Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/89

64 days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is asked by a supernatural voice: "How shall those live who have this day been born?" Fate always replies: "As I have fared this day, so may they fare."

Thus our beggar found the secret of his own misfortunes; for he had been born on a day of poverty. But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor begged him to tell whether there could be any way whereby he might escape from the consequences of his unlucky birth. "I will tell thee," said Fate. "Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own. But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou be rich." The beggar joyfully left Fate's dreary house, with its sad round of days, and went back to the world of labor and hope. There, by following the advice that he had received, he became in fact very wealthy; since all that he undertook prospered. But the wealth was his adopted daughter's. For always he called his gains hers. One day he grew however very weary of this, and said to himself: "These fields and flocks and houses and treasures are not really hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine." No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than lightning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain-fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his face and cried: "Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth; they