CHAPTER V
Herr Permaneder moved into Meng Street; he ate dinner with Thomas Buddenbrook and his wife the following day; and on the third, a Thursday, he made the acquaintance of Justus Kröger and his wife, the three ladies from Broad Street, who found him “frightfully funny” (they said fr-right-fully), Sesemi Weichbrodt, who was rather stern with him, and poor Clothilde and little Erica, to whom he gave a bag of bonbons.
The man was invincibly good-humoured. His sighs, in fact, meant nothing, and seemed to arise out of an excess of comfort. He smoked his pipe, talked in his curious dialect, and displayed an inexhaustible power of sitting still. He kept his place long after the meal was finished, in the most easy attitude possible, and smoked, drank, and chatted. His presence gave to the life in the old home a new and strange tone; his very being brought something unharmonious into the room. But he disturbed none of the traditional customs of the house. He was faithful to morning and evening prayers, asked permission to attend one of the Frau Consul’s Sunday School classes, and even appeared on a Jerusalem evening in the drawing-room and was presented to the guests, but withdrew affrighted when Lea Gerhardt began to read aloud.
He was soon known in the town. They spoke in the great houses about the Buddenbrooks’ guest from Bavaria; but neither in the family nor on the Bourse did he make connections, and as it was already the time when people were making ready to go to the shore, the Consul refrained from introducing Herr Permaneder into society. But he devoted himself with zeal to the guest, taking time from his business and civic engagements to show him about the town and point out the mediæval monuments—churches, gates, fountains,
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