Page:La Fontaine - The Original Fables Of, 1913.djvu/71

Rh would have tied her own hands, and ours also, to the extent of marking our fate in the heavens. For our fate depends upon certain combinations of time, place,  and people; not upon the combinations of charlatans. A shepherd and a king are born under the same planet: one carries the sceptre; the other the crook. The planet Jupiter willed it so! But what is this planet Jupiter? A body without senses. Whence comes it then that its influence works so differently on these  two men? Further, how could its influence, if it had any, penetrate through endless voids to our world?

Do not attach too much importance to the two instances I have related. This beloved son and the good man Æschylus are beside the mark.

Nevertheless, however blind and lying is the fortune-teller's art, it may yet hit home once in a thousand times. That is just a matter of chance.