Yes, the times were tight again, for what are "the times," for the North German people, and for all mankind, but long, long threads stretched far out over England and America and all the world, and knotted at the ends, and so managed that they lie sometimes quite slack, and whatever is fastened to them--and that is for our people almost the whole country--cannot move itself; and then again they are stretched tight, so that everything dances merrily back and forth, and all are shifted about, even in the remotest corners. In this little corner of the world also, the thread was stretched tight, and young Jochen's porcelain pipe-bowl, and leaden tinder box, and his blue-painted corner-cupboard, and the waxed sofa, were all cleared out of the house, and the old crazy yellow coach out of the carriage-house; and in their place he had a meerschaum pipe adorned with silver, and a mahogany secretary, and an immense creature of a divan, in the living-room, and in the carriage-house there was a vehicle which Bräsig always called the "phantom," because in looking at the bill he had taken an "e" for an "n," and an "n" for an "m:" and he was not far wrong, for the thing was almost of the kind one sees in a dream. And the same thread had also guided the hand of Bräsig's Herr Count, so that finally, after almost twenty years, he had given him in writing the desired permission to marry, and also a bond promising "a suitable pension for his old age." And upon this thread, when it was slack, the little Frau Pastorin had caught herself, like a top which the boys rig up, and now that it was stretched she buzzed about her Pastor, and hummed daily in his ears; when the minister's meadow should be rented again, it would bring as good as double. And as Moses, at the close of the last year, added up his sum-total, and wrote underneath a little one and four great ciphers, the thread caught him by the arm, and the four ciphers changed to six. "David, lay the book away," said he, "it balances."