little eyes.

The Senator sat down at the round table and tried to read the jokes in
a volume of _Fliegende Blätter_, flung down the book, and pressed the
cool silver handle of his walking-stick against his cheek. He closed
his burning eyes and groaned. There was not a sound, except for the
noise made by Josephus as he bit and clawed at the bars of his cage.
Herr Brecht might not be busy; but he owed it to himself to make his
patient wait a little.

Thomas Buddenbrook stood up precipitately and drank a glass of water
from the bottle on the table. It tasted and smelled of chloroform. Then
he opened the door into the corridor and called out in an irritated
voice: if there were nothing very important to prevent it, would Herr
Brecht kindly make haste--he was suffering.

And immediately the bald forehead, hooked nose, and grizzled moustaches
of the dentist appeared in the door of the operating-room. “If you
please,” he said. “If you please,” shrieked Josephus. The Senator
followed on the invitation. He was not smiling. “A bad case,” thought
Herr Brecht, and turned pale.

They passed through the large light room to the operating-chair in
front of one of the two largest windows. It was an adjustable chair
with an upholstered head-rest and green plush arms. As he sat down,
Thomas Buddenbrook briefly explained what the trouble was. Then he
leaned back his head and closed his eyes.

Herr Brecht screwed up the chair a bit and got to work on the tooth
with a tiny mirror and a pointed steel instrument. His hands smelled of
almond soap, his breath of cauliflower and beefsteak.

“We must proceed to extraction,” he said, after a while, and turned
still paler.

“Very well, proceed, then,” said the Senator, and shut his eyes more
tightly.

There was a pause. Herr Brecht prepared something at his chest of
drawers and got out his instruments. Then he approached the chair again.

“I’ll paint it a little,” he said; and began at once to apply a
strong-smelling liquid in generous quantities. Then he gently implored
the patient to sit very still and open his mouth very wide--and then he
began.

Thomas Buddenbrook clutched the plush arm-rests with both his hands. He
scarcely felt the forceps close around his tooth; but from the grinding
sensation in his mouth, and the increasingly painful, really agonizing
pressure on his whole head, he was made amply aware that the thing was
under way. Thank God, he thought, now it can’t last long. The pain
grew and grew, to limitless, incredible heights; it grew to an insane,
shrieking, inhuman torture, tearing his entire brain. It approached the
catastrophe. ‘Here we are, he thought. Now I must just bear it.’

It lasted three or four seconds. Herr Brecht’s nervous exertions
communicated themselves to Thomas Buddenbrook’s whole body, he was even
lifted up a little on his chair, and he heard a soft, squeaking noise
coming from the dentist’s throat. Suddenly there was a fearful blow,
a violent shaking as if his neck were broken, accompanied by a quick
cracking, crackling noise. The pressure was gone, but his head buzzed,
the pain throbbed madly in the inflamed and ill-used jaw; and he had
the clearest impression that the thing had not been successful: that
the extraction of the tooth was not the solution of the difficulty, but
merely a premature catastrophe which only made matters worse.

Herr Brecht had retreated. He was leaning against his
instrument-cupboard, and he looked like death. He said: “The crown--I
thought so.”

Thomas Buddenbrook spat a little blood into the blue basin at his side,
for the gum was lacerated. He asked, half-dazed: “What did you think?
What about the crown?”

“The crown broke off, Herr Senator. I was afraid of it.--The tooth was
in very bad condition. But it was my duty to make the experiment.”

“What next?”

“Leave it to me, Herr Senator.”

“What will you have to do now?”

“Take out the roots. With a lever. There are four of them.”

“Four. Then you must take hold and lift four times.”

“Yes--unfortunately.”

“Well, this is enough for to-day,” said the Senator. He started to
rise, but remained seated and put his head back instead.

“My dear Sir, you mustn’t demand the impossible of me,” he said. “I’m
not very strong on my legs, just now. I have had enough for to-day.
Will you be so kind as to open the window a little?”

Herr Brecht did so. “It will be perfectly agreeable to me, Herr
Senator, if you come in to-morrow or next day, at whatever hour you
like, and we can go on with the operation. If you will permit me, I
will just do a little more rinsing and pencilling, to reduce the pain
somewhat.”

He did the rinsing and pencilling, and then the Senator went. Herr
Brecht accompanied him to the door, pale as death, expending his last
remnant of strength in sympathetic shoulder-shruggings.

“One moment, please!” shrieked Josephus as they passed through the
waiting-room. He still shrieked as Thomas Buddenbrook went down the
steps.

With a lever--yes, yes, that was to-morrow. What should he do now? Go
home and rest, sleep, if he could. The actual pain in the nerve seemed
deadened; in his mouth was only a dull, heavy burning sensation. Home,
then. He went slowly through the streets, mechanically exchanging
greetings with those whom he met; his look was absent and wandering,
as though he were absorbed in thinking how he felt.

He got as far as Fishers’ Lane and began to descend the left-hand
sidewalk. After twenty paces he felt nauseated. “I’ll go over to the
public-house and take a drink of brandy,” he thought, and began to
cross the road. But just as he reached the middle, something happened
to him. It was precisely as if his brain was seized and swung around,
faster and faster, in circles that grew smaller and smaller, until it
crashed with enormous, brutal, pitiless force against a stony centre.
He performed a half-turn, fell, and struck the wet pavement, his arms
outstretched.

As the street ran steeply downhill, his body lay much lower than his
feet. He fell upon his face, beneath which, presently, a little pool
of blood began to form. His hat rolled a little way off down the road;
his fur coat was wet with mud and slush; his hands, in their white kid
gloves, lay outstretched in a puddle.

Thus he lay, and thus he remained, until some people came down the
street and turned him over.




CHAPTER VIII


Frau Permaneder mounted the main staircase, holding up her gown in
front of her with one hand and with the other pressing her muff to her
cheek. She tripped and stumbled more than she walked; her cheeks were
flushed, her capote sat crooked on her head, and little beads stood on
her upper lip.... Though she met no one, she talked continually as she
hurried up, in whispers out of which now and then a word rose clear and
audible and emphasized her fear. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t
mean anything. God wouldn’t let anything happen. He knows what he’s
doing, I’m very sure of that.... Oh, my God, I’ll pray every day--” She
prattled senselessly in her fear, as she rushed up to the second storey
and down the corridor.

The door of the ante-chamber opened, and her sister-in-law came toward
her. Gerda Buddenbrook’s lovely white face was quite distorted with
horror and disgust; and her close-set, blue-shadowed brown eyes opened
and shut with a look of anger, distraction, and shrinking. As she
recognized Frau Permaneder, she beckoned quickly with outstretched arms
and embraced her, putting her head on her sister-in-law’s shoulder.

“Gerda! Gerda! What is it?” Frau Permaneder cried. “What has happened?
What does it mean? They said he fell--unconscious? How is he?--God
won’t let the worst happen, I know. Tell me, for pity’s sake!”

But the reply did not come at once. She only felt how Gerda’s whole
form was shaken. Then she heard a whisper at her shoulder.

“How he looked,” she heard, “when they brought him! His whole life
long, he never let any one see even a speck of dust on him.--Oh, it is
insulting, it is vile, for the end to have come like that!”

Subdued voices came out to them. The dressing-room door opened, and Ida
Jungmann stood in the doorway in a white apron, a basin in her hands.
Her eyes were red. She looked at Frau Permaneder and made way, her head
bent. Her chin was trembling.

The high flowered curtains stirred in the draught as Tony, followed by
her sister-in-law, entered the chamber. The smell of carbolic, ether,
and other drugs met them. In the wide mahogany bed, under the red down
coverlet, lay Thomas Buddenbrook, on his back, undressed and clad in
an embroidered nightshirt. His half-open eyes were rolled up; his lips
were moving under the disordered moustaches, and babbling, gurgling
sounds came out. Young Dr. Langhals was bending over him, changing a
bloody bandage for a fresh one, which he dipped into a basin at the
bedside. Then he listened at the patient’s chest and felt his pulse.

On the bed-clothes at the foot of the bed sat little Johann, clutching
his sailor’s knot and listening broodingly to the sounds behind him,
which his father was making. The Senator’s bemired clothing hung over a
chair.

Frau Permaneder cowered down at the bedside, seized one of her
brother’s hands--it was cold and heavy--and stared wildly into his
face. She began to understand that, whether God knew what he was doing
or not, he was at all events bent on “the worst”!

“Tom!” she clamoured, “do you know me? How are you? You aren’t going to
leave us? You won’t go away from us? Oh, it _can’t_ be!”

Nothing answered her, that could be called an answer. She looked
imploringly up at Dr. Langhals. He stood there with his beautiful eyes
cast down; and his manner, not without a certain self-satisfaction,
expressed the will of God.

Ida Jungmann came back into the room, to make herself useful if she
could. Old Dr. Grabow appeared in person, looked at the patient with
his long, mild face, shook his head, pressed all their hands, and then
stood as Dr. Langhals stood. The news had gone like the wind through
the whole town. The vestibule door rang constantly, and inquiries
after the Senator’s condition came up into the sick-chamber. It was
unchanged--unchanged. Every one received the same answer.

The two physicians were in favour of sending for a sister of
charity--at least for the night. They sent for Sister Leandra, and
she came. There was no trace of surprise or alarm in her face as she
entered. Again she laid aside her leather bag, her outer hood and
cloak, and again she set to work in her gentle way.

Little Johann sat hour after hour on the bed-clothes, watching
everything and listening to the gurgling noises. He was to have gone
to an arithmetic lesson; but he understood perfectly that what was
happening here was something over which the worsted-coats had no
jurisdiction. He thought of his lessons only for a moment, and with
scorn. He wept, sometimes, when Frau Permaneder came up and pressed him
to her; but mostly he sat dry-eyed, with a shrinking, brooding gaze,
and his breath came irregularly and cautiously, as if he expected any
moment to smell that strange and yet familiar smell.

Toward four o’clock Frau Permaneder took a sudden resolve. She asked
Dr. Langhals to come with her into the next room; and there she folded
her arms and laid back her head, with the chin dropped.

“Herr Doctor,” she said, “there is one thing you can do, and I beg
you to do it. Tell me the truth. I am a woman steeled by adversity; I
have learned to bear the truth. You may depend upon me. Please tell me
plainly: Will my brother be alive to-morrow?”

Dr. Langhals turned his beautiful eyes aside, looked at his
fingernails, and spoke of our human powerlessness, and the
impossibility of knowing whether Frau Permaneder’s brother would
outlive the night, or whether he would be called away the next minute.

“Then I know what I have to do,” said she; went out of the room; and
sent for Pastor Pringsheim.

Pastor Pringsheim appeared, without his vestments or neck-ruff, in
a long black gown. He swept Sister Leandra with an icy stare, and
seated himself in the chair which they placed for him by the bedside.
He asked the patient to recognize and hear him. Then, as this appeal
was unsuccessful, he addressed himself at once to God and prayed in
carefully modulated tones, with his Frankish pronunciation, with
emphasis now solemn and now abrupt, while waves of fanaticism and
sanctimony followed each other across his face. He pronounced his _r_
in a sleek and oily way peculiar to himself alone, and little Johann
received an irresistible impression that he had just been eating rolls
and coffee.

He said that he and the family there present no longer importuned God
for the life of this dear and beloved sufferer, for they saw plainly
that it was God’s will to take him to Himself. They only begged Him
for the mercy of a gentle death. And then he recited, appropriately
and with effect, two of the prayers customary on such occasions. Then
he got up. He pressed Gerda Buddenbrook’s hand, and Frau Permaneder’s,
and held little Johann’s head for a moment between both his hands,
regarding the drooping eyelashes with an expression of the most fervent
pity. He saluted Ida Jungmann, stared again at Sister Leandra, and took
his leave.

Dr. Langhals had gone home for a little. When he came back there
had been no change. He spoke with the nurse, and went again. Dr.
Grabow came once more, to see that everything was being done. Thomas
Buddenbrook went on babbling and gurgling, with his eyes rolled up.
Twilight was falling. There was a pale winter glow at sunset, and it
shone through the window upon the soiled clothing lying across the
chair.

At five o’clock Frau Permaneder let herself be carried away by her
feelings, and committed an indiscretion. She suddenly began to sing, in
her throaty voice, her hands folded before her.

  “Come, Lord,”

she sang, quite loud, and they all listened without stirring.

  “Come, Lord, receive his failing breath;
  Strengthen his hands and feet, and lead him unto death.”

But in the devoutness of her prayer, she thought only of the words as
they welled up from her heart, and forgot that she did not know the
whole stanza; after the third line she was left hanging in the air,
and had to make up for her abrupt end by the increased dignity of her
manner. Everybody shivered with embarrassment. Little Johann coughed so
hard that the coughs sounded like sobs. And then, in the sudden pause,
there was no sound but the agonizing gurgles of Thomas Buddenbrook.

It was a relief when the servant announced that there was something
to eat in the next room. But they had only begun, sitting in Gerda’s
bedroom, to take a little soup, when Sister Leandra appeared in the
doorway and quietly beckoned.

The Senator was dying. He hiccoughed gently two or three times, was
silent, and ceased to move his lips. That was the only change. His eyes
had been quite dead before.

Dr. Langhals, who was on the spot a few minutes later, put the black
stethoscope to the heart, listened, and, after this scientific test,
said “Yes, it is over.”

And Sister Leandra, with the forefinger of her gentle white hand,
softly closed the eyes of the dead.

Then Frau Permaneder flung herself down on her knees by the bed,
pressed her face into the coverlet, and wept aloud, surrendering
herself utterly and without restraint to one of those refreshing
bursts of feeling which her happy nature had always at its command.
Her face still streamed with tears, but she was soothed and comforted
and entirely herself as she rose to her feet and began straightway to
occupy her mind with the announcements of the death--an enormous number
of elegant cards, which must be ordered at once.

Christian appeared. He had heard the news of the Senator’s stroke in
the club, which he had left at once. But he was so afraid of seeing
some awful sight that he went instead for a long walk outside the
walls, and was not to be found. Now, however, he came in, and on the
threshold heard of his brother’s death.

“It isn’t possible,” he said, and limped up the stairs, his eyes
rolling wildly.

He stood at the bedside between his sister and his sister-in-law; with
his bald head, his sunken cheeks, his drooping moustaches, and his
huge beaked nose, he stood there on his bent legs, looking a little
like an interrogation-point, and gazed with his little round deep eyes
into his brother’s face, as it lay so silent, so cold, so detached
and inaccessible. The corners of Thomas’s mouth were drawn down in an
expression almost scornful. Here he lay, at whom once Christian had
flung the reproach that he was too heartless to weep at a brother’s
death. He was dead now himself: he had simply withdrawn, silent,
elegant, and irreproachable, into the hereafter. He had, as so often
in his life, left it to others to feel put in the wrong. No matter
now, whether he had been right or wrong in his cold and scornful
indifference toward his brother’s afflictions, the “misery,” the
nodding man, the spirit-bottle, the open window. None of that mattered
now; for death, with arbitrary and incomprehensible partiality, had
singled him out, and taken him up, and given him an awesome dignity and
importance. And yet Death had rejected Christian, had held him off,
and would not have him at any price--would only keep on making game of
him and mocking him with all these tricks and antics which nobody took
seriously. Never in his life had Thomas Buddenbrook so impressed his
brother as at this hour. Success is so definite, so conclusive! Death
alone can make others respect our sufferings; and through death the
most pitiable sufferings acquire dignity. “You have won--I give in,”
Christian thought. He knelt on one knee, with a sudden awkward gesture,
and kissed the cold hand on the coverlet. Then he stepped back and
moved about the room, his eyes darting back and forth.

Other visitors came--the old Krögers, the Misses Buddenbrook, old Herr
Marcus. Poor Clothilde, lean and ashen, stood by the bed; her face was
apathetic, and she folded her hands in their worsted gloves. “You must
not think, Tony and Gerda,” said she, and her voice dragged very much,
“that I’ve no feeling because I don’t weep. The truth is, I have no
more tears.” And as she stood there, incredibly dry and withered, it
was evident that she spoke the truth.

Then they all left the room to make way for an elderly female, an
unpleasant old creature with a toothless, mumbling jaw, who had come to
help Sister Leandra wash and dress the corpse.

Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, Christian, and little Johann sat
under the big gas-lamp around the centre-table in the living-room,
and worked industriously until far on into the evening. They were
addressing envelopes and making a list of people who ought to receive
announcements. Now and then somebody thought of another name. Hanno had
to help, too; his handwriting was plain, and there was need of haste.

It was still in the house and in the street. The gas-lamp made a soft
hissing noise; somebody murmured a name; the papers rustled. Sometimes
they looked at each other and remembered what had happened.

Frau Permaneder scratched busily. But regularly once every five minutes
she would put down her pen, lift her clasped hands up to her mouth, and
break out in lamentations. “I can’t realize it!” she would cry--meaning
that she was gradually beginning to realize. “It is the end of
everything,” she burst out another time, in sheer despair, and flung
her arms around her sister-in-law’s neck with loud weeping. After each
outburst she was strengthened, and took up her work again.

With Christian it was as with poor Clothilde. He had not shed a
tear--which fact rather mortified him. It was true, too, that his
constant preoccupation with his own condition had used him up
emotionally and made him insensitive. Now and then he would start up,
rub his hand over his bald brow, and murmur, “Yes, it’s frightfully
sad.” He said it to himself, with strong self-reproach, and did his
best to make his eyes water.

Suddenly something happened to startle them all: little Johann began to
laugh. He was copying a list of names, and had found one with such a
funny sound that he could not resist it. He said it aloud and snorted
through his nose, bent over, sobbed, and could not control himself. The
grown people looked at him in bewildered incredulity; and his mother
sent him up to bed.




CHAPTER IX


Senator Buddenbrook had died of a bad tooth. So it was said in the
town. But goodness, people don’t die of a bad tooth! He had had a
toothache; Herr Brecht had broken off the crown; and thereupon the
Senator had simply fallen in the street. Was ever the like heard?

But however it had happened, that was no longer the point. What had
next to be done was to send wreaths--large, expensive wreaths which
would do the givers credit and be mentioned in the paper: wreaths
which showed that they came from people with sympathetic hearts and
long purses. They were sent. They poured in from all sides, from
organizations, from families and individuals: laurel wreaths, wreaths
of heavily-scented flowers, silver wreaths, wreaths with black bows or
bows with the colours of the City on them, or dedications printed in
heavy black type or gilt lettering. And palms--simply quantities of
palms.

The flower-shops did an enormous business, not least among them being
Iwersen’s, opposite the Buddenbrook mansion. Frau Iwersen rang many
times in the day at the vestibule door, and handed in arrangements in
all shapes and styles, from Senator This or That, or Consul So-and-So,
from office staffs and civil servants. On one of these visits she
asked if she might go up and see the Senator a minute. Yes, of course,
she was told; and she followed Frau Permaneder up the main staircase,
gazing silently at its magnificence.

She went up heavily, for she was, as usual, expecting. Her looks had
grown a little common with the years; but the narrow black eyes and the
Malay cheek-bones had not lost their charm. One could still see that
she must once have been exceedingly pretty. She was admitted into the
salon, where Thomas Buddenbrook lay upon his bier.

He lay in the centre of the large, light room, the furniture of which
had been removed, amid the white silk linings of his coffin, dressed in
white silk, shrouded in white silk, in a thick and stupefying mingling
of odours from the tube-roses, violets, roses, and other flowers with
which he was surrounded. At his head, in a half-circle of silver
candelabra, stood the pedestal draped in mourning, supporting the
marble copy of Thorwaldsen’s Christ. The wreaths, garlands, baskets,
and bunches stood or lay along the walls, on the floor, and on the
coverlet. Palms stood around the bier and drooped over the feet of
the dead. The skin of his face was abraded in spots, and the nose was
bruised. But his hair was dressed with the tongs, as in life, and his
moustache, too, had been drawn through the tongs for the last time by
old Herr Wenzel, and stuck out stiff and straight beyond his white
cheeks. His head was turned a little to one side, and an ivory cross
was stuck between the folded hands.

Frau Iwersen remained near the door, and looked thence, blinking, over
to the bier. Only when Frau Permaneder, in deep black, with a cold
in her head from much weeping, came from the living-room through the
portières and invited Frau Iwersen to come nearer, did she dare to
venture a little farther forward on the parquetry floor. She stood with
her hands folded across her prominent abdomen, and looked about her
with her narrow black eyes: at the plants, the candelabra, the bows and
the wreaths, the white silk, and Thomas Buddenbrook’s face. It would
be hard to describe the expression on the pale, blurred features of
the pregnant woman. Finally she said “Yes--” sobbed just once, a brief
confused sound, and turned away.

Frau Permaneder loved these visits. She never stirred from the house,
but superintended with tireless zeal the homage that pressed about the
earthly husk of her departed brother. She read the newspaper articles
aloud many times in her throaty voice: those same newspapers which at
the time of the jubilee had paid tribute to her brother’s merits, now
mourned the irreparable loss of his personality. She stood at Gerda’s
side to receive the visits of condolence in the living-room and there
was no end of these; their name was legion. She held conferences with
various people about the funeral, which must of course be conducted in
the most refined manner. She arranged farewells: she had the office
staff come in a body to bid their chief good-bye. The workmen from the
granaries came too. They shuffled their huge feet along the parquetry
floor, drew down the corners of their mouths to show their respect, and
emanated an odour of chewing tobacco, spirits, and physical exertion.
They looked at the dead lying in his splendid state, twirled their
caps, first admired and then grew restive, until at length one of them
found courage to go, and the whole troop followed shuffling on his
heels. Frau Permaneder was enchanted. She asserted that some of them
had tears running down into their beards. This simply was not the fact;
but she saw it, and it made her happy.

The day of the funeral dawned. The metal casket was hermetically sealed
and covered with flowers, the candles burned in their silver holders,
the house filled with people, and, surrounded by mourners from near
and far, Pastor Pringsheim stood at the head of the coffin in upright
majesty, his impressive head resting upon his ruff as on a dish.

A high-shouldered functionary, a brisk intermediate something between
a waiter and a major-domo, had in charge the outward ordering of
the solemnity. He ran with the softest speed down the staircase and
called in a penetrating whisper across the entry, which was filled to
overflowing with tax-commissioners in uniform and grain-porters in
blouses, knee-breeches, and tall hats: “The rooms are full, but there
is a little room left in the corridor.”

Then everything was hushed. Pastor Pringsheim began to speak. He filled
the whole house with the rolling periods of his exquisitely modulated,
sonorous voice. He stood there near the figure of Thorwaldsen’s Christ
and wrung his hands before his face or spread them out in blessing;
while below in the street, before the house door, beneath a white
wintry sky, stood the hearse drawn by four black horses, with the other
carriages in a long row behind it. A company of soldiers with grounded
arms stood in two rows opposite the house door, with Lieutenant von
Throta at their head. He held his drawn sword on his arm and looked up
at the bow-window with his brilliant eyes. Many people were craning
their necks from windows nearby or standing on the pavements to look.

At length there was a stir in the vestibule, the lieutenant’s muffled
word of command sounded, the soldiers presented arms with a rattle of
weapons, Herr von Throta let his sword sink, and the coffin appeared.
It swayed cautiously forth of the house door, borne by the four men
in black cloaks and cocked hats, and a gust of perfume came with it,
wafted over the heads of bystanders. The breeze ruffled the black
plumes on top of the hearse, tossed the manes of the horses standing in
line down to the river, and dishevelled the mourning hat-scarves of the
coachmen and grooms. Enormous single flakes of snow drifted down from
the sky in long slanting curves.

The horses attached to the hearse, all in black trappings so that
only their restless rolling eyeballs could be seen, now slowly got
in motion. The hearse moved off, led by the four black servants. The
company of soldiers fell in behind, and one after another the coaches
followed on. Christian Buddenbrook and the pastor got into the first;
little Johann sat in the second, with a well-fed Hamburg relative. And
slowly, slowly, with mournful long-drawn pomp, Thomas Buddenbrook’s
funeral train wound away, while the flags at half-mast on all the
houses flapped before the wind. The office staff and the grain-porters
followed on foot.

The casket, with the mourners behind, followed the well-known cemetery
paths, past crosses and statues and chapels and bare weeping-willows,
to the Buddenbrook family lot, where the military guard of honour
already stood, and presented arms again. A funeral march sounded in
subdued and solemn strains from behind the shrubbery.

Once more the heavy gravestone, with the family arms in relief, had
been moved to one side; and once more the gentlemen of the town stood
there, on the edge of the little grove, beside the abyss walled in
with masonry into which Thomas Buddenbrook was now lowered to join
his fathers. They stood there with bent heads, these worthy and
well-to-do citizens: prominent among them were the Senators, in white
gloves and cravats. Beyond them was the throng of officials, clerks,
grain-porters, and warehouse labourers.

The music stopped. Pastor Pringsheim spoke. While his voice, raised in
blessing, still lingered on the air, everybody pressed round to shake
hands with the brother and son of the deceased.

The ceremony was long and tedious. Christian Buddenbrook received all
the condolences with his usual absent, embarrassed air. Little Johann
stood by his side, in his heavy reefer jacket with the gilt buttons,
and looked at the ground with his blue-shadowed eyes. He never looked
up, but bent his head against the wind with a sensitive twist of all
his features.




PART ELEVEN




CHAPTER I


It sometimes happens that we may recall this or that person whom we
have not lately seen and wonder how he is. And then, with a start, we
remember that he has disappeared from the stage, that his voice no
longer swells the general concert--that he is, in short, departed from
among us, and lies somewhere outside the walls, beneath the sod.

Frau Consul Buddenbrook, she that was a Stüwing, Uncle Gotthold’s
widow, passed away. Death set his reconciling and atoning seal upon the
brow of her who in her life had been the cause of such violent discord;
and her three daughters, Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi, received
the condolences of their relatives with an affronted air which seemed
to say: “You see, your persecutions have at last brought her down to
her grave!” As if the Frau Consul were not as old as the hills already!

And Madame Kethelsen had gone to her long rest. In her later years she
had suffered much from gout; but she died gently and simply, resting
upon a childlike faith which was much envied by her educated sister,
who had always had her periodic attacks of rationalistic doubt, and
who, though she grew constantly smaller and more bent, was relentlessly
bound by an iron constitution to this sinful earth.

Consul Peter Döhlmann was called away. He had eaten up all his money,
and finally fell a prey to Hunyadi-Janos, leaving his daughter an
income of two hundred marks a year. He depended upon the respect felt
in the community for the name of Döhlmann to insure her being admitted
into the Order of St. John.

Justus Kröger also departed this life, which was a loss, for now
nobody was left to prevent his wife selling everything she owned to
send money to the wretched Jacob, who was still leading a dissolute
existence somewhere in the world.

Christian Buddenbrook had likewise disappeared from the streets of
his native city. He would have been sought in vain within her walls.
He had moved to Hamburg, less than a year after his brother’s death,
and there he united himself, before God and men, with Fräulein Aline
Puvogel, a lady with whom he had long stood in a close relationship. No
one could now stop him. His inheritance from his mother, indeed, half
the interest of which had always found its way to Hamburg, was managed
by Herr Stephan Kistenmaker--in so far as it was not already spent in
advance. Herr Kistenmaker, in fact, had been appointed administrator
by the terms of his deceased friend’s will. But in all other respects
Christian was his own master. Directly the marriage became known,
Frau Permaneder addressed to Frau Aline Buddenbrook in Hamburg a long
and extraordinarily violent letter, beginning “Madame!” and declaring
in carefully poisoned words that she had absolutely no intention of
recognizing as a relative either the person addressed or any of her
children.

Herr Kistenmaker was executor and administrator of the Buddenbrook
estate and guardian of little Johann. He held these offices in high
regard. They were an important activity which justified him in rubbing
his head on the Bourse with every indication of overwork and telling
everybody that he was simply wearing himself out. Besides, he received
two per cent. of the revenues, very punctually. But he was not too
successful in the performance of his duties, and Gerda Buddenbrook soon
had reason to feel dissatisfied.

The business was to close, the firm to go into liquidation, and the
estate to be settled within a year. This was Thomas Buddenbrook’s wish,
as expressed in his will. Frau Permaneder felt much upset. “And Hanno?
And little Johann--what about Hanno?” She was disappointed and grieved
that her brother had passed over his son and heir and had not wished to
keep the firm alive for him to step into. She wept for hours to think
that one should dispose thus summarily of that honourable shield, that
jewel cherished by four generations of Buddenbrooks: that the history
of the firm was now to close, while yet there existed a direct heir to
carry it on. But she finally consoled herself by thinking that the end
of the firm was not, after all, the end of the family, and that her
nephew might as easily, in a new and different career, perform the high
task allotted to him--that task being to carry on the family name and
add fresh lustre to the family reputation. It could not be in vain that
he possessed so much likeness to his great-grandfather.

The liquidation of the business began, under the auspices of Herr
Kistenmaker and old Herr Marcus; and it took a most deplorable course.
The time was short, and it must be punctiliously kept to. The pending
business was disposed of on hurried and unfavourable terms. One
precipitate and disadvantageous sale followed another. The granaries
and warehouses were turned into money at a great loss; and what was
not lost by Herr Kistenmaker’s over-zealousness was wasted by the
procrastination of old Herr Marcus. In town they said that the old man,
before he left his house in winter warmed not only his coat and hat,
but his walking-stick as well. If ever a favourable opportunity arose,
he invariably let it slip through his fingers. And so the losses piled
up. Thomas Buddenbrook had left, on paper, an estate of six hundred and
fifty thousand marks. A year after the will was opened it had become
abundantly clear that there was no question of such a sum.

Indefinite, exaggerated rumours of the unfavourable liquidation got
about, and were fed by the news that Gerda Buddenbrook meant to sell
the great house. Wonderful stories flew about, of the reasons which
obliged her to take such a step; of the collapse of the Buddenbrook
fortune. Things were thought to look very badly: and a feeling began
to grow up in the town, of which the widowed Frau Senator became aware,
at first with surprise and astonishment, and then with growing anger.
When she told her sister-in-law, one day, that she had been pressed
in an unpleasant way for the payment of some considerable accounts,
Frau Permaneder had at first been speechless, and then had burst out
into frightful laughter. Gerda Buddenbrook was so outraged that she
expressed a half-determination to leave the city for ever with little
Johann and go back to Amsterdam to play duets with her old father. But
this called forth such a storm of protest from Frau Permaneder that she
was obliged to give up the plan for the time being.

As was to be expected, Frau Permaneder protested against the sale of
the house which her brother had built. She bewailed the bad impression
it would make and complained of the blow it would deal the family
prestige. But she had to grant that it would be folly to continue
to keep up the spacious and splendid dwelling that had been Thomas
Buddenbrook’s costly hobby, and that Gerda’s idea of a comfortable
little villa outside the wall, in the country, had, after all, much to
commend it.

A great day dawned for Siegismund Gosch the broker. His old age was
illumined by an event so stupendous that for many hours it held his
knees from trembling. It came about that he sat in Gerda Buddenbrook’s
salon, in an easy-chair, opposite her and discussed tête-à-tête the
price of her house. His snow-white locks streamed over his face, his
chin protruded grimly, he succeeded for once in looking thoroughly
hump-backed. He hissed when he talked, but his manners were cold
and businesslike, and nothing betrayed the emotions of his soul. He
bound himself to take over the house, stretched out his hand, smiled
cunningly, and bid eighty-five thousand marks--which was a possible
offer, for some loss would certainly have to be taken in this sale.
But Herr Kistenmaker’s opinion must be heard; and Gerda Buddenbrook
had to let Herr Gosch go without making the bargain. Then it appeared
that Herr Kistenmaker was not minded to allow any interference in
what he considered his prerogative. He mistrusted Herr Gosch’s offer;
he laughed at it, and swore that he could easily get much more. He
continued to swear this, until at length he was forced to dispose of
the property for seventy-five thousand marks to an elderly spinster who
had returned from extended travel and decided to settle in the town.

Herr Kistenmaker also arranged for the purchase of the new house, a
pleasant little villa for which he paid rather too high a price, but
which was about what Gerda Buddenbrook wanted. It lay outside the
Castle Gate, on a chestnut-bordered avenue; and thither, in the autumn
of the year 1876, the Frau Senator moved with her son, her servants,
and a part of her household goods--the remainder, to Frau Permaneder’s
great distress, being left behind to pass into the possession of the
elderly gentlewoman.

As if these were not changes enough, Mamsell Jungmann, after forty
years in the service of the Buddenbrook family, left it to return to
her native West Prussia to live out the evening of her life. To tell
the truth, she was dismissed by the Frau Senator. This good soul had
taken up with little Johann when the previous generation had outgrown
her. She had cherished him fondly, read him fairy stories, and told
him about the uncle who died of hiccoughs. But now little Johann was
no longer small. He was a lad of fifteen years, to whom, despite
his lack of strength, she could no longer be of much service; and
with his mother her relations had not for a long time been on a very
comfortable footing. She had never been able to think of this lady,
who had entered the family so much later than herself, as a proper
Buddenbrook; and of late she had begun, with the freedom of an old
servant, to arrogate to herself exaggerated authority. She stirred up
dissension in the household by this or that encroachment; the position
became untenable; there were disagreements--and though Frau Permaneder
made an impassioned plea in her behalf, as for the old house and the
furniture, old Ida had to go.

She wept bitterly when the hour came to bid little Johann farewell. He
put his arms about her and embraced her. Then, with his hands behind
his back, resting his weight on one leg while the other poised on the
tips of the toes, he watched her out of sight; his face wore the same
brooding, introspective look with which he had stood at his father’s
death-bed, and his grandmother’s bier, witnessed the breaking-up of the
great household, and shared in so many events of the same kind, though
of lesser outward significance. The departure of old Ida belonged to
the same category as other events with which he was already familiar:
breakings-up, closings, endings, disintegrations--he had seen them all.
Such events did not disturb him--they had never disturbed him. But he
would lift his head, with the curling light-brown hair, inflate one
delicate nostril, and it was as if he cautiously sniffed the air about
him, expecting to perceive that odour, that strange and yet familiar
odour which, at his grandmother’s bier, not all the scent of the
flowers had been able to disguise.

When Frau Permaneder visited her sister-in-law, she would draw her
nephew to her and tell him of the Buddenbrook family past, and of that
future for which, next to the mercy of God, they would have to thank
little Johann. The more depressing the present appeared, the more she
strove to depict the elegance of the life that went on in the houses
of her parents and grandparents; and she would tell Hanno how his
great-grandfather had driven all over the country with his carriage
and four horses. One day she had a severe attack of cramps in the
stomach because Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi had asserted that the
Hagenströms were the crême de la crême of town society.

Bad news came of Christian. His marriage seemed not to have improved
his health. He had become more and more subject to uncanny delusions
and morbid hallucinations, until finally his wife had acted upon the
advice of a physician and had him put into an institution. He was
unhappy there, and wrote pathetic letters to his relatives, expressive
of a fervent desire to leave the establishment, where, it seemed,
he was none too well treated. But they kept him shut up, and it was
probably the best thing for him. It also put his wife in a position
to continue her former independent existence without prejudice to her
status as a married woman or to the practical advantages accruing from
her marriage.




CHAPTER II


The alarm-clock went off with cruel alacrity. It was a hoarse rattling
and clattering that it made, rather than a ringing, for it was old and
worn out; but it kept on for a painfully long time, for it had been
thoroughly wound up.

Hanno Buddenbrook was startled to his inmost depths. It was like this
every morning. His very entrails rebelled, in rage, protest, and
despair, at the onslaught of this at once cruel and faithful monitor
standing on the bedside table close to his ear. However, he did not get
up, or even change his position in the bed; he only wrenched himself
away from some blurred dream of the early morning and opened his eyes.

It was perfectly dark in the wintry room. He could distinguish nothing,
not even the hands on the clock. But he knew it was six o’clock,
because last night he had set his alarm for six. Last night-- And as
he lay on his back, with his nerves rasped by the shock of waking,
struggling for sufficient resolution to make a light and jump out of
bed, everything that had filled his mind yesterday came gradually back
into his consciousness.

It was Sunday evening; and after having been maltreated by Herr Brecht
for several days on end, he had been taken as a reward to a performance
of _Lohengrin_. He had looked forward for a whole week to this evening
with a joy which absorbed his entire existence. Only, it was a pity
that on such occasions the full pleasure of the anticipation had to be
marred by disagreeable commonplaces that went on up to the very last
minute. But at length Saturday came, school was over for the week, and
Herr Brecht’s little drill had bored and buzzed away in the mouth for
the last time. Now everything was out of the way and done with--for
he had obstinately put off his preparation for Monday until after the
opera. What was Monday to him? Was it likely it would ever dawn? Who
believes in Monday, when he is to hear _Lohengrin_ on Sunday evening?
He would get up early on Monday and get the wretched stuff done--and
that was all there was to it. Thus he went about free from care,
fondled the coming joy in his heart, dreamed at his piano, and forgot
all unpleasantness to come.

And then the dream became reality. It came over him with all its
enchantment and consecration, all its secret revelations and tremors,
its sudden inner emotion, its extravagant, unquenchable intoxication.
It was true that the music of the overture was rather too much for the
cheap violins in the orchestra; and the fat conceited-looking Lohengrin
with straw-coloured hair came in rather hind side foremost in his
little boat. And his guardian, Herr Stephan Kistenmaker, had sat in the
next box and grumbled about the boy’s being taken away from his lessons
and having his mind distracted like that. But the sweet, exalted
splendour of the music had borne him away upon its wings.

The end had come at length. The singing, shimmering joy was quenched
and silent. He had found himself back home in his room, with a burning
head and the consciousness that only a few hours of sleep, there in
his bed, separated him from dull everyday existence. And he had been
overpowered by an attack of the complete despondency which was all too
familiar an experience. Again he had learned that beauty can pierce one
like a pain, and that it can sink profoundly into shame and a longing
despair that utterly consume the courage and energy necessary to the
life of every day. His despondency weighed him down like mountains, and
once more he told himself, as he had done before, that this was more
than his own individual burden of weaknesses that rested upon him: that
his burden was one which he had borne upon his soul from the beginning
of time, and must one day sink under at last.

He had wound the alarm-clock and gone to sleep--and slept that dead and
heavy sleep that comes when one wishes never to awake again. And now
Monday was here, and he had not prepared a single lesson.

He sat up and lighted the bedside candle. But his arms and shoulders
felt so cold that he lay down again and pulled up the covers.

The hand pointed to ten minutes after six. Oh, it was absurd to get
up now! He should hardly have time to make a beginning, for there
was preparation in nearly every lesson. And the time he had fixed
was already past. Was it as certain, then, as it had seemed to him
yesterday that he would be called up in Latin and Chemistry? It
was certainly to be expected--in all human probability it would
happen. The names at the end of the alphabet had lately been called
in the Ovid class, and presumably they would begin again at the
beginning. But, after all, it wasn’t so absolutely certain, beyond a
peradventure--there were exceptions to every rule. Chance sometimes
worked wonders, he knew. He sank deeper and deeper into these false and
plausible speculations; his thoughts began to run in together--he was
asleep.

The little schoolboy bed-chamber, cold and bare, with the copper-plate
of the Sistine Madonna over the bed, the extension-table in the middle,
the untidy book-shelf, a stiff-legged mahogany desk, the harmonium, and
the small wash-hand stand, lay silent in the flickering light of the
candle. The window was covered with ice-crystals, and the blind was
up in order that the light might come earlier. And Hanno slept, his
cheek pressed into the pillow, his lips closed, the eyelashes lying
close upon his cheek; he slept with an expression of the most utter
abandonment to slumber, the soft, light-brown hair clustering about
his temples. And slowly the candle-flame lost its reddish-yellow glow,
as the pale, dun-coloured dawn stole into the room through the icy
coating on the window-pane.

At seven he woke once more, with a start of fear. He must get up and
take upon himself the burden of the day. There was no way out of it.
Only a short hour now remained before school would begin. Time pressed;
there was no thought of preparation now. And yet he continued to lie,
full of exasperation and rebellion against this brutal compulsion
that was upon him to forsake his warm bed in the frosty dawning and
go out into the world, into contact with harsh and unfriendly people.
“Oh, only two little tiny minutes more,” he begged of his pillow, in
overwhelming tenderness. And then he gave himself a full five minutes
more, out of sheer bravado, and closed his eyes, opening one from time
to time to stare despairingly at the clock, which went stupidly on in
its insensate, accurate way.

Ten minutes after seven o’clock, he tore himself out of bed and began
to move about the room with frantic haste. He let the candle burn, for
the daylight was not enough by itself. He breathed upon a crystal and,
looking out, saw a thick mist abroad.

He was unutterably cold, and a shiver sometimes shook his entire body.
The ends of his fingers burned; they were so swollen that he could do
nothing with the nail-brush. As he washed the upper parts of his body,
his almost lifeless hand let fall the sponge, and he stood a moment
stiff and helpless, steaming like a sweating horse.

At last he was dressed. Dull-eyed and breathless, he stood at the
table, collected his despairing senses with a jerk, and began to put
together the books he was likely to need to-day, murmuring in an
anguished voice: “Religion, Latin, chemistry,” and shuffling together
the wretched ink-spotted paper volumes.

Yes, he was already quite tall, was little Johann. He was more
than fifteen years old, and no longer wore a sailor costume, but a
light-brown jacket suit with a blue-and-white spotted cravat. Over
his waistcoat he wore a long, thin gold chain that had belonged to
his grandfather, and on the fourth finger of his broad but delicately
articulated right hand was the old seal ring with the green stone. It
was his now. He pulled on his heavy winter jacket, put on his hat,
snatched his school-bag, extinguished the candle, and dashed down
the stair to the ground floor, past the stuffed bear, and into the
dining-room on the right.

Fräulein Clementine, his mother’s new factotum, a thin girl with curls
on her forehead, a pointed nose, and short-sighted eyes, already sat at
the breakfast-table.

“How late is it, really?” he asked between his teeth, though he already
knew with great precision.

“A quarter before eight,” she answered, pointing with a thin, red,
rheumatic-looking hand at the clock on the wall. “You must get along,
Hanno.” She set a steaming cup of cocoa before him, and pushed the
bread and butter, salt, and an egg-cup toward his place.

He said no more, clutched a roll, and began, standing, with his hat on
and his bag under his arm, to swallow his cocoa. The hot drink hurt the
back tooth which Herr Brecht had just been working at. He let half of
it stand, pushed away the egg, and with a sound intended for an adieu
ran out of the house.

It was ten minutes to eight when he left the garden and the little
brick villa behind him and dashed along the wintry avenue. Ten, nine,
eight minutes more. And it was a long way. He could scarcely see for
the fog. He drew it in with his breath and breathed it out again, this
thick, icy cold fog, with all the power of his narrow chest; he stopped
his still throbbing tooth with his tongue, and did fearful violence
to his leg muscles. He was bathed in perspiration; yet he felt frozen
in every limb. He began to have a stitch in his side. The morsel of
breakfast revolted in his stomach against this morning jaunt which it
was taking; he felt nauseated, and his heart fluttered and trembled so
that it took away his breath.

The Castle Gate--only the Castle Gate--and it was four minutes to
eight! As he panted on through the streets, in an extremity of
mingled pain, perspiration, and nausea, he looked on all sides for
his fellow-pupils. No, there was no one else; they were all on the
spot--and now it was beginning to strike eight. Bells were ringing
all over the town, and the chimes of St. Mary’s were playing, in
celebration of this moment, “now let us all thank God.” They played
half the notes falsely; they had no idea of rhythm, and they were badly
in want of tuning. Thus Hanno, in the madness of despair. But what was
that to him? He was late; there was no longer any room for doubt. The
school clock was usually a little behind, but not enough to help him
this time. He stared hopelessly into people’s faces as they passed him.
They were going to their offices or about their business; they were in
no particular hurry; nothing was threatening them. Some of them looked
at him and smiled at his distracted appearance and sulky looks. He
was beside himself at these smiles. What were they smiling at, these
comfortable, unhurried people? He wanted to shout after them and tell
them their smiling was very uncivil. Perhaps _they_ would just enjoy
falling down dead in front of the closed entrance gate of the school!

The prolonged shrill ringing which was the signal for morning prayers
struck on his ear while he was still twenty paces from the long red
wall with the two cast-iron gates, which separated the court of the
school-building from the street. He felt that his legs had no more
power to advance: he simply let his body fall forward, the legs moved
willy-nilly to prevent his stumbling, and thus he staggered on and
arrived at the gate just as the bell had ceased ringing.

Herr Schlemiel, the porter, a heavy man with the face and rough beard
of a labourer, was just about to close the gate. “Well!” he said,
and let Buddenbrook slip through. Perhaps, perhaps, he might still
be saved! What he had to do now was to slip unobserved into his
classroom and wait there until the end of prayers, which were held in
the drill-hall, and to act as if everything were in order. Panting,
exhausted, in a cold perspiration, he slunk across the courtyard and
through the folding doors with glass panes that divided it from the
interior.

Everything in the establishment was now new, clean, and adequate.
The time had been ripe; and the grey, crumbling walls of the ancient
monastic school had been levelled to the ground to make room for the
spacious, airy, and imposing new building. The style of the whole had
been preserved, and corridors and cloisters were still spanned by the
fine old Gothic vaulting. But the lighting and heating arrangements,
the ventilation of the classrooms, the comfort of the masters’ rooms,
the equipment of the halls for the teaching of chemistry, physics and
design, all this had been carried out on the most modern lines with
respect to comfort and sanitation.

The exhausted Hanno stuck close to the wall and kept his eyes open as
he stole along. Heaven be praised, the corridors were empty. He heard
distantly the hubbub made by the hosts of masters and pupils going into
the drill-hall, to receive there a little spiritual strengthening for
the labours of the week. But here everything was empty and still, and
his road up the broad linoleum-covered stairs lay free. He stole up
cautiously on his tip-toes, holding his breath, straining his ears for
sounds from above. His classroom, the lower second of the _Realschule_,
was in the first storey, opposite the stairs, and the door was open.
Crouched on the top step, he peered down the long corridor, on both
sides of which were the entrances to the various classrooms, with
porcelain signs above them. Three rapid, noiseless steps forward--and
he was in his own room.

It was empty. The curtains of the three large windows were still drawn,
and the gas was burning in the chandelier with a soft hissing noise.
Green shades diffused the light over the three rows of desks. These
desks each had room for two pupils; they were made of light-coloured
wood, and opposite them, in remote and edifying austerity, stood the
master’s platform with a blackboard behind it. A yellow wainscoting ran
round the lower part of the wall, and above it the bare white-washed
surface was decorated with a few maps. A second blackboard stood on an
easel by the master’s chair.

Hanno went to his place, which was nearly in the centre of the room.
He stuffed his bag into the desk, sank upon the hard seat, laid his
arms on the sloping lid, and rested his head upon them. He had a
sensation of unspeakable relief. The room was bare, hard, hateful,
and ugly; and the burden of the whole threatening forenoon, with its
numerous perils, lay before him. But for the moment he was safe; he had
saved his skin, and could take things as they came. The first lesson,
Herr Ballerstedt’s class in religious instruction, was comparatively
harmless. He could see, by the vibration of the little strips of paper
over the ventilator next the ceiling, that warm air was streaming in,
and the gas, too, did its share to heat the room. He could actually
stretch out here and feel his stiffened limbs slowly thawing. The heat
mounted to his head: it was very pleasant, but not quite healthful; it
made his ears buzz and his eyes heavy.

A sudden noise behind him made him start and turn around. And behold,
from behind the last bench rose the head and shoulders of Kai, Count
Mölln. He crawled out, did this young man, got up, shook himself,
slapped his hands together to get the dust off, and came up to Hanno
with a beaming face.

“Oh, it’s you, Hanno,” he said. “And I crawled back there because I
took you for a piece of the faculty when you came in.”

His voice cracked as he spoke, because it was changing, which
Hanno’s had not yet begun to do. He had kept pace with Hanno in his
growth, but his looks had not altered, and he still wore a dingy
suit of no particular colour, with a button or so missing and a big
patch in the seat. His hands, too, were not quite clean; narrow and
aristocratic-looking though they were, with long, slender fingers
and tapering nails. But his brow was still pure as alabaster beneath
the carelessly parted reddish-yellow hair that fell over it, and the
glance of the sparkling blue eyes was as keen and as profound as ever.
In fact, the contrast was even more striking between his neglected
toilette and the racial purity of his face, with its delicate bony
structure, slightly aquiline nose, and short upper lip, upon which the
down was beginning to show.

“Oh, Kai,” said Hanno, with a wry face, putting his hand to his heart.
“How can you frighten me like that? What are you doing up here? Why are
you hiding? Did you come late too?”

“Dear me, no,” Kai said. “I’ve been here a long time. Though one
doesn’t much look forward to getting back to the old place, when Monday
morning comes round. _You_ must know that yourself, old fellow. No, I
only stopped up here to have a little game. The deep one seems to be
able to reconcile it with his religion to hunt people down to prayers.
Well, I get behind him, and I manage to keep close behind his back
whichever way he turns, the old mystic! So in the end he goes off,
and I can stop up here. But what about you?” he said sympathetically,
sitting down beside Hanno on the bench. “You had to run, didn’t you?
Poor old chap! You look perfectly worn out. Your hair is sticking to
your forehead.” He took a ruler from the table and carefully combed
little Johann’s hair with it. “You overslept, didn’t you? Look,” he
interrupted himself, “here I am sitting in the sacred seat of number
one--Adolf Todtenhaupt’s place! Well, it won’t hurt me for once, I
suppose. You overslept, didn’t you?”

Hanno had put his head down on his arms again. “I was at the opera
last night,” he said, heaving a long sigh.

“Right--I’d forgot that. Well, was it beautiful?”

He got no answer.

“You are a lucky fellow, after all,” went on Kai perseveringly. “I’ve
never been in the theatre, not a single time in my whole life, and
there isn’t the smallest prospect of my going--at least, not for years.”

“If only one did not have to pay for it afterwards,” said Hanno
gloomily.

“The headache next morning--well, I know how that feels, anyhow.” Kai
stooped and picked up his friend’s coat and hat, which lay on the floor
beside the bench, and carried them quietly out into the corridor.

“Then I take for granted you haven’t done the verses from the
_Metamorphoses_?” he asked as he came back.

“No,” said Hanno.

“Have you prepared for the geography test?”

“I haven’t done anything, and I don’t know anything,” said Hanno.

“Not the chemistry nor the English, either? _Benissimo!_ Then there’s
a pair of us--brothers-in-arms,” said Kai, with obvious gratification.
“I’m in exactly the same boat,” he announced jauntily. “I did no
work Saturday, because the next day was Sunday; and I did no work on
Sunday, because it was Sunday! No, nonsense, it was mostly because I’d
something better to do.” He spoke with sudden earnestness, and a slight
flush spread over his face. “Yes, perhaps it may be rather lively
to-day, Hanno.”

“If I get only one more bad mark, I shan’t go up,” said Johann; “and
I’m sure to get it when I’m called up for Latin. The letter B comes
next, Kai, so there’s not much help for it.”

“We shall see: What does Caesar say? ‘Dangers may threaten me in the
rear; but when they see the front of Caesar--’” But Kai did not finish.
He was feeling rather out of sorts himself; he went to the platform and
sat down in the master’s chair, where he began to rock back and forth,
scowling. Hanno still sat with his forehead resting on his arms. So
they remained for a while in silence.

Then, somewhere in the distance, a dull humming was heard, which
quickly swelled to a tumult of voices, approaching, imminent.

“The mob,” said Kai, in an exasperated tone. “Goodness, how fast they
got through. They haven’t taken up ten minutes of the period!”

He got down from the platform and went to the door to mingle with the
incoming stream. Hanno, for his part, lifted up his head for a minute,
screwed up his mouth, and remained seated.

Stamping, shuffling, with a confusion of masculine voices, treble
and falsetto, they flooded up the steps and over the corridor. The
classroom suddenly became full of noise and movement. This was the
lower second form of the _Realschule_, some twenty-five strong,
comrades of Hanno and Kai. They loitered to their places with their
hands in their pockets or dangling their arms, sat down, and opened
their Bibles. Some of the faces were pleasant, strong, and healthy;
others were doubtful or suspicious-looking. Here were tall, stout,
lusty rascals who would soon go to sea or else begin a mercantile
career, and who had no further interest in their school life; and
small, ambitious lads, far ahead of their age, who were brilliant in
subjects that could be got by heart. Adolf Todtenhaupt was the head
boy. He knew everything. In all his school career he had never failed
to answer a question. Part of his reputation was due to his silent,
impassioned industry; but part was also due to the fact that the
masters were careful not to ask him anything he might not know. It
would have pained and mortified them and shaken their faith in human
perfectibility to have Adolf Todtenhaupt fail to answer. He had a head
full of remarkable bumps, to which his blond hair clung as smooth as
glass; grey eyes with black rings beneath them, and long brown hands
that stuck out beneath the too short sleeves of his neatly brushed
jacket. He sat down next Hanno Buddenbrook with a mild, rather sly
smile, and bade his neighbour good morning in the customary jargon,
which reduced the greeting to a single careless monosyllable. Then he
began to employ himself silently with the class register, holding his
pen in a way that was incomparably correct, with the slender fingers
outstretched; while about him people yawned, laughed, conned their
lessons, and chattered half aloud.

After two minutes there were steps outside. The front rows of pupils
rose, and some of those seated farther back followed their example.
The rest scarcely interrupted what they were doing as Herr Ballerstedt
came into the room, hung his hat on the door, and betook himself to the
platform.

He was a man in the forties, with a pleasant _embonpoint_, a large
bald spot, a short beard, a rosy complexion, and a mingled expression
of unctuousness and sensuality on his humid lips. He took out his
notebook and turned over the leaves in silence; but as the order in
the classroom left much to be desired, he lifted his head, stretched
out his arm over the desk, and waved his flabby white fist a few times
powerlessly in the air. His face grew slowly red--such a dark red
that his beard looked pale-yellow by contrast. He moved his lips and
struggled spasmodically and fruitlessly for half a minute to speak,
and finally brought out a single syllable, a short, suppressed grunt
that sounded like “Well!” He still struggled after further expression,
but in the end gave it up, returned to his notebook, calmed down, and
became quite composed once more. This was Herr Ballerstedt’s way.

He had intended to be a priest; but on account of his tendency to
stutter and his leaning toward the good things of life he had become
a pedagogue instead. He was a bachelor of some means, wore a small
diamond on his finger, and was much given to eating and drinking.
He was the head master who associated with his fellow masters only
in working hours; and outside them he spent his time chiefly with
the bachelor society of the town--yes, even with the officers of the
garrison. He ate twice a day in the best hotel and was a member of the
club. If he met any of his elder pupils in the streets, late at night
or at two or three o’clock in the morning, he would puff up the way he
did in the classroom, fetch out a “Good morning,” and let the matter
rest there, on both sides. From this master Hanno Buddenbrook had
nothing to fear and was almost never called up by him. Herr Ballerstedt
had been too often associated with Hanno’s Uncle Christian in all too
purely human affairs, to make him inclined to conflict with Johann in
an official capacity.

“Well,” he said, looked about him once more, waved his flabby fist with
the diamond upon it, and glanced into his notebook. “Perlemann, the
synopsis.”

Somewhere in the class, up rose Perlemann. One could hardly see that he
had risen; he was one of the small and forward ones. “The synopsis,”
he said, softly and politely, craning his neck forward with a nervous
smile. “The Book of Job falls into three sections. First, the condition
of Job before he fell under the chastening of the Lord: Chapter One,
Verses one to six: second, the chastening itself, and its consequences,
Chapter--”

“Right, Perlemann,” interrupted Herr Ballerstedt, touched by so
much modesty and obligingness. He put down a good mark in his book.
“Continue, Heinricy.”

Heinricy was one of the tall rascals who gave themselves no trouble
over anything. He shoved the knife he had been playing with into his
pocket, and got up noisily, with his lower lip hanging, and coughing
in a gruff voice. Nobody was pleased to have him called up after the
gentle Perlemann. The pupils sat drowsing in the warm room, some of
them half asleep, soothed by the purring sound of the gas. They were
all tired after the holiday; they had all crawled out of warm beds that
morning with their teeth chattering, groaning in spirit. And they would
have preferred to have the gentle Perlemann drone on for the remainder
of the period. Heinricy was almost sure to make trouble.

“I wasn’t here when we had this,” he said, none too respectfully.

Herr Ballerstedt puffed himself up, waved his fist, struggled to speak,
and stared young Heinricy in the face with his eyebrows raised. His
head shook with the effort he made; but he finally managed to bring out
a “Well!” and the spell was broken. He went on with perfect fluency.
“There is never any work to be got out of you, and you always have
an excuse ready, Heinricy. If you were ill the last time, you could
have had help in that part; besides, if the first part dealt with
the condition before the tribulation, and the second part with the
tribulation itself, you could have told by counting on your fingers
that the third part must deal with the condition after the tribulation!
But you have no application or interest whatever; you are not only
a poor creature, but you are always ready to excuse and defend your
mistakes. But so long as this is the case, Heinricy, you cannot expect
to make any improvement, and so I warn you. Sit down, Heinricy. Go on,
Wasservogel.”

Heinricy, thick-skinned and defiant, sat down with much shuffling and
scraping, whispered some sort of saucy comment in his neighbour’s ear,
and took out his jack-knife again. Wasservogel stood up: a boy with
inflamed eyes, a snub nose, prominent ears, and bitten fingernails. He
finished the summary in a rather whining voice, and began to relate
the story of Job, the man from the land of Uz, and what happened to
him. He had simply opened his Bible, behind the back of the pupil
ahead of him; and he read from it with an air of utter innocence and
concentration, staring then at a point on the wall and translated what
he read, coughing the while, into awkward and hesitating modern German.
There was something positively repulsive about Wasservogel; but Herr
Ballerstedt gave him a large meed of praise. Wasservogel had the knack
of making the masters like him; and they praised him in order to show
that they were incapable of being led away by his ugliness to blame him
unjustly.

The lesson continued. Various pupils were called up to display their
knowledge touching Job, the man from the land of Uz. Gottlob Kassbaum,
son of the unfortunate merchant P. Philipp Kassbaum, got an excellent
mark, despite the late distressing circumstances of his family, because
he knew that Job had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels,
five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred asses, and a large number of
servants.

Then the Bibles, which were already open, were permitted to be opened,
and they went on reading. Wherever Herr Ballerstedt thought explanation
necessary, he puffed himself up, said “Well!” and after these customary
preliminaries made a little speech upon the point in question,
interspersed with abstract moral observations. Not a soul listened. A
slumberous peace reigned in the room. The heat, with the continuous
influx of warm air and the still lighted gas burners, had become
oppressive, and the air was well-nigh exhausted by these twenty-five
breathing and steaming organisms. The warmth, the purring of the gas,
and the drone of the reader’s voice lulled them all to a point where
they were more asleep than awake. Kai, Count Mölln, however, had a
volume of Edgar Allan Poe’s _Tales_ inside his Bible, and read in it,
supporting his head on his hand. Hanno Buddenbrook leaned back, sank
down in his seat, and looked with relaxed mouth and hot, swimming eyes
at the Book of Job, in which all the lines ran together into a black
haze. Now and then, as the Grail _motif_ or the Wedding March came into
his mind, his lids drooped and he felt an inward soothing; and then he
would wish that this safe and peaceful morning hour might go on for
ever.

Yet it ended, as all things must end. The shrill sound of the bell,
clanging and echoing through the corridor, shook the twenty-five brains
out of their slumberous calm.

“That is all,” said Herr Ballerstedt. The register was handed up to
him and he signed his name in it, as evidence that he had performed his
office.

Hanno Buddenbrook closed his Bible and stretched himself, yawning. It
was a nervous yawn; and as he dropped his arms and relaxed his limbs
he had to take a long, deep breath to bring his heart back to a steady
pulsation, for it weakly refused its office for a second. Latin came
next. He cast a beseeching glance at Kai, who still sat there reading
and seemed not to have remarked the end of the lesson. Then he drew out
his Ovid, in stitched covers of marbled paper, and opened it at the
lines that were to have been learned by heart for to-day. No, it was no
use now trying to memorize any of it: the regular lines, full of pencil
marks, numbered by fives all the way down the page, looked hopelessly
unfamiliar. He barely understood the sense of them, let alone trying to
say a single one of them by heart. And of those in to-day’s preparation
he had not puzzled out even the first sentence.

“What does that mean--‘_deciderant, patula Jovis arbore glandes_’?”
he asked in a despairing voice, turning to Adolf Todtenhaupt, who sat
beside him working on the register.

“What?” asked Todtenhaupt, continuing to write. “The acorns from the
tree of Jupiter--that is the oak; no, I don’t quite know myself--”

“Tell me a bit, Todtenhaupt, when it comes my turn, will you?” begged
Hanno, and pushed the book away. He scowled at the cool and careless
nod Todtenhaupt gave by way of reply; then he slid sidewise off the
bench and stood up.

The scene had changed. Herr Ballerstedt had left the room, and his
place was taken by a small, weak enervated little man who stood
straight and severe on the platform. He had a sparse white beard and
a thin red neck that rose out of a narrow turned-down collar. He held
his top-hat upside down in front of him, clasped in two small hands
covered with white hair. His real name was Professor Hückopp, but he
was called “Spider” by the pupils. He was in charge of classrooms and
corridors during the recess. “Out with the gas! Up with the blinds! Up
with the windows!” he said, and gave his voice as commanding a tone as
possible, moving his little arm in the air with an awkward, energetic
gesture, as if he were turning a crank. “Everybody downstairs, into the
fresh air, as quick as possible!”

The gas went out, the blinds flew up, the sallow daylight filled the
room. The cold mist rushed in through the wide-open windows, and the
lower second crowded past Professor Hückopp to the exit. Only the head
boy might remain upstairs.

Hanno and Kai met at the door and went down the stairs together, and
across the architecturally correct vestibule. They were silent. Hanno
looked pathetically unwell, and Kai was deep in thought. They reached
the courtyard and began to stroll up and down across the wet red tiles,
among school companions of all ages and sizes.

A youthful looking man with a blond pointed beard kept order down here:
Dr. Goldener, the “dressy one.” He kept a _pensionnat_ for the sons
of the rich landowners from Mecklenburg and Holstein, and dressed, on
account of these aristocratic youths, with an elegance not apparent
in the other masters. He wore silk cravats, a dandified coat, and
pale-coloured trousers fastened down with straps under the soles of
his boots, and used perfumed handkerchiefs with coloured borders.
He came of rather simple people, and all this elegance was not very
becoming--his huge feet, for example, looked absurd in the pointed
buttoned boots he wore. He was vain of his plump red hands, too, and
kept rubbing them together, clasping them before him, and regarding
them with every mark of admiration. He carried his head laid far back
on one side, and constantly made faces by blinking, screwing up his
nose, and half-opening his mouth, as though he were about to say:
“What’s the matter now?” But his refinement led him to overlook all
sorts of small infractions of the rules. He overlooked this or that
pupil who had brought a book with him into the courtyard to prepare a
little at the eleventh hour; he overlooked the fact that one of his
boarding-pupils handed money to the porter, Herr Schlemiel, and asked
him to get some pastry; he overlooked a small trial of strength between
two third-form pupils, which resulted in a beating of one by the other,
and around which a ring of connoisseurs was quickly formed; and he
overlooked certain sounds behind him which indicated that a pupil who
had made himself unpopular by cheating, cowardice, or other weakness
was being forcibly escorted to the pump.

It was a lusty, not too gentle race, that of these comrades of
Hanno and Kai among whom they walked up and down. The ideals of
the victorious, united fatherland were those of a somewhat rude
masculinity; its youth talked in a jargon at once brisk and slovenly;
the most despised vices were softness and dandyism, the most admired
virtues those displayed by prowess in drinking and smoking, bodily
strength and skill in athletics. Whoever went out with his coat-collar
turned up incurred a visit to the pump; while he who let himself be
seen in the streets with a walking-stick must expect a public and
ignominious correction administered in the drill-hall.

Hanno’s and Kai’s conversation was in striking contrast to that which
went on around them among their fellows. This friendship had been
recognized in the school for a long time. The masters suffered it
grudgingly, suspecting that it meant disaffection and future trouble.
The pupils could not understand it, but had settled down to regarding
it with a sort of embarrassed dislike, and to thinking of the two
friends as outlaws and eccentrics who must be left to their own
devices. They recognized, it is true, the wildness and insubordination
of Kai, Count Mölln, and respected him accordingly. As for Hanno
Buddenbrook, big Heinricy, who thrashed everybody, could not make up
his mind to lay a finger on him by way of chastisement for dandyism or
cowardice. He refrained out of an indefinite respect and awe for the
softness of Hanno’s hair, the delicacy of his limbs, and his sad, shy,
cold glance.

“I’m scared,” Hanno said to Kai. He leaned against the wall of the
school, drawing his jacket closer about him, yawning and shivering,
“I’m so scared, Kai, that it hurts me all over my body. Now just
tell me this: is Herr Mantelsack the sort of person one ought to be
afraid of? Tell me yourself! If this beastly Ovid lesson were only
over! If I just had my bad mark, in peace, and stopped where I am, and
everything was in order! I’m not afraid of that. It is the row that
goes beforehand that I hate!”

Kai was still deep in thought. “This Roderick Usher is the most
remarkable character ever conceived,” he said suddenly and abruptly.
“I have read the whole lesson-hour. If ever I could write a tale like
that!”

Kai was absorbed in his writing. It was to this he had referred when
he said that he had something better to do than his preparation, and
Hanno had understood him. Attempts at composition had developed out of
his old propensity for inventing tales; and he had lately completed
a composition in the form of a fantastic fairy tale, a narrative of
symbolic adventure, which went forward in the depths of the earth
among glowing metals and mysterious fires, and at the same time in the
souls of men: a tale in which the primeval forces of nature and of the
soul were interchanged and mingled, transformed and refined--the whole
conceived and written in a vein of extravagant and even sentimental
symbolism, fervid with passion and longing.

Hanno knew the tale well, and loved it; but he was not now in a frame
of mind to think of Kai’s work or of Edgar Allan Poe. He yawned again,
and then sighed, humming to himself a _motif_ he had lately composed on
the piano. This was a habit with him. He would often give a long sigh,
a deep indrawn breath, from the instinct to calm the fluctuating and
irregular action of his heart; and he had accustomed himself to set
the deep breathing to a musical theme of his own or some one else’s
invention.

“Look, there comes the Lord God,” said Kai. “He is walking in his
garden.”

“Fine garden,” said Hanno. He began to laugh nervously, and could not
stop; putting his handkerchief to his mouth the while and looking
across the courtyard at him whom Kai called the Lord God.

This was Director Wulicke, the head of the school, who had appeared in
the courtyard: an extremely tall man with a slouch hat, a short heavy
beard, a prominent abdomen, trousers that were far too short, and very
dirty funnel-shaped cuffs. He strode across the flagstones with a face
so angry in its expression that he seemed to be actually suffering,
and pointed at the pump with outstretched arm. The water was running!
A train of pupils ran before him and stumbled in their zeal to repair
the damage. Then they stood about, looking first at the pump and then
at the Director, their faces pictures of distress; and the Director,
meanwhile, had turned to Dr. Goldener, who hurried up with a very red
face and spoke to him in a deep hollow voice, fairly babbling with
excitement between the words.

This Director Wulicke was a most formidable man. He had succeeded
to the headship of the school after the death, soon after 1871, of
the genial and benevolent old gentleman under whose guidance Hanno’s
father and uncle had pursued their studies. Dr. Wulicke was summoned
from a professorship in a Prussian high school; and with his advent an
entirely new spirit entered the school. In the old days the classical
course had been thought of as an end in itself, to be pursued at one’s
ease, with a sense of joyous idealism. But now the leading conceptions
were authority, duty, power, service, the career; “the categorical
imperative of our philosopher Kant” was inscribed upon the banner which
Dr. Wulicke in every official speech unfurled to the breeze. The school
became a state within a state, in which not only the masters but the
pupils regarded themselves as officials, whose main concern was the
advancement they could make, and who must therefore take care to stand
well with the authorities. Soon after the new Director was installed in
his office the tearing down of the old school began, and the new one
was built up on the most approved hygienic and aesthetic principles,
and everything went swimmingly. But it remained an open question
whether the old school, as an institution, with its smaller endowment
of modern comfort and its larger share of gay good nature, courage,
charm, and good feeling, had not been more blest and blessing than the
new.

As for Dr. Wulicke himself personally, he had all the awful mystery,
duplicity, obstinacy, and jealousy of the Old Testament God. He was as
frightful in his smiles as in his anger. The result of the enormous
authority that lay in his hands was that he grew more and more
arbitrary and moody--he was even capable of making a joke and then
visiting with his wrath anybody who dared to laugh. Not one of his
trembling creatures knew how to act before him. They found it safest
to honour him in the dust, and to protect themselves by a frantic
abasement from the fate of being whirled up in the cloud of his wrath
and crushed for ever under the weight of his righteous displeasure.

The name Kai had given Dr. Wulicke was known only to himself and
Hanno, and they took the greatest pains not to let any of the others
overhear it, for they could not possibly understand. No, there was
not one single point on which those two stood on common ground with
their schoolfellows. Even the methods of revenge, of “getting even,”
which obtained in the school were foreign to Hanno and Kai; and they
utterly disdained the current nicknames, which did not in the least
appeal to their more subtle sense of humour. It was so poor, it showed
such a paucity of invention, to call thin Professor Hückopp “Spider”
and Herr Ballerstedt “Cocky.” It was such scant compensation for their
compulsory service to the state! No, Kai, Count Mölln, flattered
himself that he was not so feeble as that! He invented, for his own and
Hanno’s use, a method of alluding to all their masters by their actual
names, with the simple prefix, thus: Herr Ballerstedt, Herr Hückopp.
The irony of this, its chilly remoteness and mockery, pleased him very
much. He liked to speak of the “teaching body”; and would amuse himself
for whole recesses with imagining it as an actual creature, a sort of
monster, with a repulsively fantastic form. And they spoke in general
of the “Institution” as if it were similar to that which harboured
Hanno’s Uncle Christian.

Kai’s mood improved at sight of the Lord God, who still pervaded the
playground and put everybody in a pallid fright by pointing, with
fearful rumblings, to the wrapping papers from the luncheons which
strewed the courtyard. The two lads went off to one of the gates,
through which the masters in charge of the second period were now
entering. Kai began to make bows of exaggerated respect before the
red-eyed, pale, shabby-looking seminarists, who crossed over to go to
their sixth and seventh form pupils in the back court. And when the
grey-haired mathematics master, Herr Tietge, appeared, holding a bundle
of books on his back with a shaking hand, bent, yellow, cross-eyed,
spitting as he walked along, Kai said, “Good morning, old dead man.” He
said this, in a loud voice and gazed straight up into the air with his
bright, sharp gaze.

Then the bell clanged loudly, and the pupils began to stream through
the entrances into the building. Hanno could not stop laughing. He was
still laughing so hard on the stairs that his classmates looked at him
and Kai with wonder and cold hostility, and even with a slight disgust
at such frivolity.

There was a sudden hush in the classroom, and everybody stood up, as
Herr Professor Mantelsack entered. He was the Professor _ordinarius_,
for whom it was usual to show respect. He pulled the door to after him,
bowed, craned his neck to see if all the class were standing up, hung
his hat on its nail, and went quickly to the platform, moving his head
rapidly up and down as he went. He took his place and stood for a while
looking out the window and, running his forefinger, with a large seal
ring on it, around inside his collar. He was a man of medium size, with
thin grey hair, a curled Olympian beard, and short-sighted prominent
sapphire-blue eyes gleaming behind his spectacles. He was dressed in an
open frock-coat of soft grey material, which he habitually settled at
the waist with his short-fingered, wrinkled hand. His trousers were,
like all the other masters’, even the elegant Dr. Goldener’s, far too
short, and showed the legs of a pair of very broad and shiny boots.

He turned sharply away from the window and gave vent to a little
good-natured sigh, smiling familiarly at several pupils. His mood was
obviously good, and a wave of relief ran through the classroom. So
much--everything, in fact--depended on whether Dr. Mantelsack was in a
good mood! For the whole form was aware that he gave way to the feeling
of the moment, whatever that might happen to be, without the slightest
restraint. He was most extraordinarily, boundlessly, naïvely unjust,
and his favour was as inconstant as that of fortune herself. He had
always a few favourites--two or three--whom he called by their given
names, and these lived in paradise. They might say almost anything
they liked; and after the lesson Dr. Mantelsack would talk with them
just like a human being. But a day would come--perhaps after the
holidays--when for no apparent reason they were dethroned, cast out,
rejected, and others elevated to their place. The mistakes of these
favourites would be passed over with neat, careful corrections, so that
their work retained a respectable appearance, no matter how bad it
was; whereas he would attack the other copy-books with heavy, ruthless
pen, and fairly flood them with red ink, so that their appearance was
shocking indeed. And as he never troubled to count the mistakes, but
distributed bad marks in proportion to the red ink he had expended,
his favourites always emerged with great credit from these exercises.
He was not even aware of the rank injustice of this conduct. And if
anybody had ever had the temerity to call his attention to it, that
person would have been for ever deprived of even the chance of becoming
a favourite and being called by his first name. There was nobody who
was willing to let slip the chance.

Now Dr. Mantelsack crossed his legs, still standing, and began to turn
over the leaves of his notebook. Hanno Buddenbrook wrung his hands
under the desk. B, the letter B, came next. Now he would hear his name,
he would get up, he would not know a line, and there would be a row, a
loud, frightful catastrophe--no matter how good a mood Dr. Mantelsack
might be in. The seconds dragged out, each a martyrdom. “Buddenbrook”--
Now he would say “Buddenbrook.” “Edgar,” said Dr. Mantelsack, closing
his notebook with his finger in it. He sat down, as if all were in the
best of order.

What? Who? Edgar? That was Lüders, the fat Lüders boy over there by
the window. Letter L, which was not next at all! No! Was it possible?
Dr. Mantelsack’s mood was so good that he simply selected one of his
favourites, without troubling in the least about whose turn it was.

Lüders stood up. He had a face like a pug dog, and dull brown eyes. He
had an advantageous seat, and could easily have read it off, but he was
too lazy. He felt too secure in his paradise, and answered simply, “I
had a headache yesterday, and couldn’t study.”

“Oh, so you are leaving me in the lurch, Edgar,” said Dr. Mantelsack
with tender reproach. “You cannot say the lines on the Golden Age? What
a shocking pity, my friend! You had a headache? It seems to me you
should have told me before the lesson began, instead of waiting till
I called you up. Didn’t you have a headache just lately, Edgar? You
should do something for them, for otherwise there is danger of your not
passing. Timm, will you take his place?”

Lüders sat down. At this moment he was the object of universal hatred.
It was plain that the master’s mood had altered for the worse, and
that Lüders, perhaps in the very next lesson, would be called by his
last name. Timm stood up in one of the back seats. He was a blond
country-looking lad with a light-brown jacket and short, broad fingers.
He held his mouth open in a funnel shape, and hastily found the place,
looking straight ahead the while with the most idiotic expression. Then
he put down his head and began to read, in long-drawn-out, monotonous,
hesitating accents, like a child with a first lesson-book: “_Aurea
prima sata est ætas!_”

It was plain that Dr. Mantelsack was calling up quite at random,
without reference to the alphabet. And thus it was no longer so
imminently likely that Hanno would be called on, though this might
happen through unlucky chance. He exchanged a joyful glance with Kai
and began to relax somewhat.

But now Timm’s reading was interrupted. Whether Dr. Mantelsack could
not hear him, or whether he stood in need of exercise, is not to be
known. But he left his platform and walked slowly down through the
room. He paused near Timm, with his book in his hand; Timm meanwhile
had succeeded in getting his own book out of sight, but was now
entirely helpless. His funnel-shaped mouth emitted a gasp, he looked at
the _Ordinarius_ with honest, troubled blue eyes, and could not fetch
out another syllable.

“Well, Timm,” said Dr. Mantelsack. “Can’t you get on?”

Timm clutched his brow, rolled up his eyes, sighed windily, and said
with a dazed smile: “I get all mixed up, Herr Doctor, when you stand so
close to me.”

Dr. Mantelsack smiled too. He smiled in a very flattered way and said
“Well, pull yourself together and get on.” And he strolled back to his
place.

And Timm pulled himself together. He drew out and opened his book
again, all the time apparently wrestling to recover his self-control
and staring about the room. Then he dropped his head and was himself
again.

“Very good,” said the master, when he had finished. “It is clear that
you have studied to some purpose. But you sacrifice the rhythm too
much, Timm. You seem to understand the elisions; yet you have not been
really reading hexameters at all. I have an impression as if you had
learned the whole thing by heart, like prose. But, as I say, you have
been diligent, you have done your best--and whoever does his best--;
you may sit down.”

Timm sat down, proud and beaming, and Dr. Mantelsack gave him a good
mark in his book. And the extraordinary thing was that at this moment
not only the master, but also Timm himself and all his classmates,
sincerely felt that Timm was a good industrious pupil who had fully
deserved the mark he got. Hanno Buddenbrook, even, thought the same,
though something within him revolted against the thought. He listened
with strained attention to the next name.

“Mumme,” said Dr. Mantelsack. “Again: _aurea prima_--”

Mumme! Well! Thank Heaven! Hanno was now in probable safety. The lines
would hardly be asked for a third time, and in the sight-reading the
letter B had just been called up.

Mumme got up. He was tall and pale, with trembling hands and
extraordinarily large round glasses. He had trouble with his eyes, and
was so short-sighted that he could not possibly read standing up from
a book on the desk before him. He had to learn, and he had learned.
But to-day he had not expected to be called up; he was, besides,
painfully ungifted; and he stuck after the first few words. Dr. Mumme
helped him, he helped him again in a sharper tone, and for the third
time with intense irritation. But when Mumme came to a final stop, the
_Ordinarius_ was mastered by indignation.

“This is entirely insufficient, Mumme. Sit down. You cut a disgraceful
figure, let me tell you, sir. A _cretin_! Stupid and lazy both--it is
really too much.”

Mumme was overwhelmed. He looked the child of calamity, and at this
moment everybody in the room despised him. A sort of disgust, almost
like nausea, mounted again in Hanno Buddenbrook’s throat; but at the
same time he observed with horrid clarity all that was going forward.
Dr. Mantelsack made a mark of sinister meaning after Mumme’s name, and
then looked through his notebook with frowning brows. He went over,
in his disgust, to the order of the day, and looked to see whose turn
it really was. There was no doubt that this was the case: and just as
Hanno was overpowered by this knowledge, he heard his name--as if in a
bad dream.

“Buddenbrook!” Dr. Mantelsack had said “Buddenbrook.” The scale was in
the air again. Hanno could not believe his senses. There was a buzzing
in his ears. He sat still.

“Herr Buddenbrook!” said Dr. Mantelsack, and stared at him sharply
through his glasses with his prominent sapphire-blue eyes. “Will you
have the goodness?”

Very well, then. It was to be. It had to come. It had come differently
from his expectations, but still, here it was, and he was none the less
lost. But he was calm. Would it be a very big row? He rose in his place
and was about to utter some forlorn and absurd excuse to the effect
that he had “forgotten” to study the lines, when he became aware that
the boy ahead of him was offering him his open book.

This boy, Hans Hermann Kilian, was a small brown lad with oily hair and
broad shoulders. He had set his heart on becoming an officer, and was
so possessed by an ideal of comradeship that he would not leave in the
lurch even little Buddenbrook, whom he did not like. He pointed with
his finger to the place.

Hanno gazed down upon it and began to read. With trembling voice,
his face working, he read of the Golden Age, when truth and justice
flourished of their own free will, without laws or compulsions.
“Punishment and fear did not exist,” he said, in Latin. “No threats
were graven upon the bronze tablets, nor did those who came to petition
fear the countenance of the judges....” He read in fear and trembling,
read with design badly and disjointedly, purposely omitted some of the
elisions that were marked with pencil in Kilian’s book, made mistakes
in the lines, progressed with apparent difficulty, and constantly
expected the master to discover the fraud and pounce upon him. The
guilty satisfaction of seeing the open book in front of him gave him
a pricking sensation in his skin; but at the same time he had such a
feeling of disgust that he intentionally deceived as badly as possible,
simply to make the deceit seem less vulgar to himself. He came to the
end, and a pause ensued, during which he did not dare look up. He felt
convinced that Dr. Mantelsack had seen all, and his lips were perfectly
white. But at length the master sighed and said:

“Oh, Buddenbrook! _Si tacuisses!_ You will permit me the classical
thou, for this once. Do you know what you have done? You have conducted
yourself like a vandal, a barbarian. You are a humourist, Buddenbrook;
I can see that by your face. If I ask myself whether you have been
coughing or whether you have been reciting this noble verse, I should
incline to the former. Timm showed small feeling for rhythm, but
compared to you he is a genius, a rhapsodist! Sit down, unhappy wretch!
You have studied the lines, I cannot deny it, and I am constrained
to give you a good mark. You have probably done your best. But tell
me--have I not been told that you are musical, that you play the
piano? How is it possible? Well, very well, sit down. You have worked
hard--that must suffice.”

He put a good mark down in his book, and Hanno Buddenbrook took his
seat. He felt as Timm, the rhapsodist had felt before him--that he
really deserved the praise which Dr. Mantelsack gave him. Yes, at
the moment he was of the opinion that he was, if rather a dull, yet
an industrious pupil, who had come off with honour, comparatively
speaking. He was conscious that all his schoolmates, not excepting
Hans Hermann Kilian, had the same view. Yet he felt at the same time
somewhat nauseated. Pale, trembling, too exhausted to think about what
had happened, he closed his eyes and sank back in lethargy.

Dr. Mantelsack, however, went on with the lesson. He came to the verses
that were to have been prepared for to-day, and called up Petersen.
Petersen rose, fresh, lively, sanguine, in a stout attitude, ready for
the fray. Yet to-day, even to-day, was destined to see his fall. Yes,
the lesson-hour was not to pass without a catastrophe far worse than
that which had befallen the hapless, short-sighted Mumme.

Petersen translated, glancing now and then at the other page of his
book, which should have had nothing on it. He did it quite cleverly:
he acted as though something there distracted him--a speck of dust,
perhaps, which he brushed with his hand or tried to blow away. And
yet--there followed the catastrophe.

Dr. Mantelsack made a sudden violent movement, which was responded
to on Petersen’s part by a similar movement. And in the same moment
the master left his seat, dashed headlong down from his platform, and
approached Petersen with long, impetuous strides.

“You have a crib in your book,” he said as he came up.

“A crib--I--no,” stammered Petersen. He was a charming lad, with a
great wave of blond hair on his forehead and lovely blue eyes which now
flickered in a frightened way.

“You have no crib in your book?”

“A crib, Herr Doctor? No, really, I haven’t. You are mistaken. You
are accusing me falsely.” Petersen betrayed himself by the unnatural
correctness of his language, which he used in order to intimidate the
master. “I am not deceiving you,” he repeated, in the greatness of his
need. “I have always been honourable, my whole life long.”

But Dr. Mantelsack was all too certain of the painful fact.

“Give me your book,” he said coldly.

Petersen clung to his book; he raised it up in both hands and went on
protesting. He stammered, his tongue grew thick. “Believe me, Herr
Doctor. There is nothing in the book--I have no crib--I have not
deceived you--I have always been honourable--”

“Give me your book,” repeated the master, stamping his foot.

Then Petersen collapsed, and his face grew grey.

“Very well,” said he, and delivered up his book. “Here it is. Yes,
there is a crib in it. You can see for yourself; there it is. But I
haven’t used it,” he suddenly shrieked, quite at random.

Dr. Mantelsack ignored this idiotic lie, which was rooted in despair.
He drew out the crib, looked at it with an expression of extreme
disgust, as if it were a piece of decaying offal, thrust it into his
pocket, and threw the volume of Ovid contemptuously back on Petersen’s
desk.

“Give me the class register,” he said in a hollow voice.

Adolf Todtenhaupt dutifully fetched it, and Petersen received a mark
for dishonesty which effectually demolished his chances of being sent
up at Easter. “You are the shame of the class,” said Dr. Mantelsack.

Petersen sat down. He was condemned. His neighbour avoided contact with
him. Every one looked at him with a mixture of pity, aversion, and
disgust. He had fallen, utterly and completely, because he had been
found out. There was but one opinion as to Petersen, and that was that
he was, in very truth, the shame of the class. They recognized and
accepted his fall, as they had the rise of Timm and Buddenbrook and the
unhappy Mumme’s mischance. And Petersen did too.

Thus most of this class of twenty-five young folk, being of sound and
strong constitution, armed and prepared to wage the battle of life as
it is, took things just as they found them, and did not at this moment
feel any offence or uneasiness. Everything seemed to them to be quite
in order. But one pair of eyes, little Johann’s, which stared gloomily
at a point on Hans Hermann Kilian’s broad back, were filled, in their
blue-shadowed depths, with abhorrence, fear, and revulsion. The lesson
went on. Dr. Mantelsack called on somebody, anybody--he had lost all
desire to test any one. And after Adolf Todtenhaupt, another pupil, who
was but moderately prepared, and did not even know what “_patula Jovis
arbore_” meant, had been called on, Buddenbrook had to say it. He said
it in a low voice, without looking up, because Dr. Mantelsack asked
him, and he received a nod of the head for the answer.

And now that the performance of the pupils was over, the lesson had
lost all interest. Dr. Mantelsack had one of the best scholars read
at his own sweet will, and listened just as little as the twenty-four
others, who began to get ready for the next class. This one was
finished, in effect. No one could be marked on it, nor his interest or
industry judged. And the bell would soon ring. It did ring. It rang for
Hanno, and he had received a nod of approbation. Thus it was.

“Well!” said Kai to Hanno, as they walked down the Gothic corridor with
their classmates, to go to the chemistry class, “what do you say now
about the brow of Caesar? You had wonderful luck!”

“I feel sick, Kai,” said little Johann, “I don’t like that kind of
luck. It makes me sick.” Kai knew he would have felt the same in
Hanno’s place.

The chemistry hall was a vaulted chamber like an amphitheatre with
benches rising in tiers, a long table for the experiments, and two
glass cases of phials. The air in the classroom had grown very hot and
heavy again; but here it was saturated with an odour of sulphuretted
hydrogen from a just-completed experiment, and smelled abominable. Kai
flung up the window and then stole Adolf Todtenhaupt’s copy-book and
began in great haste to copy down the lesson for the day. Hanno and
several others did the same. This occupied the entire pause till the
bell rang, and Dr. Marotzke came in.

This was the “deep one,” as Kai and Hanno called him. He was a
medium-sized dark man with a very yellow skin, two large lumps on his
brow, a stiff smeary beard, and hair of the same kind. He always looked
unwashed and unkempt, but his appearance probably belied him. He taught
the natural sciences, but his own field was mathematics, in which
subject he had the reputation of being an original thinker. He liked
to hold forth on the subject of metaphysical passages from the Bible;
and when in a good-natured or discursive mood, he would entertain the
boys of the first and second forms with marvellous interpretations of
mysterious passages. He was, besides all this, a reserve officer, and
very enthusiastic over the service. As an official who was also in the
army, he stood very well with Director Wulicke. He set more store by
discipline than any of the other masters: he would review the ranks of
sturdy youngsters with a professional eye, and he insisted on short,
brisk answers to questions. This mixture of mysticism and severity was
not, on the whole, attractive.

The copy-books were shown, and Dr. Marotzke went around and touched
each one with his finger. Some of the pupils who had not done theirs at
all, put down other books or turned this one back to an old lesson; but
he never noticed.

Then the lesson began, and the twenty-five boys had to display their
industry and interest with respect to boric acid, and chlorine, and
strontium, as in the previous period they had displayed it with
respect to Ovid. Hans Hermann Kilian was commended because he knew
that BaSO_{4}, or barytes, was the metal most commonly used in
counterfeiting. He was the best in the class, anyhow, because of his
desire to be an officer. Kai and Hanno knew nothing at all, and fared
very badly in Dr. Marotzke’s notebook.

And when the tests, recitation, and marking were over, the interest in
chemistry was about exhausted too. Dr. Marotzke began to make a few
experiments; there were a few pops, a few coloured gases; but that was
only to fill out the hour. He dictated the next lesson; and then the
third period, too, was a thing of the past.

Everybody was in good spirits now--even Petersen, despite the blow
he had received. For the next hour was likely to be a jolly one. Not
a soul felt any qualms before it, and it even promised occasion for
entertainment and mischief. This was English, with Candidate Modersohn,
a young philologian who had been for a few weeks on trial in the
faculty--or, as Kai, Count Mölln, put it, he was filling a limited
engagement with the company. There was little prospect, however, of his
being re-engaged. His classes were much too entertaining.

Some of the form remained in the chemistry hall, others went up to
the classroom; nobody needed to go down and freeze in the courtyard,
because Herr Modersohn was in charge up in the corridors, and he never
dared send any one down. Moreover, there were preparations to be made
for his reception.

The room did not become in the least quieter when it rang for the
fourth hour. Everybody chattered and laughed and prepared to see some
fun. Count Mölln, his head in his hands, went on reading Roderick
Usher. Hanno was audience. Some of the boys imitated the voices of
animals; there was the shrill crowing of a cock; and Wasservogel, in
the back row, grunted like a pig without anybody’s being able to see
that the noise came from his inside. On the blackboard was a huge
chalk drawing, a caricature, with squinting eyes, drawn by Timm the
rhapsodist. And when Herr Modersohn entered he could not shut the door,
even with the most violent efforts, because there was a thick fir-cone
in the crack; Adolf Todtenhaupt had to take it away.

Candidate Modersohn was an undersized, insignificant looking man.
His face was always contorted with a sour, peevish expression, and
he walked with one shoulder thrust forward. He was frightfully
self-conscious, blinked, drew in his breath, and kept opening his mouth
as if he wanted to say something if he could only think of it. Three
steps from the door he trod on a cracker of such exceptional quality
that it made a noise like dynamite. He jumped violently; then, in these
straits, he smiled exactly as though nothing had happened and took
his place before the middle row of benches, stooping sideways, in his
customary attitude, and resting one palm on the desk in front of him.
But this posture of his was familiar to everybody; somebody had put
some ink on the right spot, and Herr Modersohn’s small clumsy hand got
all inky. He acted as though he had not noticed, laid his wet black
hand on his back, blinked, and said in a soft, weak voice: “The order
in the classroom leaves something to be desired.”

Hanno Buddenbrook loved him in that moment, sat quite still, and looked
up into his worried, helpless face. But Wasservogel grunted louder
than ever, and a handful of peas went rattling against the window and
bounced back into the room.

“It’s hailing,” somebody said, quite loudly. Herr Modersohn appeared to
believe this, for he went without more ado to the platform and asked
for the register. He needed it to call the names from, for, though he
had been teaching the class for five or six weeks, he hardly knew any
of them by name.

“Feddermann,” he said, “will you please recite the poem?”

“Absent,” shouted a chorus of voices. And there sat Feddermann, large
as life, in his place, shooting peas with great skill and accuracy.

Herr Modersohn blinked again and selected a new name. “Wasservogel,” he
said.

“Dead,” shouted Petersen, attacked by a grim humour. And the chorus,
grunting, crowing, and with shouts of derision, asseverated that
Wasservogel was dead.

Herr Modersohn blinked afresh. He looked about him, drew down his
mouth, and put his finger on another name in the register. “Perlemann,”
he said, without much confidence.

“Unfortunately, gone mad,” uttered Kai, Count Mölln, with great clarity
and precision. And this also was confirmed by the chorus amid an
ever-increasing tumult.

Then Herr Modersohn stood up and shouted in to the hubbub:
“Buddenbrook, you will do me a hundred lines imposition. If you laugh
again, I shall be obliged to mark you.”

Then he sat down again. It was true that Hanno had laughed. He had been
seized by a quiet but violent spasm of laughter, and went on because he
could not stop. He had found Kai’s joke so good--the “unfortunately”
had especially appealed to him. But he became quiet when Herr Modersohn
attacked him, and sat looking solemnly into the Candidate’s face. He
observed at that moment every detail of the man’s appearance: saw every
pathetic little hair in his scanty beard, which showed the skin through
it; saw his brown, empty, disconsolate eyes; saw that he had on what
appeared to be two pairs of cuffs, because the sleeves of his shirt
came down so long; saw the whole pathetic, inadequate figure he made.
He saw more: he saw into the man’s inner self. Hanno Buddenbrook was
almost the only pupil whom Herr Modersohn knew by name, and he availed
himself of the knowledge to call him constantly to order, give him
impositions, and tyrannize over him. He had distinguished Buddenbrook
from the others simply because of his quieter behaviour--and of this he
took advantage to make him feel his authority, an authority he did not
dare exert upon the real offenders. Hanno looked at him and reflected
that Herr Modersohn’s lack of fine feeling made it almost impossible
even to pity him! “I don’t bully you,” he addressed the Candidate,
in his thoughts: “I don’t share in the general tormenting like the
others--and how do you repay me? But so it is, and so will it be,
always and everywhere,” he thought; and fear, and that sensation almost
amounting to physical nausea, rose again in him. “And the most dreadful
thing is that I can’t help seeing through you with such disgusting
clearness!”

At last Herr Modersohn found some one who was neither dead nor crazy,
and who would take it upon himself to repeat the English verse. This
was a poem called “The Monkey,” a poor childish composition, required
to be committed to memory by these growing lads whose thoughts were
already mostly bent on business, on the sea, on the coming conflicts of
actual life.

  “Monkey, little, merry fellow,
  Thou art nature’s punchinello....”

There were endless verses--Kassbaum read them, quite simply, out of
his book. Nobody needed to trouble himself about what Herr Modersohn
thought. The noise grew worse and worse, the feet shuffled and scraped
on the dusty floor, the cock crowed, the pig grunted, peas filled the
air. The five-and-twenty were drunk with disorder. And the unregulated
instincts of their years awoke. They drew obscene pictures on pieces of
paper, passed them about, and laughed at them greedily.

All at once everything was still. The pupil who was then reciting
interrupted himself; even Herr Modersohn got up and listened. They
heard something charming: a pure, bell-like sound, coming from the
bottom of the room and flowing sweetly, sensuously, with indescribably
tender effect, on the sudden silence. It was a music-box which somebody
had brought, playing “_Du, du, liegst mir am Herzen_” in the middle
of the English lesson. But precisely at that moment when the little
melody died away, something frightful ensued. It broke like a sudden
storm over the heads of the class, unexpected, cruel, overwhelming,
paralyzing.

Without anybody’s having knocked, the door opened wide with a great
shove, and a presence came in, high and huge, growled, and stood with a
single stride in front of the benches. It was the Lord God.

Herr Modersohn grew ashy pale and dragged down the chair from the
platform, dusting it with his handkerchief. The pupils had sprung up
like one man. They pressed their arms to their sides, stood on their
tip-toes, bent their heads, and bit their tongues in the fervour of
their devotion. The deepest silence reigned. Somebody gasped with the
effort he made--then all was still again.

Director Wulicke measured the saluting columns for a while with his
eye. He lifted his arm with its dirty funnel-shaped cuff, and let it
fall with the fingers spread out, as if he were attacking a keyboard.
“Sit down,” he said in his double-bass voice.

The pupils sank back into their seats. Herr Modersohn pulled up the
chair with trembling hands, and the Director sat down beside the dais.
“Please proceed,” he said. That was all, but it sounded as frightful
as if the words he uttered had been “Now we shall see, and woe to him
who--”

The reason for his coming was clear. Herr Modersohn was to give
evidence of his ability to teach, to show what the lower second had
learned in the six or seven hours he had been with them. It was a
question of Herr Modersohn’s existence and future. The Candidate was a
sorry figure as he stood on the platform and called again on somebody
to recite “The Monkey.” Up to now it had been only the pupils who were
examined, but now it was the master as well. Alas, it went badly on
both sides! Herr Director Wulicke’s appearance was entirely unexpected,
and only two or three of the pupils were prepared. It was impossible
for Herr Modersohn to call up Adolf Todtenhaupt for the whole hour
on end; after “The Monkey” had been recited once, it could not be
asked for again, and so things were in a bad way. When the reading
from Ivanhoe began, young Count Mölln was the only person who could
translate it at all, he having a personal interest in the novel. The
others hemmed and hawed, stuttered, and got hopelessly stuck. Hanno
Buddenbrook was called up and could not do a line. Director Wulicke
gave utterance to a sound that was as though the lowest string of his
double-bass had been violently plucked, and Herr Modersohn wrung his
small, clumsy, inky hands repeating plaintively over and over. “And it
went so well--it always went so well!”

He was still saying it, half to the pupils and half to the Director,
when the bell rang. But the Lord God stood erect with folded arms
before his chair and stared in front of him over the heads of the
class. Then he commanded that the register be brought, and slowly
marked down for laziness all those pupils whose performances of the
morning had been deficient--or entirely lacking--six or seven marks at
one fell swoop. He could not put down a mark for Herr Modersohn, but he
was much worse than the others. He stood there with a face like chalk,
broken, done for. Hanno Buddenbrook was among those marked down. And
Director Wulicke said besides, “I will spoil all your careers for you.”
Then he went.

The bell rang; class was over. It was always like that. When you
expected trouble it did not come. When you thought all was well--then,
the catastrophe. It was now impossible for Hanno to go up at Easter.
He rose from his seat and went drearily out of the room, seeking the
aching back tooth with his tongue.

Kai came up to him and put his arm across his shoulders. Together they
walked down to the courtyard, among the crowd of excited comrades,
all of whom were discussing the extraordinary event. He looked with
loving anxiety into Hanno’s face and said, “Please forgive, Hanno, for
translating. It would have been better to keep still and get a mark.
It’s so cheap--”

“Didn’t I say what ‘_patula Jovis arbore_’ meant?” answered Hanno.
“Don’t mind, Kai. That doesn’t matter. One just mustn’t mind.”

“I suppose that’s true. Well, the Lord God is going to ruin your
career. You may as well resign yourself, Hanno, because if it is His
inscrutable will--. Career--what a lovely word ‘career’ is! Herr
Modersohn’s career is spoilt too. He will never get to be a master,
poor chap! There are assistant masters, you may know, and there are
head masters; but never by any chance a plain master. This is a
mystery not to be revealed to youthful minds; it is only intended for
grown-ups and persons of mature experience. An ordinary intelligence
might say that either one is a master or one is not. I might go up
to the Lord God or Herr Marotzke and explain this to him. But what
would be the result? They would consider it an insult, and I should be
punished for insubordination--all for having discovered for them a much
higher significance in their calling than they themselves were aware
of! No, let’s not talk about them--they’re all thick-skinned brutes!”

They walked about the court; Kai made jokes to help Hanno forget his
bad mark, and Hanno listened and enjoyed.

“Look, here is a door, an outer door. It is open, and outside there
is the street. How would it be if we were to go out and take a little
walk? It is recess, and we have still six minutes. We could easily be
back in time. But it is perfectly impossible. You see what I mean? Here
is the door. It is open, there is no grating, there is nothing, nothing
whatever to prevent us. And yet it is impossible for us to step outside
for even a second--it is even impossible for us to think of doing so.
Well, let’s not think of it, then. Let’s take another example: we don’t
say, for instance, that it is nearly half-past twelve. No, we say,
‘It’s nearly time for the geography period’! You see? Now, I ask, is
this any sort of a life to lead? Everything is wrong. Oh, Lord, if the
institution would just once let us out of her loving embrace!”

“Well, and what then? No, Kai, we should just have to do something
then; here, at least we are taken care of. Since my Father died Herr
Stephan Kistenmaker and Pastor Pringsheim have taken over the business
of asking me every day what I want to be. I don’t know. I can’t answer.
I can’t be anything. I’m afraid of everything--”

“How can anybody talk so dismally? What about your music?”

“What about my music, Kai? There is nothing to it. Shall I travel round
and give concerts? In the first place, they wouldn’t let me; and in
the second place, I should never really know enough. I can play very
little. I can only improvise a little when I am alone. And then, the
travelling about must be dreadful, I imagine. It is different with
you. You have more courage. You go about laughing at it all--you have
something to set against it. You want to write, to tell wonderful
stories. Well, that _is_ something. You will surely become famous, you
are so clever. The thing is, you are so much livelier. Sometimes in
class we look at each other, the way we did when Petersen got marked
because he read out of a crib, when all the rest of us did the same.
The same thought is in both our minds--but you know how to make a face
and let it pass. I can’t. I get so tired of things. I’d like to sleep
and never wake up. I’d like to die, Kai! No, I am no good. I can’t want
anything. I don’t even want to be famous. I’m afraid of it, just as
much as if it were a wrong thing to do. Nothing can come of me, that
is perfectly sure. One day, after confirmation-class, I heard Pastor
Pringsheim tell somebody that one must just give me up, because I come
of a decayed family.”

“Did he say that?” Kai asked with deep interest.

“Yes; he meant my Uncle Christian, in the institution in Hamburg. One
must just give me up--oh, I’d be so happy if they would! I have so many
worries; everything is so hard for me. If I give myself a little cut
or bruise anywhere, and make a wound that would heal in a week with
anybody else, it takes a month with me. It gets inflamed and infected
and makes me all sorts of trouble. Herr Brecht told me lately that all
my teeth are in a dreadful condition--not to mention the ones that have
been pulled already. If they are like that now, what will they be when
I am thirty or forty years old? I am completely discouraged.”

“Oh, come,” Kai said, and struck into a livelier gait. “Now you must
tell me something about your playing. I want to write something
marvellous--perhaps I’ll begin it to-day, in drawing period. Will you
play this afternoon?”

Hanno was silent a moment. A flush came upon his face, and a painful,
confused look.

“Yes, I’ll play--I suppose--though I ought not. I ought to practise my
sonatas and études and then stop. But I suppose I’ll play; I cannot
help it, though it only makes everything worse.”

“Worse?”

Hanno was silent.

“I know what you mean,” said Kai after a bit, and then neither of the
lads spoke again.

They were both at the same difficult age. Kai’s face burned, and he
cast down his eyes. Hanno looked pale and serious; his eyes had clouded
over, and he kept giving sideways glances.

Then the bell rang, and they went up.

The geography period came next, and an important test on the kingdom
of Hesse-Nassau. A man with a red beard and brown tail-coat came in.
His face was pale, and his hands were very full of pores, but without
a single hair. This was “the clever one,” Dr. Mühsam. He suffered from
occasional haemorrhages, and always spoke in an ironic tone, because it
was his pose to be considered as witty as he was ailing. He possessed
a Heine collection, a quantity of papers and objects connected with
that cynical and sickly poet. He proceeded to mark the boundaries of
Hesse-Nassau on the map that hung on the wall, and then asked, with a
melancholy, mocking smile, if the gentlemen would indicate in their
books the important features of the country. It was as though he meant
to make game of the class and of Hesse-Nassau as well; yet this was an
important test, and much dreaded by the entire form.

Hanno Buddenbrook knew next to nothing about Hesse-Nassau. He tried
to look on Adolf Todtenhaupt’s book; but Heinrich Heine, who had a
penetrating observation despite his suffering, melancholy air, pounced
on him at once and said: “Herr Buddenbrook, I am tempted to ask you to
close your book, but that I suspect you would be glad to have me do so.
Go on with your work.”

The remark contained two witticisms. First, that Dr. Mühsam addressed
Hanno as Herr Buddenbrook, and, second, that about the copy-book. Hanno
continued to brood over his book, and handed it in almost empty when he
went out with Kai.

The difficulties were now over with for the day. The fortunate ones who
had come through without marks, had light and easy consciences, and
life seemed like play to them as they betook themselves to the large
well-lighted room where they might sit and draw under the supervision
of Herr Drägemüller. Plaster casts from the antique stood about the
room, and there was a great cupboard containing divers pieces of
wood and doll-furniture which served as models. Herr Drägemüller was
a thick-set man with a full round beard and a smooth, cheap brown
wig which stood out in the back of the neck and betrayed itself. He
possessed two wigs, one with longer hair, the other with shorter; if
he had had his beard cut he would don the shorter wig as well. He was
a man with some droll peculiarities of speech. For instance, he called
a lead pencil a “lead.” He gave out an oily-alcoholic odour; and it
was said of him that he drank petroleum. It always delighted him to
have an opportunity to take a class in something besides drawing. On
such occasions he would lecture on the policy of Bismarck, accompanying
himself with impressive spiral gestures from his nose to his shoulder.
Social democracy was his bugbear--he spoke of it with fear and
loathing. “We must keep together,” he used to say to refractory
pupils, pinching them on the arm. “Social democracy is at the door!”
He was possessed by a sort of spasmodic activity: would sit down next
a pupil, exhaling a strong spirituous odour, tap him on the forehead
with his seal ring, shoot out certain isolated words and phrases like
“Perspective! Light and shade! The lead! Social democracy! Stick
together!”--and then dash off again.

Kai worked at his new literary project during this period, and Hanno
occupied himself with conducting, in fancy, an overture with full
orchestra. Then school was over, they fetched down their things, the
gate was opened, they were free to pass, and they went home.

Hanno and Kai went the same road together as far as the little red
villa, their books under their arms. Young Count Mölln had a good
distance farther to go alone before he reached the paternal dwelling.
He never wore an overcoat.

The morning’s fog had turned to snow, which came down in great white
flocks and rapidly became slush. They parted at the Buddenbrook gate;
but when Hanno was half-way up the garden Kai came back to put his arm
about his neck. “Don’t give up--better not play!” he said gently. Then
his slender, careless figure disappeared in the whirling snow.

Hanno put down his books on the bear’s tray in the corridor and went
into the living-room to see his mother. She sat on the sofa reading a
book with a yellow paper cover, and looked up as he crossed the room.
She gazed at him with her brown, close-set, blue-shadowed eyes; as he
stood before her, she took his head in both her hands and kissed him on
the brow.

He went upstairs, where Fräulein Clementine had some luncheon ready
for him, washed, and ate. When he was done he took out of his desk a
packet of little biting Russian cigarettes and began to smoke. He was
no stranger to their use by now. Then he sat down at the harmonium and
played something from Bach: something very severe and difficult, in
fugue form. At length he clasped his hands behind his head and looked
out the window at the snow noiselessly tumbling down. Nothing else was
to be seen; for there was no longer a charming little garden with a
plashing fountain beneath his window. The view was cut off by the grey
side-wall of the neighbouring villa.

Dinner was at four o’clock, and Hanno, his mother, and Fräulein
Clementine sat down to it. Afterward Hanno saw that there were
preparations for music in the salon, and awaited his mother at the
piano. They played the Sonata Opus 24 of Beethoven. In the adagio the
violin sang like an angel; but Gerda took the instrument from her chin
with a dissatisfied air, looked at it in irritation, and said it was
not in time. She played no more, but went up to rest.

Hanno remained in the salon. He went to the glass door that led out on
the small verandah and looked into the drenched garden. But suddenly
he took a step back and jerked the cream-coloured curtains across the
door, so that the room lay in a soft yellow twilight. Then he went
to the piano. He stood for a while, and his gaze, directed fixed and
unseeing upon a distant point, altered slowly, grew blurred and vague
and shadowy. He sat down at the instrument and began to improvise.

It was a simple _motif_ which he employed--a mere trifle, an unfinished
fragment of melody in one bar and a half. He brought it out first,
with unsuspected power, in the bass, as a single voice: indicating
it as the source and fount of all that was to come, and announcing
it, with a commanding entry, by a burst of trumpets. It was not quite
easy to grasp his intention; but when he repeated and harmonized it
in the treble, with a timbre like dull silver, it proved to consist
essentially of a single resolution, a yearning and painful melting
of one tone into another--a short-winded, pitiful invention, which
nevertheless gained a strange, mysterious, and significant value
precisely by means of the meticulous and solemn precision with which
it was defined and produced. And now there began more lively passages,
a restless coming and going of syncopated sound, seeking, wandering,
torn by shrieks like a soul in unrest and tormented by some knowledge
it possesses and cannot conceal, but must repeat in ever different
harmonies, questioning, complaining, protesting, demanding, dying
away. The syncopation increased, grew more pronounced, driven hither
and thither by scampering triplets; the shrieks of fear recurred,
they took form and became melody. There was a moment when they
dominated, in a mounting, imploring chorus of wind-instruments that
conquered the endlessly thronging, welling, wandering, vanishing
harmonies, and swelled out in unmistakable simple rhythms--a crushed,
childlike, imposing, imploring chorale. This concluded with a sort of
ecclesiastical cadence. A _fermate_ followed, a silence. And then,
quite softly, in a timbre of dull silver, there came the first _motif_
again, the paltry invention, a figure either tiresome or obscure,
a sweet, sentimental dying-away of one tone into another. This was
followed by a tremendous uproar, a wild activity, punctuated by notes
like fanfares, expressive of violent resolve. What was coming? Then
came horns again, sounding the march; there was an assembling, a
concentrating, firm, consolidated rhythms; and a new figure began, a
bold improvisation, a sort of lively, stormy hunting song. There was
no joy in this hunting song; its note was one of defiant despair.
Signals sounded through it; yet they were not only signals but cries
of fear; while throughout, winding through it all, through all the
writhen, bizarre harmonies, came again that mysterious first _motif_,
wandering in despair, torturingly sweet. And now began a ceaseless
hurry of events whose sense and meaning could not be guessed, a
restless flood of sound-adventures, rhythms, harmonies, welling up
uncontrolled from the keyboard, as they shaped themselves under Hanno’s
labouring fingers. He experienced them, as it were; he did not know
them beforehand. He sat a little bent over the keys, with parted lips
and deep, far gaze, his brown hair covering his forehead with its soft
curls. What was the meaning of what he played? Were these images of
fearful difficulties surmounted flames passed through and torrents
swum, castles stormed and dragons slain? But always--now like a yelling
laugh, now like an ineffably sweet promise--the original _motif_ wound
through it all, the pitiful phrase with its notes melting into one
another! Now the music seemed to rouse itself to new and gigantic
efforts: wild runs in octaves followed, sounding like shrieks; an
irresistible mounting, a chromatic upward struggle, a wild relentless
longing, abruptly broken by startling, arresting pianissimi which gave
a sensation as if the ground were disappearing from beneath one’s
feet, or like a sudden abandonment and sinking into a gulf of desire.
Once, far off and softly warning, sounded the first chords of the
imploring prayer; but the flood of rising cacophonies overwhelmed them
with their rolling, streaming, clinging, sinking, and struggling up
again, as they fought on toward the end that must come, must come this
very moment, at the height of this fearful climax--for the pressure
of longing had become intolerable. And it came; it could no longer be
kept back--those spasms of yearning could not be prolonged. And it came
as though curtains were rent apart, doors sprang open, thorn-hedges
parted of themselves, walls of flame sank down. The resolution, the
redemption, the complete fulfilment--a chorus of jubilation burst
forth, and everything resolved itself in a harmony--and the harmony,
in sweet _ritardando_, at once sank into another. It was the _motif_,
the _first motif_! And now began a festival, a triumph, an unbounded
orgy of this very figure, which now displayed a wealth of dynamic
colour which passed through every octave, wept and shivered in tremolo,
sang, rejoiced, and sobbed in exultation, triumphantly adorned with
all the bursting, tinkling, foaming, purling resources of orchestral
pomp. The fanatical worship of this worthless trifle, this scrap of
melody, this brief, childish harmonic invention only a bar and a half
in length, had about it something stupid and gross, and at the same
time something ascetic and religious--something that contained the
essence of faith and renunciation. There was a quality of the perverse
in the insatiability with which it was produced and revelled in:
there was a sort of cynical despair; there was a longing for joy, a
yielding to desire, in the way the last drop of sweetness was, as it
were, extracted from the melody, till exhaustion, disgust, and satiety
supervened. Then, at last; at last, in the weariness after excess, a
long, soft arpeggio in the minor trickled through, mounted a tone,
resolved itself in the major, and died in mournful lingering away.

Hanno sat still a moment, his chin on his breast, his hands in his lap.
Then he got up and closed the instrument. He was very pale, there was
no strength in his knees, and his eyes were burning. He went into the
next room, stretched himself on the chaise-lounge, and remained for a
long time motionless.

Later there was supper, and he played a game of chess with his mother,
at which neither side won. But until after midnight he still sat in
his room, before his harmonium, and played--played in thought only,
for he must make no noise. He did this despite his firm intention to
get up the next morning at half-past five, to do some most necessary
preparation.

This was one day in the life of little Johann.




CHAPTER III


Cases of typhoid fever take the following course.

The patient feels depressed and moody--a condition which grows rapidly
worse until it amounts to acute despondency. At the same time he is
overpowered by physical weariness, not only of the muscles and sinews,
but also of the organic functions, in particular of the digestion--so
that the stomach refuses food. There is a great desire for sleep,
but even in conditions of extreme fatigue the sleep is restless
and superficial and not refreshing. There is pain in the head, the
brain feels dull and confused, and there are spells of giddiness. An
indefinite ache is felt in all the bones. There is blood from the nose
now and then, without apparent cause.-- This is the onset.

Then comes a violent chill which seizes the whole body and makes the
teeth chatter; the fever sets in, and is immediately at its height.
Little red spots appear on the breast and abdomen, about the size of a
lentil. They go away when pressed by the finger, but return at once.
The pulse is unsteady; there are about a hundred pulsations to the
minute. The temperature goes up to 104°. Thus passes the first week.

In the second week the patient is free from pain in the head and
limbs; but the giddiness is distinctly worse, and there is so much
humming in the ears that he is practically deaf. The facial expression
becomes dull, the mouth stands open, the eyes are without life. The
consciousness is blurred, desire for sleep takes entire possession
of the patient, and he often sinks, not into actual sleep, but into
a leaden lethargy. At other intervals there are the loud and excited
ravings of delirium. The patient’s helplessness is complete, and
his uncleanliness becomes repulsive. His gums, teeth, and tongue are
covered with a blackish deposit which makes his breath foul. He lies
motionless on his back, with distended abdomen. He has sunk down in
the bed, with his knees wide apart. Pulse and breathing are rapid,
jerky, superficial and laboured; the pulse is fluttering, and gallops
one hundred and twenty to the minute. The eyelids are half-closed, the
cheeks are no longer glowing, but have assumed a bluish colour. The red
spots on breast and abdomen are more numerous. The temperature reaches
105.8°.

In the third week the weakness is at its height. The patient raves
no longer: who can say whether his spirit is sunk in empty night or
whether it lingers, remote from the flesh, in far, deep, quiet dreams,
of which he gives no sound and no sign? He lies in total insensibility.
This is the crisis of the disease.

In individual cases the diagnosis is sometimes rendered more difficult;
as, for example, when the early symptoms--depression, weariness,
lack of appetite, headache and unquiet sleep--are nearly all present
while the patient is still going about in his usual health; when they
are scarcely noticeable as anything out of the common, even if they
are suddenly and definitely increased. But a clever doctor, of real
scientific acumen--like, for example, Dr. Langhals, the good-looking
Dr. Langhals with the small, hairy hands--will still be in a position
to call the case by its right name; and the appearance of the red spots
on the chest and abdomen will be conclusive evidence that his diagnosis
was correct. He will know what measures to take and what remedies to
apply. He will arrange for a large, well-aired room, the temperature
of which must not be higher than 70°. He will insist on absolute
cleanliness, and by means of frequent shifting and changes of linen
will keep the patient free from bedsores--if possible; in some cases it
is not possible. He will have the mouth frequently cleansed with moist
linen rags. As for treatment, preparations of iodine, potash, quinine,
and antipyrin are indicated--with a diet as light and nourishing as
possible, for the patient’s stomach and bowels are profoundly attacked
by the disease. He will treat the consuming fever by means of frequent
baths, into which the patient will often be put every three hours, day
and night, cooling them gradually from the foot end of the tub, and
always, after each bath, administering something stimulating, like
brandy or champagne.

But all these remedies he uses entirely at random, in the hope that
they may be of some use in the case; ignorant whether any one of
them will have the slightest effect. For there is one thing which
he does not know at all; with respect to one fact, he labours in
complete darkness. Up to the third week, up to the very crisis of the
disease, he cannot possibly tell whether this illness, which he calls
typhoid, is an unfortunate accident, the disagreeable consequence of
an infection which might perhaps have been avoided, and which can be
combated with the resources of medical science; or whether it is, quite
simply, a form of dissolution, the garment, as it were, of death. And
then, whether death choose to assume this form or another is all the
same--against him there is no remedy.

Cases of typhoid take the following course:

When the fever is at its height, life calls to the patient: calls
out to him as he wanders in his distant dream, and summons him in no
uncertain voice. The harsh, imperious call reaches the spirit on that
remote path that leads into the shadows, the coolness and peace. He
hears the call of life, the clear, fresh, mocking summons to return
to that distant scene which he has already left so far behind him,
and already forgotten. And there may well up in him something like
a feeling of shame for a neglected duty; a sense of renewed energy,
courage, and hope; he may recognize a bond existing still between him
and that stirring, colourful, callous existence which he thought he had
left so far behind him. Then, however far he may have wandered on his
distant path, he will turn back--and live. But if he shudders when he
hears life’s voice, if the memory of that vanished scene and the sound
of that lusty summons make him shake his head, make him put out his
hand to ward it off as he flies forward in the way of escape that has
opened to him--then it is clear that the patient will die.




CHAPTER IV


“It is not right, it is not right, Gerda,” said old Fräulein
Weichbrodt, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her voice was full of
reproach and distress. She had a sofa place to-day in the circle that
sat round the centre-table in the drawing-room of her former pupil.
Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, her daughter Erica, poor Clothilde,
and the three Misses Buddenbrook made up the group. The green
cap-strings still fell down upon the old lady’s childish shoulders; but
she had grown so tiny, with her seventy-five years of life, that she
could scarcely raise her elbow high enough to gesticulate above the
surface of the table.

“No, it is not right, and so I tell you, Gerda,” she repeated. She
spoke with such warmth that her voice trembled. “I have one foot in the
grave, my time is short--and you can think of leaving me--of leaving
us all--for ever! If it were just a visit to Amsterdam that you were
thinking of--but to leave us for ever--!” She shook her bird-like old
head vigorously, and her brown eyes were clouded with her distress. “It
is true, you have lost a great deal--”

“No, she has not lost a great deal, she has lost everything,” said Frau
Permaneder. “We must not be selfish, Therese. Gerda wishes to go, and
she is going--that is all. She came with Thomas, one-and-twenty years
ago; and we all loved her, though she very likely didn’t like any of
us.--No, you didn’t, Gerda; don’t deny it!--But Thomas is no more--and
nothing is any more. What are we to her? Nothing. We feel it very much,
we cannot help feeling it; but yet I say, go, with God’s blessing,
Gerda, and thanks for not going before, when Thomas died.”

It was an autumn evening, after supper. Little Johann (Justus, Johann,
Kaspar) had been lying for nearly six months, equipped with the
blessing of Pastor Pringsheim, out there at the edge of the little
grove, beneath the sandstone cross, beneath the family arms. The rain
rustled the half-leafless trees in the avenue, and sometimes gusts of
wind drove it against the window-panes. All eight ladies were dressed
in black.

The little family had gathered to take leave of Gerda Buddenbrook, who
was about to leave the town and return to Amsterdam, to play duets once
more with her old father. No duties now restrained her. Frau Permaneder
could no longer oppose her decision. She said it was right, she knew
it must be so; but in her heart she mourned over her sister-in-law’s
departure. If the Senator’s widow had remained in the town, and kept
her station and her place in society, and left her property where it
was, there would still have remained a little prestige to the family
name. But let that be as it must, Frau Antonie was determined to hold
her head high while she lived and there were people to look at her. Had
not her grandfather driven with four horses all over the country?

Despite the stormy life that lay behind her, and despite her weak
digestion, she did not look her fifty years. Her skin was a little
faded and downy, and a few hairs grew on her upper lip--the pretty
upper lip of Tony Buddenbrook. But there was not a white hair in the
smooth coiffure beneath the mourning cap.

Poor Clothilde bore up under the departure of her relative, as one must
bear up under the afflictions of this life. She took it with patience
and tranquillity. She had done wonders at the supper table, and now
she sat among the others, lean and grey as of yore, and her words were
drawling and friendly.

Erica Weinschenk, now thirty-one years old, was likewise not one to
excite herself unduly over her aunt’s departure. She had lived through
worse things, and had early learned resignation. Submission was her
strongest characteristic: one read it in her weary light-blue eyes--the
eyes of Bendix Grünlich--and heard it in the tones of her patient,
sometimes plaintive voice.

The three Misses Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s daughters, wore their
old affronted and critical air; Friederike and Henriette, the eldest,
had grown leaner and more angular with the years; while Pfiffi, the
youngest, now fifty-three years old, was much too little and fat.

Old Frau Consul Kröger, Uncle Justus’ widow, had been asked too, but
she was rather ailing--or perhaps she had no suitable gown to put on:
one couldn’t tell which.

They talked about Gerda’s journey and the train she was to take;
about the sale of the villa and its furnishings, which Herr Gosch had
undertaken. For Gerda was taking nothing with her--she was going away
as she had come.

Then Frau Permaneder began to talk about life. She was very serious and
made observations upon the past and the future--though of the future
there was in truth almost nothing to be said.

“When I am dead,” she declared, “Erica may move away if she likes. But
as for me, I cannot live anywhere else; and so long as I am on earth,
we will come together here, we who are left. Once a week you will come
to dinner with me--and we will read the family papers.” She put her
hand on the portfolio that lay before her on the table. “Yes, Gerda, I
will take them over, and be glad to have them. Well, that is settled.
Do you hear, Tilda? Though it might exactly as well be you who should
invite us, for you are just as well off as we are now. Yes--so it goes.
I’ve struggled against fate, and done my best, and you have just sat
there and waited for everything to come round. But you are a goose, you
know, all the same--please don’t mind if I say so--”

“Oh, Tony,” Clothilde said, smiling.

“I am sorry I cannot say good-bye to Christian,” said Gerda, and
the talk turned aside to that subject. There was small prospect of
his ever coming out of the institution in which he was confined,
although he was probably not too bad to go about in freedom. But the
present state of things was very agreeable for his wife. She was, Frau
Permaneder asserted, in league with the doctor; and Christian would, in
all probability, end his days where he was.

There was a pause. They touched delicately and with hesitation upon
recent events, and when one of them let fall little Johann’s name, it
was still in the room, except for the sound of the rain, which fell
faster than before.

This silence lay like a heavy secret over the events of Hanno’s last
illness. It must have been a frightful onslaught. They did not look in
each other’s eyes as they talked; their voices were hushed, and their
words were broken. But they spoke of one last episode--the visit of the
little ragged count who had almost forced his way to Hanno’s bedside.
Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, though he hardly knew any
one; and Kai had kissed his hands again and again.

“He kissed his hands?” asked the Buddenbrook ladies.

“Yes, over and over.”

They all thought for a while of this strange thing, and then suddenly
Frau Permaneder burst into tears.

“I loved him so much,” she sobbed. “You don’t any of you know how
much--more than any of you--yes, forgive me, Gerda--you are his
mother.--Oh, he was an angel.”

“He is an angel, now,” corrected Sesemi.

“Hanno, little Hanno,” went on Frau Permaneder, the tears flowing down
over her soft faded cheeks. “Tom, Father, Grandfather, and all the
rest! Where are they? We shall see them no more. Oh, it is so sad, so
hard!”

“There will be a reunion,” said Friederike Buddenbrook. She folded her
hands in her lap, cast down her eyes, and put her nose in the air.

“Yes--they say so.--Oh, there are times, Friederike, when that is no
consolation, God forgive me! When one begins to doubt--doubt justice
and goodness--and everything. Life crushes so much in us, it destroys
so many of our beliefs--! A reunion--if that were so--”

But now Sesemi Weichbrodt stood up, as tall as ever she could. She
stood on tip-toe, rapped on the table; the cap shook on her old head.

“It _is so_!” she said, with her whole strength; and looked at them all
with a challenge in her eyes.

She stood there, a victor in the good fight which all her life she had
waged against the assaults of Reason: hump-backed, tiny, quivering with
the strength of her convictions, a little prophetess, admonishing and
inspired.


THE END




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