talking with Consul Peter Döhlmann at her dressing-room door. Peter Döhlmann nearly fell over with laughing when he saw Christian with the bouquet. But the new wooer, with a solemn face, bowed in his best manner before Walter Tell, handed her the bouquet, and, nodding his head, said in a voice of well-nigh tearful conviction: “Ah, Fraulein, how beautifully you act!”
“Well, hang me if it ain’t Krishan Buddenbrook!” Consul Döhlmann cried out, in his broadest accent. Fräulein Meyer-de-la-Grange lifted her pretty brows and asked: “The son of Consul Buddenbrook?” And she stroked the cheek of her young admirer with all the favour in the world.
Such was the story that Consul Peter Döhlmann told at the Club that night; it flew about the town like lightning, and reached the ears of the head master, who asked for an audience with Consul Buddenbrook. And how did the Father take this affair? He was, in truth, less angry than overwhelmed. He sat almost like a broken man, after telling the Frau Consul the story in the landscape-room.
“And this is our son,” he said. “So is he growing up—”
“But Jean! Good heavens, your Father would have laughed at it. Tell it to my Father and Mother on Thursday—you will see how Papa will enjoy it ”
But here the Consul rose up in anger. “Ah, yes, yes! I am sure he will enjoy it, Betsy. He will be glad to know that his light blood and impious desires live on, not only in a rake like Justus, his own son, but also in a grandson of his as well! Good God, you drive me to say these things!—He goes to this—person; he spends his pocket-money on flowers for this—lorette! I don’t say he knows what he is doing—yet. But the inclination shows itself—it shows itself, Betsy!”
Ah, yes, this was all very painful indeed. The Consul was perhaps the more beside himself for the added reason that Tony’s behaviour, too, had not been of the best. She had given up, it is true, shouting at the nervous stranger to make
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