Thomas’s likeness to his grandfather was as strong as Christian’s to his father. The firm round chin was the old man’s, and the straight, well-chiselled nose. Thomas wore his hair parted on one side, and it receded in two bays from his narrow veined temples. His eyelashes were colourless by contrast, and so were the eyebrows, one of which he had a habit of lifting expressively. His speech, his movements, even his laugh, which showed his rather defective teeth, were all quiet and adequate. He already looked forward seriously and eagerly to his career. It was indeed a solemn moment when, after early breakfast, the Consul led him down into the office and introduced him to Herr Marcus the confidential clerk, Herr Havermann the cashier, and the rest of the staff, with all of whom, naturally, he had long been on the best of terms. For the first time he sat at his desk, in his own revolving chair, absorbed in copying, stamping, and arranging papers. In the afternoon his father took him through the magazines on the Trave, each one of which had a special name, like the “Linden,” the “Oak,” the “Lion,” the “Whale.” Tom was thoroughly at home in every one of them, of course, but now for the first time he entered them to be formally introduced as a fellow worker. He entered upon his tasks with devotion, imitating the quiet, tenacious industry of his father, who was working with his jaws set, and writing down many a prayer for help in his private diary. For the Consul had set himself the task of making good the sums paid out by the firm on the occasion of his father’s death. It was a conception ... an ideal.... He explained the position quite fully to his wife late one evening in the landscape-room. It was half-past eleven, and Mamsell Jungmann and the children were already asleep in the corridor rooms. No one slept in the second storey now--it was empty save for an occasional guest. The Frau Consul sat on the yellow sofa beside her husband, and he, cigar in mouth, was reading the financial columns of the local paper. She bent over her embroidery, moving her lips as she counted a row of stitches with her needle. Six candles burned in a candelabrum on the slender sewing-table beside her, and the chandelier was unlighted. Johann Buddenbrook was nearing the middle forties, and had visibly altered in the last years. His little round eyes seemed to have sunk deeper in his head, his cheek-bones and his large aquiline nose stood out more prominently than ever, and the ash-blond hair seemed to have been just touched with a powder-puff where it parted on the temples. The Frau Consul was at the end of her thirties, but, while never beautiful, was as brilliant as ever; her dead-white skin, with a single freckle here and there, had lost none of its splendour, and the candle-light shone on the rich red-blond hair that was as wonderfully dressed as ever. Giving her husband a sidelong glance with her clear blue eyes, she said: