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RV 388 (BUDDENBROOKS) day, and the Consul lost his temper several times. Tony was in no state to share his feelings. She was entirely taken up with words like “tangibilities,” “improvabilities,” “accessions,” “productivity,” “dowry rights,” and the like, which she used in season and out of season, with marvellous fluency, her shoulders slightly raised. One point in Dr. Gieseke’s long disquisitions had made a great impression on her: it had to do with “treasure” found in any piece of property that has constituted part of a dowry, which was to be regarded as a component part of the dowry, to be liquidated if the marriage came to an end. About this “treasure?”&mdash;which was, of course, non-existent&mdash;she talked to every soul she knew: Ida Jungmann, Uncle Justus, poor Clothilde, the Broad Street Buddenbrooks&mdash;and they, when they heard how matters stood, just folded their hands in their laps and looked at each other in speechless joy that this satisfaction, too, had been vouchsafed them. Therese Weichbrodt was told of it&mdash;Erica had gone to stay at the pension again&mdash;and Madame Kethelsen too, though this last, for more than one reason, understood not a single word.

Then came the day when the divorce was pronounced; when the last formalities were gone through, and Tony asked Thomas for the family papers and set down this last event with her own hand. Yes, it was done. All that remained was to get used to it.

She did it gallantly. She bore, with unscathed dignity, the tiny dagger-thrusts of the ladies from Broad Street; she met the Hagenströms and Möllendorpfs on the street and looked with chilling indifference straight over their heads; and she quite gave up going into society&mdash;the more easily that it had for some years past forsaken her Mother’s house for her brother’s. She had her own immediate family, the Frau Consul, Tom, and Gerda; she had Ida Jungmann and her motherly friend Sesemi Weichbrodt; and she had Erica, upon whose future she probably built her own last secret

RV 388 (388)