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.