Fortune's Kiss
			A Fable About Strength and Weakness
		In a small town located in a remote part of the country, on the coast but rarely visited by any craft larger than a two-person fishing boat, there lived a woman.  She was prosperous. She wasn't rich, but she was "comfortable".  In this town of very modest means she was a rather successful merchant. She ran the town brothel.   Hers was the largest home in the town.  It sat, surrounded by rose bushes, on a small bluff overlooking the central square.  The only other building of any size was the Town Hall.  It housed the Mayor's office, other offices occupied by the Mayor's friends, and a small room that didn't show on any blueprints of the building.   The only paved street in the town led up the hill to the her home.  She had paid for it to be paved out of her own money.  The Town Council said that there wasn't enough in the treasury to pave it. There wasn't, because most of the money had already been spent on new furniture for the Mayor's office and his private home.   The Woman was the most admired person in the town, and also the most hated.  She was admired by those people who understood and appreciated hard work and a good heart.   She was hated by those citizens who saw themselves as the Elite, the High Society, the Guardians of the Public Good.  She was hated by those people who wished that they were as prosperous, as successful and as smart as she was.   The Woman in the large home on the hill knew that she was hated and in order to keep the peace and avoid a confrontation she maintained a low public profile and insisted that her girls do likewise.   Serious hatred is a powerful thing.  It can make people do cruel and stupid things. That is what it made the Haters do.   The Haters held meeting after meeting in the secret room of the Town Hall trying to decide what they could do to rid themselves of the object of their hatred.  Finally, they decided to pass new laws that would make her an official lawbreaker and thereby give them the legal power to sieze her business and drive her out of town.  They met in a formal Citizen's Council Meeting and pretended to argue the pro's and con's of the issue and then quickly passed their new laws. The Haters were gleeful with what they saw as their new unequaled and unquestioned power in the town.   They couldn't just pass a law to simply make the brothel illegal, they still liked to visit it while their wives were busy with pointless civic functions created by their husbands.  A counterpoint of pancake breakfasts and purple veined adultery.   They used their new laws to hurt the Woman on the Hill every way that they could.  They made the street leading to her home a one-way street heading downhill and they posted a policeman to stop anyone from going the "wrong way" up the hill.  When the customers began to cut through backyards to avoid the policeman they passed more laws.   They cut off garbage pickup in the hope of having her home declared a health hazard. This attempt failed when almost every man leaving the home was seen clutching a small paper bag.   A law was passed making it illegal for more than five unrelated women to live together in the same home. This caused an immediate uproar when an overzealous police officer arrested all sixteen of the Little Sisters of Saint Clair who shared the Convent down by the pier.   With each new law the chaos in the town increased as the rights of the ordinary people, who didn't hate the Woman on the Hill, were taken away and their freedoms restricted. Taxes were increased by the Council to pay for more policemen to enforce their new laws.      After more than a year of trying and failing to close the brothel using the Law, the Haters finally realized that drastic action was needed.      Late on a Sunday night, when the moon was new, a man in a policeman's uniform walked silently up the hill toward the large, well lit home.  When he reached the front yard he stopped and took a bottle out of the canvas bag that was slung over his shoulder.  He unscrewed the cap, sniffed the gasoline that filled the bottle and then tossed the cap into the rose bushes that lined the walk.  He took a red handkerchief from his back pocket, twisted the end and stuck it down into the neck of the bottle.  He struck a match on his badge and held the flame to the drooping end of the handkerchief.  When it caught fire and began to burn up toward the mouth of the bottle the policeman called out.      "Old Woman! Old Woman! I've got a gift for you from your neighbors. You should have used your head and moved out when they asked you nice.  It's too late now. Bye-bye, Old Woman."   He laughed as he leaned back and extended his arm to throw the bottle through the front window of the home.   "Bye-bye, Old Woman."