Why did he have golden shoes?

He was the most beautiful animal. He had delicate legs, wise eyes, and a mane that hung like a silk ribbon around his neck. He had carried his master through the fog of battle and rain of bullets, and heard the shots sizzle and sing. He had bitten, kicked and fought along when the enemy pressed forward. With his emperor on his back, he had jumped over the charging enemy’s horse and saved his emperor’s crown of red gold, saved his emperor’s life, which was more than gold, and that’s why the emperor’s horse had gold shoes. A golden shoe on each foot.

And the dung beetle crept out.

“First the big ones, then the small,” he said. “Although it’s not size that matters.” And he stretched out his thin legs.

“What do you want?” asked the blacksmith.

“Gold shoes!” answered the dung beetle.

“You must be out of your mind,” said the smithy. “You want golden shoes too?”

“Gold shoes!” said the dung beetle. “Am I not just as good as the big beast that is waited on, curried, watched over, fed and watered? Don’t I also belong to the emperor’s stable?”

“But why did the horse get golden shoes?” asked the blacksmith. “Don’t you understand that?”

“Understand? I understand that it’s contempt for me,” said the dung beetle. “It’s an insult—and so now I will go out into the wide world.”

“Bug off!” said the smithy.

“Coarse fellow,” said the dung beetle, and then he went outside, flew a short distance, and came to a lovely little flower garden, where there was the smell of roses and lavender.

“Isn’t it nice here?” asked one of the little ladybugs, who flew about with black dots on its red armor-plated wings. “How sweet it smells, and how pretty it is here.”

“I am used to better!” said the dung beetle. “Do you call this pretty? There isn’t even a dunghill here!”

He went on a bit further, into the shadow of a big stock plant. There was a caterpillar crawling on it.

“How lovely the world is!” said the caterpillar. “The sun is so warm! Everything is so pleasant. And when I shall one day fall asleep and die, as it’s called, I’ll wake up and be a butterfly!”

“Who do you think you are?” said the dung beetle. “Flying around like butterflies! I come from the emperor’s stable, but no one there, not even the emperor’s favorite horse, who wears my castoff golden shoes, has such imaginings! Get wings! Fly! Yes, now we’re flying!” And the dung beetle flew. “I don’t like getting annoyed, but I am annoyed anyway.”

Then he plumped down on a large lawn where he lay for awhile and then fell asleep.

Gracious! What a cloud-burst! The dung beetle awoke from the splashing and wanted to crawl right into the ground, but he couldn’t. He flipped over and swam on his stomach and his back. Flying was out of the question. He was sure he would not escape the lawn alive. He lay where he was and remained lying there.

When it let up a little, and the dung beetle had blinked the water from his eyes, he glimpsed something white. It was linen laid out to bleach. He crept over to it and crawled into a fold of the wet cloth. It certainly wasn’t like lying in the warm dung in the stable, but there wasn’t anything better here, and so he remained there a whole day and night while the rain continued. He crawled out the next morning, very annoyed at the climate.

There were two frogs sitting on the linen. Their clear eyes shone with pure pleasure. “What wonderful weather!” said one. “How refreshing it is! And the linen retains the water so well! My hind legs are ticklingjust as when I’m going to swim.”

“I wonder,” said the other, “if the swallow who flies so widely around has found a better climate than ours on its many trips abroad? Such rough weather and such rain. It’s like lying in a wet ditch. If you don’t like this, then you really don’t love your country.”

“You haven’t ever been in the emperor’s stable, have you?” asked the dung beetle. “The wetness there is both warm and spicy! I’m used to that. It’s my climate, but you can’t take it with you when you travel. Isn’t there any hotbed here in the garden, where people of quality like me could go in and feel at home?”

But the frogs didn’t understand him, or didn’t want to understand him.

“I never ask a question more than once,” said the dung beetle when he had asked three times without being answered.

He walked on until he came to a piece of broken pottery. It shouldn’t have been there, but the way it was lying, it gave shelter. Several earwig families lived here. They don’t need a lot of space, just lots of company and parties. The females are especially maternal, and so each of them thought her own children to be the prettiest and smartest.

“Our son has gotten engaged,” said one mother. “The dear innocent! His greatest goal is to one day crawl into the ear of a minister. He’s so lovably childish, and the engagement keeps him from excesses. It’s such a joy for a mother!”

“Our son,” said another mother, “was no sooner hatched than he was having a good time. He’s so full of energy! He’s sowing his wild oats. That’s a great joy for a mother! Isn’t that right, Mr. Dung Beetle?” They recognized the stranger by his shape.

“You’re both right,” said the dung beetle, and he was invited in, as far in as he was able to get under the pottery shard.

“You have to see my little earwig!” said a third, and then a fourth of the mothers. “He’s the most lovable child and so much fun! They’re only naughty when they have a tummy ache, but you get that easily at their age.”

And every mother talked about her children, and the children talked too and used the little fork in their tails to pull at the dung beetle’s whiskers.

“They think up all sorts of things, the little imps!” said the mothers, reeking of motherly love, but this bored the dung beetle, and so he asked if it was far to the hotbed.

“It’s way out in the world, on the other side of the ditch,” said the earwig, “I hope none of my children ever go so far, or it would kill me.”

“I’m going to try to get that far though,” said the dung beetle and left without saying good bye, which is the most elegant.

By the ditch he met several of his relations, all dung beetles.

“This is where we live,” they said. “It’s pretty cozy here. May we invite you down here where it’s warm and wet? Your trip must have tired you.”

“It certainly has!” said the dung beetle. I was lying on linen in the rain, and cleanliness especially takes a lot out of me. I’ve also gotten arthritis in a wing joint from standing in a draft under a pottery shard. It’s really refreshing to be amongst my own kind again!”

“Maybe you came from the hotbed?” asked the oldest one.

“Higher up than that!” said the dung beetle. “I come from the emperor’s stable, where I was born with golden shoes on my feet. I am traveling on a secret mission, and you can’t ask me about it because I won’t tell you.”

Then the dung beetle settled down in the rich mud. Three young female dung beetles were sitting there. They giggled because they didn’t know what to say.

“They’re not engaged,” said their mother, and then they giggled again, but from shyness.

“I haven’t seen any more beautiful in the emperor’s stable,” said the traveling dung beetle.

“Now don’t spoil my girls! And don’t talk to them unless you have honorable intentions—but you do, and so I give you my blessing!”

“Hurrah!” all the others shouted, and the dung beetle was engaged. First the engagement and then the wedding. There was no reason to wait.

The next day went very well, the second jogged along fine, but on the third day one had to start thinking about supporting the wife and maybe children.

“I’ve let myself be taken by surprise,” he said, “so I’d better surprise them too.”

And he did. He was gone. Gone all day, gone all night—and his wife was a widow. The other dung beetles said that they had taken a real tramp into the family, and now had the burden of his wife.

“She can become a maiden again,” said her mother. “Be my child again. Shame on that loathsome low-life who deserted her!”

In the meantime, he was on the move. He had sailed across the ditch on a cabbage leaf. In the morning two people came by. They saw the dung beetle, picked him up, and turned and twisted him this way and that. They were both very learned, especially the boy. “Allah sees the black beetle in the black rock on the black mountain. Isn’t that what it says in the Koran?” he asked. Then he translated the dung beetle’s name to Latin and explained its family and habits. The older scholar voted against taking him home since they already had equally good specimens there, he said. The dung beetle didn’t think that was very polite, so he flew out of his hand. He flew a good way, and his wings had dried out. He reached the greenhouse and was able to fly in with the greatest of ease since a window was open. Then he burrowed down into the fresh manure.

“It’s delicious here!” he said.

Soon he fell asleep and dreamed that the emperor’s horse was dead and that Mr. Dung Beetle had gotten its golden shoes and the promise of two more. It was very pleasant, and when the dung beetle woke up, he crept out and looked around. It was magnificent here in the greenhouse! Big fan palms were spread out high above. They looked transparent when the sun shone through them, and below them an abundance of greenery streamed forth, and flowers were shining red as fire, yellow as amber, and as white as newly fallen snow.

“What a magnificent mass of plants! How marvelous it will taste when it rots!” said the dung beetle. “It’s a luscious larder, and I’m sure I must have relatives here. I’ll see if I can track down someone I can associate with. I’m proud and proud of it!” And he thought about his dream of the dead horse and the golden shoes he had gotten.

Suddenly a hand grabbed the dung beetle, and he was squeezed, turned, and twisted about.

The gardener’s little son and his friend were in the greenhouse and had seen the dung beetle and were going to have some fun with it. He was wrapped in a grapevine leaf and put into a warm pants pocket. He crawled and crept around, but was squeezed by the hand of the boy, who went straight off to the big lake at the edge of the garden. Here the dung beetle was placed in an old cracked wooden shoe with a missing instep. A stick was tied on for a mast, and the dung beetle was tethered to it with a woolen thread. Now he was the captain and was going sailing!

It was a really big lake. It seemed like an ocean to the dung beetle, and he became so astonished that he fell over on his back and lay wriggling his legs.

The wooden shoe sailed, and there was a current in the water, but if the boat went out too far, then one of the boys pulled up his pant legs and waded out to get it. But when it was sailing again, someone called the boys—called them sternly—and they hurried off and let the wooden shoe be. It drifted further and further from land, always further out. It was dreadful for the dung beetle. He couldn’t fly because he was tied to the mast.

He was visited by a fly.

“We’re having wonderful weather,” said the fly. “I can rest here and sunbathe too. You have it very comfortable here.”

“You talk according to your lights! Don’t you see that I’m tied up?”

“I’m not tied,” said the fly and flew away.

“Now I know the world,” the dung beetle said. “And it’s a mean world. I’m the only honorable one in it! First they deny me gold shoes, then I have to lie on wet linen, stand in a draft, and finally they foist a wife on me! When I then take a quick step out into the world to see what it’s like and how it will treat me, then a people-puppy comes along and sets me in a tether on the wild sea. And meanwhile the emperor’s horse is walking around in gold shoes! That annoys me the most. But you can’t expect sympathy in this world! My life is very interesting, but what good is that if no one knows about it? The world doesn’t deserve to hear about it either, or it would have given me golden shoes in the emperor’s stable when the favorite horse got them, and I reached out my legs. If I had gotten golden shoes I would have brought honor to the stable. Now it’s lost me, and the world has lost me. Everything’s over!”

But everything wasn’t over yet because a boat sailed by with some young girls in it.

“There’s a wooden shoe!” one of them said.

“There’s a little animal tied up to it,” said another.

They were right beside the wooden shoe and picked it up. One of the girls took a little scissors and cut the woolen thread without hurting the dung beetle, and when they got to land, she set it in the grass.

“Crawl, crawl! Fly, fly, if you can!” she said. “Freedom is a lovely thing.”

And the dung beetle flew right through an open window in a big building and sank tiredly down in the fine, soft, long mane of the emperor’s favorite horse who was standing in the stable where it and the dung beetle belonged. It clung to the mane and sat collecting its thoughts for awhile. “Here I am sitting on the emperor’s favorite horse—sitting as a horseman. What’s that I said? Well, now everything is clear to me! It’s a good idea, and the right one. Why did the horse get golden shoes? He asked me about that, the blacksmith. Now I realize why! The horse got golden shoes for my sake!”

And that put the dung beetle in a good mood.

“You get clear-headed from travel,” he said.

The sun shone in on him, shone very beautifully. “The world isn’t so bad after all,” said the dung beetle. “You just have to know how to take it.” The world was lovely—the emperor’s favorite horse had gotten golden shoes because the dung beetle was to be its rider.

“Now I’ll just step down to the other beetles and tell them how much has been done for me. I’ll tell about all the pleasures I enjoyed on my travel abroad, and I’ll tell them that now I’ll stay home until the horse has worn out his golden shoes.”