Pastor Kölling of St. Mary’s, a heavy man with a bullet head and a rough manner of speaking, held the service at the grave, in the Buddenbrook family burying-ground, outside the Castle Gate, at the edge of the cemetery grove. He extolled the godly, temperate life of the deceased and compared it with that of “gluttons, drunkards, and profligates”--over which strong language some of the congregation shook their heads, thinking of the tact and moderation of their old Pastor Wunderlich, who had lately died. When the service and the burial were over, and the seventy or eighty hired coaches began to roll back to town, Gotthold Buddenbrook asked the Consul’s permission to go with him, that they might speak together in private. He sat with his brother on the back seat of the high, ungainly old coach, one short leg crossed over the other--and, wonderful to relate, he was gentle and conciliatory. He realized more and more, he said, that the Consul was bound to act as he was doing; and he was determined to cherish no bitter memories of his father. He renounced the claims he had put forward, the more readily that he had decided to retire from business and live upon his inheritance and what capital he had left; for he had no joy of the linen business, and it was going so indifferently that he could not bring himself to put any more money into it.... “His spite against our Father brought him no blessing,” the Consul thought piously. Probably Gotthold thought so too. When they got back, he went with his brother up to the breakfast-room; and as both gentlemen felt rather chilly, after standing so long in their dress-coats in the early spring air, they drank a glass of old cognac together. Then Gotthold exchanged a few courteous words with his sister-in-law, stroked the children’s heads, and went away. But he appeared at the next “children’s day,” which took place at the Krögers’, outside the Castle Gate. And he began to wind up his business at once. CHAPTER V It grieved the Consul sorely that the grandfather had not lived to see the entry of his grandson into the business--an event which took place at Easter-time of the same year. Thomas had left school at sixteen. He was grown strong and sturdy, and his manly clothes made him look still older. He had been confirmed, and Pastor Kölling, in stentorian tones, had enjoined upon him to practice the virtues of moderation. A gold chain, bequeathed him by his grandfather, now hung about his neck, with the family arms on a medallion at the end--a rather dismal design, showing on an irregularly hatched surface a flat stretch of marshy country with one solitary, leafless willow tree. The old seal ring with the green stone, once worn, in all probability, by the well-to-do tailor in Rostock, had descended to the Consul, together with the great Bible.