CHAPTER I
Senator Buddenbrook followed the two gentlemen, old Dr. Grabow and young Dr. Langhals, out of the Frau Consul’s bedchamber into the breakfast-room and closed the door.
“May I ask you to give me a moment, gentlemen?” he said, and led them up the steps, through the corridor, and into the landscape-room, where, on account of the raw, damp weather, the stove was already burning. “You will understand my anxiety,” he said. “Sit down and tell me something reassuring, if possible.”
“Zounds, my dear Senator,” answered Dr. Grabow, leaning back comfortably, his chin in his neck-cloth, his hat-brim propped in both hands against his stomach. Dr. Langhals put his top-hat down on the carpet beside him and regarded his hands, which were exceptionally small and covered with hair. He was a heavy dark man with a pointed beard, a pompadour hair-cut, beautiful eyes, and a vain expression.
“There is positively no reason for serious disquiet at present,” Dr. Grabow went on. “When we take into consideration our honoured patient’s powers of resistance—my word, I think, as an old and tried councillor, I ought to know what that resistance is—it is simply astonishing, for her years, I must say.”
“Yes, precisely: for her years,” said the Senator, uneasily, twisting his moustaches.
“I don’t say,” went on Dr. Grabow, in his gentle voice, “that your dear Mother will be walking out to-morrow. You can tell that by looking at her, of course. There is no denying that the inflammation has taken a disappointing turn in the last twenty-four hours. The chill yesterday afternoon did not
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