Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

Every vacant seat in the Senate must, according to the Constitution, be filled within four weeks. Three of them have passed, and this is election-day -- a day of thaw, at the end of February.

It is about one o'clock, and people are thronging into Broad Street. They are thronging before the Town Hall, with its ornamental glazed-brick facade, its pointed towers and turrets mounting toward a whitish grey sky, its covered steps supported on outstanding columns, its pointed arcades, through which there is a glimpse of the marketplace and the fountain. The crowd stands steadfastly in the dirty slush that melts beneath their feet; they look into each other's faces and then straight ahead again, and crane their necks. For beyond that portal, in the Council Room, in fourteen armchairs arranged in a semicircle sit the electors, who have been chosen from the Senate and the Assembly and await the proposals of the voting chambers.