Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/166

RV 156 (BUDDENBROOKS) Frau Permaneder sank upon the sofa with an impotent sob. “And they will go on; they will go on to the end, Tom.”

“Tony,” he said, and sat down sidewise by his mahogany desk, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his head on his hand, “tell me straight out, do you still have faith in his innocence?”

She sobbed once or twice before she answered, hopelessly: “Oh, no, Tom. How could I? I’ve seen so much evil in the world. I haven’t believed in it from the beginning, even, though I tried my very best. Life makes it so very hard, you know, to believe in any one’s innocence. Oh, no—I’ve had doubts of his good conscience for a long time, and Erica has not known what to make of him—she confessed it to me, with tears—on account of his behaviour at home. We haven’t talked about it, of course. He got ruder and ruder, and kept demanding all the time that Erica should be lively and divert his mind and make him forget his troubles. And he broke the dishes when she wasn’t. You can’t imagine what it was like, when he shut himself up evenings with his papers: when anybody knocked, you could hear him jump up and shout ‘Who’s there?’&ThinSpace;”

They were silent.

“But suppose he is guilty, Tom. Suppose he did do it,” began Frau Permaneder afresh, and her voice gathered strength. “He wasn’t working for his own pocket, but for the company—and then—good Heavens, in this life, people have to realize—there are other things to be taken into consideration. He married into our family—he is one of us, now. They can’t just go and stick him into prison like that!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“What are you shrugging your shoulders for, Tom? Do you mean that you are willing to sit down under the last and crowning insult these adventurers think they can offer us? We must do something! He mustn’t be convicted! Aren’t you the Burgomaster’s right hand? My God, can’t the Senate

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