Frau Permaneder came out once in a while to see her brother. They would walk as far as Sea-Gull Rock or the little Ocean Temple; and here Tony Buddenbrook, for some reason or other, was always seized by a mood of vague excitement and rebellion. She would repeatedly emphasize the independence and equality of all human beings, summarily repudiate all distinctions of rank or class, use some very strong language on the subject of privilege and arbitrary power, and demand in set terms that merit should receive its just reward. And then she talked about her own life. She talked well, she entertained her brother capitally. This child of fortune, so long as she walked upon this earth, had never once needed to suppress an emotion, to choke down or swallow anything she felt. She had never received in silence either the blows or the caresses of fate. And whatever she had received, of joy or sorrow, she had straightway given forth again, in a flow of childish, self-important trivialities. Her digestion was not perfect, it is true. But her heart--ah, her heart was light, her spirit was free; freer than she herself comprehended. She was not consumed by the inexpressible. No sorrow weighed her down, or strove to speak but could not. And thus it was that her past left no mark upon her. She knew that she had led a troubled life--she knew it, that is, but at bottom she never believed in it herself. She recognized it as a fact, since everybody else believed it--and she utilized it to her own advantage, talking of it and making herself great with it in her own eyes and those of others. With outraged virtue and dignity she would call by name all those persons who had played havoc with her life and, in consequence, with the prestige of the Buddenbrook family; the list had grown long with time: Teary Trietschke! Grünlich! Permaneder! Tiburtius! Weinschenk! the Hagenströms! the State Attorney! Severin!--“What _filoux_, all of them, Thomas! God will punish them--that is my firm belief.” Twilight was falling as they came up to the Ocean Temple, for the autumn was far advanced. They stood in one of the little chambers facing the bay--it smelled of wood, like the bathing cabins at the Kur, and its walls were scribbled over with mottoes, initials, hearts and rhymes. They stood and looked out over the dripping slope across the narrow, stony strip of beach, out to the turbid, restless sea.