Chapter Eight

      They were rising from table.

      “Well, ladies and gentlemen, gesegnete Mahlzeit! Cigars and coffee in the next room, and a liqueur if Madame feels generous.… Billiards for whoever chooses. Jean, you will show them the way back to the billiard-room? Madame Köppen, may I have the honour?”

      Full of well-being, laughing and chattering, the company trooped back through the folding doors into the landscape-room. The Consul remained behind, and collected about him the gentlemen who wanted to play billiards.

      “You won’t try a game, Father?”

      No, Lebrecht Kröger would stop with the ladies, but Justus might go if he liked … Senator Langhals, Köppen, Gratjens, and Doctor Grabow went with the Consul, and Jean Jacques Hoffstede said he would join them later. “Johann Buddenbrook is going to play the flute,” he said. “I must stop for that. Au revoir, messieurs.”

      As the gentlemen passed through the hall, they could hear from the landscape-room the first notes of the flute, accompanied by the Frau Consul on the harmonium: an airy, charming little melody that floated sweetly through the lofty rooms. The Consul listened as long as he could. He would have liked to stop behind in an easy-chair in the landscape-room and indulge the reveries that the music conjured up; but his duties as host …

      “Bring some coffee and cigars into the billiard-room,” he said to the maid whom he met in the entry.

      “Yes, Line, coffee!” Herr Köppen echoed, in a rich, well-fed voice, trying to pinch the girl’s red arm. The c came 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 passageway 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 an earthen floor, which was used as a granary and provided with a rope for hauling up the sacks. A pair of stairs led up to the first storey, where the Consul opened a white door and admitted his guests to the billiard-room.

      It was a bare, severe-looking room, with stiff chairs ranged round the sides. Herr Köppen flung himself exhausted into one of them. “I’ll look on for a while,” said he, brushing the wet from his coat. “It’s the devil of a Sabbath day’s journey through your house, Buddenbrook!”

      Here too the stove was burning merrily, behind a brass lattice. Through the three high, narrow windows one looked out over red roofs gleaming with the wet, grey gables and courtyards.

      The Consul took the cues out of the rack. “Shall we play a carambolage, Senator?” he asked. He went around and closed the pockets on both tables. “Who is playing with us? Gratjens? The Doctor? All right. Then will you take the other table, Gratjens and Justus? Köppen, you’ll have to play.”

      The wine-merchant stood up and listened, with his mouth full of smoke. A violent gust of wind whistled between the houses, lashed the window-panes with rain, and howled down the chimney.

      “Good Lord!” he said, blowing out the smoke. “Do you think the Wullenwewer will get into port, Buddenbrook? What abominable weather!”

      Yes, and the news from Travemünde was not of the best, Consul Kröger agreed, chalking his cue. Storms everywhere on the coast. Nearly as bad as in 1824, the year of the great flood in St. Petersburg. Well, here was the coffee.

      They poured it out and drank a little and began their game. The talk turned upon the Customs Union, and Consul Buddenbrook waxed enthusiastic.

      “An inspiration, gentlemen,” he said. He finished a shot and turned to the other table, where the topic had begun. “We ought to join at the earliest opportunity.”

      Herr Köppen disagreed. He fairly snorted in opposition. “How about our independence?” he asked incensed, supporting himself belligerently on his cue. “How about our self-determination? Would Hamburg consent to be a party to this Prussian scheme? We might as well be annexed at once! Heaven save us, what do we want of a customs union? Aren’t we well enough as we are?”

      “Yes, you and your red wine, Köppen. And the Russian products are all right. But there is little or nothing else imported. As for exports, well, we send a little corn to Holland and England, it is true. But I think we are far from being well enough as we are. In days gone by a very different business went on. Now, with the Customs Union, the Mecklenburgs and Schleswig-Holstein would be opened up—and private business would increase beyond all reckoning. …”

      “But look here, Buddenbrook,” Gratjens broke in, leaning far over the table and shifting his cue in his bony hand as he took careful aim, “I don’t get the idea. Certainly our own system is perfectly simple and practical. Clearing on the security of a civic oath—”

      “A fine old institution,” the Consul admitted.

      “Do you call it fine, Herr Consul?” Senator Langhals spoke with some heat. “I am not a merchant; but to speak frankly—well, I think this civic oath business has become little short of a farce: everybody makes light of it, and the State pockets the loss. One hears things that are simply scandalous. I am convinced that our entry into the Customs Union, so far as the Senate is concerned—”

      Herr Köppen flung down his cue. “Then there will be a conflick,” he said heatedly, forgetting to be careful with his pronunciation. “I know what I’m sayin’—God help you, but you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, beggin’ your pardon.”

      Well, thank goodness! thought the rest of the company, as Jean Jacques entered at this point. He and Pastor Wunderlich came together, arm in arm, two cheerful, unaffected old men from another and less troubled age.

      “Here, my friends,” he began. “I have something for you: a little rhymed epigram from the French.”

      He sat down comfortably opposite the billiard-players, who leaned upon their cues across the tables. Drawing a paper from his pocket and laying his long finger with the signet ring to the side of his pointed nose, he read aloud, with a mock-heroic intonation:

      “When the Maréchal Saxe and