BUDDENBROOKS
with her. He did not belong to her circle of wealthy merchant families, nor sit at their tables, nor pay visits to them. But, as we have seen, Gerda Buddenbrook had but to arrive in the town to be singled out by the roving fancy of the sinister broker, ever on the look-out for the unusual. With unerring instinct he divined that this figure was calculated to add content to his unsatisfied existence, and he made himself the slave of one who had scarcely ever heard his name. Since then he encompassed in his reveries this nervous, exceedingly reserved lady, to whom he had not even been presented: he lifted his Jesuit hat to her, on the street, to her great surprise, and treated her to a pantomime of cringing treachery, gloating over her the while in his thoughts as a tiger might over his trainer. This dull existence would afford him no chance of committing atrocities for this woman’s sake—ah, if it only would, with what devilish indifference would he answer for them! Its stupid conventions prevented him from raising her, by deeds of blood and horror, to an imperial throne!—And thus, nothing was left but for him to go to the Town Hall and cast his vote in favour of her furiously respected husband—and, perhaps, one day, to dedicate to her his forthcoming transition of Lope de Vega.
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