The liquidation of the business began, under the auspices of Herr Kistenmaker and old Herr Marcus; and it took a most deplorable course. The time was short, and it must be punctiliously kept to. The pending business was disposed of on hurried and unfavourable terms. One precipitate and disadvantageous sale followed another. The granaries and warehouses were turned into money at a great loss; and what was not lost by Herr Kistenmaker’s over-zealousness was wasted by the procrastination of old Herr Marcus. In town they said that the old man, before he left his house in winter warmed not only his coat and hat, but his walking-stick as well. If ever a favourable opportunity arose, he invariably let it slip through his fingers. And so the losses piled up. Thomas Buddenbrook had left, on paper, an estate of six hundred and fifty thousand marks. A year after the will was opened it had become abundantly clear that there was no question of such a sum. Indefinite, exaggerated rumours of the unfavourable liquidation got about, and were fed by the news that Gerda Buddenbrook meant to sell the great house. Wonderful stories flew about, of the reasons which obliged her to take such a step; of the collapse of the Buddenbrook fortune. Things were thought to look very badly: and a feeling began to grow up in the town, of which the widowed Frau Senator became aware, at first with surprise and astonishment, and then with growing anger. When she told her sister-in-law, one day, that she had been pressed in an unpleasant way for the payment of some considerable accounts, Frau Permaneder had at first been speechless, and then had burst out into frightful laughter. Gerda Buddenbrook was so outraged that she expressed a half-determination to leave the city for ever with little Johann and go back to Amsterdam to play duets with her old father. But this called forth such a storm of protest from Frau Permaneder that she was obliged to give up the plan for the time being. As was to be expected, Frau Permaneder protested against the sale of the house which her brother had built. She bewailed the bad impression it would make and complained of the blow it would deal the family prestige. But she had to grant that it would be folly to continue to keep up the spacious and splendid dwelling that had been Thomas Buddenbrook’s costly hobby, and that Gerda’s idea of a comfortable little villa outside the wall, in the country, had, after all, much to commend it.