Johann Buddenbrook was nearing the middle forties, and had visibly altered in the last years. His little round eyes seemed to have sunk deeper in his head, his cheekbones and his large aquiline nose stood out more prominently than ever, and the ash-blond hair seemed to have been just touched with a powder-puff where it parted on the temples. The Frau Consul was at the end of her thirties, but, while never beautiful, was as brilliant as ever; her dead-white skin, with a single freckle here and there, had lost none of its splendour, and the candlelight shone on the rich red-blond hair that was as wonderfully dressed as ever. Giving her husband a sidelong glance with her clear blue eyes, she said:
“Jean, I wanted to ask you to consider something: if it would not perhaps be advisable to engage a manservant. I have just been coming to that conclusion. When I think of my parents—”
The Consul let his paper drop on his knee and took his cigar out of his mouth. A shrewd look came into his eyes: here was a question of money to be paid out.
“My dear Betsy,” he said—and he spoke as deliberately as possible, to gain time to muster his excuses—“do you think we need a manservant? Since my parents’ death we have kept on all three maids, not counting Mamsell Jungmann. It seems to me—”
“Oh, but the house is so big, Jean. We can hardly get along as it is. I say to Line, ‘Line, it’s a fearfully long time since the rooms in the annexe were dusted’; but I don’t like to drive the girls too hard; they have their work cut out to keep everything clean and tidy here in the front. And a manservant would be so useful for errands and so on. We could find some honest man from the country, who wouldn’t expect much. … Oh, before I forget it—Louise Möllendorpf is letting her Anton go. I’ve seen him serve nicely at table.”
“To tell you the truth,” said the Consul, and shuffled about a little uneasily, “it is a new idea to me. We aren’t either entertaining or going out just now—”
“No, but we have visitors very often—for which I am not responsible, Jean, as you know, though of course I am always glad to see them. You have a business friend from somewhere, and you invite him to dinner. Then he has not taken a room at a hotel, so we ask him to stop the night. A missionary comes, and stops the week with us. Week after next, Pastor Mathias is coming from Kannstadt. And the wages amount to so little—”
“But they mount up, Betsy! We have four people here in the house—and think of the payroll the firm has!”
“So we really can’t afford a manservant?” the Frau Consul asked. She smiled as she spoke, and looked at her husband with her head on one side. “When I think of all the servants my Father and Mother had—”
“My dear Betsy! Your parents—I really must ask you if you understand our financial position?”
“No, Jean, I must admit I do not. I’m afraid I have only a vague idea—”
“Well, I can tell you in a few words,” the Consul said. He sat up straight on the sofa, with one knee crossed over the other, puffed at his cigar, knit his brows a little, and marshalled his figures with wonderful fluency.
“To put it briefly, my Father had, before my sister’s marriage, a round sum of nine hundred thousand marks net, not counting, of course, real estate, and the stock and good will of the firm. Eighty thousand went to Frankfort as dowry, and a hundred thousand to set Gotthold up in business. That leaves seven hundred and twenty thousand. The price of this house, reckoning off what we got for the little one in Alf Street, and counting all the improvements and new furnishings, came to a good hundred thousand. That brings it down to six hundred and twenty thousand. Twenty-five thousand to Frankfort, as compensation on the house, leaves five hundred and ninety-five thousand—which is what we should have had at Father’s death if we hadn’t partly made up for all these expenses through years, by a profit of some two hundred thousand marks current. The entire capital amounted to seven hundred and ninety-five thousand marks, of which another hundred thousand went to Gotthold, and a few thousand marks for the minor legacies that Father left to the Holy Ghost Hospital, the Fund for Tradesmen’s Widows, and so on. That brings us down to around four hundred and twenty thousand, or another hundred thousand with your own dowry. There is the position, in round figures, aside from small fluctuations in the capital. You see, my dear Betsy, we are not rich. And while the capital has grown smaller, the running expenses have not; for the whole business is established on a certain scale, which it costs about so much to maintain. Have you followed me?”
The Consul’s wife, her needlework in her lap, nodded with some hesitation. “Quite so, my dear Jean,” she said, though she was far from having understood everything, least of all what these big figures had to do with her engaging a manservant.
The Consul puffed at his cigar till it glowed, threw back his head and blew out the smoke, and then went on:
“You are thinking, of course, that when God calls your dear parents unto Himself, we shall have a considerable sum to look forward to—and so we shall. But we must not reckon too blindly on it. Your Father has had some heavy losses, due, we all know, to your brother Justus. Justus is certainly a charming personality, but business is not his strong point, and he has had bad luck too. According to all accounts he has had to pay up pretty heavily, and transactions with bankers
