“Well, there will be plenty of time for that.  I am only seventeen, you know, and have not yet made up my mind to die.”

“At least not before I do.  To be sure, if I should die first, I should like to take you with me.  I do not want to leave you to any other man.  What do you say to that?”

“Oh, I must have some time to think about it.  Or, rather, let us not think about it at all.  I don’t like to talk about death; I am for life.  And now tell me, how shall we live here?  On our travels you told me all sorts of queer things about the city and the country, but not a word about how we shall live here.  That here nothing is the same as in Hohen-Cremmen and Schwantikow, I see plainly, and yet we must be able to have something like intercourse and society in ‘good Kessin,’ as you are always calling it.  Have you any people of family in the city?”

“No, my dear Effi.  In this regard you are going to meet with great disappointments.  We have in the neighborhood a few noble families with which you will become acquainted, but here in the city there is nobody at all.”

“Nobody at all?  That I can’t believe.  Why, you are upward of three thousand people, and among three thousand people there certainly must be, beside such inferior individuals as Barber Beza (I believe that was his name), a certain elite, officials and the like.”

Innstetten laughed.  “Yes, officials there are.  But when you examine them narrowly it doesn’t mean much.  Of course, we have a preacher and a judge and a school principal and a commander of pilots, and of such people in official positions I presume there may be as many as a dozen altogether, but they are for the most part, as the proverb says, good men, but poor fiddlers.  And all the others are nothing but consuls.”

“Nothing but consuls!  I beg you, Geert, how can you say ’nothing but consuls?’ Why, they are very high and grand, and, I might almost say, awe-inspiring individuals.  Consuls, I thought, were the men with the bundles of rods, out of which an ax blade projected.”

“Not quite, Effi.  Those men are called lictors.”

“Right, they are called lictors.  But consuls are also men of very high rank and authority.  Brutus was a consul, was he not?”

“Yes, Brutus was a consul.  But ours are not very much like him and are content to handle sugar and coffee, or open a case of oranges and sell them to you at ten pfennigs apiece.”

“Not possible.”

“Indeed it is certain.  They are tricky little tradesmen, who are always at hand with their advice on any question of business, when foreign vessels put in here and are at a loss to know what to do.  And when they have given advice and rendered service to some Dutch or Portuguese vessel, they are likely in the end to become accredited representatives of such foreign states, and so we have just as many consuls in Kessin as we have ambassadors and envoys in Berlin.  Then whenever there is a holiday, and we have many holidays here, all the flags are hoisted, and, if we happen to have a bright sunny morning, on such days you can see all Europe flying flags from our roofs, and the star-spangled banner and the Chinese dragon besides.”