BUDDENBROOKS
invested it securely and not unprofitably. But then, what he had said, quite unblushingly and without embarrassment, to his wife, was this: “Tonerl”—he called her “Tonerl”—“Tonerl, that’s good enough for me. What do we want of more? I been working my hide off all my days; now I’d like to sit down and have a little peace and quiet, damned if I wouldn’t. Let’s rent the parterre and the second floor, and still we’ll have a good house, where we can sit and eat our bit of pig’s meat without screwing ourselves up and putting on so much lug. And in the evening I can go to the Hofbräu house. I’m no swell—I don’t care about scraping money together. I want my comfort. I quit to-morrow and go into private life.”
“Permaneder!” she had cried; and for the first time she had spoken hi3 name with that peculiar throaty sound which her voice always had when she uttered the name of Grünlich.
“Oh, shut up! Don’t take on!” was all he answered. There had followed, thus early in their life together, a quarrel, serious and violent enough to endanger the happiness of any marriage. He came off victorious. Her passionate resistance was shattered upon his urgent longing for “peace and quiet.” It ended in Herr Permaneder’s withdrawing the capital he had in the hop business, so that now Herr Noppe, in his turn, could strike the “and Company” off his card. After which Tony’s husband, like most of the friends whom he met around the table in the Hofbräu House, to play cards and drink his regular three litres of beer, limited his activities to the raising of rents in his capacity of landlord, and to an undisturbed cutting of coupons.
The Frau Consul was notified quite simply of this fact. But Frau Permaneder’s distress was evident in the letters which she wrote to her brother. Poor Tony! Her worst fears were more than realized. She had always known that Herr Permaneder possessed none of that “resourcefulness” of which her first husband had had so much; but that he would so entirely confound the expectations she had expressed to Mamsell
