Read "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
At the end of April Frau Grünlich returned home. Another epoch was behind her, and the old existence began again -- attending the daily devotions and the Jerusalem evenings and hearing Lea Gerhardt read aloud. Yet she was obviously in a gay and hopeful mood.
Her brother, the Consul, fetched her from the station -- she had come from Buchen -- and drove her through the Holsten Gate into the town. He could not resist paying her the old compliment -- how, next to Clothilde, she was the prettiest one in the family; and she answered: "Oh, Tom, I hate you! To make fun of an old lady like that -- "