CHAPTER VI

An account of the wheel of fortune, with a method of preparing a
spirit for this world.

We now proceeded on our journey, without staying to see whether
he fulfilled his word or no; and without encountering anything
worth mentioning, came to the place where the spirits on their
passage to the other world were obliged to decide by lot the
station in which every one was to act there. Here was a
monstrous wheel, infinitely larger than those in which I had
formerly seen lottery-tickets deposited. This was called the
WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

The goddess herself was present. She was one of the most
deformed females I ever beheld; nor could I help observing the
frowns she expressed when any beautiful spirit of her own sex
passed by her, nor the affability which smiled in her countenance
on the approach of any handsome male spirits. Hence I accounted
for the truth of an observation I had often made on earth, that
nothing is more fortunate than handsome men, nor more unfortunate
than handsome women. The reader may be perhaps pleased with an
account of the whole method of equipping a spirit for his
entrance into the flesh.

First, then, he receives from a very sage person, whose look much
resembled that of an apothecary (his warehouse likewise bearing
an affinity to an apothecary's shop), a small phial inscribed,