dealer, and Consul Hermann Hagenström were names that kept their places on the list. But from the very first was heard the name of Thomas Buddenbrook; and as election day approached, it grew constantly plainer that he and Hermann Hagenström were the favoured candidates.
Hermann Hagenström had his admirers and hangers-on—there was no doubt of that. His zeal in public affairs, the spectacular rise of the firm of Strunck and Hagenström, the showy house the Consul kept, the luxurious life he led, the pâtés-de-foie-gras he ate for breakfast—all these could not fail to make an impression. This large, rather over-stout man with the short, full, reddish beard and the snub nose coming down flat on his upper lip, this man whose grandfather nobody knew, not even himself, and whose father had made himself socially impossible by a rich but doubtful marriage; this man had become a brother-in-law of the Huneus’ and the Möllendorpfs, had ranged his name alongside those of the five or six reigning families in the town, and was undeniably a remarkable and a respected figure. The novel and therewith the attractive element in his personality—that which singled him out for a leading position in the eyes of many—was its liberal and tolerant strain. His light, large way of making money and spending it again differed fundamentally from the patient, persistent toil and the inherited principles of his fellow merchants. This man stood on his own feet, free from the fetters of tradition and ancestral piety; and all the old ways were foreign to him. His house was not one of the ancient patrician mansions, built with senseless waste of space, in tall white galleries mounting above a stone-paved ground floor. His home on Sand Street, the southern extension of Broad Street, was a modern dwelling, not conforming to any set style of architecture, with a simple painted façade, but furnished inside with every luxury and planned with the cleverest economy of space. Recently, on the occasion of one of his large evening parties, he had invited a prima donna from the government theatre, to sing after dinner to his guests—among them his
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