She turned back to the end of the great volume, where on a rough folio page was entered the genealogy of the whole Buddenbrook family, with parentheses and rubrics, indicated in the Consul’s hand, and all the dates set down: from the marriage of the earliest scion of the family with Brigitta Schuren, the pastor’s daughter, down to the wedding of Consul Johann Buddenbrook with Elizabeth Kröger in 1825. From this marriage, it said, four children had resulted: whereupon these were all entered, with the days and years of their birth, and their baptismal names, one after another. Under that of the eldest son it was recorded that he had entered as apprentice in his father’s business in the Easter of 1842. Tony looked a long time at her name and at the blank space next it. Then, suddenly, with a jerk, with a nervous, feverish accompaniment of sobbing breaths and quick-moving lips--she clutched the pen, plunged it rather than dipped it into the ink, and wrote, with her forefinger crooked, her hot head bent far over on her shoulder, in her awkward handwriting that climbed up the page from left to right: “Betrothed, on Sept. 22, 1845, to Herr Bendix Grünlich, Merchant, of Hamburg.” CHAPTER XIV “I entirely agree with you, my good friend. This important matter must be settled. In short, then: the usual dowry of a young girl of our family is seventy thousand marks.” Herr Grünlich cast at his future father-in-law a shrewd, calculating glance--the glance of the genuine man of business. “As a matter of fact,” he said--and this “matter of fact” was of precisely the same length as his left-hand whisker, which he was drawing reflectively through his fingers; he let go of the end just as “of fact” was finished. “You know, my honoured father,” he began again, “the deep respect I have for traditions and principles. Only--in the present case is not this consideration for the tradition a little exaggerated? A business increases--a family prospers--in short, conditions change and improve.” “My good friend,” said the Consul, “you see in me a fair-dealing merchant. You have not let me finish, or you would have heard that I am ready and willing to meet you in the circumstances, and add ten thousand marks to the seventy thousand without more ado.” “Eighty thousand, then,” said Herr Grünlich, making motions with his mouth, as though to say: “Not _too_ much; but it will do.” Thus they came to an affectionate settlement; the Consul jingled his keys like a man satisfied as he got up. And, in fact, his satisfaction was justified; for it was only with the eighty thousand marks that they had arrived at the dowry traditional in the family.