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An Astrologer once let himself fall
To the bottom of a well. He was told: “Poor fool,
While you can barely see at your own feet,
Do you think you can read above your head?”
This adventure in itself, without going further,
Can serve as a lesson to most men.
Among what we people on earth are,
There are few who very often
Do not take pleasure in hearing it said
That in the book of Destiny mortals can read.
But this book, which Homer and his kind sang,
What is it but Chance among Antiquity,
And among us Providence?
Now of Chance there is no science:
If there were, one would be wrong
To call it chance, nor fortune, nor fate,
All things very uncertain.
As for the sovereign wills
Of Him who makes all, and nothing except with purpose,
Who knows them but He alone? How read in His breast?
Would He have imprinted on the brow of the stars
What the night of time locks within its veils?
To what use? To exercise the mind
Of those who wrote of the Sphere and the Globe?
To make us avoid inevitable evils?
To render us, in goods, incapable of pleasure?And causing disgust for these anticipated goods,
To convert them into evils before they come?
It is error, or rather it is a crime to believe it.
The Firmament moves; the Stars make their course,
The Sun shines on us every day,
Every day its brightness succeeds the black shadow,
Without our being able to infer anything else from it
Than the necessity to shine and give light,
To bring the seasons, to ripen the seeds,
To pour on bodies certain influences.
For the rest, how does it answer to ever-diverse fate
This ever-equal course by which the Universe walks?
Charlatans, makers of horoscopes,
Leave the courts of the Princes of Europe;
Take with you the puffers all at once:
You do not deserve more faith than these people.
I get a little carried away: let us return to the story
Of this Speculator who was forced to drink.
Besides the vanity of his deceitful art,
It is the image of those who gape at chimeras,
While they are in danger,
Whether for themselves or for their affairs.
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-astrologer-who-fell-into-a-well-jean-de-la-fontaine/