Buddenbrooks_ The Decline Of A Family Part 4

"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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 rny 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 Con-sul, beside herself with angry grief, sat on the sofa, leaning with one hand on its upholstered arm, while the other struck 41 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 em-bittered disagreement between mother and son! It was a sultry August afternoon. Only tt-n 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 de-parted 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 inheri-tance, right over my head! Without saying aye, yea, 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 G.o.d, she wrote me from her death-bed, with faltering hand, a pen-cilled 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. G.o.d 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. Fur I felt I must fulfil the last wish of my dying child, and I knew you would have tried to prevent me!" "Yes! By G.o.d, 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 ingen-ious 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, G.o.d 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 cir-c.u.mstances, 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 con-nected this case with the series of rebuffs and misfortunes which had lately attended him in both public and private 43 BUDDENBRDDK5 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 mat-ters of the highest importance? That a pastor from Riga could thus bamboozle him behind his bark? 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? Tiber-tius 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 he 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 *o as it is," he concluded, and walked lifelessly to the gla.s.s 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 Oynhausen. 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 rny 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 G.o.d."

CHAPTER VIII.

WARS and rumours of war, billeting and bustle! Prussian officers tread the parquetry floors of Senator Buddenbrook's bel-etage, kiss the hand of the lady of the house, and frequent the club with Christian, who is back from Dynhausen. In Meng Street Mams ell 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 feted, 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 ijie 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 part.i.tioned off far his use by a pillared Tailing 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 dande-lion 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 strug-gle. 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 Budden-brook'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 swoop the raund sum of twenty thousand thaler.

PART EIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

WHEN Herr Hugo Weinschenk--in his b.u.t.toned-up frock-coat, with his drooping lower lip and his narrow black mous-taches, 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 Wein-schenk, now for some time Director of the City Fire Insurance Company, crossed the great entry in Meng Street and pa.s.sed, 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 Gr*, 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 pa.s.sed 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 frockcoat, 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. Fraulein Griinliuh had grown up under Therese Weich-brodt'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 51 Erica was at a disadvantage compared with other young girls of her age. Frau Permaneder not only did not go into SOLI-ety, 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 rparl con-tempt and aversion where probably there was onlv indiffer-ence. Consul Hermann Hagenslrbm, fnr 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-pate" face, which, to use her own strong language, she "haled like the plague"--and her look, of course, distinctly forbade him. So Erica grew up outside her uncle's social circle; she frequented no b.a.l.l.s, 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 glanre 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 grand-daughter, talked for ten minutes, and promised to return an-other day for coffee and more leisurely conversation. This too came to pa.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+ny spots; his cuffs, with large jet cuff-b.u.t.tons, 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 im-pression, 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 Gr*'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 G.o.d 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 dif-ferentiated frnm Bendix Gr* by his position as an oldestablished 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 1857--he permitted 53 himself to make a brief and manly offer for Erica Crunlich'a 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 a.s.surance of manner, while the Frau Consul, Uncle Justus, and the Senator--though hardly the Broad Street Bud den-brooks--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 loo roguish. He uttered his views frankly and cheerfully, Tubbing 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 Cerda Buddenbrook were hopeless. This lady's per-sonality 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 im-pression 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 con-versation with full details. The second son of the deceased Consul Buddenbrook had been relieved of his rheumatism in Dynhausen; 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. Rickchen 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 coa.r.s.e 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--ignoied 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 limes," 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 55 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 Juris-prudence. He was fortunate in this friends.h.i.+p, 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. Overdieck 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 Fraulein Huneus, he had acquired a s.p.a.cious 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 p.r.o.nounced it with a very soft s and a very broad a. Christian Buddenbrook, as Senator Giescke'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 relaxtion as Dr. Cieseke, who, however, had to pay for the same with his wife's money. A short time after the betrothal of Hugo Weinschenk and Erica Gr*, 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, in- definable 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 b.o.o.by. 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 Gerhartlt 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 Direc-tor 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 Gr* or Alois Permaneder had ever existed, and all the trials, disappointments, and sufferings of her life w?re as nothing, and she might begin anew and with fresh hopes. She bade Erica be grateful to G.o.d, who bestowed upon her the one man of her d^siie, 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 in-scribed 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 57 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 onre 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g from neck to hem! The weeks fled by--the last weeks of Erica Gr*'fl 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 thfi 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 fiancee, 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 Criinlirh 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 Cieseke, and two school friends of Erica's acted as bridesmaids. Director Hugo Weinschenk looked imposing and manly, and only trod once on Erica's [lowing veil on the way to the improvised altar. Pastor Pring&heim 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, unembarra.s.sed tsars 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 ryes of the white Dlympians, 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, a.s.sisted by the upholsterer Jacobs, accomplished one of her masterpieces: she moved into and settled the-s.p.a.cious 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 Mollendorpf, born Hagenstrom, into whose face she looked with a challenging, triumphant glance; it actually dawned upon Frau Mbllendorpf 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, lhat 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 fur-niture, 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 Gr*'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 n.o.body at the club, drank a little gla.s.s 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 note-book, 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 G.o.d 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 rhanced ID see a maid, ahead o' me.

She'd such a charmin' air, Her back--wa. s Frrnch--I'd swear, And. she wore her 'at as rakish as could be.

I "-ays 'My prrtty dear, Since you an' I are 'ere, Prrhaps ynu'd take me arm and walk along?1 She lurned her pretty 'cad, And looked--at me--and said, 'You just get on, my lad, and hold your tongue!'" But, quite suddenly, he stopped. His face changed, his molions relaxed. His little deep round eyes began to stray 61 moodily about; he rubbed his left side with his hand, and seemed to be listening to uncanny sounds within himself. He drank another gla.s.s of liqueur, which relieved him a litlle. Then he tried to tell another story, but broke down in a fit of depression. Frau Permaneder, who in these days was uncommonly p.r.o.ne to laugh and had enjoyed the performance hugely, ac-companied her brother to the door, in rather a prankish mood. "Adieu, Herr Agent," said she. "Minnesinger--Ninny-singer! 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 be-tween 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 gla.s.ses for reading. He heard his sister's footsteps as she pa.s.sed through the dining-room, took off his gla.s.ses, and peered into the darkness until Tony appeared between the portieres and in the circle of light fiom the lamp. "Dh, it is you? How are you? Back from Pbppenrade? How are ynur 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 splen-did 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 ID remember an old boarding-school friends.h.i.+p 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 Weinsuhenk? How does he like being a father? I never see him except on Thursdays--" "Dh, he is just the same. You know he is a very good, hard-working man, and in a way a model husband; he necr 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 beLween ourselves--he re-quires Erica to be always lively, always laughing anrl 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."

BUDDENBRODK5.

"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 en-joyed what one would call a refined bringing-up. To be quite frank--a few days before I went to Pbppenrade, 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. G.o.d knows, we are all weak creatures--and a good, capable, industrious man like that--Heaven forbid! No, Tom, a rough sh.e.l.l 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. Tnin--that is what I wanted to tell you. We sit here visiting, but I really came to-night on a serious and im-portant 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 Warnemiincle, and his debts are like the sands of the sea. n.o.body could be-l; rvp it, just living a couple of weeks at Piippenrade. The house is lovely, everything looks flouris.h.i.+ng, 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 65 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 friends.h.i.+p be-tween 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 pa.s.sed his finger-tips across his hair and screwed up his face a little. "I think so," he said. "Your serious and important busi-ness evidently concerns an advance on the Poppenrade har-vest--if I am not mistaken. But you have come to the wrong man, I think, you and your friends. In the first plane, 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 my-self have made advances on occasion to the landed gentry, it was always when they offered a certain security, either per-sonally 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 nu 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 cur-rent--" "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 a.s.sure you I was never wider awake in my life than now, coming over here in the dead of night to make Armgard's oifer to you--or rather, indirectly, Ralf von Maiboom's--" "And I will forgive you for making a proposal which is the product of your naivete and the Maibooms' helplessness." "Helplessness? Naivete, Thomas? I don't understand you--I am very far from understanding you. You are of-fered an opportunity to do a good deed, and at the same time the best stroke of business you ever did in your life--" "Dh, my darling child, you are talking the sheerest non-sense," 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 maniEUvres? Why should I go fis.h.i.+ng 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?'" "Dh, 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 conies to you? He needs the money, and would 67 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 n.o.body respects them more than I do. And I know Father would not have done it--Cod forbid! Who says he would? But, silly as I am, I know enough to know that you are quite a different? ort of man from Father, and since you took over the busi-ness 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 ahow 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 fhe business. I know I am silly; but I have noticed about myself--and about other peo-ple too--that we are most likely to get angry and excited in our op-position 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 ivas 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 G.o.d 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 Hagen-strbm!" "Dh, yes--he probably would not refuse it,'1 the Senator said bitterly; and Frau Permaneder answered, three limes, 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 Pbppenrade." "Dh, 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--Pbppenrade is a large estate, I know for a fact that it grows more than 69 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, b.u.t.toned 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 ill.u.s.trate my att.i.tude toward this affair. I know your weakness for the n.o.bility, and the Mecklenburg n.o.bility 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 cla.s.ses 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 in-ferior 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-gla.s.s (I could never make out why he did not cut himself), patent-leather top-hoots, 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 be-gins 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 a.s.sure 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, wail--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 .71 CHAPTER III SHE mounted the stairs to the second storey, left the little balcony on her right, went along the white-and-gold balus-trade 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 st.u.r.dy, 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. Un-fortunately, it didn't turn out.--Is he asleep?" she asked, and gestured with her chin toward the little brd on the left wall, its head close to the door that led into the parents7 sleeping chamber. "Sh-h!" said Ha. "Yes, he is asleep." Frau Perrnaneder 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 ex-pression mounted over the little face, beginning with a trem-bling 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 bant 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 storking over her darning-ball, looked at the hole, ani 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--" 73 "Poor darling! Have they whipped him yet?" "No, indeed. Sake3 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?" "Yre, 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--" "Dh, my brother took him, did he?--Yea, that is a hard moment, Ida. I remember it like yesterday. I howled, I do a.s.sure you. I howled like a rhained-up dog; I felt dread-fully. And why? Because I had had such a good lime 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 an-other. "Dh, 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 wilh 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 some-times much worse than that." She put her work down calmly and crossed the room, wilh her long heavy stride, to Hanno's bed. She spoke to him in a low, quieting voice, laid him down, and covered him again. "Dh, 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. 11 '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."

11 '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 s.h.i.+nes.

The baby cries, The clock strikes twelve, G.o.d help all suff'ring folk to close their eyes."1 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 hed, 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 Fraulein 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 75 more!' Even to-night, when his Mama kissed him good night before she went to the concert, he asked her ID 'pray for the little man.' " "And did he pray too?" '"Not aloud, but probably to himself.--He hasn't sair1 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 50 much. 'The waggoner gKs up at thrrc from his bed of straw'--why, of course he- docs! Thai's why he is a waggoner. I can see already that the child takes everything loo murh 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; anil aside from that, good as IIP is--and he really is a very good man, a perfect angel--so far as his skill is concerned, I have no surh great opinion of it, Ida, and may G.o.d forgive me if I am wronij. Take this nervous-ness of Hanno's, his starting up at night and having such frights in his sleep. Grabow knovs what it is, jnil 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. Gra-bow 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 privelege and arbi-trary power? He is a cultivated man; but I am convinced that the unheard-of laws concerning the press and the univer-sities 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! TOD 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 pa.s.sing, 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 gla.s.ses, 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 portieres 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, other-wise obedient to his will, relaxed and became flabby. Like a mask the look of vigour, alertness, and amiability, which now for a long lime had been preserved only by constant effort, fell from his face, and betrayed an anguished Hearings 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 Bud den-brook, at forty-three years, was an old, worn-out man. He rubbed his hand over his eye9 and forehead, drawing a long, deep breath, mechanically lighted another rigarrlle, though he knew they were bad for him, and continued to gaze through the smoke-haze into the darkness. What a con-trast between that relaxed and suffering facr and the elegant, almost military style, of his hair and beard! the stiffened and perfumed mustaches, the meticulously shaven checks 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 ani the dull pallor of his face. Not that he was in reality less of an important 'and indis-pensable personage than he always had been. His friends said, and his enemies could not deny, that Senator Budden-brook was the Burgomaster's right hand: Burgomaster Langhals was even more emphatic on that point than his predecessor Overdieck 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 dis-cussed it with his wife over their bacon broth--and Thomas Buddenbrook groaned over the fact. At thf 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 luik 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 enter-tained, 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 seash.o.r.e. 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 lime 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 s.h.i.+rt now every other day, as the 79 was.h.i.+ng was too hard on the fine linen. He knew more than that. He knew that he was to be dismissed. Gerda pro-tested: 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 Budden-brook drove down to the Senate, was sent away with a suit-able 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, Heir Frie-drich 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 dav, 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 la.s.situde. 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 Budden-brook 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 a.s.semble one's inner powers? Why must this proposition corns up just now, to shake him untimely out of his canny resignation and make him a prey to doubts and suspicions? Was the time cDme? Was this a sign? Should he feel encouraged to stand up and strike a blow? He had refused with all the decisiveness he could put into his voice, to think of the proposition; but had that settled it? It seemed not, since here he sat and brooded over it. "We are most likely to get angry in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position." A deucedly sly little person, Tony was! What had he answered her? He had spoken very impressively, he recollected, about "underhand manoeuvres," "fis.h.i.+ng 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 Hagenstrbm would not have thought of them, and would not have used them. Was he, Thomas Ruddenbrook, 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 unsentimenlalily. was an epitome of life. Did Thomas Buddenbrook, like his father, stand firmly on his two feet, in face of this haid 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 brough