Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/26

RV 16 (BUDDENBROOKS) But interest could not long remain concentrated upon the past. And even with the first rumour of the old man’s death, the great question had at once sprung up: who was to succeed him?

What suspense, what subterranean activity! A stranger, intent on the sights of the mediaeval town, would have noticed nothing; but beneath the surface there was unimaginable bustle and commotion, as one firm and unassailable honest conviction after another was exploded; and slowly, slowly the while, divergent views approached each other! Passions are stirred, Ambition and Vanity wrestle together in silence. Dead and buried hopes spring once more to life—and again are blasted. Old Kurz, the merchant, in Bakers’ Alley, who gets three or four votes at every election, will sit quaking at home on the fatal day, and listen to the shouting, but he will not be elected this time either. He will continue to take his walks abroad, displaying outwardly his usual mingling of civic pride and self-satisfaction: but he will bear down with him into the grave the secret chagrin of never having been elected Senator.

James Möllendorpf’s death was discussed at the Buddenbrook Thursday dinner-table; and Frau Permaneder, after the proper expressions of sympathy, began to let her tongue play upon her upper lip and look across artfully at her brother. The Buddenbrook ladies marked the look. They exchanged piercing glances, and with one accord shut their eyes and their lips tightly together. The Consul had, for a second, responded to the sly smile his sister gave him, and then given the talk another turn. He knew that the thought which Tony hugged to her breast in secret was being spoken in the street.

Names were suggested and rejected, others came up and were sifted out. Henning Kurz in Bakers’ Alley was too old. They needed new blood. Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer, whose millions would have weighted the scale heavily in his favour, was constitutionally ineligible, as his brother already sat in the Senate. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the wine

RV 16 (16)