“And did he pray too?”
“Not aloud, but probably to himself.—He hasn’t said much about the other poem—it is called ‘The Nursery Clock’—he has only wept. He weeps so easy, poor little lad, and it is so hard for him to stop.”
“But what is there so sad about it?”
“How do I know? He has never been able to say any more than the beginning of it, the part that makes him cry in his sleep. And that about the waggoner, who gets up at three from his bed of straw—that always made him weep too.”
Frau Permaneder laughed emotionally, and then looked serious.
“I’ll tell you, Ida, it’s no good. It isn’t good for him to feel everything so much. ‘The waggoner gets up at three from his bed of straw’—why, of course he does! That’s why he is a waggoner. I can see already that the child takes everything too much to heart—it consumes him, I feel sure. We must speak seriously with Grabow. But there, that is just what it is,” she went on, folding her arms, putting her head on one side, and tapping the floor nervously with her foot. “Grabow is getting old; and aside from that, good as he is—and he really is a very good man, a perfect angel—so far as his skill is concerned, I have no such great opinion of it, Ida, and may God forgive me if I am wrong. Take this nervousness of Hanno’s, his starting up at night and having such frights in his sleep. Grabow knows what it is, and all he does is to tell us the Latin name of it—pavor nocturnus. Dear knows, that is very enlightening, of course! No, he is a dear good man, and a great friend of the family and all that—but he is no great light. An important man looks different—he shows when he is young that there is something in him. Grabow lived through the ’48. He was a young man then. Do you imagine he was the least bit thrilled over it—over freedom and justice, and the downfall of privilege and arbitrary power? He is a cultivated man; but I am convinced that the unheard-of laws concerning the press and the universities did not interest him in the least. He has never behaved even the least little bit wild, never jumped over the traces. He has always had just the same long, mild face, and always prescribed pigeon and French bread, and when anything is serious, a teaspoon of tincture of althaea.—Good night, Ida. No, I think there are other doctors in the world! Too bad I have missed Gerda. Yes, thanks, there is a light in the corridor. Good night.”
When Frau Permaneder opened the dining-room door in passing, to call a good night to her brother in the living-room, she saw that the whole storey was lighted up, and that Thomas was walking up and down with his hands behind his back.
CHAPTER IV
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, and he sat for a long time without changing his position, gazing straight ahead of him between the portières into the darkness of the salon.
His face, when he was alone, changed so that it was hardly recognizable. The muscles of his mouth and cheeks, otherwise obedient to his will, relaxed and became flabby. Like a mask the look of vigour, alertness, and amiability, which now for a long time had been preserved only by constant effort, fell from his face, and betrayed an anguished weariness instead. The tired, worried eyes gazed at objects without seeing them; they became red and watery. He made no effort to deceive even himself; and of all the dull, confused, and rambling thoughts that filled his mind he clung to only one: the single, despairing thought that Thomas Buddenbrook, at forty-three years, was an old, worn-out man.