Buddenbrooks/Volume 1/Part 1/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
“Did you ever see him, Herr Pastor?”
The plates were being changed again. An enormous brick-red boiled ham appeared, strewn with crumbs and served with a sour brown onion sauce, and so many vegetables that the company could have satisfied their appetites from that one vegetable-dish. Lebrecht Kröger undertook the carving, and skilfully cut the succulent slices, with his elbows slightly elevated and his two long forefingers laid out along the back of the knife and fork. With the ham went the Frau Consul’s celebrated “Russian jam,” a pungent fruit conserve flavoured with spirits.
No, Pastor Wunderlich regretted to say that he had never set eyes on Bonaparte. Old Buddenbrook and Jean Jacques Hoffstede had both seen him face to face, one in Paris just before the Russian campaign, reviewing the troops at the Tuileries; the other in Dantzig.
“I must say, he wasn’t a very cheerful person to look at,” said the poet, raising his brows, as he disposed of a forkful of ham, potato, and sprouts. “But they say he was in a lively mood, at Dantzig. There was a story they used to tell, about how he would gamble all day with the Germans, and make them pay up too, and then spend the evening playing with his generals. Once he swept a handful of gold off the table, and said: ‘Les Allemands aiment beaucoup ces petits Napoléons, nest-ce pas, Rapp?’ ‘Oui, Sire, plus que le Grand!’ Rapp answered.”
There was general laughter—Hoffstede had told the story very prettily, even mimicking the Emperor’s manner. Old Buddenbrook said: “Well, joking aside, one can’t help having respect for his personal greatness. . . . What a nature!”
The Consul shook his head gravely.
“No, no—we of the younger generation do not see why we should revere the man who murdered the Duc d’Engien, and butchered eight hundred prisoners in Egypt. . . .”
“All that is probably exaggerated and overdrawn,” said Pastor Wunderlich. “The Duke was very likely a feather-brained and seditious person, and as for the prisoners, their execution was probably the deliberate and necessary policy of a council of war." And he went on to speak of a book at which he had been looking, by one of the Emperor’s secretaries, which had appeared some years before and was well worth reading.
“All the same,” persisted the Consul, snuffing a flickering candle in the sconce in front of him, “I cannot understand it—I cannot understand the admiration people have for this monster. As a Christian, as a religious man, I can find no room in my heart for such a feeling.”
He had, as he spoke, the slightly inclined head and the rapt look of a man in a vision. His father and Pastor Wunderlich could be seen to exchange the smallest of smiles.
“Well, anyhow,” grinned the old man, “the little napoleons aren’t so bad, eh? My son has more enthusiasm for Louis Philippe,” he said to the company in general.
“Enthusiasm?” repeated Jean Jacques Hoffstede, rather sarcastically. “. . . That is a curious juxtaposition, Philippe Égalité and enthusiasm. . . .”
“God knows, I feel we have much to learn from the July Monarchy,” the Consul said, with serious zeal. “The friendly and helpful attitude of French constitutionalism toward the new, practical ideals and interests of our time…is something we should be deeply thankful for. . . .”
“Practical ideals—well, ye-es—” The elder Buddenbrook gave his jaws a moment’s rest and played with his gold snuff-box. “Practical ideals—well—h’m—they don’t appeal to me in the least.” He dropped into dialect, out of sheer vexation. “We have trade schools and technical schools and commercial schools springing up on every corner; the high schools and the classical education suddenly turn out to be all foolishness, and the whole world thinks of nothing but mines and factories and making money. . . . That’s all very fine, of course. But in the long run, pretty stupid, isn’t it? . . . I don’t know why, but it irritates me like the deuce. . . . I don’t mean, Jean, that the July Monarchy is not an admirable regime. . . .”
Senator Langhals, as well as Gratjens and Köppen, stood by the Consul. . . . They felt that high praise was due to the French government, and to similar efforts that were being made in Germany. It was worthy of all respect—Herr Köppen called it “respeck.” He had grown more and more crimson from eating, and puffed audibly as he spoke. Pastor Wunderlich had not changed colour; he looked as pale, refined, and alert as ever, while drinking down glass after glass of wine.
The candles burned down slowly in their sockets. Now and then they flickered in a draught and dispersed a faint smell of wax over the table.
There they all sat, on heavy, high-backed chairs, consuming good heavy food from good heavy silver plate, drinking full-bodied wines and expressing their views freely on all subjects. When they began to talk shop, they slipped unconsciously more and more into dialect, and used the clumsy but comfortable idioms that seemed to embody to them the business efficiency and the easy well-being of their community. Sometimes they even used an over-drawn pronunciation by way of making fun of themselves and each other, and relished their clipped phrases and exaggerated vowels with the same heartiness as they did their food.
The ladies had not long followed the discussion. Madame Kröger gave them the cue by setting forth a tempting method of boiling carp in red wine. “You cut it into nice pieces, my dear, and put it in the saucepan, add some cloves, and onions, and a few rusks, a little sugar, and a spoonful of butter, and set it on the fire. . . . But don t wash it, on any account. All the blood must remain in it.”
The elder Kröger was telling the most delightful stories; and his son Justus, who sat with Dr. Grabow down at the bottom of the table, near the children, was chaffing Mamsell Jungmann. She screwed up her brown eyes and stood her knife and fork upright on the table and moved them back and forth. Even the Överdiecks were very lively. Old Frau Överdieck had a new pet name for her husband: “You good old bell-wether,” she said, and laughed so hard that her cap bobbed up and down.
But all the various conversations around the table flowed together in one stream when Jean Jacques Hoffstede embarked upon his favourite theme, and began to describe the Italian journey which he had taken fifteen years before with a rich Hamburg relative. He told of Venice, Rome, and Vesuvius, of the Villa Borghese, where Goethe had written part of his Faust; he waxed enthusiastic over the beautiful Renaissance fountains that wafted coolness upon the warm Italian air, and the formal gardens through the avenues of which it was so enchanting to stroll. Some one mentioned the big wilderness of a garden outside the Castle Gate, that belonged to the Buddenbrooks.
“Upon my word,” the old man said, “I still feel angry with myself that I have never put it into some kind of order. I was out there the other day—and it is really a disgrace, a perfect primeval forest. It would be a pretty bit of property, if the grass were cut and the trees trimmed into formal shapes.”
The Consul protested strenuously. “Oh, no, Papa! I love to go out there in the summer and walk in the undergrowth; it would quite spoil the place to trim and prune its free natural beauty.”
“But, deuce take it, the free natural beauty belongs to me—haven’t I the right to put it in order if I like?”
“Ah, Father, when I go out there and lie in the long grass among the undergrowth, I have a feeling that I belong to nature and not she to me. . . .”
“Krishan, don’t eat too much,” the old man suddenly called out, in dialect. “Never mind about Tilda—it doesn’t hurt her. She can put it away like a dozen harvest hands, that child!”
And truly it was amazing, the prowess of this scraggy child with the long, old-maidish face. Asked if she wanted more soup, she answered in a meek drawling voice: “Ye-es, ple-ase.” She had two large helpings both of fish and ham, with piles of vegetables; and she bent short-sightedly over her plate, completely absorbed in the food, which she chewed ruminantly, in large mouthfuls. “Oh, Un-cle,” she replied, with amiable simplicity, to the old man’s gibe, which did not in the least disconcert her. She ate: whether it tasted good or not, whether they teased her or not, she smiled and kept on, heaping her plate with good things, with the instinctive, insensitive voracity of a poor relation—patient, persevering, hungry, and lean.