BUDDENBROOKS
But the man who gazed with furious ardour at Thomas Buddenbrook’s bride, the first time he saw her on the street, was Gosch the broker. “Ah!” he said in the club or the Ships’ Company, lifting his glass and screwing up his face absurdly, “what a woman! Hera and Aphrodite, Brunhilda and Melusine all in one! Oh, how wonderful life is!” he would add. And not one of the citizens who sat about with their beer on the hard wooden benches of the old guild-house, under the models of sailing vessels and big stuffed fish hanging down from the ceiling, had the least idea what the advent of Gerda Arnoldsen meant in the yearning life of Gosch the broker.
The little company in Meng Street, not committed, as we have seen, to large entertainments, had the more leisure for intimacy with each other. Sievert Tiburtius, with Clara’s hand in his, talked about his parents, his childhood, and his future plans. The Arnoldsens told of their people, who came from Dresden, only one branch of them having been transplanted to Holland.
Madame Grünlich asked her brother for the key of the secretary in the landscape-room, and brought out the portfolio with the family papers, in which Thomas had already entered the new events. She proudly related the Buddenbrook history, from the Rostock tailor on; and when she read out the old festival verses:
Industry and beauty chaste
See we linked in marriage band:
Venus Anadyomene,
And cunning Vulcan’s busy hand
she looked at Tom and Gerda and let her tongue play over her lips. Regard for historical veracity also caused her to narrate events connected with a certain person whose name she did not like to mention!
On Thursday at four o’clock the usual guests came. Uncle Justus brought his feeble wife, with whom he lived an un-
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