Frau Permaneder was quite aware of the dignity, the representative bearing, which she owed to herself and the community in this hour. She, her daughter Erica, and her granddaughter Elisabeth occupied the most conspicuous places of honour, close to the pastor at the head of the coffin; while Thomas, Gerda, Clothilde, and little Johann, as likewise old Consul Kröger, who had a chair to sit in, were content, as were the relatives of the second class, to occupy less prominent places. Frau Permaneder stood there, very erect, her shoulders elevated, her black-bordered handkerchief between her folded hands; and her pride in the chief rôle which it fell to her lot to perform was so great as sometimes entirely to obscure her grief. Conscious of being the focus of all eyes, she kept her own discreetly cast down; yet now and again she could not resist letting them stray over the assembly, in which she noted the presence of Julchen Möllendorpf, born Hagenström, and her husband. Yes, they had all had to come: Möllendorpfs, Kistenmakers, Langhals, Överdiecks--before Tony Buddenbrook left her parental roof for ever, they had all gathered here, to offer her, despite Grünlich, despite Permaneder, despite Hugo Weinschenk, their sympathy and condolences. Pastor Pringsheim’s sermon went on, turning the knife in the wound that death had made: he caused each person present to remember his own dead, he knew how to make tears flow where none would have flowed of themselves--and for this the weeping ones were grateful to him. When he mentioned the Jerusalem evenings, all the old friends of the dead began to sob--excepting Madame Kethelsen, who did not hear a word he said, but stared straight before her with the remote air of the deaf, and the Gerhardt sisters, the descendants of Paul, who stood hand in hand in a corner, their eyes glowing. They were glad for the death of their friend, and could have envied her but that envy and unkindness were foreign to their natures. Poor Mademoiselle Weichbrodt blew her nose all the time, with a short, emphatic sound. The Misses Buddenbrook did not weep. It was not their habit. Their bearing, less angular than usual, expressed a mild satisfaction with the impartial justice of death.