“We’ve got rather brown,” he said, putting his arm around Hanno as he stood before him. He arranged his small black-felled hand upon the boy’s shoulder, and looked up at the Frau Senator and Ida Jungmann. “But we still look very down in the mouth.” “He is homesick for the sea,” said Gerda Buddenbrook. “Oh, so you like being there?” asked Dr. Langhals, looking with his shallow eyes into Hanno’s face. Hanno coloured. What did Dr. Langhals mean by his question, to which he plainly expected an answer? A fantastic hope rose up in him, inspired by the belief that nothing was impossible to God--despite all the worsted-coated men there were in the world. “Yes,” he brought out, with his wide eyes full upon Dr. Langhals’ face. But after all, it seemed, the physician had nothing particular in mind when he asked the question. “Well, the effect of the bathing and the good air is bound to show itself in time,” Dr. Langhals said. He tapped little Johann on the shoulder and then put him away, with a nod toward the Frau Senator and Ida Jungmann--a superior, benevolent nod, the nod of the omniscient physician, used to have people hanging on his lips. He got up, and the consultation was at an end. It was Aunt Antonie who best understood his yearning for the sea, and the wound in his heart that healed so slowly and was so likely to bleed afresh under the strain of everyday life. Aunt Antonie loved to hear him talk about Travemünde, and entered freely into his longings and enthusiasm. “Yes, Hanno,” she said, “the truth is the truth, and Travemünde is and always will be a beautiful spot. Till I go down to my grave I shall remember the weeks I spent there when I was a slip of a girl--and such a silly young girl! I lived with people I was fond of, and who seemed to care for me; I was a pretty young thing in those days,--though I’m an old woman now--and full of life and high spirits. They were splendid people, I can tell you, respectable and kind-hearted and straight-thinking; and they were cleverer and better educated, too, than any I’ve known since, and they had more enthusiasm. Yes, my life seemed very full when I lived with them, and I learned a great deal which I’ve never forgotten--information, beliefs, opinions, ways of looking at things. If other things hadn’t interfered--as all sorts of things did, the way life does, you know--I might have learned a great deal more from them. Shall I tell you how silly I was in those days? I thought I could get the pretty star out of the jelly-fish, and I carried a quantity home with me and spread them in the sun on the balcony to dry. But when I looked at them again, of course there was nothing but a big wet spot, and a smell of rotten seaweed.” CHAPTER IV In the beginning of the year 1873 the Senate pardoned Hugo Weinschenk, and the former Director left prison, six months before his time was up.