But I have only room in this ‘Fors’ for a very little bit more of the broom-maker. I continue the last sentence of it from page 13 of Letter XXX.:—
“And then Hansli always knew that as soon as he got home there would be enough to eat;—his mother saw faithfully to that. She knew the difference it makes whether a man finds something ready to eat, when he comes in, or not. He who knows there will be something at home, does not stop in the taverns; he arrives with an empty stomach, and furnishes it, highly pleased with all about him; but if he usually finds nothing ready when at home, he stops on the road, comes in when he has had enough or too much; and grumbles right and left.
“Hansli was not avaricious, but economical. For things really useful and fit, he did not look at the money. In all matters of food and clothes, he wished his mother to be thoroughly at ease. He made a good bed for himself; and when he had saved enough to buy a knife or a good tool, he was quite up in the air. He himself dressed well, not expensively, but solidly. Any one with a good eye knows quickly enough, at the sight of houses or of people, whether they are going up or down. As for Hansli, it was easy to see he was on his way up—not that he ever put on anything fine, but by his cleanliness and the careful look of his things: aussi, everybody liked to see him, and was very glad to know that he prospered thus, not by fraud, but by work. With all that, he never forgot his prayers. On Sunday he made no brooms: in the morning he went to the sermon,[4] and in the afternoon he read a chapter of the Bible to his mother, whose sight was now failing. After that he gave himself a personal treat. This treat consisted in bringing out all his money, counting it, looking at it,[5] and calculating how much it had increased, and how much it would yet increase, etc. etc. In that money there were some very pretty pieces,—above all, pretty white pieces” (silver among the copper). “Hansli was very strong in exchanges; he took small money willingly enough, but never kept it long; it seemed always to him that the wind got into it and carried it off too quickly. The new white pieces gave him an extreme pleasure,—above all, the fine dollars of Berne with the bear, and the superb Swiss of old time. When he had managed to catch one of these, it made him happy for many days.[6]
“Nevertheless, he had also his bad days. It was always a bad day for him when he lost a customer, or had counted on placing a dozen of new brooms anywhere, and found himself briskly sent from the door with ‘We’ve got all we want.’ At first Hansli could not understand the cause of such rebuffs, not knowing that there are people who change their cook as often as their shirt—sometimes oftener,—and that he couldn’t expect new cooks to know him at first sight. He asked himself then, with surprise, what he could have failed in,—whether his brooms had come undone, or whether anybody had spoken ill of him. He took that much to heart, and would plague himself all night to find out the real cause. But soon he took the thing more coolly; and even when a cook who knew him very well sent him about his business, he thought to himself, ‘Bah! cooks are human creatures, like other people; and when master or mistress have been rough with them[7] because they’ve put too much pepper in the soup, or too much salt in the sauce, or when their schatz” (lover,—literally, treasure) “is gone off to Pepperland,[8] the poor girls have well the right to quarrel with somebody else.’ Nevertheless, the course of time needs brought him some worse days still, which he never got himself to take coolly. He knew now, personally, very nearly all his trees; he had indeed given, for himself alone, names to his willows, and some other particular trees, as Lizzie, Little Mary-Anne, Rosie, and so on. These trees kept him in joy all the year round, and he divided very carefully the pleasure of gathering their twigs. He treated the most beautiful with great delicacy, and carried the brooms of them to his best customers. It is true to say also that these were always master-brooms. But when he arrived thus, all joyous, at his willows, and found his Lizzie or his Rosie all cut and torn from top to bottom, his heart was so strained that the tears ran down his cheeks, and his blood became so hot that one could have lighted matches at it. That made him unhappy for a length of time; he could not swallow it, and all he asked was that the thief might fall into his grip, not for the value of the twigs, but because his trees had been hurt. If Hansli was not tall, still he knew how to use his limbs and his strength, and he felt his heart full of courage. On that point he absolutely would not obey his mother, who begged him for the love of God not to meddle with people who might kill him, or do him some grievous harm. But Hansli took no heed of all that. He lay in wait and spied until he caught somebody. Then there were blows and formidable battles in the midst of the solitary trees. Sometimes Hansli got the better, sometimes he came home all in disorder. But at the worst, he gained at least this, that thenceforward one let his willows more and more alone, as happens always when a thing is defended with valour and perseverance. What is the use of putting oneself in the way of blows, when one can get things somewhere else without danger? Aussi, the Rychiswyl farmers were enchanted with their courageous little garde-champêtre, and if one or the other saw him with his hair pulled, they failed not to say, ‘Never mind, Hansli; he will have had his dance all the same. Tell me the next time you see anything—I’ll go with you, and we’ll cure him of his taste for brooms.’ Whereupon, Hansli would tell him when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peasant[9] kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack; the adversary, thinking himself strongest, waited for him; once the thief seized, the peasant showed himself, and all was said. Then the marauder would have got away if he could, but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fitting.
“This was a very efficacious remedy against the switch-stealers, and Little Mary-Anne and Rosie remained in perfect security in the midst of the loneliest fields. Thus Hansli passed some years without perceiving it, and without imagining that things could ever change. A week passed, as the hand went round the clock, he didn’t know how. Tuesday, market-day at Berne, was there before he could think about it; and Tuesday was no sooner past than Saturday was there; and he had to go to Thun, whether he would or no, for how could the Thun people get on without him? Between times he had enough to do to prepare his cartload, and to content his customers,—that is to say, those of them that pleased him. Our Hansli was a man; and every man, when his position permits it, has his caprices of liking and disliking. Whenever one had trod on his toes, one must have been very clever afterwards to get the least twig of a broom from him. The parson’s wife, for instance, couldn’t have got one if she would have paid for it twice over. It was no use sending to him; every time she did, he said he was very sorry, but he hadn’t a broom left that would suit her.
“That was because she had one day said to him that he was just like other people, and contented himself with putting a few long twigs all round, and then bad ones in the middle.
“ ‘Then you may as well get your brooms from somebody else,’ said he; and held to it too;—so well that the lady died without ever having been able to get the shadow of a broom from him.
“One Tuesday he was going to Berne with an enormous cartful of his prettiest brooms, all gathered from his favourite trees, that is to say, Rosie, Little Mary-Anne, and company. He was pulling with all his strength, and greatly astonished to find that his cart didn’t go of itself, as it did at first; that it really pulled too hard, and that something must be wrong with it. At every moment he was obliged to stop to take breath and wipe his forehead. ‘If only I was at the top of the hill of Stalden!’ said he. He had stopped thus in the little wood of Muri, close to the bench that the women rest their baskets on. Upon the bench sat a young girl, holding a little bundle beside her, and weeping hot tears. Hansli, who had a kind heart, asked her what she was crying for.
“The young girl recounted to him that she was obliged to go into the town, and that she was so frightened she scarcely dared; that her father was a shoemaker, and that all his best customers were in the town; that for a long time she had carried her bundle of shoes in, on market days, and that nothing had ever happened to her. But behold, there had arrived in the town a new gendarme, very cross, who had already tormented her every Tuesday she had come, for some time back; and threatened her, if she came again, to take her shoes from her, and put her in prison. She had begged her father not to send her any more, but her father was as severe as a Prussian soldier, and had ordered her to ‘go in, always; and if anybody hurt her, it was with him they would have affairs;’ but what would that help her?—she was just as much afraid of the gendarme as before.
“Hansli felt himself touched with compassion; above all, on account of the confidence the young girl had had in telling him all this; that which certainly she would not have done to everybody. ‘But she has seen at once that I am not a bad fellow, and that I have a kind heart,’ thought he.