Little Johann sat hour after hour on the bed-clothes, watching everything and listening to the gurgling noises. He was to have gone to an arithmetic lesson; but he understood perfectly that what was happening here was something over which the worsted-coats had no jurisdiction. He thought of his lessons only for a moment, and with scorn. He wept, sometimes, when Frau Permaneder came up and pressed him to her; but mostly he sat dry-eyed, with a shrinking, brooding gaze, and his breath came irregularly and cautiously, as if he expected any moment to smell that strange and yet familiar smell.
Toward four o’clock Frau Permaneder took a sudden resolve. She asked Dr. Langhals to come with her into the next room; and there she folded her arms and laid back her head, with the chin dropped.
“Herr Doctor,” she said, “there is one thing you can do, and I beg you to do it. Tell me the truth. I am a woman steeled by adversity; I have learned to bear the truth. You may depend upon me. Please tell me plainly: Will my brother be alive to-morrow?”
Dr. Langhals turned his beautiful eyes aside, looked at his fingernails, and spoke of our human powerlessness, and the impossibility of knowing whether Frau Permaneder’s brother would outlive the night, or whether he would be called away the next minute.
“Then I know what I have to do,” said she; went out of the room; and sent for Pastor Pringsheim.
Pastor Pringsheim appeared, without his vestments or neck-ruff, in a long black gown. He swept Sister Leandra with an icy stare, and seated himself in the chair which they placed for him by the bedside. He asked the patient to recognize and hear him. Then, as this appeal was unsuccessful, he addressed himself at once to God and prayed in carefully modulated tones, with his Frankish pronunciation, with emphasis now solemn and now abrupt, while waves of fanaticism and sanctimony followed each other across his face. He pronounced his r in a sleek and oily way peculiar to himself alone, and little Johann received an irresistible impression that he had just been eating rolls and coffee.
He said that he and the family there present no longer importuned God for the life of this dear and beloved sufferer, for they saw plainly that it was God’s will to take him to Himself. They only begged Him for the mercy of a gentle death. And then he recited, appropriately and with effect, two of the prayers customary on such occasions. Then he got up. He pressed Gerda Buddenbrook’s hand, and Frau Permaneder’s, and held little Johann’s head for a moment between both his hands, regarding the drooping eyelashes with an expression of the most fervent pity. He saluted Ida Jungmann, stared again at Sister Leandra, and took his leave.
Dr. Langhals had gone home for a little. When he came back there had been no change. He spoke with the nurse, and went again. Dr. Grabow came once more, to see that everything was being done. Thomas Buddenbrook went on babbling and gurgling, with his eyes rolled up. Twilight was falling. There was a pale winter glow at sunset, and it shone through the window upon the soiled clothing lying across the chair.
At five o’clock Frau Permaneder let herself be carried away by her feelings, and committed an indiscretion. She suddenly began to sing, in her throaty voice, her hands folded before her.
“Come, Lord,”