Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/237

Rh the others —at some hardly anyone looked. This, then, is fame!

6. Meanwhile, Fortuna appeared, and ordered that some images, not only old and faded, but also new and fresh ones, should be thrown downward; then I understood that, just as this dear immortality in itself is nothing, so also because of the mad fickleness of Fortuna (for she receives some in her castle, and then again expels them from it), no trust can be put in her; thus she and her gifts became more and more distasteful to me. For she dealt in the same fashion also with her sons when she walked about in her castle; to the voluptuous she sometimes gave delights, and then again took them from them; similarly she now granted the rich men riches; now deprived them of them; sometimes she took all from one and threw him downward out of her castle.

7. Death also increased my terror when I saw her arrive at the castle, and remove now one man, now another, but in divers fashions. She shot at the rich with her usual arrows, or creeping towards them she strangled and suffocated them by means