The Rich Man and the Shoemaker

The Rich Man and the Shoemaker
by Jean de La Fontaine

Once upon a time there lived a poor but cheerful shoemaker. He was so happy he sang all day long. The children loved to stand around his window to listen to him. Next door to the shoemaker lived a rich man. He used to sit up all night to count his gold. In the morning he went to bed, but he could not sleep because of the sound of the shoemaker’s singing. One day he thought of a way of stopping the singing. He wrote a letter to the shoemaker asking him to come by. The shoemaker went at once, and to his surprise the rich man gave him a bag of gold. When he got home, the shoemaker opened the bag. He had never seen so much money before! He sat down at his bench and began, carefully, to count it. The children watched through the window. There was so much there that the shoemaker was afraid to let it out of his sight. So he took it to bed with him. But he could not sleep because he was worrying about it. So he got out of bed and went to hide it in the attic, but he was not sure if that was a good place. Very early in the morning he got up and brought his gold down from the attic. He had decided to hide it up the chimney instead. But after breakfast he thought it would be safer in the chicken house. So he hid it there. But he was still uneasy, and in a little while he dug a hole in the garden and buried his bag of gold in it. It was no use trying to work. He was too worried about the safety of his gold.
And as for singing, he was too miserable to sing a note. He could not sleep, or work, or sing—and, worst of all, the children no longer came to see him. At last the shoemaker felt so unhappy that he seized his bag of gold and ran next door to the rich man. “Please take back your gold,” he said. “Worrying about it is making me ill, and I have lost all my friends. I would rather be a poor shoemaker, as I was before.” And so the shoemaker was happy again and sang all day at his work.