l it."

"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,