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

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

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

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

His wife interrupted him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Whatever for?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I cannot be bothered about that.”

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

Christian looked at him.

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

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

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

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

“Person, Thomas, person? You are making a mistake about her. Aline—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I shan’t die? Very good, I shan’t die, then. We'll see who dies first. Work! Suppose I can’t work? My God! I can't do the same thing long at a time! It kills me. If you have been able to, and are able to, thank God for it, but don’t sit in judgment on others, for it isn’t a virtue. God gives strength to one, and not to another. But that is the way you are made, Thomas. You are self-righteous. Oh, wait, that is not what I am going to say, nor what I accuse you of. I don’t know where to begin, and however much I can say is only a millionth part of the feeling 1 have in my heart against you. You have made a position for yourself in life; and there you stand, and push everything away which might possibly disturb your equilibrium for a moment—for your equilibrium is the most precious thing in the world to you. But it isn’t the most precious thing in life, Thomas—no, before God, it is not. You are an egotist, that is what you are. I am still fond of you, even when you are angry, and tread on me, and thunder me down. But when you get silent: when somebody says something and you are suddenly dumb, and withdraw yourself, quite elegant and remote, and repulse people like a wall and leave the other fellow to his shame, without any chance of justifying himself—! Yes, you are without pity, without love, without humility.—Oh,” he cried, and stretched both arms in front of him, palms outward, as though pushing everything away from him, “Oh, how sick I am of all this tact and propriety, this poise and refinement—sick to death of it!”

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

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

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

“Aline has put some away.”

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But what stands in the way?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Exactly.”

“Like something you dreamed in a fever?”

“Why not?”

“Like the most ridiculous kind of farce?”

“There, there, now, that’s enough!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t remember?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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