Redoubtable, multitudinous chance is for ever threading its watchful
way through the midst of the events we have foreseen, and round and
about our most deliberate actions, wherewith we are slowly tracing the
broad lines of our existence. The air we breathe, the time we
traverse, the space through which we move, are all peopled by lurking
circumstances, which pick us out from among the crowd. The least study
of their habits will quickly convince us that these strange daughters
of hazard, who should be blind and deaf as their father, by no means
act in his irresponsible fashion. They are well aware of what they are
doing, and rarely make a mistake. With inexplicable certainty do they
move to the passer-by whom they have been sent to confront, and lightly
touch his shoulder. Two men may be travelling upon the same road, and
at the same hour; but there will be no hesitation or doubt in the ranks
of the double, invisible troop whom fortune has ambushed there.
Towards one a band of white virgins will hasten, bearing palms and
amphorae, presenting the thousand unexpected delights of the journey;
as the other approaches, the "Evil Women," whom Aeschylus tells of,
will hurl themselves from the hedges, as though they were charged to
avenge, upon this unwitting victim, some inexpiable crime committed by
him before he was born.

4

There is scarcely one of us who has not been able, in some measure, to
follow the workings of destiny in life. We have all known men who met
with a prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of their
actions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn of
the road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars,
undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable. One, we will say,
who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knows
his rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at the
decisive moment, another, who has counted upon the protection of a most
influential friend, will see this friend die on the very day when his
assistance could be of value. A third, who has neither talent nor
beauty, will arrive each morning at the Palace of Fortune, Glory or
Love at the brief instant when every door lies open; while another, a
man of great merit, who long has pondered the legitimate step he is
taking, presents himself at the hour when ill-luck shall have closed
the gate for the next half-century. One man will risk his health
twen