Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/204

RV 192 (BUDDENBROOKS) 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&mdash;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&mdash;”

“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

RV 192 (192)