“Be content,” replied his wife: “why, I dreamt you had actually been made magistrate, and wore something on your head like a king's crown.”
“Oh! you women; as though what you see is n't enough, you like to chatter about what you dream.”
“Light the lamp, too,” said his wife, “and I 'll get up and make you a nice porridge.”
The peasant, putting a candle in his lantern, went to the stable; and after he had given some fodder to the horses, he seated himself upon the manger. With his hands squeezed between his knees and his head bent down, he reflected over and over again what a wretched existence he had of it. “Why,” thought he, “are so many men so well-off, so comfortable, whilst you must be always toiling? What care I if envy be not a virtue?—and yet I 'm not envious, I don't grudge others being well-off, only I should like to be well-off too; oh, for a quiet, easy life! Am I not worse off than a horse? He gets his fodder at the proper time, and takes no care about it. Why did my father make my brother a minister? He gets his salary without any trouble, sits in a warm room, has no care in the world; and I must slave and torment myself.”
Strange to say, his very next thought, that he would like to be made local magistrate, he would in no wise confess to himself.
He sat still a long while; then he went back again to the sitting-room, past the kitchen, where the fire was burning cheerily. He seated himself at the table and waited for his morning porridge. On the table lay an open book; his children had been reading it the previous evening: involuntarily taking it up, he began to read. Suddenly he started, rubbed his eyes, and then read again. How comes this verse here just at this moment? He kept his hand upon the book, and so easily had he caught the words, that he repeated them to himself softly with his lips, and nodded several times, as much as to say: “That's true!” And he said aloud: “It's all there together: short and sweet!” and he was still staring at it, when his wife brought in the smoking porridge. Taking off his cap, he folded his hands and said aloud:
“Accept God's gifts with resignation,
Content to lack what thou hast not:
In every lot there 's consolation;
There 's trouble, too, in every lot!”
The wife looked at her husband with amazement. What a strange expression was upon his face! And as he sat down and began to eat, she said: “What is the meaning of that grace? What has come to you? Where did you find it?”
“It is the best of all graces, the very best,—real God's word. Yes, and all your life you 've never made such nice porridge before. You must have put something special in it!”
“I don't know what you mean. Stop! There 's the book lying there—ah! that's it—and it's by Gellert, of Leipzig.”