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, sinking 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 fur niture, 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 roles and the accompaniment as well, and gesticulating furiously. The family gathered at his back, laughed, nodded their heads, and enjoyed it immensely. As for Hanno, his pleasure was profound. Christian broke off, after a while, very abruptly. His face clouded, he rubbed his hand over his skull and down his left side, and turned to his audience with his nose wrinkled and his face quite drawn.

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

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

“No, child,” said he, stroking Hanno’s head: “amuse yourself with it, but not too much, you know: don’t neglect your work for it, do you hear? I have made a great many mistakes.—I think I’ll go over to the club for a while,” he said to the elders. “They are celebrating there 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 sideglances, 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 he 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-sown, 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 depart ing 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 possession 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,” Hebei’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 ginger-bread 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 had, 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.

CHAPTER I

Senator Buddenbrook followed the two gentlemen, old Dr. Grabow and young Dr. Langhals, out of the Frau Consul’s bedchamber 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 naive 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 in creased, 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 inflamma tion 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.”