A cobbler sang from morning till night:
It was marvelous to see him,
Marvelous to hear him; he improvised scales and arpeggios,
Happier than any of the Seven Sages.
His neighbor, on the other hand, [rolling]1 in money,
[Sang]2 little, [slept]3 even less.
He was a man of finance.
If sometimes he would doze off at daybreak,
The cobbler would then wake him by singing,
And the financier would complain
That the care of Providence 
Had not put sleep up for sale at the market 
Like food and drink.
To his residence he summoned 
The singer, and said to him: "Now then, Mister Gregory,
What do you earn in a year?" "In a year! My word, sir,"
In a tone of laughter 
The hearty cobbler said, "It's not my way 
To count like that; and I hardly save up
From one day to the next: it's enough that all in all
I manage to make ends meet:
Each day brings its bread."
"Well then, tell me, what do you earn in a day?"
"Sometimes more, sometimes less, the trouble is always—
(And without this our earnings would be decent enough)—
The trouble is that the year is so larded with days
When one cannot work; we are ruined by feast days.
Each one treads on the next; and the parish priest
Is always stuffing some new saint into his sermon."
The financier, laughing at his innocence,
Said to him: "I want to put you on the throne today.
Take these hundred crowns: look after them carefully,
To make use of them when you have need."
The cobbler thought he was looking at all the money that the earth
Had, over more than a hundred years,
Produced for people to use.
He returned home; in his cellar he shut away 
The money and his joy at the same time.
No more singing; he lost his voice 
From the moment he gained that source of sorrows.
Sleep departed his lodgings;
For guests he now had worries,
Suspicions, and vain alarms.
All day long he was on the lookout; and at night,
If some cat made a noise,
The cat was taking the money: in the end the poor man
Rushed off to the one he was no longer waking;
"Return to me," he said, "my songs and my sleep,
And take back your hundred crowns."