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 God, the Father of all human beings, who had sent a part of Himself upon earth to suffer and bleed for our sins, and who, on the 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 be recompensed for the sorrows they had borne in this 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 childlike 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. How would it really be? Did the soul go to Heaven immediately after death, or did bliss first begin with the resurrection 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 school or in church? How was it justifiable for them to leave people in such uncertainty? He considered visiting Pastor Pringsheim and seeking advice 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 God. But having come to such an unsatisfactory ending of his attempts 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 midday 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, Hanno 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 Johann 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 nobody—absolutely nobody, 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 grandmother’s bier.
Ida Jungmann passed and said, “Well, little Hanno, why are you hanging about here?”
And the humpbacked apprentice came 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 times he shook his head and said softly, after a pause, “No one may go in. Papa is making his will.”
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 circulation is not what it should be. May I venture to make a suggestion? You need another little rest. These few Sundays by the sea, during the summer, haven’t amounted to much, of course. It’s the end of , Travemünde is still open, there are still a few people there. Drive over, Senator, and sit on the beach 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 suggested 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 very much, said “yes” and “amen” to this arrangement as well.
Christian was now more than ever master of his own time. 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 this was a whole list of other infirmities of which Christian kept the closest watch, and which he described in all companies, 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 itself was almost worse. He told in detail how,
