Buddenbrooks_ The Decline Of A Family Part 5

CHAPTER V.

THE marriage of which little Johann had been the issue had never lost charm in the town as a subject for conversation. Since both of the parties to it were still felt to have some-thing queer about them, the union itself must partake of thai character of the strange and uncanny which they each pos-sessed. To get behind it even a little, to look beneath the scanty outward facts to the bottom of this relation, seemed a difficult, but certainly a stimulating task. And in bedrooms and sitting-rooms, in clubs and casinos, yes, even on 'Change itself, people still talked about Gerda and Thomas Buddenbrook. How had these two come to marry, and what sort of relations.h.i.+p was theirs? Everybody remembered the sudden re-solve of Thomas Buddenbrook eighteen years ago, when he was thirty years old. "This one or no one," he had said. It must have been something of the same sort with Gerda, for it was well known that she had refused everybody up to her twenty-seventh year, and then forthwith lent an ear to this particular wooer. It must have been a love match, people said: they granted that the three hundred thousand thaler had probably not played much of a role. But of that which any ordinary person would call love, there was very little to be seen between the pair. They had displayed from the very beginning a correct, respectful politeness, quite ex-traordinary between husband and wife. And what was still more odd it seemed not to proceed out of any inner estrangement, but out of a peculiar, silent, deep mutual knowledge. This had not at all altered with the years. The one change due to the pa.s.sage of time was an outward one. It was only this: that the difference in years began to make itself plainly risible. When you saw them together you felt that here was a rapidly aging man, already a little heavy, with his young wife at his side. Thomas Buddenbrook was going off very much, and this despite the now almost laughable vanity by which he kept himself up. On the other hand, Gerda had scarcely altered in these eighteen years. She seemed to be, as it were, conserved in the nervous coldness which was the essence of her being. Her lovely dark red hair had kept its colour, the white skin its smooth texture, the figure its lofty aristocratic slimness. In the corners of her rather too small and close-set brown eyes were the same blue shadows. You could not trust those eyes. Their look was strange, and what was written in it impossible to decipher. This woman's personality was so cool, so reserved, so repressed, so distant, she showed so little human warmth for anything but her music--how could one help feeling a vague mistrust? People un-earthed wise old saws on the subject of human nature and applied them to Senator Buddenbrook's wife. Still waters were known to run deep. Some people were slyer than foxes. And as they searched for an explanation, their limited imagi-nations soon led them to the theory that the lovely Gerda. was deceiving her aging husband. 'They watched, and before long they felt sure that Gerda's conduct, to put it mildly, pa.s.sed the bounds of propriety in her relations with Herr Lieutenant von Throta. Renee Maria von Throta came from the Rhineland. He was second lieutenant of one of the infantry battalions quar-tered in the town. The red collar went well with his black hair, which he wore parted on the side and combed back in a high, thick curling crest from his white forehead. HP looked big and strong enough, but was most unmilitary in speech and manner. He had a way of running one hand in between the b.u.t.tons of his half-open undress coat and of sit-ting with his head supported on the back of his hand. His 247 bows were devoid of military stiffness, and you could not hear his heels click together as he made them. And he had no more respect for his uniform than for ordinary clothes. Even the slim youthful moustaches that ran slantwise down to the corners of his mouth had neither point nor consistency; they only confirmed the unmartial impression he gave. The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes, so large-, black, and extraordinarily brilliant that they seemed like glowing bottomless depths when he visited anything or anybody with his glance which was sparkling, ardent, or languis.h.i.+ng by turns. He had probably gone into the army against his will, or at least without any inclination for it; and despite his physique he was no good in the service. He was unregarded by his comrades, and shared but little in their interests--the interests and pleasures of young officers lately back from a victorious campaign. And they found him a disagreeable oddity, who did not care for horses or hunting or play or women. All his thoughts were bent on music. He was to be seen at all the concerts, with his languis.h.i.+ng eyes and his lax, unmilitary, theatrical att.i.tudes; on the other hand he despised the club and the casino and never went near them. He made the duty calls which his position demanded; but the Buddenbrook house was the only one at which he visited--too much, people thought, and the Senator himself thought so too. No one dreamed what went on in Thomas Buddenbrook. No one must guess. But it was just this keeping everybody in ignorance of his mortification, his hatred, his powerlessness, that was so cruelly hard! People were beginning to find him a little ludicrous; but perhaps their laugh would have turned to pity if they had even dimly suspected how much he was on his guard against their laughter! He had seen it coming long before, he had felt it beforehand, before any one else had such an idea in his head. His much-carped-at vanity had its source largely in this fear. He had been first to see, with dismay, the growing disparity between himself and his lovely wife, on whom the years had not laid a finger. And now, since the advent of Herr von Throta, he had to fight with the last rem-nant of his strength to dissimulate his own misgivings, in order that they might not make him a laughing-stock in the eyes of the community. Gerda Buddenbrook and the eccentric young officer met each other, naturally, in the world of music. Herr von Throta played the piano, violin, viola, cello, and flute, and played them all unusually well. Often the Senator became aware of an impending visit when Heir von Throta's man pa.s.sed the office-door with his master's cello-case on his back. Thomas Buddenbrook would sit at his desk and watch until he saw his wife's friend enter the house. Then, overhead in the salon, the harmonies would rise and surge like waves, with singing, lamenting, unearthly jubilation; would lift like clasped hands outstretched toward Heaven; would float in vague ecstasies; would sink and die away into sobbing, into night and silence. But they might roll and seethe, weep and exult, foam up and enfold each other, as unnaturally as they liked! They were not the worst. The worst, the actually torturing thing, was the silence. It would sometimes reign so long, so long, and so profoundly, above there in the salon, that it was impossible not to feel afraid of it. There would be no tread upon the ceiling, not even a chair would move--simply a soundless, speechless, deceiving, secret silence. Thomas Buddenbrook would sit there, and the torture was such that he sometimes softly groaned. What was it that he feared? Once more people had seen Herr von Throta enter his house. And with their eyes he beheld the picture just as they saw it: Below, an aging man, worn out and crotchety, sat at his window in the office; above, his beautiful wife made music with her lover. And not that alone. Yes, that was the way the thing looked to them. He knew it. He was aware, too, that the word "lover" was not really descriptive of Herr von Throta. It would have 249 been almost a relief if it were. If he could have understood and despised him as an empty-headed, ordinary youth who worked off his average endowment of high spirits in a little music, and thus beguiled the feminine heart! He tried to think of him like that. He tried to summon up thn instincts of his father to meet the case: the instincts of the thrifty mer-chant against the frivolous, adventurous, unreliable military cast?. He called Herr von Thrnla "the lieutenant," and tried to think of him as that; but in his heart he was conscious that the name was inappropriate. What was it that Thomas Buddenbrook feared? Nothing--nothing to put a name ID. If there had only been some-thing tangible, some simple, brutal fact, something to defend himself against! He envied people the simplirity of their conceptions. For while he sat there in torments, with his head in his hands, he knew all too well that "betrayal," "adultery," were not word? to describe the singing things, the abysmally silent things, that were happening up there. He looked up sometimes at the grey gables, at the peDple pa.s.sing by, at the jubilee present hanging above his desk with the portraits of his forefathers: he thought of the history of his house, and said to himself that this was all that was wanting: that his person should become a byword, his name and family life a scandal among the people. This was all that was lacking to set the crown upon the whole. And the thought, again, almost did him good, berausc it was a simple, comprehensible, normal thought, that one could think and express--quite another matter from this brooding over a mysterious disgrace, a blot upon his family 'scutcheon. He t-ould bear it no more. He shoved back his chair, left the office, and went upstairs. Whither should he go? Into the salon, to be greeted with unembarra.s.sed slight con-descension by Herr von Throta, to ask him to supper and be refused? For one of the worst features of the case was that the lieutenant avoided him, refused all official invitations from the head of the house, and confined himself to the free and private intercourse with its mistress. Should he wait? Sit down somewhere, perhaps in the smoking-room, until the lieutenant went, and then go to Gerda and speak out, and call her to account? Ah, one did not speak out with Gc-rda, one did not call her to account. Why should one? Their alliance was based on mutual con-sideration, tact, and silence. To become a laughing-stock be-fore her, too--no, surely he was not called upon to do that. To play the jealous husband would be to grant that outsiders wpre right, to proclaim a scandal, to cry it aloud. Was he jealous? Df whnm? Of what? Alas, no! Jealousy--tnp word meant action: mistaken, crazy, wrong action, perhaps, but at least action, energetic, fearless, and conclusive. No, IIP nnly felt a slight anxiety, a hara.s.sing worry, over thr whole thing. He went into his dressing-room and bathed his face with eau-de-colognp. Then he descended to the music-room, de-termined to break the silence there, cost what it would. He laid his hand on the door-k.n.o.b--but now the music struck up again with a stormy outburst of sound, and he shrank back. One day in surh an hour, he was leaning over the balcony of the second floor, looking down the well of the staircase, Everything was quite still. Little Johann came out of his room, down the gallery steps, and across the corridor, on his way to Ida Jungmann's room. He slipped along the wall with his book, and would have pa.s.sed his father with lowerrd eyes, and a murmured greeting; but the Senator spoke to him. "Well, Hanno, and what are you doing?" "Studying my lessons, Papa. I am going to Ida, to have her hear my translation--" "Well, and what do you have to-morrow?" Hanno, still looking down, made an obvious effort to give a prompt, alert, and correct answer to the question. HP 251 swallowed once and said, "We have Cornelius Nepos, some accounts to copy, French grammar, the rivers of North Amer-ica, German theme-correcting--" He stopped and felt provoked with himself; he could not remember any more, and wished he had said and and let his voice fall, it sounded so abrupt and unfinished. "Nothing else," he said as decidedly as he could, without looking up. But his father did not seem to be listening. He held Hanno'a free hand and played with it absently, unconsciously fingering the slim fingers. And then Hanno heard something that had nothing to do with the lessons at all: his father's voice, in a tone he had never heard before, low, distressed, almost imploring: "Hanno----the lieutenant has been more than two hours with Mamma--" Little Hanno opened wide his gold-brown eyes at the sound: and they looked, as never before, clear, large, and loving, straight into his father's face, with its reddened eyelids under the light brows, its while puffy cheeks and long stiff mous-taches. G.o.d knows how much he understood. But one thing they both felt: in the long second when their eyes met, all constraint, coldness, and misunderstanding melted away. Hanno might fail his father in all that demanded vitality, energy and strength. But where fear and suffering were in question, there Thomas Buddrnbrook could count on the de-votion of his son. On that common ground they met as one. He did not realize this--he tried not to realize it. In the days that followed, he urged Hanno on more sternly than ever to practical preparations for his future career. He tested his mental powers, pressed him to commit himself upon the subject of his calling, and grew irritated at every sign of rebellion or fatigue. For the truth was that Thomas Bud-denbrook, at the age of forty-eight, began to feel that his days were numbered, and to reckon with his own approaching death. His health had failed. Loss of appet.i.te, sleeplessness, diz- zin ess, and the chills to which he had always been subject forced him several times to call in Dr. Langhals. But he did not follow the doctor's orders. His will-power had grown flabby in these years of idlenes or petty activity. He slept late in the morning, though every evening he made an angry resold to rise early and take the prescribed walk before breakfast. Only two or three times did he actually carry out the resolve; and it was the same with everything else. And the constant effort to spur on his will, with the constant failure to do so. consumed his self-respect and made him a prey to despair. He never even tried to give up his cigarettes; he could not do without the pleasant narcotic effect; he had smoked them from his youth up. He told Dr. Langhals to his vapid face: "You see, Doctor, it is your duty to forbid me cigarettes--a very easy and agreeable duty. But I have to obey the order--that is my share, and you can look on at it. No, we will work together over my health; but I find the work un-evenly divided--too much of yours falls to me. Don't laugh: it is no joke. One is so frightfully alone--well, I smoke. Will you have one?" He offered his case. All his powers were on the decline. What strengthened in him was the conviction that it could not last long, that the end was close at hand. He suffered from strange appre-hensive fancies. Sometimes at table it seemed to him that he was no longer sitting with his family, but hovering above them somewhere and looking down upon them from a great distance. "I am going to die," he said to himself. And he would rail Hanno to him repeatedly and say: "My son, I may be taken away from you sooner than you think. And then you will be called upon to take my place. I was called upon very young myself. Can you understand that I am troubled by your indifference? Are you now resolved in your mind? Yes? Oh, 'yea* is no answer! Again you won't answer me! What I ask you is, have you resolved, bravely and joyfully, to lake up your burden? Do you im-agine that you won't have to work, that you will have enough 253 money without? You will have nothing, or very, very little; you will be thrown upon your own resources. If you want to live, and live well, you will have to work hard, harder even than I did." But this was not all. It was not only the burden of his son's future, the future of his house, that weighed him down. There was another thought that took command, that mastered him and spurred on his weary thoughts. And it was this: As soon as he began to think of his mortal end not as an in-definite remote event, almost a contingency, but as something near and tangible for which it behoved him to prepare, he began to investigate himself, to examine his relations to death and questions of another world. And his earliest researches in this kind discovered in himself an irremediable unpre-paredness. Thomas Buddenbrook had played now and then through-out his life with an inclination to Catholicism. But he was at bottom, none the less, the born Protestant: full of the true Protestant's pa.s.sionate, relentless sense of personal responsi- bility. No, in the ultimate things there was, there could be, no help from outside, no mediation, no absolution, no soothing-syrup, no panacea. Each one of us, alone, unaided, of his own powers, must unravel the riddle before it was too late, must wring for himself a pious readiness before the hour of death, or else part in despair. Thomas BudJenbrook turned away, desperate and hopeless, from his only son, in whom he had once hoped to live on, renewed and strong,] and began in fear and haste to seek far the truth which must' somewhere exist for him. It was high summer of the year 1874. Silvery, high-piled clouds drifted across the deep blue sky above the garden's dainty symmetry. The birds twittered in the boughs of the walnut tree, the fountain splashed among the irises, and the scent of the lilacs floated on the breeze, mingled, alas, with the smell of hot syrup from a sugar-factory nearby. To the astonishment of the staff, the Senator now often left his work during office hours, to pace up and down in the garden with his hands behind his back, or to work about, raking the gravel paths, tying up the rose-bushes, or dredging mud out of the fountain. His face, with its light eyebrows, seemed serious and attentive as he worked; but his thoughts travelled far away in the dark on their lonely, painful path. Sometimes he sealed himself on the little terrace, in the pavilion now entirely overgrown with green, and stared across the garden at the red brick rear wall of the house. The air was warm and sweet; it seemed as though the peaceful sounds about him strove to lull him to sleep. Weary of loneliness and silence and staring into s.p.a.ce, he would close his eyes now and then, only to s.n.a.t.c.h them open and harshly frighten peace away. "I must think," he said, almost aloud. "I must arrange everything before it is too late." He sat here one day, in the pavilion, in the little reed rocking-chair, and read for four hours, with growing absorption, in a book which had, partly by chance, come into his hands. After second breakfast, cigarette in mouth, he had 255 unearthed it in the smoking-room, from behind some stately volumes in the corner of a bookcase, and recalled that he had bought it at a bargain one day years ago. It was a large volume, poorly printed on cheap paper and poorly sewed; the second part, only, of a famous philosophical system. He had brought it out with him into the garden, and now he turned the pages, profoundly interested. He was filled with a great, surpa.s.sing satisfaction. It soothed him to see how a master-mind could lay hold on this strong, cruel, mocking thing called life and enforce it and condemn it. His was the gratification of the sufferer who has always had a bad conscience about his sufferings and con-cealed them from the gaze of a harsh, unsympathetic world, until suddenly, from the hand Df an authority, he receives, as it were, justification and license for his suffering--justi-fication before the world, this best of all possible worlds which the master-mind scornfully demonstrates to be the worst of all possible ones! He did not understand it all. Principles and premises re-mained unclear, and his mind, unpractised in such readings, was not able to follow certain trains of thought. But this very alternation of vagueness and clarity, of dull incompre-hension with sudden bursts of light, kept him enthralled and breathless, and the hours vanished without his looking up from his book or changing his position in his chair. He had left some pages unread in the beginning of the book, and hurried on, clutching rapidly after the main thesis, reading only this or that section which held his attention. Then he struck on a comprehensive chapter and read it from beginning ID end, his lips tightly closed and his brows drawn together with a concentration which had long been strange to him, completely withdrawn from the life about him. The chapter was called "On Death, and its Relation to our Per-sonal Immortality." Only a few lines remained when the servant came through the garden at four o'clock to call him to dinner. He nodded, read the remaining sentences, closed the book, and looked about him. He felt that his whole being had unaccountably expanded, and at the same time there clung about his senses a profound intoxication, a strange, sweet, vague allurement which somehow resembled the feelings of early love and longing. He put away the book in the drawer of the garden table. His hands were cold and unsteady, his head was burning, and he felt in it a strange pressure and strain, as though something were about to snap. He was not capable of consecutive thought. What was this? He asked himself the question as he mounted the stairs and sat down to table with his family. What is it? Have I had a revelation? What haa happened to me, Thomas Buddenbrook, Councillor of this government, head of the grain firm of Johann Buddenbrook? Was this message meant for me? Can I bear it? I don't know what it was: I only know it is too much for my poor brain. He remained the rest of the day in this condition, this heavy lethargy and intoxication, overpowered by the heady draught he had drunk, incapable of thought. Evening came. His head was heavy, and since he could hold it up no longer, he went early to bed. He slept for three hours, more pro-foundly than ever before in his life. And, then, suddenly, abruptly, with a start, he awoke and felt as one feels on realizing, suddenly, a budding love in the heart. He was alone in the large sleeping chamber; for Gerda slept now in Ida Jungmann's room, and the latter had moved into one of the three balcony rooms to be nearer little lohann. It was dark, for the curtains of both high windows were tightly closed. He lay on his back, feeling the oppression of the stillness and of the heavy, warm air, and looked up into the darkness. And behold, it waa^as though the darkness were rent from betore his eyee, aa if the whole wall of the night parted wide and disclosed an immeasurable, boundless prospect of light. "Pshall live!" said Thomas Buddenbrook, almost aloud, and 257 BUDDENBROOK5 felt his breast shaken with inward sobs. "This is the reve-lation: that I shall live! For it will live--and that this it is not I is only an illusion, an error which death will make plain. This is it, this is it! Why?" But at this question the night closed in again upon him. He saw, he knew, he understood, no least particle more; he let himself sink deep in the pillows, quite blinded and exhausted by the morsel of truth which had been vouchsafed. He lay still and waited fervently, feeling himself tempted to pray that it would come again and irradiate his darkness. And it came. With folded hands, not daring to move, he lay and looked. What was Death? The answer came, not in poor, large-sounding words: he felt it within him, he possessed it. Death was a joy, so great, so deep that it could be dreamed of only in momenta of revelation like the present. It was the re-turn from an unspeakably painful wandering, the correction of a grave mistake, the loosening of chains, the opening of doors--it put right again a lamentable mischance. End, dissolution! These were pitiable words, and thrice pitiable he who used them! What would end, what would dissolve? Why, this his body, this heavy, faulty, hateful inc.u.mbrance, which prevented him from being something other and better. Was not every human being a mistake and a blunder'? Was he not in painful arrest from the hour of his birth? Prison, prison, bonds and limitations everywhere! The hu-man being stares hopelessly through the barred window of bin personality at the high walls of outward circ.u.mstance, till Death comes and calls him home to freedom! Individuality?--All, all that one is, can, and has, seems poor, grey, inadequate, wearisome; what onn is not, can not, baa not, that is what one looks at with a longing desire thai becomes love because it fears to become hate. I brar in myself the seed, the tendency, the possibility of all capacity and all achievement. Where should I be were I not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not I--if this my external self, my consciousness, did not cut me off from those who are not I? Organism! Blind, thoughtless, pitiful eruption of the urging will! Better, indeed, for the will to float free in s.p.a.celess, timeless night than for it to languish in prison, illumined by the feeble, flickering light of the intellect! Have I hoped to live on in my son? In a personality yet more feeble, flirkering, and timorous than my own? Blind, childish folly! What can my son do for me--what need have I of a son? Where shall I be when I am dead? Ah, it is so brilliantly clear, so overwhelmingly simple! I shall be in all those who have ever, do ever, or ever shall say "I"-especially, however, in all those who say it most fully, po-tently, and gladly! Snmpwherp in the world a child is growing up, strong, well-grown, adequate, able to develop its powers, gifted, un-troubled, pure, joyous, relentless, one of those beings whose glance heightens the joy of the joyous and drives the unhappy ID despair. He is my son. He is I, myself, soon, soon; as soon as Death frees me from the wretched delusion that I am not hr as wrll as myself. Have I ever hated life--pure, strong, relentless life? Folly and misconception! I have but hated myself, because I could not bear'it. I love you, I love you all, you blessed, and soon, soon, I shall cease to be cut off from you all by the narrow bonds of myself; soon will that in me which loves you be free and be in and with you--in and with you all. He wept, hr pressed his face into the pillows and wept, shaken through and through, lifted up in transports by a joy without compare for its exquisite sweetness. This it was which since yesterday had filled him as if with a heady, in-toxicating draught, had worked in his heart in the darkness of the night and roused him like a budding love! And in so far as he could now understand and recognize--not in worda and consecutive thoughts, but in sudden rapturous illumina-259 lions of his inmost being--he was already free, already ac-tually released and free of all natural as well as artificial limitations. The walls of his native town, in which he had wilfully and consciously shut himself up, opened out; they opened and disclosed to his view the entire world, of which he had in his youth seen this or that small portion, and of which Death now promised him the whole. The deceptive perceptions of s.p.a.ce, time and history, the preoccupation with a glorious historical continuity of life in the person of his own descendants, the dread of some future final dissolution and decomposition--all this his spirit now put aside. He was no longer prevented from grasping eternity. Nothing be-gan, nothing left off. There was only an endless present; and that power in him which loved life with a Inve so ex-quisitely swet't and yearning--the power of which his per-son was only the unsuccessful expression--that power would always know how to find acress to this present. "I shall live," he whispered into his pillow. He wept, and in the next moment knew not why. His brain stood still, the vision wag quenched. Suddenly there was nothing more--he lay in dumb darkness. "It will come bark," he as-sured himself. And before sleep inexorably wrapped him round, he swore to himself never to let go this precious treasure, but to read and study, ID learn its powers, and to make inalienably his own the whole conception of the universe out of which his vision sprang. But that could not be. Even the next day, as he woke with a faint feeling of shame at the emotional extravagances of the night, he suspected that it would be hard to put these beautiful designs into practice. He rose late and had to go at once to take part in the debate at an a.s.sembly of burgesses. Public business, the civic life lhat went on in the gabled narrow streets of this middle-sized trading city, consumed his energies once more. He still planned to take up the wonderful reading again where he had left it off. But he questioned of himself whether the events of that night had been anything firm and permanent; whether, when Death approached, they would be found to hold thrir ground. His mid rile-cla.s.s instincts rose against them--and his vanity, too: the fear of being eccentric, of playing a laughable role. Had he really seen these things? And did they really become him--him, Thomas Buddenbrook, head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook? He never succeeded in looking again into the precious volume--to say nothing of buying its other parts. His days were consumed by nervous pedantry: hara.s.sed by a thousand details, all of them unimportant, he was too weak-willed to arrive at a reasonable and fruitful arrangement of his time. farlv two weeks after that memorable afternoon he gave it up--and ordered the maid-servant to fetch the book from the drawer in the garden table and replace it in the bookcase. And thus Thomas Buddenbrook, who had held his hands stretched imploringly upward toward the high ultimate truth, sank now weakly back to the images and conceptions of his childhood. He strove to call back that personal G.o.d. the Father of all human beings, who had sent a part of Himsplf npnn earlh to suffer and bleed for our sins, and who, on ihe final day, would come to judge the quick and the dead; at whose feet the justified, in the course of the eternity then beginning, would br recompensed for the sorrows they had borne in mis vale of tears, Yes, he strove'to subscribe to the whole confused unconvincing story, which required no intelligence, only obedient credulity; and which, when the last anguish came, would sustain one in a firm and child-like faith.--* But would it, really? Ah, even here there was no peace. This poor, well-nigh exhausted man, consumed with gnawing fears for the honour of his house, his wife, his child, his name, his family, this man who spent painful effort even to keep his body artificially erect and well-preserved--this poor man tortured himself for days with thoughts upon the moment and manner of death .261 BUDDENBRO DKS How would it really be? Did the soul go to Heaven im-mediately after death, or did bliss first begin with the resur-rection of the flesh? And, if so, where did the soul stay until that time? He did not remember ever having been taught this. Why had he not been told this important fact in srhool or in church? How was it justifiable for them to leave people in such uncertainty? He considered visiting Pastor Pringsheim and seeking advire and counsel; but he gave it up in the end for fear of being ridiculous. And finally he gave it all up--he left it all to G.o.d. But having come to such an unsatisfactory ending of his at-tempts to set his spiritual affairs in order, he determined at least to spare no pains over his earthly ones, and to carry out a plan which he had long entertained. One day little Johann heard his father tell his mother, as they drank their coffee in the living-room after the mid-day meal, that he expected Lawyer So-and-So to make his will. He really ought not to keep on putting it off. Later, in the afternoon, Hannu practised his music for an hour. When he went down the corridor after that, he met, coming up the stairs, his father and a gentleman in a long black overcoat. "Hanno," said the Senator, curtly. And little Johnann stopped, swallowed, and said quickly and softly: "Yes, Papa." "I have some important business with this gentleman," his father went on. "Will you stand before the door into the smoking-room and take care that n.o.body--absolutely n.o.body, you understand--disturbs us?" "Yes, Papa," said little Johann, and took up his post before the door, which closed after the two gentlemen. He stood there, clutching his sailor's knot with one hand, felt with his tongue for a doubtful tooth, and listened to the earnest subdued voices which could be heard from inside. His head, with the curling light-brown hair, he held on one side, and his face with the frowning brows and blue-shadowed, gold-brown eyes, wore that same displeased and brooding look with which he had inhaled the odour of the flowers, and that other strange, yet half-familiar odour, by his grand-mother's bier. Ida Jungmann pa.s.sed and said, "Well, little Hanno, why are you hanging about here?" And the hump-backed apprentice oame out of the office with a telegram, and asked for the Senator. But, both times, little Johann put his arm in its blue sailor sleeve with the anchor on it horizontally across the door; both limes he shook his head and said softly, after a pause, "No one may go in. Papa is making his will."

CHAPTER VI.

IN the autumn Dr. Langhals said, making- play like a woman with his beautiful eyes: "It is the nerves, Senator; the nerves are to blame for everything. And once in a while the rircu-lation is not what it should be. May I venture In make a suggestion? You need another little rest. These few Sun-days by the sea, during the summer, haven't amounted to much, of course. It's the end of September, Travemiinde is still open, there are still a few people there. Drive over, Senator, and sit on the bearh a little. Two or three weeks will do you a great deal of good." And Thomas Buddenbrook said "yes" and "amen." But when he told his family of the arrangement, Christian sug-gested going with him. "I'll go with you, Thomas," he said, quite simply. "You don't mind, I suppose." And the Senator, though he did mind ery much, said "yes" and "amen" to this arrangement as well. Christian was now more than ever master of his own Lime. His fluctuating health had constrained him to give up his last undertaking, the champagne and spirit agency. The man who used to come and sit on his sofa and nod at him in the twilight had happily not recurred of late. But the misery in the side had, if anything, grown worse, and added to tlms was a whole list of other infirmities of which Christian kept the closest watch, and which he described in all com-panies, with his nose wrinkled up. He often suffered from that long-standing dread of paralysis of the tongue, throat, and oesophagus, even of the extremities and of the brain--of which there were no actual symptoms, but the fear in 261- itself was almost worse. He told in detail how, one day when he was making tea, he had held the lighted match not over the spirit-lamp, but over the open bottle of methylated spirit instead; so that not only himself, but the people in his own and the adjacent buildings, nearly went up in flames. And he dwelt in particular detail, straining every resource he had at his command to make himself perfectly clear, upon a certain ghastly anomaly which he had of late observed in him-self. It was this: that on certain days, i. e., under certain weather conditions, and in certain states of mind, he could not see an open window without having a horrible and in-explicable impulse to jump out. It was a mad and almost uncontrollable desire, a sort of desperate foolhardiness. The family were dining on Sunday in Fishers' Lane, and he de-scribed how he had to summon all his powers, and crawl on hands and knees to the window to shut it. At this point everybody shrieked; his audience rebelled, and would listen no more. He told these and similar things with a certain horrible satisfaction. But the thing about himself which he did not know, which he never studied and described, but which none the less grew worse and worse, was his singular lack of tact. He told in the family circle anecdotes of such a nature that the club was the only possible place for them. And even 'his sense of personal modesty seemed to be breaking down. He was on friendly terms with his sister-in-law, Cerda. But when he displayed to 4ier the beautiful weave and texture of his English socks, he did not stop at that, but rolled up his wide, checkered trouser-leg to far above the knee: "Look," he said, wrinkling his nose in distress: "Look how thin I'm getting. Isn't it striking and unusual?" And there he sat, sadly gazing at his crooked, bony leg and the gauht knee visible through his white woollen drawers. His mercantile activity then, was a thing of the past. But such hours as he did not spend at the club he liked to fill in with one sort of occupation or another; and he would 255 BUDDENBRODK5 proudly point out that he had never actually ceased to work. He extended his knowledge of languages and embarked upon a study of Chinese--though this was for the sake of acquiring knowledge, simply, with no practical purpose in view. He worked at it industriously for two weeks. He was also, just at this time, occupied with a project of enlarging an English-German dictionary which he had found inadequate. But he really needed a little change, and it would be better too for the Senator to have somebody with him; so he did not allow his business to keep him in town. The two brothers drove out together to the sea along the turnpike, which was nothing but a puddle. The rain drummed on the carriage-top, and they hardly spoke. Christian's eyes roved hither and yon; he was as if listening to uncanny noises. Thomas sat m.u.f.fled in his cloak, s.h.i.+vering, gazing witli bloodshot eyes, his moustaches stiffly sticking out beyond his white cheeks. They drove up to the Kurhousc in the afternoon, their wheels grating in the wet gravel. Did Broker Gosch sat in the gla.s.s verandah, drinking rum punch. Hi-stood up, whistling through his teeth, and they all sat down together to have a little something warm while the trunks were being carried up. Herr Gosch was a late guest at the cure, and there were a few other people as well: an English family, a Dutch maiden lady, and a Hamburg bachelor, all of them pre-sumably taking their rest before table-d'hole, for it was like the grave everywhere but for the sound of the rain. Let them sleep! As for Herr Gosch, he was not in the habit of sleeping in the daytime, He was glad enough to get a few hours' sleep at night. He was far from well; he was taking a late cure for the benefit of this trembling which he suffered from in all his limbs. Hang it. he could hardly hold his gla.s.s of grog; and more often than not he could not write at all--so that the translation of Lope da Vega got on but slowly. He was in a very low mood indeed, and even his curses lacked relish. "Let it go hang!" was his constant phrase, which he rep Bated on every occasion and often on none at all. And the Senator? How was he feeling? How long were the gentlemen thinking of stopping? Dh, Dr. Langhals had sent him out on account of his nerves. He had obeyed orders, of course, despite the frightful weather--what doesn't one do out of fear of one's physician? HP was re-ally feeling more or less miserable, and they would probably remain till there was a little improvement. "Yes, I'm pretty wretched too," said Christian, irritated at Thomas's speaking only of himself. He was about to fetch out his repertoire--the nodding; man, the spirit-bottle, the open window--when the Senator interrupted him by going to engage the rooms. The rain did not stop. It washed away the earth, it danced upon the sea, which was driven back by the south-west wind and left 'the beaches bare. Everything was shrouded in grey. The steamers went by like wraiths and vanished on the dim horizon. They met the strange guests only at table. The Senator, in markintosh and goloshes, went walking with Gosch; Chris-tian drank Swedish punch with the barmaid in the pastry-shop. Two or three times in the afternoon it looked as though the sun were coming out; and a few acquaintances from town appeared--people who enjoyed a holiday away from their families: Senator Dr. Gieseke, Christian's friend, and Consul Peter Dohlmann, who looked very ill indeed, and was killing himself with Hunyadi-Janos water. The gentlemen sat tog'ether in their overcoats, under the awnings of the pastry-shop, opposite the empty bandstand, drinking their coffee, digesting their five courses, and talking desultorily as they gazed over the empty garden. The news of the town--the last high water, which had gone into the cellars and been so deep that in the lower part of the town people had to go about in boats; a fire in the dockyard 267 sheds; a senatorial election--these were the topics of con- versation. Alfred Lauritzen, of the firm of Sturmann & Lauritzen, tea, coffee, and spice merchants, had been elected, and Senator Buddenbrook had not approved of the choice. He sat smoking cigarettes, wrapped in -his cloak, almost silent except for a few remarks on this particular subject. One thing was certain, he said, and that was that he had not voted for Herr Lauritzen. Lauritzen was an honest fellow and a good man of business. There was no doubt of that; but he was middle-cla.s.s, respectable middle-cla.s.s. His father had fished herrings out of the barrel and handed them across the counter to servant-maids with his own hands--and now they had in the Senate the proprietor of a retail business. His, Thomas Buddenbrook's father had disowned his eldest son for "marrying a shop"; but that was in the good old days. "The standard is being lowered," he said. "The social level is nol so high as it was; the Senate is being democratized, my dear Gieseke, and that is no good. Business ability is one thing--but it is not everything. In my view we should de- mand something more. Alfred Lauritzen, with his big feet and his boatswain's face--it is offensive to me to think of him in the Senate-house. It offends something in me, I don't know what. It goes against my sense of form--it is a piece of bad taste, in short.'7 Senator Gieseke demurred. He was rather piqued by this expression of opinion. After all, he himself was only the son of a Fire Commissioner. No, the labourer was worthy of his hire. That was what being a republican meant. "You ought not to smoke So much, Buddenbrook," he ended. "You won't get any sea air." "I'll stop now," said Thomas Buddenbrook, flung away the end of his cigarette, and closed his eyes. The conversation dragged on; the rain set in again and veiled the prospect. They began to talk about the latest town scandal--about P. Philipp Ka.s.sbaum, who had been falsifying bills of exchange and now sat behind locks and bars. N one felt outraged over the dishonesty: they spoke of it as an act of folly, laughed a bit, and shrugged their shoulders. Srnator Dr. Gieseke said that the convicted man had not lost his spirits. He had asked for a mirror, it seemed, there being none in hig cell. "I'll need a looking-gla.s.s," he was re-ported to have said: "I shall be here for some time." He had been, like Christian and Dr. Gieseke, a pupil of the lamented Marcellus Stengel. They all laughed again at this, through their noses, without a sign of feeling. Siegismund Gosch ordered another grog in a tone of voice that was as good as saying, "What's the use of living?" Consul Do'hlmann sent for a bottle of brandy. Christian felt inclined to more Swedish punch, so Dr. Gieseke ordered some for both of them. Before long Thomas Bud-denbrook began to smoke again. And the idle, cynical, indifferent talk went on, heavy with the food they had eaten, the wine they drank, and the damp that depressed their spirits. They talked about business, the business of each one of those present; but even this subject roused no great enthusiasm. "Oh, there's nothing very good about mine," said Thomas Buddenbrook heavily, and leaned his head against the back of his chair with an air of disgust. "Well, and you, Dohlmann," asked Senator Gieseke, and yawned. "You've been devoting yourself entirely to brandy, eh?" "The chimney can't smoke, unless there's a fire," the Con-sul retorted. "I look into the office every few days. Short hairs are soon combed." "And Slrunrk and Hagenstrom have all the business in their hands anyhow," the broker said morosely, with his elbows sprawled out on the table and his wicked old grey head in his hands. "Dh, nothing can compete with a dung-heap, for smell," Dohlmann said, with a deliberately coa.r.s.e p.r.o.nunciation, which must have depressed everybody's spirits the more by 269 its hopeless cynicism. "Well, and you, Buddenbrook--what are you doing now? Nothing, eh?" "No," answered Christian, "I can't, any more." And wilh-oul more ado, having perceived the mood of the hour, he proceeded to accentuate it. He began, his hat on one side, to talk about his Valparaiso office and Johnny Thunderstorm. "Well, in that heat--'Good G.o.d! Work, Sir? No, Sir. As you see, Sir.' And they puffed their cigarette-smoke right in his face. Good G.o.d!" It was, as always, an imrompar-able expression of dissolute, impudent, lazy good-nature. His brother sat motionless. Herr Gosch tried to lift his gla.s.s to his thin lips, put it back on the table again, cursing through his shut teeth, and struck the offending arm with his fist. Then he lifted the gla.s.s once more, and spilled half its contents, draining the remainder furiously at a gulp. "Oh, you and your shaking, Gosch!" Peter Dohlmann ex-claimed. "Why don't you just let yourself go, like me? I'll croak if I don't drink my bottle every day--I've got as far as that; and I'll croak if I do. How would you feel if you couldn't get rid of your dinner, not a single day--I mean, after you've got it in your stomach?" And he favoured them with some repulsive details of his condition, to which Christian listened with dreadful interest, wrinkling his nose as far as it could go and countering with a brief and forcible-account of his "misery." It rained harder than ever. It came straight down in sheets and filled the silence of the Kurgarden with its ceaseless, forlorn, and desolate murmur. "Yes, life's pretty rotten," said Senator Gieseke. He had been drinking heavily. "I'd just as lief quit," said Christian. "Let it go hang," said Herr Gosch. 'There comes Fike Dahlbeck," said Senator Gieseke. The proprietress of the cow-stalls, a heavy, bold-faced woman BUDDENBRODK5 in the forties, came by with a pail of milk and smiled at the gentlemen. Senator Cieseke let his eyes rove after her. "What a bosom," he said. Consul Dbhlmann added a lewd witticism, with the result that all the gentlemen laughed once more, through their noses. The waiter was summoned. "I've finished the bottle, Schroder," said Consul Dbhlmann. "May as well pay--we have to some time or other. You, Christian? Gieseke pays for you, eh?" Senator Buddenbrook roused himself at this. He had been sitting there, hardly speaking, wrapped in his cloak, his hands in his lap and his cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Now he suddenly started up and said sharply, "Have you no money with you, Christian? Then I'll lend it to you." They put up their umbrellas and emerged from their shelter to takn a little stroll. Frau Prrmanedrr came out once in a while to see her brother. They would walk as far as Sea-Gull Rock or the little Oi'ean Temple; and here Tony Buddenbrook, for some reason or other, was always seized by a mood of vague ex-citement and rebellion. She would repeatedly emphasize the independence and equality of all human beings, summarily repudiate all distinctions of rank or cla.s.s, use some very strong language, on the subject of privilege and arbitrary power, and demand in set terms that merit should receive its just reward. And then she talked about her own life. She talked well, she entertained her brother capitally. This child of fortune, so long as she walked upon this earth, had never once needed to suppress an emotion, to choke down or swallow anything she felt. She had never received in silence either the blows or the caresses of fate. And whatever she had received, of joy or sorrow, she had straightway given forth again, in a flow of childish, self-important trivialities. Her digestion was not perfect, it is true. But her heart--ah, her heart 271 was light, her spirit was free; freer than she herself com-prehended. She was not consumed by the inexpressible. No sorrow weighed her down, or strove to speak but could not. And thus it was that her past left no mark upon her. She knew that she had led a troubled life--she knew it, that is, but at bottom she never believed in it herself. She recognized it as a fact, since everybody else believed it--and she utilized it to her own advantage, talking of it and making herself great with it in her own eyes and those of others. With outraged virtue and dignity she would call by name all those persons who had played havoc with her life and, in consequence, with the prestige of the Buddenbrook family; the list had grown long with time: Teary Trietschke! Griinlich! Permaneder! Tiburtius! Weinschenk! the Hagenstroms! the State Attorney! Severin!--"What filoux, all of them, Thomas! G.o.d will punish them--that is my firm belief." Twilight was falling as they came up to the Ocean Temple, for the autumn was far advanced. They stood in one of the little chambers facing the bay--it smelled of WDDC!. like the bathing cabins at the Kur, and its walls were scribbled over with mottoes, initials, hearts and rhymes. They stood and looked out over the dripping slope across the narrow, stony strip of beach, out to the turbid, restless sea. "Great waves," said Thomas Buddenbrook. "How they come on and break, come on and break, one after another, endlessly, idly, empty and vast! And yet, like all the simple, inevitable things, they soothe, they ronsole, after all .1 have learned to love the sea more and more. Onre, I think, I cared more for the mountains--because they lay farther off. Now I do not long for them. They would only frighten and abash me. They are too capricious, too manifold, too anomalous--1 know I should feel myself vanquished in their presence. What sort of men prefer the monotony of the sea? Those, I think, who have looked so long and deeply inlo the complexities of the spirit, that they ask of outward things merely that they should possess one quality above all: sim- plicity. It is true that in the mountains one clambers briskly about, while beside the sea one sits quietly on the sh.o.r.e. This is a difference, but a superficial one. The real difference is in the look with which one pays homage to the one and to the other. It is a strong, challenging gaze, full of enter-prise, that can soar from peak to peak; but the eyes that rest on the wide ocean and are soothed by the sight of its waves rolling on forever, mystically, relentlessly, are those that are already wearied by looking too deep into the solemn perplexities of life.--Health and illness, that is the difference. The man whose strength is unexhausted climbs boldly up into the lofty multiplicity of the mountain heights. But it is when one is worn out with turning one's eyes inward 'upon the be-wildering complexity of the human heart, that one finds peace in resting them on the wideness of the sea." Frau Permaneder was silent and uncomfortable,--as simple people are when a profound truth is suddenly expressed in the middle of a conventional conversation. People don't say such things, she thought to herself; and looked out to sea so as not to show her feeling by meeting his eyes. Then, in the silence, to make amends for an embarra.s.sment which she jcould not help, she drew his arm through hers.

CHAPTER VII.

WINTER had come, Christmas had pa.s.sed. It was January, 1875. The snow, which covered the foot-walks in a firm-trodden ma.s.s, mingled with sand and ashes, was piled on either side of the road in high mounds that were growing greyer and more porous all the time, for the temperature was rising. The pavements were wet and dirty, the grey gables dripped. But above all stretched the heavens, a rloudless tender blue, while millions of light atoms seemed to dance like crystal motes in the air. It was a lively sight in the centre of the town, for this was Sat.u.r.day, and market-day as well. Under the pointed arches of the Town Hall arcades the butchers had their stalls and weighed out their wares red-handed. The fish-market, how-ever, was held around the fountain in the market-square it-self. Here fat old women, with their hands in m.u.f.fs from hich most of the fur was worn off, warming their feet at little coal-braziers, guarded their slippery wares and tried to cajole the servants and housew;ves into making purchases. There was no fear of being cheated. The fish would nrrlainly be fresh, for the most of them were still alive. The lurkiest ones were even swimming about in pails of water, rather cramped for s.p.a.ce, but perfectly lively. Dthers lay with dreadfully goggling eyes and labouring gills, clinging to lifr1 and slapping the marble slab desperately with their tails--until such time as their fate was at hand, when somebody would seize them and cut their throats with a crunching sr)und. Great fat eels writhed and wreathed about in extraor-dinary shapes. There were deep vats full of black ma.s.ses of crabs from the Baltic. Once in a while a big flounder gave such a desperate leap that he sprang right off his slab and fell down upon the slippery pavement, among all the refuse, and had to be picked up and severely admonished by his possessor. Broad Street, at midday, was full of life. Schoolchildren with knapsacks on their backs came along the street, filling it with laughter and chatter, s...o...b..lling each other with the half-melting snow. Smart young apprentices pa.s.sed, with Danish sailor caps or suits cut after the English model, carrying their portfolios and obviously pleased with themselves for having escaped from school. Among the crowd were settled, grey-bearded, highly respectable citizens, wearing the most irreproachable national-liberal expression on their faces, and tapping their sticks along the pavement. These looked across with interest to the glazed-brick front of the Town Hall, where the double guard was stationed; for the Senate was in session. The sentries trod their beat, wearing their cloaks, their guns on their shoulders, phlegmatically stamping their feet in the dirty half-melted snow. They met in the centre of their beat, looked at each other, exchanged a word, turned, and moved away each to his own side. Sometimes a lieutenant would pa.s.s, his coat-collar turned up, his hands in his pockets, on the track of some grisette, yet at the same time permitting himself to be admired by young ladies of good family; and then each sentry would stand at attention in front of his box, look at himself from head to foot, and present arms. It would be a little time yet before they would perform the same salute before the members of the Senate, the sitting lasted some three quarters of an hour; it would probably adjourn before that. But one of the sentries suddenly heard a short, discreet whistle from within the building. At the same moment the entrance -was illumined by the red uniform of Uhlefeld the beadle, with his dress sword and c.o.c.ked hat. His air of preoccupation was simply enormous as he uttered a stealthy "Look out" and hastily withdrew. At the same moment ap-275 preaching steps were heard on the echoing flags within. The sentries front-faced, inflated their chests, stifTened their necks, grounded their arms, and then, with a couple of rapid motions, presented arms. Between them there had appeared, lifting his top hat, a gentleman of scarcely medium height, with one light eyebrow higher than the other and the pointed ends of his moustaches extending beyond his pallid cheeks. Senator Thomas Buddenbrook was leaving the Town Hall to-day long before the end of the sitting. He did not take the street to his own house, but turned to the right instead. He looked correct, spotless, and elegant as, with the rather hopping step peculiar to him, he walked along Broad Street, constantly saluting people whom he met. He wore white kid gloves, and he had his stick with the silver handle under his left arm. A white dress tie peeped forth from between the lapels of his fur coat. But his head and face, despite their careful grooming, looked rather seedy. People who pa.s.sed him noticed that his eyes were watering and that he held his mouth sh'ut in a peculiar cautious way; it was twisted a little to one side, and one could see by the musrles of his cheeks and temples that he was clenching his jaw. Sometimes he swallowed, as if a liquid kept rising in his mouth. "Well, Buddenbrook, so you are cutting the session? That is something new," somebody said unexpectedly to him at the beginning of Mill Street. It was his friend and admirer Stephan Kistenmaker, whose opinion on all subjects was the echo of his own. Stephan Kistenmaker had a full greying beard, bushy eyebrows, and a long nose full of large pores. He had retired from the wine business a few years back with a comfortable sum, and his brother Edouard carried it on by himself. He lived now the life of a private gentleman; but, being rather ashamed of the fact, he always pretended to be overwhelmed with work. "I'm wearing myself out," he would say, stroking his grey hair, which he curled with the tongs. "But what's a man good for, but to wear himself out?" He stood hours on 'Change, gesturing imposingly, but doing no BUDDENBRDOK5 business. He held a number of unimportant offices, the latest one being Director of the city bathing establishments; but he also functioned as juror, broker, and executor, and laboured with such zeal that the perspiration dripped from his brow. "There's a session, isn't there, Buddenbrook--and you are taking a walk?" "Oh, it's you," said the Senator in a low voice, moving his lips cautiously. "I'm suffering frightfully--I'm nearly blind with pain." "Pain? Where?" "Toothache. Since yesterday. I did not close my eyes last night. I have not been to the dentist yet, because I had business in the office this morning, and then I did not like to miss the sitting, But I couldn't stand it any longer. I'm on my way to Brecht." "Where is it?" "Here on the left side, the lower jaw. A back tooth. It is decayed, of course. The pain is simply unbearable. Good-bye, Kistenmaker. You can understand that I am in a good deal of a hurry." "Yes, of course--don't you think I am, too? Awful lot to do. Good-bye. Good luck! Have it out--get it over with at once--always the best way." Thomas Buddenbrook went on, biting his jaws together, though it made the pain worse to do so. It was a furious burning, boring pain, starting from the infected back tooth and affecting the whole side of the jaw. The inflammation throbbed like red-hot hammers; it made his face burn and his eyes water. His nerves were terribly affected by the sleepless night he had spent. He had had to control himself just now, lest his voice break as he spoke. He entered a yellow-brown house in Mill Street and went up to the first storey, where a bra.s.s plate on the door said, "Brecht, Dentist." He did not see the servant who opened the door. The corridor was warm and smelled of beefsteak and cauliflower. Then he suddenly inhaled the sharp odour 277 of the waiting-room into which he was ushered. "Sit down! One moment!" shrieked the voice of an old woman. It was Josephus, who sat in his s.h.i.+ning cage at the end of the room and regarded him sidewise out of his venomous little eyes. The Senator sat down at the round table and tried to read the jokes in a volume of Fliegsnde Blatter, flung down the hook, and pressed the cool silver handle of his walking-stick against his cheek. He closed his burning eyes and groaned. There was not a sound, except for the noise made by Josephus as he bit and clawed at the bars of his cage. Herr Brecht might not be busy; but he owed it to himself to make his patient wait a little. Thomas Buddenbrook stood up precipitately and drank a gla.s.s of water from the bottle on the table. It tasted and smelled of chloroform. Then he opened the door into the corridor and called out in an irritated voice: if there were nothing very important to prevent it, would Herr Brecht kindly make haste--he was suffering. And immediately the bald forehead, hooked nose, and grizzled moustaches of the dentist appeared in the door of the operating-roorn. "If you please," he said. "If you please," shrieked Josephus. The Senator followed on the invitation. He was not smiling. "A bad case," thought Herr Brecht, and turned pale. They pa.s.sed through the large light room to the operating-chair in front of one of the two largest windows. It was an adjustable chair with an upholstered head-rest and preen plush arms. As he sat down, Thomas Buddenbrook briefly ex-plained what the trouble was. Then he leaned back his head and closed his eyes. Herr Brecht screwed up the chair a bit and got to work on the tooth with a tiny mirror and a pointed steel instrument. His hands smelled of almond soap, his breath of cauliflower and beefsteak. "We must proceed to extraction," he said, after a while, and turned still paler. "Very well, proceed, then," said the Senator, and shut his eyes more tightly. There was a pause. Herr Brecht prepared something at his chest of drawers and got out his instruments. Then he approached the chair again. "I'll paint it a little," he said; and began at once to apply a strong-smelling liquid in generous quant.i.ties. Then he gently implored the patient to sit very still and open his mouth very wide--and then he began. Thomas Buddenbrook clutched the plush arm-rests with both his hands. He scarcely felt the forceps close around his tooth; but from the grinding sensation in his mouth, and the increasingly painful, really agonizing pressure on his whole head, he was made amply aware that the thing was under way. Thank Cod, he thought, now it can't last long. The pain grew and grew, to limitless, incredible heights; it grew to an insane, shrieking, inhuman torture, tearing his entire brain. It approached the catastrophe. 'Here we are, he thought. Now I must just bear it.' It lasted three or four seconds. Herr Brechl's nervous exertions communicated themselves to Thomas Buddenbrook's whole body, he was even lifted up a little on his chair, and he heard a soft, squeaking noise coming from the dentist's tjiroat. Suddenly there was a fearful blow, a violent shaking as if his neck were broken, accompanied by a quick cracking, crackling noise. The pressure was gone, but his head buzzed, the pain throbbed madly in the inflamed and ill-used jaw; and he had the clearest impression that the thing had not been successful: that the extraction of the tooth was not the solution of the difficulty, but merely a premature catas-trophe which only made matters worse. Herr Brecht had retreated. He was leaning against his instrument-cupboard, and he looked like death. He said: "The crown--I thought so." Thomas Buddenbrook spat a little blood into the blue basin at his side, for the gum was lacerated. He asked, half-279 dazed: "What did you think? What about the crown?" "The crown broke off, Herr Senator. I was afraid of it.--The tooth was in very bad condition. But it was my duty to make the experiment." "What next?" "Leave it to me, Herr Senator." "What will you have to do now?" "Take out the roots. With a levrr. There are four of them." "Four. Then you must take hold and lift four times." "Yes--unfortunately." "Well, this is enough for to-day," said the Senator. He started to rise, but remained seated and put his head bark instead. "My dear Sir, you mustn't demand the impossible of me," he said. "I'm not very strong on my legs, just now. I have had enough for to-day. Will you be so kind as to open the window a little?" Herr Brecht did so. "It will be perfectly agreeable tn me, Herr Senator, if you come in to-morrow or next day, at whatever hour you like, and we can go on with the operation. If you will permit me, I will just do a little more rinsing and pencilling, to reduce the pain somewhat." He did the rinsing and pencilling, and then the Senator went. Herr Brecht accompanied him to the door, pale as death, expending his last remnant of strength in sympathetic shoulder-shruggings. "One moment, please!" shrieked Josephus as they pa.s.sed through the waiting-room. He still shrieked as Thomas Bud-denbrook went down the steps. With a lever--yes, yes, that was to-morrow. What should he do now? Go home and rest, sleep, if he could. The actual pain in the nerve seemed deadened; in his mouth was only a dull, heavy burning sensation. Home, then. He went slowly through the streets, mechanically exchanging greetings with those whom he met; his look was absent and wander- BUDDENBRD'OKS ing, as though he were absorbed in thinking how he felt. He got as far as Fishers' Lane and began to descend the left-hand sidewalk. After twenty paces he felt nauseated. "I'll go over to the public house and take a