Thomas Mann

“ He wears himself out, he's quite thin under his glossy coat, you can feel all his ribs. For I'm afraid he'll never grow to be old, but will fall an early victim to consumption. The street curs persecute him, they go for him in every street, but he jumps clear of them, and if they succeed in joining issue with him, he distributes a few bites with his splendid teeth which the rabble don't forget in a hurry. One must love such a compound of chivalry and virtue.”
Imma agreed, in words which were the most serious and grave which Klaus Heinrich had ever heard from her mouth. ”

“ I am a woman steeled by misfortunes. And that about the dead capital is very convincing to me, Tom—I’ve enough intelligence to understand that much, anyhow. I can only repeat that you must do what you think best. You must think and act for us all; for Gerda and I are only women, and Christian—well, God help him, poor soul! We cannot oppose you, for whatever we could say would be only sentiment, not real objections, it is very plain. To whom will you sell it, Tom? ”

“ He saw Imma Spoelmann sitting in a languid pose in her red-gold dress at the table, with a look as of a spoilt child on her face; sitting in comfortable assurance, and uttering remarks with a sting in them, such as were good coin in the United States, where clearness, hardness, and a ready wit were essentials of life. And why? Klaus Heinrich could understand now, and never a day passed that he did not try to realize it better. ”

“ The two brothers drove out together to the sea along the turnpike, which was nothing but a puddle. The rain drummed on the carriage-top, and they hardly spoke. Christian’s eyes roved hither and yon; he was as if listening to uncanny noises. Thomas sat muffled in his cloak, shivering, gazing with bloodshot eyes, his moustaches stiffly sticking out beyond his white cheeks. They drove up to the Kurhouse in the afternoon, their wheels grating in the wet gravel. Old Broker Gosch sat in the glass verandah, drinking rum punch. ”

“ Gerda and Thomas climbed out of the trunk-laden carriage wrapped in their furs; and she drew them into the house in her embrace.
“Here you are! You lucky people, to have travelled so far in the world. ‘Knowest thou the house? High-pillared are its walls!’ Gerda, you are more beautiful than ever; here, I must kiss you—no, so, on the mouth. How are you, Tom, old fellow?—yes, I must kiss you too. Marcus says everything has gone well here. Mother is waiting for you at home, but you can first just make yourselves comfortable. Will you have some tea? ”

“ Grüss Gott! Lord, I’m just silly glad to see you. Do you think sometimes of little old [327] Munich and what a gay time we had? Oh, my, oh my! And here we are again. Who would ’a’ thought it?”
Tony, on her side, greeted him with great vivacity, drew up a chair, and began to chat with him about her weeks in Munich. Now the conversation went on without hitches, and the Frau Consul followed it, smiling and nodding encouragingly at Herr Permaneder. She would translate this or that expression into her own tongue, and then lean back into the sofa again, well pleased with her own intelligence. ”

“ Wherever he went there was holiday, there the people were transfigured and glorified, there the grey work-a-day world cleared up and became poetry. The starveling became a sleek man, the hovel a homely cottage, dirty gutter-children changed into chaste little maidens and boys in Sunday clothes, their hair plastered with water, a poem on their lips, and the perspiring citizen in frock-coat and top-hat was moved to emotion by the consciousness of his own worth.
But not only he, Klaus Heinrich, saw the world in this light, but it saw itself too, as long as his presence lasted. ”

“ Ought he to allow himself to be reminded of humanity and good nature ? No, come along, let's go, Klaus Heinrich, if you don't mind. They're tactless brats, these little Stavenüters." Klaus Heinrich laughed, he gave the children some of his pocket-money, and they went.
"Yes, yes," said Doctor Ueberbein in the course of an ordinary walk in the woods to Klaus Heinrich—they had drifted a little distance away from the five "Pheasants"—"nowadays the soul's thirst for veneration has to be satisfied with what it can get. Where will you find greatness? ”

“ I have nothing left over for the regular life— I don’t know whether you understand—”
“Oh, so you see that?” cried Thomas, standing still and folding his arms on his breast. “You humbly admit that, and still you go on the same old way? Are you a dog, Christian? A man has some pride, by God! One doesn’t live a life that one may not know how to defend oneself. But so you are. That is your character. If you can only see a thing and understand and describe it—. No, my patience is at an end, Christian.” And the Consul took a quick backward step and made a gesture with his arms straight out. ”

“ Yonder he lived, with his physician, his electric organ, and his collection of glass, behind the pillars, the bow windows, and the chiselled festoons of the schloss which had risen from its ruins at a nod from him. He was hardly ever seen: he was always in bed with poultices. But people saw his daughter, that curious creature with the whimsical features who lived like a princess, had a countess for a companion, studied algebra, and had walked in a temper unimpeded right through the guard. People saw her, and they sometimes saw Prince Klaus Heinrich at her side. ”

“ Look you," he said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, while he stroked his beard up from underneath his chin, "look you, Klaus Heinrich, a man who has my intellectual aspirations will not be able to help searching for and clinging to whatever is out of the ordinary in this drab world of ours, wherever and however it appears—he cannot help being put out by such a slovenly song, by such a sheepish abjuration of the exceptional, of the lofty and of the miserable, and of that which is both at once. ”

“ He stood resting on his left leg, the right knee bent, balancing lightly on the toe, and clutched his sailor knot with one hand, the other hanging down. He held his head on one side, the curly light-brown locks swaying over the temples, and looked with his gold-brown, blue-encircled eyes in brooding repugnance upon the face of the dead. His breath came long and shuddering, for he kept expecting that strange, puzzling odour which all the scent of the flowers sometimes failed to disguise. ”

“ Popinjays? thought Klaus Heinrich ... and guyed? He looked straight in front of him, he did not dare to ask. A fear, a hope struck him.... He said quite quietly: "They ... they guyed you?"
"Not half!" said the man. "I should think they did, the ogres, and no mistake! But I don't mind telling your young Highnesses, young though you are, but it'll do you good to hear it, that these people here are a set of wasters. A man comes and delivers his work as respectfully as possible.... Yes, bless my soul!" he cried suddenly, and tapped his forehead with his hat. ”

“ Once the shadows lasted a little longer, and six or seven times something fell with a slight crackling sound upon the panes of the skylight—hail-stones, no doubt. Then the sunlight streamed down again.
There is a mood of depression in which everything that would ordinarily irritate us and call up a healthy reaction, merely weighs us down with a nameless, heavy burden of dull chagrin. Thus Thomas brooded over the break-down of little Johann, over the feelings which the whole celebration aroused in him, and still more over those which he would have liked to feel but could not. ”

“ Black crape hangings fluttered everywhere in the draught, hiding the sky-blue tapestries and the smiling immortals who had looked down from these walls upon so many festive dinner-tables. Little Johann stood beside the bier among his black-clad relatives. He had a broad mourning band on his own sailor suit, and [192] his senses felt misty with the scent from countless bouquets and wreaths—and with another odour that came wafted now and then on a current of air, and smelled strange, yet somehow familiar. ”

“ Tom is a very solid chap. He’ll have to go into the business, no doubt of that. But Christian is a devil of a fellow—a young incroyable, hey? I will not conceal my engouement. He must study, I think—he is witty and brilliant.”
Old Buddenbrook used his gold snuff-box. “He’s a young monkey, that’s what he is. Why not say at once that he is to be a poet, Hoffstede?”
Mamsell Jungmann drew the curtains, and soon the room was bathed in mellow flickering light from the candles in the crystal chandelier and the sconces on the writing-desk. ”

“ I've got a matter of some importance to discuss with you—I might come with you to the Hermitage, but I can't bear the evening air."
Klaus Heinrich clapped his heels together as he an swered: "No, Albrecht, you mustn't think of it! I'll drive to the Schloss with you if you like. I am of course at your disposal." ”

“ And when March and April had passed, May came, bringing the great event of Klaus Heinrich's and Imma's marriage. It was a glorious day, with golden clouds in the sky, and its dawn was greeted by a choir from the town-hall tower. The people streamed in on foot and in carts, that fair, thick-set, healthy, reliable stock with blue, meditative eyes and broad, high cheek-bones, dressed in the handsome national dress—the men in red jackets, top-boots, and broad-brimmed black-velvet hats, the women in brightly embroidered bodices, thick, wide skirts, and big black veils as a head-dress. ”

“ Let me tell you that the unbridled passion with which you abandon yourself to the vice little beseems your grey hairs."
Mr. Spoelmann obviously tried to laugh, and as obviously failed; the acid tone of his daughter's words was not to his liking, and he flushed up.
"Silence!" he snarled. "You think you can say anything in fun, but please spare me your saucy jokes, chatterbox!"
Klaus Heinrich, appalled, looked at Imma, who turned her big eyes on her father's angry face, and then sadly dropped her head. ”

“ And in this connexion I beg your Royal Highness to allow me to revert to your more personal case."
Herr von Knobelsdorff waited till Klaus Heinrich had made a sign of consent with his hand, and then went on: "If this affair is to have any future, it is desirable that it should now advance a step in its development. It is stagnating, it remains as formless and prospectless as the mist outside. That's intolerable. We must give it form, must thicken it out, must mark its outlines more clearly before the eyes of the world." ”

“ Thomas cried. He was pale, and the blue veins stood out on his narrow temples, from which the hair went back in two bays. One of his light eyebrows was raised; even the long, stiff pointed ends of his moustache looked angry as he threw his words down at Christian’s feet on the gravel with quick sidewise gestures. “You make yourself [318] a laughing-stock with your love affairs, your harlequinades, your diseases and your remedies.”
Christian shook his head vehemently and put up a warning finger. “As far as that goes, Tom, you don’t understand very well, you know. ”

“ You're a Sunday child. Everything turns out trumps for you.... I wish you luck," he said, raising the lids from his lonely-looking, blue eyes. And it was clear at this moment that he loved Klaus Heinrich. "I wish you happiness, Klaus Heinrich—but not too much, and that you may not repose too comfortably in the love of the people. I have already said that everything turns out trumps for you. ”

“ That's my standpoint, sir.”
“I entirely understand,” said Klaus Heinrich. He sat up stiffly in his uniform and smiled uneasily.
“Of course it needs practice like everything else,” Mr. Spoelmann went on in a little less bitter tone of voice—“practice and training, I can see. For myself I shall never as long as I live cease feeling angry when I am obliged to play the prodigy.”
“I only hope,” said Klaus Heinrich, “that our people are not wanting in respect....”
“Thanks, not so bad,” answered Mr. Spoelmann. “The people are at least friendly here; one doesn't see murder written in their eyes.” ”

“ Well! Who appears? a person with gold-coloured whiskers—the scoundrel!”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “We will talk about Herr Grünlich afterward.”
“Very well; but you are a clever creature, and you will admit, Tom, that in this life things don’t always happen fairly and squarely. That’s been my experience, though a short time ago I was too simple to realize it.”
“Yes,” Tom said. They went into detail, noting the Consul’s instructions about the great family Bible, about his diamond buttons, and many, many other matters.
Justus Kröger and Herr Marcus stopped for supper. ”

“ I enjoyed myself most with a Herr Permaneder. Would you ever think there [309] could be such a name? He is a hop dealer, a nice, jolly man, in middle life and a bachelor. I had him at table, and stuck to him, for he was the only Protestant in the party. He is a citizen of Munich, but his family comes from Nuremberg. He assured me that he knew our firm very well by name, and you can imagine how it pleased me, Tom, to hear the respectful tone in which he said that. He asked how many there are of us, and things like that. He asked about Erica and Grünlich too. ”

“ He thinks: ‘Anybody! Anybody who isn’t absolutely impossible.’ For this time it is not a question of a brilliant match, but just one that will make good the other one. That is what he thinks. As soon as Permaneder appeared, you may be sure that Tom made all the proper inquiries about his business, and found it was all right—and then, as far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Tom is a politician—he knows what he wants. Who was it threw Christian out? That is strong language, Ida, but that was really the truth of it. And why? Because he was compromising the firm and the family. ”