Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/81

RV 71 (BUDDENBROOKS) did not cut himself), patent-leather top-boots, and a riding-whip with a gold handle. He had a way of looking down at me from a great height, with his eyes half shut and his mouth half open. My first visit to him was very telling. We had had some correspondence. I drove over, and was ushered by a servant into the study, where Count Strelitz was sitting at his writing-table. He returns my bow, half gets up, finishes the last lines of a letter; then he turns to me and begins to talk business, looking over the top of my head. I lean on the sofa-table, cross my arms and my legs, and enjoy myself. I stand five minutes talking. After another five minutes, I sit down on the table and swing my leg. We get on with our business, and at the end of fifteen minutes he says to me, very graciously, ‘won’t you sit down?’ ‘Beg pardon?’ I say. ‘Oh, don’t mention it—I’ve been sitting for some time!’&ThinSpace;”

“Did you say that? Really?” cried Frau Permaneder, enchanted. She had straightway forgotten all that had gone before, and lived for the moment entirely in the anecdote.

“&ThinSpace;‘I’ve been sitting for some time’—oh, that is too good!”

“Well, and I assure you that the Count altered his tune at once. He shook hands when I came, and asked me to sit down—in the course of time we became very friendly. But I have told you this in order to ask you if you think I should have the right, or the courage, or the inner self-confidence to behave in the same way to Herr von Maiboom if, when we met to discuss the bargain, he were to forget to offer me a chair?”

Frau Permaneder was silent. “Good,” she said then, and got up. “You may be right; and, as I said, I’m not going to press you. You know what you must do and what leave undone, and that’s an end of it. If you only feel that I spoke in good part—you do, don’t you? All right. Good night, Tom. Or—no, wait—I must go and say ‘How do you do’ to the good Ida and give Hanno a little kiss. I'll look in again on my way out.” With that she went.

RV 71 (71)