6493. I have often talked to spirits about fortune, which seems to people in the world like haphazard chance since they do not know its origin; and some, because they do not know its origin, deny its existence. Whenever something happened to me that seemed haphazard, the angels told me that it happened because evil spirits were present, and when I suffered some mishap, they said that the sphere of that kind of spirits was prevailing. Evil spirits also discovered how, by the use of the tricks they knew, to produce a sphere from which misfortunes resulted that looked plainly like the products of mere chance. The angels went on to say that all things, in fact the smallest of all things, and even the smallest of the smallest, are directed by the Lord's Providence, down to the very steps taken by the feet. And when the kind of thing prevails that is contrary to Providence, misfortunes occur. They also substantiated the assertion that there is no such thing as mere chance and that what seems to be haphazard, or fortune, is Providence at work in the last and lowest degree of order, in which all things are subject to comparative inconstancy.