Note 3 — LETTER LV.

(Upon all that,3 Hansli certainly owed a good deal, but it was well-placed money, and no one would ask him for it, as long as he paid the interest to the day; for the rest, ‘if God lent him life, these debts did not trouble him,’ said he.) He might then learn that the first kreutzers are the most difficult to save. There’s always a hole they are running out at, or a mouth to swallow them. But when once one has got to the point of having no more debts, and is completely set on one’s legs, then things begin to go!—the very ground seems to grow under your feet,—everything profits more and more,—the rivulet becomes a river, and the gains become always easier and larger: on one condition, nevertheless, that one shall change nothing in one’s way of life. For it is just then that new needs spring out of the ground like mushrooms on a dunghill, if not for the husband, at least for the wife,—if not for the parents, at least for the children. A thousand things seem to become necessary of which we had never thought; and we are ashamed of ever so many others, which till then had not given us the smallest concern; and we exaggerate the value of what we have, because once we had nothing; and our own value, because we attribute our success to ourselves,—and,—one changes one’s way of life, and expenses increase, and labour lessens, and the haughty spirit goes before the fall.