The music stopped. Pastor Pringsheim spoke. While his voice, raised in
blessing, still lingered on the air, everybody pressed round to shake
hands with the brother and son of the deceased.
The ceremony was long and tedious. Christian Buddenbrook received all
the condolences with his usual absent, embarrassed air. Little Johann
stood by his side, in his heavy reefer jacket with the gilt buttons,
and looked at the ground with his blue-shadowed eyes. He never looked
up, but bent his head against the wind with a sensitive twist of all
his features.
PART ELEVEN
CHAPTER I
It sometimes happens that we may recall this or that person whom we
have not lately seen and wonder how he is. And then, with a start, we
remember that he has disappeared from the stage, that his voice no
longer swells the general concert--that he is, in short, departed from
among us, and lies somewhere outside the walls, beneath the sod.
Frau Consul Buddenbrook, she that was a Stüwing, Uncle Gotthold’s
widow, passed away. Death set his reconciling and atoning seal upon the
brow of her who in her life had been the cause of such violent discord;
and her three daughters, Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi, received
the condolences of their relatives with an affronted air which seemed
to say: “You see, your persecutions have at last brought her down to
her grave!” As if the Frau Consul were not as old as the hills already!
And Madame Kethelsen had gone to her long rest. In her later years she
had suffered much from gout; but she died gently and simply, resting
upon a childlike faith which was much envied by her educated sister,
who had always had her periodic attacks of rationalistic doubt, and
who, though she grew constantly smaller and more bent, was relentlessly
bound by an iron constitution to this sinful earth.
Consul Peter Döhlmann was called away. He had eaten up all his money,
and finally fell a prey to Hunyadi-Janos, leaving his daughter an
income of two hundred marks a year. He depended upon the respect felt
in the community for the name of Döhlmann to insure her being admitted
into the Order of St. John.
Justus Kröger also departed this life, which was a loss, for now
nobody was left to prevent his wife selling everything she owned to
send money to the wretched Jacob, who was still leading a dissolute
existence somewhere in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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