BUDDENBROOKS
Erica was at a disadvantage compared with other young girls of her age. Frau Permaneder not only did not go into society, she was actually at war with it. The conviction that the “best people” thought slightingly of her because of her two divorces, had become almost a fixed idea; and she read contempt and aversion where probably there was only indifference. Consul Hermann Hagenström, for instance, simple and liberal-minded man that he was, would very likely have been perfectly glad to greet her on the street; his money had only increased his joviality and good nature. But she stared, with her head flung back, past his “goose-liver-paté” face, which, to use her own strong language, she “hated like the plague”—and her look, of course, distinctly forbade him. So Erica grew up outside her uncle’s social circle; she frequented no balls, and had small chance of meeting eligible young gentlemen.
Yet it was Frau Antonie’s most ardent hope, especially after she herself had “failed in business,” as she said, that her daughter might realize her own unfulfilled dream of a happy and advantageous marriage, which should redound to the glory of the family and sink the mother’s failure in final oblivion. Tony longed for this beyond everything, and chiefly now for her brother’s sake, who had latterly shown so little optimism, as a sign to him that the luck of the family was not yet lost, that they were by no means “at the end of their rope.” Her second dowry, the eighteen thousand thaler so magnanimously returned by Herr Permaneder, lay waiting for Erica; and directly Frau Antonie’s practiced glance marked the budding tenderness between her daughter and the Director, she began to trouble Heaven with a prayer that Herr Weinschenk might be led to visit them.
He was. He appeared in the first storey, where he was received by the three ladies, mother, daughter, and granddaughter, talked for ten minutes, and promised to return another day for coffee and more leisurely conversation.
This too came to pass, and the acquaintance progressed.
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