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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Father!” stammered Herr Grünlich.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Never, Mamma! Never under the shining sun! Such rag-tag and bob-tail!”

“Assez, my love. Such vulgar expressions—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Johann Buddenbrook was already dead.

CHAPTER I

“Good evening, Justus,” said the Frau Consul. “How are you? Sit down.”

Consul Kröger embraced her tenderly and shook hands with his elder niece, who was also present in the dining-room. He was now about fifty-five years old, and wore a heavy round whisker as well as his moustache, leaving his chin free. It was quite grey. His scanty hair was carefully combed over the broad pink expanse of his skull. The sleeve of his elegant frock-coat had a broad mourning band.

“Do you know the latest, Betsy?” he asked. “Yes, Tony, this will particularly interest you. To put it briefly, our property outside the Castle Gate is sold—guess to whom? Not to one man, but to two: for the house is to be pulled down, and a hedge run through diagonally, and Benthien will build himself a dog-kennel on the right side, and Sorenson one on the left. God bless us!”

“Whoever heard the like?” said Frau Grünlich, folding her hands in her lap and gazing up at the ceiling. “Grandfather’s property! Well, now the estate is all haggled up. Its great charm was its extent: there was really too much of it, but that was what made it elegant. The large garden, all the way down to the Trave, the house set far back with the drive, and the chestnut avenue. So it is to be divided. Benthien will stand in front of one door and Sorenson in front of the other. I say, ‘God bless us,’ too, Uncle Justus! I suppose there is nobody grand enough these days to occupy the whole thing. It is good that Grandpapa is not here to see it.”

The sense of mourning still lay too heavily on the air for Tony to give expression to her outraged feelings in livelier or stronger terms. It was the day on which the will had been read, two weeks after the death of the Consul, at half-past five in the afternoon. Frau Consul Buddenbrook had invited her brother to Meng Street, in order that he might talk over the provisions made by the deceased with Thomas and with Herr Marcus the confidential clerk. Tony had announced her intention to be present at the settlements. This attention, she said, she owed to the firm as well as to the family, and she took pains to give the meeting the character of a family council. She had closed the curtains, and despite the two oil lamps on the green-covered dining-table, drawn out to its full extent, she had lighted all the candles in the great gilded candelabrum as well. And, though there was no particular need of them, she had put on the table a quantity of writing paper and sharpened pencils.

Tony’s black frock gave her figure a maidenly slimness. She, of them all, was perhaps most deeply moved by the death of the Consul, to whom she had drawn so close in the last months that even to-day the thought of him made her burst out twice in bitter weeping; yet the prospect of this family council, this solemn little conference in which she could bear a worthy part, had power to flush her pretty cheek, brighten her glance, and give her motions dignity and even joy. The Frau Consul, on the other hand, worn with anxiety and grief and the thousand formalities of the funeral and the mourning, looked ailing. Her face, framed in the black lace of her cap-strings, seemed paler, and her light blue eyes were tired and dull. But there was not a single white hair to be seen in her smooth red-blonde coiffure. Was this still the Parisian tonic, or was it the wig? Mamsell Jungmann alone knew, and she would not have betrayed the secret even to the other ladies of the family.

They sat at the end of the table and waited for Herr Marcus and Thomas to come out of the office. The painted statues seemed to stand out white and proud on their pedestals against the sky-blue background.

The Frau Consul said: “The thing is—I bade you come, my dear Justus—in short, it is about Clara, the child. My beloved husband left to me the choice of a guardian for her—she will need one for three years. I know you do not want to be overburdened with responsibilities. You have duties to your wife and sons—”

“My son, Betsy.”

“Yes, yes, we must be Christlike and merciful, Justus. As we forgive our debtors, it says. Think of our gracious Father in Heaven.”

Her brother looked at her, a little aggrieved. Such turns of phrase had come in the past only from the mouth of the Consul.

“Enough,” she went on. “There are as good as no obligations connected with this service of love. I should like to ask you to accept it.”

“Gladly, Betsy; of course. I’ll do it with pleasure. May I not see my ward? A little too serious, isn’t she, the good child—?” Clara was called. She slowly appeared, all black and pallid, her movements melancholy and full of restraint. She had spent the time since her father’s death in her room praying almost without ceasing. Her dark eyes were immobile; she seemed frozen with grief and awe.

Uncle Justus the gallant stepped up to her, bowed as he pressed her hand, and murmured something appropriate. She went out, after receiving the Frau Consul’s kiss on her stiff lips.

“How is Jürgen?” began the Frau Consul again. Does it agree with him in Wismar?”

“Very well,” answered Justus Kröger, sitting down again with a shrug of the shoulders. “I think he has found his place now. He is a good lad, Betsy, a lad of principle, but—after he had failed twice in the examination, it seemed best—He did not like the law himself, and the position in the post-office at Wismar is quite suitable. Tell me—I hear Christian is coming?”

“Yes, Justus, he is coming. May God watch over him on the seas! I wrote to him the next day after Jean’s death, but he hasn’t even had the letter yet, and then he will take about two months with the sailing-vessel after that. But he must come, Justus; I must see him. Tom says Jean would never have been willing for Christian to give up his position in Valparaiso; but I ask you—nearly eight years since I have seen him! And then, under the circumstances! No, I must have them all about me in this painful time—that is a natural feeling for a mother.”

“Surely, surely,” said Consul Kröger; for she had begun to eep.

“Thomas agrees with me now, too,” she went on; “for where will Christian be better off than in his own father’s business, in Tom’s business? He can stay here, work here. I have been in constant fear that the climate over there might be bad for him—”

Thomas Buddenbrook, accompanied by Herr Marcus, came into the room. Friederich Wilhelm Marcus, for years the dead Consul’s confidential clerk, was a tall man in a brown-skirted coat with a mourning band. He spoke softly, hesitatingly, stammering a little and considering each word before he uttered it. He had a habit of slowly and cautiously stroking the red-brown moustache that grew over his mouth with the extended middle and index fingers of his left hand; or he would rub his hands together and let his round brown eyes wander so aimlessly about that he gave the impression of complete confusion and absent-mindedness, though he was always most watchfully bent on the matter in hand.

Thomas Buddenbrook, now the youthful head of the great house, displayed real dignity in manner and bearing. But he was pale. His hands in particular, on one of which shone the Consul’s signet ring with the green stone, were as white as the cuffs beneath his black sleeves—a frozen whiteness which showed that they were quite dry and cold. He had extraordinarily sensitive hands, with beautifully cared-for oval bluish fingernails. Sometimes, in a difficult situation, they would take positions or make little nervous movements that were indescribably expressive of shrinking sensibility and painful reserve. This was an individual trait strange heretofore to the rather broad, though finely articulated Buddenbrook hand.

Tom’s first care was to open the folding doors into the landscape-room in order to get the benefit of the warmth from the stove burning there behind the wrought-iron lattice. Then he shook hands with Consul Kröger and sat down at the table with Herr Marcus opposite him. He looked at his sister Tony, and his eyebrow went up in surprise. But she flung her head back and tucked in her chin in a way that warned him to suppress any comment on her presence.

“Well, and one may not say Herr Consul?” asked Justus Kröger. “The Netherlands hope in vain that you should represent them, Tom, my dear chap?”

“Yes, Uncle Justus, I thought it was better. You see, I could have taken over the Consulate along with so many other responsibilities, but in the first place I am a little too young—and then I spoke to Uncle Gotthold, and he was very pleased to accept it.”

“Very sensible, my lad; very politic. And very gentlemanly.”

“Herr Marcus,” said the Frau Consul, “my dear Herr Marcus!” And with her usual sweeping gesture she reached out her hand, which he took slowly, with a respectful side-glance: “I have asked you to come up—you know what the affair is; and I know that you are agreed with us. My beloved husband expressed in his final arrangements the wish that after his death you would put your loyal and well-tried powers at the service of the firm, not as an outsider but as partner.”

“Certainly, Frau Consul,” said Herr Marcus, “I must protest that I know how to value the honour your offer does me, being aware, as I am, that the resources I can bring to the firm are but small. In God’s name, I know nothing better to do than thankfully to accept the offer you and your son make me.”

“Yes, Marcus. And I thank you in my turn, most warmly, for your willingness to share with me the great responsibilities which would perhaps be too heavy for me alone.” Thomas Buddenbrook spoke quickly and whole-heartedly, reaching his hand across the table to his partner; for they were already long since agreed on the subject, and this was only the formal expression.

“Company is trumpery—you will spoil our chat, between you,” said Consul Kröger. “And now, shall we run through the provisions, my children? All I have to look out for is the dowry of my ward. The rest is not my affair. Have you a copy of the will here, Betsy? And have you made a rough calculation, Tom?”

“I have it in my head,” said Thomas; and he began, leaning back, looking into the landscape-room, and moving his gold pencil back and forth on the table, to explain how matters stood. The truth was that the Consul’s estate was more considerable than any one had supposed. The dowry of his oldest daughter, indeed, was gone, and the losses which the firm had suffered in the Bremen failure in 1851 had been a heavy blow. And the year ’48, as well as the present year ’55, with their unrest and interval of war, had brought losses. But the Buddenbrook share of the Kröger estate of four hundred thousand current marks had been full three hundred thousand, for Justus had already had much of his beforehand. Johann Buddenbrook had continually complained, as a merchant will; but the losses of the firm had been made good by the accrued profits of some fifteen years, amounting to thirty thousand thaler, and thus the property, aside from real estate, amounted in round figures, to seven hundred thousand marks. Thomas himself, with all his knowledge of the business, had been left in ignorance by his father of this total. The Frau Consul took the announcement with discreet calm; Tony put on an adorable expression of pride and ignorance, and then could not repress an anxious mental query: Is that a lot? Are we very rich now? Herr Marcus slowly rubbed his hands, apparently in absence of mind, and Consul Kröger was obviously bored. But the sum filled Tom himself, as he stated it, with such a rush of excited pride that the effort at self-control made him seem dejected. “We must have already passed the million,” he said. He controlled his voice, but his hands trembled. “Grandfather could command nine hundred thousand marks in his best time; and we’ve made great efforts since then, and had successes, and made fine coups here and there. And Mamma’s dowry, and Mamma’s inheritance! There was the constant breaking up—well, good heavens, that lay in the nature of things! Please forgive me if I speak just now in the sense of the firm and not of the family. These dowries and payments to Uncle Gotthold and to Frankfort, these hundreds of thousands which had to be drawn out of the business—and then there were only two heirs beside the head of the firm. Good; we have our work cut out for us, Marcus.” The thirst for action, for power and success, the longing to force fortune to her knees, sprang up quick and passionate in his eyes. He felt all the world looking at him expectantly, questioning if he would know how to command prestige for the firm and the family and protect its name. On exchange he had been meeting measuring side-looks out of jovial, mocking old eyes, that seemed to be saying “So you’re taking it on, my son!” “I am!” he thought.

Friederich Wilhelm Marcus rubbed his hands circumspectly, and Justus Kröger said: “Quietly, quietly, my dear chap. Times aren’t what they were when your grandfather was a Prussian army contractor.”

There began now a detailed conversation upon the provisions of the will, in which they all joined, and Consul Kröger took a lighter tone, referring to Thomas as “his Highness the reigning Prince” and saying, “The warehouses will go with the crown, according to tradition.” In general, of course, it was decided that as far as possible everything should be left to gether, that Frau Elizabeth Buddenbrook should be considered the sole heir, and that the entire property should remain in the business. Herr Marcus announced that as partner he should be able to strengthen the working capital by a hundred and twenty thousand marks current. A sum of fifty thousand marks was set aside as a private fortune for Thomas, and the same for Christian, in case he wished to establish himself separately. Justus Kröger paid close attention to the passage that ran: “The fixing of the dowry of my beloved daughter Clara I leave to the discretion of my dear wife.” “Shall we say a hundred thousand?” he suggested, leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, and turning up his short grey moustache with both hands. He was affability itself. But the sum was fixed at eighty thousand. “In case of a second marriage of my dearly loved older daughter Antonie, in view of the fact that eighty thousand marks have already been applied to her first marriage, the sum of seventeen thousand thaler current must not be exceeded.” Frau Antonie waved her arm with a graceful but excited gesture which tossed back her flowing sleeve; she looked at the ceiling and said loudly: “Grünlich, indeed!” It sounded like a challenge, like a little trumpet-call. “You know, Herr Marcus,” she said, “about that man. We are sitting, one fine afternoon, perfectly innocent, in the garden, in front of the door—you know the portal, Herr Marcus. Well! Who appears? a person with gold-coloured whiskers—the scoundrel!”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “We will talk about Herr Grünlich afterward.”

“Very well; but you are a clever creature, and you will admit, Tom, that in this life things don’t always happen fairly and squarely. That’s been my experience, though a short time ago I was too simple to realize it.”