Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/335

RV 323 (BUDDENBROOKS) ing pronunciation something that seemed as if it might have been: “I have the honour&mdash;”

“Good morning,” said the Frau Consul. “Will you not come in?” And she supported herself on the sofa-cushion and rose a little; for she did not know yet whether she ought to rise all the way or not.

“I take the liberty,” replied the gentleman in a pleasant sing-song; while he bowed in the politest manner, and took two steps forward. Then he stood still again and looked around as if searching for something&mdash;perhaps for a place to put his hat and stick, for he had brought both&mdash;the stick being a horn crutch with the top shaped like a claw and a good foot and a half long&mdash;into the room with him.

He was a man of forty years. Short-legged and chubby, he wore a wide-open coat of brown frieze and a light flowered waistcoat which covered the gentle protuberant curve of his stomach and supported a gold watch-chain with a whole bouquet of charms made of horn, bone, silver, and coral. His trousers were of an indefinite grey-green colour and too short. The material must have been extraordinarily stiff, for the edges stood out in a circle around the legs of his short, broad boots. He had a bullet head, untidy hair, and a stubby nose, and the light-blond curly moustache drooping over his mouth made him look like a walrus. By way of contrast, the imperial between his chin and his underlip stood out rather bristly. His cheeks were extremely fat and puffy, crowding his eyes into two narrow light-blue cracks with wrinkles at the corners. The whole face looked swollen and had a funny expression of fierceness, mingled with an almost touching good nature. Directly below his tiny chin a steep line ran into the white neck-cloth: his goiterous neck could not have endured a choker. In fact, the whole lower part of his face and his neck, the back of his head, his cheeks and nose, all ran rather formlessly in together. The whole skin of the face was stretched to an immoderate tightness and showed a roughness at the ear-joinings and the sides of the nose. In

RV 323 (323)