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 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.
In Marcel Gotlib’s 1970 update of the fable, it is contemporary hit songs like "All You Need Is Love" and "Nights In White Satin" with which the carefree cobbler breaks the investment banker’s rest.
Silenced by being presented with a 100 ECU cheque, the cobbler regains his lightness of heart by bringing the money back for the banker to invest on his behalf.
[14] Earlier in the 20th century, the Art Deco sculptor Max Le Verrier (1891-1973) created a pair of metal book ends based on the fable.
The earliest was the popular L’Embarras des Richesses (Troublesome Riches) by Léonor Jean Christine Soulas d'Allainval, a 1725 prose comedy in three acts which added two sets of lovers to the cast.
In that light-hearted entertainment, the cobbler turns the tables on his opponent by using the 300 crowns he is given to beat the financier at cards, taking over all his assets and winning the hand of his daughter, Aubépine.
[28] A later setting of just the fable itself was for children's choir and orchestra by Ida Gotkovsky as the final section of her Hommage à Jean de La Fontaine (1995).
[29][30] At least three early silent films were also based on the fable: Le Savetier et le Financier of 1909, made by La Société des Etablissements L. Gaumont,[31] another with the same title made in 1912 by La Société Française des Films Éclairs,[32] and a 1911 Russian movie based on two of Ivan Krylov's fables including "The Tax-Farmer and the Cobbler" (currently considered lost).
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.
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).
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.
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.
[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.
