CHAPTER I

BUDDENBROOKS

·I·

Other Books by

THOMAS MANN

DEATH IN VENICE

ROYAL HIGHNESS

MAGIC MOUNTAIN

THOMAS MANN

BUDDENBROOKS

VOLUME ONE

[Illustration]

Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter

ALFRED·A·KNOPF·NEW YORK

1927

COPYRIGHT 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

_Published, February, 1924_

_Second Printing, July, 1924_

_Third Printing, March, 1927_

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

_Buddenbrooks_ was written before the turn of the century; it was first

published in 1902, and became a German classic. It is one of those

novels--we possess many of them in English--which are at once a work of

art and a unique record of a period and a district. _Buddenbrooks_ is

great in its psychology, great as the monument of a vanished cultural

tradition, and ultimately great by the perfection of its art: the

classic purity and beautiful austerity of its style.

The translation of a book which is a triumph of style in its own

language, is always a piece of effrontery. _Buddenbrooks_ is so

leisurely, so chiselled: the great gulf of the war divided its literary

method from that of our time. Besides, the author has recorded much

dialect. This difficulty is insuperable. Dialect cannot be transferred.

So the present translation is offered with humility. It was necessary

to recognize that the difficulties were great. Yet it was necessary

to set oneself the bold task of transferring the spirit first and the

letter so far as might be; and above all, to make certain that the work

of art, coming as it does to the ear, in German, like music out of the

past, should, in English, at least _not_ come like a translation--which

is, “God bless us, a thing of naught.”

H. T. Lowe-Porter

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

“And--and--what comes next?”

“Oh, yes, yes, what the dickens does come next? _C’est la question, ma

très chère demoiselle!_”

Frau Consul Buddenbrook shot a glance at her husband and came to the

rescue of her little daughter. She sat with her mother-in-law on a

straight white-enamelled sofa with yellow cushions and a gilded lion’s

head at the top. The Consul was in his easy-chair beside her, and the

child perched on her grandfather’s knee in the window.

“Tony,” prompted the Frau Consul, “‘I believe that God’--”

Dainty little eight-year-old Antonie, in her light shot-silk frock,

turned her head away from her grandfather and stared aimlessly about

the room with her blue-grey eyes, trying hard to remember. Once more

she repeated “What comes next?” and went on slowly: “‘I believe

that God’--” and then, her face brightening, briskly finished the

sentence: “‘created me, together with all living creatures.’” She was

in smooth waters now, and rattled away, beaming with joy, through the

whole Article, reproducing it word for word from the Catechism just

promulgated, with the approval of an omniscient Senate, in that very

year of grace 1835. When you were once fairly started, she thought, it

was very like going down “Mount Jerusalem” with your brothers on the

little sled: you had no time to think, and you couldn’t stop even if

you wanted to.

“‘And clothes and shoes,’” she said, “‘meat and drink, hearth and home,

wife and child, acre and cow....’” But old Johann Buddenbrook could

hold in no longer. He burst out laughing, in a high, half-smothered

titter, in his glee at being able to make fun of the Catechism. He had

probably put the child through this little examination with no other

end in view. He inquired after Tony’s acre and cow, asked how much she

wanted for a sack of wheat, and tried to drive a bargain with her.

His round, rosy, benevolent face, which never would look cross no

matter how hard he tried, was set in a frame of snow-white powdered

hair, and the suggestion of a pigtail fell over the broad collar of

his mouse-coloured coat. His double chin rested comfortably on a white

lace frill. He still, in his seventies, adhered to the fashions of his

youth: only the lace frogs and the big pockets were missing. And never

in all his life had he worn a pair of trousers.

They had all joined in his laughter, but largely as a mark of respect

for the head of the family. Madame Antoinette Buddenbrook, born

Duchamps, tittered in precisely the same way as her husband. She was a

stout lady, with thick white curls over her ears, dressed in a plain

gown of striped black and grey stuff which betrayed the native quiet

simplicity of her character. Her hands were still white and lovely, and

she held a little velvet work-bag on her lap. It was strange to see how

she had grown, in time, to look like her husband. Only her dark eyes,

by their shape and their liveliness, suggested her half-Latin origin.

On her grandfather’s side Madame Buddenbrook was of French-Swiss stock,

though born in Hamburg.

Her daughter-in-law, Frau Consul Elizabeth Buddenbrook, born Kröger,

laughed the sputtering Kröger laugh and tucked in her chin as the

Krögers did. She could not be called a beauty, but, like all the

Krögers, she looked distinguished; she moved with graceful deliberation

and had a clear, well-modulated voice. People liked her and felt

confidence in her. Her reddish hair curled over her ears and was

piled in a crown on top of her head; and she had the brilliant white

complexion that goes with such hair, set off with a tiny freckle here

and there. Her nose was rather too long, her mouth somewhat small; her

most striking facial peculiarity was the shape of her lower lip, which

ran straight into the chin without a curve. She had on a short bodice

with high puffed sleeves, that left exposed a flawlessly modelled neck

adorned with a spray of diamonds on a satin ribbon.

The Consul was leaning forward in his easy-chair, rather fidgety.

He wore a cinnamon-coloured coat with wide lapels and leg-of-mutton

sleeves close-fitting at the wrists, and white linen trousers with

black stripes up the outside seams. His chin nestled in a stiff choker

collar, around which was folded a silk cravat that flowed down amply

over his flowered waistcoat.

He had his father’s deep-set blue observant eyes, though their

expression was perhaps more dreamy; but his features were clearer-cut

and more serious, his nose was prominent and aquiline, and his cheeks,

half-covered with a fair curling beard, were not so plump as the old

man’s.

Madame Buddenbrook put her hand on her daughter-in-law’s arm and looked

down at her lap with a giggle. “Oh, _mon vieux_--he’s always the same,

isn’t he, Betsy?”

The Consul’s wife only made a motion with her delicate hand, so that

her gold bangles tinkled slightly. Then, with a gesture habitual to

her, she drew her finger across her face from the corner of her mouth

to her forehead, as if she were smoothing back a stray hair.

But the Consul said, half-smiling, yet with mild reproach: “There you

go again, Father, making fun of sacred things.”

They were sitting in the “landscape-room” on the first floor of the

rambling old house in Meng Street, which the firm of Johann Buddenbrook

had acquired some time since, though the family had not lived in

it long. The room was hung with heavy resilient tapestries put up

in such a way that they stood well out from the walls. They were

woven in soft tones to harmonize with the carpet, and they depicted

idyllic landscapes in the style of the eighteenth century, with merry

vine-dressers, busy husbandmen, and gaily beribboned shepherdesses

who sat beside crystal streams with spotless lambs in their laps or

exchanged kisses with amorous shepherds. These scenes were usually

lighted by a pale yellow sunset to match the yellow coverings on the

white-enamelled furniture and the yellow silk curtains at the two

windows.

For the size of the room, the furniture was rather scant. A round

table, its slender legs decorated with fine lines of gilding, stood,

not in front of the sofa, but by the wall opposite the little

harmonium, on which lay a flute-case; some stiff arm-chairs were ranged

in a row round the walls; there was a sewing-table by the window, and a

flimsy ornamental writing-desk laden with knick-knacks.

On the other side of the room from the windows was a glass door,

through which one looked into the semi-darkness of a pillared hall;

and on the left were the lofty white folding doors that led to the

dining-room. A semi-circular niche in the remaining wall was occupied

by the stove, which crackled away behind a polished wrought-iron screen.

For cold weather had set in early. The leaves of the little lime-trees

around the churchyard of St. Mary’s, across the way, had turned yellow,

though it was but mid-October. The wind whistled around the corners of

the massive Gothic pile, and a cold, thin rain was falling. On Madame

Buddenbrook’s account, the double windows had already been put in.

It was Thursday, the day on which all the members of the family

living in town assembled every second week, by established custom.

To-day, however, a few intimate friends as well had been bidden to a

family dinner; and now, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, the

Buddenbrooks sat in the gathering twilight and awaited their guests.

Little Antonie had not let her grandfather interfere with her

toboggan-ride. She merely pouted, sticking out her already prominent

upper lip still further over the lower one. She was at the bottom of

her Mount Jerusalem, but not knowing how to stop herself, she shot

over the mark. “Amen,” she said. “I know something, Grandfather.”

“_Tiens!_” cried the old gentleman. “She knows something!” He made as

if he were itching all over with curiosity. “Did you hear, Mamma? She

knows something. Can any one tell me--?”

“If the lightning,” uttered Tony, nodding her head with every word,

“sets something on fire, then it’s the lightning that strikes. If it

doesn’t, why, then it’s the thunder!” She folded her arms and looked

around her like one sure of applause. But old Buddenbrook was annoyed

by this display of wisdom. He demanded to know who had taught her such

nonsense. It turned out that the culprit was the nursery governess, Ida

Jungmann, who had lately been engaged from Marienwerder. The Consul had

to come to her defence.

“You are too strict, Papa. Why shouldn’t the child have her own little

ideas about such things, at her age?”

“_Excusez, mon cher!... Mais c’est une folie!_ You know I don’t like

the children’s heads muddled with such things. ‘The thunder strikes,’

does it? Oh, very well, let it strike, and get along with your Prussian

woman!”

The truth was, the old gentleman hadn’t a good word to say for Ida

Jungmann. Not that he was narrow-minded. He had seen something of the

world, having travelled by coach to Southern Germany in 1813 to buy up

wheat for the Prussian army; he had been to Amsterdam and Paris, and

was too enlightened to condemn everything that lay beyond the gabled

roofs of his native town. But in social intercourse he was more apt

than his son to draw the line rigidly and give the cold shoulder to

strangers. So when this young girl--she was then only twenty--had come

back with his children from a visit to Western Prussia, as a sort of

charity-child, the old man had made his son a scene for the act of

piety, in which he spoke hardly anything but French and low German.

Ida was the daughter of an inn-keeper who had died just before the

Buddenbrooks’ arrival in Marienwerder. She had proved to be capable

in the household and with the children, and her rigid honesty and

Prussian notions of caste made her perfectly suited to her position

in the family. She was a person of aristocratic principles, drawing

hair-line distinctions between class and class, and very proud of her

position as servant of the higher orders. She objected to Tony’s making

friends with any schoolmate whom she reckoned as belonging only to the

respectable middle class.

And now the Prussian woman herself came from the pillared hall through

the glass door--a fairly tall, big-boned girl in a black frock, with

smooth hair and an honest face. She held by the hand an extraordinarily

thin small child, dressed in a flowered print frock, with lustreless

ash-coloured hair and the manner of a little old maid. This was

Clothilde, the daughter of a nephew of old Buddenbrook who belonged to

a penniless branch of the family and was in business at Rostock as an

estates agent. Clothilde was being brought up with Antonie, being about

the same age and a docile little creature.

“Everything is ready,” Mamsell Jungmann said. She had had a hard time

learning to pronounce her _r_’s, so now she rolled them tremendously in

her throat. “Clothilde helped very well in the kitchen, so there was

not much for cook to do.”

Monsieur Buddenbrook sneered behind his lace frill at Ida’s accent. The

Consul patted his little niece’s cheek and said: “That’s right, Tilda.

Work and pray. Tony ought to take a pattern from you; she’s far too

likely to be saucy and idle.”

Tony dropped her head and looked at her grandfather from under her

eyebrows. She knew he would defend her--he always did.

“No, no,” he said, “hold your head up, Tony. Don’t let them frighten

you. We can’t all be alike. Each according to his lights. Tilda is a

good girl--but we’re not so bad, either. Hey, Betsy?”

He turned to his daughter-in-law, who generally deferred to his views.

Madame Antoinette, probably more from shrewdness than conviction, sided

with the Consul; and thus the older and the younger generation crossed

hands in the dance of life.

“You are very kind, Papa,” the Consul’s wife said. “Tony will try her

best to grow up a clever and industrious woman.... Have the boys come

home from school?” she asked Ida.

Tony, who from her perch on her grandfather’s knee was looking out the

window, called out in the same breath: “Tom and Christian are coming up

Johannes Street ... and Herr Hoffstede ... and Uncle Doctor....”

The bells of St. Mary’s began to chime, ding-dong, ding-dong--rather

out of time, so that one could hardly tell what they were playing;

still, it was very impressive. The big and the little bell announced,

the one in lively, the other in dignified tones, that it was four

o’clock; and at the same time a shrill peal from the bell over the

vestibule door went ringing through the entry, and Tom and Christian

entered, together with the first guests, Jean Jacques Hoffstede, the

poet, and Doctor Grabow, the family physician.

CHAPTER II

Herr Jean Jacques Hoffstede was the town poet. He undoubtedly had a few

verses in his pocket for the present occasion. He was nearly as old as

Johann Buddenbrook, and dressed in much the same style except that his

coat was green instead of mouse-coloured. But he was thinner and more

active than his old friend, with bright little greenish eyes and a long

pointed nose.

“Many thanks,” he said, shaking hands with the gentlemen and bowing

before the ladies--especially the Frau Consul, for whom he entertained

a deep regard. Such bows as his it was not given to the younger

generation to perform; and he accompanied them with his pleasant quiet

smile. “Many thanks for your kind invitation, my dear good people. We

met these two young ones, the Doctor and I”--he pointed to Tom and

Christian, in their blue tunics and leather belts--“in King Street,

coming home from school. Fine lads, eh, Frau Consul? Tom is a very

solid chap. He’ll have to go into the business, no doubt of that. But

Christian is a devil of a fellow--a young _incroyable_, hey? I will

not conceal my _engouement_. He must study, I think--he is witty and

brilliant.”

Old Buddenbrook used his gold snuff-box. “He’s a young monkey, that’s

what he is. Why not say at once that he is to be a poet, Hoffstede?”

Mamsell Jungmann drew the curtains, and soon the room was bathed in

mellow flickering light from the candles in the crystal chandelier and

the sconces on the writing-desk. It lighted up golden gleams in the

Frau Consul’s hair.

“Well, Christian,” she said, “what did you learn to-day?” It appeared

that Christian had had writing, arithmetic, and singing lessons. He

was a boy of seven, who already resembled his father to an almost comic

extent. He had the same rather small round deep-set eyes and the same

prominent aquiline nose; the lines of his face below the cheek-bones

showed that it would not always retain its present childlike fulness.

“We’ve been laughing dreadfully,” he began to prattle, his eyes darting

from one to another of the circle. “What do you think Herr Stengel

said to Siegmund Kostermann?” He bent his back, shook his head, and

declaimed impressively: “‘Outwardly, outwardly, my dear child, you

are sleek and smooth; but inwardly, my dear child, you are black and

foul.’...” He mimicked with indescribably funny effect not only the

master’s odd pronunciation but the look of disgust on his face at the

“outward sleekness” he described. The whole company burst out laughing.

“Young monkey!” repeated old Buddenbrook. But Herr Hoffstede was

in ecstasies. “_Charmant!_” he cried. “If you know Marcellus

Stengel--that’s he, to the life. Oh, that’s too good!”

Thomas, to whom the gift of mimicry had been denied, stood near his

younger brother and laughed heartily, without a trace of envy. His

teeth were not very good, being small and yellowish. His nose was

finely chiselled, and he strikingly resembled his grandfather in the

eyes and the shape of the face.

The company had for the most part seated themselves on the chairs and

the sofa. They talked with the children or discussed the unseasonable

cold and the new house. Herr Hoffstede admired a beautiful Sèvres

inkstand, in the shape of a black and white hunting dog, that stood on

the secretary. Doctor Grabow, a man of about the Consul’s age, with a

long mild face between thin whiskers, was looking at the table, set

out with cakes and currant bread and saltcellars in different shapes.

This was the “bread and salt” that had been sent by friends for the

house-warming; but the “bread” consisted of rich, heavy pastries, and

the salt came in dishes of massive gold, that the senders might not

seem to be mean in their gifts.

“There will be work for me here,” said the Doctor, pointing to the

sweetmeats and threatening the children with his glance. Shaking his

head, he picked up a heavy salt and pepper stand from the table.

“From Lebrecht Kröger,” said old Buddenbrook, with a grimace. “Our dear

kinsman is always open-handed. I did not spend as much on him when

he built his summer house outside the Castle Gate. But he has always

been like that--very lordly, very free with his money, a real cavalier

à-la-mode....”

The bell had rung several times. Pastor Wunderlich was announced; a

stout old gentleman in a long black coat and powdered hair. He had

twinkling grey eyes set in a face that was jovial if rather pale. He

had been a widower for many years, and considered himself a bachelor of

the old school, like Herr Gratjens, the broker, who entered with him.

Herr Gratjens was a tall man who went around with one of his thin hands

up to his eye like a telescope, as if he were examining a painting. He

was a well-known art connoisseur.

Among the other guests were Senator Doctor Langhals and his wife, both

friends of many years’ standing; and Köppen the wine-merchant, with his

great crimson face between enormous padded sleeves. His wife, who came

with him, was nearly as stout as he.

It was after half-past four when the Krögers put in an appearance--the

elders together with their children; the Consul Krögers with their

sons Jacob and Jürgen, who were about the age of Tom and Christian. On

their heels came the parents of Frau Consul Kröger, the lumber-dealer

Överdieck and his wife, a fond old pair who still addressed each other

in public with nicknames from the days of their early love.

“Fine people come late,” said Consul Buddenbrook, and kissed his

mother-in-law’s hand.

“But look at them when they do come!” and Johann Buddenbrook included

the whole Kröger connection with a sweeping gesture, and shook the

elder Kröger by the hand. Lebrecht Kröger, the cavalier à-la-mode, was

a tall, distinguished figure. He wore his hair slightly powdered, but

dressed in the height of fashion, with a double row of jewelled buttons

on his velvet waistcoat. His son Justus, with his turned-up mustache

and small beard, was very like the father in figure and manner, even to

the graceful easy motions of the hands.

The guests did not sit down, but stood about awaiting the principal

event of the evening and passing the time in casual talk. At length,

Johann Buddenbrook the older offered his arm to Madame Köppen and

said in an elevated voice, “Well, _mesdames et messieurs_, if you are

hungry....”

Mamsell Jungmann and the servant had opened the folding doors into the

dining-room; and the company made its way with studied ease to table.

One could be sure of a good square meal at the Buddenbrooks’.

CHAPTER III

As the party began to move toward the dining-room, Consul Buddenbrook’s

hand went to his left breast-pocket and fingered a paper that was

inside. The polite smile had left his face, giving place to a strained

and care-worn look, and the muscles stood out on his temples as he

clenched his teeth. For appearance’s sake he made a few steps toward

the dining-room, but stopped and sought his mother’s eye as she was

leaving the room on Pastor Wunderlich’s arm, among the last of her

guests.

“Pardon me, dear Herr Pastor ... just a word with you, Mamma.” The

Pastor nodded gaily, and the Consul drew his Mother over to the window

of the landscape-room.

“Here is a letter from Gotthold,” he said in low, rapid tones. He took

out the sealed and folded paper and looked into her dark eyes. “That

is his writing. It is the third one, and Papa answered only the first.

What shall I do? It came at two o’clock, and I ought to have given it

to him already, but I do not like to upset him to-day. What do you

think? I could call him out here....”

“No, you are right, Jean; it is better to wait,” said Madame

Buddenbrook. She grasped her son’s arm with a quick, habitual movement.

“What do you suppose is in it?” she added uneasily. “The boy won’t give

in. He’s taken it into his head he must be compensated for his share in

the house.... No, no, Jean. Not now. To-night, perhaps, before we go to

bed.”

“What am I to do?” repeated the Consul, shaking his bent head. “I have

often wanted to ask Papa to give in. I don’t like it to look as if I

had schemed against Gotthold and worked myself into a snug place. I

don’t want Father to look at it like that, either. But, to be honest

... I am a partner, after all. And Betsy and I pay a fair rent for the

second storey. It is all arranged with my sister in Frankfort: her

husband gets compensation already, in Papa’s life-time--a quarter of

the purchase price of the house. That is good business: Papa arranged

it very cleverly, and it is very satisfactory from the point of view of

the firm. And if Papa acts so unfriendly to Gotthold--”

“Nonsense, Jean. Your position in the matter is quite clear. But it is

painful for me to have Gotthold think that his step-mother looks out

after her own children and deliberately makes bad blood between him and

his father!”

“But it is his own fault,” the Consul almost shouted, and then, with a

glance at the dining-room door, lowered his voice. “It is his fault,

the whole wretched thing. You can judge for yourself. Why couldn’t he

be reasonable? Why did he have to go and marry that Stüwing girl and

... the shop....” The Consul gave an angry, embarrassed laugh at the

last word. “It’s a weakness of Father’s, that prejudice against the

shop; but Gotthold ought to have respected it....”

“Oh, Jean, it would be best if Papa would give in.”

“But ought I to advise him to?” whispered the Consul excitedly,

clapping his hand to his forehead. “I am an interested party, so I

ought to say, Pay it. But I am also a partner. And if Papa thinks he

is under no obligation to a disobedient and rebellious son to draw the

money out of the working capital of the firm.... It is a matter of

eleven thousand thaler, a good bit of money. No, no, I cannot advise

him either for or against. I’d rather wash my hands of the whole

affair. But the scene with Papa is so _désagréable_--”

“Late this evening, Jean. Come now; they are waiting.”

The Consul put the paper back into his breast-pocket, offered his arm

to his mother, and led her over the threshold into the brightly lighted

dining-room, where the company had already taken their places at the

long table.

The tapestries in this room had a sky-blue background, against which,

between slender columns, white figures of gods and goddesses stood out

with plastic effect. The heavy red damask window-curtains were drawn;

stiff, massive sofas in red damask stood ranged against the walls;

and in each corner stood a tall gilt candelabrum with eight flaming

candles, besides those in silver sconces on the table. Above the heavy

sideboard, on the wall opposite the landscape-room, hung a large

painting of an Italian bay, the misty blue atmosphere of which was most

effective in the candle-light.

Every trace of care or disquiet had vanished from Madame Buddenbrook’s

face. She sat down between Pastor Wunderlich and the elder Kröger, who

presided on the window side.

“Bon appétit!” she said, with her short, quick, hearty nod, flashing a

glance down the whole length of the table till it reached the children

at the bottom.

CHAPTER IV

“Our best respects to you, Buddenbrook--I repeat, our best respects!”

Herr Köppen’s powerful voice drowned the general conversation as the

maid-servant, in her heavy striped petticoat, her fat arms bare and a

little white cap on the back of her head, passed the cabbage soup and

toast, assisted by Mamsell Jungmann and the Frau Consul’s maid from

upstairs. The guests began to use their soup-spoons.

“Such plenty, such elegance! I must say, you know how to do things!--I

must say--” Herr Köppen had never visited the house in its former

owner’s time. He did not come of a patrician family, and had only

lately become a man of means. He could never quite get rid of certain

vulgar tricks of speech--like the repetition of “I must say”; and he

said “respecks” for “respects.”

“It didn’t cost anything, either,” remarked Herr Gratjens drily--he

certainly ought to have known--and studied the wall-painting through

the hollow of his hand.

As far as possible, ladies and gentlemen had been paired off, and

members of the family placed between friends of the house. But

the arrangement could not be carried out in every case; the two

Överdiecks were sitting, as usual, nearly on each other’s laps, nodding

affectionately at one another. The elder Kröger was bolt upright,

enthroned between Madame Antoinette and Frau Senator Langhals, dividing

his pet jokes and his flourishes between the two ladies.

“When was the house built?” asked Herr Hoffstede diagonally across the

table of old Buddenbrook, who was talking in a gay chaffing tone with

Madame Köppen.

“Anno ... let me see ... about 1680, if I am not mistaken. My son is

better at dates than I am.”

“Eighty-two,” said the Consul, leaning forward. He was sitting at the

foot of the table, without a partner, next to Senator Langhals. “It was

finished in the winter of 1682. Ratenkamp and Company were just getting

to the top of their form.... Sad, how the firm broke down in the last

twenty years!”

A general pause in the conversation ensued, lasting for half a minute,

while the company looked down at their plates and pondered on the

fortunes of the brilliant family who had built and lived in the house

and then, broken and impoverished, had left it.

“Yes,” said Broker Gratjens, “it’s sad, when you think of the madness

that led to their ruin. If Dietrich Ratenkamp had not taken that fellow

Geelmaack for a partner! I flung up my hands, I know, when he came

into the management. I have it on the best authority, gentlemen, that

he speculated disgracefully behind Ratenkamp’s back, and gave notes

and acceptances right and left in the firm’s name.... Finally the game

was up. The banks got suspicious, the firm couldn’t give security....

You haven’t the least idea ... who looked after the warehouse, even?

Geelmaack, perhaps? It was a perfect rats’ nest there, year in, year

out. But Ratenkamp never troubled himself about it.”

“He was like a man paralysed,” the Consul said. A gloomy, taciturn look

came on his face. He leaned over and stirred his soup, now and then

giving a quick glance, with his little round deep-set eyes, at the

upper end of the table.

“He went about like a man with a load on his mind; I think one

can understand his burden. What made him take Geelmaack into the

business--a man who brought painfully little capital, and had not the

best of reputations? He must have felt the need of sharing his heavy

responsibility with some one, not much matter who, because he realized

that the end was inevitable. The firm was ruined, the old family

_passée_. Geelmaack only gave it the last push over the edge.”

Pastor Wunderlich filled his own and his neighbour’s wineglass. “So

you think my dear Consul,” he said with a discreet smile, “that even

without Geelmaack, things would have turned out just as they did?”

“Oh, probably not,” the Consul said thoughtfully, not addressing

anybody in particular. “But I do think that Dietrich Ratenkamp was

driven by fate when he took Geelmaack into partnership. That was the

way his destiny was to be fulfilled.... He acted under the pressure of

inexorable necessity. I think he knew more or less what his partner was

doing, and what the state of affairs was at the warehouse. But he was

paralyzed.”

“_Assez_, Jean,” interposed old Buddenbrook, laying down his spoon.

“That’s one of your _idées_....”

The Consul rather absently lifted his glass to his father. Lebrecht

Kröger broke in: “Let’s stick by the jolly present!” He took up a

bottle of white wine that had a little silver stag on the stopper; and

with one of his fastidious, elegant motions he held it on its side

and examined the label. “C. F. Köppen,” he read, and nodded to the

wine-merchant. “Ah, yes, where should we be without you?”

Madame Antoinette kept a sharp eye on the servants while they changed

the gilt-edged Meissen plates; Mamsell Jungmann called orders through

the speaking-tube into the kitchen, and the fish was brought in. Pastor

Wunderlich remarked, as he helped himself:

“This ‘jolly present’ isn’t such a matter of course as it seems,

either. The young folk here can hardly realize, I suppose, that things

could ever have been different from what they are now. But I think I

may fairly claim to have had a personal share, more than once, in the

fortunes of the Buddenbrook family. Whenever I see one of these, for

instance--” he picked up one of the heavy silver spoons and turned to

Madame Antoinette--“I can’t help wondering whether they belong to the

set that our friend the philosopher Lenoir, Sergeant under his Majesty

the Emperor Napoleon, had in his hands in the year 1806--and I think

of our meeting in Alf Street, Madame.”

Madame Buddenbrook looked down at her plate with a smile half of

memory, half of embarrassment. Tom and Tony, at the bottom of the

table, cried out almost with one voice, “Oh, yes, tell about it,

Grandmama!” They did not want the fish, and they had been listening

attentively to the conversation of their elders. But the Pastor knew

that she would not care to speak herself of an incident that had been

rather painful to her. He came to her rescue and launched out once more

upon the old story. It was new, perhaps, to one or two of the present

company. As for the children, they could have listened to it a hundred

times.

“Well, imagine a November afternoon, cold and rainy, a wretched day;

and me coming back down Alf Street from some parochial duty. I was

thinking of the hard times we were having. Prince Blücher had gone,

and the French were in the town. There was little outward sign of the

excitement that reigned everywhere: the streets were quiet, and people

stopped close in their houses. Prahl the master-butcher had been shot

through the head, just for standing at the door of his shop with his

hands in his pockets and making a menacing remark about its being hard

to stand. Well, thought I to myself, I’ll just have a look in at the

Buddenbrooks’. Herr Buddenbrook is down with erysipelas, and Madame has

a great deal to do, on account of the billeting.

“At that very moment, whom should I see coming towards me but our

honored Madame Buddenbrook herself? What a state she was in! hurrying

through the rain hatless, stumbling rather than walking, with a shawl

flung over her shoulders, and her hair falling down--yes, Madame, it is

quite true, it _was_ falling down!

“‘This is a pleasant surprise,’ I said. She never saw me, and I made

bold to lay my hand on her sleeve, for my mind misgave me about the

state of things. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, my dear?’ She

realized who I was, looked at me, and burst out: ‘Farewell, farewell!

All is over--I’m going into the river!’

“‘God forbid,’ cried I--I could feel that I went white. ‘That is

no place for you, my dear.’ And I held her as tightly as decorum

permitted. ‘What has happened?’ ‘What has happened!’ she cried, all

trembling. ‘They’ve got at the silver, Wunderlich! That’s what has

happened! And Jean lies there with erysipelas and can’t do anything--he

couldn’t even if he were up. They are stealing my spoons, Wunderlich,

and I am going into the river!’

“Well, I kept holding her, and I said what one would in such cases:

‘Courage, dear lady. It will be all right. Control yourself, I beg

of you. We will go and speak with them. Let us go.’ And I got her

to go back up the street to her house. The soldiery were up in the

dining-room, where Madame had left them, some twenty of them, at the

great silver-chest.

“‘Gentlemen,’ I say politely, ‘with which one of you may I have the

pleasure of a little conversation?’ ‘They begin to laugh, and they

say: ‘With all of us, Papa.’ But one of them steps out and presents

himself, a fellow as tall as a tree, with a black waxed moustache and

big red hands sticking out of his braided cuffs. ‘Lenoir,’ he said, and

saluted with his left hand, for he had five or six spoons in his right.

‘Sergeant Lenoir. What can I do for you?’

“‘Herr Officer,’ I say, appealing to his sense of honour, ‘after your

magnificent charge, how can you stoop to this sort of thing? The town

has not closed its gates to the Emperor.’

“‘What do you expect?’ he answered. ‘War is war. The people need these

things....’

“‘But you ought to be careful,’ I interrupted him, for an idea had come

into my head. ‘This lady,’ I said--one will say anything at a time

like that--‘the lady of the house, she isn’t a German. She is almost a

compatriot of yours--she is a Frenchwoman....’ ‘Oh, a Frenchwoman,’ he

repeated. And then what do you suppose he said, this big swashbuckler?

‘Oh, an _emigrée_? Then she is an enemy of philosophy!’

“I was quite taken aback, but I managed not to laugh. ‘You are a man

of intellect, I see,’ said I. ‘I repeat that I consider your conduct

unworthy.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he got red, tossed his

half-dozen spoons back into the chest, and exclaimed, ‘Who told you I

was going to do anything with these things but look at them? It’s fine

silver. If one or two of my men take a piece as a souvenir....’

“Well, in the end, they took plenty of souvenirs, of course. No use

appealing to justice, either human or divine. I suppose they knew no

other god than that terrible little Corsican....”

CHAPTER V

“Did you ever see him, Herr Pastor?”

The plates were being changed again. An enormous brick-red boiled ham

appeared, strewn with crumbs and served with a sour brown onion sauce,

and so many vegetables that the company could have satisfied their

appetites from that one vegetable-dish. Lebrecht Kröger undertook

the carving, and skilfully cut the succulent slices, with his elbows

slightly elevated and his two long forefingers laid out along the back

of the knife and fork. With the ham went the Frau Consul’s celebrated

“Russian jam,” a pungent fruit conserve flavoured with spirits.

No, Pastor Wunderlich regretted to say that he had never set eyes on

Bonaparte. Old Buddenbrook and Jean Jacques Hoffstede had both seen him

face to face, one in Paris just before the Russian campaign, reviewing

the troops at the Tuileries; the other in Dantzig.

“I must say, he wasn’t a very cheerful person to look at,” said the

poet, raising his brows, as he disposed of a forkful of ham, potato,

and sprouts. “But they say he was in a lively mood, at Dantzig. There

was a story they used to tell, about how he would gamble all day with

the Germans, and make them pay up too, and then spend the evening

playing with his generals. Once he swept a handful of gold off the

table, and said: ‘_Les Allemands aiment beaucoup ces petits Napoléons,

n’est-ce pas_, Rapp?’ ‘_Oui, Sire, plus que le Grand!_’ Rapp answered.”

There was general laughter--Hoffstede had told the story very

prettily, even mimicking the Emperor’s manner. Old Buddenbrook said:

“Well, joking aside, one can’t help having respect for his personal

greatness.... What a nature!”

The Consul shook his head gravely.

“No, no--we of the younger generation do not see why we should revere

the man who murdered the Duc d’Engien, and butchered eight hundred

prisoners in Egypt....”

“All that is probably exaggerated and overdrawn,” said Pastor

Wunderlich. “The Duke was very likely a feather-brained and seditious

person, and as for the prisoners, their execution was probably the

deliberate and necessary policy of a council of war.” And he went on to

speak of a book at which he had been looking, by one of the Emperor’s

secretaries, which had appeared some years before and was well worth

reading.

“All the same,” persisted the Consul, snuffing a flickering candle

in the sconce in front of him, “I cannot understand it--I cannot

understand the admiration people have for this monster. As a Christian,

as a religious man, I can find no room in my heart for such a feeling.”

He had, as he spoke, the slightly inclined head and the rapt look of

a man in a vision. His father and Pastor Wunderlich could be seen to

exchange the smallest of smiles.

“Well, anyhow,” grinned the old man, “the little napoleons aren’t so

bad, eh? My son has more enthusiasm for Louis Philippe,” he said to the

company in general.

“Enthusiasm?” repeated Jean Jacques Hoffstede, rather sarcastically....

“That is a curious juxtaposition, Philippe Égalité and enthusiasm....”

“God knows, I feel we have much to learn from the July Monarchy,” the

Consul said, with serious zeal. “The friendly and helpful attitude of

French constitutionalism toward the new, practical ideals and interests

of our time ... is something we should be deeply thankful for....”

“Practical ideals--well, ye-es--” The elder Buddenbrook gave his

jaws a moment’s rest and played with his gold snuff-box. “Practical

ideals--well--h’m--they don’t appeal to me in the least.” He dropped

into dialect, out of sheer vexation. “We have trade schools and

technical schools and commercial schools springing up on every corner;

the high schools and the classical education suddenly turn out to be

all foolishness, and the whole world thinks of nothing but mines and

factories and making money.... That’s all very fine, of course. But

in the long run, pretty stupid, isn’t it?... I don’t know why, but

it irritates me like the deuce.... I don’t mean, Jean, that the July

Monarchy is not an admirable régime....”

Senator Langhals, as well as Gratjens and Köppen, stood by the

Consul.... They felt that high praise was due to the French government,

and to similar efforts that were being made in Germany. It was worthy

of all respect--Herr Köppen called it “respeck.” He had grown more

and more crimson from eating, and puffed audibly as he spoke. Pastor

Wunderlich had not changed colour; he looked as pale, refined, and

alert as ever, while drinking down glass after glass of wine.

The candles burned down slowly in their sockets. Now and then they

flickered in a draught and dispersed a faint smell of wax over the

table.

There they all sat, on heavy, high-backed chairs, consuming good

heavy food from good heavy silver plate, drinking full-bodied wines

and expressing their views freely on all subjects. When they began to

talk shop, they slipped unconsciously more and more into dialect, and

used the clumsy but comfortable idioms that seemed to embody to them

the business efficiency and the easy well-being of their community.

Sometimes they even used an overdrawn pronunciation by way of making

fun of themselves and each other, and relished their clipped phrases

and exaggerated vowels with the same heartiness as they did their food.

The ladies had not long followed the discussion. Madame Kröger gave

them the cue by setting forth a tempting method of boiling carp in

red wine. “You cut it into nice pieces, my dear, and put it in the

saucepan, add some cloves, and onions, and a few rusks, a little

sugar, and a spoonful of butter, and set it on the fire.... But don’t

wash it, on any account. All the blood must remain in it.”

The elder Kröger was telling the most delightful stories; and his

son Justus, who sat with Dr. Grabow down at the bottom of the table,

near the children, was chaffing Mamsell Jungmann. She screwed up her

brown eyes and stood her knife and fork upright on the table and

moved them back and forth. Even the Överdiecks were very lively. Old

Frau Överdieck had a new pet name for her husband: “You good old

bell-wether,” she said, and laughed so hard that her cap bobbed up and

down.

But all the various conversations around the table flowed together in

one stream when Jean Jacques Hoffstede embarked upon his favourite

theme, and began to describe the Italian journey which he had taken

fifteen years before with a rich Hamburg relative. He told of Venice,

Rome, and Vesuvius, of the Villa Borghese, where Goethe had written

part of his Faust; he waxed enthusiastic over the beautiful Renaissance

fountains that wafted coolness upon the warm Italian air, and the

formal gardens through the avenues of which it was so enchanting to

stroll. Some one mentioned the big wilderness of a garden outside the

Castle Gate, that belonged to the Buddenbrooks.

“Upon my word,” the old man said, “I still feel angry with myself

that I have never put it into some kind of order. I was out there the

other day--and it is really a disgrace, a perfect primeval forest. It

would be a pretty bit of property, if the grass were cut and the trees

trimmed into formal shapes.”

The Consul protested strenuously. “Oh, no, Papa! I love to go out there

in the summer and walk in the undergrowth; it would quite spoil the

place to trim and prune its free natural beauty.”

“But, deuce take it, the free natural beauty belongs to me--haven’t I

the right to put it in order if I like?”

“Ah, Father, when I go out there and lie in the long grass among the

undergrowth, I have a feeling that I belong to nature and not she to

me....”

“Krishan, don’t eat too much,” the old man suddenly called out, in

dialect. “Never mind about Tilda--it doesn’t hurt her. She can put it

away like a dozen harvest hands, that child!”

And truly it was amazing, the prowess of this scraggy child with the

long, old-maidish face. Asked if she wanted more soup, she answered

in a meek drawling voice: “Ye-es, ple-ase.” She had two large

helpings both of fish and ham, with piles of vegetables; and she bent

short-sightedly over her plate, completely absorbed in the food, which

she chewed ruminantly, in large mouthfuls. “Oh, Un-cle,” she replied,

with amiable simplicity, to the old man’s gibe, which did not in the

least disconcert her. She ate: whether it tasted good or not, whether

they teased her or not, she smiled and kept on, heaping her plate with

good things, with the instinctive, insensitive voracity of a poor

relation--patient, persevering, hungry, and lean.

CHAPTER VI

And now came, in two great cut-glass dishes, the “Plettenpudding.”

It was made of layers of macaroons, raspberries, lady-fingers, and

custard. At the same time, at the other end of the table, appeared the

blazing plum-pudding which was the children’s favourite sweet.

“Thomas, my son, come here a minute,” said Johann Buddenbrook, taking

his great bunch of keys from his trousers pocket. “In the second cellar

to the right, the second bin, behind the red Bordeaux, two bottles--you

understand?” Thomas, to whom such orders were familiar, ran off and

soon came back with the two bottles, covered with dust and cobwebs;

and the little dessert-glasses were filled with sweet, golden-yellow

malmsey from these unsightly receptacles. Now the moment came when

Pastor Wunderlich rose, glass in hand, to propose a toast; and the

company fell silent to listen. He spoke in the pleasant, conversational

tone which he liked to use in the pulpit; his head a little on one

side, a subtle, humorous smile on his pale face, gesturing easily with

his free hand. “Come, my honest friends, let us honour ourselves by

drinking a glass of this excellent liquor to the health of our host and

hostess in their beautiful new home. Come, then--to the health of the

Buddenbrook family, present and absent! May they live long and prosper!”

“Absent?” thought the Consul to himself, bowing as the company lifted

their glasses. “Is he referring to the Frankfort Buddenbrooks, or

perhaps the Duchamps in Hamburg--or did old Wunderlich really mean

something by that?” He stood up and clinked glasses with his father,

looking him affectionately in the eye.

Broker Gratjens got up next, and his speech was rather long-winded; he

ended by proposing in his high-pitched voice a health to the firm of

Johann Buddenbrook, that it might continue to grow and prosper and do

honour to the town.

Johann Buddenbrook thanked them all for their kindness, first as head

of the family and then as senior partner of the firm--and sent Thomas

for another bottle of Malmsey. It had been a mistake to suppose that

two would be enough.

Lebrecht Kröger spoke too. He took the liberty of remaining seated,

because it looked less formal, and gestured with his head and hands

most charmingly as he proposed a toast to the two ladies of the

family, Madame Antoinette and the Frau Consul. As he finished, the

Plettenpudding was nearly consumed, and the Malmsey nearing its end;

and then, to a universal, long-drawn “Ah-h!” Jean Jacques Hoffstede

rose up slowly, clearing his throat. The children clapped their hands

with delight.

“_Excusez!_ I really couldn’t help it,” he began. He put his finger

to his long sharp nose and drew a paper from his coat pocket.... A

profound silence reigned throughout the room.

His paper was gaily parti-coloured. On the outside of it was written,

in an oval border surrounded by red flowers and a profusion of gilt

flourishes:

“_On the occasion of my friendly participation in a delightful

house-warming party given by the Buddenbrook family. October 1835._”

He read this aloud first; then turning the paper over, he began, in a

voice that was already somewhat tremulous:

Honoured friends, my modest lay

Hastes to greet you in these walls:

May kind Heaven grant to-day

Blessing on their spacious halls.

Thee, my friend with silver hair,

And thy faithful, loving spouse,

And your children young and fair--

I salute you, and your house.

Industry and beauty chaste

See we linked in marriage band:

Venus Anadyomene

And cunning Vulcan’s busy hand.

May no future storms dismay

With unkind blast the joyful hour;

May each new returning day

Blessings on your pathway shower.

Ceaselessly shall I rejoice

O’er the fortune that is yours:

As to-day I lift my voice,

May I still, while life endures.

In your splendid walls live well,

And cherish with affection true

Him who in his humble cell

Penned to-day these lines for you

He bowed to a unanimous outburst of applause.

“Charming, Hoffstede,” cried old Buddenbrook. “It was too charming for

words. I drink your health.”

But when the Frau Consul touched glasses with the poet, a delicate

blush mantled her cheek; for she had seen the courtly bow he made in

her direction when he came to the part about the Venus Anadyomene.

CHAPTER VII

The general merriment had now reached its height. Herr Köppen felt a

great need to unfasten a few buttons of his waistcoat; but it obviously

wouldn’t do, for not even the elderly gentlemen were permitting

themselves the liberty. Lebrecht Kröger sat up as straight as he did

at the beginning; Pastor Wunderlich’s face was as pale as ever, his

manner as correct. The elder Buddenbrook had indeed sat back a little

in his chair, but he maintained perfect decorum. There was only Justus

Kröger--he was plainly a little overtaken.

But where was Dr. Grabow? The butter, cheese and fruit had just been

handed round; and the Frau Consul rose from her chair and unobtrusively

followed the waitress from the room; for the Doctor, Mamsell Jungmann,

and Christian were no longer in their places, and a smothered wail was

proceeding from the hall. There in the dim light, little Christian

was half-lying, half-crouching on the round settee that encircled the

central pillar. He was uttering heart-breaking groans. Ida and the

Doctor stood beside him.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said she, “the poor child is very bad!”

“I’m ill, Mamma, damned ill,” whimpered Christian, his little deep-set

eyes darting back and forth, and his big nose looking bigger than ever.

The “damned” came out in a tone of utter despair; but the Frau Consul

said: “If we use such words, God will punish us by making us suffer

still more!”

Doctor Grabow felt the lad’s pulse. His kindly face grew longer and

gentler.

“It’s nothing much, Frau Consul,” he reassured her. “A touch of

indigestion.” He prescribed in his best bed-side manner: “Better put

him to bed and give him a Dover powder--perhaps a cup of camomile tea,

to bring out the perspiration.... And a rigorous diet, you know, Frau

Consul. A little pigeon, a little French bread....”

“I don’t want any pigeon,” bellowed Christian angrily. “I don’t want

to eat anything, ever any more. I’m ill, I tell you, damned ill!” The

fervour with which he uttered the bad word seemed to bring him relief.

Doctor Grabow smiled to himself--a thoughtful, almost a melancholy

smile. He would soon eat again, this young man. He would do as the rest

of the world did--his father, and all their relatives and friends: he

would lead a sedentary life and eat four good, rich, satisfying meals

a day. Well, God bless us all! He, Friedrich Grabow, was not the man

to upset the habits of these prosperous, comfortable tradesmen and

their families. He would come when he was sent for, prescribe a few

days’ diet--a little pigeon, a slice of French bread--yes, yes, and

assure the family that it was nothing serious this time. Young as he

was, he had held the head of many an honest burgher who had eaten

his last joint of smoked meat, his last stuffed turkey, and, whether

overtaken unaware in his counting-house or after a brief illness in

his solid old four-poster, had commended his soul to God. Then it

was called paralysis, a “stroke,” a sudden death. And he, Friedrich

Grabow, could have predicted it, on all of these occasions when it was

“nothing serious this time”--or perhaps at the times when he had not

even been summoned, when there had only been a slight giddiness after

luncheon. Well, God bless us all! He, Friedrich Grabow, was not the

man to despise a roast turkey himself. That ham with onion sauce had

been delicious, hang it! And the Plettenpudding, when they were already

stuffed full--macaroons, raspberries, custard.... “A rigorous diet,

Frau Consul, as I say. A little pigeon, a little French bread....”

CHAPTER VIII

They were rising from table.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, _gesegnete Mahlzeit!_ Cigars and coffee

in the next room, and a liqueur if Madame feels generous.... Billiards

for whoever chooses. Jean, you will show them the way back to the

billiard-room? Madame Köppen, may I have the honour?”

Full of well-being, laughing and chattering, the company trooped back

through the folding doors into the landscape-room. The Consul remained

behind, and collected about him the gentlemen who wanted to play

billiards.

“You won’t try a game, Father?”

No, Lebrecht Kröger would stop with the ladies, but Justus might go if

he liked.... Senator Langhals, Köppen, Gratjens, and Doctor Grabow went

with the Consul, and Jean Jacques Hoffstede said he would join them

later. “Johann Buddenbrook is going to play the flute,” he said. “I

must stop for that. _Au revoir, messieurs._”

As the gentlemen passed through the hall, they could hear from the

landscape-room the first notes of the flute, accompanied by the Frau

Consul on the harmonium: an airy, charming little melody that floated

sweetly through the lofty rooms. The Consul listened as long as he

could. He would have liked to stop behind in an easy-chair in the

landscape-room and indulge the reveries that the music conjured up; but

his duties as host....

“Bring some coffee and cigars into the billiard-room,” he said to the

maid whom he met in the entry.

“Yes, Line, coffee!” Herr Köppen echoed, in a rich, well-fed voice,

trying to pinch the girl’s red arm. The _c_ came from far back in his

throat, as if he were already swallowing the coffee.

“I’m sure Madame Köppen saw you through the glass,” Consul Kröger

remarked.

“So you live up there, Buddenbrook?” asked Senator Langhals. To the

right a broad white staircase with a carved baluster led up to the

sleeping-chambers of the Consul’s family in the second storey; to

the left came another row of rooms. The party descended the stairs,

smoking, and the Consul halted at the landing.

“The entresol has three rooms,” he explained--“the breakfast-room, my

parents’ sleeping-chamber, and a third room which is seldom used. A

corridor runs along all three.... This way, please. The wagons drive

through the entry; they can go all the way out to Bakers’ Alley at the

back.”

The broad echoing passageway below was paved with great square

flagstones. At either end of it were several offices. The odour of

the onion sauce still floated out from the kitchen, which, with the

entrance to the cellars, lay on the left of the steps. On the right, at

the height of a storey above the passageway, a scaffolding of ungainly

but neatly varnished rafters thrust out from the wall, supporting

the servants’ quarters above. A sort of ladder which led up to them

from the passage was their only means of ingress or egress. Below the

scaffolding were some enormous old cupboards and a carved chest.

Two low, worn steps led through a glass door out to the courtyard and

the small wash-house. From here you could look into the pretty little

garden, which was well laid out, though just now brown and sodden with

the autumn rains, its beds protected with straw mats against the cold.

At the other end of the garden rose the “portal,” the rococo façade of

the summer house. From the courtyard, however, the party took the path

to the left, leading between two walls through another courtyard to the

annexe.

They entered by slippery steps into a cellar-like vault with an

earthen floor, which was used as a granary and provided with a rope

for hauling up the sacks. A pair of stairs led up to the first storey,

where the Consul opened a white door and admitted his guests to the

billiard-room.

It was a bare, severe-looking room, with stiff chairs ranged round the

sides. Herr Köppen flung himself exhausted into one of them. “I’ll look

on for a while,” said he, brushing the wet from his coat. “It’s the

devil of a Sabbath day’s journey through your house, Buddenbrook!”

Here too the stove was burning merrily, behind a brass lattice. Through

the three high, narrow windows one looked out over red roofs gleaming

with the wet, grey gables and courtyards.

The Consul took the cues out of the rack. “Shall we play a

_carambolage_, Senator?” he asked. He went around and closed the

pockets on both tables. “Who is playing with us? Gratjens? The Doctor?

All right. Then will you take the other table, Gratjens and Justus?

Köppen, you’ll have to play.”

The wine-merchant stood up and listened, with his mouth full of

smoke. A violent gust of wind whistled between the houses, lashed the

window-panes with rain, and howled down the chimney.

“Good Lord!” he said, blowing out the smoke. “Do you think the

_Wullenwewer_ will get into port, Buddenbrook? What abominable weather!”

Yes, and the news from Travemünde was not of the best, Consul Kröger

agreed, chalking his cue. Storms everywhere on the coast. Nearly as bad

as in 1824, the year of the great flood in St. Petersburg. Well, here

was the coffee.

They poured it out and drank a little and began their game. The

talk turned upon the Customs Union, and Consul Buddenbrook waxed

enthusiastic.

“An inspiration, gentlemen,” he said. He finished a shot and turned to

the other table, where the topic had begun. “We ought to join at the

earliest opportunity.”

Herr Köppen disagreed. He fairly snorted in opposition. “How about our

independence?” he asked incensed, supporting himself belligerently on

his cue. “How about our self-determination? Would Hamburg consent to be

a party to this Prussian scheme? We might as well be annexed at once!

Heaven save us, what do we want of a customs union? Aren’t we well

enough as we are?”

“Yes, you and your red wine, Köppen. And the Russian products are all

right. But there is little or nothing else imported. As for exports,

well, we send a little corn to Holland and England, it is true. But

I think we are far from being well enough as we are. In days gone by

a very different business went on. Now, with the Customs Union, the

Mecklenburgs and Schleswig-Holstein would be opened up--and private

business would increase beyond all reckoning....”

“But look here, Buddenbrook,” Gratjens broke in, leaning far over the

table and shifting his cue in his bony hand as he took careful aim, “I

don’t get the idea. Certainly our own system is perfectly simple and

practical. Clearing on the security of a civic oath--”

“A fine old institution,” the Consul admitted.

“Do you call it fine, Herr Consul?” Senator Langhals spoke with some

heat. “I am not a merchant; but to speak frankly--well, I think this

civic oath business has become little short of a farce: everybody makes

light of it, and the State pockets the loss. One hears things that

are simply scandalous. I am convinced that our entry into the Customs

Union, so far as the Senate is concerned--”

Herr Köppen flung down his cue. “Then there will be a conflick,” he

said heatedly, forgetting to be careful with his pronunciation. “I know

what I’m sayin’--God help you, but you don’t know what you’re talkin’

about, beggin’ your pardon.”

Well, thank goodness! thought the rest of the company, as Jean Jacques

entered at this point. He and Pastor Wunderlich came together, arm in

arm, two cheerful, unaffected old men from another and less troubled

age.

“Here, my friends,” he began. “I have something for you: a little

rhymed epigram from the French.”

He sat down comfortably opposite the billiard-players, who leaned upon

their cues across the tables. Drawing a paper from his pocket and

laying his long finger with the signet ring to the side of his pointed

nose, he read aloud, with a mock-heroic intonation:

“When the Maréchal Saxe and the proud Pompadour

Were driving out gaily in gilt coach and four,

Frelon spied the pair: ‘Oh, see them,’ he cried:

‘The sword of our king--and his sheath, side by side.’”

Herr Köppen looked disconcerted for a minute. Then he dropped the

“conflick” where it was and joined in the hearty laughter that echoed

to the ceiling of the billiard-room. Pastor Wunderlich withdrew to

the window, but the movement of his shoulders betrayed that he was

chuckling to himself.

Herr Hoffstede had more ammunition of the same sort in his pocket,

and the gentlemen remained for some time in the billiard-room. Herr

Köppen unbuttoned his waistcoat all the way down, and felt much more

at ease here than in the dining-room. He gave vent to droll low-German

expressions at every turn, and at frequent intervals began reciting to

himself with enormous relish:

“When the Maréchal Saxe....”

It sounded quite different in his harsh bass.

CHAPTER IX

It was rather late, nearly eleven, when the party began to break up.

They had reassembled in the landscape-room, and they all made their

adieux at the same time. The Frau Consul, as soon as her hand had been

kissed in farewell, went upstairs to see how Christian was doing. To

Mamsell Jungmann was left the supervision of the maids as they set

things to rights and put away the silver. Madame Antoinette retired to

the entresol. But the Consul accompanied his guests downstairs, across

the entry, and outside the house.

A high wind was driving the rain slantwise through the streets as the

old Krögers, wrapped in heavy fur mantles, slipped as fast as they

could into their carriage. It had been waiting for hours before the

door. The street was lighted by the flickering yellow rays from oil

lamps hanging on posts before the houses or suspended on heavy chains

across the streets. The projecting fronts of some of the houses jutted

out into the roadway; others had porticos or raised benches added on.

The street ran steeply down to the River Trave; it was badly paved, and

sodden grass sprang up between the cracks. The church of St. Mary’s was

entirely shrouded in rain and darkness.

“_Merci_,” said Lebrecht Kröger, shaking the Consul’s hand as he stood

by the carriage door. “_Merci_, Jean; it was too charming!” The door

slammed, and the carriage drove off. Pastor Wunderlich and Broker

Gratjens expressed their thanks and went their way. Herr Köppen, in a

mantle with a five-fold cape and a broad grey hat, took his plump wife

on his arm and said in his gruff bass: “G’night, Buddenbrook. Go in,

go in; don’t catch cold. Best thanks for everything--don’t know when

I’ve fed so well! So you like my red wine at four marks? Well, g’night,

again.”

The Köppens went in the same direction as the Krögers, down toward the

river; Senator Langhals, Doctor Grabow, and Jean Jacques Hoffstede

turned the other way. Consul Buddenbrook stood with his hands in his

trousers pockets and listened to their footsteps as they died away down

the empty, damp, dimly-lighted street. He shivered a little in his

light clothes as he stood there a few paces from his own house, and

turned to look up at its grey gabled façade. His eyes lingered upon

the motto carved in the stone over the entrance, in antique lettering:

_Dominus providebit_--“The Lord will provide.” He bowed his head a

little and went in, bolting the door carefully behind him. Then he

locked the vestibule door and walked slowly across the echoing floor

of the great entry. The cook was coming down the stairs with a tray of

glasses in her hands, and he asked her, “Where’s the master, Trina?”

“In the dining-room, Herr Consul,” said she, and her face went as red

as her arms, for she came from the country and was very bashful.

As he passed through the dark hall, he felt in his pocket for the

letter. Then he went quickly into the dining-room, where a few small

candle-ends in one of the candelabra cast a dim light over the empty

table. The sour smell of the onion sauce still hung on the air.

Over by the windows Johann Buddenbrook was pacing comfortably up and

down, with his hands behind his back.

CHAPTER X

“Well, Johann, my son, where are you going?” He stood still and put his

hand out to his son--his white Buddenbrook hand, a little too short,

though finely modelled. His active figure showed indistinctly against

the dark-red curtains, the only gleams of white being from his powdered

hair and the lace frill at his throat.

“Aren’t you sleepy? I’ve been here listening to the wind; the weather

is something fearful. Captain Kloot is on his way from Riga....”

“Oh, Father, with God’s help all will be well.”

“Well, do you think I can depend on that? I know you are on intimate

terms with the Almighty--”

The Consul felt his courage rise at this display of good humour.

“Well, to get to the point,” he began, “I came in here not to bid you

good night, but to--you won’t be angry, will you, Papa?... I didn’t

want to disturb you with this letter on such a festive occasion ... it

came this afternoon....”

“_Monsieur Gotthold, voilà!_” The old man affected to be quite unmoved

as he took the sealed blue paper. “Herr Johann Buddenbrook, Senior.

Personal. A careful man, your step-brother, Jean! Have I answered

his second letter, that came the other day? And so now he writes me

a third.” The old man’s rosy face grew sterner as he opened the seal

with one finger, unfolded the thin paper, and gave it a smart rap with

the back of his hand as he turned about to catch the light from the

candles. The very handwriting of this letter seemed to express revolt

and disloyalty. All the Buddenbrooks wrote a fine, flowing hand; but

these tall straight letters were full of heavy strokes, and many of

the words were hastily underlined.

The Consul had drawn back a little to where the row of chairs stood

against the wall; he did not sit down, as his father did not; but he

grasped one of the high chair-backs nervously and watched the old man

while he read, his lips moving rapidly, his brows drawn together, and

his head on one side.

FATHER,

I am probably mistaken in entertaining any further hope of your sense

of justice or any appreciation of my feelings at receiving no reply

from my second pressing letter concerning the matter in question. I

do not comment again on the character of the reply I received to my

first one. I feel compelled to say, however, that the way in which

you, by your lamentable obstinacy, are widening the rift between us,

is a sin for which you will one day have to answer grievously before

the judgment seat of God. It is sad enough that when I followed the

dictates of my heart and married against your wishes, and further

wounded your insensate pride by taking over a shop, you should have

repulsed me so cruelly and remorselessly; but the way in which you

now treat me cries out to Heaven, and you are utterly mistaken if you

imagine that I intend to accept your silence without a struggle. The

purchase price of your newly acquired house in the Mengstrasse was

a hundred thousand marks; and I am aware that Johann, your business

partner and your son by your second marriage, is living with you as

your tenant, and after your death will become the sole proprietor of

both house and business. With my step-sister in Frankfort, you have

entered into agreements which are no concern of mine. But what does

concern me, your eldest son, is that you carry your un-Christian

spirit so far as to refuse me a penny of compensation for my share in

the house. When you gave me a hundred thousand marks on my marriage

and to set me up in business, and told me that a similar sum and

no more should be bequeathed me by will, I said nothing, for I was

not at the time sufficiently informed as to the amount of your

fortune. Now I know more: and not regarding myself as disinherited

in principle, I claim as my right the sum of thirty-three thousand

and three hundred and thirty-three marks current, or a third of the

purchase price. I make no comment on the damnable influences which

are responsible for the treatment I have received. But I protest

against them with my whole sense of justice as a Christian and a

business man. Let me tell you for the last time that, if you cannot

bring yourself to recognize the justice of my claims, I shall no

longer be able to respect you as a Christian, a parent, or a man of

business.

GOTTHOLD BUDDENBROOK.

“You will excuse me for saying that I don’t get much pleasure out

of reading that rigmarole all over again.--_Voilà!_” And Johann

Buddenbrook tossed the letter to his son, with a contemptuous gesture.

The Consul picked it up as it fluttered to his feet, and looked

at his father with troubled eyes, while the old man took the long

candle-snuffers from their place by the window and with angry strides

crossed the room to the candelabrum in the corner.

“_Assez_, I say. _N’en parlons plus!_ To bed with you--_en avant!_” He

quenched one flame after another under the little metal cap. There were

only two candles left when the elder turned again to his son, whom he

could hardly see at the far end of the room.

“_Eh bien_--what are you standing there for? Why don’t you say

something?”

“What shall I say, Father? I am thoroughly taken aback.”

“You are pretty easily taken aback, then,” Johann Buddenbrook rapped

out irritably, though he knew that the reproach was far from being a

just one. His son was in fact often his superior when it came to a

quick decision upon the advantageous course.

“‘Damnable influences,’” the Consul quoted. “That is the first line

I can make out. Do you know how it makes me feel, Father? And he

reproaches us with ‘unchristian behaviour!’”

“You’ll let yourself be bluffed by this miserable scribble, will you?”

Johann Buddenbrook strode across to his son, dragging the extinguisher

on its long stick behind him. “‘Unchristian behaviour!’ Ha! He shows

good taste, doesn’t he, this canting money-grabber? I don’t know

what to make of you young people! Your heads are full of fantastic

religious humbug--practical idealism, the July Monarchy, and what not:

and we old folk are supposed to be wretched cynics. And then you abuse

your poor old Father in the coarsest way rather than give up a few

thousand thaler.... So he deigns to look down upon me as a business

man, does he? Well, as a business man, I know what _faux-frais_

are!--_Faux-frais_,” he repeated, rolling the _r_ in his throat. “I

sha’n’t make this high-falutin scamp of a son any fonder of me by

giving him what he asks for, it seems to me.”

“What can I say, Father? I don’t care to feel that he has any

justification when he talks of ‘influences.’ As an interested party I

don’t like to tell you to stick out, but-- It seems to me I’m as good a

Christian as Gotthold ... but still....”

“‘Still’--that is exactly it, Jean, you are right to say ‘still.’ What

is the real state of the case? He got infatuated with his Mademoiselle

Stüwing and wouldn’t listen to reason; he made scene after scene, and

finally he married her, after I had absolutely refused to give my

consent. Then I wrote to him: ‘_Mon très cher fils_: you are marrying

our shop--very well, that’s an end of it. We cease to be on friendly

terms from now on. I won’t cut you off, or do anything melodramatic. I

am sending you a hundred thousand marks as a wedding present, and I’ll

leave you another hundred thousand in my will. But that is absolutely

all you’ll get, not another shilling!’ That shut his mouth.--What have

our arrangements got to do with him? Suppose you and your sister do

get a bit more, and the house has been bought out of your share?”

“Father, surely you can understand how painful my position is! I ought

to advise you in the interest of family harmony--but....” The Consul

sighed. Johann Buddenbrook peered at him, in the dim light, to see what

his expression was. One of the two candles had gone out of itself; the

other was flickering. Every now and then a tall, smiling white figure

seemed to step momentarily out of the tapestry and then back again.

“Father,” said the Consul softly. “This affair with Gotthold depresses

me.”

“What’s all this sentimentality, Jean? How does it depress you?”

“We were all so happy here to-day, Father; we had a glorious

celebration, and we felt proud and glad of what we have accomplished,

and of having raised the family and firm to a position of honour and

respect.... But this bitter feud with my own brother, with your eldest

son, is like a hidden crack in the building we have erected. A family

should be united, Father. It must keep together. ‘A house divided

against itself will fall.’”

“There you are with your milk-and-water stuff, Jean! All I say is, he’s

an insolent young puppy.”

A pause ensued. The last candle burned lower and lower.

“What are you doing, Jean?” asked Johann Buddenbrook. “I can’t see you.”

The Consul said shortly, “I’m calculating.” He was standing erect, and

the expression in his eyes had changed. They had looked dreamy all

the evening; but now they stared into the candle-flame with a cold

sharp gaze. “Either you give thirty-three thousand, three hundred and

thirty-three marks to Gotthold, and fifteen thousand to the family

in Frankfort--that makes forty-eight thousand, three hundred and

thirty-five in all--or, you give nothing to Gotthold, and twenty-five

thousand to the family in Frankfort. That means a gain of twenty-three

thousand, three hundred and thirty-five for the firm. But there is more

to it than that. If you give Gotthold a compensation for the house,

you’ve started the ball rolling. He is likely to demand equal shares

with my sister and me after your death, which would mean a loss of

hundreds of thousands to the firm. The firm could not face it, and I,

as sole head, could not face it either.” He made a vigorous gesture and

drew himself more erect than before. “No, Papa,” he said, and his tone

bespoke finality, “I must advise you not to give in.”

“Bravo!” cried the old man. “There’s an end of it! _N’en parlons plus!

En avant!_ Let’s get to bed.”

And he extinguished the last candle. They groped through the pitch-dark

hall, and at the foot of the stairs they stopped and shook hands.

“Good night, Jean. And cheer up. These little worries aren’t anything.

See you at breakfast!”

The Consul went up to his rooms, and the old man felt his way along

the baluster and down to the entresol. Soon the rambling old house

lay wrapped in darkness and silence. Hopes, fears, and ambitions all

slumbered, while the rain fell and the autumn wind whistled around

gables and street corners.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

It was mid-April, two and a half years later. The spring was more

advanced than usual, and with the spring had come to the Buddenbrook

family a joy that made old Johann sing about the house and moved his

son to the depths of his heart.

The Consul sat at the big roll-top writing-desk in the window of the

breakfast-room, at nine o’clock one Sunday morning. He had before him

a stout leather portfolio stuffed with papers, from among which he had

drawn a gilt-edged notebook with an embossed cover, and was busily

writing in it in his small, thin, flowing script. His hand hurried over

the paper, never pausing except to dip his quill in the ink.

Both the windows were open, and the spring breeze wafted delicate

odours into the room, lifting the curtains gently. The garden was full

of young buds and bathed in tender sunshine; a pair of birds called and

answered each other pertly. The sunshine was strong, too, on the white

linen of the breakfast-table and the gilt-borders of the old china.

The folding doors into the bedroom were open, and the voice of old

Johann could be heard inside, singing softly to a quaint and ancient

tune:

A kind papa, a worthy man,

He rocks the baby in the cradle,

He feeds the children sugar-plums

And stirs the porridge with a ladle.

He sat beside the little green-curtained cradle, close to the Frau

Consul’s lofty bed, and rocked it softly with one hand. Madame

Antoinette, in a white lace cap and an apron over her striped frock,

was busy with flannel and linen at the table. The old couple had given

up their bedroom to the Frau Consul for the time being, to make things

easier for the servants, and were sleeping in the unused room in the

entresol.

Consul Buddenbrook gave scarcely a glance at the adjoining room, so

absorbed was he in his work. His face wore an expression of earnest,

almost suffering piety, his mouth slightly open, the chin a little

dropped; his eyes filled from time to time. He wrote:

“To-day, April 14, 1838, at six o’clock in the morning, my dear wife,

Elizabeth Buddenbrook, born Kröger, was, by God’s gracious help,

happily delivered of a daughter, who will receive the name of Clara

in Holy Baptism. Yea, the Lord hath holpen mightily; for according to

Doctor Grabow, the birth was somewhat premature, and her condition not

of the best. She suffered great pain. Oh, Lord God of Sabaoth, where

is there any other God save Thee? who helpest us in all our times of

need and danger, and teachest us to know Thy will aright, that we may

fear Thee and obey Thy commandments! O Lord, lead us and guide us all,

so long as we live upon this earth....” The pen hurried glibly over

the paper, with here and there a commercial flourish, talking with

God in every line. Two pages further on: “I have taken out,” it said,

“an insurance policy for my youngest daughter, of one hundred and

fifty thaler current. Lead her, O Lord, in Thy ways, give her a pure

heart, O God, that she may one day enter into the mansions of eternal

peace. For inasmuch as our weak human hearts are prone to forget Thy

priceless gift of the sweet, blessed Jesus....” And so on for three

pages. Then he wrote “Amen.” But still the faint scratching sound of

the pen went on, over several more pages. It wrote of the precious

spring that refreshes the tired wanderer, of the Saviour’s holy wounds

gushing blood, of the broad way and the narrow way, and the glory of

the Eternal God. It is true that after a while the Consul began to

feel that he had written enough; that he might let well enough alone,

and go in to see his wife, or out to the counting-house. Oh, fie, fie!

Did one so soon weary of communion with his Lord and Saviour? Was it

not robbing his God to scant Him of this service? No, he would go on,

as a chastisement for these unholy impulses. He cited whole pages of

Scripture, he prayed for his parents, his wife, his children, and

himself, he prayed even for his brother Gotthold. And then, with a last

quotation and three final “Amens,” he strewed sand on the paper and

leaned back with a sigh of relief.

He crossed one leg over the other and slowly turned the pages of the

notebook, reading dates and entries here and there, written in his own

hand, and thanking the Lord afresh as he saw how in every time of need

and danger He had stretched out His hand to aid. Once he had lain so

ill of small-pox that his life had been despaired of--yet it had been

saved. And once, when he was a boy, a beer-vat had fallen on him. A

large quantity of beer was being brewed for a wedding, in the old days

when the brewing was done at home; and a vat had fallen over, pinning

the boy beneath it. It had taken six people to lift it up again, and

his head had been crushed so that the blood ran down in streams. He

was carried into a shop, and, as he still breathed, the doctor and the

surgeon were sent for. They told the father to prepare for the worst

and to bow to the will of God. But the Almighty had blessed the work of

healing, and the boy was saved and restored to health. The Consul dwelt

a while upon this account, re-living the accident in his mind. Then he

took his pen again and wrote after his last “Amen”: “Yea, O God, I will

eternally praise Thee!”

Another time, his life had been saved from danger by water, when he had

gone to Bergen, as a young man. The account read:

“At high water, when the freight boats of the Northern Line are in,

we have great difficulty getting through the press to our landing. I

was standing on the edge of the scow, with my feet on the thole-pins,

leaning my back against the sailboat, trying to get the scow nearer in,

when, as luck would have it, the oak thole-pins broke, and I went head

over heels into the water. The first time I came up, nobody was near

enough to get hold of me; the second time, the scow went over my head.

There were plenty of people there anxious to save me, but they had to

keep the sailboat and the scow off, so that I should not come up under

them; and all their shoving would probably have been in vain if a rope

had not suddenly broken on one of the sailboats belonging to the Line,

so that she swung further out; and this, by the grace of God, gave me

room enough to come up in free water. It was only the top of my head,

with the hair, that they saw; but it was enough, for they were all

lying on their stomachs with their heads sticking out over the scow,

and the man at the bow grabbed me by the hair, and I got hold of his

arm. He was in an unsafe position himself and could not hold me, but he

gave a yell, and they all took hold of him around the waist and pulled.

I hung on, though he bit me to make me let go. So they got me in at

last.” There followed a long prayer of thanksgiving, which the Consul

re-read with tear-wet eyes.

On another page he had said: “I could write much more, were I minded

to reveal the passions of my youth....” The Consul passed over this,

and began to read here and there from the period of his marriage and

the birth of his first child. The union, to be frank, could hardly be

called a love-match. His father had tapped him on the shoulder and

pointed out to him the daughter of the wealthy Kröger, who could bring

the firm a splendid marriage portion. He had accepted the situation

with alacrity; and from the first moment had honoured his wife as the

mate entrusted to him by God.

After all, his father’s second marriage had been of much the same kind.

“‘A kind Papa, a worthy man.’”

He could still hear old Johann softly humming in the bedroom. What

a pity he had so little taste for those old records! He stood with

both feet firmly planted in the present, and concerned himself seldom

with the past of his family. Yet in times gone by he too had made a

few entries in the gilt-edged book. The Consul turned to those pages,

written in a florid hand on rather coarse paper that was already

yellowing with age. They were chiefly about his first marriage. Ah,

Johann Buddenbrook must have adored his first wife, the daughter of a

Bremen merchant! The one brief year it had been granted him to live

with her was the happiest of his life--“_l’année la plus heureuse de

ma vie_,” he had written there. The words were underlined with a wavy

line, for all the world, even Madame Antoinette, to see.

Then Gotthold had come, and Josephine had died. And here some strange

things had been written on the rough paper. Johann Buddenbrook must

have openly and bitterly hated his child, even when, while still in

the womb, it had caused its mother to faint and agonize under the

lusty burden. It was born strong and active, while Josephine buried

her bloodless face deeper in the pillows and passed away. Johann

never forgave the ruthless intruder. He grew up vigorous and pushing,

and Johann thought of him as his mother’s murderer. This was, to the

Consul’s mind, incomprehensible. She had died, he thought, fulfilling

the holy duty of a woman: “the love I bore to her would have passed

over in all its tenderness to her child,” he said to himself. It had

not been so. Later the father married again, his bride being Antoinette

Duchamps, the daughter of a rich and much-esteemed Hamburg family, and

the two had dwelt together with mutual respect and deference.

The Consul went on turning over the pages. There at the end were

written the small histories of his own children: how Tom had had the

measles, and Antonie jaundice, and Christian chicken-pox. There were

accounts of various journeys he had taken with his wife, to Paris,

Switzerland, Marienbad. Then the Consul turned back to the front

of the book, to some pages written in bluish ink, in a hand full of

flourishes, on paper that was like parchment, but tattered and spotted

with age. Here his grandfather Johann had set down the genealogy of the

main branch of the Buddenbrooks. At the end of the sixteenth century,

the first Buddenbrook of whom they had knowledge lived in Parchim, and

his son had been a Senator of Grabau. Another Buddenbrook, a tailor

by trade, and “very well-to-do” (this was underlined) had married in

Rostock and begotten an extraordinary number of children, who lived or

died, as the case might be. And again, another, this time a Johann,

had lived in Rostock as a merchant, from whom the Consul’s grandfather

had descended, who had left Rostock to settle himself in this very

town, and was the founder of the present grain business. There was much

about him set down in detail: when he had had the purples, and when

genuine small-pox; when he had fallen out of the malt-kiln and been

miraculously saved, when he might have fallen against the beams and

been crushed; how he had had fever and been delirious--all these events

were meticulously described. He had also written down wise admonitions

for the benefit of his descendants, like the following, which was

carefully painted and framed, in a tall Gothic script set off with a

border: “My son, attend with zeal to thy business by day; but do none

that hinders thee from thy sleep by night.” He had also stated that his

old Wittenberg Bible was to descend to his eldest son, and thence from

first-born to first-born in each generation.

Consul Buddenbrook reached for the old leather portfolio and took

out the remaining documents. There were letters, on torn and yellow

paper, written by anxious mothers to their sons abroad--which the

sons had docketed: “Received and contents duly noted.” There were

citizens’ papers, with the seal and crest of the free Hansa town;

insurance policies; letters inviting this or that Buddenbrook to

become god-father for a colleague’s child; congratulatory epistles

and occasional poems. Sons travelling for the firm to Stockholm or

Amsterdam had written back, to the parent or partner at home, letters

in which business was touchingly mingled with inquiries after wife

and child. There was a separate diary of the Consul’s journey through

England and Brabant; the cover had an engraving of Edinburgh Castle and

the Grass-market. Lastly, there were Gotthold’s late angry letters to

his father--painful documents, to offset which was the poem written by

Jean Jacques Hoffstede to celebrate the house-warming.

A faint, rapid chime came from above the secretary, where there hung a

dull-looking painting of an old market square, with a church-tower that

possessed a real clock of its own. It was now striking the hour, in

authentic if tiny tones. The Consul closed the portfolio and stowed it

away carefully in a drawer at the back of the desk. Then he went into

the bed-chamber.

Here the walls and the high old bed were hung with dark-flowered

chintz, and there was in the air a feeling of repose, of

convalescence--of calm after an anxious and painful ordeal. A mingled

odour of cologne and drugs hung in the mild, dim-lighted atmosphere.

The old pair bent over the cradle side by side and watched the

slumbering child; and the Consul’s wife lay pale and happy, in an

exquisite lace jacket, her hair carefully dressed. As she put out her

hand to her husband, her gold bracelets tinkled slightly. She had a

characteristic way of stretching out her hand with the palm upward, in

a sweeping gesture that gave it added graciousness.

“Well, Betsy, how are you?”

“Splendid, splendid, my dear Jean.”

He still held her hand as he bent over and looked at the child, whose

rapid little breaths were distinctly audible. For a moment he inhaled

the tender warmth and the indescribable odour of well-being and

cherishing care that came up from the cradle. Then he kissed the little

creature on the brow and said softly: “God bless you!” He noticed how

like to a bird’s claws were the tiny yellow, crumpled fingers.

“She eats splendidly,” Madame Antoinette said. “See how she has gained.”

“I believe, on my soul, she looks like Netta,” old Johann said, beaming

with pride and pleasure. “See what coal-black eyes she has!”

The old lady waved him away. “How can anybody tell who she looks like

yet?” she said. “Are you going to church, Jean?”

“Yes, it is ten o’clock now, and high time. I am only waiting for the

children.”

The children were already making an unseemly noise on the stairs, and

Clothilde could be heard telling them to hush. They came in in their

fur tippets--for it would still be wintry in St. Mary’s--trying to be

soft and gentle in the sick-room. They wanted to see the little sister,

and then go to church. Their faces were rosy with excitement. This was

a wonderful red-letter day, for the stork had brought not only the baby

sister, but all sorts of presents as well. How tremendously strong the

stork must be, to carry all that! There was a new seal-skin school-bag

for Tom, a big doll for Antonie, that had real hair--imagine that!--for

Christian a complete toy theatre, with the Sultan, Death, and the

Devil; and a book with pictures for demure Clothilde, who accepted it

with thanks, but was more interested in the bag of sweeties that fell

to her lot as well.

They kissed their mother, and were allowed a peep under the green

curtains of the baby’s bed. Then off they went with their father, who

had put on his fur coat and taken the hymn book. They were followed by

the piercing cry of the new member of the family, who had just waked

up.

CHAPTER II

Early in the summer, sometimes as early as May or June, Tony

Buddenbrook always went on a visit to her grandparents, who lived

outside the Castle Gate. This was a great pleasure.

For life was delightful out there in the country, in the luxurious

villa with its many outbuildings, servants’ quarters and stables, and

its great parterres, orchards, and kitchen-gardens, which ran steeply

down to the river Trave. The Krögers lived in the grand style; there

was a difference between their brilliant establishment and the solid,

somewhat heavy comfort of the paternal home, which was obvious at a

glance, and which impressed very much the young Demoiselle Buddenbrook.

Here there was no thought of duties in house or kitchen. In the

Mengstrasse, though her Mother and Grandfather did not seem to think it

important, her Father and her Grandmother were always telling her to

remember her dusting, and holding up Clothilde as an example. The old

feudal feeling of her Mother’s side of the family came out strongly in

the little maid: one could see how she issued her orders to the footman

or the abigail--and to her Grandmother’s servants and her Grandfather’s

coachman as well.

Say what you will, it is pleasant to awake every morning in a large,

gaily tapestried bed-chamber, and with one’s first movements to

feel the soft satin of the coverlet under one’s hand; to take early

breakfast in the balcony room, with the sweet fresh air coming up

from the garden through the open glass door; to drink, instead of

coffee, a cup of chocolate handed one on a tray--yes, proper birthday

chocolate, with a thick slice of fresh cup-cake! True, she had to eat

her breakfast alone, except on Sundays, for her grandparents never came

down until long after she had gone to school. When she had munched her

cake and drunk her chocolate, she would snatch up her satchel and trip

down the terrace and through the well-kept front garden.

She was very dainty, this little Tony Buddenbrook. Under her straw hat

curled a wealth of blonde hair, slowly darkening with the years. Lively

grey-blue eyes and a pouting upper lip gave her fresh face a roguish

look, borne out by the poise of her graceful little figure; even the

slender legs, in their immaculate white stockings, trotted along over

the ground with an unmistakable air of ease and assurance. People knew

and greeted the young daughter of Consul Buddenbrook as she came out

of the garden gate and up the chestnut-bordered avenue. Perhaps an old

market-woman, driving her little cart in from the village, would nod

her head in its big flat straw hat with its light-green ribbons, and

call out “Mornin’, little missy!” Or Matthiesen the porter, in his wide

knee-breeches, white hose, and buckled shoes, would respectfully take

off his hat as she passed.

Tony always waited for her neighbour, little Julie Hagenström; the two

children went to school together. Julie was a high-shouldered child,

with large, staring black eyes, who lived close by in a vine-covered

house. Her people had not been long in the neighbourhood. The father,

Herr Hagenström, had married a wife from Hamburg, with thick, heavy

black hair and larger diamonds in her ears than any one had ever seen

before. Her name was Semlinger. Hagenström was partner in the export

firm of Strunck and Hagenström. He showed great zeal and ambition in

municipal affairs, and was always acting on boards and committees and

administrative bodies. But he was not very popular. His marriage had

rather affronted the rigid traditions of the older families, like the

Möllendorpfs, Langhals, and Buddenbrooks; and, for another thing,

he seemed to enjoy thwarting their ideas at every turn--he would

go to work in an underhand way to oppose their interests, in order

to show his own superior foresight and energy. “Heinrich Hagenström

makes trouble the whole time,” the Consul would say. “He seems to

take a personal pleasure in thwarting me. To-day he made a scene at

the sitting of the Central Paupers’ Deputation; and a few days ago

in the Finance Department....” “The old skunk!” Johann Buddenbrook

interjected. Another time, father and son sat down to table angry

and depressed. What was the matter? Oh, nothing. They had lost a big

consignment of rye for Holland: Strunck and Hagenström had snapped it

up under their noses. He was a fox, Heinrich Hagenström.

Tony had often heard such remarks, and she was not too well disposed

toward Julie Hagenström; the two children walked together because they

were neighbours, but usually they quarrelled.

“My Father owns a thousand thalers,” said Julchen. She thought she was

uttering the most terrible falsehood. “How much does yours?”

Tony was speechless with envy and humiliation. Then she said, with a

quiet, off-hand manner: “My chocolate tasted delicious this morning.

What do you have for breakfast, Julie?”

“Before I forget it,” Julie would rejoin, “would you like one of my

apples? Well, I won’t give you any!” She pursed up her lips, and her

black eyes watered with satisfaction.

Sometimes Julie’s brother Hermann went to school at the same time with

the two girls. There was another brother too, named Moritz, but he

was sickly and did his lessons at home. Hermann was fair-haired and

snub-nosed. He breathed through his mouth and was always smacking his

lips.

“Stuff and nonsense!” he would say. “Papa has a lot more than a

thousand thaler.” He interested Tony because of the luncheon he took

to school: not bread, but a soft sort of lemon bun with currants in

it, and sausage or smoked goose between. It seemed to be his favourite

luncheon. Tony had never seen anything like it before. Lemon bun, with

smoked goose--it must be wonderful! He let her look into his box, and

she asked if she might have some. Hermann said: “Not to-day, Tony,

because I can’t spare any. But to-morrow I’ll bring another piece for

you, if you’ll give me something.”

Next morning, Tony came out into the avenue, but there was no Julie.

She waited five minutes, but there was no sign. Another minute--there

came Hermann alone, swinging his lunch-box by the strap and smacking

his lips.

“Now,” he said, “here’s a bun, with some goose between--all lean;

there’s not a bit of fat to it. What will you give me for it?”

“A shilling?” suggested Tony. They were standing in the middle of the

avenue.

“A shilling?” repeated Hermann. Then he gave a gulp and said, “No, I

want something else.”

“What?” demanded Tony; for she was prepared to pay a good price for the

dainty.

“A kiss!” shouted Hermann Hagenström. He flung his arms around Tony,

and began kissing at random, never once touching her face, for she

flung her head back with surprising agility, pushed him back with her

left hand--it was holding her satchel--against his breast, while with

her right hand she dealt him three or four blows in the face with all

her strength. He stumbled backward; but at that moment sister Julie

appeared from behind a tree, like a little black demon, and, falling

upon Tony, tore off her hat and scratched her cheeks unmercifully.

After this affair, naturally, the friendship was about at an end.

It was hardly out of shyness that Tony had refused the kiss. She was

on the whole a forward damsel, and had given the Consul no little

disquiet with her tomboy ways. She had a good little head, and did as

well in the school as one could desire; but her conduct in other ways

was far from satisfactory. Things even went so far that one day the

school-mistress, a certain Fräulein Agathe Vermehren, felt obliged to

call upon the Frau Consul, and, flushed with embarrassment, to suggest

with all due politeness that the child should receive a paternal

admonition. It seemed that Tony, despite frequent correction, had been

guilty, not for the first time, of creating a disturbance in the street!

There was, of course, no harm in the fact that the child knew

everybody in town. The Consul quite approved of this, and argued that

it displayed love of one’s neighbour, a sense of human fellowship,

and a lack of snobbishness. So Tony, on her way through the streets,

chattered with all and sundry. She and Tom would clamber about

in the granaries on the water-side, among the piles of oats and

wheat, prattling to the labourers and the clerks in the dark little

ground-floor offices; they would even help haul up the sacks of grain.

She knew the butchers with their trays and aprons, when she met them

in Broad Street; she accosted the dairy women when they came in from

the country, and made them take her a little way in their carts. She

knew the grey-bearded craftsmen who sat in the narrow goldsmiths’

shops built into the arcades in the market square; and she knew the

fish-wives, the fruit- and vegetable-women, and the porters that stood

on the street corners chewing their tobacco.

So far, this was very well. But it was not all.

There was a pale, beardless man, of no particular age, who was often

seen wandering up and down Broad Street with a wistful smile on his

face. This man was so nervous that he jumped every time he heard a

sudden noise behind him; and Tony delighted in making him jump every

time she set eyes on him. Then there was an odd, tiny little woman

with a large head, who put up a huge tattered umbrella at every sign

of a storm. Tony would harass this poor soul with cries of “Mushroom!”

whenever she had the chance. Moreover, she and two or three more of her

ilk would go to the door of a tiny house in an alley off John Street,

where there lived an old woman who did a tiny trade in worsted dolls;

they would ring the bell and, when the old dame appeared, inquire with

deceptive courtesy, if Herr and Frau Spittoon were at home--and then

run away screaming with laughter. All these ragamuffinly tricks Tony

Buddenbrook was guilty of--indeed, she seemed to perform them with the

best conscience in the world. If one of her victims threatened her,

she would step back a pace or two, toss her pretty head, pout with her

pretty lip, and say “Pooh!” in a half mocking, half angry tone which

meant: “Try it if you like. I am Consul Buddenbrook’s daughter, if you

don’t know!”

Thus she went about in the town like a little queen; and like a queen,

she was kind or cruel to her subjects, as the whim seized her.

CHAPTER III

Jean Jacques Hoffstede’s verdict on the two sons of Consul Buddenbrook

undoubtedly hit the mark.

Thomas had been marked from the cradle as a merchant and future member

of the firm. He was on the modern side of the old school which the boys

attended; an able, quick-witted, intelligent lad, always ready to laugh

when his brother Christian mimicked the masters, which he did with

uncanny facility. Christian, on the classical side, was not less gifted

than Tom, but he was less serious. His special and particular joy in

life was the imitation, in speech and manner, of a certain worthy

Marcellus Stengel, who taught drawing, singing, and some other of the

lighter branches.

This Herr Marcellus Stengel always had a round half-dozen beautifully

sharpened pencils sticking out of his pocket. He wore a red wig and

a light-brown coat that reached nearly down to his ankles; also a

choker collar that came up almost to his temples. He was quite a wit,

and loved to play with verbal distinctions, as: “You were to make a

line, my child, and what have you made? You have made a dash!” In

singing-class, his favourite lesson was “The Forest Green.” When they

sang this, some of the pupils would go outside in the corridor; and

then, when the chorus rose inside: “We ramble so gaily through field

and wood,” those outside would repeat the last word very softly, as an

echo. Once Christian Buddenbrook, his cousin Jürgen Kröger, and his

chum Andreas Gieseke, the son of the Fire Commissioner, were deputed as

echo; but when the moment came, they threw the coal-scuttle downstairs

instead, and were kept in after school by Herr Stengel in consequence.

But alas, by that time Herr Stengel had forgotten their crime. He bade

his housekeeper give them each a cup of coffee, and then dismissed them.

In truth, they were all admirable scholars, the masters who taught in

the cloisters of the old school--once a monastic foundation--under

the guidance of a kindly, snuff-taking old head. They were, to a man,

well-meaning and sweet-humoured; and they were one in the belief

that knowledge and good cheer are not mutually exclusive. The Latin

classes in the middle forms were heard by a former preacher, one Pastor

Shepherd, a tall man with brown whiskers and a twinkling eye, who joyed

extremely in the happy coincidence of his name and calling, and missed

no chance of having the boys translate the word _pastor_. His favourite

expression was “boundlessly limited”; but it was never quite clear

whether this was actually meant for a joke or not! When he wanted to

dumbfound his pupils altogether, he would draw in his lips and blow

them quickly out again, with a noise like the popping of a champagne

cork. He would go up and down with long strides in his class-room,

prophesying to one boy or another, with great vividness, the course

which his life would take. He did this avowedly with the purpose of

stimulating their imaginations; and then he would set to work seriously

on the business in hand, which was to repeat certain verses on the

rules of gender and difficult constructions. He had composed these

verses himself, with no little skill, and took much pride in declaiming

them, with great attention to rhyme and rhythm.

Thus passed Tom’s and Christian’s boyhood, with no great events to mark

its course. There was sunshine in the Buddenbrook family, and in the

office everything went famously. Only now and again there would be a

sudden storm, a trifling mishap, like the following:

Herr Stuht the tailor had made a new suit for each of the Buddenbrook

lads. Herr Stuht lived in Bell-Founders’ Street. He was a master

tailor, and his wife bought and sold old clothes, and thus moved in

the best circles of society. Herr Stuht himself had an enormous

belly, which hung down over his legs, wrapped in a flannel shirt. The

suits he made for the young Masters Buddenbrook were at the combined

cost of seventy marks; but at the boys’ request he had consented

to put them down in the bill at eighty marks and to hand them the

difference. It was just a little arrangement among themselves--not

very honourable, indeed, but then, not very uncommon either. However,

fate was unkind, and the bargain came to light. Herr Stuht was sent

for to the Consul’s office, whither he came, with a black coat over

his woollen shirt, and stood there while the Consul subjected Tom and

Christian to a severe cross-examination. His head was bowed and his

legs far apart, his manner vastly respectful. He tried to smooth things

over as much as he could for the young gentlemen, and said that what

was done was done, and he would be satisfied with the seventy marks.

But the Consul was greatly incensed by the trick. He gave it long

and serious consideration; yet finally ended by increasing the lads’

pocket-money--for was it not written: “Lead us not into temptation?”

It seemed probable that more might be expected from Thomas Buddenbrook

than from his brother Christian. He was even-tempered, and his high

spirits never crossed the bounds of discretion. Christian, on the other

hand, was inclined to be moody: guilty at times of the most extravagant

silliness, at others he would be seized by a whim which could terrify

the rest of them in the most astonishing way.

The family are at table eating dessert and conversing pleasantly the

while. Suddenly Christian turns pale and puts back on his plate the

peach into which he has just bitten. His round, deep-set eyes, above

the too-large nose, have opened wider.

“I will never eat another peach,” he says.

“Why not, Christian? What nonsense! What’s the matter?”

“Suppose I accidentally--suppose I swallowed the stone, and it stuck

in my throat, so I couldn’t breathe, and I jumped up, strangling

horribly--and all of you jump up-- Ugh...!” and he suddenly gives a

short groan, full of horror and affright, starts up in his chair, and

acts as if he were trying to escape.

The Frau Consul and Ida Jungmann actually do jump up.

“Heavens, Christian!--you haven’t swallowed it, have you?” For his

whole appearance suggests that he has.

“No,” says Christian slowly. “No”--he is gradually quieting down--“I

only mean, suppose I actually _had_ swallowed it!”

The Consul has been pale with fright, but he recovers and begins to

scold. Old Johann bangs his fist on the table and forbids any more of

these idiotic practical jokes. But Christian, for a long, long time,

eats no more peaches.

CHAPTER IV

It was not simply the weakness of age that made Madame Antoinette

Buddenbrook take to her lofty bed in the bed-chamber of the entresol,

one cold January day after they had dwelt some six years in Meng

Street. The old lady had remained hale and active, and carried her

head, with its clustering white side-curls, proudly erect to the very

last. She had gone with her husband and children to most of the large

dinners given in the town, and presided no whit less elegantly than

her daughter-in-law when the Buddenbrooks themselves entertained.

But one day an indefinable malady had suddenly made itself felt--at

first in the form of a slight intestinal catarrh, for which Dr. Grabow

prescribed a mild diet of pigeon and French bread. This had been

followed by colic and vomiting, which reduced her strength so rapidly

as to bring about an alarming decline.

Dr. Grabow held hurried speech with the Consul, outside on the landing,

and another doctor was called in consultation--a stout, black-bearded,

gloomy-looking man who began going in and out with Dr. Grabow. And now

the whole atmosphere of the house changed. They went about on their

tip-toes and spoke in whispers. The wagons were no longer allowed to

roll through the great entry-way below. They looked in each others’

eyes and saw there something strange. It was the idea of death that had

entered, and was holding silent sway in the spacious rooms.

But there was no idle watching, for visitors came: old Senator

Duchamps, the dying woman’s brother, from Hamburg, with his daughter;

and a few days later, the Consul’s sister from Frankfort and her

husband, who was a banker. The illness lasted fourteen or fifteen

days, during which the guests lived in the house, and Ida Jungmann

had her hands full attending to the bedrooms and providing heavy

breakfasts, with shrimps and port wine. Much roasting and baking went

on in the kitchen.

Upstairs, Johann Buddenbrook sat by the sick-bed, his old Netta’s limp

hand in his, and stared into space with his brows knitted and his

lower lip hanging. A clock hung on the wall and ticked dully, with

long pauses between; not so long, however, as the pauses between the

dying woman’s fluttering breaths. A black-robed sister of mercy busied

herself about the beef-tea which they still sought to make the patient

take. Now and then some member of the family would appear at the door

and disappear again.

Perhaps the old man was thinking how he had sat at the death-bed of his

first wife, forty-six years before. Perhaps he recalled his frenzy of

despair and contrasted it with the gentle melancholy which he felt now,

as an old man, gazing into the face of his old wife--a face so changed,

so listless, so void of expression. She had never given him either a

great joy or a great sorrow; but she had decorously played her part

beside him for many a long year--and now her life was ebbing away.

He was not thinking a great deal. He was only looking with fixed gaze

back into his own past life and at life in general. It all seemed to

him now quite strange and far away, and he shook his head a little.

That empty noise and bustle, in the midst of which he had once stood,

had flowed away imperceptibly and left him standing there, listening

in wonder to sounds that died upon his ear. “Strange, strange,” he

murmured.

Madame Buddenbrook breathed her last brief, effortless sigh; and they

prayed by her side in the dining-room, where the service was held;

and the bearers lifted the flower-covered coffin to carry it away.

But old Johann did not weep. He only gave the same gentle, bewildered

head-shake, and said, with the same half-smiling look: “Strange,

strange!” It became his most frequent expression. Plainly, the time for

old Johann too was near at hand.

He would sit silent and absent in the family circle; sometimes with

little Clara on his knee, to whom he would sing one of his droll

catches, like

“The omnibus drives through the town”

or perhaps

“Look at the blue-fly a-buzzin’ on the wall.”

But he might suddenly stop in the middle, like one aroused out of a

train of thought, put the child down on the floor, and move away, with

his little head-shake and murmur “Strange, strange!” One day he said:

“Jean--it’s about time, eh?”

It was soon afterward that neatly printed notices signed by father

and son were sent about through the town, in which Johann Buddenbrook

senior respectfully begged leave to announce that his increasing years

obliged him to give up his former business activities, and that in

consequence the firm of Johann Buddenbrook, founded by his late father

anno 1768, would as from that day be transferred, with its assets and

liabilities, to his son and former partner Johann Buddenbrook as sole

proprietor; for whom he solicited a continuance of the confidence

so widely bestowed upon him. Signed, with deep respect, Johann

Buddenbrook--who would from now on cease to append his signature to

business papers.

These announcements were no sooner sent out than the old man refused

to set foot in the office; and his apathy so increased that it took

only the most trifling cold to send him to bed, one March day two

months after the death of his wife. One night more--then came the hour

when the family gathered round his bed and he spoke to them: first

to the Consul: “Good luck, Jean, and keep your courage up!” And then

to Thomas: “Be a help to your Father, Tom!” And to Christian: “Be

something worth while!” Then he was silent, gazing at them all; and

finally, with a last murmured “Strange!” he turned his face to the

wall....

To the very end, he did not speak of Gotthold, and the latter

encountered with silence the Consul’s written summons to his father’s

death-bed. But early the next morning, before the announcements were

sent out, as the Consul was about to go into the office to attend to

some necessary business, Gotthold Buddenbrook, proprietor of the linen

firm of Siegmund Stüwing and Company, came with rapid steps through

the entry. He was forty-six years old, broad and stocky, and had thick

ash-blond whiskers streaked with grey. His short legs were cased in

baggy trousers of rough checked material. On the steps he met the

Consul, and his eyebrows went up under the brim of his grey hat.

He did not put out his hand. “Johann,” he said, in a high-pitched,

rather agreeable voice, “how is he?”

“He passed away last night,” the Consul said, with deep emotion,

grasping his brother’s hand, which held an umbrella. “The best of

fathers!”

Gotthold drew down his brows now, so low that the lids nearly closed.

After a silence, he said pointedly: “Nothing was changed up to the end?”

The Consul let his hand drop and stepped back. His round, deep-set blue

eyes flashed as he answered, “Nothing.”

Gotthold’s eyebrows went up again under his hat, and his eyes fixed

themselves on his brother with an expression of suspense.

“And what have I to expect from your sense of justice?” he asked in a

lower voice.

It was the Consul’s turn to look away. Then, without lifting his eyes,

he made that downward gesture with his hand that always betokened

decision; and in a quiet voice, but firmly, he answered:

“In this sad and solemn moment I have offered you my brotherly hand.

But if it is your intention to speak of business matters, then I can

only reply in my capacity as head of the honourable firm whose sole

proprietor I have to-day become. You can expect from me nothing that

runs counter to the duties I have to-day assumed; all other feelings

must be silent.”

Gotthold went away. But he came to the funeral, among the host of

relatives, friends, business associates, deputies, clerks, porters,

and labourers that filled the house, the stairs, and the corridors to

overflowing and assembled all the hired coaches in town in a long row

all the way down the Mengstrasse. Gotthold came, to the sincere joy of

the Consul. He even brought his wife, born Stüwing, and his three grown

daughters: Friederike and Henriette, who were too tall and thin, and

Pfiffi, who was eighteen, and too short and fat.

Pastor Kölling of St. Mary’s, a heavy man with a bullet head and

a rough manner of speaking, held the service at the grave, in the

Buddenbrook family burying-ground, outside the Castle Gate, at the

edge of the cemetery grove. He extolled the godly, temperate life of

the deceased and compared it with that of “gluttons, drunkards, and

profligates”--over which strong language some of the congregation

shook their heads, thinking of the tact and moderation of their old

Pastor Wunderlich, who had lately died. When the service and the burial

were over, and the seventy or eighty hired coaches began to roll back

to town, Gotthold Buddenbrook asked the Consul’s permission to go

with him, that they might speak together in private. He sat with his

brother on the back seat of the high, ungainly old coach, one short

leg crossed over the other--and, wonderful to relate, he was gentle

and conciliatory. He realized more and more, he said, that the Consul

was bound to act as he was doing; and he was determined to cherish

no bitter memories of his father. He renounced the claims he had put

forward, the more readily that he had decided to retire from business

and live upon his inheritance and what capital he had left; for he

had no joy of the linen business, and it was going so indifferently

that he could not bring himself to put any more money into it.... “His

spite against our Father brought him no blessing,” the Consul thought

piously. Probably Gotthold thought so too.

When they got back, he went with his brother up to the breakfast-room;

and as both gentlemen felt rather chilly, after standing so long in

their dress-coats in the early spring air, they drank a glass of old

cognac together. Then Gotthold exchanged a few courteous words with

his sister-in-law, stroked the children’s heads, and went away. But

he appeared at the next “children’s day,” which took place at the

Krögers’, outside the Castle Gate. And he began to wind up his business

at once.

CHAPTER V

It grieved the Consul sorely that the grandfather had not lived to see

the entry of his grandson into the business--an event which took place

at Easter-time of the same year.

Thomas had left school at sixteen. He was grown strong and sturdy, and

his manly clothes made him look still older. He had been confirmed,

and Pastor Kölling, in stentorian tones, had enjoined upon him to

practice the virtues of moderation. A gold chain, bequeathed him by

his grandfather, now hung about his neck, with the family arms on a

medallion at the end--a rather dismal design, showing on an irregularly

hatched surface a flat stretch of marshy country with one solitary,

leafless willow tree. The old seal ring with the green stone, once

worn, in all probability, by the well-to-do tailor in Rostock, had

descended to the Consul, together with the great Bible.

Thomas’s likeness to his grandfather was as strong as Christian’s to

his father. The firm round chin was the old man’s, and the straight,

well-chiselled nose. Thomas wore his hair parted on one side, and it

receded in two bays from his narrow veined temples. His eyelashes were

colourless by contrast, and so were the eyebrows, one of which he had

a habit of lifting expressively. His speech, his movements, even his

laugh, which showed his rather defective teeth, were all quiet and

adequate. He already looked forward seriously and eagerly to his career.

It was indeed a solemn moment when, after early breakfast, the Consul

led him down into the office and introduced him to Herr Marcus the

confidential clerk, Herr Havermann the cashier, and the rest of the

staff, with all of whom, naturally, he had long been on the best of

terms. For the first time he sat at his desk, in his own revolving

chair, absorbed in copying, stamping, and arranging papers. In the

afternoon his father took him through the magazines on the Trave, each

one of which had a special name, like the “Linden,” the “Oak,” the

“Lion,” the “Whale.” Tom was thoroughly at home in every one of them,

of course, but now for the first time he entered them to be formally

introduced as a fellow worker.

He entered upon his tasks with devotion, imitating the quiet, tenacious

industry of his father, who was working with his jaws set, and writing

down many a prayer for help in his private diary. For the Consul had

set himself the task of making good the sums paid out by the firm

on the occasion of his father’s death. It was a conception ... an

ideal.... He explained the position quite fully to his wife late one

evening in the landscape-room.

It was half-past eleven, and Mamsell Jungmann and the children were

already asleep in the corridor rooms. No one slept in the second storey

now--it was empty save for an occasional guest. The Frau Consul sat on

the yellow sofa beside her husband, and he, cigar in mouth, was reading

the financial columns of the local paper. She bent over her embroidery,

moving her lips as she counted a row of stitches with her needle. Six

candles burned in a candelabrum on the slender sewing-table beside her,

and the chandelier was unlighted.

Johann Buddenbrook was nearing the middle forties, and had visibly

altered in the last years. His little round eyes seemed to have sunk

deeper in his head, his cheek-bones and his large aquiline nose

stood out more prominently than ever, and the ash-blond hair seemed

to have been just touched with a powder-puff where it parted on the

temples. The Frau Consul was at the end of her thirties, but, while

never beautiful, was as brilliant as ever; her dead-white skin, with a

single freckle here and there, had lost none of its splendour, and the

candle-light shone on the rich red-blond hair that was as wonderfully

dressed as ever. Giving her husband a sidelong glance with her clear

blue eyes, she said:

“Jean, I wanted to ask you to consider something: if it would not

perhaps be advisable to engage a man-servant. I have just been coming

to that conclusion. When I think of my parents--”

The Consul let his paper drop on his knee and took his cigar out of his

mouth. A shrewd look came into his eyes: here was a question of money

to be paid out.

“My dear Betsy,” he said--and he spoke as deliberately as possible, to

gain time to muster his excuses--“do you think we need a man-servant?

Since my parents’ death we have kept on all three maids, not counting

Mamsell Jungmann. It seems to me--”

“Oh, but the house is so big, Jean. We can hardly get along as it is.

I say to Line, ‘Line, it’s a fearfully long time since the rooms in

the annexe were dusted’; but I don’t like to drive the girls too hard;

they have their work cut out to keep everything clean and tidy here in

the front. And a man-servant would be so useful for errands and so on.

We could find some honest man from the country, who wouldn’t expect

much.... Oh, before I forget it--Louise Möllendorpf is letting her

Anton go. I’ve seen him serve nicely at table.”

“To tell you the truth,” said the Consul, and shuffled about a little

uneasily, “it is a new idea to me. We aren’t either entertaining or

going out just now--”

“No, but we have visitors very often--for which I am not responsible,

Jean, as you know, though of course I am always glad to see them. You

have a business friend from somewhere, and you invite him to dinner.

Then he has not taken a room at a hotel, so we ask him to stop the

night. A missionary comes, and stops the week with us. Week after next,

Pastor Mathias is coming from Kannstadt. And the wages amount to so

little--”

“But they mount up, Betsy! We have four people here in the house--and

think of the pay-roll the firm has!”

“So we really can’t afford a man-servant?” the Frau Consul asked. She

smiled as she spoke, and looked at her husband with her head on one

side. “When I think of all the servants my Father and Mother had--”

“My dear Betsy! Your parents-- I really must ask you if you understand

our financial position?”

“No, Jean, I must admit I do not. I’m afraid I have only a vague idea--”

“Well, I can tell you in a few words,” the Consul said. He sat up

straight on the sofa, with one knee crossed over the other, puffed at

his cigar, knit his brows a little, and marshalled his figures with

wonderful fluency.

“To put it briefly, my Father had, before my sister’s marriage, a round

sum of nine hundred thousand marks net, not counting, of course, real

estate, and the stock and good will of the firm. Eighty thousand went

to Frankfort as dowry, and a hundred thousand to set Gotthold up in

business. That leaves seven hundred and twenty thousand. The price

of this house, reckoning off what we got for the little one in Alf

Street, and counting all the improvements and new furnishings, came to

a good hundred thousand. That brings it down to six hundred and twenty

thousand. Twenty-five thousand to Frankfort, as compensation on the

house, leaves five hundred and ninety-five thousand--which is what we

should have had at Father’s death if we hadn’t partly made up for all

these expenses through years, by a profit of some two hundred thousand

marks current. The entire capital amounted to seven hundred and

ninety-five thousand marks, of which another hundred thousand went to

Gotthold, and a few thousand marks for the minor legacies that Father

left to the Holy Ghost Hospital, the Fund for Tradesmen’s Widows, and

so on. That brings us down to around four hundred and twenty thousand,

or another hundred thousand with your own dowry. There is the position,

in round figures, aside from small fluctuations in the capital. You

see, my dear Betsy, we are not rich. And while the capital has grown

smaller, the running expenses have not; for the whole business is

established on a certain scale, which it costs about so much to

maintain. Have you followed me?”

The Consul’s wife, her needlework in her lap, nodded with some

hesitation. “Quite so, my dear Jean,” she said, though she was far from

having understood everything, least of all what these big figures had

to do with her engaging a man-servant.

The Consul puffed at his cigar till it glowed, threw back his head and

blew out the smoke, and then went on:

“You are thinking, of course, that when God calls your dear parents

unto Himself, we shall have a considerable sum to look forward to--and

so we shall. But we must not reckon too blindly on it. Your Father has

had some heavy losses, due, we all know, to your brother Justus. Justus

is certainly a charming personality, but business is not his strong

point, and he has had bad luck too. According to all accounts he has

had to pay up pretty heavily, and transactions with bankers make dear

money. Your Father has come to the rescue several times, to prevent

a smash. That sort of thing may happen again--to speak frankly, I am

afraid it will. You will forgive me, Betsy, for my plain speaking,

but you know that the style of living which is so proper and pleasing

in your Father is not at all suitable for a business man. Your Father

has nothing to do with business any more; but Justus--you know what I

mean--he isn’t very careful, is he? His ideas are too large, he is too

impulsive. And your parents aren’t saving anything. They live a lordly

life--as their circumstances permit them to.”

The Frau Consul smiled forbearingly. She well knew her husband’s

opinion of the luxurious Kröger tastes.

“That’s all,” he said, and put his cigar into the ash-receiver. “As

far as I’m concerned, I live in the hope that God will preserve my

powers unimpaired, and that by His gracious help I may succeed in

reëstablishing the firm on its old basis.... I hope you see the thing

more clearly now, Betsy?”

“Quite, quite, my dear Jean,” the Frau Consul hastened to reply; for

she had given up the man-servant, for the evening. “Shall we go to bed?

It is very late--”

A few days later, when the Consul came in to dinner in an unusually

good mood, they decided at the table to engage the Möllendorpfs’ Anton.

CHAPTER VI

“We shall put Tony into Fräulein Weichbrodt’s boarding-school,” said

the Consul. He said it with such decision that so it was.

Thomas was applying himself with talent to the business; Clara was a

thriving, lively child; and the appetite of the good Clothilde must

have pleased any heart alive. But Tony and Christian were hardly so

satisfactory. It was not only that Christian had to stop nearly every

afternoon for coffee with Herr Stengel--though even this became at

length too much for the Frau Consul, and she sent a dainty missive

to the master, summoning him to conference in Meng Street. Herr

Stengel appeared in his Sunday wig and his tallest choker, bristling

with lead-pencils like lance-heads, and they sat on the sofa in

the landscape-room, while Christian hid in the dining-room and

listened. The excellent man set out his views, with eloquence if some

embarrassment: spoke of the difference between “line” and “dash,” told

the tale of “The Forest Green” and the scuttle of coals, and made use

in every other sentence of the phrase “in consequence.” It probably

seemed to him a circumlocution suitable to the elegant surroundings

in which he found himself. After a while the Consul came and drove

Christian away. He expressed to Herr Stengel his lively regret that a

son of his should give cause for dissatisfaction. “Oh, Herr Consul, God

forbid! Buddenbrook minor has a wide-awake mind, he is a lively chap,

and in consequence-- Just a little _too_ lively, if I might say so; and

in consequence--” The Consul politely went with him through the hall

to the entry, and Herr Stengel took his leave.... Ah, no, this was far

from being the worst!

The worst, when it became known, was as follows: Young Christian

Buddenbrook had leave one evening to go to the theatre in company with

a friend. The performance was Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell; and the rôle of

Tell’s son Walter was played by a young lady, a certain Mademoiselle

Meyer-de-la-Grange. Christian’s worst, then, had to do with this young

person. She wore when on the stage, whether it suited her part or not,

a diamond brooch, which was notoriously genuine; for, as everybody

knew, it was the gift of young Consul Döhlmann--Peter Döhlmann, son

of the deceased wholesale dealer in Wall Street outside Holsten Gate.

Consul Peter, like Justus Kröger, belonged to the group of young men

whom the town called “fast.” His way of life, that is to say, was

rather loose! He had married, and had one child, a little daughter;

but he had long ago quarrelled with his wife, and he led the life

of a bachelor. His father had left him a considerable inheritance,

and he carried on the business, after a fashion; but people said

he was already living on his capital. He lived mostly at the Club

or the Rathskeller, was often to be met somewhere in the street at

four o’clock in the morning; and made frequent business trips to

Hamburg. Above all, he was a zealous patron of the drama, and took a

strong personal interest in the cast. Mademoiselle Meyer-de-la-Grange

was the latest of a line of young ladies whom he had, in the past,

distinguished by a gift of diamonds.

Well, to arrive at the point, this young lady looked so charming as

Walter Tell, wore her brooch and spoke her lines with such effect,

that Christian felt his heart swell with enthusiasm, and tears rose

to his eyes. He was moved by his transports to a course that only the

very violence of emotion could pursue. He ran during the entr’acte to

a flower-shop opposite, where, for the sum of one mark eight and a

half shillings, he got at a bargain a bunch of flowers; and then this

fourteen-year-old sprat, with his big nose and his deep-lying eyes,

took his way to the green-room, since nobody stopped him, and came upon

Fräulein Meyer-de-la-Grange, talking with Consul Peter Döhlmann at her

dressing-room door. Peter Döhlmann nearly fell over with laughing when

he saw Christian with the bouquet. But the new wooer, with a solemn

face, bowed in his best manner before Walter Tell, handed her the

bouquet, and, nodding his head, said in a voice of well-nigh tearful

conviction: “Ah, Fräulein, how _beautifully_ you act!”

“Well, hang me if it ain’t Krishan Buddenbrook!” Consul Döhlmann

cried out, in his broadest accent. Fräulein Meyer-de-la-Grange lifted

her pretty brows and asked: “The son of Consul Buddenbrook?” And she

stroked the cheek of her young admirer with all the favour in the world.

Such was the story that Consul Peter Döhlmann told at the Club that

night; it flew about the town like lightning, and reached the ears of

the head master, who asked for an audience with Consul Buddenbrook. And

how did the Father take this affair? He was, in truth, less angry than

overwhelmed. He sat almost like a broken man, after telling the Frau

Consul the story in the landscape-room.

“And this is our son,” he said. “So is he growing up--”

“But Jean! Good heavens, your Father would have laughed at it. Tell it

to my Father and Mother on Thursday--you will see how Papa will enjoy

it--”

But here the Consul rose up in anger. “Ah, yes, yes! I am sure he will

enjoy it, Betsy. He will be glad to know that his light blood and

impious desires live on, not only in a rake like Justus, his own son,

but also in a grandson of his as well! Good God, you drive me to say

these things!-- He goes to this--person; he spends his pocket-money

on flowers for this--_lorette_! I don’t say he knows what he is

doing--yet. But the inclination shows itself--it shows itself, Betsy!”

Ah, yes, this was all very painful indeed. The Consul was perhaps the

more beside himself for the added reason that Tony’s behaviour, too,

had not been of the best. She had given up, it is true, shouting at

the nervous stranger to make him dance; and she no longer rang the

doorbell of the tiny old woman who sold worsted dolls. But she threw

back her head more pertly than ever, and showed, especially after the

summer visits with her grandparents, a very strong tendency to vanity

and arrogance of spirit.

One day the Consul surprised her and Mamsell Jungmann reading together.

The book was Clauren’s “Mimili”; the Consul turned over some of the

leaves, and then silently closed it--and it was opened no more. Soon

afterward it came to light that Tony--Antonie Buddenbrook, no less

a person--had been seen walking outside the City wall with a young

student, a friend of her brother. Frau Stuht, she who moved in the best

circles, had seen the pair, and had remarked at the Möllendorpfs’,

whither she had gone to buy some cast-off clothing, that really

Mademoiselle Buddenbrook was getting to the age where-- And Frau

Senator Möllendorpf had lightly repeated the story to the Consul.

The pleasant strolls came to an end. Later it came out that Fräulein

Antonie had made a post-office of the old hollow tree that stood near

the Castle Gate, and not only posted therein letters addressed to the

same student, but received letters from him as well by that means. When

these facts came to light, they seemed to indicate the need of a more

watchful oversight over the young lady, now fifteen years old; and she

was accordingly, as we have already said, sent to boarding-school at

Fräulein Weichbrodt’s, Number seven, Millbank.

CHAPTER VII

Therese Weichbrodt was humpbacked. So humpbacked that she was not much

higher than a table. She was forty-one years old. But as she had never

put her faith in outward seeming, she dressed like an old lady of sixty

or seventy. Upon her padded grey locks rested a cap the green ribbons

of which fell down over shoulders narrow as a child’s. Nothing like an

ornament ever graced her shabby black frock--only the large oval brooch

with her mother’s miniature in it.

Little Miss Weichbrodt had shrewd, sharp brown eyes, a slightly hooked

nose, and thin lips which she could compress with extraordinary

firmness. In her whole insignificant figure, in her every movement,

there indwelt a force which was, to be sure, somewhat comic, yet

exacted respect. And her mode of speech helped to heighten the

effect. She spoke with brisk, jerky motions of the lower jaw and

quick, emphatic nods. She used no dialect, but enunciated clearly and

with precision, stressing the consonants. Vowel-sounds, however, she

exaggerated so much that she said, for instance, “botter” instead of

“butter”--or even “batter!” Her little dog that was forever yelping she

called Babby instead of Bobby. She would say to a pupil: “Don-n’t be

so stu-upid, child,” and give two quick knocks on the table with her

knuckle. It was very impressive--no doubt whatever about that! And when

Mlle. Popinet, the Frenchwoman, took too much sugar to her coffee, Miss

Weichbrodt had a way of gazing at the ceiling and drumming on the cloth

with one hand while she said: “Why not take the who-ole sugar-basin? I

would!” It always made Mlle. Popinet redden furiously.

As a child--heavens, what a tiny child she must have been!--Therese

Weichbrodt had given herself the nickname of Sesemi, and she still kept

it, even letting the best and most favoured of the day as well as of

the boarding-pupils use it. “Call me Sesemi, child,” she said on the

first day to Tony Buddenbrook, kissing her briefly, with a sound as

of a small explosion, on the forehead. “I like it.” Her elder sister,

however, Madame Kethelsen, was called Nelly.

Madame Kethelsen was about forty-eight years old. She had been left

penniless when her husband died, and now lived in a little upstairs

bedroom in her sister’s house. She dressed like Sesemi, but by contrast

was very tall. She wore woollen wristlets on her thin wrists. She was

not a mistress, and knew nothing of discipline. A sort of inoffensive

and placid cheerfulness was all her being. When one of the pupils

played a prank, she would laugh so heartily that she nearly cried,

and then Sesemi would rap on the table and call out “Nelly!” very

sharply--it sounded like “Nally”--and Madame Kethelsen would shrink

into herself and be mute.

Madame Kethelsen obeyed her younger sister, who scolded her as if she

were a child. Sesemi, in fact, despised her warmly. Therese Weichbrodt

was a well-read, almost a literary woman. She struggled endlessly to

keep her childhood faith, her religious assurance that somewhere in the

beyond she was to be recompensed for the hard, dull present. But Madame

Kethelsen, innocent, uninstructed, was all simplicity of nature. “Dear,

good Nelly, what a child she is! She never doubts or struggles, she is

always happy.” In such remarks there was always as much contempt as

envy. Contempt was a weakness of Sesemi’s--perhaps a pardonable one.

The small red-brick suburban house was surrounded by a neatly kept

garden. Its lofty ground floor was entirely taken up by schoolrooms

and dining-room; the bedrooms were in the upper storey and the attic.

Miss Weichbrodt did not have a large number of pupils. As boarders she

received only older girls, while the day-school consisted of but three

classes, the lowest ones. Sesemi took care to have only the daughters

of irreproachably refined families in her house. Tony Buddenbrook, as

we have seen, she welcomed most tenderly. She even made “bishop” for

supper--a sort of sweet red punch to be taken cold, in the making of

which she was a past mistress. “A little more beeshop,” she urged with

a hearty nod. It sounded so tempting; nobody could resist!

Fräulein Weichbrodt sat on two sofa-cushions at the top of the table

and presided over the meal with tact and discretion. She held her

stunted figure stiffly erect, tapped vigilantly on the table, cried

“Nally” or “Babby,” and subdued Mlle. Popinet with a glance whenever

the latter seemed about to take unto herself all the cold veal jelly.

Tony had been allotted a place between two other boarders, Armgard von

Schilling, the strapping blond daughter of a Mecklenburg landowner,

and Gerda Arnoldsen, whose home was in Amsterdam--an unusual, elegant

figure, with dark-red hair, brown eyes close together, and a lovely,

pale, haughty face. Opposite her sat a chattering French girl who

looked like a negress, with huge gold earrings. The lean English Miss

Brown, with her sourish smile, sat at the bottom of the table. She was

a boarder too.

It was not hard, with the help of Sesemi’s bishop, to get acquainted.

Mlle. Popinet had had nightmares again last night--_ah, quel horreur!_

She usually screamed “Help, thieves; help, thieves!” until everybody

jumped out of bed. Next, it appeared that Gerda Arnoldsen did not

take piano like the rest of them, but the violin, and that Papa--her

Mother was dead--had promised her a real Stradivarius. Tony was not

musical--hardly any of the Buddenbrooks and none of the Krögers

were. She could not even recognize the chorals they played at St.

Mary’s.--Oh, the organ in the new Church at Amsterdam had a _vox

humana_--a human voice--that was just wonderful. Armgard von Schilling

talked about the cows at home.

It was Armgard who from the earliest moment had made a great impression

on Tony. She was the first person from a noble family whom Tony had

ever known. What luck, to be called _von_ Schilling! Her own parents

had the most beautiful old house in the town, and her grandparents

belonged to the best families; still, they were called plain

Buddenbrook and Kröger--which was a pity, to be sure. The granddaughter

of the proud Lebrecht Kröger glowed with reverence for Armgard’s

noble birth. Privately, she sometimes thought that the splendid

“von” went with her better than it did with Armgard; for Armgard did

not appreciate her good luck, dear, no! She had a thick pigtail,

good-natured blue eyes, and a broad Mecklenburg accent, and went about

thinking just nothing at all on the subject. She made absolutely no

pretentions to being aristocratic; in fact, she did not know what it

was. But the word “aristocratic” stuck in Tony’s small head; and she

emphatically applied it to Gerda Arnoldsen.

Gerda was rather exclusive, and had something foreign and queer about

her. She liked to do up her splendid red hair in striking ways, despite

Sesemi’s protests. Some of the girls thought it was “silly” of her to

play the violin instead of the piano--and, be it known, “silly” was a

term of very severe condemnation. Still, the girls mostly agreed with

Tony that Gerda was aristocratic--in her figure, well-developed for her

years; in her ways, her small possessions, everything. There was the

ivory toilet set from Paris, for instance; that Tony could appreciate,

for her own parents and grandparents also had treasures which had been

brought from Paris.

The three girls soon made friends. They were in the same class and

slept together in the same large room at the top of the house. What

delightful, cosy times they had going to bed! They gossiped while they

undressed--in undertones, however, for it was ten o’clock and next door

Mlle. Popinet had gone to bed to dream of burglars. Eva Ewers slept

with her. Eva was a little Hamburger, whose father, an amateur painter

and collector, had settled in Munich.

The striped brown blinds were down, the low, red-shaded lamp burned

on the table, there was a faint smell of violets and fresh wash, and a

delicious atmosphere of laziness and dreams.

“Heavens,” said Armgard, half undressed, sitting on her bed, “how Dr.

Newmann can talk! He comes into the class and stands by the table and

tells about Racine--”

“He has a lovely high forehead,” remarked Gerda, standing before the

mirror between the windows and combing her hair by the light of two

candles.

“Oh, yes, hasn’t he?” Armgard said eagerly.

“And you are taking the course just on his account, Armgard; you gaze

at him all the time with your blue eyes, as if--”

“Are you in love with him?” asked Tony. “I can’t undo my shoe-lace;

please, Gerda. Thanks. Why don’t you marry him? He is a good match--he

will get to be a High School Professor.”

“I think you are both horrid. I’m not in love with him, and I would not

marry a teacher, anyhow. I shall marry a country gentleman.”

“A nobleman?” Tony dropped her stocking and looked thoughtfully into

Armgard’s face.

“I don’t know, yet. But he must have a large estate. Oh, girls, I just

love that sort of thing! I shall get up at five o’clock every morning,

and attend to everything....” She pulled up the bed-covers and stared

dreamily at the ceiling.

“Five hundred cows are before your mind’s eye,” said Gerda, looking at

her in the mirror.

Tony was not ready yet; but she let her head fall on the pillow, tucked

her hands behind her neck, and gazed dreamily at the ceiling in her

turn.

“Of course,” she said, “I shall marry a business man. He must have a

lot of money, so we can furnish elegantly. I owe that to my family and

the firm,” she added earnestly. “Yes, you’ll see, that’s what I shall

do.”

Gerda had finished her hair for the night and was brushing her big

white teeth, using the ivory-backed hand-mirror to see them better.

“I shall _probably_ not marry at all,” she said, speaking with some

difficulty on account of the tooth-powder. “I don’t see why I should. I

am not anxious. I’ll go back to Amsterdam and play duets with Daddy and

afterwards live with my married sister.”

“What a pity,” Tony said briskly. “What a pity! You ought to marry here

and stay here for always. Listen: you could marry one of my brothers--”

“The one with the big nose?” asked Gerda, and gave a dainty little

yawn, holding the hand-mirror before her face.

“Or the other; it doesn’t matter. You could furnish beautifully. Jacobs

could do it--the upholsterer in Fish Street. He has lovely taste. I’d

come to see you every day--”

But then there came the voice of Mlle. Popinet. It said: “Oh,

mademoiselles! Please go to bed. It is too late to get married any more

this evening!”

Sundays and holidays Tony spent in Meng Street or outside the town

with her grandparents. How lovely, when it was fine on Easter Sunday,

hunting for eggs and marzipan hares in the enormous Kröger garden!

Then there were the summer holidays at the seashore; they lived in the

Kurhouse, ate at the table-d’hôte, bathed, and went donkey-riding.

Some seasons when the Consul had business, there were long journeys.

But Christmases were best of all. There were three present-givings:

at home, at the grandparents’, and at Sesemi’s, where bishop flowed

in streams. The one at home was the grandest, for the Consul believed

in keeping the holy feast with pomp and ceremony. They gathered in

the landscape-room with due solemnity. The servants and the crowd of

poor people thronged into the pillared hall, where the Consul went

about shaking their purple hands. Then outside rose the voices of the

choir-boys from St. Mary’s in a quartette, and one’s heart beat loudly

with awe and expectation. The smell of the Christmas tree was already

coming through the crack in the great white folding doors; and the

Frau Consul took the old family Bible with the funny big letters, and

slowly read aloud the Christmas chapter; and after the choir-boys had

sung another carol, everybody joined in “O Tannenbaum” and went in

solemn procession through the hall into the great salon, hung with

tapestries that had statuary woven into them. There the tree rose to

the ceiling, decorated with white lilies, twinkling and sparkling and

pouring out light and fragrance; and the table with the presents on

it stretched from the windows to the door. Outside, the Italians with

the barrel-organ were making music in the frozen, snowy streets, and

a great hubbub came over from the Christmas market in Market Square.

All the children except little Clara stopped up to late supper in the

salon, and there were mountains of carp and stuffed turkey.

In these years Tony Buddenbrook visited two Mecklenburg estates. She

stopped for two weeks one summer with her friend Armgard, on Herr

von Schilling’s property, which lay on the coast across the bay from

Travemünde. And another time she went with Cousin Tilda to a place

where Bernard Buddenbrook was inspector. This estate was called

“Thankless,” because it did not bring in a penny’s income; but for a

summer holiday it was not to be despised.

Thus the years went on. It was, take it all in all, a happy youth for

Tony.

PART THREE

CHAPTER I

On a June afternoon, not long after five o’clock, the family were

sitting before the “portal” in the garden, where they had drunk coffee.

They had pulled the rustic furniture outside, for it was too close

in the whitewashed garden house, with its tall mirror decorated with

painted birds and its varnished folding doors, which were really not

folding doors at all and had only painted latches.

The Consul, his wife, Tony, Tom, and Clothilde sat in a half-circle

around the table, which was laid with its usual shining service.

Christian, sitting a little to one side, conned the second oration of

Cicero against Catiline. He looked unhappy. The Consul smoked his cigar

and read the _Advertiser_. His wife had let her embroidery fall into

her lap and sat smiling at little Clara; the child, with Ida Jungmann,

was looking for violets in the grass-plot. Tony, her head propped

on both hands, was deep in Hoffman’s “Serapion Brethren,” while Tom

tickled her in the back of the neck with a grass-blade, an attention

which she very wisely ignored. And Clothilde, looking thin and

old-maidish in her flowered cotton frock, was reading a story called

“Blind, Deaf, Dumb, and Still Happy.” As she read, she scraped up the

biscuit-crumbs carefully with all five fingers from the cloth and ate

them.

A few white clouds stood motionless in the slowly paling sky. The small

town garden, with its carefully laid-out paths and beds, looked gay and

tidy in the afternoon sun. The scent of the mignonette borders floated

up now and then.

“Well, Tom,” said the Consul expansively, and took the cigar out of

his mouth, “we are arranging that rye sale I told you about, with van

Henkdom and Company.”

“What is he giving?” Tom asked with interest, ceasing to tickle Tony.

“Sixty thaler for a thousand kilo--not bad, eh?”

“That’s very good.” Tom knew this was excellent business.

“Tony, your position is not _comme il faut_,” remarked the Frau Consul.

Whereat Tony, without raising her eyes from her book, took one elbow

off the table.

“Never mind,” Tom said. “She can sit how she likes, she will always

be Tony Buddenbrook. Tilda and she are certainly the beauties of the

family.”

Clothilde was astonished almost to death. “Good gracious, Tom,” she

said. It was inconceivable how she could drawl out the syllables. Tony

bore the jeer in silence. It was never any use, Tom was more than a

match for her. He could always get the last word and have the laugh

on his side. Her nostrils dilated a little, and she shrugged her

shoulders. But when the Consul’s wife began to talk of the coming dance

at the house of Consul Huneus, and let fall something about new patent

leather shoes, Tony took the other elbow off the table and displayed a

lively interest.

“You keep talking and talking,” complained Christian fretfully, “and

I’m having such a hard time. I wish I were a business man.”

“Yes, you’re always wanting something different,” said Tom. Anton came

across the garden with a card on his tray. They all looked at him

expectantly.

“Grünlich, Agent,” read the Consul. “He is from Hamburg--an agreeable

man, and well recommended, the son of a clergyman. I have business

dealings with him. There is a piece of business now.--Is it all right,

Betsy, if I ask him to come out here?”

A middle-sized man, his head thrust a little forward of his body,

carrying his hat and stick in one hand, came across the garden. He

was some two-and-thirty years old; he wore a fuzzy greenish-yellow

suit with a long-skirted coat, and grey worsted gloves. His face,

beneath the sparse light hair, was rosy and smiling; but there was an

undeniable wart on one side of his nose. His chin and upper lip were

smooth-shaven; he wore long, drooping side-whiskers, in the English

fashion, and these adornments were conspicuously golden-yellow in

colour. Even at a distance, he began making obsequious gestures with

his broad-brimmed grey hat, and as he drew near he took one last very

long step, and arrived describing a half-circle with the upper part of

his body, by this means bowing to them all at once.

“I am afraid I am disturbing the family circle,” he said in a soft

voice, with the utmost delicacy of manner. “You are conversing, you are

indulging in literary pursuits--I must really beg your pardon for my

intrusion.”

“By no means, my dear Herr Grünlich,” said the Consul. He and his sons

got up and shook hands with the stranger. “You are very welcome. I am

delighted to see you outside the office and in my family circle. Herr

Grünlich, Betsy--a friend of mine and a keen man of business. This is

my daughter Antonie, and my niece Clothilde. Thomas you know already,

and this is my second son, Christian, in High School.” Herr Grünlich

responded to each name with an inclination of the body.

“I must repeat,” he said, “that I have no desire to intrude. I came on

business. If the Herr Consul would be so good as to take a walk with

me round the gardens--” The Consul’s wife answered: “It will give us

pleasure to have you sit down with us for a little before you begin to

talk business with my husband. Do sit down.”

“A thousand thanks,” said Herr Grünlich, apparently quite flattered. He

sat down on the edge of the chair which Tom brought, laid his hat and

stick on his knees, and settled himself, running his hand over his long

beard with a little hemming and hawing, as if to say, “Well, now we’ve

got past the introduction--what next?”

The Frau Consul began the conversation. “You live in Hamburg?” she

asked, inclining her head and letting her work fall into her lap.

“Yes, Frau Consul,” responded Herr Grünlich with a fresh bow. “At

least, my house is in Hamburg, but I am on the road a good deal. My

business is very flourishing--ahem--if I may be permitted to say so.”

The Frau Consul lifted her eyebrows and made respectful motions with

her mouth, as if she were saying “Ah--indeed?”

“Ceaseless activity is a condition of my being,” added he, half turning

to the Consul. He coughed again as he noticed that Fräulein Antonie’s

glance rested upon him. She gave him, in fact, the cold, calculating

stare with which a maiden measures a strange young man--a stare which

seems always on the point of passing over into actual contempt.

“We have relatives in Hamburg,” said she, in order to be saying

something.

“The Duchamps,” explained the Consul. “The family of my late Mother.”

“Oh, yes,” Herr Grünlich hastened to say. “I have the honour of a

slight acquaintance with the family. They are very fine people, in

mind and heart. Ahem! This would be a better world if there were more

families like them in it. They have religion, benevolence, and genuine

piety; in short, they are my ideal of the true Christlike spirit. And

in them it is united to a rare degree with a brilliant cosmopolitanism,

an elegance, an aristocratic bearing, which I find most attractive,

Frau Consul.”

Tony thought: “How can he know my Father and Mother so well? He is

saying exactly what they like best to hear.” The Consul responded

approvingly, “The combination is one that is becoming in everybody.”

And the Frau Consul could not resist stretching out her hand to their

guest with her sweeping gesture, palm upward, while the bracelets gave

a little jingle. “You speak as though you read my inmost thoughts, dear

Herr Grünlich,” she said.

Upon which, Herr Grünlich made another deep bow, settled himself

again, stroked his beard, and coughed as if to say: “Well, let us get

on.”

The Frau Consul mentioned the disastrous fire which had swept Hamburg

in May of the year 1842. “Yes, indeed,” said Herr Grünlich, “truly a

fearful misfortune. A distressing visitation. The loss amounted to one

hundred and thirty-five millions, at a rough estimate. I am grateful to

Providence that I came off without any loss whatever. The fire raged

chiefly in the parishes of St. Peter and St. Nicholas.--What a charming

garden!” he interrupted himself, taking the cigar which the Consul

offered. “It is so large for a town garden, and the beds of colour

are magnificent. I confess my weakness for flowers, and for nature in

general. Those climbing roses over there trim up the garden uncommonly

well.” He went on, praising the refinement of the location, praising

the town itself, praising the Consul’s cigar. He had a pleasant word

for each member of the circle.

“May I venture to inquire what you are reading, Fräulein Antonie?” he

said smiling.

Tony drew her brows together sharply at this, for some reason, and

answered without looking at him, “Hoffmann’s ‘Serapion Brethren.’”

“Really! He is a wonderful writer, is he not? Ah, pardon me--I forget

the name of your younger son, Frau Consul?”

“Christian.”

“A beautiful name. If I may so express myself”--here he turned again

to the Consul--“I like best the names which show that the bearer is a

Christian. The name of Johann, I know, is hereditary in your family--a

name which always recalls the beloved disciple. My own name--if I may

be permitted to mention it,” he continued, waxing eloquent, “is that of

most of my forefathers--Bendix. It can only be regarded as a shortened

form of Benedict. And you, Herr Buddenbrook, are reading--? ah, Cicero.

The works of this great Roman orator make pretty difficult reading, eh?

‘Quousque tandem--Catalina’ ... ahem. Oh, I have not forgotten quite

all my Latin.”

“I disagree with my late Father on this point,” the Consul said. “I

have always objected to the perpetual occupation of young heads with

Greek and Latin. When there are so many other important subjects,

necessary as a preparation for the practical affairs of life--”

“You take the words out of my mouth,” Herr Grünlich hastened to say.

“It is hard reading, and not by any means always unexceptionable--I

forgot to mention that point. Everything else aside, I can recall

passages that were positively offensive--”

There came a pause, and Tony thought “Now it’s my turn.” Herr Grünlich

had turned his gaze upon her. And, sure enough: he suddenly started in

his chair, made a spasmodic but always highly elegant gesture toward

the Frau Consul, and whispered ardently, “Pray look, Frau Consul, I

beg of you.--Fräulein, I implore you,” he interrupted himself aloud,

just as if Tony could not hear the rest of what he said, “to keep in

that same position for just a moment. Do you see,” he began whispering

again, “how the sunshine is playing in your daughter’s hair? Never,”

he said solemnly, as if transported, speaking to nobody in particular,

“have I seen more beautiful hair.” It was as if he were addressing his

remarks to God or to his own soul.

The Consul’s wife smiled, well pleased. The Consul said, “Don’t be

putting notions into the girl’s head.” And again Tony drew her brows

together without speaking. After a short pause, Herr Grünlich got up.

“But I won’t disturb you any longer now--no, Frau Consul, I refuse to

disturb you any longer,” he repeated. “I only came on business, but I

could not resist--indeed, who could resist you? Now duty calls. May I

ask the Consul--”

“I hope I do not need to assure you that it would give us pleasure if

you would let us put you up while you are here,” said the Frau Consul.

Herr Grünlich appeared for the moment struck dumb with gratitude.

“From my soul I am grateful, Frau Consul,” he said, and his look was

indeed eloquent with emotion. “But I must not abuse your kindness. I

have a couple of rooms at the City of Hamburg--”

“A _couple_ of rooms,” thought the Frau Consul--which was just what

Herr Grünlich meant her to think.

“And, in any case,” he said, as she offered her hand cordially, “I

hope we have not seen each other for the last time.” He kissed her

hand, waited a moment for Antonie to extend hers--which she did not

do--described another half-circle with his upper torso, made a long

step backward and another bow, threw back his head and put his hat on

with a flourish, then walked away in company with the Consul.

“A pleasant man,” the Father said later, when he came back and took his

place again.

“I think he’s silly,” Tony permitted herself to remark with some

emphasis.

“Tony! Heavens and earth, what an idea!” said the Consul’s wife,

displeased. “Such a Christian young man!”

“So well brought up, and so cosmopolitan,” went on the Consul. “You

don’t know what you are talking about.” He and his wife had a way of

taking each other’s side like this, out of sheer politeness. It made

them the more likely to agree.

Christian wrinkled up his long nose and said, “He was so important.

‘You are conversing’--when we weren’t at all. And the roses over there

‘trim things up uncommonly.’ He acted some of the time as if he were

talking to himself. ‘I am disturbing you’--‘I beg pardon’--‘I have

never seen more beautiful hair.’” Christian mocked Herr Grünlich so

cleverly that they all had to laugh, even the Consul.

“Yes, he gave himself too many airs,” Tony went on. “He talked the

whole time about himself--_his_ business is good, and _he_ is fond

of nature, and _he_ likes such-and-such names, and _his_ name is

Bendix--what is all that to us, I’d like to know? Everything he said

was just to spread himself.” Her voice was growing louder all the time

with vexation. “He said all the very things you like to hear, Mamma and

Papa, and he said them just to make a fine impression on you both.”

“That is no reproach, Tony,” the Consul said sternly. “Everybody puts

his best foot foremost before strangers. We all take care to say what

will be pleasant to hear. That is a commonplace.”

“I think he is a good man,” Clothilde pronounced with drawling

serenity--she was the only person in the circle about whom Herr

Grünlich had not troubled himself at all. Thomas refrained from giving

an opinion.

“Enough,” concluded the Consul. “He is a capable, cultured, and

energetic Christian man, and you, Tony, should try to bridle your

tongue--a great girl of eighteen or nineteen years old, like you!

And after he was so polite and gallant to you, too. We are all weak

creatures; and you, let me say, are one of the last to have a right to

throw stones. Tom, we’ll get to work.”

Pert little Tony muttered to herself “A golden goat’s beard!” and

scowled as before.