THE EVIL EYE.
I.
There was once upon a time a rich gentleman who lived in a fine house on the banks of the Vistula. All the windows in the house looked towards the river, none looked towards the wide sweep of country around. The path under the poplars which led up to the house was overgrown with grass and weeds, and showed plainly enough that none of the neighbours visited there, and that very little of the old hospitality was to be experienced there.
The gentleman who owned the house had lived there for seven years, and had come from some far-off place. The peasants knew little about him, and they avoided him with fear and trembling, for there were terrible tales about him.
The gentleman was born on the banks of the river Sau, and his parents had been rich. Misfortune, however, had pursued him from the cradle upwards. He had an evil eye, which scattered disease and death wherever its glances fell. If he by ill chance glanced over his herd, the cattle on which his eye fell died. Whatever he loved would surely die. His own parents, to complete the son’s sorrow, perished, and the man with the evil eye, as he came to be called in his birthplace, where the evil eye had caused so much mischief, sold everything he had, and set off to the banks of the Vistula, where he bought the fine house. He kept no folk about him save one old manservant, who had nursed him in his arms when he was a boy, and on whom the evil eye of his master had no effect.
The unlucky man seldom went out of his house, for he knew that his glance brought misfortune, disease, and death on what it lighted on. When he did go out in his carriage his old servant sat beside him, and told him when they were coming to a man, a village, or a town. Then the miserable man would either cover his eyes with his hands, or cast down his glances on the floor of his carriage, where he always had a bundle of pea-stalks at his feet.[[1]]
[1]. When the evil eye is directed to a bundle of pea-stalks it does no damage, but merely dries up the stalks.
So it was that he had all the windows of his fine house made to look over the Vistula. Twice had he by ill chance looked upon his farm-buildings, and they had been set on fire by his glance.