‘What’s that?—lost so much time, indeed!’ cried Madame the Syndic. ‘Ah, nonsense;—with your fifty thousand crowns, are you going to keep carrying brooms about the country?’
‘But very certainly, Madame the Syndic,’ said Hansli, ‘I only half trust the thing; it seems to me impossible I should have so much. After all, they say it can’t fail; but be it as it will, I shall go on living my own life: so that if there comes any hitch in the business, people shan’t be able to say of me, “Ah, he thought himself already a gentleman, did he? Now he’s glad to go back to his cart!” But if the money really comes to me, I shall leave my brooms, though not without regret; but it would all the same, then, make the world talk and laugh if I went on; and I will not have that.’
‘But that fortune is in safe hands,—it runs no danger?’ asked M. the Syndic.
‘I think so,’ said Hansli. ‘I promised some money to the man, if the heritage really came to me; then he got angry, and said, “If it’s yours, you’ll have it; and if it isn’t, money won’t get it: for the expenses and taxes, you’ll have the account in proper time and place.” Then I saw the thing was well placed; and I can wait well enough, till the time’s up.’
‘But, in truth,’ said Madame the Syndic, ‘I can’t [[199]]understand such a sangfroid! One has never seen the like of that in Israel. That would make me leap out of my skin, if I was your wife.’
‘You had better not,’ said Hansli, ‘at least until you have found somebody able to put you into it again.’
This sangfroid, and his carrying on his business, reconciled many people to Hansli; who were not the less very envious of him: some indeed thought him a fool, and wanted to buy the succession of him, declaring he would get nothing out of it but lawsuits.
‘What would you have?’ said Hansli. ‘In this world, one is sure of nothing. It will be time to think of it if the affair gets into a mess.’
But the affair got into nothing of the sort. Legal time expired, he got invitation to Berne, when all difficulties were cleared away.
When his wife saw him come back so rich, she began, first, to cry; and then, to scream.