Once he was alone, the senator had sat down at the table again and taken out his pince-nez, intending to resume reading his paper. But after two minutes his eyes drifted up from the newsprint, and, without changing the position of his body, he gazed straight ahead into the darkened salon for a long time, his eyes fixed on the portieres.

How almost unrecognizable his face became when he was alone. The muscles of his mouth and cheeks, usually so disciplined and obedient to his will, relaxed and slackened; the alert, prudent, kind, energetic look, which he had preserved for so long now only with great effort, fell away like a mask and reverted to a state of anguished weariness; his dull, sombre eyes would fix on some object without seeing it, would redden and begin to water – and, lacking the courage to deceive even himself, he could hold fast to only one of the many heavy, confused, restless thoughts that filled his mind: that, at age forty-two, Thomas Buddenbrook was an exhausted man.