BUDDENBROOKS
this disgraceful state of things be true, or have my ears deceived me?”
Herr Schwarzkopf answered only by lifting his eyebrows as high as they would go, and clutching the arms of his chair with his brown, blond-felled fisherman’s hands.
“Yes. This is the fact. So I am informed,” Herr Grünlich said, with dreary certitude. “I hear that your son—studiosus medicinae, I am led to understand—has allowed himself—of course unconsciously—to encroach upon my rights. I hear that he has taken advantage of the present visit of the young lady to extract certain promises from her.”
“What?” shouted the pilot-captain, gripping the arms of his chair and springing up. “That we shall soon—we can soon see—!” With two steps he was at the door, tore it open, and shouted down the corridor in a voice that would have out-roared the wildest seas: “Meta, Morten! Come in here, both of you.”
“I shall regret it exceedingly if the assertion of my prior rights runs counter to your fatherly hopes, Herr Captain.”
Diederich Swarzkopf turned and stared, with his sharp blue eyes in their wrinkled setting, straight into the stranger’s face, as though he strove in vain to comprehend his words.
“Sir!” he said. Then, with a voice that sounded as though he had just burnt his throat with hot grog, “I’m a simple sort of a man, and don’t know much about landlubber’s tricks and skin games; but if you mean, maybe, that—well, sir, you can just set it down right away that you’ve got on the wrong tack, and are making a pretty bad miscalculation about my fatherly hopes. I know who my son is, and I know who Mademoiselle Buddenbrook is, and there’s too much respect and too much pride in my carcase to be making any plans of the sort you’ve mentioned.—And now,” he roared, jerking his head toward the door, “it’s your turn to talk, boy. You tell me what this affair is; what is this I hear—hey?”
Frau Schwarzkopf and her son stood in the doorway, she innocently arranging her apron, he with the air of a hardened
