Next day there would be a third Christmas party, at Fräulein Weichbrodt’s. He looked forward to it as to a comic performance in the theatre. Therese Weichbrodt had given up her pensionnat in the past year. Madame Kethelsen now occupied the first storey of the house on the Mill Brink, and she herself the ground floor, and there they lived alone. The burden of her deformed little body grew heavier with the years, and she concluded, with Christian humility and submission, that the end was not far off. For some years now she had believed that each Christmas was her last; and she strove with all the powers at her command to give a departing brilliance to the feast that was held in her small overheated rooms. Her means were very narrow, and she gave away each year a part of her possessions to swell the heap of gifts under the tree: knickknacks, paperweights, emery-bags, needle-cushions, glass vases, and fragments of her library, miscellaneous books of every shape and size. Books like The Secret Journal of a Student of Himself, Hebel’s Alemannian Poems, Krummacher’s Parables—Hanno had once received an edition of the Pensées de Blaise Pascal, in such tiny print that it had to be read with a glass.
Bishop flowed in streams, and Sesemi’s gingerbread was very spicy. But Fräulein Weichbrodt abandoned herself with such trembling emotion to the joys of each Christmas party that none of them ever went off without a mishap. There was always some small catastrophe or other to make the guests laugh and enhance the silent fervour of the hostess’ mien. A jug of bishop would be upset and overwhelm everything in a spicy, sticky red flood. Or the decorated tree would topple off its wooden support just as they solemnly entered the room. Hanno fell asleep with the mishap of the previous year before his eyes. It had happened just before the gifts were given out. Therese Weichbrodt had read the Christmas chapter, in such impressive accents that all the vowels got inextricably commingled, and then retreated before her guests to the door, where she made a little speech. She stood upon the threshold, humped and tiny, her old hands clasped before her childish bosom, the green silk cap-ribbons falling over her fragile shoulders. Above her head, over the door, was a transparency, garlanded with evergreen, that said “Glory to God in the Highest.” And Sesemi spoke of God’s mercy; she mentioned that this was her last Christmas, and ended by reminding them that the words of the apostle commended them all to joy—wherewith she trembled from head to foot, so much did her whole poor little body share in her emotions. “Rejoice!” said she, laying her head on one side and nodding violently: “and again I say unto you, rejoice!” But at this moment the whole transparency, with a puffing, crackling, spitting noise, went up in flames, and Mademoiselle Weichbrodt gave a little shriek and a side-spring of unexpected picturesqueness and agility, and got herself out of the way of the rain of flying sparks.
As Hanno recalled the leap which the old spinster performed, he giggled nervously for several minutes into his pillow.
IX
Frau Permaneder was going along Broad Street in a great hurry. There was something abandoned about her air: she showed almost none of the impressive bearing usual to her on the street. Hunted and harassed, in almost violent haste, she had as it were been able to save only a remnant of her dignity—like a beaten king who gathers what is left of his army about him to seek safety in the arms of flight.
She looked pitiable indeed. Her upper lip, that arched upper lip that had always done its share to give charm to her face, was quivering now, and the eyes were large with apprehension. They were very bright and stared fixedly ahead of her, as though they too were hurrying onward. Her hair came in disorder from under her close hat, and her face showed the pale yellow tint which it always had when her digestion took a turn for the worse.
Her digestion was obviously worse in these days. The family noticed that on Thursdays. And no matter how hard everyone tried to keep off the rocks, the conversation always made straight for them and stuck there: on the subject of Hugo Weinschenk’s trial. Frau Permaneder herself led up to it. She would call on God and her fellow men to tell her how Public Prosecutor Moritz Hagenström could sleep of nights. For her part, she could not understand it—she never would! Her agitation increased with every word. “Thank you, I can’t eat,” she would say, and push away her plate. She would elevate her shoulders, toss her head, and in the height of her passion fall back upon the practice, acquired in her Munich years, of taking nothing but beer, cold Bavarian beer, poured into an empty stomach, the nerves of which were in rebellion and would revenge themselves bitterly. Toward the end of the meal she always had to get up and go down to the garden or the court, where she suffered the most dreadful fits of nausea, leaning upon Ida Jungmann or Riekchen Severin. Her stomach would finally relieve itself of its contents, and contract with spasms of pain, which sometimes lasted for minutes and would continue at intervals for a long time.
It was about , a windy, rainy day. Frau Permaneder turned the corner at Fishers’ Lane and hurried down the steep declivity to her brother’s house. After a hasty knock she went from the court straight into the bureau, her
