“
A young Persian gardener said to his Prince:
“Save me! I met death this morning. He made a threatening face at me. Tonight, I would like, by some miracle, to be in Ispahan.”
The bountiful Prince lends him his horses. That afternoon, the Prince encounters Death, and asks:
“Why did you make a threatening face at our gardener this morning?”
“It wasn’t a threatening face,” comes the reply, “but a surprised face. For I met him this morning far from Ispahan, and it is in Ispahan that I must take him tonight.”
”— From Le Grand Ecart by Jean Cocteau in Extraordinary Tales by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares.
