They later admitted the error of their gloomy prophecy; but nobody, in fact, denied that Hanno was a little backward. His early infancy was a struggle for life, and his family was in constant anxiety. At birth he had been too feeble to cry out; and soon after the christening a three-day attack of cholera-infantum was almost enough to still forever the little heart set pumping, in the first place, with such difficulty. But he survived; and good Dr. Grabow did his best, by the most painstaking care and nourishment, to strengthen him for the difficult period of teething. The first tiny white point had barely pricked through the gum, when the child was attacked by convulsions, which repeated themselves with greater and greater violence, until again the worst was to be feared. Once more the old doctor speechlessly pressed the parents’ hands. The child lay in profound exhaustion, and the vacant look in the shadowy eyes indicated an affection of the brain. The end seemed almost to be wished for.
But Hanno regained some little strength, consciousness returned; and though the crisis which he had survived greatly hindered his progress in walking and talking, there was no longer any immediate danger to be feared.
The child was slender of limb, and rather tall for his age. His hair, pale brown and very soft, began to grow rapidly, and fell waving over the shoulders of his full, pinafore-like frocks. The family likenesses were abundantly clear, even now. From the first he possessed the Buddenbrook hand, broad, a little too short, but finely articulated, and his nose was precisely the nose of his father and great-grandfather, though the nostrils would probably remain more delicate. But the whole lower part of his face, longish and narrow, was neither Buddenbrook nor Kröger, but from the mother’s side of the house. This was true of the mouth in particular, which, when closed, began very early to wear an anxious, woebegone expression that later matched the look of his strange, gold-brown, blue-shadowed eyes.
So he began to live: brooded over by his father’s reserved tenderness, clothed and nurtured under his mother’s watchful eye; prayed over by Aunt Antonie, presented with tops and hobbyhorses by the Frau Consul and Uncle Justus; and when his charming little perambulator appeared on the streets, it was looked after with interest and expectation. Madame Decho, the stately nurse, had attended the child up to now; but it had been settled that when they moved into the new house, not she, but Ida Jungmann, should move in with them, and the latter’s place with the old Frau Consul be filled by somebody else.
Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. He had no difficulty in obtaining title to the property in Fishers’ Lane. The Broad Street house was turned over to Gosch the broker, who dramatically declared himself prepared to assume the task of disposing of it. Stephan Kistenmaker, who had a growing family, and, with his brother Eduard, made good money in the wine business, bought it at once. Herr Voigt undertook the new building, and soon there was a clean plan to unroll before the eyes of the family on Thursday afternoons, when they could, in fancy, see the façade already before them: an imposing brick façade with sandstone caryatides supporting the bow-window, and a flat roof, of which Clothilde remarked, in her pleasant drawl, that one might drink afternoon coffee there. The Senator planned to transfer the business offices to his new building, which would, of course, leave empty the ground floor of the house in Meng Street. But here also things turned out well: for it appeared that the City Fire Insurance Company wanted to rent the rooms by the month for their offices—which was quickly arranged.
Autumn came, and the grey walls crumbled to heaps of rubbish, and Thomas Buddenbrook’s new house rose above its roomy cellars, while winter set in and slowly waned again. In all the town there was no pleasanter topic of conversation. It was “tip-top”—it was the finest dwelling-house far and wide. But it must cost like the deuce—the old Consul would never have spent money so recklessly. Thus the neighbours, the middle-class dwellers in the gabled houses, looking out at the workmen on the scaffoldings, enjoying the sight of the rising walls, and speculating on the date of the carpenters’ feast.
It came at length, and was celebrated with due circumstance. Up on the flat-topped roof an old master mason made the festal speech and flung the champagne bottle over his shoulder, while the tremendous wreath, woven of roses, green garlands, and gay-coloured leaves, swayed between standards, heavily in the breeze. The workmen’s feast was held at a neighbouring inn, at long tables, with beer, sandwiches, and cigars; and Senator Buddenbrook and his wife and his little son on Madame Decho’s arm, walked through the narrow space between the tables and bowed his thanks at the cheers they gave him.
When they got outside, they put little Hanno back into his carriage, and Thomas and Gerda crossed the road to have another look at the red façade with the white caryatides. They stood before the flower-shop with the narrow door and the poor little show-window, in which only a few pots of onions stood on a green glass slab. Iwersen, the proprietor, a blond giant of a man, in a woollen jacket, was in the doorway with his wife. She was of a quite different build, slender and delicate, with a dark, southern-looking face. She held a four- or five-year-old boy by one hand, while with the other she was pushing a little carriage back and forth, in which a younger child lay asleep; and she was plainly expecting a third blessing.
Iwersen made a low, awkward bow; his
