BUDDENBROOKS
Consul Buddenbrook, before you consign to the grave such a valuable—such a supreme specimen of a son-in-law. Anything so shrewd, so resourceful as he is, won’t be born upon God’s wide earth a second time. Aha! Four years ago—when the knife was at our throat, the rope around our neck—suddenly we made a match with Fräulein Buddenbrook, and spread the news on ’Change, even before it had actually come off! Congratulations, my dear friend; my best respects!”
“Kesselmeyer,” groaned Herr Grünlich, making spasmodic motions with his hands, as though waving off an evil spirit. He rushed into one corner of the room, where he sat down and buried his face in his hands. The ends of his whiskers lay on his shanks, and he rocked his knees up and down in his emotion.
“How did we do that?” went on Herr Kesselmeyer. “How did we actually manage to catch the little daughter and the eighty thousand marks? O-ho, ah, ha! That is easy. Even if one has no more shrewdness and resourcefulness than a tallow candle, it is easy! You show the saviour Papa nice, pretty, clean books, in which everything is put in the right way—only that they don’t quite correspond with the plain fact—for the plain fact is that three-quarters of the dowry is already debts.”
The Consul stood at the door deathly pale, the handle in his hand. Shivers ran up and down his back. He seemed to be standing in this little room lighted by the flickering candles, between a swindler and an ape gone mad with spite.
“I despise your words, sir,” he brought out with uncertain emphasis. “I despise your wild utterances the more that they concern me as well. I did not hand my daughter over light-headedly to misfortune; I informed myself as to my son-in-law’s prospects. The rest was God’s will.”
He turned—he would not hear any more—he opened the door. But Herr Kesselmeyer shrieked after him: “Aha, inquiries? Where? Of Bock? Of Goudstikker? Of Peter-
228
