CHAPTER VII
In the morning at eight o’clock Consul Buddenbrook, so soon as he had left his bed, stolen through the little door and down the winding stair into the bathroom, taken a bath, and put on his night-shirt again—Consul Buddenbrook, we say, began to busy himself with public affairs. For then Herr Wenzel, barber and member of the Assembly, appeared, with his intelligent face and his red hands, his razors and other tools, and the basin of warm water which he had fetched from the kitchen; and the Consul sat in a reclining-chair and leaned his head back, and Herr Wenzel began to make a lather; and there ensued almost always a conversation that began with the weather and how you had slept the night before, went on to politics and the great world, thence to domestic affairs in the city itself, and closed in an intimate and familiar key on business and family matters. All this prolonged very much the process in hand, for every time the Consul said anything Herr Wenzel had to stop shaving.
“Hope you slept well, Herr Consul?”
“Yes, thanks, Wenzel. Is it fine to-day?”
“Frost and a bit of snow, Herr Consul. In front of St. James’s the boys have made another slide, more than ten yards long—I nearly sat down, when I came from the Burgomaster’s. The young wretches!”
“Seen the papers?”
“The Advertiser and the Hamburg News—yes. Nothing in them but the Orsini bombs. Horrible. It happened on the way to the opera. Oh, they must be a fine lot over there.”
“Oh, it doesn’t signify much, I should think. It has nothing to do with the people, and the only effect will be that the police will be doubled and there will be twice as much inter-
