Note 7 — LETTER XXXIV.

“Nevertheless, he had also his bad days. It was always a bad day for him when he lost a customer, or had counted on placing a dozen of new brooms anywhere, and found himself briskly sent from the door with ‘We’ve got all we want.’ At first Hansli could not understand the cause of such rebuffs, not knowing that there are people who change their cook as often as their shirt—sometimes oftener,—and that he couldn’t expect new cooks to know him at first sight. He asked himself then, with surprise, what he could have failed in,—whether his brooms had come undone, or whether anybody had spoken ill of him. He took that much to heart, and would plague himself all night to find out the real cause. But soon he took the thing more coolly; and even when a cook who knew him very well sent him about his business, he thought to himself, ‘Bah! cooks are human creatures, like other people; and when master or mistress have been rough with them7 because they’ve put too much pepper in the soup, or too much salt in the sauce, or when their schatz” (lover,—literally, treasure) “is gone off to Pepperland,8 the poor girls have well the right to quarrel with somebody else.’ Nevertheless, the course of time needs brought him some worse days still, which he never got himself to take coolly. He knew now, personally, very nearly all his trees; he had indeed given, for himself alone, names to his willows, and some other particular trees, as Lizzie, Little Mary-Anne, Rosie, and so on. These trees kept him in joy all the year round, and he divided very carefully the pleasure of gathering their twigs. He treated the most beautiful with great delicacy, and carried the brooms of them to his best customers. It is true to say also that these were always master-brooms. But when he arrived thus, all joyous, at his willows, and found his Lizzie or his Rosie all cut and torn from top to bottom, his heart was so strained that the tears ran down his cheeks, and his blood became so hot that one could have lighted matches at it. That made him unhappy for a length of time; he could not swallow it, and all he asked was that the thief might fall into his grip, not for the value of the twigs, but because his trees had been hurt. If Hansli was not tall, still he knew how to use his limbs and his strength, and he felt his heart full of courage. On that point he absolutely would not obey his mother, who begged him for the love of God not to meddle with people who might kill him, or do him some grievous harm. But Hansli took no heed of all that. He lay in wait and spied until he caught somebody. Then there were blows and formidable battles in the midst of the solitary trees. Sometimes Hansli got the better, sometimes he came home all in disorder. But at the worst, he gained at least this, that thenceforward one let his willows more and more alone, as happens always when a thing is defended with valour and perseverance. What is the use of putting oneself in the way of blows, when one can get things somewhere else without danger? Aussi, the Rychiswyl farmers were enchanted with their courageous little garde-champêtre, and if one or the other saw him with his hair pulled, they failed not to say, ‘Never mind, Hansli; he will have had his dance all the same. Tell me the next time you see anything—I’ll go with you, and we’ll cure him of his taste for brooms.’ Whereupon, Hansli would tell him when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peasant9 kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack; the adversary, thinking himself strongest, waited for him; once the thief seized, the peasant showed himself, and all was said. Then the marauder would have got away if he could, but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fitting.