“And this is our son,” he said. “So is he growing up—”
“But Jean! Good heavens, your Father would have laughed at it. Tell it to my Father and Mother on Thursday—you will see how Papa will enjoy it—”
But here the Consul rose up in anger. “Ah, yes, yes! I am sure he will enjoy it, Betsy. He will be glad to know that his light blood and impious desires live on, not only in a rake like Justus, his own son, but also in a grandson of his as well! Good God, you drive me to say these things!—He goes to this—person; he spends his pocket-money on flowers for this—lorette! I don’t say he knows what he is doing—yet. But the inclination shows itself—it shows itself, Betsy!”
Ah, yes, this was all very painful indeed. The Consul was perhaps the more beside himself for the added reason that Tony’s behaviour, too, had not been of the best. She had given up, it is true, shouting at the nervous stranger to make him dance; and she no longer rang the doorbell of the tiny old woman who sold worsted dolls. But she threw back her head more pertly than ever, and showed, especially after the summer visits with her grandparents, a very strong tendency to vanity and arrogance of spirit.
One day the Consul surprised her and Mamsell Jungmann reading together. The book was Clauren’s Mimili; the Consul turned over some of the leaves, and then silently closed it—and it was opened no more. Soon afterward it came to light that Tony—Antonie Buddenbrook, no less a person—had been seen walking outside the City wall with a young student, a friend of her brother. Frau Stuht, she who moved in the best circles, had seen the pair, and had remarked at the Möllendorpfs’, whither she had gone to buy some cast-off clothing, that really Mademoiselle Buddenbrook was getting to the age where—And Frau Senator Möllendorpf had lightly repeated the story to the Consul. The pleasant strolls came to an end. Later it came out that Fräulein Antonie had made a post-office of the old hollow tree that stood near the Castle Gate, and not only posted therein letters addressed to the same student, but received letters from him as well by that means. When these facts came to light, they seemed to indicate the need of a more watchful oversight over the young lady, now fifteen years old; and she was accordingly, as we have already said, sent to boarding-school at Fräulein Weichbrodt’s, Number seven, Millbank.
VII
Therese Weichbrodt was humpbacked. So humpbacked that she was not much higher than a table. She was forty-one years old. But as she had never put her faith in outward seeming, she dressed like an old lady of sixty or seventy. Upon her padded grey locks rested a cap the green ribbons of which fell down over shoulders narrow as a child’s. Nothing like an ornament ever graced her shabby black frock—only the large oval brooch with her mother’s miniature in it.
Little Miss Weichbrodt had shrewd, sharp brown eyes, a slightly hooked nose, and thin lips which she could compress with extraordinary firmness. In her whole insignificant figure, in her every movement, there indwelt a force which was, to be sure, somewhat comic, yet exacted respect. And her mode of speech helped to heighten the effect. She spoke with brisk, jerky motions of the lower jaw and quick, emphatic nods. She used no dialect, but enunciated clearly and with precision, stressing the consonants. Vowel-sounds, however, she exaggerated so much that she said, for instance, “botter” instead of “butter”—or even “batter!” Her little dog that was forever yelping she called Babby instead of Bobby. She would say to a pupil: “Don‑n’t be so stu‑upid, child,” and give two quick knocks on the table with her knuckle. It was very impressive—no doubt whatever about that! And when Mlle. Popinet, the Frenchwoman, took too much sugar to her coffee, Miss Weichbrodt had a way of gazing at the ceiling and drumming on the cloth with one hand while she said: “Why not take the who‑ole sugar-basin? I would!” It always made Mlle. Popinet redden furiously.
As a child—heavens, what a tiny child she must have been!—Therese Weichbrodt had given herself the nickname of Sesemi, and she still kept it, even letting the best and most favoured of the day as well as of the boarding-pupils use it. “Call me Sesemi, child,” she said on the first day to Tony Buddenbrook, kissing her briefly, with a sound as of a small explosion, on the forehead. “I like it.” Her elder sister, however, Madame Kethelsen, was called Nelly.
Madame Kethelsen was about forty-eight years old. She had been left penniless when her husband died, and now lived in a little upstairs bedroom in her sister’s house. She dressed like Sesemi, but by contrast was very tall. She wore woollen wristlets on her thin wrists. She was not a mistress, and knew nothing of discipline. A sort of inoffensive and placid cheerfulness was all her being. When one of the pupils played a prank, she would laugh so heartily that she nearly cried, and then Sesemi would rap on the table and call out “Nelly!” very sharply—it sounded like “Nally”—and Madame Kethelsen would shrink into herself and be mute.
Madame Kethelsen obeyed her younger sister, who scolded her as if she were a child. Sesemi, in fact, despised her warmly. Therese Weichbrodt was a well-read, almost a literary woman. She struggled endlessly to keep her childhood faith, her religious assurance that somewhere in the beyond she was
