e emperor's favorite
horse,--sitting upon him as if I were the emperor himself. But what
was it the farrier asked me? Ah, I remember now,--that's a good
thought,--he asked me why the golden shoes were given to the horse.
The answer is quite clear to me, now. They were given to the horse
on my account." And this reflection put the beetle into a good temper.
The sun's rays also came streaming into the stable, and shone upon
him, and made the place lively and bright. "Travelling expands the
mind very much," said the beetle. "The world is not so bad after
all, if you know how to take things as they come."

THE BELL

In the narrow streets of a large town people often heard in the
evening, when the sun was setting, and his last rays gave a golden
tint to the chimney-pots, a strange noise which resembled the sound of
a church bell; it only lasted an instant, for it was lost in the
continual roar of traffic and hum of voices which rose from the
town. "The evening bell is ringing," people used to say; "the sun is
setting!" Those who walked outside the town, where the houses were
less crowded and interspersed by gardens and little fields, saw the
evening sky much better, and heard the sound of the bell much more
clearly. It seemed as though the sound came from a church, deep in the
calm, fragrant wood, and thither people looked with devout feelings.

A considerable time elapsed: one said to the other, "I really
wonder if there is a church out in the wood. The bell has indeed a
strange sweet sound! Shall we go there and see what the cause of it
is?" The rich drove, the poor walked, but the way seemed to them
extraordinarily long, and when they arrived at a number of willow
trees on the border of the wood they sat down, looked up into the
great branches and thought they were now really in the wood. A
confectioner from the town also came out and put up a stall there;
then came another confectioner who hung a bell over his stall, which
was covered with pitch to protect it from the rain, but the clapper
was wanting.

When people came home they used to say that it had been very
romantic, and that really means something else than merely taking tea.
Three persons declared that they had gone as far as the end of the
wood; they had always heard the strange sound, but there it seemed
to them as if it came from the town. One of them wrote verses about
the bell, and said that it was like the voice of a mother speaking