the house. The servants divide up things before my face—Severin has the keys to the cupboards. I said to her: ‘Fräulein Severin, I shall be much obliged for the keys.’ And she told me, in good set terms, that I’ve nothing to say to her, she’s not in my service, I didn’t engage her, and she will keep the keys until she leaves!”
“Have you the keys to the silver-chest? Good. Let the rest go. That sort of thing is inevitable when a household breaks up, especially when the rule has been rather lax already. I don’t want to make any scenes. The linen is old and worn. We can see what there is there. Have you the lists? Good. We’ll have a look at them.”
They went into the bed-chamber and stood a while in silence by the bed; Frau Antonie removed the white cloth from the face of the dead. The Frau Consul was arrayed in the silk garment in which she would that afternoon lie upon her bier in the hall. Twenty-eight hours had passed since she drew her last breath. The mouth and chin, without the false teeth, looked sunken and senile, and the pointed chin projected sharply. All three tried their best to recognize their mother’s face in this sunken countenance before them, with its eyelids inexorably closed. But under the old lady’s Sunday cap there showed, as in life, the smooth, reddish-brown wig over which the Misses Buddenbrook had so often made merry. Flowers were strewn on the coverlet.
“The most beautiful wreaths have come,” said Frau Permaneder. “From all the families in town, simply from everybody. I had everything carried up to the corridor. You must look at them afterwards, Gerda and Tom. They are heart-breakingly lovely.”
“How are they progressing down in the hall?” asked the Senator.
“They will soon be done, Tom. Jacobs has taken the greatest pains. And the—” she choked down a sob—“the coffin has come. But you must take off your things, my dears,” she went on, carefully replacing the white cloth over
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