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Rh cases of late years within the limits of our Monthly Meeting, respecting the exercising of pure righteousness towards the negroes, in which I have lived under a labor of heart that equity might be steadily preserved. On this account I have had some close exercises among Friends, in which, I may thankfully say, I find peace. And as my meditations have been on universal love, my own conduct in time past became of late very grievous to me. As persons setting negroes free in our province are bound by law to maintain them in case they have need of relief, some in the time of my youth who scrupled to keep slaves for term of life were wont to detain their young negroes in their service without wages till they were thirty years of age. With this custom I so far agreed that being joined with another Friend in executing the will of a deceased Friend, I once sold a negro lad till he might attain the age of thirty years, and applied the money to the use of the estate.

With abasement of heart I may now say that sometimes as I have sat in a meeting with my heart exercised towards that awful Being who respecteth not persons nor colors, and have thought upon this lad, I have felt that all was not clear in my mind respecting him; and as I have attended to this exercise and fervently sought the Lord, it hath appeared to me that I should make some restitution; but in what way I saw not till lately, when being under some concern that I might be resigned to go on a visit to some part of the West Indies, and under close engagement of spirit seeking to the Lord for counsel herein, the aforesaid trans-action came heavily upon me, and my mind for a time was covered with darkness and sorrow. Under this sore affliction my heart was softened to receive instruction, and I now first perceived that as I had been one of the two executors who had sold this lad for nine years longer than is common for our own children to serve, so I should now offer part of my substance to redeem the last half of the nine years; but as the time was not yet come, I executed a bond, binding myself and my executors to pay to the man to whom he was sold what to candid men might appear equitable for the last four and a half years of his time, in case the said youth


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294 should be living, and in a condition likely to provide comfortably for himself.

Ninth of tenth monthMy heart hath often been deeply afflicted under a feeling that the standard of pure righteousness is not lifted up to the people by us, as a society, in that clearness which it might have been, had we been as faithful as we ought to be to the teachings of Christ. And as my mind hath been inward to the Lord, the purity of Christ's government hath been made clear to my understanding, and I have believed, in the opening of universal love, that where a people who are convinced of the truth of the inward teachings of Christ are active in putting laws in execution which are not consistent with pure wisdom, it hath a necessary tendency to bring dimness over their minds. My heart having been thus exercised for several years with a tender sympathy towards my fellow-members, I have within a few months past expressed my concern on this subject in several meetings for discipline.

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rained in streams. Heaven, earth, and sea were in flood, while the driving wind took the rain and flung it against the panes as though not drops but brooks were flowing down and making them impossible to see through. Complaining and despairing voices sounded in the chimney.

When Morten Schwarzkopf went out into the verandah with his pipe shortly after dinner to look at the sky, he found there a gentleman with a long, narrow yellow-checked ulster and a grey hat. A closed carriage, its top glistening with wet, its wheels clogged with mud, was before the door. Morten stared irresolutely into the rosy face of the gentleman. He had mutton-chop whiskers that looked as though they had been dressed with gold paint.

The gentleman in the ulster looked at Morten as one looks at a servant, blinking gently without seeing him, and said in a soft voice: “Is Herr Pilot-Captain Schwarzkopf at home?”

“Yes,” stammered Morten, “I think my Father—”

Hereupon the gentleman fixed his eyes upon him; they were as blue as a goose’s.

“Are you Herr Morten Schwarzkopf?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” answered Morten, trying to keep his face straight.

“Ah—indeed!” remarked the gentleman in the ulster, and went on, “Have the goodness to announce me to your Father, young man. My name is Grünlich.”

Morten led the gentleman through the verandah, opened for him the right-hand door that led into the office, and went back into the sitting-room to tell his Father. Then the youth sat down at the round table, resting his elbow on it, and seemed, without noticing his Mother, who was sitting at the

RV 149 (149)


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296 of late hath been more weighty upon me, which is, that I believe it is required of me to be resigned to go on a visit to some parts of the West Indies." In the Quarterly and General Spring Meetings I found no clearness to express any-thing further than that I believed resignation herein was required of me. Having obtained certificates from all the said meetings, I felt like a sojourner at my outward habitation, and kept free from worldly encumbrances, and I was often bowed in spirit before the Lord, with inward breathings to him that I might be rightly directed. I may here note that the circumstance before related of my having, when young, joined with another executor in selling a negro lad till he might attain the age of thirty years, was now the cause of much sorrow to me; and, after having settled matters relating to this youth, I provided a sea-store and bed, and things for the voyage. Hearing of a vessel likely to sail from Philadelphia for Barbadoes, I spake with one of the owners at Burlington, and soon after went to Philadelphia on purpose to speak to him again. He told me there was a Friend in town who was part owner of the said vessel. I felt no inclination to speak with the latter, but returned home. Awhile after I took leave of my family, and, going to Philadelphia, had some weighty conversation with the first-mentioned owner, and showed him a writing, as follows:

"On the 25th of eleventh month, 1769, as an exercise with respect to a visit to Barbadoes hath been weighty on my mind, I may express some of the trials which have attended me, under which I have at times rejoiced that I have felt my own self-will subjected.

"Some years ago I retailed rum, sugar, and molasses, the fruits of the labor of slaves, but had not then much concern about them save only that the rum might be used in moderation; nor was this concern so weightily attended to as I now believe it ought to have been. Having of late years been further informed respecting the oppressions too generally: exercised in these islands, and thinking often on the dangers there are in connections of interest and fellowship with the works of darkness (Eph. . ), I have felt an increasing concern to be wholly given up to the leadings of the Holy


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RV 150 (BUDDENBROOKS) dark window mending stockings, to busy himself with the “wretched news-sheet” which had nothing in it except the announcements of the silver wedding of Consul So-and-So. Tony was resting in her room.

The pilot-captain entered his office with the air of a man satisfied with his meal. His uniform-coat stood open over the usual white waistcoat. His face was red, and his ice-grey beard coldly set off against it; his tongue travelled about agreeably among his teeth, making his good mouth take the most extraordinary shapes. He bowed shortly, jerkily, with the air of one conforming to the conventions as he understood them.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “At your service.”

Herr Grünlich, on his side, bowed with deliberation, although one corner of his mouth seemed to go down. He said softly: “Ahem!”

The office was rather a small room, the walls of which had wainscoting for a few feet and then simple plaster. Curtains, yellow with smoke, hung before the window, on whose panes the rain beat unceasingly. On the right of the door was a rough table covered with papers, above it a large map of Europe, and a smaller one of the Baltic Sea fastened to the wall. From the middle of the ceiling hung the well-cut model of a ship under full sail.

The Captain made his guest take the sloping sofa, covered with cracked oil-cloth, that stood opposite the door, and made himself comfortable in a wooden arm-chair, folding his hands across his stomach; while Herr Grünlich, his ulster tightly buttoned up, his hat on his knees, sat bolt upright on the edge of the sofa.

“My name is, I repeat, Grünlich,” he said; “from Hamburg. I may say by way of introduction that I am a close business friend of Herr Buddenbrook.”

“Servant, Herr Grünlich; pleased to make your acquaintance. Won’t you make yourself comfortable? Have a glass of grog after your journey? I’ll send right into the kitchen.” RV 150 (150)


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RV 151 (BUDDENBROOKS) “I must permit myself to remark that my time is limited, my carriage is waiting, and I am really obliged to ask for the favour of a few words with you.”

“At your service,” repeated Herr Schwarzkopf, taken aback. There was a pause.

“Herr Captain,” began Herr Grünlich, wagging his head with determination and throwing himself back on his seat. After this he was silent again; and by way of enhancing the effect of his address he shut his mouth tight, like a purse drawn together with strings.

“Herr Captain,” he repeated, and went on without further pause, “The matter about which I have come to you directly concerns the young lady who has been for some weeks stopping in your house.”

“Mademoiselle Buddenbrook?” asked the Consul.

“Precisely,” assented Herr Grünlich. He looked down at the floor, and spoke in a voice devoid of expression. Hard lines came out at the corners of his mouth.

“I am obliged to inform you,” he went on in a sing-song tone, his sharp eyes jumping from one point in the room to another and then to the window, “that some time ago I proposed for the hand of Mademoiselle Buddenbrook. I am in possession of the fullest confidence of both parents, and the young lady herself has unmistakably given me a claim to her hand, though no betrothal has taken place in form.”

“You don’t say—God keep us!” said Herr Schwarzkopf, in a sprightly tone. “I never heard that before! Congratulations, Herr—er—Grünlich. She’s a good girl—genuine good stuff.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” said Herr Grünlich, coldly. He went on in his high sing-song: “What brings me to you on this occasion, my good Herr Captain, is the circumstance that certain difficulties have just arisen—and these difficulties—appear to have their source in your house—?” He spoke the last words in a questioning tone, as if to say, “Can

RV 151 (151)


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Rh Spirit, and it hath seemed right that my small gain from this branch of trade should be applied in promoting righteousness on the earth. This was the first motion towards a visit to Barbadoes. I believed also that part of my out-ward substance should be applied in paying my passage, if I went, and providing things in a lowly way for my subsistence; but when the time drew near in which I believed it required of me to be in readiness, a difficulty arose which hath been a continual trial for some months past, under which I have, with abasement of mind from day to day, sought the Lord for instruction, having often had a feeling of the condition of one formerly, who bewailed himself because the Lord hid his face from him. During these exercises my heart hath often been contrite, and I have had a tender feeling of the temptations of my fellow-creatures, laboring under expensive customs not agreeable to the simplicity that 'there is in Christ' (2 Cor. ii. 3), and sometimes in the renewings of gospel love I have been helped to minister to others.

"That which hath so closely engaged my mind, in seeking to the Lord for instruction, is, whether, after the full information I have had of the oppression which the slaves lie under who raise the West India produce, which I have gained by reading a caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies, written by Anthony Benezet, it is right for me to take passage in a vessel employed in the West India trade.

"To trade freely with oppressors without laboring to dissuade them from such unkind treatment, and to seek for gain by such traffic, tends, I believe, to make them more easy respecting their conduct than they would be if the cause of universal righteousness was humbly and firmly attended to by those in general with whom they have commerce; and that complaint of the Lord by his prophet, "They have strengthened the hands of the wicked,” hath very often revived in my mind. I may here add some circumstances which occurred to me before I had any prospect of a visit there, David longed for some water in a well beyond an army of Philistines who were at war with Israel, and some of his men, to please him, ventured their lives in passing through this army, and brought that water.


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RV 152 (BUDDENBROOKS) this disgraceful state of things be true, or have my ears deceived me?”

Herr Schwarzkopf answered only by lifting his eyebrows as high as they would go, and clutching the arms of his chair with his brown, blond-felled fisherman’s hands.

“Yes. This is the fact. So I am informed,” Herr Grünlich said, with dreary certitude. “I hear that your son—studiosus medicinae, I am led to understand—has allowed himself—of course unconsciously—to encroach upon my rights. I hear that he has taken advantage of the present visit of the young lady to extract certain promises from her.”

“What?” shouted the pilot-captain, gripping the arms of his chair and springing up. “That we shall soon—we can soon see—!” With two steps he was at the door, tore it open, and shouted down the corridor in a voice that would have out-roared the wildest seas: “Meta, Morten! Come in here, both of you.”

“I shall regret it exceedingly if the assertion of my prior rights runs counter to your fatherly hopes, Herr Captain.”

Diederich Swarzkopf turned and stared, with his sharp blue eyes in their wrinkled setting, straight into the stranger’s face, as though he strove in vain to comprehend his words.

“Sir!” he said. Then, with a voice that sounded as though he had just burnt his throat with hot grog, “I’m a simple sort of a man, and don’t know much about landlubber’s tricks and skin games; but if you mean, maybe, that—well, sir, you can just set it down right away that you’ve got on the wrong tack, and are making a pretty bad miscalculation about my fatherly hopes. I know who my son is, and I know who Mademoiselle Buddenbrook is, and there’s too much respect and too much pride in my carcase to be making any plans of the sort you’ve mentioned.—And now,” he roared, jerking his head toward the door, “it’s your turn to talk, boy. You tell me what this affair is; what is this I hear—hey?”

Frau Schwarzkopf and her son stood in the doorway, she innocently arranging her apron, he with the air of a hardened

RV 152 (152)


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RV 153 (BUDDENBROOKS) sinner. Herr Grünlich did not rise at their entrance. He waited, erect and composed, on the edge of the sofa, buttoned up tight in his ulster.

“So you’ve been behaving like a silly fool?” bellowed the captain to Morten.

The young man had his thumb stuck between the buttons of his jacket. He scowled and puffed out his cheeks defiantly.

“Yes, Father,” he said, “Fräulein Buddenbrook and I—”

“Well, then, I’ll just tell you you’re a perfect Tom-fool, a young ninny, and you’ll be packed off to-morrow for Göttingen—to-morrow, understand? It’s all damned childish nonsense, and rascality into the bargain.”

“Good heavens, Diederich,” said Frau Schwarzkopf, folding her hands, “you can’t just say that, you know. Who knows—?” She stopped, she said no more; but it was plain from her face that a mother’s beautiful dream had been shattered in that moment.

“Would the gentleman like to see the young lady?” Schwarkopf turned to Herr Grünlich and spoke in a harsh voice.

“She is upstairs in her room asleep,” Frau Schwarzkopf said with feeling.

“I regret,” said Herr Grünlich, and he got up, obviously relieved. “But I repeat that my time is limited, and the carriage waits. I permit myself,” he went on, describing with his hat a motion in the direction of Herr Schwarzkopf, “to acknowledge to you, Herr Captain, my entire recognition of your manly and high-principled bearing. I salute you. Good-bye.”

Diederich Schwarzkopf did not offer to shake hands with him. He merely gave a jerky bow with the upper part of his heavy figure, that had an air of saying: “This is the proper thing, I suppose.”

Herr Grünlich, with measured tread, passed between Morten and his mother and went out the door.

RV 153 (153)


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298 "It doth not appear that the Israelites were then scarce of water, but rather that David gave way to delicacy of taste; and having reflected on the danger to which these men had been exposed, he considered this water as their blood, and his heart smote him that he could not drink it, but he poured it out to the Lord. The oppression of the slaves which I have seen in several journeys southward on this continent, and the report of their treatment in the West Indies, have deeply affected me, and a care to live in the spirit of peace and minister no just cause of offence to my fellow-creatures having from time to time livingly revived in my mind, I have for some years past declined to gratify my palate with those sugars.

"I do not censure my brethren in these things, but I believe the Father of Mercies, to whom all mankind by creation are equally related, hath heard the groans of this oppressed people and that he is preparing some to have a tender feeling of their condition. Trading in or the frequent use of any produce known to be raised by the labor of those who are under such lamentable oppression hath appeared to be a subject which may hereafter require the more serious consideration of the humble followers of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

"After long and mournful exercise I am now free to mention how things have opened in my mind, with desires that if it may please the Lord further to open his will to any of his children in this matter they may faithfully follow him in such further manifestation.

"The number of those who decline the use of West India produce, on account of the hard usage of the slaves who raise it, appears small, even among people truly pious; and the labors in Christian love on that subject of those who do are not very extensive. Were the trade from this continent to the West Indies to be stopped at once, I believe many there would suffer for want of bread. Did we on this continent and the inhabitants of the West Indies generally dwell in pure righteousness, I believe a small trade between us might be right. Under these considerations, when the thoughts of wholly declining the use of trading-vessels and of trying to hire a vessel to go under ballast have arisen


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Rh in my mind, I have believed that the labors in gospel love hitherto bestowed in the cause of universal righteousness have not reached that height. If the trade to the West Indies were no more than was consistent with pure wisdom, I believe the passage-money would for good reasons be higher than it is now; and therefore, under deep exercise of mind, I have believed that I should not take advantage of this great trade and small passage-money, but, as a testimony in favor of less trading, should pay more than is common for others to pay if I go at this time."

The first-mentioned owner, having read the paper, went with me to the other owner, who also read over the paper, and we had some solid conversation, under which I felt my-self bowed in reverence before the Most High. At length one of them asked me if I would go and see the vessel. But not having clearness in my mind to go, I went to my lodging and retired in private under great exercise of mind; and my tears were poured out before the Lord with inward cries that he would graciously help me under these trials. I believe my mind was resigned, but I did not feel clearness to proceed; and my own weakness and the necessity of Divine instruction were impressed upon me.

I was for a time as one who knew not what to do and was tossed as in a tempest; under which affliction the doctrine of Christ, "Take no thought for the morrow," arose livingly before me, and I was favored to get into a good degree of stillness. Having been near two days in town, I believed my obedience to my Heavenly Father consisted in returning homeward; I therefore went over among Friends on the Jersey shore and tarried till the morning on which the vessel was appointed to sail. As I lay in bed the latter part of that night my mind was comforted, and I felt what I esteemed a fresh confirmation that it was the Lord’s will that I should pass through some further exercises near home; so I went thither, and still felt like a sojourner with my family. In the fresh spring of pure love I had some labors in a private way among Friends on a subject relating to truth’s testimony, under which I had frequently been exercised in heart for some years. I remember, as I walked on the road under this exercise, that


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300 passage in Ezekiel came fresh upon me, "Whithersoever their faces were turned thither they went." And I was graciously helped to discharge my duty in the fear and dread of the Almighty.

In the course of a few weeks it pleased the Lord to visit me with a pleurisy; and after I had lain a few days and felt the disorder very grievous, I was thoughtful how it might end. I had of late, through various exercises, been much weaned from the pleasant things of this life; and I now thought if it were the Lord's will to put an end to my labors and graciously to receive me into the arms of his mercy, death would be acceptable to me; but if it were his will further to refine me under affliction, and to make me in any degree useful in his church, I desired not to die. I may with thankfulness say that in this case I felt resignedness wrought in me and had no inclination to send for a doctor, believing, if it were the Lord’s will through outward means to raise me up, some sympathizing Friends would be sent to minister to me; which accordingly was the case. But though I was carefully attended, yet the disorder was at times so heavy that I had no expectation of recovery. One night in particular my bodily distress was great; my feet grew cold, and the cold increased up my legs towards my body; at that time I had no inclination to ask my nurse to apply anything warm to my feet, expecting my end was near. After I had lain near ten hours in this condition, I closed my eyes, thinking whether I might now be delivered out of the body; but in these awful moments my mind was livingly opened to behold the church; and strong engagements were begotten in me for the everlasting well-being of my fellow-creatures. I felt in the spring of pure love that I might remain some time longer in the body, to fill up according to my measure that which remains of the afflictions of Christ, and to labor for the good of the church; after which I requested my nurse to apply warmth to my feet, and I revived. The next night, feeling a weighty exercise of spirit and having a solid friend sitting up with me, I requested him to write what I said, which he did as follows:

"Fourth day of the first month, 1770, about five in the morning.I have seen in the Light of the Lord that the day


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Thomas appeared with the Kröger calèche. The day was at hand.

The young man arrived at ten o’clock in the forenoon and took a bite with the family in the living-room. They sat together as on the first day, except that now summer was over; it was too cold and windy to sit in the verandah; and—Morten was not there. He was in Göttingen. Tony and he had not even been able to say good-bye. The Captain had stood there and said, “Well, so that’s the end of that, eh!”

At eleven the brother and sister mounted into the wagon, where Tony’s trunk was already fastened at the back. She was pale and shivered in her soft autumn coat—from cold, weariness, excitement, and a grief that now and then rose up suddenly and filled her breast with a painful oppression. She kissed little Meta, pressed the house-wife’s hand, and nodded to Herr Schwarzkopf when he said, “Well, you won’t forget us, little Miss, will you? And no bad feeling, eh? And a safe journey and best greetings to your honoured Father and the Frau Consul.” Then the coach door slammed, the fat brown horses pulled at their traces, and the three Schwarzkopfs waved their handkerchiefs.

Tony crooked her neck in the corner of the coach, in order to peer out of the window. The sky was covered with white cloud-flakes; the Trave broke into little waves that hurried before the wind. Now and then drops of rain pattered against the glass. At the end of the front people sat in the doors of their cottages and mended nets; barefoot children came running to look curiously at the carriage. They did not have to go away! RV 154 (154)


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Rh is approaching when the man that is most wise in human policy shall be the greatest fool; and the arm that is mighty to support injustice shall be broken to pieces; the enemies of righteousness shall make a terrible rattle, and shall mightily torment one another; for He that is omnipotent is rising up to judgment, and will plead the cause of the oppressed; and He commanded me to open the vision."

Near a week after this, feeling my mind livingly opened, I sent for a neighbor, who, at my request, wrote as follows:

"The place of prayer is a precious habitation; for I now saw that the prayers of the saints were precious incense; and a trumpet was given to me that I might sound forth this language; that the children might hear it and be invited together to this precious habitation, where the prayers of the saints, as sweet incense, arise before the throne of God and the Lamb. I saw this habitation to be safe,to be inwardly quiet when there were great stirrings and commotions in the world.

"Prayer, at this day, in pure resignation, is a precious place: the trumpet is sounded; the call goes forth to the church that she gather to the place of pure inward prayer; and her habitation is safe."


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RV 155 (BUDDENBROOKS) As they left the last houses behind, Tony bent forward to look at the lighthouse; then she leaned back and closed her tired and burning eyes. She had hardly slept for excitement. She had risen early to finish her packing, and discovered no desire for breakfast. There was a dull taste in her mouth, and she felt so weak that she made no effort to dry the slow, hot tears that kept rising every minute.

But directly her eyes were shut, she found herself again in Travemünde, on the verandah. She saw Morten in the flesh before her; he seemed to speak and to lean toward her as he always did, and then look good-naturedly and searchingly at the next person, unconsciously showing his beautiful teeth as he smiled. Slowly her mind grew calm and peaceful again. She recalled everything that she had heard and learned from him in many a talk, and it solaced her to promise herself that she would preserve all this as a secret holy and inviolate and cherish it in her heart. That the King of Prussia had committed a great wrong against his people; that the local newspaper was a lamentable sheet; yes, that the laws of the League concerning universities had been renewed four years ago—all these were from now on consoling and edifying truths, a hidden treasure which she might store up within herself and contemplate whenever she chose. On the street, in the family circle, at the table she would think of them. Who knew? Perhaps she might even go on in the path prescribed for her and marry Herr Grünlich—that was a detail, after all—but when he spoke to her she could always say to herself, “I know something you don’t: the nobility is in principle despicable.”

She smiled to herself and was assuaged. But suddenly, in the noise of the wheels, she heard Morten’s voice with miraculous clearness. She distinguished every nuance of his kindly, dragging speech as he said: “To-day we must both ‘sit on the rocks,’ Fräulein Tony,” and this little memory overpowered her. Her breast contracted with her grief, and she let the tears flow down unopposed. Bowed in her corner, she

RV 155 (155)


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RV 156 (BUDDENBROOKS) held her handkerchief before her face and wept bitterly.

Thomas, his cigarette in his mouth, looked somewhat blankly at the high-road. “Poor Tony,’ he said at last, stroking her jacket. “I feel so sorry—I understand so well, you know. But what can you do? One has to bear these things. Believe me, I do understand what you feel.”

“Oh, you don’t understand at all, Tom,” sobbed Tony.

“Don’t say that. Did you know it is decided that I am to go to Amsterdam at the beginning of next year? Papa has obtained a place for me with van der Kellen and Company. That means I must say good-bye for a long, long time.”

“Oh, Tom! Saying good-bye to your father and mother and sisters and brothers—that isn’t anything.”

“Ye-es,” he said, slowly. He sighed, as if he did not wish to say more, and was silent. He let the cigarette rove from one corner of his mouth to the other, lifted one eyebrow, and turned his head away.

“Well, it doesn’t last for ever,” he began again after a while. “Naturally one forgets.”

“But I don’t want to forget,” Tony cried out in desperation. “Forgetting—is that any consolation?”

RV 156 (156)


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and Israelsdorf Avenue, Jerusalem Hill, the Castle Field. The wagon passed the Castle Gate, with the walls of the prison rising on the right, and rolled along Castle Street and over the Koberg. Tony looked at the grey gables, the oil lamps hung across the streets, Holy Ghost Hospital with the already almost bare lindens in front of it. Oh, how everything was exactly as it had been! It had been standing here, in immovable dignity, while she had thought of it as a dream worthy only to be forgotten. These grey gables were the old, the accustomed, the traditional, to which she was returning, in the midst of which she must live. She wept no more. She looked about curiously. The pain of parting was almost dulled at the sight of these well-known streets and faces. At that moment—the wagon was rolling through Broad Street—the porter Matthiesen passed and took off his stove-pipe hat so obsequiously that it seemed he must be thinking, “Bow, you dog of a porter—you can’t bow low enough.”

The equipage turned into the Mengstrasse, and the fat brown horses stood snorting and stamping before the Buddenbrook door. Tom was very attentive in helping his sister out, while Anton and Line hastened up to unfasten the trunk. But they had to wait before they could enter the house. Three great lorries were being driven through, one close behind another, piled high with full corn sacks, with the firm name written on them in big black letters. They jolted along over the great boards and down the shallow steps to the cart-yard with a heavy rumbling noise. Part of the corn was evidently to be unloaded at the back of the house and the rest taken to the “Walrus,” the “Lion,” or the “Oak.” RV 157 (157)


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RV 158 (BUDDENBROOKS) The Consul came out of the office with his pen behind his ear as the brother and sister reached the entry, and stretched out his arms to his daughter.

“Welcome home, my dear Tony!”

She kissed him, looking a little shame-faced, her eyes still red with weeping. But he was very tactful; he made no allusions; he only said: “It is late, but we waited with the second breakfast.”

The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Clara, and Ida Jungmann stood above on the landing to greet her.

Tony slept soundly and well the first night in Mengstrasse. She rose the next morning, the twenty-second of September, refreshed and calmed, and went down into the breakfast-room. It was still quite early, hardly seven o’clock. Only Mamsell Jungmann was there, making the morning coffee.

“Well, well, Tony, my little child,” she said, looking round with her small, blinking brown eyes. “Up so early?”

Tony sat down at the open desk, clasped her hands behind her head, and looked for a while at the pavement of the court, gleaming black with wet, and at the damp, yellow garden. Then she began to rummage curiously among the visiting-cards and letters on the desk. Close by the inkstand lay the wellknown large copy-book with the stamped cover, gilt edges, and leaves of various qualities and colours. It must have been used the evening before, and it was strange that Papa had not put it back in its leather portfolio and laid it in its special drawer.

She took it and turned over the pages, began to read, and became absorbed. What she read were mostly simple facts well known to her; but each successive writer had followed his predecessor in a stately but simple chronicle style which was no bad mirror of the family attitude, its modest but honourable self-respect, and its reverence for tradition and history. The book was not new to Tony; she had sometimes been allowed to read in it. But its contents had never made the impression upon her that they did this morning. She was

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RV 159 (BUDDENBROOKS) thrilled by the reverent particularity with which the simplest facts pertinent to the family were here treated. She propped herself on her elbows and read with growing absorption, seriousness and pride.

No point in her own tiny past was lacking. Her birth, her childish illnesses, her first school, her boarding-school days at Mademoiselle Weichbrodt’s, her confirmation—everything was carefully entered, with an almost reverent observation of facts, in the Consul’s small, flowing business hand; for was not the least of them the will and work of God, who wonderfully guided the destinies of the family? What, she mused, would there he entered here in the future after her name, which she had received from her grandmother Antoinette? All that was yet to be written there would be conned by later members of the family with a piety equal to her own.

She leaned back sighing; her heart beat solemnly. She was filled with reverence for herself: the familiar feeling of personal importance possessed her, heightened by all she had been reading. She felt thrilled and shuddery. “Like a link in a chain,” Papa had written. Yes, yes. She was important precisely as a link in this chain. Such was her significance and her responsibility, such her task: to share by deed and word in the history of her family.

She turned back to the end of the great volume, where on a rough folio page was entered the genealogy of the whole Buddenbrook family, with parentheses and rubrics, indicated in the Consul’s hand, and all the dates set down: from the marriage of the earliest scion of the family with Brigitta Schuren, the pastor’s daughter, down to the wedding of Consul Johann Buddenbrook with Elizabeth Kröger in 1825. From this marriage, it said, four children had resulted: whereupon these were all entered, with the days and years of their birth, and their baptismal names, one after another. Under that of the eldest son it was recorded that he had entered as apprentice in his father’s business in the Easter of 1842.

Tony looked a long time at her name and at the blank

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RV 160 (BUDDENBROOKS) space next it. Then, suddenly, with a jerk, with a nervous, feverish accompaniment of sobbing breaths and quick-moving lips—she clutched the pen, plunged it rather than dipped it into the ink, and wrote, with her forefingef crooked, her hot head bent far over on her shoulder, in her awkward handwriting that climbed up the page from left to right: “Betrothed, on Sept. 22, 1845, to Herr Bendix Grünlich, Merchant, of Hamburg.”

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agree with you, my good friend. This important matter must be settled. In short, then: the usual dowry of a young girl of our family is seventy thousand marks.”

Herr Grünlich cast at his future father-in-law a shrewd, calculating glance—the glance of the genuine man of business. “As a matter of fact,” he said—and this “matter of fact” was of precisely the same length as his left-hand whisker, which he was drawing reflectively through his fingers; he let go of the end just as “of fact” was finished.

“You know, my honoured father,” he began again, “the deep respect I have for traditions and principles. Only—in the present case is not this consideration for the tradition a little exaggerated? A business increases—a family prospers—in short, conditions change and improve.”

“My good friend,” said the Consul, “you see in me a fair-dealing merchant. You have not let me finish, or you would have heard that I am ready and willing to meet you in the circumstances, and add ten thousand marks to the seventy thousand without more ado.”

“Eighty thousand, then,” said Herr Grünlich, making motions with his mouth, as though to say: “Not too much; but it will do.”

Thus they came to an affectionate settlement; the Consul jingled his keys like a man satisfied as he got up. And, in fact, his satisfaction was justified; for it was only with the eighty thousand marks that they had arrived at the dowry traditional in the family.

Herr Grünlich now said good-bye and departed for Hamburg. Tony as yet realized but little of her new estate. She still

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RV 162 (BUDDENBROOKS) went to dances at the Möllendorpfs’, Kistenmakers’, and Langhals’, and in her own home; she skated on the Burgfield and the meadows of the Trave, and permitted the attentions of the young gentlemen of the town. In the middle of October she went to the betrothal feast at the Möllendorpfs’ for the oldest son of the house and Juliet Hagenström. “Tom,” she said, “I won’t go. It is disgusting.” But she went, and enjoyed herself hugely. And, as for the rest, by the entry with the pen in the family history-book, she had won the privilege of going, with the Frau Consul or alone, into all the shops in town and making purchases in a grand style for her trousseau. It was to be a brilliant trousseau. Two seamstresses sat all day in the breakfast-room window, sewing, embroidering monograms, and eating quantities of house-bread and green cheese.

“Is the linen come from Lentföhr, Mamma?”

“No, but here are two dozen tea-serviettes.”

“That is nice. But he promised it by this afternoon. My goodness, the sheets still have to be hemmed.”

“Mamsell Bitterlich wants to know about the lace for the pillow-cases, Ida.”

“It is in the righthand cupboard in the entry, Tony, my child.”

“Line—!”

“You could go yourself, my dear.”

“Oh, if I’m marrying for the privilege of running up and down stairs—!”

“Have you made up your mind yet about the material for the wedding-dress, Tony?”

“Moiré antique, Mamma—I won’t marry, without moiré antique!”

So passed October and November. At Christmas time Herr Grünlich appeared, to spend Christmas in the Buddenbrook family circle and also to take part in the celebration at the Krögers’. His conduct toward his bride showed all the delicacy one would have expected from him. No unnecessary RV 162 (162)


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RV 163 (BUDDENBROOKS) formality, no importunity, no tactless tenderness. A light, discreet kiss upon the forehead, in the presence of the parents, sealed the betrothal. Tony sometimes puzzled over this, the least in the world. Why, she wondered, did his present happiness seem not quite commensurate with the despair into which her refusal had thrown him? He regarded her with the air of a satisfied possessor. Now and then, indeed, if they happened to be alone, a jesting and teasing mood seemed to overcome him; once he attempted to fall on his knees and approach his whiskers to her face, while he asked in a voice apparently trembling with joy, “Have I indeed captured you? Have I won you for my own?” To which Tony answered, “You are forgetting yourself,” and got away with all possible speed.

Soon after the holidays Herr Grünlich went back to Hamburg, for his flourishing business demanded his personal attention; and the Buddenbrooks agreed with him that Tony had had time enough before the betrothal to make his acquaintance.

The question of a house was quickly arranged. Tony, who looked forward extravagantly to life in a large city, had expressed the wish to settle in Hamburg itself, and indeed in the Spitalstrasse, where Herr Grünlich’s office was. But the bridegroom, by manly persistence, won her over to the purchase of a villa outside the city, near Eimsbiittel, a romantic and retired spot, an ideal nest for a newly-wedded pair—“procul negotiis.”—Ah, he had not yet forgotten quite all his Latin!

Thus December passed, and at the beginning of the year ’46 the wedding was celebrated. There was a splendid wedding feast, to which half the town was bidden. Tony’s friends—among them Armgard von Schilling, who arrived in a towering coach—danced with Tom’s and Christian’s friends, among them Andreas Gieseke, son of the Fire Commissioner and now studiosus juris; also Stephan and Edward Kistenmacher, of Kistenmacher and Son. They danced in the dining

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 That phenomena of this description have occurred within the last century every one must acknowledge. They are matters of common notoriety. No doubt the extraordinary troubles, which within that time have arisen in Europe, and more or less inflicted suffering upon the whole civilized world, were occasioned by the evils which prevailed; for a long time they had been festering and undermining the welfare of society; but then a period came in which their consequences affected the world to an extent and with a fatality unprecedented in the annals of the human race. Surely affairs involving the commission of so much wickedness, and the endurance of so much suffering, must have had an infernal origin. The tree is to be known by its fruit. The malignant principles and sentiments which the inhabitants of the world of spirits had been so long and so forcibly insinuating into the human mind, rushed out into open violence when the time arrived for the judgment of those spirits: and is it not reasonable to conclude that the afflictions which the world experienced represented the miserable condition to which those spirits had been condemned? May they not be regarded as the effects of the activities and infestation of a spiritual tyranny which judgment overthrew? To what other adequate causes can they be assigned? To say that they were merely the outbirths of vicious minds is no sufficient answer; for it is plain that all minds are operated upon in their determination, by influences more interior than themselves, which, however, they have always the freedom to examine and control.

The principles which led to those terrible results had been growing up in society for a considerable period. The interiors of the whole Christian world had been thrown into a condition of disaster and confusion. In a preceding chapter it was shown that all the circumstances which the


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RV 164 (BUDDENBROOKS) room and the hall, which had been strewn with talc for the occasion. Among the liveliest of the lively was Consul Peter Döhlmann; he got hold of all the earthenware crocks he could find and broke them on the flags of the big passage.

Frau Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street had another opportunity to mingle in the society of the great; for it was she who helped Mamsell Jungmann and the two seamstresses to adjust Tony’s toilette on the great day. She had, as God was her judge, never seen a more beautiful bride. Fat as she was, she went on her knees; and, with her eyes rolled up in admiration, fastened the myrtle twigs on the white moiré antique. This was in the breakfast-room. Herr Grünlich, in his long-skirted frock-coat and silk waistcoat, waited at the door. His rosy face had a correct and serious expression, his wart was powdered, and his gold-yellow whiskers carefully curled.

Above in the hall, where the marriage was to take place, the family gathered—a stately assemblage. There sat the old Krögers, a little ailing both of them, but distinguished figures always. There was Consul Kröger with his sons Jürgen and Jacob, the latter having come from Hamburg, like the Duchamps. There were Gottfried Buddenbrook and his wife, born Stüwing, with their three offspring, Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi, none of whom was, unfortunately, likely to marry. There was the Mecklenburg branch, represented by Clothilde’s father, Herr Bernhard Buddenbrook, who had come in from Thankless and looked with large eyes at the seignorial house of his rich relations. The relatives from Frankfort had contented themselves with sending presents; the journey was too arduous. In their place were the only guests not members of the family. Dr. Grabow, the family physician, and Mile. Weichbrodt, Tony’s motherly friend—Sesemi Weichbrodt, with fresh ribbons on her cap over the side curls, and a little black dress. “Be happy, you good child,” she said, when Tony appeared at Herr Grünlich’s RV 164 (164)


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RV 165 (BUDDENBROOKS) side in the hall. She reached up and kissed her with a little explosion on the forehead. The family was satisfied with the bride: Tony looked pretty, gay, and at her ease, if a little pale from excitement and tension.

The hall had been decorated with flowers and an altar arranged on the right side. Pastor Kölling of St. Mary’s performed the service, and laid special stress upon moderation. Everything went according to custom and arrangement, Tony brought out a hearty yes, and Herr Grünlich gave his little ahem, beforehand, to clear his throat. Afterward, everybody ate long and well.

While the guests continued to eat in the salon, with the pastor in their midst, the Consul and his wife accompanied the young pair, who had dressed for their journey, out into the snowy, misty air, where the great travelling coach stood before the door, packed with boxes and bags.

After Tony had expressed many times her conviction that she should soon be back again on a visit, and that they too would not delay long to come to Hamburg to see her, she climbed in good spirits into the coach and let herself be carefully wrapped up by the Consul in the warm fur rug. Her husband took his place by her side.

“And, Grünlich,” said the Consul, “the new laces are in the small satchel, on top. You take a little in under your overcoat, don’t you? This excise—one has to get around it the best one can. Farewell, farewell! Farewell, dear Tony. God bless you.”

“You will find good accommodation in Arensburg, won’t you?” asked the Frau Consul. “Already reserved, my dear Mamma,” answered Herr Grünlich.

Anton, Line, Trine, and Sophie took leave of Ma’am Grünlich. The coach door was about to be slammed, when Tony was overtaken by a sudden impulse. Despite all the trouble it took, she unwound herself again from her wrappings, climbed ruthlessly over Herr Grünlich, who began to grumble, RV 165 (165)


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 Lord foretold would be the occasion for His second coming had really transpired: that there was no stone of the temple—no truth of the Church—which had not been thrown down. The Church maintained a profession indeed, because of the worldly interests that had clustered around it: "For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together;" but it had ceased to be a spiritual institution. Heaven had become dim and distant in their eyes, and the world was regarded as the only reality. Great numbers of the clergy were indifferent spectators of the vices of the people, and sought relaxation in the coarsest pleasures. The courts of Europe were seats of sensuality in every form: most of the kings were infidels; the national governments were political corruptions; statesmen were place-hunters, drunkards, and gamblers; these vices were not confined to the men; women participated in this deplorable profligacy. Libertinism and profane swearing were esteemed the indication of manhood and the characteristics of gentlemen; and a wide-spread infidelity, both within the Church and without it, finally displayed itself in France, by the public renunciation of Christianity, the abolition of the Sabbath, and the exalting of what was called Reason, as a god. The Archbishop of Paris, followed by his clergy, carried the Scriptures, and other works connected with Divine worship, and burnt them in the public market-place. These were only the miserable results of a spiritual iniquity that had long been festering. But space will not permit us to dwell upon the decay of all that was good and true in religion, life, and manners, which then prevailed. It is written in history, and distinctly spoken of by authorities which no one can dispute. Bishop Burnet, in a pastoral charge, in 1713, said, "I see the imminent


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RV 166 (BUDDENBROOKS) and embraced her Father with passion. “Adieu, Papa, adieu, my good Papa.” And then she whispered softly: “Are you satisfied with me?”

The Consul pressed her without words' to his heart, then put her from him and shook her hands with deep feeling.

Now everything was ready. The coach door slammed, the coachman cracked his whip, the horses dashed away so that the coach windows rattled; the Frau Consul let fly her little white handkerchief; and the carriage, rolling down the street, disappeared in the mist.

The Consul stood thoughtfully next to his wife, who drew her cloak about her shoulders with a graceful movement.

“There she goes, Betsy.”

“Yes, Jean, the first to leave us. Do you think she is happy with him?”

“Oh, Betsy, she is satisfied with herself, which is better; it is the most solid happiness we can have on this earth.”

They went back to their guests. RV 166 (166)


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went down Meng Street as far as the “Five Houses.” He avoided Broad Street so as not to be accosted by acquaintances and obliged to greet them. With his hands deep in the big pockets of his warm dark grey overcoat, he walked, sunk in thought, over the hard, sparkling snow, which crunched under his boots. He went his own way, and whither it led no one knew but himself. The sky was pale blue and clear, the air biting and crisp—a still, severe, clear weather, with five degrees of frost; in short, a matchless February day.

Thomas walked down the “Five Houses,” crossed Bakers’ Alley, and went along a narrow cross-street into Fishers’ Lane. He followed this street, which led down to the Trave parallel to Meng Street, for a few steps, and paused before a small house, a modest flower-shop, with a narrow door and dingy show-window, where a few pots of onions stood on a pane of green glass.

He went in, whereupon the bell above the door began to give tongue, like a little watch-dog. Within, before the counter, talking to the young saleswoman, was a little fat elderly lady in a Turkey shawl. She was choosing a pot of flowers, examining, smelling, criticizing, chattering, and constantly obliged to wipe her mouth with her handkerchief. Thomas Buddenbrook greeted her politely and stepped to one side. She was a poor relation of the Langhals’, a good-natured garrulous old maid who bore the name of one of the best families without herself belonging to their set: that is, she was not asked to the large dinners, but to the small coffee circles. She was known to almost all the world as Aunt

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RV 168 (BUDDENBROOKS) Lottchen. She turned toward the door, with her pot of flowers, wrapped up in tissue paper, under her arm; and Thomas, after greeting her again, said in an elevated voice to the shop girl, “Give me a couple of roses, please. Never mind the kind—well, La France.”

Then, after Aunt Lottchen had shut the door behind her and gone away, he said in a lower voice, “Put them away again, Anna. How are you, little Anna? Here I am—and I’ve come with a heavy heart.”

Anna wore a white apron over her simple black frock. She was wonderfully pretty. Delicately built as a fawn, she had an almost mongol type of face, somewhat prominent cheek-bones, narrow black eyes full of a soft gleam, and a pale yellow skin the like of which is rare anywhere. Her hands, of the same tint, were narrow, and more beautiful than a shop girl’s are wont to be.

She went behind the counter at the right end, so that she could not be seen through the shop-window. Thomas followed on the outside of the counter and, bending over, kissed her on the lips and the eyes.

“You are quite frozen, poor boy,” she said.

“Five degrees,” said Tom. “I didn’t notice it, I’ve felt so sad coming over.”

He sat down on the table, keeping her hand in his, and went on: “Listen, Anna; we’ll be sensible to-day, won’t we? The time has come.”

“Oh, dear,” she said miserably, and lifted her apron to her eyes.

“It had to happen some time, Anna. No, don’t weep. We were going to be reasonable, weren’t we? What else is there to do? One has to bear such things.”

“When?” asked Anna, sobbing.

“Day after to-morrow.”

“Oh, God, no! Why to-morrow? A week longer—five days! Please, oh, please!” RV 168 (168)


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RV 169 (BUDDENBROOKS) “Impossible, dear Anna. Everything is arranged and in order. They are expecting me in Amsterdam. I couldn’t make it a day longer, no matter how much I wanted.”

“And that is so far away—so far away!”

“Amsterdam? Nonsense, that isn’t far. We can always think of each other, can’t we? And I’ll write to you. You’ll see, I’ll write directly I’ve got there.”

“Do you remember,” she said, “a year and a half ago, at the Rifle-club fair?”

He interrupted her ardently. “Do I remember? Yes, a year and a half ago! I took you for an Italian. I bought a pink and put it in my button-hole.—I still have it—I am taking it with me to Amsterdam.—What a heat: how hot and dusty it was on the meadow!”

“Yes, you bought me a glass of lemonade from the next both. I remember it like yesterday. Everything smelled of fatty-cakes and people.”

“But it was fine! We knew right away how we felt—about each other!”

“You wanted to take me on the carroussel, but I couldn’t go; I had to be in the shop. The old woman would have scolded.”

“No, I know it wouldn’t have done, Anna.”

She said softly and clearly, “But that is the only thing I’ve refused you.”

He kissed her again, on the lips and the eyes. “Adieu, darling little Anna. We must begin to say good-bye.”

“Oh, you will come back to-morrow?”

“Yes, of course, and day after to-morrow early, if I can get away.—But there is one thing I want to say to you, Anna. I am going, after all, rather far away. Amsterdam is a long way off—and you are staying here. But—don’t throw yourself away, I tell you.”

She wept into her apron, holding it up with her free hand to her face. “And you—and you?” RV 169 (169)


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 ruin hanging over the Church, and by consequence, over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is bad enough. God knows; but that which heightens our fears rises chief from the inward state into which we have unhappily fallen. I will, in examining this, confine myself to the clergy." In 1736, Bishop Butler said, "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry: but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And assuredly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point amongst people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule." In 1738, Archbishop Secker declared that "An open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age. Indeed, it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle, in the higher parts of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this mighty torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of others, a continual increase." In 1731, Dr. Watts remarks, "Nor is the complaint of the dissolution of virtue and piety made only by Protestant dissenters: it is a general matter of mournful observation amongst all that lay the cause of God to heart; and therefore, it cannot be thought amiss for every one to use all just and proper efforts for the recovery of dying religion in the world."


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RV 170 (BUDDENBROOKS) “God knows, Anna, what will happen. One isn’t young for ever—you are a sensible girl, you have never said anything about marriage and that sort of thing—”

“God forbid—that I should ask such a thing of you!”

“One is carried along—you see. If I live, I shall take over the business, and make a good match—you see, I am open with you at parting, Anna. I wish you every happiness, darling, darling little Anna. But don’t throw yourself away, do you hear? For you haven’t done that—with me—I swear it.”

It was warm in the shop. A moist scent of earth and flowers was in the air. Outside, the winter sun was hurrying to its repose, and a pure delicate sunset, like one painted on porcelain, beautified the sky across the river. People hurried past the window, their chins tucked into their turned-up collars; no one gave a glance into the corner of the little flower-shop, at the two who stood there saying their last farewells.

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 Mr. Paterson, treating of the "Tendencies of religious thought in England, 1688—1750," says, "The historian of moral and religious progress is under the necessity of depicting this period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language—a day of 'rebuke and blasphemy,'—it was an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of 'light without love,' whose 'very merits were of the earth, earthy.' "" Bishop Ken, more than a century and a half ago, in his "Expostularia," speaking of the clergy, said, "Alas, alas! for your debauched courses; a holy calling and an unholy life; servants of God, yet slaves of sin; reverend in your functions, yet shameful in your practice; a minister, and yet given to wine; a priest, and yet lascivious; in holy orders, and yet in riotous assemblies." The Rev. J. C. Ryle, speaking of the state of preaching in the English Church a century ago, tells us that "The celebrated lawyer, Blackstone, had the curiosity, early in the reign of George the Third, to go from church to church, to hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero; and that it would have been impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether the preacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ." The Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel, writing of the clergy so recently as twenty years ago. says, "The children of patrons and of rich capitalists, of bishops and of clergymen, recruit the ranks of the elergy, not so much because they have given themselves up to the service


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 of Christ and of their fellow-creatures, as because they have not the ability for law or medicine, nor spirit enough for the army and navy, nor capital enough for commerce, nor income enough to lead an idle life."

There is, then, unquestionable evidence for the truth of this mournful picture of society and of the Church, during the preceding century, which we have attempted to draw. The broad outline might have been filled in with more detail, and the whole might have received a more distinctive colouring, but the general sketch presented is sufficient for our purpose: it points out some of the principles which underlay the history of the times to which we are referring.

The evils, however, which then prevailed, and which were uprooting the welfare of mankind, have been long abating; some of their most flagrant forms have passed away, and there can be no doubt that an extraordinary change has taken place among the people since that period. Every one who will take up the history of the last century and compare it with the annals of the present, will at once perceive that some mighty change has been accomplished; that some desolating cause has been removed, and some new influences set to work. We do not here so much refer to those common advantages which are everywhere surrounding us, as to that blow by which it is certain a great variety of public evils have been struck down;—evils which were rampant in society, and generally connived at by our ancestry a few generations ago. The vices which distinguished the reigning courts; the tyranny of governments; the corruption of Parliaments; the intemperance of statesmen; the sanguinary character of the laws; the corruption of the Church, the looseness of its clergy, their open simony,


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Talk:The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

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https://www.eapoe.org/works/info/pt056.htm -- Beardo (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


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 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF,.


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 "One word will do!" he exclaimed, drawing her to him.

"Ah!" she whispered as she lifted her face to his. "I couldn't say it all in one word. But—we've lots of time before us!"


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 immediately hastened to find her niece, tax her with encouraging my addresses, and assure herself whether her conjectures were well-grounded. Unfortunately she had already seen enough to need no other confirmation. She arrived at the door of the room, at the precise moment when Agnes gave me her portrait. She heard me profess an everlasting attachment to her rival, and saw me kneeling at her feet. She advanced to separate us; we were too much occupied by each other to perceive her approach, and were not aware of it till Agnes beheld her standing by my side.

Rage on the part of Donna Rodolpha, embarrassment on mine, for some time kept us both silent. The lady recovered herself first.

"My suspicions then were just," said she; "the coquetry of my niece has triumphed, and 'tis to her that I am sacrificed. In one respect, however, I am fortunate; I shall not be the only one who laments a disappointed passion. You, too, shall know


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 what it is to love without hope! I daily expect orders for restoring Agnes to her parents. Immediately upon her arrival in Spain, she will take the veil, and place an insuperable barrier to your union. You may spare your supplications." She continued, perceiving me on the point of speaking: "My resolution is fixed and immoveable. Your mistress shall remain a close prisoner in her chamber, till she exchanges this castle for the cloister. Solitude will perhaps recall her to a sense of her duty: but to prevent your opposing that wished event, I must inform you, Don Alphonso, that your presence here is no longer agreeable either to the baron or myself. It was not to talk nonsense to my niece, that your relations sent you to Germany: your business was to travel, and I should be sorry to impede any longer so excellent a design. Farewell, Segnor; remember, that to-morrow morning we meet for the last time."

Having said this, she darted upon me a look of pride, contempt, and malice, and


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 quitted the apartment. I also retired to mine, and consumed the night in planning the means of rescuing Agnes from the power of her tyrannical aunt.

After the positive declaration of its mistress, it was impossible for me to make a longer stay at the castle of Lindenberg. Accordingly, I the next day announced my immediate departure. The baron declared that it gave him sincere pain; and he expressed himself in my favour so warmly, that I endeavoured to win him over to my interest. Scarcely had I mentioned the name of Agnes when he stopped me short, and said, that it was totally out of his power to interfere in the business. I saw that it was in vain to argue; the baroness governed her husband with despotic sway, and I easily perceived that she had prejudiced him against the match. Agnes did not appear. I entreated permission to take leave of her, but my prayer was rejected. I was obliged to depart without seeing her.

At quitting him, the baron shook my hand


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 affectionately, and assured me that, as soon as his niece was gone, I might consider his house as my own.

"Farewell, Don Alphonso!" said the baroness, and stretched out her hand to me.

I took it, and offered to carry it to my lips. She prevented me. Her husband was at the other end of the room, and out of hearing.

"Take care of yourself," she continued; "my love is become hatred, and my wounded pride shall not be unatoned. Go where you will, my vengeance shall follow you!"

She accompanied these words with a look sufficient to make me tremble. I answered not, but hastened to quit the castle.

As my chaise drove out of the court, I looked up to the windows of your sister's chamber: nobody was to be seen there. I threw myself back despondent in my carriage. I was attended by no other servants than a Frenchman, whom I had hired


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 at Strasbourg in Stephano's room, and my little page, whom I before mentioned to you. The fidelity, intelligence, and good temper of Theodore had already made him dear to me; but he now prepared to lay an obligation on me, which made me look upon him as a guardian genius. Scarcely had we proceeded half a mile from the castle, when he rode up to the chaise door.

"Take courage, Segnor!" said he in Spanish, which he had-already learnt to speak with fluency and correctness: "While you were with the baron, I watched the moment when dame Cunegonda was below stairs, and mounted into the chamber over that of donna Agnes. I sang, as loud as I could, a little German air, well known to her, hoping that she would recollect my voice. I was not disappointed, for I soon heard her window open. I hastened to let down a string with which I had provided myself. Upon hearing the casement closed again, I drew up the string and, fastened to it, I found this scrap of paper."


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 He then presented me with a small note, addressed to me. I opened it with impatience. It contained the following words, written in pencil:

"Conceal yourself for the next fortnight in some neighbouring village. My aunt will believe you to have quitted Lindenberg, and I shall be restored to liberty. I will be in the west pavilion at twelve on the night of the thirtieth. Fail not to be there, and we shall have an opportunity of concerting our future plans. Adieu.

"AGNES."

At perusing these lines my transports exceeded all bounds; neither did I set any to the expressions of gratitude which I heaped upon Theodore. In fact, his address and attention merited my warmest praise. You will readily believe that I had not entrusted him with my passion for Agnes; but the arch youth had too much discernment not to discover my secret, and too much discre-


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 tion not to conceal his knowledge of it. He observed in silence what was going on, nor strove to make himself an agent in the business till my interests required his interference. I equally admired his judgment, his penetration, his address, and his fidelity. This was not the first occasion in which I had found him of infinite use, and I was every day more convinced of his quickness and capacity. During my short stay at Strasbourg, he had applied himself diligently to learning the rudiments of Spanish. He continued to study it, and with so much success, that he spoke it with the same facility as his native language. He passed the greatest part of his time in reading. He had acquired much information for his age; and united the advantages of a lively countenance and prepossessing figure to an excellent understanding and the very best of hearts. He is now fifteen. He is still in my service; and, when you see him, I am sure that he will please you. But excuse this digression; I return to the subject which I quitted.


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 I obeyed the instructions of Agnes. I proceeded to Munich: there I left my chaise under the care of Lucas, my French servant, and then returned on horseback to a small village about four miles distant from the castle of Lindenberg. Upon arriving there, a story was related to the host at whose inn I alighted, which prevented his wondering at my making so long a stay in his house. The old man, fortunately, was credulous and incurious: he believed all I said, and sought to know no more than what I thought proper to tell him. Nobody was with me but Theodore: both were disguised; and as we kept ourselves close, we were not suspected to be other than what we seemed. In this manner the fortnight passed away. During that time I had the pleasing conviction that Agnes was once more at liberty. She passed through the village with dame Cunegonda: she seemed in good health and spirits, and talked to her companion without any appearance of constraint.


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 "Who are those ladies?" said I to my host as the carriage passed.

"Baron Lindenberg's niece, with her governess," he replied: "she goes regularly every Friday to the convent of St. Catharine, in which she was brought up, and which is situated about a mile from hence."

You may be certain that I waited with impatience for the ensuing Friday. I again beheld my lovely mistress. She cast her eyes upon me as she passed the inn door. A blush which overspread her cheek, told me that, in spite of my disguise, I had been recognised. I bowed profoundly. She returned the compliment by a slight inclination of the head, as if made to one inferior, and looked another way till the carriage was out of sight.

The long-expected, long wished-for night arrived. It was calm, and the moon was at the full. As soon as the clock struck eleven I hastened to my appointment, determined not to be too late. Theodore had provided a ladder; I ascended the garden wall with-


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 out difficulty. The page followed me, and drew the ladder after us. I posted myself in the west pavilion, and waited impatiently for the approach of Agnes. Every breeze that whispered, every leaf that fell, I believed to be her foot-step, and hastened to meet her. Thus was I obliged to pass a full hour, every minute of which appeared to me an age. The castle bell at length tolled twelve, and scarcely could I believe the night to be no farther advanced. Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and I heard the light foot of my mistress approaching the pavilion with precaution. I flew to receive her, and conducted her to a seat. I threw myself at her feet, and was expressing my joy at seeing her, when she thus interrupted me:

"We have no time to lose, Alphonso: the moments are precious; for, though no more a prisoner, Cunegonda watches my every step. An express is arrived from my father; I must depart immediately for Madrid, and 'tis with difficulty that I have ob-


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 tained a week's delay. The superstition of my parents, supported by the representations of my cruel aunt, leaves me no hope of softening them to compassion. In this dilemma, I have resolved to commit myself to your honour. God grant that you may never give me cause to repent my resolution! Flight is my only resource from the horrors of a convent; and my imprudence must be excused by the urgency of the danger. Now listen to the plan by which I hope to effect my escape.

"We are now at the thirtieth of April. On the fifth day from this the visionary nun is expected to appear. In my last visit to the convent I provided myself with a dress proper for the character. A friend whom I have left there, and to whom I made no scruple to confide my secret, readily consented to supply me with a religious habit. Provide a carriage, and be with it at a little distance from the great gate of the castle. As soon as the clock strikes "one," I shall quit my chamber, dressed in


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 the same apparel as the ghost is supposed to wear. Whoever meets me will be too much terrified to oppose my escape: I shall easily reach the door, and throw myself under your protection. Thus far success is certain: but, oh! Alphonso, should you deceive me! Should you despise my imprudence, and reward it with ingratitude, the world will not hold a being more wretched than myself! I feel all the dangers to which I shall be exposed. I feel that I am giving you a right to treat me with levity: but I rely upon your love, upon your honour! The step which I am on the point of taking will incense my relations against me. Should you desert me; should you betray the trust reposed in you, I shall have no friend to punish your insult, or support my cause. On yourself alone rests all my hope; and if your own heart does not plead in my behalf, I am undone for ever!"

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 could not help being affected. I also repined in secret at not having taken the precaution to provide a carriage at the village; in which case, I might have carried off Agnes that very night. Such an attempt was now impracticable; neither carriage nor horses were to be procured nearer than Munich, which was distant from Lindenberg two good days journey. I was therefore obliged to chime in with her plan, which, in truth, seemed well arranged. Her disguise would secure her from being stopped in quitting the castle, and would enable her to step into the carriage at the very gate, without difficulty or losing time.

Agnes reclined her head mournfully upon my shoulder, and, by the light of the moon, I saw tears flowing down her cheek. I strove to dissipate her melancholy, and encouraged her to look forward to the prospect of happiness. I protested in the most solemn terms that her virtue and innocence would be safe in my keeping; and that, till the church had made her my lawful wife,


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 posed, bambina, if it have helped to make you what you are. But you may tell Zulve that its work and hers are done."

Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its covering.

"Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my mind—the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more deeply and incurably spoilt child. Your mother's reproach is an exact inversion of the truth. No one could have acted with more utter unselfishness, more devoted kindness, more exquisite delicacy than you have shown in this miserable matter. I could not have believed that even you could have put aside your own feelings so completely, could have recognised so promptly that I was not in fault, have thought so exclusively of what was best and safe for me in the first place, and next of what was kind and just and generous to your rivals. I never thought such reasonableness and justice possible to feminine nature; and if I cannot love you more dearly, you have taught me how deeply to admire and honour you. I accept the situation, since you will have it so; be as just and considerate henceforward as you have been to-night, and trust me that it shall bring no shadow between us—shall never make you less to me than you are now."

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 fix. No rule, no custom, obliges you to give any preference in form or fact to one, merely because you chanced to marry her first."

"Such, nevertheless, did not seem to be the practice in your father's house. Your mother was as distinctly wife and mistress as if his sole companion."

"My father," she replied, "did not marry a second time till within my own memory; and it was natural and usual to give the first place to one so much older and more experienced. I have no such claim, and when you see my companions you may find good reason to think that I am the least fit of all to take the first place. Nor," she added, drawing me from the room, "do I wish it. If only you will keep in your mind one little place for the memory of our visit to your vessel and your promise respecting it, I shall be more than content."

Eveena's humble, unconscious self-abnegation was rendering the conversation intolerably painful, and even the embarrassing situation now at hand was a welcome interruption. Eveena paused before a door opening from the gallery into one of the rooms looking on the peristyle.

"You will find them there," she said, drawing back.

"Come with me, then," I answered; and as she shrank away, I tightened my clasp of her waist and drew her forward. The door opened, and we found ourselves in presence of six veiled ladies in pink and silver, all of them, with one exception, a little taller and less slight than my bride. Eveena, with the kindness which never failed under the most painful trial or the most powerful impulses of natural feeling, extricated herself gently from my hold, took the hand of the first, and


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 brought her up to me. The girl was evidently startled at the first sight of her new possessor, and alarmed by a figure so much larger and more powerful than any she had ever seen, exceeding probably the picture drawn by her imagination.

"This," said Eveena gently and gravely, "is Eunané, the prettiest and most accomplished scholar in her Nursery."

As I was about to acknowledge the introduction with the same cold politeness with which I should have bowed to a strange guest on Earth, Eveena took my left hand in her own and laid it on the maiden's veil, recalling to me at once the proprieties of the occasion and the justice she had claimed for her unoffending and unintentional rivals; but at the same time bringing back in full force a remembrance she could not have forgotten, but whose effect upon myself the ideas to which she was habituated rendered her unable to anticipate. To accept in her presence a second bride, by the same ceremonial act which had so lately asserted my claim to herself, was intensely repugnant to my feelings, and only her own self-sacrificing influence could have overcome my reluctance. My hesitation was, I fear, perceptible to Eunane; for, as I removed her veil and head-dress, her expression and a colour somewhat brighter than that of mere maiden shyness indicated disappointment or mortified pride. She was certainly very beautiful, and perhaps, had I now seen them both for the first time, I might have acquiesced in the truth of Eveena's self-depreciation. As it was, nothing could associate with the bright intelligent face, the clear grey eyes and light brown hair, the lithe active form instinct with nervous


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 energy, that charm which from our first acquaintance their expression of gentle kindness, and, later, the devoted affection visible in every look, had given to Eveena's features.

It is, I suppose, hardly natural to man to feel actual unkindness towards a young and beautiful girl who has given no personal offence. Having once admitted, the justice of Eveena's plea, and feeling that she would be more pained by the omission than by the fulfilment of the forms which courtesy and common kindness imperatively demanded, I kissed Eunane's brow and spoke a few words to her, with as much of tenderness as I could feel or affect for Eveena's rival, after what had passed to endear Eveena more than ever. The latter waited a little, to allow me spontaneously to perform the same ceremony with the other girls; but seeing my hesitation, she came forward again and presented severally four others—Enva ("Snow" = Blanche), Leenoo ("Rose"), Eiralé, Elfé, all more or less of the usual type of female beauty in Mars, with long full tresses varying in tinge from flax to deep gold or the lightest brown; each with features almost faultless, and with all the attraction (to me unfailing) possessed for men who have passed their youth by la beauté du Diable—the bloom of pure graceful girlhood. Eivé, the sixth of the party, standing on the right of the others, and therefore last in place according to Martial usage, was smaller and slighter than Eveena herself, and made an individual impression on my attention by a manifest timidity and agitation greater than any of the rest had evinced. As I removed her veil I was struck by the total unlikeness which her face and form presented to


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 those I had just saluted. Her hair was so dark as by contrast to seem black; her complexion less fair than those of her companions, though as fair as that of an average Greek beauty; her eyes of deepest brown; her limbs, and especially the hands and feet, marvellously perfect in shape and colour, but in the delicacy and minuteness of their form suggesting, as did all the proportions of her tiny figure, the peculiar grace of childhood; an image in miniature of faultless physical beauty. In Eivé alone of the bevy I felt a real interest; but the interest called forth by a singularly pretty child, in whose expression the first glance discerns a character it will take long to read, rather than that commanded by the charms of earliest womanhood.

When I had completed the ceremonial round, there was a somewhat awkward silence, which Eveena at last broke by suggesting that Eunane should show us through the house, with which she had made the earliest acquaintance. This young girl readily took the lead thus assigned to her, and by some delicate manoeuvre, whose authorship I could not doubt, I found her hand in mine as we made our tour. The number of chambers was much greater than in Esmo's dwelling, the garden of the peristyle larger and more elaborately arranged, if not more beautiful. The ambau were more numerous than even the domestic service of so large a mansion appeared to require. The birds, whose duties lay outside, were by this time asleep on their perches, and we forbore to disturb them. The central chamber of the seraglio, if I may so call it, the largest and midmost of those in the rear of the garden, devoted as of course to the ladies of the household, was especially magnificent.


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 When we stood in its midst, shy looks askance from all the six betrayed their secret ambition; though Eivé's was but momentary, and so slight that I felt I might have unfairly suspected her of presumption. I left this room, however, in silence, and assigned to each, of my maiden brides, in order as they had been presented to me, the rooms on the left; and then, as we stood once more in the peristyle, having postponed all further arrangements, all distribution of household duties, to the morrow (assigning, however, to Eunane, whose native energy and forwardness had made early acquaintance with the dwelling and its dumb inhabitants, the charge of providing and preparing with their assistance our morning meal), I said, "I have let the business of the evening zyda actually encroach on midnight, and must detain you from your rest no longer. Eveena, you know, I still have need of you."

She was standing at a little distance, next to Eunane; and the latter, with a smile half malicious, half triumphant, whispered something in her ear. There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena's look which provoked me to interpose. On Earth I should never have been fool enough to meddle in a woman's quarrel. The weakest can take her own part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously than could dervish, priest, or politician. But Eveena could no more lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could have borne to hear her do so; and it was intolerable that one whose sweet humility commanded respect from myself should submit to slight or sneer from the lips and eyes of petulant girls. Eunane


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 I did fancy for one moment you would strike, as passionate men and women often do strike provoking girls, perhaps forgetting your own strength; and I knew you would be miserable if you did hurt her—in that way. The next moment I was ashamed, more than you will believe, to have wronged you so. Like every man, from the head of a household to the Arch-Judge or the Camptâ, you must rule by fear. But your wrath will 'stand to cool;' and you will hate to make a girl cry as you would hate to send a criminal to the electric-rack, the lightning-stroke, or the vivisection-table. And, whatever you had done, do you fancy that I could shrink from you? I said, 'If you weary of your flower-bird you must strike with the hammer;' and if you could do so, do you think I should not feel for your hand to hold it to the last?"

"Hush, Eveena! how can I bear such words? You might forgive me for any outrage to you: I doubt your easily forgetting cruelty to another. I have not a heart like yours. As I never failed a friend, so I never yet forgave a foe. Yet even I might pardon one of those girls an attempt to poison myself, and in some circumstances I might even learn to like her better afterwards. But I doubt if I could ever touch again the hand that had mixed the poison for another, though that other were my mortal enemy."


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 started as I spoke, using that accent which gives its most peremptory force to the Martial imperative. "Repeat aloud what you have chosen to say to Eveena in my presence."

If the first to express the ill-will excited by Eveena's evident influence, though exerted in their own behalf, it was less that Eunane surpassed her companions in malice than that they fell short of her in audacity. Her school-mates had found her their most daring leader in mischief, the least reluctant scapegoat when mischief was to be atoned. But she was cowed, partly perhaps by her first collision with masculine authority, partly, I fear, by sheer dread of physical force visibly greater than she had ever known by repute. Perhaps she was too much frightened to obey. At any rate, it was from Eveena, despite her pleading looks, that I extorted an answer. She yielded at last only to that formal imperative which her conscience would not permit her to disobey, and which for the first time I now employed in addressing her.

"Eunane only repeated," Eveena said, with a reluctance so manifest that one might have supposed her to be the offender, "a school-girl's proverb:—

The smile that had accompanied the whisper—though not so much suggestive of a woman's malignity as of a child's exultation in a companion's disgrace—gave point and sting to the taunt. It is on chance, I suppose, that the effect of such things depends. Had the saying been thrown at any of Eunane's equals, I should probably


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 have been inclined to laugh, even if I felt it necessary to reprimand. But, angered at a hint which placed Eveena on their own level, I forgot how far the speaker's experience and inexperience alike palliated the impertinence. That the insinuation shocked none of those around me was evident. Theirs were not the looks of women, however young and thoughtless, startled by an affront to their sex; but of children amazed at a child's folly in provoking capricious and irresponsible power. The angry quickness with which I turned to Eunane received a double, though doubly unintentional, rebuke, equally illustrative of Martial ideas and usages. The culprit cowered like a child expecting a brutal blow. A gentle pressure on my left arm evinced the same fear in a quarter from which its expression wounded me deeply. That pressure arrested not, as was intended, my hand, but my voice; and when I spoke the frightened girl looked up in surprise at its measured tones.

"Wrong, and wrong thrice over, Eunane. It is for me to teach you the bad taste of bringing into your new home the ideas and language of school. Meanwhile, in no case would you learn more of my rule than concerned your own fault. Take in exchange for your proverb the kindliest I have learned in your language:—

"But, happily for you, your taunt had not truth enough to sting; and I can tell the story about which you are unduly curious as frankly as you please.—Let me speak now, Eveena, that I may spare the need to speak again and in another tone.—That Eveena seemed to have put us both in a false position only convinced me that she


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 had a motive she knew would satisfy me as fully as herself. When I learned what that motive was, I was greatly surprised at her unselfishness and courage. If you threw me your veil to save me from drowning, how would you feel if my first words to you were:—'No one must think I could not swim, therefore even the household must believe you, in unveiling, guilty of an unpardonable fault Answer me, Eunane."

"I should let you sink next time," she replied, with a pretty half-dubious sauciness, showing that her worst fears at least were relieved.

"Quite right; but you are less generous than Eveena. To hide how I had acted on her advice, she would have had you suppose her guilty. That you might not laugh at my authority, and 'find a dragon in the esve's nest,' she would have had me treat her as guilty."

"But I deserved it. A girl has no right to break the seal in the master's absence," interposed Eveena, much more distressed than gratified by the vindication to which she was so well entitled.

"Let your tongue sleep, Eveena. So [with a kiss] I blot your first miscalculation, Eunane. Earth [the Evening Star of Mars] light your dreams."

It was with visible reluctance that Eveena followed me into the chamber we had last left; and she expostulated as earnestly as her obedience would permit against the fiat that assigned it to her.

"Choose what room you please, then," I said; "but understand that, so far as my will and my trust can make you, you are the mistress here."

"Well, then," she answered, "give me the little octagon beside your own:"—the smallest and simplest,


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 but to my taste the prettiest, room in the house. "I should like to be near you still, if I may; but, believe me, I shall not be frozen (hurt) because you think another hand better able to steer the carriage, if mine may sometimes rest in yours."

Leading her into the room she had chosen, and having installed her among the cushions that were to form her couch, I silenced decisively her renewed protest.

"Let me answer you on this point, once and for ever, Eveena. To me this seems matter of right, not of favour or fitness. But favour and fitness here go with right. I could no more endure to place another before or beside you than I could break the special bond between us, and deny the hope of which the Serpent" (laying my hand on her shoulder-clasp, which, by mere accident, was shaped into a faint resemblance to the mystic coil) "is the emblem; the hope that alone can make such love as ours endurable, or even possible, to creatures that must die. She who knelt with me before the Emerald Throne, who took with me the vows so awfully sanctioned, shall hold the first place in my home as in my heart till the Serpent's promise be fulfilled."

Both were silent for some time, for never could we refer to that Vision—whether an objective fact, or an impression communicated from one spirit to the other by the occult force of intense sympathy—save by such allusion; and the remembrance never failed to affect us both with a feeling too deep for words. Eveena spoke again—

"I am sorry you have so bound yourself; perhaps only because you knew me first. And it shames me to receive fresh proof of your kindness to-night."


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 "And why, my own?"

"Do not make me feel," she said, "that—though the measured sentences you have taught me to call scolding seemed the sharpest of all penances—there is a heavier yet in the silence which withholds forgiveness."

"What have I yet to forgive, Madonna?"

But Eveena could read my feelings in spite of my words, and knew that the pain she had given was too recent to allow me to misconceive her penitence.

"I ought to say, my interference. It was your right to rule as you chose, and my meddling was a far worse offence than Eunane's malice. But it was not that you felt too deeply to reprove."

"True! Eunane hurt me a little; but I expected no such misjudgment from you. By the touch that proved your alarm I know that I gave no cause for it."

"How so?" she asked in surprise.

"You laid your hand instinctively on my left arm, the one your people use. Had I made the slightest angry gesture, you would have held back my right. Had I deserved that Eveena should think so ill of me—think me capable of doing such dishonour to her presence and to my own roof, which should have protected an equal enemy from that which you feared for a helpless girl? For what you would have checked was such a blow as men deal to men who can strike back; and the hand that had given it would have been unfit to clasp man's in friendship or woman's in love. You yourself must have shrunk from its touch."

She caught and held it fast to her lips.

"Can I forget that it saved my life? I don't understand you at all, but I see that I have frozen your heart.