“Oh, that’s just an expression--a figure. What I mean is, it won’t turn out all right. I’ve had too much to bear--I don’t know how I came to deserve it all--but I can’t hope any more. Erica will be like me--with Grünlich and Permaneder. But now you can see just how it is--and how it all comes over you! Could I help it? Could any one help it, I ask you, Tom?” she repeated drearily, and looked at him with her tear-swimming eyes. “Everything I’ve ever undertaken has gone wrong and turned to misfortune--and I’ve meant everything so well. God knows I have! And now this too-- This is the last straw--the very last.” She wept, leaning on the arm which he gently put about her: wept over her ruined life and the quenching of this last hope. A week later, Herr Director Hugo Weinschenk was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment, and arrested at once. There was a very large crowd at the final session. Lawyer Breslauer of Berlin made a speech for the defence the like of which had never been heard before. Gosch the broker went about for weeks afterward bursting with enthusiasm for the masterly pathos and irony it displayed. Christian Buddenbrook heard it too, and afterward got behind a table at the club, with a pile of newspapers in front of him, and reproduced the whole speech. At home he declared that jurisprudence was the finest profession there was, and he thought it would just have suited him. The Public Prosecutor himself, Dr. Moritz Hagenström, who was a great connoisseur, said in private that the speech had been a genuine treat to him. But the famous advocate’s talents did not prevent his colleagues from thumping him on the back and telling him he had not pulled the wool over their eyes. The necessary sale followed upon the disappearance of the Director; and when it was over, people in town began gradually to forget about Hugo Weinschenk. But the Misses Buddenbrook, sitting on Thursday at the family table, declared that they had known the first moment, from the man’s eyes, that he was not straight, that his conscience was bad, and that there would be trouble in the end. Certain considerations, which they wished now they had not regarded, had led them to suppress these painful observations. PART NINE CHAPTER I Senator Buddenbrook followed the two gentlemen, old Dr. Grabow and young Dr. Langhals, out of the Frau Consul’s bed-chamber into the breakfast-room and closed the door. “May I ask you to give me a moment, gentlemen?” he said, and led them up the steps, through the corridor, and into the landscape-room, where, on account of the raw, damp weather, the stove was already burning. “You will understand my anxiety,” he said. “Sit down and tell me something reassuring, if possible.”