ing how to stop herself, she shot over the mark. “Amen,” she said. “I know something, Grandfather.”
“Tiens!” cried the old gentleman. “She knows something!” He made as if he were itching all over with curiosity. “Did you hear, Mamma? She knows something. Can any one tell me—?”
“If the lightning,” uttered Tony, nodding her head with every word, “sets something on fire, then it’s the lightning that strikes. If it doesn’t, why, then it’s the thunder!” She folded her arms and looked around her like one sure of applause. But old Buddenbrook was annoyed by this display of wisdom. He demanded to know who had taught her such nonsense. It turned out that the culprit was the nursery governess, Ida Jungmann, who had lately been engaged from Marienwerder. The Consul had to come to her defence.
“You are too strict, Papa. Why shouldn’t the child have her own little ideas about such things, at her age?”
“Excusez, mon cher! . . . Mais c’est une folie! You know I don’t like the children’s heads muddled with such things. ‘The thunder strikes,’ does it? Oh, very well, let it strike, and get along with your Prussian woman!”
The truth was, the old gentleman hadn’t a good word to say for Ida Jungmann. Not that he was narrow-minded. He had seen something of the world, having travelled by coach to Southern Germany in 1813 to buy up wheat for the Prussian army; he had been to Amsterdam and Paris, and was too enlightened to condemn everything that lay beyond the gabled roofs of his native town. But in social intercourse he was more apt than his son to draw the line rigidly and give the cold shoulder to strangers. So when this young girl—she was then only twenty—had come hack with his children from a visit to Western Prussia, as a sort of charity-child, the old man had made his son a scene for the act of piety, in which he spoke hardly anything but French and low German. Ida
7
