Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/281

RV 271 (BUDDENBROOKS) in the forties, came by with a pail of milk and smiled at the gentlemen.

Senator Gieseke let his eyes rove after her.

“What a bosom,” he said. Consul Döhlmann added a lewd witticism, with the result that all the gentlemen laughed once more, through their noses.

The waiter was summoned.

“I’ve finished the bottle, Schröder,” said Consul Döhlmann. May as well pay—we have to some time or other. You, Christian? Gieseke pays for you, eh?”

Senator Buddenbrook roused himself at this. He had been sitting there, hardly speaking, wrapped in his cloak, his hands in his lap and his cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Now he suddenly started up and said sharply, “Have you no money with you, Christian? Then I’ll lend it to you.”

They put up their umbrellas and emerged from their shelter to take a little stroll.

Frau Permaneder came out once in a while to see her brother. They would walk as far as Sea-Gull Rock or the little Ocean Temple; and here Tony Buddenbrook, for some reason or other, was always seized by a mood of vague excitement and rebellion. She would repeatedly emphasize the independence and equality of all human beings, summarily repudiate all distinctions of rank or class, use some very strong language on the subject of privilege and arbitrary power, and demand in set terms that merit should receive its just reward. And then she talked about her own life. She talked well, she entertained her brother capitally. This child of fortune, so long as she walked upon this earth, had never once needed to suppress an emotion, to choke down or swallow anything she felt. She had never received in silence either the blows or the caresses of fate. And whatever she had received, of joy or sorrow, she had straightway given forth again, in a flow of childish, self-important trivialities. Her digestion was not perfect, it is true. But her heart—ah, her heart

RV 271 (271)