“Our house,” she murmured. “I remember the housewarming. We were no bigger than that. The whole family was there. And Uncle Hoffstede read a poem. It is in the family papers. I know it by heart. Venus Anadyomene. The landscape-room. The dining-hall! And strange people--!” “Yes, Tony. They must have felt the same--the family of whom Grandfather bought the house. They had lost their money and had to give up their home, and they are all dead and gone now. Everything has its time. We ought to be grateful to God that we are better off than the Ratenkamps, and are not saying good-bye to the house under such sorry circumstances as theirs.” Sobs, long, painful sobs, interrupted him. Frau Permaneder so abandoned herself to her grief that she did not even dry the tears that ran down her cheeks. She sat bent over, and the warm drops fell unheeded upon the hands lying limp in her lap. “Tom,” said she, and there was a gentle, touching decision in her voice, which, a moment before her sobs had threatened to choke, “you can’t understand how I feel at this hour--you cannot understand your sister’s feelings! Things have not gone well with her in this life.--I have had everything to bear that fate could think of to inflict upon me. But I have borne it all without flinching, Tom: all my troubles with Grünlich and Permaneder and Weinschenk. For, however my life seemed to go awry, I was never quite lost. I had always a safe haven to fly to. Even this last time, when everything came to an end, when they took away Weinschenk to prison, ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘may we come to you?’ And she said, ‘Yes, my children, come!’ Do you remember, Tom, when we were little, and played war, there was always a little spot marked off for us to run to, where we could be safe and not be touched until we were rested again? Mother’s house, this house, was my little spot, my refuge in life, Tom. And now--it must be sold--” She leaned back, buried her face in her handkerchief, and wept unrestrainedly. He drew down one of her hands and held it in his own. “I know, dear Tony, I know it all. But we must be sensible. Our dear good Mother is gone. We cannot bring her back. And so-- It is madness to keep the house as dead capital. Shall we turn it into a tenement-house? I know it is painful to think of strangers living here; but after all it is better you should _not_ see it. You must take a nice, pretty little house or flat somewhere for yourself and your family--outside the Castle Gate, for example. Or would you rather stop on here and let out floors to different families? And you still have the family: Gerda and me, and the Buddenbrooks in Broad Street, and the Krögers, and Therese Weichbrodt, and Clothilde--that is, if Clothilde will condescend to associate with us, now that she’s become a lady of the Order of St. John--it’s so very exclusive, you know!”