But, after all, was it not best thus? Misfortune too has its time, he thought. Is it not better, while it holds sway, to keep oneself still, to wait in quiet and assemble one’s inner powers? Why must this proposition come up just now, to shake him untimely out of his canny resignation and make him a prey to doubts and suspicions? Was the time come? Was this a sign? Should he feel encouraged to stand up and strike a blow? He had refused with all the decisiveness he could put into his voice, to think of the proposition; but had that settled it? It seemed not, since here he sat and brooded over it. “We are most likely to get angry in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position.” A deucedly sly little person, Tony was!
What had he answered her? He had spoken very impressively, he recollected, about “underhand manoeuvres,” “fishing in troubled waters,” “fleecing the poor landowner,” “usury,” and so on. Very fine! But really one might ask if this were just the right time for so many large words. Consul Hermann Hagenström would not have thought of them, and would not have used them. Was he, Thomas Buddenbrook, a man of action, a business man—or was he a finicking dreamer?
Yes, that was the question. It had always been, as far back as he could remember, the question. Life was harsh: and business, with its ruthless unsentimentality, was an epitome of life. Did Thomas Buddenbrook, like his father, stand firmly on his two feet, in face of this hard practicality of life? Often enough, even far back in the past, he had seen reason to doubt it. Often enough, from his youth onwards, he had sternly brought his feelings into line. To inflict punishment, to take punishment, and not to think of it as punishment, but as something to be taken for granted—should he never completely learn that lesson?
He recalled the catastrophe of the year , and the inexpressibly painful emotions which had then overpowered him. He had lost a large sum of money in the affair—but that had not been the unbearable thing about it. For the first time in his career he had fully and personally experienced the ruthless brutality of business life and seen how all better, gentler, and kindlier sentiments creep away and hide themselves before the one raw, naked, dominating instinct of self-preservation. He had seen that when one suffers a misfortune in business, one is met by one’s friends—and one’s best friends—not with sympathy, not with compassion, but with suspicion—cold, cruel, hostile suspicion. But he had known all this before; why should he be surprised at it? And in stronger and hardier hours he had blushed for his own weakness, for his own distress and sleepless nights, for his revulsion and disgust at the hateful and shameless harshness of life!
How foolish all that was! How ridiculous such feelings had been! How could he entertain them?—unless, indeed, he were a feeble visionary and not a practical business man at all! Ah, how many times had he asked himself that question? And how many times had he answered it: in strong and purposeful hours with one answer, in weak and discouraged ones with another! But he was too shrewd and too honest not to admit, after all, that he was a mixture of both.
All his life, he had made the impression on others of a practical man of action. But in so far as he legitimately passed for one—he, with his fondness for quotations from Goethe—was it not because he deliberately set out to do so? He had been successful in the past, but was that not because of the enthusiasm and impetus drawn from reflection? And if he were now discouraged, if his powers were lamed—God grant it was only for a time—was not his depression the natural consequence of the conflict that went on within himself? Whether his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather would have brought the Pöppenrade harvest in the blade was not the point after all. The thing was that they were practical men, more naturally, more vigorously, more impeccably practical than he was himself.
He was seized by a great unrest, by a need for movement, space, and light. He shoved back his chair, went into the salon, and lighted several burners of the chandelier over the centre-table. He stood there, pulling slowly and spasmodically at the long ends of his moustaches and vacantly gazing about the luxurious room. Together with the living-room it occupied the whole front of the house; it had light, ornate furniture and looked like a music-room, with the great grand piano, Gerda’s violin-case, the étagère with music books, the carved music-stand, and the bas-reliefs of singing cupids over the doors. The bow-window was filled with palms.
Senator Buddenbrook stood for two or three minutes motionless. Then he went back through the living-room into the dining-room and made light there also. He stopped at the sideboard and poured a glass of water, either to be doing something or to quiet his heart. Then he moved quickly on through the house, lighting
