The Consul’s wife, her needle-work in her lap, nodded with some hesitation. “Quite so, my dear Jean,” she said, though she was far from having understood everything, least of all what these big figures had to do with her engaging a man-servant.

The Consul puffed at his cigar till it glowed, threw back his head and blew out the smoke, and then went on:

“You are thinking, of course, that when God calls your dear parents unto Himself, we shall have a considerable sum to look forward to—and so we shall. But we must not reckon too blindly on it. Your Father has had some heavy losses, due, we all know, to your brother Justus. Justus is certainly a charming personality, but business is not his strong point, and he has had bad luck too. According to all accounts he has had to pay up pretty heavily, and transactions with bankers make dear money. Your Father has come to the rescue several times, to prevent a smash. That sort of thing may happen again—to speak frankly, I am afraid it will. You will forgive me, Betsy, for my plain speaking, but you know that the style of living which is so proper and pleasing in your Father is not at all suitable for a business man. Your Father has nothing to do with business any more; but Justus—you know what I mean—he isn’t very careful, is he? His ideas are too large, he is too impulsive. And your parents aren’t saving anything. They live a lordly life—as their circumstances permit them to.”

The Frau Consul smiled forbearingly. She well knew her husband’s opinion of the luxurious Kröger tastes.

“That’s all,” he said, and put his cigar into the ash-receiver. “As far as I’m concerned, I live in the hope that God will preserve my powers unimpaired, and that by His gracious help I may succeed in reëstablishing the firm on its old basis. . . . I hope you see the thing more clearly now, Betsy?”

“Quite, quite, my dear Jean,” the Frau Consul hastened to reply; for she had given up the man-servant, for the evening. “Shall we go to bed? It is very late—”

A few days later, when the Consul came in to dinner in an unusually good mood, they decided at the table to engage the Möllendorpfs’ Anton.

CHAPTER VI

“We shall put Tony into Fraulein Weichbrodt’s boarding-school,” said the Consul. He said it with such decision that so it was.

Thomas was applying himself with talent to the business; Clara was a thriving, lively child; and the appetite of the good Clothilde must have pleased any heart alive. But Tony and Christian were hardly so satisfactory. It was not only that Christian had to stop nearly every afternoon for coffee with Herr Stengel—though even this became at length too much for the Frau Consul, and she sent a dainty missive to the master, summoning him to conference in Meng Street. Herr Stengel appeared in his Sunday wig and his tallest choker, bristling with lead-pencils like lance-heads, and they sat on the sofa in the landscape-room, while Christian hid in the dining-room and listened. The excellent man set out his views, with eloquence if some embarrassment: spoke of the difference between “line” and “dash,” told the tale of “The Forest Green” and the scuttle of coals, and made use in every other sentence of the phrase “in consequence.” It probably seemed to him a circumlocution suitable to the elegant surroundings in which he found himself. After a while the Consul came and drove Christian away. He expressed to Herr Stengel his lively regret that a son of his should give cause for dissatisfaction. “Oh, Herr Consul, God forbid! Buddenbrook minor has a wide-awake mind, he is a lively chap, and in consequence—Just a little too lively, if I might say so; and in consequence—” The Consul politely went with him through the hall to the entry, and Herr Stengel took his leave. . . . Ah, no, this was far from being the worst!

The worst, when it became known, was as follows: Young Christian Buddenbrook had leave one evening to go to the theatre in company with a friend. The performance was Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell; and the rôle of Tell’s son Walter was played by a young lady, a certain Mademoiselle Meyer-de-la-Grange. Christian’s worst, then, had to do with this young person. She wore when on the stage, whether it suited her part or not, a diamond brooch, which was notoriously genuine; for, as everybody knew, it was the gift of young Consul Döhlmann—Peter Döhlmann, son of the deceased wholesale dealer in Wall Street outside Holsten Gate. Consul Peter, like Justus Kröger, belonged to the group of young men whom the town called “fast.” His way of life, that is to say, was rather loose! He had married, and had one child, a little daughter; but he had long ago quarrelled with his wife, and he led the life of a bachelor. His father had left him a considerable inheritance, and he carried on the business, after a fashion; but people said he was already living on his capital. He lived mostly at the Club or the Rathskeller, was often to be met somewhere in the street at four o’clock in the morning; and made frequent business trips to Hamburg. Above all, he was a zealous patron of the drama, and took a strong personal interest in the caste. Mademoiselle Meyer-de-la-Grange was the latest of a line of young ladies whom he had, in the past, distinguished by a gift of diamonds.

Well, to arrive at the point, this young lady looked so charming as Walter Tell, wore her brooch and spoke her lines with such effect, that Christian felt his heart swell with enthusiasm, and tears rose to his eyes. He was moved by his transports to a course that only the very violence of emotion could pursue. He ran during the entr’acte to a flower-shop opposite, where, for the sum of one mark eight and a half shillings, he got at a bargain a bunch of flowers; and then this fourteen-year-old sprat, with his big nose and his deep-lying eyes, took his way to the green-room, since nobody stopped him, and came upon Fräulein Meyer-de-la-Grange, talking with Consul Peter Döhlmann at her dressing-room door. Peter Döhlmann nearly fell over with laughing when he saw Christian with the bouquet. But the new wooer, with a solemn face, bowed in his best manner before Walter Tell, handed her the bouquet, and, nodding his head, said in a voice of well-nigh tearful conviction: “Ah, Fraulein, how beautifully you act!”

“Well, hang me if it ain’t Krishan Buddenbrook!” Consul Döhlmann cried out, in his broadest accent. Fräulein Meyer-de-la-Grange lifted her pretty brows and asked: “The son of Consul Buddenbrook?” And she stroked the cheek of her young admirer with all the favour in the world.

Such was the story that Consul Peter Döhlmann told at the Club that night; it flew about the town like lightning, and reached the ears of the head master, who asked for an audience with Consul Buddenbrook. And how did the Father take this affair? He was, in truth, less angry than overwhelmed. He sat almost like a broken man, after telling the Frau Consul the story in the landscape-room.

“And this is our son,” he said. “So is he growing up—”

“But Jean! Good heavens, your Father would have laughed at it. Tell it to my Father and Mother on Thursday—you will see how Papa will enjoy it—”

But here the Consul rose up in anger. “Ah, yes, yes! I am sure he will enjoy it, Betsy. He will be glad to know that his light blood and impious desires live on, not only in a rake like Justus, his own son, but also in a grandson of his as well! Good God, you drive me to say these things!—He goes to this—person; he spends his pocket-money on flowers for this— lorette! I don’t say he knows what he is doing—yet. But the inclination shows itself—it shows itself, Betsy!”

Ah, yes, this was all very painful indeed. The Consul was perhaps the more beside himself for the added reason that Tony’s behaviour, too, had not been of the best. She had given up, it is true, shouting at the nervous stranger to make him dance; and she no longer rang the doorbell of the tiny old woman who sold worsted dolls. But she threw back her head more pertly than ever, and showed, especially after the summer visits with her grandparents, a very strong tendency to vanity and arrogance of spirit.

One day the Consul surprised her and Mamsell Jungmann reading together. The book was Clauren’s “Mimili” ; the Consul turned over some of the leaves, and then silently closed it—and it was opened no more. Soon afterward it came to light that Tony—Antonie Buddenbrook, no less a person—had been seen walking outside the City wall with a young student, a friend of her brother. Frau Stuht, she who moved in the best circles, had seen the pair, and had remarked at the Möllendorpfs’, whither she had gone to buy some cast-off clothing, that really Mademoiselle Buddenbrook was getting to the age where—And Frau Senator Möllendorpf had lightly repeated the story to the Consul. The pleasant strolls came to an end. Later it came out that Fräulein Antonie had made a post-office of the old hollow tree that stood near the Castle Gate, and not only posted therein letters addressed to the same student, but received letters from him as well by that means. When these facts came to light, they seemed to indicate the need of a more watchful oversight over the young lady, now fifteen years old; and she was accordingly, as we have already said, sent to boarding-school at Fräulein Weichbrodt’s, Number seven, Millbank.

CHAPTER VII

Therese Weichbrodt was humpbacked. So humpbacked that she was not much higher than a table. She was forty-one years old. But as she had never put her faith in outward seeming, she dressed like an old lady of sixty or seventy. Upon her padded grey locks rested a cap the green ribbons of which fell down over shoulders narrow as a child’s. Nothing like an ornament ever graced her shabby black frock—only the large oval brooch with her mother’s miniature in it.

Little Miss Weichbrodt had shrewd, sharp brown eyes, a slightly hooked nose, and thin lips which she could compress with extraordinary firmness. In her whole insignificant figure, in her every movement, there indwelt a force which was, to be sure, somewhat comic, yet exacted respect. And her mode of speech helped to heighten the effect. She spoke with brisk, jerky motions of the lower jaw and quick, emphatic nods. She used no dialect, hut enunciated clearly and with precision, stressing the consonants. Vowel-sounds, however, she exaggerated so much that she said, for instance, “botter” instead of “butter”—or even “batter!” Her little dog that was forever yelping she called Babby instead of Bobby. She would say to a pupil: “Don-n’t be so stu-upid child” and give two quick knocks on the table with her knuckle. It was very impressive—no doubt whatever about that! An when Mlle. Popinet, the Frenchwoman, took too much sugar to her coffee, Miss Weichbrodt had a way of gazing at the ceiling and drumming on the cloth with one hand while she said: “Why not take the who-ole sugar-basin? I would!” It always made Mlle. Popinet redden furiously.

As a child—heavens, what a tiny child she must have been! —Therese Weichbrodt had given herself the nickname of Sesemi, and she still kept it, even letting the best and most favoured of the day- as well as of the boarding-pupils use it. “Call me Sesemi, child,” she said on the first day to Tony Buddenbrook, kissing her briefly, with a sound as of a small explosion, on the forehead. “I like it.” Her elder sister, however, Madame Kethelsen, was called Nelly.

Madame Kethelsen was about forty-eight years old. She had been left penniless when her husband died, and now lived in a little upstairs bedroom in her sister’s house. She dressed like Sesemi, but by contrast was very tall. She wore woollen wristlets on her thin wrists. She was not a mistress, and knew nothing of discipline. A sort of inoffensive and placid cheerfulness was all her being. When one of the pupils played a prank, she would laugh so heartily that she nearly cried, and then Sesemi would rap on the table and call out “Nelly!” very sharply—it sounded like “Nally”—and Madame Kethelsen would shrink into herself and be mute.

Madame Kethelsen obeyed her younger sister, who scolded her as if she were a child. Sesemi, in fact, despised her warmly. Therese Weichbrodt was a well-read, almost a literary woman. She struggled endlessly to keep her childhood faith, her religious assurance that somewhere in the beyond she was to be recompensed for the hard, dull present. But Madame Kethelsen, innocent, uninstructed, was all simplicity of nature. “Dear, good Nelly, what a child she is! She never doubts or struggles, she is always happy.” In such remarks there was always as much contempt as envy. Contempt was a weakness of Sesemi’s—perhaps a pardonable one.

The small red-brick suburban house was surrounded by a neatly kept garden. Its lofty ground floor was entirely taken up by schoolrooms and dining-room; the bedrooms were in the upper story and the attic. Miss Weichbrodt did not have a large number of pupils. As boarders she received only older girls, while the day-school consisted of but three classes, the lowest ones. Sesemi took care to have only the daugh ters of irreproachably refined families in her house. Tony Buddenbrook, as we have seen, she welcomed most tenderly. She even made “bishop” for supper—a sort of sweet red punch to be taken cold, in the making of which she was a past mistress. “A little more beeshop,” she urged with a hearty nod. It sounded so tempting; nobody could resist!

Fraulein Weichbrodt sat on two sofa-cushions at the top of the table and presided over the meal with tact and discretion. She held her stunted figure stiffly erect, tapped vigilantly on the table, cried “Nally” or “Babby,” and subdued Mlle. Popinet with a glance whenever the latter seemed about to take unto herself all the cold veal jelly. Tony had been allotted a place between two other boarders, Armgard von Schilling, the strapping blond daughter of a Mecklenburg landowner, and Gerda Arnoldsen, whose home was in Amsterdam—an unusual, elegant figure, with dark red hair, brown eyes close together, and a lovely, pale, haughty face. Opposite her sat a chattering French girl who looked like a negress, with huge gold earrings. The lean English Miss Brown, with her sourish smile, sat at the bottom of the table. She was a boarder too.

It was not hard, with the help of Sesemi’s bishop, to get acquainted. Mlle. Popinet had had nightmares again last night— ah, quel horreur! She usually screamed “Help, thieves; help, thieves!” until everybody jumped out of bed. Next, it appeared that Gerda Arnoldsen did not take piano like the rest of them, but the violin, and that Papa—her Mother was dead—had promised her a real Stradivarius. Tony was not musical—hardly any of the Buddenbrooks and none of the Krögers were. She could not even recognize the chorals they played at St. Mary’s.—Oh, the organ in the new Church at Amsterdam had a vox humana—a human voice—that was just wonderful. Armgard von Schilling talked about the cows at home.

It was Armgard who from the earliest moment had made a great impression on Tony. She was the first person from a noble family whom Tony had ever known. What luck, to be called von Schilling! Her own parents had the most beautiful old house in the town, and her grandparents belonged to the best families; still, they were called plain Buddenbrook and Kröger—which was a pity, to be sure. The granddaughter of the proud Lebrecht Kröger glowed with reverence for Armgard’s noble birth. Privately, she sometimes thought that the splendid “von” went with her better than it did with Armgard; for Armgard did not appreciate her good luck, dear, no! She had a thick pigtail, good-natured blue eyes, and a broad Mecklenburg accent, and went about thinking just nothing at all on the subject. She made absolutely no pretentions to being aristocratic; in fact, she did not know what it was. But the word “aristocratic” stuck in Tony’s small head; and she emphatically applied it to Gerda Arnoldsen.

Gerda was rather exclusive, and had something foreign and queer about her. She liked to do up her splendid red hair in striking ways, despite Sesemi’s protests. Some of the girls thought it was “silly” of her to play the violin instead of the piano—and, be it known, “silly” was a term of very severe condemnation. Still, the girls mostly agreed with Tony that Gerda was aristocratic—in her figure, well-developed for her years; in her ways, her small possessions, everything. There was the ivory toilet set from Paris, for instance; that Tony could appreciate, for her own parents and grandparents also had treasures which had been brought from Paris.

The three girls soon made friends. They were in the same class and slept together in the same large room at the top of the house. What delightful, cosy times they had going to bed! They gossiped while they undressed—in undertones, however, for it was ten o’clock and next door Mlle. Popinet had gone to bed to dream of burglars. Eva Ewers slept with her. Eva was a little Hamburger, whose father, an amateur painter and collector, had settled in Munich.

The striped brown blinds were down, the low, red-shaded lamp burned on the table, there was a faint smell of violets and fresh wash, and a delicious atmosphere of laziness and dreams.

“Heavens,” said Armgard, half undressed, sitting on her bed, “how Dr. Newmann can talk! He comes into the class and stands by the table and tells about Racine—”

He has a lovely high forehead,” remarked Gerda, standing before the mirror between the windows and combing her hair by the light of two candles.

“Oh, yes, hasn’t he?” Armgard said eagerly.

“And you are taking the course just on his account, Armgard; you gaze at him all the time with your blue eyes, as if—”

“Are you in love with him?” asked Tony. “I can’t undo my shoe-lace; please, Gerda. Thanks. Why don’t you marry him? He is a good match—he will get to be a High School Professor.”

“I think you are both horrid. I’m not in love with him, and I would not marry a teacher, anyhow. I shall marry a country gentleman.”

“A nobleman?” Tony dropped her stocking and looked thoughtfully into Armgard’s face.

“I don’t know, yet. But he must have a large estate. Oh, girls, I just love that sort of thing! I shall get up at five o’clock every morning, and attend to everything. . . .” She pulled up the bed-covers and stared dreamily at the ceiling.

“Five hundred cows are before your mind’s eye,” said Gerda, looking at her in the mirror.

Tony was not ready yet; but she let her head fall on the pillow, tucked her hands behind her neck, and gazed dreamily at the ceiling in her turn.

“Of course,” she said, “I shall marry a business man. He must have a lot of money, so we can furnish elegantly. I owe that to my family and the firm,” she added earnestly. “Yes, you’ll see, that’s what I shall do.”

Gerda had finished her hair for the night and was brushing her big white teeth, using the ivory-backed hand-mirror to see them better.

“I shall probably not marry at all,” she said, speaking with some difficulty on account of the tooth-powder. I don’t see why I should. I am not anxious. I’ll go back to Amsterdam and play duets with Daddy and afterwards live with my married sister.”

“What a pity,” Tony said briskly. “What a pity! You ought to marry here and stay here for always. Listen: you could marry one of my brothers—”

“The one with the big nose?” asked Gerda, and gave a dainty little yawn, holding the hand-mirror before her face.

“Or the other; it doesn’t matter. You could furnish beautifully. Jacobs could do it—the upholsterer in Fish Street. He has lovely taste. I’d come to see you every day—”

But then there came the voice of Mlle. Popinet. It said: “Oh, mademoiselles! Please go to bed. It is too late to get married any more this evening!”

Sundays and holidays Tony spent in Meng Street or outside the town with her grandparents. How lovely, when it was fine on Easter Sunday, hunting for eggs and marzipan hares in the enormous Kröger garden! Then there were the summer holidays at the seashore; they lived in the Kurhouse, ate at the table-d’hôte, bathed, and went donkey-riding. Some seasons when the Consul had business, there were long journeys. But Christmases were best of all. There were three present-givings: at home, at the grandparents’, and at Sesemi’s, where bishop flowed in streams. The one at home was the grandest, for the Consul believed in keeping the holy feast with pomp and ceremony. They gathered in the landscape-room with due solemnity. The servants and the crowd of poor people thronged into the pillared hall, where the Consul went about shaking their purple hands. Then outside rose the voices of the choir-boys from St. Mary’s in a quartette, and one’s heart heat loudly with awe and expectation. The smell of the Christmas tree was already coming through the crack in the great white folding doors; and the Frau Consul took the old family Bible with the funny big letters, and slowly read aloud the Christmas chapter; and after the choir-boys had sung another carol, everybody joined in “O Tannenbaum” and went in solemn procession through the hall into the great salon, hung with tapestries that had statuary woven into them. There the tree rose to the ceiling, decorated with white lilies, twinkling and sparkling and pouring out light and fragrance; and the table with the presents on it stretched from the windows to the door. Outside, the Italians with the barrel-organ were making music in the frozen, snowy streets, and a great hubbub came over from the Christmas market in Market Square. All the children except little Clara stopped up to late supper in the salon, and there were mountains of carp and stuffed turkey.

In these years Tony Buddenbrook visited two Mecklenburg estates. She stopped for two weeks one summer with her friend Armgard, on Herr von Schilling’s property, which lay on the coast across the bay from Travemünde. And another time she went with Cousin Tilda to a place where Bernard Buddenbrook was inspector. This estate was called “Thankless,” because it did not bring in a penny’s income; but for a summer holiday it was not to be despised.

Thus the years went on. It was, take it all in all, a happy youth for Tony.

CHAPTER I

On a June afternoon, not long after five o’clock, the family were sitting before the “portal” in the garden, where they had drunk coffee. They had pulled the rustic furniture outside, for it was too close in the white-washed garden house, with its tall mirror decorated with painted birds and its varnished folding doors, which were really not folding doors at all and had only painted latches.

The Consul, his wife, Tony, Tom, and Clothilde sat in a half-circle around the table, which was laid with its usual shining service. Christian, sitting a little to one side, conned the second oration of Cicero against Catiline. He looked unhappy. The Consul smoked his cigar and read the Advertiser . His wife had let her embroidery fall into her lap and sat smiling at little Clara; the child, with Ida Jungmann, was looking for violets in the grass-plot. Tony, her head propped on both hands, was deep in Hoffman’s “Serapion Brethren,” while Tom tickled her in the back of the neck with a grassblade, an attention which she very wisely ignored. And Clothilde, looking thin and old-maidish in her flowered cotton frock, was reading a story called “Blind, Deaf, Dumb, and Still Happy.” As she read, she scraped up the biscuit-crumbs carefully with all five fingers from the cloth and ate them.

A few white clouds stood motionless in the slowly paling sky. The small town garden, with its carefully laid-out paths and beds, looked gay and tidy in the afternoon sun. The scent of the mignonette borders floated up now and then.

“Well, Tom,” said the Consul expansively, and took the cigar out of his mouth, “we are arranging that rye sale I told you about, with van Henkdom and Company.”

“What is he giving?” Tom asked with interest, ceasing to tickle Tony.

“Sixty thaler for a thousand kilo—not bad, eh?”

“That’s very good.” Tom knew this was excellent business.

“Tony, your position is not comme il faut, ” remarked the Frau Consul. Whereat Tony, without raising her eyes from her book, took one elbow off the table.

“Never mind,” Tony said. “She can sit how she likes, she will always be Tony Buddenbrook. Tilda and she are certainly the beauties of the family.”

Clothilde was astonished almost to death. “Good gracious, Tom,” she said. It was inconceivable how she could drawl out the syllables. Tony bore the jeer in silence. It was never any use, Tom was more than a match for her. He could always get the last word and have the laugh on his side. Her nostrils dilated a little, and she shrugged her shoulders. But when the Consul’s wife began to talk of the coming dance at the house of Consul Huneus, and let fall something about new patent leather shoes, Tony took the other elbow off the table and displayed a lively interest.

“You keep talking and talking,” complained Christian fretfully, “and I’m having such a hard time. I wish I were a business man.”

“Yes, you’re always wanting something different,” said Tom. Anton came across the garden with a card on his tray. They all looked at him expectantly.

“Grünlich, Agent,” read the Consul. “He is from Hamburg—an agreeable man, and well recommended, the son of a clergyman. I have business dealings with him. There is a piece of business now.—Is it all right, Betsy, if I ask him to come out here?”

A middle-sized man, his head thrust a little forward of his body, carrying his hat and stick in one hand, came across the garden. He was some two-and-thirty years old; he wore a fuzzy greenish-yellow suit with a long-skirted coat, and grey worsted gloves. His face, beneath the sparse light hair, was rosy and smiling; but there was an undeniable wart on one side of his nose. His chin and upper lip were smooth-shaven; he wore long, drooping side-whiskers, in the English fashion, and these adornments were conspicuously golden-yellow in colour. Even at a distance, he began making obsequious gestures with his broad-brimmed grey hat, and as he drew near he took one last very long step, and arrived describing a half-circle with the upper part of his body, by this means bowing to them all at once.

“I am afraid I am disturbing the family circle,” he said in a soft voice, with the utmost delicacy of manner. “You are conversing, you are indulging in literary pursuits—I must really beg your pardon for my intrusion.”

“By no means, my dear Herr Grünlich,” said the Consul. He and his sons got up and shook hands with the stranger. “You are very welcome. I am delighted to see you outside the office and in my family circle. Herr Grünlich, Betsy—a friend of mine and a keen man of business. This is my daughter Antonie, and my niece Clothilde. Thomas you know already, and this is my second son, Christian, in High School.” Herr Grünlich responded to each name with an inclination of the body.

“I must repeat,” he said, “that I have no desire to intrude. I came on business. If the Herr Consul would be so good as to take a walk with me round the gardens—” The Consul’s wife answered: “It will give us pleasure to have you sit down with us for a little before you begin to talk business with my husband. Do sit down.”

“A thousand thanks,” said Herr Grünlich, apparently quite flattered. He sat down on the edge of the chair which Tom brought, laid his hat and stick on his knees, and settled himself, running his hand over his long beard with a little hemming and hawing, as if to say, “Well, now we’ve got past the introduction—what next?”

The Frau Consul began the conversation. “You live in Hamburg?” she asked, inclining her head and letting her work fall into her lap.

“Yes, Frau Consul,” responded Herr Grünlich with a fresh bow. “At least, my house is in Hamburg, but I am on the road a good deal. My business is very flourishing—ahem—if I may be permitted to say so.”

The Frau Consul lifted her eyebrows and made respectful motions with her mouth, as if she were saying “Ah—indeed?”

“Ceaseless activity is a condition of my being,” added he, half turning to the Consul. He coughed again as he noticed that Fräulein Antonie’s glance rested upon him. She gave him, in fact, the cold, calculating stare with which a maiden measures a strange young man—a stare which seems always on the point of passing over into actual contempt.

“We have relatives in Hamburg,” said she, in order to be saying something.

“The Duchamps,” explained the Consul. “The family of my late Mother.”

“Oh, yes,” Herr Grünlich hastened to say. “I have the honour of a slight acquaintance with the family. They are very fine people, in mind and heart. Ahem! This would be a better world if there were more families like them in it. They have religion, benevolence, and genuine piety; in short, they are my ideal of the true Christlike spirit. And in them it is united to a rare degree with a brilliant cosmopolitanism, an elegance, an aristocratic bearing, which I find most attractive, Frau Consul.”

Tony thought: “How can he know my Father and Mother so well? He is saying exactly what they like best to hear.” The Consul responded approvingly, “The combination is one that is becoming in everybody.” And the Frau Consul could not resist stretching out her hand to their guest with her sweeping gesture, palm upward, while the bracelets gave a little jingle. “You speak as though you read my inmost thoughts, dear Herr Grünlich,” she said.

Upon which, Herr Grünlich made another deep bow, settled himself again, stroked his beard, and coughed as if to say: “Well, let us get on.”

The Frau Consul mentioned the disastrous fire which had swept Hamburg in May of the year 1842. “Yes, indeed,” said Herr Grünlich, “truly a fearful misfortune. A distressing visitation. The loss amounted to one hundred and thirty-five millions, at a rough estimate. I am grateful to Providence that I came off without any loss whatever. The fire raged chiefly in the parishes of St. Peter and St. Nicholas.—What a charming garden!” he interrupted himself, taking the cigar which the Consul offered. “It is so large for a town garden, and the beds of colour are magnificent. I confess my weakness for flowers, and for nature in general. Those climbing roses over there trim up the garden uncommonly well.” He went on, praising the refinement of the location, praising the town itself, praising the Consul’s cigar. He had a pleasant word for each member of the circle.

“May I venture to inquire what you are reading, Fräulein Antonie?” he said smiling.

Tony drew her brows together sharply at this, for some reason, and answered without looking at him, “Hoffmann’s ‘Serapion Brethren.’ ”

“Really! He is a wonderful writer, is he not? Ah, pardon me—I forget the name of your younger son, Frau Consul?”

“Christian.”

“A beautiful name. If I may so express myself”—here he turned again to the Consul—“I like best the names which show that the bearer is a Christian. The name of Johann, I know, is hereditary in your family—a name which always recalls the beloved disciple. My own name—if I may be permitted to mention it,” he continued, waxing eloquent, is that of most of my forefathers—Bendix. It can only be regarded as a shortened form of Benedict. And you, Herr Buddenbrook, are reading—? ah, Cicero. The works of this great Roman orator make pretty difficult reading, eh? ‘Quo usque tandem—Catalina’ . . . ahem. Oh, I have not forgotten quite all my Latin.”

“I disagree with my late Father on this point,” the Consul said. “I have always objected to the perpetual occupation of young heads with Greek and Latin. When there are so many other important subjects, necessary as a preparation for the practical affairs of life—”

“You take the words out of my mouth,” Herr Grünlich hastened to say. “It is hard reading, and not by any means always unexceptionable—I forgot to mention that point. Everything else aside, I can recall passages that were positively offensive—”

There came a pause, and Tony thought “Now it’s my turn.” Herr Grünlich had turned his gaze upon her. And, sure enough: he suddenly started in his chair, made a spasmodic but always highly elegant gesture toward the Frau Consul, and whispered ardently, “Pray look, Frau Consul, I beg of you.—Fräulein, I implore you,” he interrupted himself aloud, just as if Tony could not hear the rest of what he said, to keep in that same position for just a moment. Do you see,” he began whispering again, “how the sunshine is playing in your daughter’s hair? Never,” he said solemnly, as if transported, speaking to nobody in particular, “have I seen more beautiful hair.” It was as if he were addressing his remarks to God or to his own soul.

The Consul’s wife smiled, well pleased. The Consul said, “Don’t be putting notions into the girl’s head.” And again Tony drew her brows together without speaking. After a short pause, Herr Grünlich got up. “But I won’t disturb you any longer now—no, Frau Consul, I refuse to disturb you any longer,” he repeated. “I only came on business, but I could not resist—indeed, who could resist you? Now duty calls. May I ask the Consul—”

“I hope I do not need to assure you that it would give us pleasure if you would let us put you up while you are here,” said the Frau Consul. Herr Grünlich appeared for the moment struck dumb with gratitude. “From my soul I am grateful, Frau Consul,” he said, and his look was indeed eloquent with emotion. “But I must not abuse your kindness. I have a couple of rooms at the City of Hamburg—”

“A couple of rooms,” thought the Frau Consul—which was just what Herr Grünlich meant her to think.

“And, in any case,” he said, as she offered her hand cordially, “I hope we have not seen each other for the last time.” He kissed her hand, waited a moment for Antonie to extend hers—which she did not do—described another half-circle with his upper torso, made a long step backward and another bow, threw back his head and put his hat on with a flourish, then walked away in company with the Consul.

“A pleasant man,” the Father said later, when he came back and took his place again.

“I think he’s silly,” Tony permitted herself to remark with some emphasis.

“Tony! Heavens and earth, what an idea!” said the Consul’s wife, displeased. “Such a Christian young man!”

“So well brought up, and so cosmopolitan,” went on the Consul. “You don’t know what you are talking about.” He and his wife had a way of taking each other’s side like this, out of sheer politeness. It made them the more likely to agree.

Christian wrinkled up his long nose and said, “He was so important. ‘You are conversing’—when we weren’t at all. And the roses over there ‘trim things up uncommonly.’ He acted some of the time as if he were talking to himself. ‘I am disturbing you’—‘I beg pardon’—I have never seen more beautiful hair.’ ” Christian mocked Herr Grünlich so cleverly that they all had to laugh, even the Consul.

“Yes, he gave himself too many airs,” Tony went on. “He talked the whole time about himself— his business is good, and he is fond of nature, and he likes such-and-such names, and his name is Bendix—what is all that to us, I’d like to know? Everything he said was just to spread himself. Her voice was growing louder all the time with vexation. “He said all the very things you like to hear, Mamma and Papa, and he said them just to make a fine impression on you both.”

“That is no reproach, Tony,” the Consul said sternly. “Everybody puts his best foot foremost before strangers. We all take care to say what will be pleasant to hear. That is a commonplace.”

“I think he is a good man,” Clothilde pronounced with drawling serenity—she was the only person in the circle about whom Herr Grünlich had not troubled himself at all. Thomas refrained from giving an opinion.

“Enough,” concluded the Consul. “He is a capable, cultured, and energetic Christian man, and you, Tony, should try to bridle your tongue—a great girl of eighteen or nineteen years old, like you! And after he was so polite and gallant to you, too. We are all weak creatures; and you, let me say, are one of the last to have a right to throw stones. Tom, we’ll get to work.”

Pert little Tony muttered to herself “A golden goat’s beard!” and scowled as before.

CHAPTER II

Tony, coming back from a walk some days later, met Herr Grünlich at the corner of Meng Street. “I was most grieved to have missed you, Fraulein,” he said. “I took the liberty of paying my respects to your Mother the other day, and I regretted your absence more than I can say. How delightful that I should meet you like this!”

Fräulein Buddenbrook had paused as he began to speak; but her half-shut eyes looked no further up than the height of Herr Grünlich’s chest. On her lips rested the mocking, merciless smile with which a young girl measures and rejects a man. Her lips moved—what should she say? It must be something that would demolish this Herr Bendix Grünlich once and for all—simply annihilate him. It must be clever, witty, and effective, must at one and the same time wound him to the quick and impress him tremendously.

“The pleasure is not mutual, Herr Grünlich,” said she, keeping her gaze meanwhile levelled at his chest. And after she had shot this poisoned arrow, she left him standing there and went home, her head in the air, her face red with pride in her own powers of repartee—to learn that Herr Grünlich had been invited to dinner next Sunday.

And he came. He came in a not quite new-fashioned, rather wrinkled, but still handsome bell-shaped frock coat which gave him a solid, respectable look. He was rosy and smiling, his scant hair carefully parted, his whiskers curled and scented. He ate a ragout of shell-fish, julienne soup, fried soles, toast veal with creamed potatoes and cauliflower, maraschino pudding, and pumpernickel with roquefort; and he found a fresh and delicate compliment for each fresh course. Over the sweet he lifted his dessert-spoon, gazed at one of the tapestry statues, and spoke aloud to himself, thus: “God forgive me, I have eaten far too well already. But this pudding—! It is too wonderful! I must beg my good hostess for another slice.” And he looked roguishly at the Consul’s wife. With the Consul he talked business and politics, and spoke soundly and weightily. He discussed the theatre and the fashions with the Frau Consul, and he had a good word for Tom and Christian and Clothilde, and even for little Clara and Ida Jungmann. Tony sat in silence, and he did not undertake to engage her; only gazing at her now and then, with his head a little tilted, his face looking dejected and encouraged by turns.

When Herr Grünlich took his leave that evening, he had only strengthened the impressions left by his first visit. “A thoroughly well-bred man,” said the Frau Consul. “An estimable Christian gentleman” was the Consul’s opinion. Christian imitated his speech and actions even better than before; and Tony said her good nights to them all with a frowning brow, for something told her that she had not yet seen the last of this gentleman who had won the hearts of her parents with such astonishing ease and rapidity.

And, sure enough, coming back one afternoon from a visit with some girl friends, she found Herr Grünlich cosily established in the landscape-room, reading aloud to the Frau Consul out of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverly.” His pronunciation was perfect, for, as he explained, his business trips had taken him to England. Tony sat down apart with another book, and Herr Grünlich softly questioned: “Our book is not to your taste, Fräulein?” To which she replied, with her head in the air, something in a sarcastic vein, like “Not in the very least.”

But he was not taken aback. He began to talk about his long-dead parents and communicated the fact that his father had been a clergyman, a Christian, and at the same time a highly cosmopolitan gentleman.—After this visit, he de parted for Hamburg. Tony was not there when he called to take leave. “Ida,” she said to Mamsell Jungmann, “Ida, the man has gone.” But Mamsell Jungmann only replied, “You’ll see, child.”

And eight days later, in fact, came that scene in the breakfast room. Tony came down at nine o’clock and found her father and mother still at table. She let her forehead be kissed and sat down, fresh and hungry, her eyes still red with sleep, and helped herself to sugar, butter, and herb cheese. “How nice to find you still here, for once, Papa,” she said as she held her egg in her napkin and opened it with her spoon.

“But to-day I have been waiting for our slug-a-bed,” said the Consul. He was smoking and tapping on the table with his folded newspaper. His wife finished her breakfast with her slow, graceful motions, and leaned back in the sofa.

“Tilda is already busy in the kitchen,” went on the Consul, “and I should have been long since at work myself, if your Mother and I had not been speaking seriously about a matter that concerns our little daughter.”

Tony, her mouth full of bread and butter, looked first at her father and then her mother, with a mixture of fear and curiosity.

“Eat your breakfast, my child,” said the Frau Consul. But Tony laid down her knife and cried, “Out with it quickly, Papa—please.” Her father only answered: “Eat your breakfast first.”

So Tony drank her coffee and ate her egg and bread and cheese silently, her appetite quite gone. She began to guess. The fresh morning bloom disappeared from her cheek, and she even grew a little pale. She said “Thank you” for the honey, and soon after announced in a subdued voice that she had finished.

“My dear child,” said the Consul, “the matter we desire to talk over with you is contained in this letter.” He was tapping the table now with a big blue envelope instead of the newspaper. “To be brief: Bendix Grünlich, whom we have learned, during his short stay here, to regard as a good and a charming man, writes to me that he has conceived a strong inclination for our daughter, and he here makes a request in form for her hand. What does my child say?”

Tony was leaning back in her seat, her head bent, her right hand slowly twirling the silver napkin-ring round and round. But suddenly she looked up, and her eyes had grown quite dark with tears. She said, her voice full of distress: “What does this man want of me? What have I done to him?” And she burst into weeping.

The Consul shot a glance at his wife and then regarded his empty cup, embarrassed.

“Tony dear,” said the Frau Consul gently, “why this— échauffement? You know quite well your parents can only desire your good. And they cannot counsel you to reject forthwith the position offered you. I know you feel so far no particular inclination for Herr Grünlich, but that will come; I assure you it comes, with time. Such a young thing as you is never sure what she wants. The mind is as confused as the heart. One must just give the heart time—and keep the mind open to the advice of experienced people who think and plan only for our good.”

“I don’t know him the least little bit,” Tony said in a dejected tone, wiping her eyes on the little white batiste serviette, stained with egg. “All I know is, he has a yellow beard, like a goat’s, and a flourishing business—” Her upper lip, trembling on the verge of tears, had an expression that was indescribably touching.

With a movement of sudden tenderness the Consul jerked his chair nearer hers and stroked her hair, smiling.

“My little Tony, what should you like to know of him? You are still a very young girl, you know. You would know him no better if he had been here for fifty-two weeks instead of four. You are a child, with no eyes yet for the world, and you must trust other people who mean well by you.”

“I don’t understand—I don’t understand,” Tony sobbed helplessly, and put down her head as a kitten does beneath the hand that strokes it. “He comes here and says something pleasant to everybody, and then goes away again; and then he writes to you that he—that I—I don’t understand. What made him? What have I done to him?”

The Consul smiled again. “You said that once before, Tony; and it illustrates so well your childish way of reasoning. My little daughter must not feel that people mean to urge or torment her. We can consider it all very quietly; in fact, we must consider it all very quietly and calmly, for it is a very serious matter. Meanwhile I will write an answer to Herr Grünlich’s letter, without either consenting or refusing. There is much to be thought of.—Well, is that agreed? What do you say?—And now Papa can go back to his work, can’t he?—Adieu, Betsy.”

“Au revoir, dear Jean.”

“Do take a little more honey, Tony,” said the Frau Consul to her daughter, who sat in her place motionless, with her head bent. “One must eat.”

Tony’s tears gradually dried. Her head felt hot and heavy with her thoughts. Good gracious, what a business! She had always known, of course, that she should one day marry, and be the wife of a business man, and embark upon a solid and advantageous married life, commensurate with the position of the family and the firm. But suddenly, for the first time in her life, somebody, some actual person, in serious earnest, wanted to marry her. How did people act? To her, her, Tony Buddenbrook, were now applicable all those tremendous words and phrases which she had hitherto met with only in books: her “hand,” her “consent,” “as long as life shall last!” Goodness gracious, what a step to take, all at once!

“And you, Mamma? Do you too advise me to—to—to yield my consent?” She hesitated a little before the “yield my consent.” It sounded high-flown and awkward. But then, this was the first occasion in her life that was worthy of fine language. She began to blush for her earlier lack of self-control. It seemed to her now not less unreasonable than it had ten minutes ago that she should marry Herr Grünlich; but the dignity of her situation began to fill her with a sense of importance which was satisfying indeed.

“I advise you to accept, my child? Has Papa advised you to do so? He has only not advised you not to, that is all. It would be very irresponsible of either of us to do that. The connection offered you is a very good one, my dear Tony. You would go to Hamburg on an excellent footing and live there in great style.”

Tony sat motionless. She was having a sort of vision of silk portières, like those in grandfather’s salon. And, as Madame Grünlich, should she drink morning chocolate? She thought it would not be seemly to ask.

“As your Father says, you have time to consider,” the Frau Consul continued. “But we are obliged to tell you that such an offer does not come every day, that it would make your fortune, and that it is exactly the marriage which duty and vocation prescribe. This, my child, it is my business to tell you. You know yourself that the path which opens before you to-day is the prescribed one which your life ought to follow.”

“Yes,” Tony said thoughtfully. She was well aware of her responsibilities toward the family and the firm, and she was proud of them. She was saturated with her family history—she, Tony Buddenbrook, who, as the daughter of Consul Buddenbrook, went about the town like a little queen, before whom Matthiesen the porter took off his hat and made a low bow! The Rostock tailor had been very well off, to begin with; but since his time, the family fortunes had advanced by leaps and bounds. It was her vocation to enhance the brilliance of family and firm in her allotted way, by making a rich and aristocratic marriage. To the same end, Tom worked in the office. Yes, the marriage was undoubtedly precisely the right one. But—but— She saw him before her, saw his gold-yellow whiskers, his rosy, smiling face, the wart on his nose, his mincing walk. She could feel his woolly suit, hear his soft voice. . . .

“I felt sure,” the Consul’s wife said, “that we were accessible to quiet reason. Have we perhaps already made up our mind?”

“Oh, goodness, no!” cried Tony, suddenly. She uttered the “Oh” with an outburst of irritation. “What nonsense! Why should I marry him? I have always made fun of him. I never did anything else. I can’t understand how he can possibly endure me. The man must have some sort of pride in his bones!” She began to drip honey upon a slice of bread.

CHAPTER III

This year the Buddenbrooks took no holiday during Christian’s and Clara’s vacation. The Consul said he was too busy; but it was Tony’s unsettled affair as well, that kept them lingering in Mengstrasse. A very diplomatic letter, written by the Consul himself, had been dispatched to Herr Grünlich; but the progress of the wooing was hindered by Tony’s obstinacy. She expressed herself in the most childish way. “Heaven forbid, Mamma,” she would say. “I simply can’t en dure him!” with tremendous emphasis on the second syllable. Or she would explain solemnly, “Father” (Tony never otherwise said anything but “Papa”), “I can never yield him my consent.”

And at this point the matter would assuredly have stuck, had it not been for events that occurred some ten days after the talk in the breakfast-room—in other words, about the middle of July.

It was afternoon—a hot blue afternoon. The Frau Consul was out, and Tony sat with a book alone at the window of the landscape room, when Anton brought her a card. Before she had time to read the name, a young man in a bell-skirted coat and pea-green pantaloons entered the room. It was, of course, Herr Grünlich, with an expression of imploring tenderness upon his face.

Tony started up indignantly and made a movement to flee into the next room. How could one possibly talk to a man who had proposed for one’s hand? Her heart was in her throat and she had gone very pale. While he had been at a safe distance she had hugely enjoyed the solemn conferences with her Father and Mother and the suddenly enhanced im portance of her own person and destiny. But now, here he was—he stood before her. What was going to happen? And again she felt that she was going to weep.

At a rapid stride, his head tipped on one side, his arms outstretched, with the air of a man who says: “Here I am, kill me if you will!” he approached. “What a providence!” he cried. “I find you here, Antonie—” (He said “Antonie”!)

Tony stood erect, her novel in her right hand. She stuck out her lips and gave her head a series of little jerks upward, relieving her irritation by stressing, in that manner, each word as she spoke it. She got out “What is the matter with you?”—But the tears were already rising. And Herr Grünlich’s own excitement was too great for him to realize the check.

“How could I wait longer? Was I not driven to return?” he said in impassioned tones. “A week ago I had your Father’s letter, which filled me with hope. I could bear it no longer. Could I thus linger on in half-certainty? I threw myself into a carriage, I hastened hither, I have taken a couple of rooms at the City of Hamburg—and here I am, Antonie, to hear from your lips the final word which will make me happier than I can express.”

Tony was stunned. Her tears retreated abashed. This, then, was the effect of her Father’s careful letter, which had indefinitely postponed the decision. Two or three times she stammered: “You are mistaken—you are mistaken.”

Herr Grünlich had drawn an arm-chair close to her seat in the window. He sat down, he obliged her to sit as well, and, bowing over her hand, which, limp with indecision, she resigned to him, he went on in a trembling voice: “Fräulein Antonie, since first I saw you, that afternoon,—do you remember that afternoon, when I saw you, a vision of loveliness, in your own family circle?—Since then, your name has been indelibly written on my heart.” He went back, corrected himself, and said “graven”: “Since that day, Fräulein Antonie, it has been my only, my most ardent wish, to win your beautiful hand. What your Father’s letter permitted me only to hope, that I implore you to confirm to me now in all certainty. I may feel sure of your consent—I may be assured of it?” He took her other hand in his and looked deep into her wide-open, frightened eyes. He had left off his worsted gloves to-day, and his hands were long and white, marked with blue veins. Tony stared at his pink face, at his wart, at his eyes, which were as blue as a goose’s.

“Oh, no, no,” she broke out, rapidly, in terror. And then she added, “No, I will never yield my consent.” She took great pains to speak firmly, but she was already in tears.

“How have I deserved this doubt and hesitation?” he asked in a lower, well-nigh reproachful tone. “I know you are a maiden cherished and sheltered by the most loving care. But I swear to you, I pledge you my word of honour as a man, that I would carry you in my arms, that as my wife you would lack nothing, that you would live in Hamburg a life altogether worthy of you—”

Tony sprang up. She freed her hand and, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, cried out in desperation, “No, no! I said no! I am refusing you—for heaven’s sake, can’t you understand?” Then Herr Grünlich rose up too. He took one backward step and stretched out his arms toward her, palms up. Seriously, like a man of honour and resolution, he spoke.

“Mademoiselle Buddenbrook, you understand that I cannot permit myself to be insulted?”

“But I am not insulting you, Herr Grünlich,” said Tony, repenting her brusqueness. Oh, dear, oh dear, why did all this have to happen to her? Such a wooing as this she had never imagined. She had supposed that one only had to say: “Your offer does me great honour, but I cannot accept it,” and that would be an end of the matter. “Your offer does me great honour,” she said, as calmly as she could, “but I cannot accept it. And now I must go; please excuse me—I am busy—” But Herr Grünlich stood in front of her.

“You reject me?” he said gloomily.

“Yes,” Tony said; adding with tact, “unfortunately.”

Herr Grünlich gave a gusty sigh. He took two big steps backward, bent his torso to one side, pointed with his fore-finger to the carpet and said in an awful voice: “Antonie!” Thus for the space of a moment they stood, he in a posture of commanding rage, Tony pale, weepy, and trembling, her damp handkerchief to her mouth. Then he turned from her and, with his hands on his back, measured the room twice through, as if he were at home. He paused at the window and looked out into the early dusk. Tony moved cautiously toward the glass doors, but she got only as far as the middle of the room when he stood beside her again.

“Tony!” he murmured, and gently took her hand. Then he sank, yes, he sank slowly upon his knees beside her! His two gold whiskers lay across her hand!

“Tony!” he repeated. “You behold me here—you see to what you have brought me. Have you a heart to feel what I endure? Listen. You behold a man condemned to death, devoted to destruction, a man who—who will certainly die of grief,” he interrupted himself, “if you scorn his love. Here I lie. Can you find it in your heart to say: ‘I despise you’?”

“No, no,” Tony said quickly in a consoling tone. Her tears were conquered, pity stirred. Heavens, how he must adore her, to go on like that, while she herself felt completely indifferent! Was it to her, Tony Buddenbrook, that all this was happening? One read of it in the novels. But here in real life was a man in a frock-coat, on his knees in front of her, weeping, imploring. The idea of marrying him was simply idiotic, because she had found him silly; but just at this moment he did not seem silly; heavens, no! Honourable, upright, desperate entreaty were in his voice and face.

“No, no,” she repeated, bending over him quite touched. “I don’t despise you, Herr Grünlich. How can you say such a thing? Do get up—please do!”

“Then you will not kill me?” he asked again; and she answered, in a consoling, almost motherly tone, “No, no.”

“That is a promise!” he cried, springing to his feet. But when he saw Tony’s frightened face he got down again and went on in a wheedling tone: “Good, good, say no more, Antonie. Enough, for this time. We shall speak of this again. No more now—farewell. I will return—farewell!” He had got quickly to his feet. He took his broad grey hat from the table, kissed her hand, and was out through the glass doors in a twinkling.

Tony saw him take his stick from the hall and disappear down the corridor. She stood, bewildered and worn out, in the middle of the room, with the damp handkerchief in one of her limp hands.

CHAPTER IV

Consul Buddenbrook said to his wife: “If I thought Tony had a motive in refusing this match— But she is a child, Betsy. She enjoys going to halls and being courted by the young fellows; she is quite aware that she is pretty and from a good family. Of course, it is possible that she is consciously or unconsciously seeking a mate herself—but I know the child, and I feel sure she has never yet found her heart, as the saying goes. If you asked her, she would turn this way and that way, and consider—but she would find nobody. She is a child, a little bird, a hoyden. Directly she once says yes, she will find her place. She will have carte blanche to set herself up, and she will love her husband, after a few days. He is no beau, God knows. But he is perfectly presentable. One mustn’t ask for five legs on a sheep, as we say in business. If she waits for somebody to come along who is an Adonis and a good match to boot—well, God bless us, Tony Buddenbrook could always find a husband, but it’s a risk, after all. Every day is fishing-day, but not every day catching-day, to use another homely phrase.—. Yesterday I had a long talk with Grünlich. He is a most constant wooer. He showed me all his books. They are good enough to frame. I told him I was completely satisfied. The business is young, but in fine condition—assets must be somewhere about a hundred and twenty thousand thaler, and that is obviously only the situation at the moment, for he makes a good slice every year. I asked the Duchamps. What they said doesn’t sound at all bad. They don’t know his connections, but he lives like a gentleman, mingles in society, and his business is known to be expanding. And some other people in Hamburg have told me things—a banker named Kesselmeyer, for instance—that I feel pleased with. In short, as you know, Betsy, I can only wish for the consummation of this match, which would be highly advantageous for the family and the firm. I am heartily sorry the child feels so pressed. She hardly speaks at all, and acts as if she were in a state of siege. But I can’t bring myself to refuse him out and out. You know, Betsy, there is another thing I can’t emphasize often enough: in these last years we haven’t been doing any too brilliantly. Not that there’s anything to complain of. Oh, no. Faithful work always finds its reward. Business goes quietly on—but a bit too quietly for me. And it only does that because I am eternally vigilant. We haven’t perceptibly advanced since Father was taken away. The times aren’t good for merchants. No, our prospects are not too bright. Our daughter is in a position to make a marriage that would undoubtedly be honourable and advantageous; she is of an age to marry, and she ought to do it. Delay isn’t advisable—it isn’t advisable, Betsy. Speak to her again. I said all I could, this afternoon.”

Tony was besieged, as the Consul said. She no longer said no—but she could not bring herself to say yes. She could not wring a “yes” out of herself—God knew why; she did not.

Meanwhile, first her Father would draw her aside and speak seriously, and then her Mother would take up the tale, both pressing for a decision. Uncle Gotthold and family were not brought into the affair; their attitude toward the Mengstrasse was not exactly sympathetic. But Sesemi Weichbrodt got wind of it and came to give good advice, with correct enunciation. Even Mademoiselle Jungmann said, “Tony, my little one, why should you worry? You will always be in the best society.” And Tony could not pay a visit to the admired silken salon outside the Castle Gate without getting a dose from old Madame Kröger: “À propos, little one, I hear there is an affair! I hope you are going to listen to reason, child.”