CHAPTER XV

Thomas Buddenbrook went down Meng Street as far as the “Five Houses.”

He avoided Broad Street so as not to be accosted by acquaintances and

obliged to greet them. With his hands deep in the big pockets of his

warm dark grey overcoat, he walked, sunk in thought, over the hard,

sparkling snow, which crunched under his boots. He went his own way,

and whither it led no one knew but himself. The sky was pale blue and

clear, the air biting and crisp--a still, severe, clear weather, with

five degrees of frost; in short, a matchless February day.

Thomas walked down the “Five Houses,” crossed Bakers’ Alley, and went

along a narrow cross-street into Fishers’ Lane. He followed this

street, which led down to the Trave parallel to Meng Street, for a few

steps, and paused before a small house, a modest flower-shop, with a

narrow door and dingy show-window, where a few pots of onions stood on

a pane of green glass.

He went in, whereupon the bell above the door began to give tongue,

like a little watch-dog. Within, before the counter, talking to the

young saleswoman, was a little fat elderly lady in a Turkey shawl.

She was choosing a pot of flowers, examining, smelling, criticizing,

chattering, and constantly obliged to wipe her mouth with her

handkerchief. Thomas Buddenbrook greeted her politely and stepped to

one side. She was a poor relation of the Langhals’, a good-natured

garrulous old maid who bore the name of one of the best families

without herself belonging to their set: that is, she was not asked to

the large dinners, but to the small coffee circles. She was known to

almost all the world as Aunt Lottchen. She turned toward the door,

with her pot of flowers, wrapped up in tissue paper, under her arm; and

Thomas, after greeting her again, said in an elevated voice to the shop

girl, “Give me a couple of roses, please. Never mind the kind--well, La

France.”

Then, after Aunt Lottchen had shut the door behind her and gone away,

he said in a lower voice, “Put them away again, Anna. How are you,

little Anna? Here I am--and I’ve come with a heavy heart.”

Anna wore a white apron over her simple black frock. She was

wonderfully pretty. Delicately built as a fawn, she had an almost

mongol type of face, somewhat prominent cheek-bones, narrow black eyes

full of a soft gleam, and a pale yellow skin the like of which is rare

anywhere. Her hands, of the same tint, were narrow, and more beautiful

than a shop girl’s are wont to be.

She went behind the counter at the right end, so that she could not be

seen through the shop-window. Thomas followed on the outside of the

counter and, bending over, kissed her on the lips and the eyes.

“You are quite frozen, poor boy,” she said.

“Five degrees,” said Tom. “I didn’t notice it, I’ve felt so sad coming

over.”

He sat down on the table, keeping her hand in his, and went on:

“Listen, Anna; we’ll be sensible to-day, won’t we? The time has come.”

“Oh, dear,” she said miserably, and lifted her apron to her eyes.

“It had to happen sometime, Anna. No, don’t weep. We were going to be

reasonable, weren’t we? What else is there to do? One has to bear such

things.”

“When?” asked Anna, sobbing.

“Day after to-morrow.”

“Oh, God, no! Why to-morrow? A week longer--five days! Please, oh,

please!”

“Impossible, dear Anna. Everything is arranged and in order. They are

expecting me in Amsterdam. I couldn’t make it a day longer, no matter

how much I wanted.”

“And that is so far away--so far away!”

“Amsterdam? Nonsense, that isn’t far. We can always think of each

other, can’t we? And I’ll write to you. You’ll see, I’ll write directly

I’ve got there.”

“Do you remember,” she said, “a year and a half ago, at the Rifle-club

fair?”

He interrupted her ardently. “Do I remember? Yes, a year and a

half ago! I took you for an Italian. I bought a pink and put it

in my button-hole.--I still have it--I am taking it with me to

Amsterdam.--What a heat: how hot and dusty it was on the meadow!”

“Yes, you bought me a glass of lemonade from the next booth. I remember

it like yesterday. Everything smelled of fatty-cakes and people.”

“But it was fine! We knew right away how we felt--about each other!”

“You wanted to take me on the carroussel, but I couldn’t go; I had to

be in the shop. The old woman would have scolded.”

“No, I know it wouldn’t have done, Anna.”

She said softly and clearly, “But that is the only thing I’ve refused

you.”

He kissed her again, on the lips and the eyes. “Adieu, darling little

Anna. We must begin to say good-bye.”

“Oh, you will come back to-morrow?”

“Yes, of course, and day after to-morrow early, if I can get away.--But

there is one thing I want to say to you, Anna. I am going, after all,

rather far away. Amsterdam _is_ a long way off--and you are staying

here. But--don’t throw yourself away, I tell you.”

She wept into her apron, holding it up with her free hand to her face.

“And you--and you?”

“God knows, Anna, what will happen. One isn’t young for ever--you are

a sensible girl, you have never said anything about marriage and that

sort of thing--”

“God forbid--that I should ask such a thing of you!”

“One is carried along--you see. If I live, I shall take over the

business, and make a good match--you see, I am open with you at

parting, Anna. I wish you every happiness, darling, darling little

Anna. But don’t throw yourself away, do you hear? For you haven’t done

that--with me--I swear it.”

It was warm in the shop. A moist scent of earth and flowers was in the

air. Outside, the winter sun was hurrying to its repose, and a pure

delicate sunset, like one painted on porcelain, beautified the sky

across the river. People hurried past the window, their chins tucked

into their turned-up collars; no one gave a glance into the corner of

the little flower-shop, at the two who stood there saying their last

farewells.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER I

April 30, 1846

MY DEAR MAMMA,

A thousand thanks for your letter, in which you tell me of Armgard

von Schilling’s betrothal to Herr von Maiboom of Pöppenrade. Armgard

herself sent me an invitation (very fine, with a gilt edge), and

also a letter in which she expresses herself as enchanted with her

bridegroom. He sounds like a very handsome and refined man. How happy

she must be! Everybody is getting married. I have had a card from

Munich too, from Eva Ewers. I hear she’s getting a director of a

brewery.

Now I must ask you something, dearest Mamma: Why do I hear nothing

of a visit from the Buddenbrooks? Are you waiting for an official

invitation from Grünlich? If so, it isn’t necessary; and besides,

when I remind him to ask you, he says, “Yes, yes, child, your Father

has something else to do.” Or do you think you would be disturbing

me? Oh, dear me, no; quite the contrary! Perhaps you think you would

make me homesick again? But don’t you know I am a reasonable woman,

already middle-aged and experienced?

I’ve just been to coffee at Madame Käselau’s, a neighbour of mine.

They are pleasant people, and our left-hand neighbours, the Gussmanns

(but there is a good deal of space between the houses) are sociable

people too. We have two friends who are at the house a good deal,

both of whom live out here: Doctor Klaasen, of whom I must tell you

more later, and Kesselmeyer, the banker, Grünlich’s intimate friend.

You don’t know what a funny old man he is. He has a stubbly white

beard and thin black and white hair on his head, that looks like

down and waves in the breeze. He makes funny motions with his head,

like a bird, and talks all the time, so I call him the magpie, but

Grünlich has forbidden me to say that, because magpies steal, and

Herr Kesselmeyer is an honourable man. He stoops when he walks, and

rows along with his arms. His fuzz only reaches half-way down his

head in the back, and from there on his neck is all red and seamy.

There is something so awfully sprightly about him! Sometimes he pats

me on the cheek and says, “You good little wifey! what a blessing for

Grünlich that he has got you.” Then he takes out his eye-glasses (he

always wears three of them, on long cords, that are forever getting

tangled up in his white waistcoat) and sticks them on his nose, which

he wrinkles up to make them stop on, and looks at me with his mouth

open, until I have to laugh, right in his face. But he takes no

offence at that.

Grünlich is very busy; he drives into town in the morning in our

little yellow wagon and often does not come back till late. Sometimes

he sits down with me and reads the paper.

When we go into society--for example, to Kesselmeyer’s, or to

Consul Goudstikker on the Alster Dam, or Senator Bock in City Hall

Street--we have to take a hired coach. I have begged Grünlich again

and again to get a coupé, for it is really a necessity out here. He

has half promised, but, strange to say, he does not like to go into

society with me and is evidently displeased when I visit people in

the town. Do you suppose he is jealous?

Our villa, which I’ve already described to you in detail, dear

Mamma, is really very pretty, and is much prettier by reason of

the new furnishings. You could not find a flaw in the upstairs

sitting-room--all in brown silk. The dining-room next is prettily

wainscoted. The chairs cost twenty-five marks apiece. I sit in the

“pensée-room,” which we use as a sitting-room. There is also a little

room for smoking and playing cards. The salon, which takes up the

whole other half of the parterre, has new yellow blinds now and

looks very well. Above are the bed, bath, and dressing-rooms and the

servants’ quarters. We have a little groom for the yellow wagon. I

am fairly well satisfied with the two maidservants. I am not sure

they are quite honest, but thank God I don’t have to look after every

kreuzer. In short, everything is really worthy of the family and the

firm.

And now, dear Mamma, comes the most important part of my letter,

which I have kept till the last. A while ago I was feeling rather

queer--not exactly ill and yet not quite well. I told Dr. Klaasen

about it when I had the chance. He is a little bit of a man with a

big head and a still bigger hat. He carries a cane with a flat round

handle made of a piece of bone, and walks with it pressed against his

whiskers, which are almost light-green from being dyed so many years.

Well, you should have seen him! he did not answer my questions at

all, but jerked his eye-glasses, twinkled his little eyes, wrinkled

his nose at me--it looks like a potato--snickered, giggled, and

stared so impertinently that I did not know what to do. Then he

examined me, and said everything was going on well, only I must drink

mineral water, because I am perhaps a little anæmic. Oh, Mamma, do

tell Papa about it, so he can put it in the family book. I will write

you again as soon as possible, you may be sure.

Give my love to Papa, Christian, Clara, Clothilde and Ida Jungmann. I

wrote to Thomas just lately.

Your dutiful daughter,

ANTONIE.

August 2, 1846

MY DEAR THOMAS,

I have read with pleasure the news of your meeting with Christian

in Amsterdam. It must have been a happy few days for both of you.

I have no word as yet of your brother’s further journey to England

via Ostende, but I hope that with God’s mercy it has been safely

accomplished. It may not be too late, since Christian has decided to

give up a professional career, for him to learn much that is valuable

from his chief, Mr. Richardson; may he prosper and find blessing in

the mercantile line! Mr. Richardson, Threadneedle Street, is, as you

know, a close business friend of our house; I consider myself lucky

to have placed both my sons with such friendly-disposed firms. You

are now experiencing the good result of such a policy; and I feel

profound satisfaction that Herr van der Kellen has already raised

your salary in the quarter of a year you have been with him, and

that he will continue to give you advancement. I am convinced that

you have shown and will continue to show yourself, by your industry

and good behaviour, worthy of these favours.

I regret to hear that your health is not so good as it should be.

What you write me of nervousness reminds me of my own youth, when

I was working in Antwerp and had to go to Ems to take a cure. If

anything of the sort seems best for you, my son, I am ready to

encourage you with advice and assistance, although I am avoiding such

expense for the rest of us in these times of political unrest.

However, your Mother and I took a trip to Hamburg in the middle of

June to visit your sister Tony. Her husband had not invited us, but

he received us with the greatest cordiality and devoted himself to us

so entirely during the two days of our visit, that he neglected his

business and hardly left me time for a visit to Duchamps in the town.

Antonie is in her fifth month, and her physician assures her that

everything is going on in a normal and satisfactory way.

I have still to mention a letter from Herr van der Kellen, from which

I was pleased to learn that you are a favoured guest in his family

circle. You are now, my son, at an age to begin to harvest the fruits

of the upbringing your parents gave you. It may be helpful to you if

I tell you that at your age, both in Antwerp and Bergen, I formed a

habit of making myself useful and agreeable to my principals; and

this was of the greatest service to me. Aside from the honour of

association with the family of the head of the firm, one acquires an

advocate in the person of the principal’s wife; and she may prove

invaluable in the undesirable contingency of an oversight at the

office or the dissatisfaction of your chief for some slight cause or

other.

As regards your business plans for the future, my son, I rejoice in

the lively interest they indicate, without being able entirely to

agree with them. You start with the idea that the market for our

native products--for instance, grain, rapeseed, hides and skins,

wool, oil, oil-cake, bones, etc.--is our chief concern; and you think

it would be of advantage for you to turn yourself to the commission

branch of the business. I once occupied myself with these ideas,

at a time when the competition was small (it has since distinctly

increased), and I made some experiments in them. My journey to

England had for its chief purpose to look out connections there for

my undertakings. To this end I went as far as Scotland, and made

many valuable acquaintances; but I soon recognized the precarious

nature of an export trade hither, and decided to discourage further

expansion in that direction. Thus I kept in mind the warning of our

forefather, the founder of the firm, which he bequeathed to us, his

descendants: “My son, attend with zeal to thy business by day, but do

none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.”

This principle I intend to keep sacred, now as in the past, though

one is sometimes forced to entertain a doubt, on contemplating

the operations of people who seem to get on better without it. I

am thinking of Strunk and Hagenström, who have made such notable

progress while our own business seems almost at a stand-still. You

know that the house has not enlarged its business since the set-back

consequent upon the death of your grandfather; and I pray to God

that I shall be able to turn over the business to you in its present

state. I have an experienced and cautious adviser in our head clerk

Marcus. If only your Mother’s family would hang on to their groschen

a little better! The inheritance is a matter of real importance for

us.

I am unusually full of business and civic work. I have been made

alderman of the Board of the Bergen Line; also city deputy for the

Finance Department, the Chamber of Commerce, the Auditing Commission,

and the Almshouse of St. Anne, one after the other.

Your Mother, Clara and Clothilde send greetings. Also several

gentlemen--Senator Möllendorpf, Doctor Överdieck, Consul Kistenmaker,

Gosch the broker, C. F. Köppen, and Herr Marcus in the office, have

asked to be remembered. God’s blessing on you, my dear son. Work,

pray, and save.

With affectionate regards,

YOUR FATHER.

October 8, 1846

DEAR AND HONOURED PARENTS,

The undersigned is overjoyed to be able to advise you of the happy

_accouchement_, half an hour ago, of your daughter, my beloved wife

Antonie. It is, by God’s will, a daughter; I can find no words to

express my joyful emotion. The health of the dear patient, as well as

of the infant, is unexceptionable. Dr. Klaasen is entirely satisfied

with the way things have gone; and Frau Grossgeorgis, the midwife,

says it was simply nothing at all. Excitement obliges me to lay

down my pen. I commend myself to my worthy parents with the most

respectful affection.

B. GRÜNLICH.

If it had been a boy, I had a very pretty name. As it is, I wanted to

name her Meta, but Grünlich is for Erica.

CHAPTER II

“What is the matter, Betsy?” said the Consul, as he came to the table

and lifted up the plate with which his soup was covered. “Aren’t you

well? You don’t look just right to me.”

The round table in the great dining-room was grown very small. Around

it there gathered in these days, besides the parents, only little

Clara, now ten years old, Mamsell Jungmann, and Clothilde, as humble,

lean, and hungry as ever. The Consul looked about him: every face

was long and gloomy. What had happened? He himself was troubled and

anxious; for the Bourse was unsteady, owing to this complicated

Schleswig-Holstein affair. And still another source of disquiet was

in the air; when Anton had gone to fetch in the meat course, the

Consul heard what had happened. Trina, the cook, who had never before

been anything but loyal and dutiful to her mistress, had suddenly

shown clear signs of revolt. To the Frau Consul’s great vexation,

she had been maintaining relations--a sort of spiritual affinity, it

seemed--with the butcher’s apprentice; and that man of blood must

have influenced her political views in a most regrettable way. The

Consul’s wife had addressed some reproach to her in the matter of an

unsuccessful sauce, and she had put her naked arms akimbo and delivered

herself as follows: “You jus’ wait, Frau Consul; ’tain’ goin’ t’ be

much longer--there’ll come another order inter the world. ’N’ then

_I’ll_ be sittin’ on the sofa in a silk gownd, an’ you’ll be servin’

me.” Naturally, she received summary notice.

The Consul shook his head. He himself had had similar troubles. The

old porters and labourers were of course respectful enough, and

had no notions in their heads; but several here and there among the

young ones had shown by their bearing that the new spirit of revolt

had entered into them. In the spring there had been a street riot,

although a constitution corresponding to the demands of the new time

had already been drafted; which, a little later, despite the opposition

of Lebrecht Kröger and other stubborn old gentlemen, became law by a

decree of the Senate. The citizens met together and representatives of

the people were elected. But there was no rest. The world was upside

down. Every one wanted to revise the constitution and the franchise,

and the citizens grumbled. “Voting by estates,” said some--Consul

Johann Buddenbrook among them. “Universal franchise,” said the others;

Heinrich Hagenström was one of these. Still others cried “Universal

voting by estates”--and dear knew what they meant by that! All sorts

of ideas were in the air; for instance, the abolition of disabilities

and the general extension of the rights of citizenship--even to

non-Christians! No wonder Buddenbrook’s Trina had imbibed such ideas

about sofas and silk gowns! Oh, there was worse to come! Things

threatened to take a fearful turn.

It was an early October day of the year 1848. The sky was blue, with

a few light floating clouds in it, silvered by the rays of the sun,

the strength of which was indeed not so great but that the stove was

already going, behind the polished screen in the landscape-room. Little

Clara, whose hair had grown darker and whose eyes had a rather severe

expression, sat with some embroidery before the sewing-table, while

Clothilde, busy likewise with her needlework, had the sofa-place near

the Frau Consul. Although Clothilde Buddenbrook was not much older than

her married cousin--that is to say, only twenty-one years--her long

face already showed pronounced lines; and with her smooth hair, which

had never been blond, but always a dull greyish colour, she presented

an ideal portrait of a typical old maid. But she was content; she did

nothing to alter her condition. Perhaps she thought it best to grow old

early and thus to make a quick end of all doubts and hopes. As she did

not own a single sou, she knew that she would find nobody in all the

wide world to marry her, and she looked with humility into her future,

which would surely consist of consuming a tiny income in some tiny room

which her influential uncle would procure for her out of the funds of

some charitable establishment for maidens of good family.

The Consul’s wife was busy reading two letters. Tony related the good

progress of the little Erica, and Christian wrote eagerly of his life

and doings in London. He did not give any details of his industry

with Mr. Richardson of Threadneedle Street. The Frau Consul, who was

approaching the middle forties, complained bitterly of the tendency of

blond women to grow old too soon. The delicate tint which corresponded

to her reddish hair had grown dulled despite all cosmetics; and the

hair itself began relentlessly to grey, or would have done so but for

a Parisian tincture of which the Frau Consul had the receipt. She was

determined never to grow white. When the dye would no longer perform

its office, she would wear a blond wig. On top of her still artistic

coiffure was a silk scarf bordered with white lace, the beginning,

the first adumbration of a cap. Her silk frock was wide and flowing,

its bell-shaped sleeves lined with the softest mull. A pair of gold

circlets tinkled as usual on her wrist.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Suddenly there was a noise of

running and shouting: a sort of insolent hooting and cat-calling, the

stamping of feet on the pavement, a hubbub that grew louder and came

nearer.

“What is that noise, Mamma?” said Clara, looking out of the window and

into the gossip’s glass. “Look at the people! What is the matter with

them? What are they so pleased about?”

“My God!” shouted the Frau Consul, throwing down her letters and

springing to the window. “Is it--? My God, it is the Revolution! It is

the people!”

The truth was that the town had been the whole day in a state of

unrest. In the morning the windows of Benthien the draper’s shop in

Broad Street had been broken by stones--although God knew what the

owner had to do with politics!

“Anton,” the Consul’s wife called with a trembling voice into the

dining-room, where the servants were bustling about with the silver.

“Anton! Go below! Shut the outside doors. Make everything fast. It is a

mob.”

“Oh, Frau Consul,” said Anton. “Is it safe for me to do that? I am a

servant. If they see my livery--”

“What wicked people,” Clothilde drawled without putting down her work.

Just then the Consul crossed the entrance hall and came in through the

glass door. He carried his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand.

“You are going out, Jean?” asked the Frau Consul in great excitement

and trepidation.

“Yes, my dear, I must go to the meeting.”

“But the mob, Jean, the Revolution--”

“Oh, dear me, Betsy, it isn’t so serious as that! We are in God’s hand.

They have gone past the house already. I’ll go down the back way.”

“Jean, if you love me--do you want to expose yourself to this danger?

Will you leave us here unprotected? I am afraid, I tell you--I am

afraid.”

“My dear, I beg of you, don’t work yourself up like this. They will

only make a bit of a row in front of the Town Hall or in the market. It

may cost the government a few window-panes--but that’s all.”

“Where are you going, Jean?”

“To the Assembly. I am late already. I was detained by business. It

would be a shame not to be there to-day. Do you think your Father is

stepping away, old as he is?”

“Then go, in God’s name, Jean. But be careful, I beg of you. And keep

an eye on my Father. If anything hit him--”

“Certainly, my dear.”

“When will you be back?” the Frau Consul called after him.

“Well, about half-past four or five o’clock. Depends. There is a good

deal of importance on the agenda, so I can’t exactly tell.”

“Oh, I’m frightened, I’m frightened,” repeated the Frau Consul, walking

up and down restlessly.

CHAPTER III

Consul Buddenbrook crossed his spacious ground floor in haste. Coming

out into Bakers’ Alley, he heard steps behind him and saw Gosch the

broker, a picturesque figure in his long cloak and Jesuit hat, also

climbing the narrow street to the meeting. He lifted his hat with one

thin long hand, and with the other made a deferential gesture, as he

said, “Well, Herr Consul--how are you?” His voice sounded sinister.

This broker, Siegismund Gosch, a bachelor of some forty years, was,

despite his demeanour, the best and most honest soul in the world; but

he was a wit and an oddity. His smooth-shaven face was distinguished

by a Roman nose, a protruding pointed chin, sharp features, and a wide

mouth drooping at the corners, whose narrow lips he was in the habit of

pressing together in the most taciturn and forbidding manner. His grey

hair fell thick and sombre over his brow, and he actually regretted

not being humpbacked. It was his whim to assume the rôle of a wild,

witty, and reckless intrigant--a cross between Mephistopheles and

Napoleon, something very malevolent and yet fascinating too; and he was

not entirely unsuccessful in his pose. He was a strange yet attractive

figure among the citizens of the old city; still, he belonged among

them, for he carried on a small brokerage business in the most modest,

respectable sort of way. In his narrow, dark little office, however,

he had a large book-case filled with poetry in every language, and

there was a story that he had been engaged since his twentieth year on

a translation of Lope de Vega’s collected dramas. Once he had played

the rôle of Domingo in an amateur performance of Schiller’s “Don

Carlos”--this was the culmination of his career. A common word never

crossed his lips; and the most ordinary business expressions he would

hiss between his clenched teeth, as if he were saying “Curses on you,

villain,” instead of some commonplace about stocks and commissions. He

was, in many ways, the heir and successor to Jean Jacques Hoffstede of

blessed memory, except that his character had certain elements of the

sombre and pathetic, with none of the playful liveliness of that old

18th century friend of Johann Buddenbrook. One day he lost at a single

blow, on the Bourse, six and a half thaler on two or three papers

which he had bought as a speculation. This was enough. He sank upon a

bench; he struck an attitude which looked as though he had lost the

Battle of Waterloo; he struck his clenched fist against his forehead

and repeated several times, with a blasphemous roll of the eyes: “Ha,

accursed, accursed!” He must have been, at bottom, cruelly bored by

the small, safe business he did and the petty transfer of this or that

bit of property; for this loss, this tragic blow with which Heaven had

stricken him down--him, the schemer Gosch--delighted his inmost soul.

He fed on it for weeks. Some one would say, “So you’ve had a loss,

Herr Gosch, I’m sorry to hear.” To which he would answer: “Oh, my good

friend, ‘_uomo non educato dal dolore riman sempre bambino_’!” Probably

nobody understood that. Was it, possibly, Lope da Vega? Anyhow, there

was no doubt that this Siegismund Gosch was a remarkable and learned

man.

“What times we live in,” he said, limping up the street with the

Consul, supported by his stick. “Times of storm and unrest.”

“You are right,” replied the Consul. “The times are unquiet. This

morning’s sitting will be exciting. The principle of the estates--”

“Well, now,” Herr Gosch went on, “I have been about all day in the

streets, and I have been looking at the mob. There are some fine

fellows in it, their eyes flaming with excitement and hatred--”

Johann Buddenbrook began to laugh. “You like that, don’t you? But

you have the right end of it after all, let me tell you. It is all

childishness! What do these men want? A lot of uneducated rowdies who

see a chance for a bit of a scrimmage.”

“Of course. Though I can’t deny--I was in the crowd when Berkemeyer,

the journeyman butcher, smashed Herr Benthien’s window. He was like a

panther.” Herr Gosch spoke the last word with his teeth particularly

close together, and went on: “Oh, the thing has its fine side, that’s

certain. It is a change, at least, you know; something that doesn’t

happen every day. Storm, stress, violence--the tempest! Oh, the people

are ignorant, I know--still, my heart, this heart of mine--it beats

with theirs!” They were already before the simple yellow-painted house

on the ground floor of which the sittings of the Assembly took place.

The room belonged to the beer-hall and dance-establishment of a widow

named Suerkringel; but on certain days it was at the service of the

gentlemen burgesses. The entrance was through a narrow whitewashed

corridor opening into the restaurant on the right side, where it

smelled of beer and cooking, and thence through a handleless, lockless

green door so small and narrow that no one could have supposed such a

large room lay behind it. The room was empty, cold, and barnlike, with

a whitewashed roof in which the beams showed, and whitewashed walls.

The three rather high windows had green-painted bars, but no curtains.

Opposite them were the benches, rising in rows like an amphitheatre,

with a table at the bottom for the chairman, the recording clerk, and

the Committee of the Senate. It was covered with a green cloth and had

a clock, documents, and writing materials on it. On the wall opposite

the door were several tall hat-racks with hats and coats.

The sound of voices met the Consul and his companion as they entered

through the narrow door. They were the last to come. The room was

filled with burgesses, hands in their trousers pockets, on their hips,

or in the air, as they stood together in groups and discussed. Of the

hundred and thirty members of the body at least a hundred were present.

A number of delegates from the country districts had been obliged by

circumstances to stop at home.

Near the entrance stood a group composed of two or three small

business men, a high-school teacher, the orphan asylum “father,”

Herr Mindermann, and Herr Wenzel, the popular barber. Herr Wenzel, a

powerful little man with a black moustache, an intelligent face, and

red hands, had shaved the Consul that very morning; here, however, he

stood on an equality with him. He shaved only in the best circles; he

shaved almost exclusively the Möllendorpfs, Langhals, Buddenbrooks, and

Överdiecks, and he owed his vote in the Assembly to his omniscience in

city affairs, his sociability and ease, and his remarkable power of

decision at a division.

“Have you heard the latest, Herr Consul?” he asked with round-eyed

eagerness as his patron came up.

“What is there to hear, my dear Wenzel?”

“Nobody knew it this morning. Well, permit me to tell you, Herr Consul,

the latest is that the crowd are not going to collect before the Town

Hall, or in the market--they are coming here to threaten the burgesses.

Editor Rübsam has stirred them up.”

“Is it possible?” said the Consul. He pressed through the various

groups to the middle of the room, where he saw his father-in-law with

Senators Dr. Langhals and James Möllendorpf. “Is it true, gentlemen?”

he asked, shaking hands with them.

But there was no need to answer. The whole assemblage was full of it:

the peace-breakers were coming; they could be heard already in the

distance.

“_Canaille!_” said Lebrecht Kröger with cold scorn. He had driven

hither in his carriage. On an ordinary day the tall, distinguished

figure of the once famous cavalier showed the burden of his eighty

years; but to-day he stood quite erect with his eyes half-closed, the

corners of his mouth contemptuously drawn down, and the points of his

white moustaches sticking straight up. Two rows of jewelled buttons

sparkled on his black velvet waistcoat.

Not far from this group was Heinrich Hagenström, a square-built, fleshy

man with a reddish beard sprinkled with grey, a heavy watch-chain

across his blue-checked waistcoat, and his coat open over it. He was

standing with his partner Herr Strunck, and did not greet the Consul.

Herr Benthien, the draper, a prosperous looking man, had a large group

of gentlemen around him, to whom he was circumstantially describing

what had happened to his show-window. “A brick, gentlemen, a brick, or

at least half a brick--_crack!_ through it went and landed on a roll of

green rep. The rascally mob! Oh, the Government will have to take it

up! It’s their affair!”

And in every corner of the room unceasingly resounded the voice of

Herr Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street. He had on a black coat over his

woollen shirt; and he so deeply sympathized with the narrative of Herr

Benthien that he never stopped saying, in outraged accents, “Infamous,

un-heard-of!”

Johann Buddenbrook found and greeted his old friend G. F. Köppen, and

then Köppen’s rival, Consul Kistenmaker. He moved about in the crowd,

pressed Dr. Grabow’s hand, and exchanged a few words with Herr Gieseke

the Fire Commissioner, Contractor Voigt, Dr. Langhals, the Chairman,

brother of the Senator, and several merchants, lawyers, and teachers.

The sitting was not yet opened, but debate was already lively.

Everybody was cursing that pestilential scribbler, Editor Rübsam;

everybody knew he had stirred up the crowd--and what for? The business

in hand was to decide whether they were to go on with the method of

selecting representatives by estates, or whether there was to be

universal and equal franchise. The Senate had already proposed the

latter. But what did the people want? They wanted these gentlemen by

the throats--no more and no less. It was the worst hole they had

ever found themselves in, devil take it! The Senatorial Committee

was surrounded, its members’ opinion eagerly sought. They approached

Consul Buddenbrook, as one who should know the attitude of Burgomaster

Överdieck; for since Senator Doctor Överdieck, Consul Justus Kröger’s

brother-in-law, had been made President last year, the Buddenbrooks

were related to the Burgomaster; which had distinctly enhanced the

regard in which they were held.

All of a sudden the tumult began outside. Revolution had arrived under

the windows of the Sitting. The excited exchange of opinions inside

ceased simultaneously. Every man, dumb with the shock, folded his

hands upon his stomach and looked at his fellows or at the windows,

where fists were being shaken in the air and the crowd was giving vent

to deafening and frantic yelling. But then, most astonishingly, as

though the offenders themselves had suddenly grown aghast at their own

behaviour, it became just as still outside as in the hall; and in that

deep hush, one word from the neighbourhood of the lowest benches, where

Lebrecht Kröger was sitting, was distinctly audible. It rang through

the hall, cold, emphatic, and deliberate--the word “Canaille!” And,

like an echo, came the word “Infamous,” in a fat, outraged voice from

the other corner of the hall. Then the hurried, trembling, whispering

utterance of the draper Benthien: “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Listen! I know

the house. There is a trap-door on to the roof from the attic. I used

to shoot cats through it when I was a lad. We can climb on to the next

roof and get down safely.”

“Cowardice,” hissed Gosch the broker between his teeth. He leaned

against the table with his arms folded and head bent, directing a

blood-curdling glance through the window.

“Cowardice, do you say? How cowardice? In God’s name, sir, aren’t they

throwing bricks? I’ve had enough of that.”

The noise outside had begun again, but without reaching its former

stormy height. It sounded quieter and more continuous, a prolonged,

patient, almost comfortable hum, rising and falling; now and then one

heard whistles, and sometimes single words like “principle” and “rights

of citizens.” The assembly listened respectfully.

After a while the chairman, Herr Dr. Langhals, spoke in a subdued tone:

“Gentlemen, I think we could come to some agreement if we opened the

meeting.”

But this humble suggestion did not meet with the slightest support from

anybody.

“No good in that,” somebody said, with a simple decisiveness that

permitted no appeal. It was a peasant sort of man, named Pfahl, from

the Ritzerau district, deputy for the village of Little Schretstaken.

Nobody remembered ever to have heard his voice raised before in a

meeting, but its very simplicity made it weighty at the present crisis.

Unafraid and with sure political insight, Herr Pfahl had voiced the

feeling of the entire assemblage.

“God keep us,” Herr Benthien said despondently. “If we sit on the

benches we can be seen from outside. They’re throwing stones--I’ve had

enough of that.”

“And the cursed door is so narrow,” burst out Köppen the wine-merchant,

in despair. “If we start to go out, we’ll probably get crushed.”

“Infamous, un-heard-of,” Herr Stuht intoned.

“Gentlemen,” began the Chairman urgently once more. “I have to put

before the Burgomaster in the next three days a draft of to-day’s

protocol, and the town expects its publication through the press. I

should at least like to get a vote on that subject, if the sitting

would come to order--”

But with the exception of a few citizens who supported the chairman,

nobody seemed ready to come to the consideration of the agenda. A vote

would have been useless anyhow--they must not irritate the people.

Nobody knew what they wanted, so it was no good to offend them by a

vote, in whatever direction. They must wait and control themselves. The

clock of St. Mary’s struck half-past four.

They confirmed themselves and each other in this resolve of patient

waiting. They began to get used to the noise that rose and fell

outside, to feel quieter; to make themselves more comfortable, to sit

down on the lower benches and chairs. The natural instinct toward

industry, common to all these good burghers, began to assert itself:

they ventured to bargain a little, to pick up a little business here

and there. The brokers sat down by the wholesale dealers. These

beleaguered gentlemen talked together like people shut in by a sudden

storm, who speak of other things, and now and then pause to listen with

respectful faces to the thunder. It was five o’clock--half-past five.

It was getting dark. Now and then somebody sighed and said that the

wife would be waiting with the coffee--and then Herr Benthien would

venture to mention the trap-door. But most of them were like Herr

Stuht, who said fatalistically, shaking his head, “I’m too fat.”

Mindful of his wife’s request Johann Buddenbrook had kept an eye on his

father-in-law. He said to him: “This little adventure isn’t disturbing

you, is it, Father?”

Lebrecht Kröger’s forehead showed two swollen blue veins under his

white wig. He looked ill. One aristocratic old hand played with the

opalescent buttons on his waistcoat; the other, with its great diamond

ring, trembled on his knee.

“Fiddlesticks, Buddenbrook,” he said; but his voice showed extreme

fatigue. “I am sick of it, that’s all.” Then he betrayed himself by

suddenly hissing out: “Parbleu, Jean, this infamous rabble ought to be

taught some respect with a little powder and shot. _Canaille!_ Scum!”

The Consul hummed assent. “Yes, yes, you are right; it is a pretty

undignified affair. But what can we do? We must keep our tempers. It’s

getting late. They’ll go away after a bit.”

“Where is my carriage? I desire my carriage,” said the old man in a

tone of command, suddenly quite beside himself. His anger exploded; he

trembled all over. “I ordered it for five o’clock: where is it? This

sitting will never be held. Why should I stop any longer? I don’t care

about being made a fool of. My carriage! What are they doing to my

coachman? Go see after it, Buddenbrook.”

“My dear Father-in-Law, for heaven’s sake be calm. You are getting

excited. It will be bad for you. Of course I will go and see after the

carriage. I think myself we have had enough of this. I will speak to

the people and tell them to go home.”

Close by the little green door he was accosted by Siegismund Gosch,

who grasped his arm with a bony hand and asked in a gruesome whisper:

“Whither away, Herr Consul?”

The broker’s face was furrowed with a thousand lines. His pointed chin

rose almost up to his nose, his face expressed the most desperate

resolution; his grey hair streamed distractedly over brow and temples;

his head was so drawn in between his shoulders that he really almost

achieved his ambition of looking like a dwarf--and he rapped out: “You

behold me resolved to speak to the people.”

The Consul said: “No, let me do it, Gosch. I really know more of them

than you do.”

“Be it so,” answered the broker tonelessly. “You are a bigger man than

I.” And, lifting his voice, he went on: “But I will accompany you,

I will stand at your side, Consul Buddenbrook. Let the wrath of the

outraged people tear me in pieces--”

“What a day, what a night!” he said as they went out. There is no doubt

he had never felt so happy before in his life. “Ha, Herr Consul! Here

are the people.”

They had gone down the corridor and outside the outer door, where

they stood at the top of three little steps that went down to the

pavement. The street was indeed a strange sight. It was as still as the

grave. At the open and lighted windows of the houses round, stood the

curious, looking down upon the black mass of the insurgents before the

Burgesses’ House. The crowd was not much bigger than that inside the

hall. It consisted of young labourers from the harbour and granaries,

servants, school pupils, sailors from the merchant ships, and other

people from the little streets, alleys, courts, and rabbit-hutches

round about. There were even two or three women--who had probably

promised themselves the same millennium as the Buddenbrooks’ cook. A

few of the insurrectionists, weary of standing, had sat down with their

feet in the gutter and were eating sandwiches.

It was nearly six o’clock. Though twilight was well advanced, the

oil lamps hung unlighted above the street. This fact, this open and

unheard-of interruption of the regular order, was the first thing that

really made Consul Buddenbrook’s temper rise, and was responsible

for his beginning to speak in a rather short and angry tone and the

broadest of pronunciations:

“Now then, all of you, what is the meaning of this foolishness?”

The picnickers sprang up from the sidewalk. Those in the back ranks,

beyond the foot-pavement, stood on their tip-toes. Some navvies, in the

service of the Consul, took off their caps. They stood at attention,

nudged each other, and muttered in low tones, “’Tis Consul Buddenbrook.

He be goin’ to talk. Hold yer jaw, there, Chrishan; he can jaw like the

devil himself! Ther’s Broker Gosch--look! What a monkey he is! Isn’t he

gettin’ o’erwrought!”

“Carl Smolt!” began the Consul again, picking out and fastening

his small, deep-set eyes upon a bow-legged young labourer of about

two-and-twenty, with his cap in his hand and his mouth full of bread,

standing in front of the steps. “Here, speak up, Carl Smolt! Now’s the

time! I’ve been here the whole afternoon--”

“Yes, Herr Consul,” brought out Carl Smolt, chewing violently. “The

thing is--ower--it’s a soart o’--we’re makkin’ a rivolution.”

“What kind of nonsense is that, then?”

“Lord, Herr Consul, ye knaw what that is. We’re not satisfied wi’

things as they be. We demand another order o’ things; tain’t any more’n

that--that’s what it is.”

“Now, listen, Carl Smolt and the rest of you. Whoever’s got any sense

will go home and not bother himself over any revolutions, disturbing

the regular order of things--”

“The sacred order,” interrupted Herr Gosch dramatically.

“The regular order, I say,” finished the Consul. “Why, even the lamps

aren’t lighted. That’s going too far with the revolution.”

Carl Smolt had swallowed his mouthful by now, and, with the people at

his back, stood his ground and made some objections.

“Well, Herr Consul, ye may say that. But we’re only agin the principle

of the voate--”

“God in heaven, you ninny,” shouted the Consul, forgetting, in his

excitement, to speak dialect. “You’re talking the sheerest nonsense--”

“Lord, Herr Consul,” said Carl Smolt, somewhat abashed, “thet’s oall

as it is. Rivolution it has to be. Ther’s rivolution iverywheer, in

Berlin, in Paris--”

“But, Smolt, what do you want? Just tell me that, if you can.”

“Lord, Herr Consul, I say we wants a republic; that’s wat I be sayin’.”

“But, you fool, you’ve got one already.”

“Well, Herr Consul, then we wants another.”

Some of the bystanders, who understood the matter better, began to

laugh rudely and heartily; and although few even heard Carl’s answer,

the laughter spread until the whole crowd of republicans stood shaking

good-naturedly. Some of the gentlemen from inside the hall appeared at

the window with curious faces and beer-mugs in their hands. The only

person disappointed and pained by this turn of affairs was Siegismund

Gosch.

“Now, people,” shouted Consul Buddenbrook finally, “I think the best

thing for you all to do is to go home.”

Carl Smolt, quite crestfallen over the result he had brought about,

answered “That’s right, Herr Consul. Then things’ll be quieted down.

And Herr Consul doesn’t take it ill of me, do’e, now? Good-bye, Herr

Consul!”

The crowd began to disperse, in the best of humours.

“Wait a minute, Smolt,” shouted the Consul. “Have you seen the Kröger

carriage? the calèche from outside the Castle Gate?”

“Yes, sir, Herr Consul. He’s here; he be driven up in some court

somewhere.”

“Then run quick and say he’s to come at once; his master wants to go

home.”

“Servant, Herr Consul,” and, throwing his cap on his head and pulling

the leather visor well down over his brows, Carl Smolt ran with great

swinging strides down the street.

CHAPTER IV

When the Consul and Siegismund Gosch returned to the hall, the

scene was a more comfortable one than it had been a quarter of an

hour before. It was lighted by two large oil lamps standing on the

Committee table, in whose yellow light the gentlemen sat or stood

together, pouring out beer into shining tankards, touching glasses

and talking loudly, in the gayest of humours. Frau Suerkringel, the

widow, had consoled them. She had loyally taken on her enforced guests

and given them good advice, recommending that they fortify themselves

for the siege, which might endure some while yet. And thus she had

profitably employed the time by selling a considerable quantity of her

light yet exhilarating beer. As the others entered, the house-boy,

in shirt-sleeves and good-natured grin, was just bringing in a fresh

supply of bottles. While it was certainly late, too late to consider

further the revision of the Constitution, nobody seemed inclined to

interrupt the meeting and go home. It was too late for coffee, in any

case.

After the Consul had received congratulatory handshakes on his success,

he went up to his father-in-law. Lebrecht Kröger was the only man

in the room whose mood had not improved. He sat in his place, cold,

remote, and lofty, and answered the information that the carriage would

be around at once by saying scornfully, in a voice that trembled more

with bitterness than age: “Then the mob permits me to go home?”

With stiff movements that no longer had in them anything of the charm

that had been his, he had his fur mantle put about his shoulders, and

laid his arm, with a careless “_Merci_,” on that of the Consul, who

offered to accompany him home. The majestic coach, with two large

lanterns on the box, stood in the street, where, to the Consul’s great

satisfaction, the lamps were now being lighted. They both got in.

Silent and stiffly erect, with his eyes half-closed, Lebrecht Kröger

sat with the rug over his knees, the Consul at his right hand, while

the carriage rolled through the streets. Beneath the points of the

old man’s white moustaches two lines ran down perpendicularly from

the corners of his mouth to his chin. He was gnawed by chagrin at the

insult that had been offered him, and he stared, weary and chilled, at

the cushions opposite.

There was more gayety in the streets than on a Sunday evening.

Obviously a holiday temper reigned. The people, delighted at the

successful outcome of the revolution, were out in the gayest mood.

There was singing. Here and there youngsters shouted “Hurrah!” as the

carriage drove past, and threw their caps into the air.

“I really think, Father, you let the matter affect you too much,” the

Consul said. “When one thinks of it, what a tom-fool business the whole

thing was--simply a farce.” In order to get some reply from the old

man he went on to talk about the revolution in lively tones. “When the

propertyless class begin to realize how little they serve their own

ends--why, good heavens, it’s the same everywhere. I was talking this

afternoon with Gosch the broker, a wonderful man, looking at everything

with the eyes of a poet and writer. You see, Father, this revolution

was made at the æsthetic tea-tables of Berlin. Then the people take

their own skin to market--for, of course, they will be the ones to pay

for it!”

“It would be a good thing if you would open the window on your side,”

said Herr Kröger.

Johann Buddenbrook gave him a quick glance and let the glass down

hastily.

“Aren’t you feeling well, dear Father?” he asked anxiously.

“Not at all,” answered Lebrecht Kröger severely.

“You need food and rest,” the Consul said; and in order to be doing

something he drew up the fur rug closer about his father-in-law’s knees.

Suddenly--the carriage was rolling through Castle Street--a wretched

thing happened. Fifteen paces from the Castle Gate, in the half-dark,

they passed a group of noisy and happy street urchins, and a stone

flew through the open window. It was a harmless little stone, the size

of a hen’s egg, flung by the hand of some Chris Snut or Heine Voss

to celebrate the revolution; certainly not with any bad intent, and

probably not directed toward the carriage at all. It came noiselessly

through the window and struck Lebrecht Kröger in his chest, which was

covered with the thick fur rug. Then it rolled down over the cover and

fell upon the floor of the coach.

“Clumsy fools!” said the Consul angrily. “Is everybody out of their

senses this evening? It didn’t hurt you, did it?”

Old Kröger was silent--alarmingly silent. It was too dark in the

carriage to see his expression. He sat straighter, higher, stiffer

than ever, without touching the cushions. Then, from deep within him,

slowly, coldly, dully, came the single word: “Canaille.”

For fear of angering him further, the Consul made no answer. The

carriage clattered through the gate, and three minutes later was in the

broad avenue before the gilt-tipped railings that bounded the Kröger

domain. A drive bordered with chestnut trees went from the garden

gate up to the terrace; and on either side of the gate a gilt-topped

lantern was burning brightly. The Consul saw his father-in-law’s face

by this light--it was yellow and wrinkled; the firm, contemptuous set

of the mouth had given way: it had changed to the lax, silly, distorted

expression of a very old man. The carriage stopped before the terrace.

“Help me out,” said Lebrecht Kröger; but the Consul was already out,

had thrown back the rug, and offered his arm and shoulder as a support.

He led the old man slowly for a few paces across the gravel to the

white stone steps that went up to the dining-room. At the foot of

these, the old man bent at the knee-joints. His head fell so heavily

on his breast that the lower jaw clashed against the upper. His eyes

rolled--grew dim; Lebrecht Kröger, the gallant, the cavalier à-la-mode,

had joined his fathers.

CHAPTER V

A year and two months later, on a misty, snowy morning in January of

the year 1850, Herr and Madame Grünlich sat at breakfast with their

little three-year-old daughter, in the brown wainscoted dining-room, on

chairs that cost twenty-five marks apiece.

The panes of both windows were opaque with mist; behind them one

had vague glimpses of bare trees and bushes. A red glow and a

gentle, scented warmth came from the low, green-tiled stove standing

in a corner. Through the open door next to it one could see the

foliage-plants in the “pensée-room.” On the other wall, half-drawn

green stuff portières gave a view of the brown satin salon and of a

lofty glass door leading on to a little terrace beyond. The cracks

in this door were carefully stopped with cotton-wool, and there was

nothing to be seen through its panes but the whitish-grey mist beyond.

The snow-white cloth of woven damask on the round table had an

embroidered green runner across it, laid with gold-bordered porcelain

so translucent that it gleamed like mother-of-pearl. The tea-kettle was

humming. There was a finely worked silver bread-basket in the shape

of a curling leaf, with slices and rolls of fine bread; under one

crystal bell were little balls of butter, under another different sorts

of cheese, white, yellow, and green. There was even a bottle of wine

standing before the master of the house; for Herr Grünlich had a full

breakfast every morning.

His whiskers were freshly curled, and at this early hour his rosy

face was rosier than ever. He sat with his back to the salon, already

arrayed in a black coat and light trousers with a pattern of large

checks, eating a grilled chop, in the English manner. His wife thought

this very elegant, but also very disgusting--she had never brought

herself to take it instead of her usual breakfast of bread and butter

and an egg.

Tony was in her dressing-gown. She adored dressing-gowns. Nothing

seemed more elegant to her than a handsome negligée, and as she had

not been allowed to indulge this passion in the parental house she was

the more given to it as a wife. She had three of these dainty clinging

garments, to the fashioning of which can go so much more taste and

fantasy than to a ball-gown. To-day she wore her dark-red one. Its

colour toned beautifully with the paper above the wainscoting, and its

large-flowered stuff, of a beautiful soft texture, was embroidered all

over with sprays of tiny glass beads of the same colour, while row

after row of red velvet ribbons ran from neck to hem.

Her thick ash-blonde hair, with its dark-red velvet band, curled about

her brows. She had now, as she was herself well aware, reached the

highest point of her physical bloom; yet her pretty, pouting upper lip

retained just the naïve, provocative expression of her childhood. The

lids of her grey-blue eyes were reddened with cold water. Her hands,

the white Buddenbrook hands, finely shaped if a little stumpy, their

delicate wrists caressed by the velvet cuffs of her dressing-gown,

handled her knife and fork and tea-cup with motions that were to-day,

for some reason or other, rather jerky and abrupt. Her little daughter

Erica sat near her in a high chair. She was a plump child with short

blonde hair, in a funny, shapeless, knitted frock of pale-blue wool.

She held a large cup in both tiny hands, entirely concealing her face,

and drank her milk with little sighs of satisfaction.

Frau Grünlich rang, and Tinka, the housemaid, came from the entry to

take the child from her high chair and carry her upstairs into the

play-room. “You may take her walking outside for a half-hour, Tinka,”

said Tony. “But not longer; and put on her thick jacket. It is very

damp and foggy.” She remained alone with her husband.

“You only make yourself seem absurd,” she said then, after a silence,

obviously continuing an interrupted conversation. “What are your

objections? Give me some reason. I can’t be always attending to the

child.”

“You are not fond of children, Antonie.”

“Fond of children, indeed! I have no time. I am taken up with the

housekeeping. I wake up with twenty things that must be done, and I go

to bed with forty that have not been done.”

“There are two servants. A young woman like you--”

“Two servants. Good. Tinka has to wash up, to clean, to serve. The

cook is busy all the time. You have chops early in the morning. Think

it over, Grünlich. Sooner or later, Erica must have a _bonne_, a

governess.”

“But to get a governess for her so soon is not suited to our means.”

“Our means! Goodness, you _are_ absurd! Are we beggars? Are we forced

to live within the smallest limits we can? I think I brought you in

eighty thousand marks--”

“Oh, you and your eighty thousand marks--!”

“Yes, I know you like to make light of them. They were of no importance

to you because you married me for love! Good. But do you still love

me? You deliberately disregard my wishes. The child is not to have a

governess. And I don’t even speak any more of the coupé, which we need

quite as much as we need food and drink. And why do you insist on our

living out here in the country, if it isn’t in accordance with our

means to keep a carriage so that we can go into society respectably?

Why do you never like it when I go in to town? You would always rather

just have me bury myself out here, so I should never see a living soul.

I think you are very ill-tempered.”

Herr Grünlich poured some wine into his glass, lifted up one of the

crystal bells, and began on the cheese. He made no reply.

“Don’t you love me any more?” repeated Tony. “Your silence is so

insulting, it drives me to remind you of a certain day when you entered

our landscape-room. You made a fine figure of yourself! But from the

very first day after our marriage you have sat with me only in the

evening, and that only to read the paper. Just at first you showed some

little regard for my wishes. But that’s been over with for a long while

now. You neglect me.”

“And you? You are ruining me.”

“I? I am ruining you?”

“Yes, you are ruining me with your indolence, your extravagance, and

love of luxury.”

“Oh, pray don’t reproach me with my good upbringing! In my parents’

house I never had to lift a finger. Now I have hard work to get

accustomed to the housekeeping; but I have at least a right to demand

that you do not refuse me the ordinary assistance. Father is a rich

man; he would never dream that I could lack for service.”

“Then wait for this third servant until we get hold of some of those

riches.”

“Oh, you are wishing for my Father’s death. But I mean that we are

well-to-do people in our own right. I did not come to you with empty

hands.”

Herr Grünlich smiled an embarrassed and dejected smile, although he was

in the act of chewing his breakfast. He made no other reply, and his

silence bewildered Tony.

“Grünlich,” she said more quietly, “why do you smile and talk about our

‘means’? Am I mistaken? Has business been bad? Have you--?”

Just then somebody drummed on the corridor door, and Herr Kesselmeyer

walked in.

CHAPTER VI

Herr Kesselmeyer entered unannounced, as a friend of the house,

without hat or coat. He paused, however, near the door. His looks

corresponded exactly to the description Tony had given to her Mother.

He was slightly thick-set as to figure, but neither fat nor lean. He

wore a black, already somewhat shiny coat, short tight trousers of

the same material, and a white waistcoat, over which went a long thin

watch-chain and two or three eye-glass cords. His clipped white beard

was in sharp contrast with his red face. It covered his cheeks and

left his chin and lips free. His mouth was small and mobile, with two

yellowish pointed teeth in the otherwise vacant gum of his lower jaw,

and he was pressing these into his upper lip, as he stood absently by

the door with his hands in his trousers pockets and the black and white

down on his head waving slightly, although there was not the least

perceptible draught.

Finally he drew his hands out of his pockets, bowed, released his lip,

and with difficulty freed one of the eye-glass cords from the confusion

on his waistcoat. He lifted his pince-nez and put it with a single

gesture astride his nose. Then he made the most astonishing grimaces,

looked at the husband and wife, and remarked: “Ah, ha!”

He used this expression with extraordinary frequency and a surprising

variety of inflections. He might say it with his head thrown back, his

nose wrinkled up, mouth wide open, hands swishing about in the air,

with a long-drawn-out, nasal, metallic sound, like a Chinese gong; or

he might, with still funnier effect, toss it out, gently, _en passant_;

or with any one of a thousand different shades of tone and meaning. His

_a_ was very clouded and nasal. To-day it was a hurried, lively “Ah

ha!” accompanied with a jerk of the head, that seemed to arise from an

unusually pleasant mood, and yet might not be trusted to be so; for the

fact was, Banker Kesselmeyer never behaved more gaily than when he was

dangerous. When he jumped about emitting a thousand “Ah ha’s,” lifting

his glasses to his nose and letting them fall again, waving his arms,

chattering, plainly quite beside himself with light-headedness, then

you might be sure that evil was gnawing at his inwards. Herr Grünlich

looked at him blinking, with unconcealed mistrust.

“Already--so early?” he asked.

“Ah, ha!” answered Herr Kesselmeyer, and waved one of his small, red,

wrinkled hands in the air, as if to say: “Patience, there is a surprise

coming.” “I must speak with you, without any delay; I must speak with

you.”

The words sounded irresistibly comic as he rolled each one about before

giving it out, with exaggerated movements of his little toothless,

mobile mouth. He rolled his _r_’s as if his palate were greased. Herr

Grünlich blinked more and more suspiciously.

“Come and sit down, Herr Kesselmeyer,” said Tony. “I’m glad you’ve

come. Listen. You can decide between us. Grünlich and I have been

disagreeing. Now tell me: ought a three-year-old child to have a

governess or not?”

But Herr Kesselmeyer seemed not to be attending. He had seated himself

and was rubbing his stubbly beard with his forefinger, making a rasping

sound, his mouth as wide open as possible, nose as wrinkled, while he

stared over his glasses with an indescribably sprightly air at the

elegantly appointed breakfast-table, the silver bread-basket, the label

on the wine-bottle.

“Grünlich says I am ruining him,” Tony continued.

Herr Kesselmeyer looked at her; then he looked at Herr Grünlich;

then he burst out into an astonishing fit of laughter. “You are

ruining him?--you? _You_ are ruining him--that’s it, is it? Oh good

gracious, heavens and earth, you don’t say! That _is_ a joke. That is

a tre-men-dous, tre-men-dous joke.” He let out a stream of ha ha’s all

run in together.

Herr Grünlich was plainly nervous. He squirmed on his seat. He ran his

long finger down between his collar and his neck and let his golden

whiskers glide through his hand.

“Kesselmeyer,” he said. “Control yourself, man. Are you out of your

head? Stop laughing! Will you have some wine? Or a cigar? What are you

laughing at?”

“What am I laughing at? Yes, yes, give me a glass of wine, give me a

cigar. Why am I laughing? So you think your wife is ruining you?”

“She is very luxuriously inclined,” Herr Grünlich said irritably.

Tony did not contradict him. She leaned calmly back, her hands in

her lap on the velvet ribbons of her frock and her pert upper lip in

evidence: “Yes, I am, I know. I have it from Mamma. All the Krögers are

fond of luxury.”

She would have admitted in the same calm way that she was frivolous,

revengeful, or quick-tempered. Her strongly developed family sense was

instinctively hostile to conceptions of free will and self-development;

it inclined her rather to recognize and accept her own characteristics

wholesale, with fatalistic indifference and toleration. She had,

unconsciously, the feeling that any trait of hers, no matter of what

kind, was a family tradition and therefore worthy of respect.

Herr Grünlich had finished breakfast, and the fragrance of the two

cigars mingled with the warm air from the stove. “Will you take

another, Kesselmeyer?” said the host. “I’ll pour you out another glass

of wine.--You want to see me? Anything pressing? Is it important?--Too

warm here, is it? We’ll drive into town together afterward. It is

cooler in the smoking-room.” To all this Herr Kesselmeyer simply shook

his hand in the air, as if to say: “This won’t get us anywhere, my dear

friend.”

At length they got up; and, while Tony remained in the dining-room to

see that the servant-maid cleared away, Herr Grünlich led his colleague

through the “pensée-room,” with his head bent, drawing his long beard

reflectively through his fingers. Herr Kesselmeyer rowed into the room

with his arms and disappeared behind him.

Ten minutes passed. Tony had gone into the salon to give the polished

nut-wood secretary and the curved table-legs her personal attention

with the aid of a gay little feather duster. Then she moved slowly

through the dining-room into the living-room with dignity and marked

self-respect. The Demoiselle Buddenbrook had plainly not grown less

important in her own eyes since becoming Madame Grünlich. She held

herself very erect, chin in, and looked down at the world from above.

She carried in one hand her little lacquered key-basket; the other was

in the pocket of her gown, whose soft folds played about her. The naïve

expression of her mouth betrayed that the whole of her dignity and

importance were a part of a beautiful, childlike, innocent game which

she was constantly playing with herself.

In the “pensée-room” she busied herself with a little brass sprinkler,

watering the black earth around her plants. She loved her palms, they

gave so much elegance to the room. She touched carefully a young shoot

on one of the thick round stems, examined the majestically unfolded

fans, and cut away a yellow tip here and there with the scissors.

Suddenly she stopped. The conversation in the next room, which had for

several minutes been assuming a livelier tone, became so loud that she

could hear every word, though the door and the portières were both

heavy.

“Don’t shriek like that--control yourself, for God’s sake!” she heard

Herr Grünlich say. His weak voice could not stand the strain, and went

off in a squeak. “Take another cigar,” he went on, with desperate

mildness.

“Yes, thanks, with the greatest pleasure,” answered the banker, and

there was a pause while he presumably helped himself. Then he said: “In

short, will you or won’t you: one or the other?”

“Kesselmeyer, give me an extension.”

“Ah, ha! No, no, my friend. There is no question of an extension.

That’s not the point now.”

“Why not? What is stirring you up to this? Be reasonable, for heaven’s

sake. You’ve waited this long.”

“Not a day longer, my friend. Yes, we’ll say eight days, but not an

hour longer. But can’t we rely any longer on--?”

“No names, Kesselmeyer.”

“No names. Good. But doesn’t some one rely any longer on his estimable

Herr Pa--”

“No hints, either. My God, don’t be a fool.”

“Very good; no hints, either. But have we no claim any longer on the

well-known firm with whom our credit stands and falls, my friend?

How much did it lose by the Bremen failure? Fifty thousand? Seventy

thousand? A hundred thousand? More? The sparrows on the housetops know

that it was involved, heavily involved. Yesterday--well, no names.

Yesterday the well-known firm was good, and it was unconsciously

protecting you against pressure. To-day its stock is flat--and B.

Grünlich’s stock is the flattest of the flat. Is that clear? Do you

grasp it? You are the first man to notice a thing like that. How are

people treating you? How do they look at you? Beck and Goudstikker are

perfectly agreeable, give you the same terms as usual? And the bank?”

“They will extend.”

“You aren’t lying, are you? Oh, no! I know they gave you a jolt

yesterday--a very, very stimulating jolt eh? You see? Oh, don’t be

embarrassed. It is to your interest, of course, to pull the wool over

my eyes, so that the others will be quiet. Hey, my dear friend? Well,

you’d better write to the Consul. I’ll wait a week.”

“A part payment, Kesselmeyer!”

“Part payment, rubbish! One accepts part payment to convince oneself

for the time of a debtor’s ability to pay. Do I need to make

experiments of that kind on you? I am perfectly well-informed about

your ability to pay. Ah, ha, ah, ha! Part payment! That’s a very good

joke.”

“Moderate your voice, Kesselmeyer. Don’t laugh all the time in that

cursed way. My position is so serious--yes, I admit, it is serious. But

I have such-and-such business in hand--everything may still come out

all right. Listen, wait a minute: Give me an extension and I’ll sign it

for twenty per cent.”

“Nothing in it, nothing in it, my friend. Very funny, very amusing.

Oh, yes, I’m in favour of selling at the right time. You promised me

eight per cent, and I extended. You promised me twelve and sixteen per

cent, and I extended, every time. Now, you might offer me forty per

cent, and I shouldn’t consider it--not for a moment. Since Brother

Westfall in Bremen fell on his nose, everybody is for the moment

freeing himself from the well-known firm and getting on a sound basis.

As I say, I’m for selling at the right time. I’ve held your signatures

as long as Johann Buddenbrook was good--in the meantime I could write

up the interest on the capital and increase the per cent. But one only

keeps a thing so long as it is rising or at least keeping steady. When

it begins to fall, one sells--which is the same as saying I want my

capital.”

“Kesselmeyer, you are shameless.”

“Ah, ha, a-ha! Shameless, am I? That’s very charming, very funny. What

do you want? You must apply to your father-in-law. The Credit Bank is

raging--and you know you are not exactly spotless.”

“No, Kesselmeyer. I adjure you to hear me quietly. I’ll be perfectly

frank. I confess that my situation is serious. You and the Credit Bank

are not the only ones--there are notes of hand--everything seems to

have gone to pieces at once!”

“Of course--naturally. It is certainly a clean-up--a liquidation.”

“No, Kesselmeyer; hear me out. Do take another cigar.”

“This one is not half finished. Leave me alone with your cigars. Pay

up.”

“Kesselmeyer, don’t let me smash!--You are a friend of mine--you have

eaten at my table.”

“And maybe you haven’t eaten at mine?”

“Yes, yes--but don’t refuse me credit now, Kesselmeyer!”

“Credit? It’s credit, now, is it? Are you in your senses? A new loan?”

“Yes, Kesselmeyer, I swear to you-- A little--a trifle. I only need to

make a few payments and advances here and there to get on my feet again

and restore confidence. Help me and you will be doing a big business.

As I said, I have a number of affairs on hand. They may still all come

out right. You know how shrewd and resourceful I am.”

“I know what a numbskull you are! A dolt, a nincompoop, my dear friend!

Will you have the goodness to tell me what your resourcefulness can

accomplish at this stage? Perhaps there is a bank somewhere in the wide

world that will lend you a shilling? Or another father-in-law? Ah, no;

you have already played your best card. You can’t play it twice.--With

all due respect, my dear fellow, and my highest regards.”

“Speak lower, devil take you!”

“You are a fool. Shrewd and resourceful, are you? Yes, to the other

chap’s advantage. You’re not scrupulous, I’ll say that for you, but

much good it’s done you! You have played tricks, and wormed capital out

of people by hook or crook, just to pay me my twelve or sixteen per

cent. You threw your honour overboard without getting any return. You

have a conscience like a butcher’s dog, and yet you are nothing but a

ninny, a scapegoat. There are always such people--they are too funny

for words. Why is it you are so afraid to apply to the person we mean

with the whole story? Isn’t it because there was crooked work four

years ago? Perhaps it wasn’t all quite straight--what? Are you afraid

that certain things--?”

“Very well, Kesselmeyer; I will write. But suppose he refuses? Suppose

he lets me down?”

“Oh--ah, ha! Then we will just have a bankruptcy, a highly amusing

little bankruptcy. That doesn’t bother me at all. So far as I am

concerned, I have about covered my expenses with the interest you

have scratched together, and I have the priority with the assets. Oh,

you wait; I shan’t come short. I know everything pretty well, my good

friend; I have an inventory already in my pocket. Ah, ha! We shall see

that no dressing-gown and no silver bread-basket gets away.”

“Kesselmeyer, you have sat at my table--”

“Oh, be quiet with your table! In eight days I’ll be back for the

answer. I shall walk in to town--the fresh air will do me good. Good

morning, my friend, good morning!”

And Herr Kesselmeyer seemed to depart--yes, he went. She heard his odd,

shuffling walk in the corridor, and imagined him rowing along with his

arms....

Herr Grünlich entered the “pensée-room” and saw Tony standing there

with the little watering-can in her hand. She looked him in the face.

“What are you looking at? Why are you staring like that?” he said to

her. He showed his teeth, and made vague movements in the air with his

hands, and wiggled his body from side to side. His rosy face could

not become actually pale; but it was spotted red and white like a

scarlet-fever patient’s.

CHAPTER VII

Consul Johann Buddenbrook arrived at the villa at two o’clock in the

afternoon. He entered the Grünlich salon in a grey travelling-cloak and

embraced his daughter with painful intensity. He was pale and seemed

older. His small eyes were deep in their sockets, his large pointed

nose stuck out between the fallen cheeks, his lips seemed to have grown

thinner, and the beard under his chin and jaws half-covered by his

stiff choker and high neck-band,--he had lately ceased to wear the two

locks running from the temples half-way down the cheeks--was as grey as

the hair on his head.

The Consul had hard, nerve-racking days behind him. Thomas had had a

haemorrhage; the Father had learned of the misfortune in a letter from

Herr van der Kellen. He had left his business in the careful hands of

his clerk and hurried off to Amsterdam. He found nothing immediately

dangerous about his son’s illness, but an open-air cure was necessary,

in the South, in Southern France; and as it fortunately happened that a

journey of convalescence had been prescribed for the young son of the

head of the firm, the two young men had left for Pau as soon as Thomas

was able to travel.

The Consul had scarcely reached home again when he was attacked by

a fresh misfortune, which had for the moment shaken his firm to its

foundations and by which it had lost eighty thousand marks at one blow.

How? Discounted cheques drawn on Westfall Brothers had come back to

the firm, liquidation having begun. He had not failed to cover them.

The firm had at once showed what it could do, without hesitation or

embarrassment. But that could not prevent the Consul from experiencing

all the sudden coldness, the reserve, the mistrust at the banks,

with “friends,” and among firms abroad, which such an event, such a

weakening of working capital, was sure to bring in its train.

Well, he had pulled himself together, and had reviewed the whole

situation; had reassured, reinforced, made head. And then, in the midst

of the struggle, among telegrams, letters, and calculations, this last

blow broke upon him as well: B. Grünlich, his daughter’s husband, was

insolvent. In a long, whining, confused letter he had implored, begged,

and prayed for an assistance of a hundred to a hundred and twenty

thousand marks. The Consul replied curtly and non-committally that he

would come to Hamburg to meet Herr Grünlich and Kesselmeyer the banker,

made a brief, soothing explanation to his wife, and started off.

Tony received him in the salon. She was fond of receiving visits in

her brown silk salon, and she made no exception now; particularly as

she had a very profound impression of the importance of the present

occasion, without comprehending in the least what it was about. She

looked blooming and yet becomingly serious, in her pale grey frock with

its laces at breast and wrists, its bell-shaped sleeves and long train,

and little diamond clasp at the throat. “How are you, Papa? At last you

have come to see us again. How is Mamma? Is there good news from Tom?

Take off your things, Father dear. Will you dress? The guest-room is

ready for you. Grünlich is dressing.”

“Don’t call him, my child. I will wait for him here. You know I have

come for a talk with your husband--a very, very serious talk, my dear

Tony. Is Herr Kesselmeyer here?”

“Yes, he is in the pensée-room looking at the album.”

“Where is Erica?”

“Up in the nursery with Tinka. She is very well. She is bathing her

doll--of course, not in real water; I mean--she is a wax-doll, she

only--”

“Of course.” The Consul drew a deep breath and went on: “Evidently

you have not been informed as to--to the state of affairs with your

husband.”

He had sat down in an arm-chair near the large table, and Tony placed

herself at his feet on a little seat made of three cushions on top of

one another. The finger of her right hand toyed gently with the diamond

at her throat.

“No, Papa,” answered Tony. “I must confess I know nothing. Heavens,

I am a goose!--I have no understanding at all. I heard Kesselmeyer

talking lately to Grünlich--at the end it seemed to me he was just

joking again--he always talks so drolly. I heard your name once or

twice--”

“You heard my name? In what connection?”

“Oh, I know nothing of the connection, Papa. Grünlich has been

insufferably sulky ever since that day, I must say. Until

yesterday--yesterday he was in a good mood, and asked me a dozen times

if I loved him, and if I would put in a good word for him with you if

he had something to ask you.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, he told me he had written you and that you were coming here. It

is good you have. Everything is so queer. Grünlich had the card-table

put in here. There are a lot of paper and pencils on it--for you to sit

at, and hold a council together.”

“Listen, my dear child,” said the Consul, stroking her hair. “I want

to ask you something very serious. Tell me: you love your husband with

your whole heart, don’t you?”

“Of course, Papa,” said Tony with a face of childlike

hypocrisy--precisely the face of the child Tony when she was asked:

“You won’t tease the old doll-woman again, Tony?” The Consul was silent

a minute.

“You love him so much,” he asked again, “that you could not live

without him, under any circumstances, even if by God’s will your

situation should alter so that he could no longer surround you with

all these things?” And his hand described a quick movement over the

furniture and portières, over the gilt clock on the étagère, and

finally over her own frock.

“Certainly, Papa,” repeated Tony, in the soothing tone she nearly

always used when any one spoke seriously to her. She looked past her

father out of the window, where a heavy veil of rain was silently

descending. Her face had the expression children wear when some

one tells them a fairy story and then tactlessly introduces a

generalization about conduct and duty--a mixture of embarrassment and

impatience, piety and boredom.

The Consul looked at her without speaking for a minute. Was he

satisfied with her response? He had weighed everything thoroughly, at

home and during the journey.

It is comprehensible that Johann Buddenbrook’s first impulse was to

refuse his son-in-law any considerable payment. But when he remembered

how pressing--to use a mild word--he had been about this marriage;

when he looked back into the past, and recalled the words: “Are you

satisfied with me?” with which his child had taken leave of him after

the wedding, he gave way to a burdensome sense of guilt against her

and said to himself that the thing must be decided according to her

feelings. He knew perfectly that she had not made the marriage out of

love, but he was obliged to reckon with the possibility that these four

years of life together and the birth of the child had changed matters;

that Tony now felt bound body and soul to her husband and would be

driven by considerations both spiritual and worldly to shrink from a

separation. In such a case, the Consul argued, he must accommodate

himself to the surrender of whatever sum was necessary. Christian

duty and wifely feeling did indeed demand that Tony should follow her

husband into misfortune; and if she actually took this resolve, he

did not feel justified in letting her be deprived of all the ease and

comfort to which she had been accustomed since childhood. He would feel

himself obliged to avert the catastrophe, and to support B. Grünlich at

any price. Yet the final result of his considerations was the desire

to take his daughter and her child home with him and let Grünlich go

his own way. God forbid that the worst should happen!

In any case, the Consul invoked the pronouncement of the law that

a continued inability to provide for wife and children justified a

separation. But, before everything, he must find out his daughter’s

real feelings.

“I see,” he said, “my dear child, that you are actuated by good and

praiseworthy motives. But--I cannot believe that you are seeing the

thing as, unhappily, it really is--namely, as actual fact. I have not

asked what you would do in this or that case, but what you to-day, now,

will do. I do not know how much of the situation you know or suspect.

It is my painful duty to tell you that your husband is obliged to

call his creditors together; that he cannot carry on his business any

longer. I hope you understand me.”

“Grünlich is bankrupt?” Tony asked under her breath, half rising from

the cushions and seizing the Consul’s hand quickly.

“Yes, my child,” he said seriously. “You did not know it?”

“My suspicions were not definite,” she stammered. “Then Kesselmeyer was

not joking?” she went on, staring before her at the brown carpet. “Oh,

my God!” she suddenly uttered, and sank back on her seat.

In that minute all that was involved in the word “bankrupt” rose

clearly before her: all the vague and fearful hints which she had heard

as a child. “Bankrupt”--that was more dreadful than death, that was

catastrophe, ruin, shame, disgrace, misery, despair. “He is bankrupt,”

she repeated. She was so cast down and shaken by the fatal word that

the idea of escape, of assistance from her father, never occurred to

her. He looked at her with raised eyebrows, out of his small deep-set

eyes, which were tired and sad and full of an unusual suspense. “I am

asking you,” he said gently, “my dear Tony, if you are ready to follow

your husband into misery?” He realized at once that he had used the

hard word instinctively to frighten her, and he added: “He can work

himself up again, of course.”

“Certainly, Papa,” answered she. But it did not prevent her from

bursting into tears. She sobbed into her batiste handkerchief, trimmed

with lace and with the monogram A. G. She still wept just like a child;

quite unaffectedly and without embarrassment. Her upper lip had the

most touching expression.

Her father continued to probe her with his eyes. “That is your serious

feeling, my child?” he asked. He was as simple as she.

“I must, mustn’t I?” she sobbed. “Don’t I have to--?”

“Certainly not,” he said. But with a guilty feeling he added: “I would

not force you to it, my dear Tony. If it should be the case that your

feelings did not bind you indissolubly to your husband--”

She looked at him with uncomprehending, tear-streaming eyes. “How,

Papa?”

The Consul twisted and turned, and found a compromise. “My dear child,

you can understand how painful it would be for me to have to tell you

all the hardships and suffering that would come about through the

misfortune of your husband, the breaking-up of the business and of your

household. I desire to spare you these first unpleasantnesses by taking

you and little Erica home with me. You would be glad of that, I think?”

Tony was silent a moment, drying her tears. She carefully breathed

on her handkerchief and pressed it against her eyes to heal their

inflammation. Then she asked in a firm tone, without lifting her voice:

“Papa, is Grünlich to blame? Is it his folly and lack of uprightness

that has brought him to this?”

“Very probably,” said the Consul. “That is--no, I don’t know, my child.

The explanation with him and the banker has not taken place yet.”

She seemed not to be listening. She sat crouched on her three silk

cushions, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and with her

head bowed looked dreamily into the room.

“Ah, Papa,” she said softly, almost without moving her lips, “wouldn’t

it have been better--?”

The Consul could not see her face--but it had the expression it often

wore those summer evenings at Travemünde, as she leaned at the window

of her little room. One arm rested on her Father’s knee, the hand

hanging down limply. This very hand was expressive of a sad and tender

abandonment, a sweet, pensive longing, travelling back into the past.

“Better?” asked Consul Buddenbrook. “If what, my child?”

He was thoroughly prepared for the confession that it would have been

better had this marriage not taken place; but Tony only answered with a

sigh: “Oh, nothing.”

She seemed rapt by her thoughts, which had borne her so far away that

she had almost forgotten the “bankrupt.” The Consul felt himself

obliged to utter what he would rather only have confirmed.

“I think I guess your thoughts, Tony,” he said, “and I don’t on my side

hesitate to confess that in this hour I regret the step that seemed

to me four years ago so wise and advisable. I believe, before God, I

am not responsible. I think I did my duty in trying to give you an

existence suitable to your station. Heaven has willed otherwise. You

will not believe that your Father played lightly and unreflectingly

with your happiness in those days! Grünlich came to us with the best

recommendations, a minister’s son, a Christian and a cosmopolitan man.

Later I made business inquiries, and it all sounded as favourable as

possible. I examined the connections. All that is still very dark; and

the explanation is yet to come. But you don’t blame me--?”

“No, Papa--how can you say such a thing? Come, don’t take it to heart,

poor Papa! You look pale. Shall I give you a little cordial?” She put

her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you, no,” he said. “There, there! It is all right. Yes, I have

bad days behind me. I have had much to try me. These are all trials

sent from God. But that does not help my feeling a little guilty toward

you, my child. Everything depends on the question I have already asked

you. Speak openly, Tony. Have you learned to love your husband in these

years of marriage?”

Tony wept afresh; and covering her eyes with both hands, in which she

held the batiste handkerchief, she sobbed out: “Oh, what are you asking

me, Papa? I have never loved him--he has always been repulsive to me.

You know that.”

It would be hard to say what went on in Johann Buddenbrook. His eyes

looked shocked and sad; but he bit his lips hard together, and great

wrinkles came in his cheeks, as they did when he had brought a piece of

business to a successful conclusion. He said softly: “Four years--”

Tony’s tears ceased suddenly. With her damp handkerchief in her hand,

she sat up straight on her seat and said angrily: “Four years! Yes!

Sometimes, in those four years, he sat with me in the evening and read

the paper.”

“God gave you a child,” said the Father, moved.

“Yes, Papa. And I love Erica very much, although Grünlich says I am not

fond of children. I would not be parted from her, that is certain. But

Grünlich--no! Grünlich, no. And now he is bankrupt. Ah, Papa, if you

will take Erica and me home--oh, gladly.”

The Consul compressed his lips again. He was extremely well satisfied.

But the main point had yet to be touched upon; though, by the decision

Tony showed, he did not risk much by asking.

“You seem not to have thought it might be possible to do something,

to get help. I have already said to you that I do not feel myself

altogether innocent of the situation, and--in case you should

expect--hope--I might intervene, to prevent the failure and cover your

husband’s debts, the best I could, and float his business--”

He watched her keenly, and her bearing filled him with satisfaction. It

expressed disappointment.

“How much is it?” she asked.

“What is that to the point, my child? A very large sum.” And Consul

Buddenbrook nodded several times, as though the weight of the very

thought of such a sum swung his head back and forth. “I should not

conceal from you,” he went on, “that the firm has suffered losses

already quite apart from this affair, and that the surrender of a sum

like this would be a blow from which it would recover with difficulty.

I do not in any way say this to--”

He did not finish. Tony had sprung up, had even taken a few steps

backward, and with the wet handkerchief still in her hand she cried:

“Good! Enough! Never!” She looked almost heroic. The words “the firm”

had struck home. It is highly probable that they had more effect than

even her dislike of Herr Grünlich. “You shall not do that, Papa,” she

went on, quite beside herself. “Do you want to be bankrupt too? Never,

never!”

At this moment the hall door opened a little uncertainly and Herr

Grünlich entered.

Johann Buddenbrook rose, with a movement that meant: “That’s settled.”

CHAPTER VIII

Herr Grünlich’s face was all mottled with red; but he had dressed

carefully in a respectable-looking black coat and pea-green trousers

like those in which he had made his first visits in Meng Street. He

stood still, with his head down, looking very limp, and said in a weak

exhausted sort of voice: “Father?”

The Consul bowed, not too cordially, and straightened his neck-cloth

with an energetic movement.

“Thank you for coming,” said Herr Grünlich.

“It was my duty, my friend,” replied the Consul. “But I am afraid it

will be about all I can do for you.”

Herr Grünlich threw him a quick look and seemed to grow still more limp.

“I hear,” the Consul went on, “that your banker, Herr Kesselmeyer, is

awaiting us--where shall the conference be held? I am at your service.”

“If you will be so good as to follow me,” Herr Grünlich murmured.

Consul Buddenbrook kissed his daughter on the forehead and said, “Go up

to your child, Antonie.”

Then he went, with Herr Grünlich fluttering in front of and behind him

to open the portières, through the dining-room into the living-room.

Herr Kesselmeyer stood at the window, the black and white down softly

rising and falling upon his cranium.

“Herr Kesselmeyer, Herr Consul Buddenbrook, my father-in-law,”

said Herr Grünlich, meekly. The Consul’s face was impassive. Herr

Kesselmeyer bowed with his arms hanging down, both yellow teeth against

his upper lip, and said “Pleasure to meet you, Herr Consul.”