BUDDENBROOKS
all found me ridiculously arrogant. They did not say so, but I felt it every minute, and that made me suffer, too. Do you think I feel arrogant, Tom—in a place where they eat cake with a knife, and the very princes speak bad grammar, and if a gentleman picks up a lady’s fan it is supposed to be a love-affair. Get used to it? To people without dignity, morals, energy, ambition, self-respect, or good manners, lazy and frivolous, stupid and shallow at the same time?—no, never, never, as long as I am a Buddenbrook and your sister! Eva Ewers managed it—but Eva is not a Buddenbrook, and she has a husband that amounts to something. It was different with me. You think back, Tom, from the very beginning: I come from a home where people work and get things accomplished and have a purpose in life, and I go down there to Permaneder—and he sits himself down with my dowry—Oh, that was genuine enough, that was characteristic—but it was the only good thing there was about it! And then? I was going to have a baby; that would have made everything up to me. And what happens? It dies. I dont blame Permaneder for that, of course; I don’t mean that. God forbid. He did everything he could—and he didn’t go to the café for several days. But, after all, it belonged to the same thing. It made me no happier, as you can well believe. But I didn’t give in, and I didn’t grumble. I was alone, and misunderstood, and pointed at for being arrogant; but I said to myself: ‘You yielded him your consent for life. He is lumpy and lazy, and he caused you a cruel disappointment. But his heart is pure, and he means well.’ And then I had to bear the sight of him in that last unspeakable minute.’ And I said to myself: “He understands you no better and respects you no more and no less than the others do, and he calls you names that one of our workmen up here wouldn’t throw at a dog!” I knew then that nothing bound me to him any more, and that it was an indignity for me to stay. When I was driving from the station this afternoon, I passed Nielsen the porter, and he took off his hat and made me a deep bow, and
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