t indeed the brief instant wrested from
eternal decrees, the little childish gesture, when one of his hands,
red with the blood of his mysterious victim, having chanced to draw
near his lips, his eyes and ears are suddenly opened; he understands
the hidden language of all that surrounds him, detects the treachery of
the dwarf who represents the powers of evil, and learns in a flash to
do that which had to be done.

V

LUCK

1

Once upon a time, an old Servian legend tells us, there were two
brothers of whom one was industrious, but unfortunate, and the other
lazy, but overwhelmingly prosperous. One day the unfortunate brother
meets a beautiful girl who is tending sheep and weaving a golden
thread. "To whom do these sheep belong?" he asks. "They belong to
whom I belong." "And to whom do you belong?" "To your brother: I am
his luck." "And where is my luck then?" "Very far from here." "Can I
find it?" "Yes, if you look for it."

So he wanders away in search of his luck. And one evening, in a great
forest, he comes across a poor old woman asleep under a tree. He wakes
her and asks who she is. "Don't you know me?" she answers. "It is
true you never have seen me: I am your luck." "And who can have given
me so wretched a luck?" "Destiny." "Can I find destiny?" "Yes, if
you look long enough."

So he goes off in search of destiny. He travels a very long time, and
at last she is pointed out to him. She lives in an enormous and
luxurious palace; but her wealth is dwindling day by day, and the doors
and windows of her abode are shrinking. She explains to him that she
passes thus, alternately, from misery to opulence; and that her
situation at a given moment determines the future of all the children
who may come into the world at that moment. "You were born," she says,
"when my prosperity was on the wane; and that is the cause of your
ill-luck." The only way, she tells him, to hoodwink or get the better
of fortune would be to substitute the luck of Militza, his niece, for
his own, seeing that she was born at a propitious period. All he need
do, she says, is to take this niece into his house, and to declare to
any one who may ask him that all he has belongs to Militza.

He does as she bids him, and his affairs at once take a new turn. His
herds multiply and grow fat, his trees are bent beneath the masses of
fruit, unexpected inheritances come in, his land bears prodigious
crops. But one mornin