Christian came from Hamburg, very elegantly dressed, looking a little ailing but very lively. He said his business with Burmeester was “top-top”; thought that he and Tilda would probably get married “up there”--that is to say, “each one for himself, of course”; and came very late to the wedding from the visit he paid at the club. Uncle Justus was much moved by the occasion, and with his usual lavishness presented the newly-wedded pair with a beautiful heavy silver epergne. He and his wife practically starved themselves at home, for the weak woman was still paying the disinherited and outcast Jacob’s debts with the housekeeping money. Jacob was rumoured to be in Paris at present. The Buddenbrook ladies from Broad Street made the remark: “Well, let’s hope it will last, this time.” The unpleasant part of this lay in the doubt whether they really hoped it. Sesemi Weichbrodt stood on her tip-toes, kissed her pupil, now Frau Permaneder, explosively on the forehead, and said with her most pronounced vowels: “Be happy, you go-od che-ild!” 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.”