The times were really better, and for farmers the times may be likened to a long, long cord stretching over England and America and the whole earth, and uniting the different countries to each other. When this cord gets slack and entangled, things go ill with the farmers and the whole land, but when it is firm and steady again there is great rejoicing in every heart. The cord was drawn much tighter now in our little corner of the world, and young Joseph had turned his old clay-pipe, his leaden snuff-box, the blue painted cupboard, and the polished sofa out of the house, and the old yellow carriage was no longer in the coachhouse; instead of these he had now a silver-mounted meerschaum, and a "m'og'ny secletair," and a magnificent ottoman, and there was a new carriage in the coach-house, which Bräsig always called a "phantom," and he wasn't far wrong, for it was like a dream to see such a carriage there. And the same cord passing from the Count to Bräsig gave the latter, after his five and twenty years service, written permission to marry as soon as he liked, and the promise, also written, of a comfortable pension for his old age. When the cord was slack it had twisted itself all round little Mrs. Behrens, in like manner as boys tie up a cock-chafer, and when it was tightened she went to her pastor, and continually buzzed in his ear that he ought to get double the rent for his glebe lands now, to what he had done before. And when Moses, at the end of the preceding year, added up his sum total, and wrote under the long column of figures, a little one, and a five and two large noughts: "Take away the book, David," he said, "the balance is quite right." But this cord, however straight and tight it may be drawn, is influenced by human action, though God takes care that the slackening and tightening are done properly, so that mankind is not either destroyed or allowed to tumble aimlessly about like peas in a bag that is violently shaken, but the _individual_ has as little power over the cord as a cock-chafer has on the thread to which it is tied when children play with it; like it, he can only buzz about within the space allowed him. There is yet another cord which rules the world, and it comes down from heaven, and God himself holds the end of it; this cord was pulled a little tighter, and Zachariah Bräsig had gout, and it was pulled a little tighter still, and the two old Nüsslers lay upon their last bed; a little bit was broken off the end of it, an they were laid in the grave.