Buddenbrooks, volume 2 of 2

All, everything is there that was dreamed of by Madame Permaneder in the days of her expectancy. In the dining-room, the maid-servant, moving noiselessly so as not to disturb th...

Christian Buddenbrook, proprietor of the firm of H. C. F. Purmeister and Company of Hamburg, came into his brother’s living-room, holding in his hand his modish grey hat and his...

James Möllendorpf, the oldest of the merchant senators, died in a grotesque and horrible way. The instinct of self-preservation became very weak in this diabetic old man; and in...

Every vacant seat in the Senate must, according to the Constitution, be filled within four weeks. Three of them have passed, and this is election-day--a day of thaw, at the end...

Our desires and our performance are conditioned by certain needs of our nervous systems which are very hard to define in words. What people called Thomas Buddenbrook’s “vanity”-...

One Sunday at the beginning of July--Senator Buddenbrook had moved some four weeks before--Frau Permaneder appeared at her brother’s house toward evening. She crossed the cool g...

“And I answer you, my dear Mother, by telling you that I have never for a moment forgotten the respect I owe you; but that my attributes as a son became void when I took my fath...

Wars and rumours of war, billeting and bustle! Prussian officers tread the parquetry floors of Senator Buddenbrook’s bel-étage, kiss the hand of the lady of the house, and frequ...

When Herr Hugo Weinschenk--in his buttoned-up frock-coat, with his drooping lower lip and his narrow black moustaches, which grew, in the most masculine way imaginable, right in...

In the spring of 1868, one evening towards ten o’clock, Frau Permaneder entered the first story of her brother’s house. Senator Buddenbrook sat alone in the living-room, which w...

She mounted the stairs to the second storey, left the little balcony on her right, went along the white-and-gold balustrade and through an ante-chamber, the door of which stood...

The Senator, when he was alone again, sat down at the table, took out his glasses, and tried to resume his reading. But in a few minutes his eyes had roved from the printed page...

Was it forgetfulness, or was it intention, which would have made Senator Buddenbrook pass over in silence a certain fact, had not his sister Tony, the devotee of the family pape...

“Oh, Bach, Sebastian Bach, dear lady!” cried Edmund Pfühl, Herr Edmund Pfühl, the organist of St. Mary’s, as he strode up and down the salon with great activity, while Gerda, sm...

Long ago he had led Gerda Arnoldsen to the altar, and all the Philistines had shaken their heads. He had felt strong and bold enough then to display a distinguished taste withou...

Nowadays, when the family gathered at table on Thursdays, under the calmly smiling gaze of the immortals on the walls, they had a new and serious theme. It called out on the fac...

Frau Permaneder was going along Broad Street in a great hurry. There was something abandoned about her air: she showed almost none of the impressive bearing usual to her on the...

“May I ask you to give me a moment, gentlemen?” he said, and led them up the steps, through the corridor, and into the landscape-room, where, on account of the raw, damp weather...

Through the open door Frau Permaneder could be seen praying in the chamber of death. She knelt there alone, at a chair near the bed, with her mourning garments flowing about her...

Little Johann was to go to take his farewell of his grandmother’s mortal remains. His father so arranged it, and, though Hanno was afraid, he made not a syllable of objection. A...

A week later there sat in Senator Buddenbrook’s private office, in the leather chair beside the writing-desk, a little smooth-shaven old man with snow-white hair falling over hi...

Often, in an hour of depression, Thomas Buddenbrook asked himself what he was, or what there was about him to make him think even a little better of himself than he did of his h...

Thomas Buddenbrook did not contemplate the future of little Johann with the weary dejection which was now his settled mood when he thought about his own life and his own end. Th...

The extended summer trip which had once been customary with the Buddenbrooks had now been given up for some years. Indeed, when the Frau Senator, in the previous spring, had wis...

Frau Permaneder, if she had told the truth, would have admitted that she was not so very glad. She had been living peacefully with her daughter and granddaughter in Linden Place...

The marriage of which little Johann had been the issue had never lost charm in the town as a subject for conversation. Since both of the parties to it were still felt to have so...

In the autumn Dr. Langhals said, making play like a woman with his beautiful eyes: “It is the nerves, Senator; the nerves are to blame for everything. And once in a while the ci...

Winter had come, Christmas had passed. It was January, 1875. The snow, which covered the foot-walks in a firm-trodden mass, mingled with sand and ashes, was piled on either side...

Frau Permaneder mounted the main staircase, holding up her gown in front of her with one hand and with the other pressing her muff to her cheek. She tripped and stumbled more th...

Senator Buddenbrook had died of a bad tooth. So it was said in the town. But goodness, people don’t die of a bad tooth! He had had a toothache; Herr Brecht had broken off the cr...

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 t...

The alarm-clock went off with cruel alacrity. It was a hoarse rattling and clattering that it made, rather than a ringing, for it was old and worn out; but it kept on for a pain...

The patient feels depressed and moody--a condition which grows rapidly worse until it amounts to acute despondency. At the same time he is overpowered by physical weariness, not...

“It is not right, it is not right, Gerda,” said old Fräulein Weichbrodt, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her voice was full of reproach and distress. She had a sofa place to-day...