It was not so with Hansli. He continued to live and work just the same; and hardly ever spent anything at the inn; aussi, he rejoiced all the more to find something hot ready for him when he came home; and did honour to it. Nothing was changed in him, unless that his strength for work became always greater, little by little; and his wife had the difficult art of making the children serve themselves, each, according to its age,—not with many words neither; and she herself scarcely knew how.
A pedagogue would never have been able to get the least explanation of it from her. Those children took care of each other, helped their father to make his brooms, and their mother in her work about the house; none of them had the least idea of the pleasures of doing nothing, nor of dreaming or lounging about; and yet not one was overworked, or neglected. They shot up like willows by a brookside, full of vigour and gaiety. The parents had no time for idling with them, but the children none the less knew their love, and saw how pleased they were when their little ones did their work well. Their parents prayed with them: on Sundays the father read them a chapter which he explained afterwards as well [[193]]as he could, and on account of that also the children were full of respect for him, considering him as the father of the family who talks with God Himself (and who will tell Him when children disobey[4]). The degree of respect felt by children for their parents depends always on the manner in which the parents bear themselves to God. Why do not all parents reflect more on this?[5]
Nor was our Hansli held in small esteem by other people, any more than by his children. He was so decided and so sure; words full of good sense were plenty with him; honourable in everything, he never set himself up for rich, nor complained of being poor; so that many a pretty lady would come expressly into the kitchen, when she heard that the broom-merchant was there, to inform herself how things went in the country, and how such and such a matter was turning out. Nay, in many of the houses he was trusted to lay in their winter provisions, a business which brought him many a bright bätz. The Syndic’s wife at Thun, herself, often had a chat with him; it had become, so to speak, really a pressing need with her to see him at Thun every Saturday; and when she was talking to him, it had happened, not once nor twice, that M. the Syndic [[194]]himself had been obliged to wait for an answer to something he had asked his wife. After all, a Syndic’s wife may surely give herself leave to talk a little according to her own fancy, once a week.
One fine day, however, it was the Saturday at Thun, and there was not in all the town a shadow of the broom-merchant. Thence, aussi, great emotion, and grave faces. More than one maid was on the doorsteps, with her arms akimbo, leaving quietly upstairs in the kitchen the soup and the meat to agree with each other as best they might.
‘You haven’t seen him then?—have you heard nothing of him?’—asked they, one of the other. More than one lady ran into her kitchen, prepared to dress[6] her servant well, from head to foot, because she hadn’t been told when the broom-merchant was there. But she found no servant there, and only the broth boiling over. Madame the Syndic herself got disturbed; and interrogated, first her husband, and then the gendarme. And as they knew nothing, neither the one nor the other, down she went into the low town herself, in person, to inquire after her broom-merchant. She was quite out of brooms—and the year’s house-cleaning was to be done next week—and now no broom-merchant—je vous demande![7] And truly [[195]]enough, no broom-merchant appeared; and during all the week there was a feeling of want in the town, and an enormous disquietude the next Saturday. Will he come? Won’t he come? He came, in effect; and if he had tried to answer all the questions put to him, would not have got away again till the next week. He contented himself with saying to everybody that ‘he had been obliged to go to the funeral.’
‘Whose funeral?’ asked Madame the Syndic, from whom he could not escape so easily.
‘My sister’s,’ answered the broom-merchant.
‘Who was she? and when did they bury her?’ Madame continued to ask.
The broom-merchant answered briefly, but frankly: aussi Madame the Syndic cried out all at once,
‘Mercy on us!—are you the brother of that servant-girl there’s been such a noise about, who turned out at her master’s death to have been his wife,—and had all his fortune left to her, and died herself soon afterwards?’