BUDDENBROOKS
turned out that I was not invited over there just for the sake of my beaux yeux.”
“How so?”
“I will tell you, Tom. Herr von Maiboom needs a large sum of money immediately. He knew the old friendship between his wife and me, and he knew that I am your sister. So, in his extremity, he put his wife up to it, and she put me up to it.—You understand?”
The Senator passed his finger-tips across his hair and screwed up his face a little.
“I think so,” he said. “Your serious and important business evidently concerns an advance on the Pöppenrade harvest—if I am not mistaken. But you have come to the wrong man, I think, you and your friends. In the first place, I have never done any business with Herr von Maiboom, and this would be a rather strange way to begin. In the second place—though, in the past, Grandfather, Father, and I myself have made advances on occasion to the landed gentry, it was always when they offered a certain security, either personally or through their connections. But to judge from the way you have just characterized Herr von Maiboom and his prospects, I should say there can he no security in his case.”
“You are mistaken, Tom. I have let you have your say, but you are mistaken. It is not a question of an advance, at all. Maiboom has to have thirty-five thousand marks current—”
“Heavens and earth!”
“—five-and-thirty thousand marks current, to be paid within two weeks. The knife is at his throat—to be plain, he has to sell at once, immediately.”
“In the blade—oh, the poor chap!” The Senator shook his head as he stood, playing with his pince-nez on the tablecloth. “That is a rather unheard-of thing for our sort of business,” he went on. “I have heard of such things, mostly in Hesse, where a few of the landed gentry are in the hands
