BUDDENBROOKS
of the Jews. Who knows what sort of cut-throat it is that has poor Herr von Maiboom in his clutches?”
“Jews? Cut-throats?” cried Frau Permaneder, astonished beyond measure. “But it’s you we are talking about, Tom!”
Thomas Buddenbrook suddenly threw down his pince-nez on the table so that it slid along on top of the newspaper, and turned toward his sister with a jerk.
“Me?” he said, but only with his lips, for he made no sound. Then he added aloud: “Go to bed, Tony. You are tired out.”
“Why, Tom, that is what Ida Jungmann used to say to us, when we were just beginning to have a good time. But I assure you I was never wider awake in my life than now, coming over here in the dead of night to make Armgard’s offer to you—or rather, indirectly, Ralf von Maiboom’s—”
“And I will forgive you for making a proposal which is the product of your naïveté and the Maibooms’ helplessness.”
“Helplessness? Naïveté, Thomas? I don’t understand you—I am very far from understanding you. You are offered an opportunity to do a good deed, and at the same time the best stroke of business you ever did in your life—”
“Oh, my darling child, you are talking the sheerest nonsense,” cried the Senator, throwing himself back impatiently in his chair. “I beg your pardon, but you make me angry with your ridiculous innocence. Can’t you understand that you are asking me to do something discreditable, to engage in underhand manœuvres? Why should I go fishing in troubled waters? Why should I fleece this poor land-owner? Why should I take advantage of his necessity to do him out of a year’s harvest at a usurious profit to myself?”
“Oh, is that the way you look at it!” said Frau Permaneder, quite taken aback and thoughtful. But she recovered in a moment and went on: “But it is not at all necessary to look at it like that, Tom. How are you forcing him, when it is he who comes to you? He needs the money, and would
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