The wine-merchant stood up and listened, with his mouth full of smoke. A violent gust of wind whistled between the houses, lashed the windowpanes 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 , 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 the proud Pompadour
Were driving out gaily in gilt coach and four,
Frelon spied the pair: ‘Oh, see them,’ he cried:
‘The sword of our king—and his sheath, side by side.’ ”
Herr Köppen looked disconcerted for a minute. Then he dropped the “conflick” where it was and joined in the hearty laughter that echoed to the ceiling of the billiard-room. Pastor Wunderlich withdrew to the window, but the movement of his shoulders betrayed that he was chuckling to himself.
Herr Hoffstede had more ammunition of the same sort in his pocket, and the gentlemen remained for some time in the billiard-room. Herr Köppen unbuttoned his waistcoat all the way down, and felt much more at ease here than in the dining-room. He gave vent to droll low-German expressions at every turn, and at frequent intervals began reciting to himself with enormous relish:
“When the Maréchal Saxe. …”
It sounded quite different in his harsh bass.
IX
It was rather late, nearly eleven, when the party began to break up. They had reassembled in the landscape-room, and they all made their adieux at the same time. The Frau Consul, as soon as her hand had been kissed in farewell, went upstairs to see how Christian was doing. To Mamsell Jungmann was left the supervision of the maids as they set things to rights and put away the silver. Madame Antoinette retired to the entresol. But the Consul accompanied his guests downstairs, across the entry, and outside the house.
A high wind was driving the rain slantwise through the streets as the old Krögers, wrapped in heavy fur mantles, slipped as fast as they could into their carriage. It had been waiting for hours before the door. The street was lighted by the flickering yellow rays from oil lamps hanging on posts before the houses or suspended on heavy chains across the streets. The projecting fronts of some of the houses jutted out into the roadway; others had porticos or raised benches added on. The street ran steeply down to the River Trave; it was badly paved, and sodden grass sprang up between the cracks. The church of St. Mary’s was entirely shrouded in rain and darkness.
“Merci,” said Lebrecht Kröger, shaking the Consul’s hand as he stood by the carriage door. “Merci, Jean; it was too charming!” The door slammed, and the carriage drove off. Pastor Wunderlich and Broker Gratjens expressed their thanks and went their way. Herr Köppen, in a mantle with a fivefold cape and a broad grey hat, took his plump wife on his
