Buddenbrooks

the other foot⁠—I’ve run across men who were far less scrupulous than I am! But in one case, it only needed a single bold stroke to bring me into social relations. The man was the lord of Gross-Poggendorf, of whom you have surely heard. I had considerable dealings with him some while back: Count Strelitz, a very smart-appearing man, with a square eyeglass (I could never make out why he did not cut himself), patent-leather top-boots, and a riding-whip with a gold handle. He had a way of looking down at me from a great height, with his eyes half-shut and his mouth half open. My first visit to him was very telling. We had had some correspondence. I drove over, and was ushered by a servant into the study, where Count Strelitz was sitting at his writing-table. He returns my bow, half gets up, finishes the last lines of a letter; then he turns to me and begins to talk business, looking over the top of my head. I lean on the sofa-table, cross my arms and my legs, and enjoy myself. I stand five minutes talking. After another five minutes, I sit down on the table and swing my leg. We get on with our business, and at the end of fifteen minutes he says to me, very graciously, ‘won’t you sit down?’ ‘Beg pardon?’ I say. ‘Oh, don’t mention it⁠—I’ve been sitting for some time!’ ”

“Did you say that? Really?” cried Frau Permaneder, enchanted. She had straightway forgotten all that had gone before, and lived for the moment entirely in the anecdote.

“ ‘I’ve been sitting for some time’⁠—oh, that is too good!”

“Well, and I assure you that the Count altered his tune at once. He shook hands when I came, and asked me to sit down⁠—in the course of time we became very friendly. But I have told you this in order to ask you if you think I should have the right, or the courage, or the inner self-confidence to behave in the same way to Herr von Maiboom if, when we met to discuss the bargain, he were to forget to offer me a chair?”

Frau Permaneder was silent. “Good,” she said then, and got up. “You may be right; and, as I said, I’m not going to press you. You know what you must do and what leave undone, and that’s an end of it. If you only feel that I spoke in good part⁠—you do, don’t you? All right. Good night, Tom. Or⁠—no, wait⁠—I must go and say ‘How do you do’ to the good Ida and give Hanno a little kiss. I’ll look in again on my way out.” With that she went.

III

She mounted the stairs to the second storey, left the little balcony on her right, went along the white-and-gold balustrade and through an antechamber, the door of which stood open on the corridor, and from which a second exit to the left led into the Senator’s dressing-room. Here she softly turned the handle of the door opposite and went in.

It was an unusually large chamber, the windows of which were draped with flowered curtains. The walls were rather bare: aside from a large black-framed engraving above Ida’s bed, representing Giacomo Meyerbeer surrounded by the characters in his operas, there was nothing but a few English coloured prints of children with yellow hair and little red frocks, pinned to the window hangings. Ida Jungman sat at the large extension-table in the middle of the room, darning Hanno’s stockings. The faithful Prussian was now at the beginning of the fifties. She had begun early to grow grey, but her hair had never become quite white, having remained a mixture of black and grey; her erect bony figure was as sturdy, and her brown eyes as bright, clear, and unwearied as twenty years ago.

“Well, Ida, you good soul,” said Frau Permaneder, in a low but lively voice, for her brother’s little story had put her in good spirits, “and how are you, you old standby, you?”

“What’s that, Tony⁠—standby, is it? And how do you come to be here so late?”

“I’ve been with my brother⁠—on pressing business. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out.⁠—Is he asleep?” she asked, and gestured with her chin toward the little bed on the left wall, its head close to the door that led into the parents’ sleeping chamber.

“Sh-h!” said Ida. “Yes, he is asleep.” Frau Permaneder went on her tiptoes toward the little bed, cautiously raised the curtain, and bent to look down at her sleeping nephew’s face.

The small Johann Buddenbrook lay on his back, his little face, in its frame of long light-brown hair, turned toward the room. He was breathing softly but audibly into the pillow. Only the fingers showed beneath the too long, too wide sleeves of his nightgown: one of his hands lay on his breast, the other on the coverlet, with the bent fingers jerking slightly now and then. The half-parted lips moved a little too, as if forming words. From time to time a pained expression mounted over the little face, beginning with a trembling of the chin, making the lips and the delicate nostrils quiver and the muscles of the narrow forehead contract. The long dark eyelashes did not hide the blue shadows that lay in the corners of the eyes.

“He is dreaming,” said Frau Permaneder, moved.

She bent over the child and gently kissed his slumbering cheek; then she composed the curtains and went back to the table, where Ida, in the golden light from the lamp, drew a fresh stocking over her darning-ball, looked at the hole, and began to fill it in.

“You are darning, Ida⁠—funny, I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”

“Yes, yes, Tony. The boy tears everything, now he has begun to go to school.”

“But he is such a quiet, gentle child.”

“Ye‑s, he is. But even so⁠—”

“Does he like going to school?”

“Oh, no‑o, Tony. He would far rather have gone on here with me. And I should have liked