BUDDENBROOKS
wildly—the quarrel reached a height far greater than the one that had signalized Herr Permaneder’s retirement into private life, and it ended in Frau Antonie gathering her clothes together and withdrawing into the living-room for the night. And at the end he had flung at her a word—a word which she would not repeat—a word that should never pass her lips—a word . . .
This was the major content of the confession which Frau Permaneder had sobbed into the folds of her mother’s gown. But the “word,” the word that in that fearful night had sunk into her very depths—no, she would not repeat it; no, she would not, she asseverated,—although her mother had not in the least pressed her to do so, but only nodded her head, slowly, almost imperceptibly, as she looked down on Tony’s lovely ash-blond hair.
“Yes, yes,” she said; “this is very sad, Tony. And I understand it all, my dear little one, because I am not only your Mamma, but I am a woman like you as well. I see now how fully your grief is justified, and how completely your husband, in a moment of weakness, forgot what he owed to you and—”
“In a moment—?” cried Tony. She sprang up. She made two steps backward and feverishly dried her eyes. “A moment, Mamma! He forgot what he owed to me and to our name? He never knew it, from the very beginning! A man that quietly sits down with his wife’s dowry—a man without ambition or energy or will-power! A man that has some kind of thick soup made out of hops in his veins instead of blood—and I verily believe he has! And to let himself down to such common doings as this with Babette—and when I reproached him with his good-for-nothingness, to answer with a word that—a word—”
And, arrived once more at the word, the word she would not repeat, quite suddenly she took a step forward and said, in a completely altered, a quieter, milder, interested tone: “How perfectly sweet! Where did you get that, Mamma?”
