The ground floor of the old house still preserved the life and movement of a great business; but the upper storeys were empty and lonely. Little Erica had been received as a boarder by Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, and poor Clothilde had moved with her few sticks of furniture into a cheap pension with the widow of a high-school teacher, a Frau Dr. Krauseminz. Even Anton had left the house, and gone over to the young pair, where he was more needed. When Christian was at the club, the Frau Consul and Ida Jungmann sat at four o’clock dinner alone at the round table, in which there was now not a single extra leaf. It looked quite lost in the great spaces of the dining-temple with its images of the gods. The social life of Meng Street had been extinguished with the death of Consul Johann Buddenbrook. Except for the visits of this or that man of God, the Frau Consul saw no guests but the members of her family, who still came on Thursday afternoons. But the first great dinner had already been given by the young pair in Broad Street. Tables were laid in both dining- and living-room, and there were a hired cook and waiters and Kistenmaker wines. It began at five o’clock, and its sounds and smells were still in the air at eleven. All the business and professional men were present, married pairs and bachelors as well: all the tribe of Langhals, Hagenströms, Huneus’, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks, and Möllendorpfs. It finished off with whist and music. They talked about it in glowing terms on the Bourse for a whole week. The young Frau Consul certainly knew how to entertain! When she and the Consul were alone, in the room lighted by burned-down candles, with the furniture disarranged and the air thick with heavy odours of rich food, wine, cigars, coffee, perfume, and the scent of the flowers from the ladies’ toilettes and the table decorations, he pressed her hand and said: “Very good, Gerda. We do not need to be ashamed. This sort of thing is necessary. I have no great fondness for balls, and having the young people jumping about here; and, besides, there is not room. But we must entertain the settled people. A dinner like that costs a bit more--but it is well spent.” “You are right,” she had answered, and arranged the laces through which her bosom shimmered like marble. “I much prefer the dinners to the balls myself. A dinner is so soothing. I had been playing this afternoon, and felt a little queer. My brain feels quite dead now. If I were to be struck by lightning I should not change colour.” Next morning at half-past eleven the Consul sat down beside his Mother at the breakfast-table, and she read a letter aloud to him: MUNICH, April 2, 1857 MARIENPLATZ 5 MY DEAR MOTHER,