A TRAVELER wearied from a long journey lay down, overcome with fatigue,
on the very brink of a deep well. Just as he was about to fall into the
water, Dame Fortune, it is said, appeared to him and waking him from
his slumber thus addressed him: “Good Sir, pray wake up: for if you
fall into the well, the blame will be thrown on me, and I shall get an
ill name among mortals; for I find that men are sure to impute their
calamities to me, however much by their own folly they have really
brought them on themselves.”
Everyone is more or less master of his own fate.