found there, without money and without price, the same friendly relaxation as Dr. Gieseke, who, however, had to pay for the same with his wife’s money. A short time after the betrothal of Hugo Weinschenk and Erica Grünlich, the Director proposed to his relative that he should enter the Insurance office; and Christian actually worked for two weeks in the service of the Company. But the misery in his side began to get worse, and his other, indefinable ills as well; and the Director proved to be a domineering superior, who did not hesitate, on the occasion of a little misunderstanding, to call his relative a booby. So Christian felt constrained to leave this post too. Madame Permaneder, at this period of the family’s history, was in such a joyful mood that her happiness found vent in shrewd observations about life: how, when all was said and done, it had its good side. Truly, she bloomed anew in these weeks; and their invigorating activity, the manifold plans, the search for suitable quarters, and the feverish preoccupation with furnishings brought back with such force the memories of her first betrothal that she could not but feel young again--young and boundlessly hopeful. Much of the graceful high spirits of girlhood returned to her ways, and movements; indeed, she profaned the mood of one entire Jerusalem evening by such uncontrollable hilarity that even Lea Gerhardt let the book of her ancestor fall in her lap and stared about the room with the great, innocent, startled eyes of the deaf. Erica was not to be parted from her mother. The Director agreed--nay, it was even his wish,--that Frau Antonie should live with the Weinschenks, at least at first, and help the inexperienced Erica with her housekeeping. And it was precisely this which called up in her the most priceless feeling, as though no Bendix Grünlich or Alois Permaneder had ever existed, and all the trials, disappointments, and sufferings of her life were as nothing, and she might begin anew and with fresh hopes. She bade Erica be grateful to God, who bestowed upon her the one man of her desire, whereas the mother had been obliged to offer up her first and dearest choice on the altar of duty and reason. It was Erica’s name which, with a hand trembling with joy, she inscribed in the family book next the Director’s. But she, Tony Buddenbrook, was the real bride. It was she who might once more ransack furniture and upholstery shops and test hangings and carpets with a practised hand; she who once more found and rented a truly “elegant” apartment. It was she who was once more to leave the pious and roomy parental mansion and cease to be a divorced wife; she who might once more lift her head and begin a new life, calculated to arouse general remark and enhance the prestige of the family. Even--was it a dream?--dressing-gowns appeared upon the horizon: two dressing-gowns, for Erica and herself, of soft, woven stuff, with close rows of velvet trimming from neck to hem!