Part 22

We catch sight again of the personal fate in the relations of Antony with the young Octavius. Antony had in his house an Egyptian astrologer, who advised him by all means to keep away from the young man, "for your genius," he said, "is in fear of his; when it is alone its port is erect and fearless, when his approaches it, it is dejected and depressed." There were circumstances, says Plutarch, that carried out this view, for in every kind of play, whether they cast lots or cast the die, Antony was still the loser; in their cock fights and quail fights, it was still "Caesar's cock and Caesar's quail."

In ancient Norse and Teutonic traditions, where Salida, or Frau Saelde, takes the place of Fortuna, we find indications of the personal fate, both kindly and unkindly. The fate appeared to its human turn chiefly in the hour of death, that is, in the hour of parting company. Sometimes it was attached not to one person, but to a whole family, passing on from one to another, as in the case of the not yet extinct superstition of the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns.

In a very old German story, quoted by Jacob Grimm, a poor knight is shown, eating his frugal meal in a wood, who on looking up, sees a monstrous creature among the boughs which cries, "I am thy _ungeluecke_!" The knight asks his "ill-luck" to share his meal, and when it comes down, catches it, and shuts it up in a hollow oak. Someone, who wishes to do him an ill-turn, lets out the _ungeluecke_; but instead of reverting to the knight, it jumps on the back of its evil-minded deliverer.

In the Sicilian story of "Feledico and Epomata," one of those collected by Frauelein Laura Gonzenbach,[2] a childless king and queen desire to have children. One day they see a soothsayer going by: they call him in, and he says that the queen will bear a son, but that he will die when he is eighteen years of age. The grief of the royal pair is extreme, and they ask the soothsayer for advice what to do. He can only suggest that they should shut the child up in a tower till the unlucky hour be past, after which his fate will have no more power over him. This is accordingly done, and the child sees no one in the tower but the nurse and a lady of the court, whom he believes to be his mother. One day, when the lady has gone to make her report to the queen, the boy hears his fate crying to him in his sleep, and asking why he stays shut up there, when his real father and mother are king and queen and live in a fine castle? He makes inquiries, and at first is pacified by evasive answers, but after three visits of his fate, who always utters the same words, he insists on going to the castle and seeing his father and mother. "His fate has found him out, there is no good in resisting it," says the queen. However, by the agency of Epomata, the beautiful daughter of an enchantress, who had conveyed the prince to her castle, and had provided for his execution on the very day ordained by his fate, Feledico tides over the fatal moment and attains a good old age.

Hahn states that the Greek name of [Greek: Moirai] is given by the Albanians to what I have called personal fates, as well as to the Parcae; but the Turkish designation of _Bakht_, meaning a sort of protecting spirit, seems to be in more common use. The Albanian story-teller mentions a negress who is in want of some sequins, and who says, "Go and find my fortune (_Bakht_), but first make her a cake, and when you offer it to her, ask her for a few gold pieces."

A like propitiatory offering of food to one's personal fate forms a feature of a second Sicilian story which is so important in all its bearings on the subject in hand, that it would not do to abridge it. Here it is, therefore, in its entirety.

There was a certain merchant who was so rich that he had treasures which not even the king possessed. In his audience chamber there were three beautiful arm-chairs, one of silver, one of gold, and one of diamonds. This merchant had an only daughter of the name of Caterina, who was fairer than the sun. One day Caterina sat alone in her room, when suddenly the door opened of itself, and there entered a tall and beautiful lady, who held a wheel in her hands. "Caterina," said she, "when would you like best to enjoy your life? in youth, or in age?" Caterina gazed at her in amazement, and could not get over her stupor. The beautiful lady asked again, "Caterina, when do you wish to enjoy your life in youth or in age?" Then Caterina thought, "If I say in youth, I shall have to suffer in age; hence I prefer to enjoy my life in age, and in youth I must get on as the Lord wills." So she said, "In age." "Be it unto you according to your desire," said the beautiful lady, who gave a turn to her wheel, and disappeared. This tall and beautiful lady was poor Caterina's fate. After a few days her father received the sudden news that several of his ships had gone down in a storm; again, after a few days, other of his ships met with the same fate, and to make a long story short, a month had not gone by before he saw himself despoiled of all his wealth. He had to sell everything, and remained poor and miserable, and finally he fell ill and died. Thus poor Caterina was left alone in the world, and no one would give her a home. Then she thought, "I will go to another city and will seek a place as serving-maid." She wandered a long way till she reached another city. As she passed down the street, she saw at a window a worthy-looking lady, who questioned her. "Where are you going, all alone, fair girl?" "Oh! noble lady, I am a poor girl, and I would willingly go into service to earn my bread. Could you, by chance, employ me?" The worthy lady engaged her, and Caterina served her faithfully. After a few days the lady said one evening, "Caterina, I am going out, and shall lock the house-door." "Very well," said Caterina, and when her mistress was gone, she took her work and began to sew. Suddenly the door opened, and her fate came in. "So!" cried this one, "you are here, Caterina, and you think that I shall leave you in peace!" With these words, she ran to the cupboards and turned out the linen and clothes of Caterina's mistress, and threw them all about the room. Caterina thought, "When my mistress returns and finds everything in such a state, she will kill me!" And out of fear she broke open the door and fled. But her fate made all the things right again, and gathered them up and put them in their places. When the mistress came home, she called Caterina, but she could not find her anywhere. She thought she must have robbed her, but when she looked at her cupboards, she saw that nothing was missing. She wondered greatly, but Caterina never came back--she ran and ran till she reached another city, when, as she passed along the street, she saw once more a lady at a window, who asked her, "Where are you going, all alone, fair girl?" "Ah! noble lady, I am a poor girl, and I wish to find a place so as to earn my bread. Could you take me?" The lady took her into her service, and Caterina thought now to remain in peace. Only a few days had passed, when one evening, when the lady was out, Caterina's fate appeared again, and spoke hard words to her, saying, "So you are here, are you? and you think to escape from me?" Then she scattered whatever she could lay hands on, and poor Caterina once more fled out of fright.

To be brief, poor Caterina had to lead this terrible life for seven years, flying from city to city in search of a place. Whenever she entered service, after a few days her fate always appeared and disordered her mistress' things, and so the poor girl had to fly. As soon as she was gone, however, her fate repaired all the damage that had been done. At last, after seven years, it seemed as if the unhappy Caterina's fate was weary of persecuting her. One day she arrived in a city where she saw a lady at a window, who said, "Where go you, all alone, fair girl?" "Ah! noble lady, I am a poor girl, and willingly would I enter service to earn my bread; could you employ me?" The lady replied, "I will take you, but every day you will have to do me a certain service, and I am not sure that you have the strength." "Tell me what it is," said Caterina, "and if I can, I will do it." "Do you see that high mountain?" said the lady; "every morning you will have to carry up to the top a baker's tray of new bread, and then you must cry aloud, 'O fate of my mistress!' three times repeated. My fate will appear and will receive the bread." "I will do it willingly," said Caterina, and thereupon the lady engaged her. With this lady Caterina stayed many years, and every morning she carried the tray of fresh bread up the mountain, and after she had cried three times, "O fate of my mistress!" there appeared a beautiful, stately lady, who received the bread. Caterina often wept, thinking how she, who was once so rich, had now to work like any poor girl, and one day her mistress asked her, "Why are you always crying?" Caterina told her how ill things had gone with her, and her mistress said, "You know, Caterina, when you take the bread up the mountain to-morrow? Well, do you beg my fate to try and persuade yours to leave you in peace. Perhaps this may do some good." The advice pleased poor Caterina, and the following morning when she carried up the bread, she told her mistress' fate of the sore straits she was in, and said, "O fate of my mistress, pray ask my fate no longer to torment me." "Ah! poor girl," the fate answered, "your fate is covered with a sevenfold covering, and that is why she cannot hear you. But to-morrow when you come, I will lead you to her." When Caterina had gone home, her mistress' fate went to her fate, and said, "Dear sister, why are you not tired of persecuting poor Caterina? Let her once again see happy days." The fate replied, "To-morrow bring her to me; I will give her something that will supply all her needs." The next morning, when Caterina brought the bread, her mistress' fate conducted her to her own fate, who was covered with a sevenfold covering. The fate gave her a skein of silk, and said, "Take care of it, it will be of use to you." After she had returned home, Caterina said to her mistress, "My fate has made me a present of a skein of silk; what ought I to do with it?" "It is not worth three grains of corn," said the mistress. "Keep it, all the same; who knows what it may be good for?"

After some time, it happened that the young king was about to take a wife, and, therefore, he had himself made some new clothes. But when the tailor was going to make up one fine piece of stuff, he could not anywhere find silk of the same colour with which to sew it. The king had it cried through the land, that whosoever had silk of the right colour was to bring it to court, and would be well paid for his pains. "Caterina," said her mistress, "your skein of silk is of that colour; take it to the king and he will make you a fine present." Caterina put on her best gown, and went to court, and when she came before the king, she was so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her. "Royal Majesty," she said, "I have brought a skein of silk of the colour you could not find." "Royal majesty," cried one of the ministers, "we should give her the weight of her silk in gold." The king agreed, and the scales were brought in. On one side the king placed the skein of silk, and on the other a gold piece. Now, what do you think happened? The silk was always the heaviest, no matter how many gold pieces the king placed in the balance. Then he ordered a larger pair of scales, and he put all his treasure to the one side, but the silk remained the heaviest. Then he took his gold crown off his head and set it with the other treasure, and upon that the two scales became even.

"Where did you get this silk?" asked the king. "Royal Majesty, my mistress gave it to me." "That is not possible," cried the king. "If you do not tell me the truth I will have your head cut off!" Caterina related all that had happened to her since the time when she was a rich maiden. At Court there was a very wise lady, who said: "Caterina, you have suffered much, but now you will see happy days, and since the gold crown made the balance even, it is a sign that you will live to be a queen." "She shall be a queen," cried the king, "I will make her a queen! Caterina and no other shall be my bride." And so it was. The king sent to his bride to say that he no longer wanted her, and married the fair Caterina, who, after much suffering in youth, enjoyed her age in full prosperity, living happy and content, whereof we have assured testimony.

The most suggestive passages in this ingenious story are those which refer to the relative positions of a man and his fate, and of one fate to another. On these points something further is to be gleaned from an Indian, a Servian, and a Spanish tale, all having a family likeness amongst themselves, and a strong affinity with our story. The Indian variant is one of the collection due to the youthful energies of Miss Maive Stokes, whose book of "Indian Fairy Tales" is a model of what such a book ought to be. The Servian tale is to be found in Karadschitsch's "Volksmaerschen der Serben;" the Spanish in Fernan Caballero's "Cuentos y Poesias Populares Andaluses." The chief characteristics of the personal fates, as they appear in folk-lore, may be briefly summarised. In the first place, they know each other, and are acquainted up to a given point with one another's secrets. Thus, in the Servian story, a man who goes to seek his fate is commissioned by persons he meets on the road to ask it questions touching their own private concerns. A rich householder wants to know why his servants are always hungry, however much food he gives them to eat, and why "his aged, miserable father and mother do not die?" A farmer would have him ask why his cattle perish; and a river, whose waters bear him across, is anxious to know why no living thing dwells in it. The fate gives a satisfactory answer to each inquiry.

The fates exercise a certain influence, one over the other, and hence over the destinies of the people in their charge. Caterina's mistress' fate intercedes for her with her own fate. The attention of the fates is not always fixed on the persons under them: they may be prevented from hearing by fortuitous circumstances, such as the "seven coverings or veils" of Caterina's fate, or they may be asleep, or absent from home. Their home, by the by, is invariably placed in a spot very difficult to get at. In the Spanish variant, the palace of Fortune is raised "where our Lord cried three times and was not heard"--it is up a rock so steep that not even a goat can climb it, and the sunbeams lose their footing when trying to reach the top. A personal fate is propitiated by suitable offerings, or, if obdurate, it may be brought to reason by a well-timed punishment. The Indian beats his fate-stone, just as the Ostyak beats his fetish if it does not behave well and bring him sport. The Sicilian story gives no hint of this alternative, but it is one strictly in harmony with the Italian way of thinking, whether ancient or modern. Statius' declaration:

Fataque, et injustos rabidis pulsare querelis Caelicolas solamen erat ...

was frequently put into practice, as when, upon the death of Germanicus, the Roman populace cast stones at the temples, and the altars were levelled to the ground, and the Lares thrown into the street. Again, Augustus took revenge on Neptune for the loss of his fleet, by not allowing his image to be carried in the procession of the Circensian games. It is on record that at Florence, in 1498, a ruined gamester pelted the image of the Virgin with horse dung. Luca Landucci, who tells the story, says that the Florentines were shocked; but in the southern kingdom the incident would have passed without much notice. The Neapolitans have hardly now left off heaping torrents of abuse on San Gennaro if he fails to perform the miracle of liquefaction quick enough. Probably every country could furnish an illustration. In the grand procession of St Leonhard, the Bavarians used from time to time to drop the Saint into the river, as a sort of gentle warning.

The physical presentment of the personal fate differs considerably. According to the Indian account, "the fates are stones, some standing, and others lying on the ground." It has been said that this looks like a relic of stock and stone worship: which is true if it can be said unreservedly that anyone ever worshipped a stock or a stone. The lowest stage of fetish worship only indicates a diseased spiritualism--a mental state in which there is no hedge between the real and the imagined. No savage ever supposed that his fetish was a simple three-cornered stone and nothing more. If one could guess the thoughts of the pigeon mentioned by Mr Romanes as worshipping a gingerbeer bottle, it would be surely seen that this pigeon believed his gingerbeer bottle to be other than a piece of unfeeling earthenware. It is, however, a sign of progress when man begins to picture the ruling powers not as stones, or even as animals, but as men. This point is reached in the Servian narrative, where the hero's fortune is a hag given to him as his luck by fate. In the Spanish tale, the aspect of the personal fate varies with its character: the fortunate man's fate is a lovely girl, the fate of the unfortunate man being a toothless old woman. In the _Pentamerone_ of Giambattista Basile, Fortune is also spoken of as an old woman, but this seems a departure from the true Italian ideal, which is neither a stone nor a luck-hag, nor yet a varying fair-and-foul fortune, but a "bella, alta Signora:" the imposing figure that surmounts the wheel of fortune on the marble pavement of the Cathedral of Siena. It is a graver conception than the gracefully fickle goddess of Jean Cousin's "Liber Fortunae":

... On souloit la pourtraire, Tenant un voile afin d'aller au gre du vent Des aisles aux costez pour voler bien avant.

Shakespeare had the Emblematist's Fortune in his mind when he wrote: "Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls."

In hands less light than Cousin's, it was easy for the Fortune of the emblem writers to become grotesque, and to lose all artistic merit. The Italian Fortuna does not in the least lend herself to caricature. In Italy, the objects of thought, even of the common people, have the tendency to assume concrete and aesthetic forms--a fact of great significance in the history of a people destined to render essential service to art.

The "tall, beautiful lady" of the Sicilian story, reappears in a series of South Italian folk-songs which contains further evidence of this unconsciously artistic instinct. The Italian folk-poet, for the most part, lets the lore of tradition altogether alone. It does not lie in his province, which is purely lyrical. But he has seized upon Fortune as a myth very capable of lyrical treatment, and following the free bent of his genius, he has woven out of his subject the delicate fancies of these songs. A series in the sense of being designed to form a consecutive whole, they, of course, are not. No two, probably, had the same author; the perfect individuality of the figure presented, only showing how a type may be so firmly fixed that the many have no difficulty in describing it with the consistency of one man who draws the creation of his own brain.

I.

Once in the gloaming, Fortune met me here; Fair did she seem, and Love was on me laid, Her hair was raised, as were it half a sphere, Flowered on her breast a rose that cannot fade. Then said I, "Fortune, thou without a peer, What rule shall tell the measure of thine aid?" "The pathway of the moon through all the year, The channel of the exhaustless sea," she said.

II.

One night, the while I slept, drew Fortune near, At once I loved, such beauty she displayed; A crescent moon did o'er her brows appear, And in her hand a wheel that never stayed. Then said I to her, "O my mistress dear, Grant all my wishes, mine if thou wilt aid." But she turned from me with dark sullen cheer And "Never!" as she turned, was all she said.

III.

I saw my Fortune midst the sounding sea Sit weeping on a rocky height and steep, Said I to her, "Fortune, how is't with thee?" "I cannot help thee, child" (so answered she), "I cannot help thee more--so must I weep." How sweet were those her tears, how sweet, ah me! Even the fishes wept within the deep.

IV.

One day did Fortune call me to her side, "What are the things," she asked, "that thou hast done?" Then answered I, "Dear mistress, I have tried To grave them upon marble, every one." "Ah! maddest of the mad!" so she replied, "Better hadst writ on sand than wrought in stone; He who to marble should his love confide, Loves when he loves till all his wits are gone."

V.

There where I lay asleep came Fortune in, She came the while I slept and bid me wake, "What dost thou now?" she said, "companion mine? What dost thou now? Wilt thou then love forsake? Arise," she said, "and take this violin, And play till every stone thereat shall wake." I was asleep when Fortune came to me, And bid me rise, and led me unto thee!

These songs come from different villages; from Caballino and Morciano in Calabria, from Corigliano and Calimera in Terra d'Otranto; the two last are in the Greek dialect spoken in the latter district. There are a great many more, in all of which the same sweet and serious type is preserved; but the above quintet suffices to give a notion of this modern Magna-Graecian Idyll of Fortune.

[Footnote 1: In a Breton variant the "Bon Dieu" is the first to offer himself as sponsor, but is refused by the peasant, "Because you are not just; you slay the honest bread-winner and the mother whose children can scarce run alone, and you let folks live who never brought aught but shame and sorrow on their kindred." Death is accepted, "Because at least you take the rich as well as the poor, the young as well as the old." The German tale of "Godfather Death" begins in the same way, but ends rather differently, as it is the godson and not the father who is shown the many candles, and who vainly requests Death to give him a new one instead of his own which is nearly burnt out. A poem by Hans Sachs (1553) contains reference to the legend, of which there are also Provencal and Hungarian versions.]