Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/63

RV 51 (BUDDENBROOKS) enough; that he might let well enough alone, and go in to see his wife, or out to the counting-house. Oh, fie, fie! Did one so soon weary of communion with his Lord and Saviour? Was it not robbing his God to scant Him of this service? No, he would go on, as a chastisement for these unholy impulses. He cited whole pages of Scripture, he prayed for his parents, his wife, his children, and himself, he prayed even for his brother Gotthold. And then, with a last quotation and three final “Amens,” he strewed sand on the paper and leaned back with a sigh of relief.

He crossed one leg over the other and slowly turned the pages of the notebook, reading dates and entries here and there, written in his own hand, and thanking the Lord afresh as he saw how in every time of need and danger He had stretched out His hand to aid. Once he had lain so ill of small-pox that his life had been despaired of&mdash;yet it had been saved. And once, when he was a boy, a beer-vat had fallen on him. A large quantity of beer was being brewed for a wedding, in the old days when the brewing was done at home; and a vat had fallen over, pinning the boy beneath it. It had taken six people to lift it up again, and his head had been crushed so that the blood ran down in streams. He was carried into a shop, and, as he still breathed, the doctor and the surgeon were sent for. They told the father to prepare for the worst and to bow to the will of God. But the Almighty had blessed the work of healing, and the boy was saved and restored to health. The Consul dwelt a while upon this account, re-living the accident in his mind. Then he took his pen again and wrote after his last “Amen”: “Yea, O God, I will eternally praise Thee!”

Another time, his life had been saved from danger by water, when he had gone to Bergen, as a young man. The account read:

At high water, when the freight boats of the Northern Line are in, we have great difficulty getting through the press to our landing. I was standing on the edge of the scow, with

RV 51 (51)