Kistenmaker and Son was the new firm of wine-merchants which had, in the last few years, managed to put C. F. Köppen rather in the shade. The two sons, Edouard and Stephan, worked in their father’s office. Consul Döhlmann possessed none of those graces of manner upon which Justus Kröger laid such stress. He was an idler pure and simple, whose special characteristic was a sort of rough good humour. He could and did take a good many liberties in society, being quite aware that his loud, brusque voice and bluff ways caused the ladies to set him down as an original. Once at a dinner at the Buddenbrooks, when a course failed to come in promptly and the guests grew dull and the hostess flustered, he came to the rescue and put them into a good humour by bellowing in his big voice the whole length of the table: “Please don’t wait for me, Frau Consul!” Just now, in this same reverberating voice, he was relating questionable anecdotes seasoned with low-German idioms. Frau Senator Möllendorpf, in paroxysms of laughter, was crying out over and over again: “Stop, Herr Döhlmann, stop! for heaven’s sake, don’t tell any more.” They greeted Tony--the Hagenströms coldly, the others with great cordiality. Consul Fritsche even came down the steps of the pier, for he hoped that the Buddenbrooks would return next year to swell the population of the baths. “Yours to command, Fräulein Buddenbrook,” said Consul Döhlmann, with his very best pronunciation; for he was aware that Mademoiselle did not especially care for his manners. “Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!” “You here?” “How lovely!” “When did you come?” “What a sweet frock!” “Where are you stopping?” “At the Schwarzkopfs’?” “With the pilot-captain? How original!” “How _frightfully_ original.” “You are stopping in the town?” asked Consul Fritsche, the owner of the baths. He did not betray that he felt the blow. “Will you come to our next assembly?” his wife asked. “Oh, you are only here for a short time?”--this from another lady. “Don’t you think, darling, the Buddenbrooks rather give themselves airs?” Frau Hagenström whispered to Frau Senator Möllendorpf. “Have you been in yet?” somebody asked. “Which of the rest of you hasn’t bathed yet, young ladies? Marie? Julie, Louise? Your friends will go bathing with you, of course, Fräulein Antonie.” Some of the young girls rose, and Peter Döhlmann insisted on accompanying them up the beach. “Do you remember how we used to go back and forth to school together?” Tony asked Julie Hagenström. “Yes, and you were always the one that got into mischief,” Julie said, joining in her laugh. They went across the beach on a foot-bridge made of a few boards, and reached the bathhouse. As they passed the boulders where Morten Schwarzkopf sat, Tony nodded to him from a distance, and somebody asked, “who is that you are bowing to, Tony?” “That was young Schwarzkopf,” Tony answered. “He walked down here with me.”