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. So that Hansli had to ask her, again and again, what was the matter with her, and whether anything had gone wrong. ‘Ah, now,’ said his wife, at last,—(for she cried so seldom, that she had all the more trouble to stop, when once she began),—‘Ah, now, you will despise me, because you are so rich, and think that you would like to have another sort of wife than me. I’ve done what I could, to this day; but now I’m nothing but an old rag. [53] If only I was already six feet under ground!’ Thereupon Hansli sat himself down in his arm-chair, and said: ‘Wife, listen. Here are now nearly thirty years that we have kept house; and thou knowest, what one would have, the other would have, too. I’ve never once beaten thee, and the bad words we may have said to each other would be easily counted. Well, wife, I tell thee, do not begin to be ill-tempered now, or do anything else than you have always done. Everything must remain between us as in the past. This inheritance does not come from me; nor from thee: but from the good God, for us two, and for our children. And now, I advise thee, and hold it for as sure a thing as if it were written in the Bible, if you speak again of this to me but once, be it with crying, or without, I will give thee a beating with a new rope, such as that they may hear thee cry from here to the Lake of Constance. Behold what is said: now do as thou wilt.’ It was resolute speaking; much more resolute than the diplomatic notes between Prussia and Austria. The wife knew where she was, and did not recommence her song. Things remained between them as they had been. Before abandoning his brooms, Hansli gave a turn of his hand to them, and made a present of a dozen to all his customers, carrying them to each in his own person. He has repeated many a time since, and nearly always with tears in his eyes, that it was a day he could never forget, and that he never would have believed people loved him so. Farming his own land, he kept his activity and simplicity, prayed and worked as he had always done, but he knew the difference between a farmer and a broom-seller, and did honour to his new position as he had to his old one. He knew well, already, what was befitting in a farmer’s house, and did now for others as he had been thankful to have had done for himself.