BUDDENBROOKS
from far back in his throat, as if he were already swallowing the coffee.
“I’m sure Madame Köppen saw you through the glass,” Consul Kröger remarked.
“So you live up there, Buddenbrook?” asked Senator Langhals. To the right a broad white staircase with a carved baluster led up to the sleeping-chambers of the Consul’s family in the second storey; to the left came another row of rooms. The party descended the stairs, smoking, and the Consul halted at the landing.
“The entresol has three rooms,” he explained—“the breakfast-room, my parents’ sleeping-chamber, and a third room which is seldom used. A corridor runs along all three. . . . This way, please. The wagons drive through the entry; they can go all the way out to Bakers’ Alley at the back.”
The broad echoing passage-way below was paved with great square flagstones. At either end of it were several offices. The odour of the onion sauce still floated out from the kitchen, which, with the entrance to the cellars, lay on the left of the steps. On the right, at the height of a storey above the passageway, a scaffolding of ungainly but neatly varnished rafters thrust out from the wall, supporting the servants’ quarters above. A sort of ladder which led up to them from the passage was their only means of ingress or egress. Below the scaffolding were some enormous old cupboards and a carved chest.
Two low, worn steps led through a glass door out to the courtyard and the small wash-house. From here you could look into the pretty little garden, which was well laid out, though just now brown and sodden with the autumn rains, its beds protected with straw mats against the cold. At the other end of the garden rose the “portal,” the rococo façade of the summer house. From the courtyard, however, the party took the path to the left, leading between two walls through another courtyard to the annexe.
They entered by slippery steps into a cellar-like vault with
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