Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/92

RV 82 (BUDDENBROOKS) hide themselves before the one raw, naked, dominating instinct of self-preservation. He had seen that when one suffers a misfortune in business, one is met by one’s friends—and one’s best friends—not with sympathy, not with compassion, but with suspicion—cold, cruel, hostile suspicion. But he had known all this before; why should he be surprised at it? And in stronger and hardier hours he had blushed for his own weakness, for his own distress and sleepless nights, for his revulsion and disgust at the hateful and shameless harshness of life!

How foolish all that was! How ridiculous such feelings had been! How could he entertain them?—unless, indeed, he were a feeble visionary and not a practical business man at all! Ah, how many times had he asked himself that question? And how many times had he answered it: in strong and purposeful hours with one answer, in weak and discouraged ones with another! But he was too shrewd and too honest not to admit, after all, that he was a mixture of both.

All his life, he had made the impression on others of a practical man of action. But in so far as he legitimately passed for one—he, with his fondness for quotations from Goethe—was it not because he deliberately set out to do so? He had been successful in the past, but was that not because of the enthusiasm and impetus drawn from reflection? And if he were now discouraged, if his powers were lamed—God grant it was only for a time—was not his depression the natural consequence of the conflict that went on within himself? Whether his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather would have brought the Pöppenrade harvest in the blade was not the point after all. The thing was that they were practical men, more naturally, more vigorously, more impeccably practical than he was himself.

He was seized by a great unrest, by a need for movement, space, and light. He shoved back his chair, went into the salon, and lighted several burners of the chandelier over the

RV 82 (82)