Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/318

RV 306 (BUDDENBROOKS) married pairs and bachelors as well: all the tribe of Langhals, Hagenströms, Huneus’, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks, and Möllendorpfs. It finished off with whist and music. They talked about it in glowing terms on the Bourse for a whole week. The young Frau Consul certainly knew how to entertain! When she and the Consul were alone, in the room lighted by burned-down candles, with the furniture disarranged and the air thick with heavy odours of rich food, wine, cigars, coffee, perfume, and the scent of the flowers from the ladies’ toilettes and the table decorations, he pressed her hand and said: “Very good, Gerda. We do not need to be ashamed. This sort of thing is necessary. I have no great fondness for balls, and having the young people jumping about here; and, besides, there is not room. But we must entertain the settled people. A dinner like that costs a bit more&mdash;but it is well spent.”

“You are right, she had answered, and arranged the laces through which her bosom shimmered like marble. “I much prefer the dinners to the balls myself. A dinner is so soothing. I had been playing this afternoon, and felt a little queer. My brain feels quite dead now. If I. were to be struck by lightning I should not change colour.”

Next morning at half past eleven the Consul sat down beside his Mother at the breakfast table, and she read a letter aloud to him:

April 2, 1857

I must beg your pardon&mdash;it is a shame that I have not written before in the eight days I have been here. My time has been so taken up with all the things there are to see&mdash;I’ll tell you about them afterwards. Now I must ask if all the dear ones, you and Tom and Gerda and Erica and Christian and Tilda and Ida are well&mdash;that is the most important thing.

Ah, what all I have seen in these days!&mdash;the Pinakothek and

RV 306 (306)