The news of the town—the last high water, which had gone into the cellars and been so deep that in the lower part of the town people had to go about in boats; a fire in the dockyard sheds; a senatorial election—these were the topics of conversation. Alfred Lauritzen, of the firm of Stürmann & Lauritzen, tea, coffee, and spice merchants, had been elected, and Senator Buddenbrook had not approved of the choice. He sat smoking cigarettes, wrapped in his cloak, almost silent except for a few remarks on this particular subject. One thing was certain, he said, and that was that he had not voted for Herr Lauritzen. Lauritzen was an honest fellow and a good man of business. There was no doubt of that; but he was middle-class, respectable middle-class. His father had fished herrings out of the barrel and handed them across the counter to servant-maids with his own hands—and now they had in the Senate the proprietor of a retail business. His, Thomas Buddenbrook’s father had disowned his eldest son for “marrying a shop”; but that was in the good old days. “The standard is being lowered,” he said. “The social level is not so high as it was; the Senate is being democratized, my dear Gieseke, and that is no good. Business ability is one thing—but it is not everything. In my view we should demand something more. Alfred Lauritzen, with his big feet and his boatswain’s face—it is offensive to me to think of him in the Senate-house. It offends something in me, I don’t know what. It goes against my sense of form—it is a piece of bad taste, in short.”
Senator Gieseke demurred. He was rather piqued by this expression of opinion. After all, he himself was only the son of a Fire Commissioner. No, the labourer was worthy of his hire. That was what being a republican meant. “You ought not to smoke so much, Buddenbrook,” he ended. “You won’t get any sea air.”
“I’ll stop now,” said Thomas Buddenbrook, flung away the end of his cigarette, and closed his eyes.
The conversation dragged on; the rain set in again and veiled the prospect. They began to talk about the latest town scandal—about P. Philipp Kassbaum, who had been falsifying bills of exchange and now sat behind locks and bars. No one felt outraged over the dishonesty: they spoke of it as an act of folly, laughed a bit, and shrugged their shoulders. Senator Dr. Gieseke said that the convicted man had not lost his spirits. He had asked for a mirror, it seemed, there being none in his cell. “I’ll need a looking-glass,” he was reported to have said: “I shall be here for some time.” He had been, like Christian and Dr. Gieseke, a pupil of the lamented Marcellus Stengel.
They all laughed again at this, through their noses, without a sign of feeling. Siegismund Gosch ordered another grog in a tone of voice that was as good as saying, “What’s the use of living?” Consul Döhlmann sent for a bottle of brandy. Christian felt inclined to more Swedish punch, so Dr. Gieseke ordered some for both of them. Before long Thomas Buddenbrook began to smoke again.
And the idle, cynical, indifferent talk went on, heavy with the food they had eaten, the wine they drank, and the damp that depressed their spirits. They talked about business, the business of each one of those present; but even this subject roused no great enthusiasm.
“Oh, there’s nothing very good about mine,” said Thomas Buddenbrook heavily, and leaned his head against the back of his chair with an air of disgust.
“Well, and you, Döhlmann,” asked Senator Gieseke, and yawned. “You’ve been devoting yourself entirely to brandy, eh?”
“The chimney can’t smoke, unless there’s a fire,” the Consul retorted. “I look into the office every few days. Short hairs are soon combed.”
“And Strunck and Hagenström have all the business in their hands anyhow,” the broker said morosely, with his elbows sprawled out on the table and his wicked old grey head in his hands.
“Oh, nothing can compete with a dung-heap, for smell,” Döhlmann said, with a deliberately coarse pronunciation, which must have depressed everybody’s spirits the more by its hopeless cynicism. “Well, and you, Buddenbrook—what are you doing now? Nothing, eh?”
“No,” answered Christian, “I can’t, any more.” And without more ado, having perceived the mood of the hour, he proceeded to accentuate it. He began, his hat on one side, to talk about his Valparaiso office and Johnny Thunderstorm. “Well, in that heat—‘Good God! Work, Sir? No, Sir. As you see, Sir.’ And they puffed their cigarette-smoke right in his face. Good God!” It was, as always, an incomparable expression of dissolute, impudent, lazy good-nature. His brother sat motionless.
Herr Gosch tried to lift his glass to his thin lips, put it back on the table again, cursing through his shut teeth, and struck the offending arm with his fist. Then he lifted the glass once more, and spilled half its contents, draining the remainder furiously at a gulp.
“Oh, you and your shaking, Gosch!” Peter Döhlmann exclaimed. “Why don’t you just let yourself go, like me? I’ll croak if I don’t drink my bottle every day—I’ve got as far as that; and I’ll croak if I do. How would you feel if you couldn’t get rid of your dinner, not a single day—I mean, after you’ve got it in your stomach?” And he favoured them with some repulsive details of his condition, to which Christian listened with dreadful interest, wrinkling his nose as far as it could go and countering with a brief and forcible account of his “misery.”
It rained harder than ever. It came straight down in sheets and filled the silence of the Kurgarden with its ceaseless, forlorn, and desolate murmur.
“Yes, life’s pretty rotten,” said Senator Gieseke. He had been drinking heavily.
“I’d just as lief quit,” said Christian.
“Let it go hang,” said Herr Gosch.
“There comes Fike Dahlbeck,” said Senator Gieseke. The proprietress of
