"What is the use of working so hard?" he said. "Perhaps if I stay in bed from morning until night, Fortune will take pity on me. I will try it, at any rate."
The next morning, therefore, the wood-cutter stayed in bed, as he had promised himself he would do. When his wife found he did not get up, she went to wake him.
"Come, come," she cried, "the cock crowed long since. You are late."
"Late for what?" asked her husband.
"Late for your work in the forest, to be sure."
"What is the use? I should only gain enough to keep us for one day."
"But, my dear husband, we must take what Fortune gives us. She has never been very kind to us, I must admit."
"I am tired and sick of the way she has treated us. If she wishes to find me now, she must come here. I will not go to the wood to seek her any more."
When she heard these words, the woodcutter's wife began to weep bitterly. She thought of the empty cupboard. She was afraid of hunger and cold.
Neither his wife's pleadings nor her tears had any effect on the wood-cutter. He would not rise from the bed. In a little while a man came to the door of the cottage, and said: