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In the early morning; it was quite calm, but gray, and we witnessed a kind of Fata Morgana. A ship, which had not yet risen above the horizon, showed itself in the distance, but the rigging was turned upside down; the masts were below, the hull above. This is called the ship of death, and when it is seen people are sure of bad weather and shipwreck.

I confess Dido was a very infidel in this point; for she would not believe, as Virgil makes her say, that ever Jupiter would send Mercury on such an immoral errand. But this needs no answer at least, no more than Virgil gives it: "Fata obstant, placidasque viri Deus obstruit aures."

He saw all his castles in the air destroyed: his beautiful house, his cargo-ships on the Danube, the lighted church with the brilliant company, they were only a fata morgana, blown away with the mirage of the Monostor forts by the first puff of wind melted into nothing, like the light cloud which obscures the sun. Ah! here comes Timéa! At last she had had her sleep out.

One of the stones on its pavement, from its extraordinary blackness, was called the tombstone of Romulus, and a number of statues adorned its sides, including the three Sibyls, which gave the name of "In Tria Fata" down to medieval times to this part of the Forum. From its rostra, or stone platform, addresses were delivered by political agitators to open-air assemblies of the people.

Otherwise she won't have as many hundred when the salvage is paid." Those words rang in Timar's ears. An invisible hand drove him on. "Fata nolentem trahunt!" says St. Augustine. Soon after, Timar sat again in the diligence, which galloped away with its four Neudorf horses. In the town every one slept. Only at the station-house sounded the night watchman's call.

As a background to this picture lies the Vettern the bottomless lake as the commonalty believe with its transparent water, its sea-like waves, and in calm, with "Hegring," or fata morgana on its steel-like surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, "the city of the dead," as a Swedish author has called it Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's city.

As Madame Sand perceived that this artist, in place of giving body to his phantasy in porphyry and marble, or defining his thoughts by the creation of massive caryatides, rather effaced the contour of his works, and, had it been necessary, could have elevated his architecture itself from the soil, to suspend it, like the floating palaces of the Fata Morgana, in the fleecy clouds, through his aerial forms of almost impalpable buoyancy, she was more and more attracted by that mystic ideal which she perceived glowing within them.

But you must judge with me ab effectu, since God has chosen this world as it is. We know, moreover, that often an evil brings forth a good whereto one would not have attained without that evil. Often indeed two evils have made one great good: Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant.

We must not expect very much from life, but learn to accommodate ourselves to a world where all is relative and no perfect state exists. Let us look misfortune in the face and meet it with courage and calmness! Fate is cruel and men are miserable. Life is synonymous with suffering; positive happiness a fata morgana, an illusion.

"Doctor Bentley was not such a person; and yet he would have quarrelled, I am convinced, with any wife in the world, in behalf of one of his corrections. I don't suppose he would have given up his Ingentia Fata to an angel." "But do you think," said she, "if I had loved him, I would have contended with him?"