The Cobbler and the Financier

La Fontaine's account is based on a story told by Horace in his verse epistle to Maecenas (I.7)[1] concerning the lawyer Philippus and the crier Volteius Mena. The lawyer amuses himself by befriending a carefree and contented man and destroys his peace of mind by presenting him with the means to buy a farm. It is a disaster and eventually his client begs Philippus to return him to his former way of life. In the poem, Horace is pointing out to Maecenas that the obligations of his client status should not be urged to the point of damaging his health and that, if he cannot be allowed his independence, he is ready to return the benefits he has received in the past. The story he tells follows immediately after a shorter reference to one of Aesop's animal fables pointing to the same conclusion, "The Fox and the Weasel". John Addison,[2] writing in 1735, relates a similar story told by Stobaeus (5th century) about the poet Anacreon. Having received a treasure of five gold talents from Polycrates, Anacreon could not sleep for two nights in a row. He then returned it to his patron, saying: "However considerable the sum might be, it's not an equal price for the trouble of keeping it."

La Fontaine adapts the story to the circumstances of his own century.[3] A Financier's troubled rest is broken by the merry singing of a cobbler. The man of affairs interviews the workman about his business and offers him a gift of a hundred crowns to insure against a rainy day. Worry over the security of his nest-egg destroys the cobbler's own rest and allows the financier a period of unbroken repose. Finally the cobbler brings back the money and demands the return of his songs and his sleep. This particular passage is based, not on the story but on Horace's suggestion to Maecenas in the poem that he should give him back his health and light-hearted laughter (lines 25–8). The poem is also marked by many memorable lines, including the financier's wish that sleep was a commodity to be bought at market and the cobbler's suspicion that his roaming cat is after his money.

A fable that follows La Fontaine's account fairly closely was included soon after in Roger L'Estrange's Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists (1692)[4] and a verse translation of La Fontaine appeared later in Charles Denis' Select Fables (1754).[5] However, Jonathan Swift had already made a humorous adaptation of Horace's poem at the start of the 18th century, retelling the story of his ruinous patronage by the Earl of Oxford in a more direct manner than had Horace, and in the process drawing out the original forty lines of the Latin author to 140 in octosyllabic couplets.[6]

The score of Aubépine's solo from Offenbach's opera

The original fable as told by Horace occurs in a criticism of the dependent client-patron relationship and the anxiety it brings. His advice at the end is that it is better to retain one's independence for "it is right that each should measure himself by his own rule and standard" (Epistle 7, line 98). Swift followed him in applying the story to his own circumstances. But La Fontaine used the fable differently and changed the status of his protagonist to that of an artisan who, when questioned by the financier, admits to living from hand to mouth. The focus of the story centres on the consequences of an upward change in financial standing: "From the moment he gained what hurts us so" (line 40), the cobbler's sleep was as troubled as the banker's. Though La Fontaine was also dependent on others, he does not apply the fable so openly to himself; for him the problem is not the client status but the personal consequences of possession.

When the story was adapted to musical comedy in France, its moral was often incorporated into the vaudeville at the close. D'Allainval's comedy spells out explicitly what is largely implicit in La Fontaine: "Riches and vain honours/ Are chains that weigh life down" (p. 116). Grégoire's self-criticism at the end of Boutiller's play is that, blinded by riches, he mistook their possession for happiness (p. 56). Similarly in Lourdet de Santerre's ending, Gregoire begins his song with "Gold does not make you happy", while the chorus at the end of his and the cast's succeeding stanzas draws the proverbial conclusion that "Contentment passes riches" (pp. 63–4). That same sentiment, Contentement Passe Richesse, was made the subtitle of the 1815 version of the fable, in which Sans-Quartier, Grégoire's counterpart, sings that "Money’s the root of all evil" (p. 32). Other adaptations shifted their focus away from condemnation of money to the personal quality of contentment. "For my ditties and my sleep no million is needed" is the new final line that Krylov added to the scene where the cobbler returns his money to the tax-farmer. And in the restatement of the fable by Aubépine in Offenbach's operetta the new moral is drawn that "This teaches you to be content with less" (Scene 4).

During the 18th-19th centuries, the term proverbe was being applied to moralised dramatic pieces of one act, which had become popular because they could be played without the need of a stage and allowed for improvisation.[34] Le Savetier et le Financier was one such 'proverb' that, according to her memoirs, was acted in her dining room by Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis and two of her friends in pre-revolutionary days.[35] A typical script of this kind furnishes the proverb that serves as its moral. Contentement Passe Richesse by Claude-Louis-Michel de Sacy (1746–94), for example, appeared in 1778 and there the French proverb provides the cobbler with his final words as he confronts the financier and hands him back his money.[36] Similarly, in Le Savetier et le Financier, one of the pieces in the Proverbes dramaticques (1823) of Théodore Leclercq (1777-1851), the cobbler becomes reconciled with his wife after returning the money and they repeat together "Better than wealth is content" at the end.[37]

The proverb itself was common in La Fontaine's time and was recorded as such in a contemporary dictionary.[38] It was first applied as the story's subtitle by Jean Philippe Valette (1699-1750) in his condensations of La Fontaine's fables to fit the tune of popular songs, published in 1746. There the final stanza sums up the moral of the story in the words “Money is no beatitude,/ Believing otherwise is wrong”.[39] But while the fable was initially independent of the proverb, La Fontaine's work soon provided the French language with a popular expression alluding to it. Grégoire was the name given the singing cobbler in the fable, and Insouciant comme Grégoire (carefree as Gregory) was soon applied to those with a similar nature.[40]