BUDDENBROOKS
Hamburg?” she asked, inclining her head and letting her work fall into her lap.
“Yes, Frau Consul,” responded Herr Grünlich with a fresh bow. “At least, my house is in Hamburg, hut I am on the road a good deal. My business is very flourishing—ahem—if I may be permitted to say so.”
The Frau Consul lifted her eyebrows and made respectful motions with her mouth, as if she were saying “Ah—indeed?”
“Ceaseless activity is a condition of my being,” added he, half turning to the Consul. He coughed again as he noticed that Fräulein Antonie’s glance rested upon him. She gave him, in fact, the cold, calculating stare with which a maiden measures a strange young man—a stare which seems always on the point of passing over into actual contempt.
“We have relatives in Hamburg,” said she, in order to be saying something.
“The Duchamps,” explained the Consul. “The family of my late Mother.”
“Oh, yes,” Herr Grünlich hastened to say. “I have the honour of a slight acquaintance with the family. They are very fine people, in mind and heart. Ahem! This would be a better world if there were more families like them in it. They have religion, benevolence, and genuine piety; in short, they are my ideal of the true Christlike spirit. And in them it is united to a rare degree with a brilliant cosmopolitanism, an elegance, an aristocratic bearing, which I find most attractive, Frau Consul.”
Tony thought: “How can he know my Father and Mother so well? He is saying exactly what they like best to hear.” The Consul responded approvingly, “The combination is one that is becoming in everybody.” And the Frau Consul could not resist stretching out her hand to their guest with her sweeping gesture, palm upward, while the bracelets gave a little jingle. “You speak as though you read my inmost thoughts, dear Herr Grünlich,” she said.
Upon which, Herr Grünlich made another deep bow, settled
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