The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library)

by Francois Voltaire

  Her wounds were slight, and she was soon well again. Zadig’s hurt was more dangerous. An arrow had hit him near the eye and made a deep wound. Sémire asked nothing of the gods save that her lover should get well. Night and day her eyes were bathed in tears. She lived for the moment when Zadig should be able to delight in her tender looks once more. But an abscess formed on the wounded eye, and made the worst to be feared. The great doctor Hermes was sent for from Memphis, and he came to Babylon with a numerous retinue. He visited the sick man and said he would lose his eye. He even predicted the day and hour when this disastrous accident would happen. “If it had been the right eye,” he said, “I should have cured it, but wounds in the left eye are incurable.”

  All Babylon, while bemoaning Zadig’s fate, marveled at Hermes’ profound knowledge. Two days later the abscess burst of its own accord, and Zadig was completely cured. Hermes wrote a book in which he proved that Zadig should not have been cured. Zadig did not read the book. As soon as he could go out, he prepared to visit her who was the hope of his happiness in life, and for whom alone he wished to have eyes. Sénrlre was in the country where she had been for three days past. On his way there, Zadig learned that this beautiful lady had announced her unconquerable aversion to one-eyed men, and had married Orcan that very night. At this news he fainted. His misery brought him to the edge of the grave, and he was ill for a very long time. But reason prevailed at last over his affliction, and the atrocity of what had happened served even to console him.

  “Since I have suffered such a cruel caprice,” he said, “on the part of a girl brought up at court, I shall have to marry a daughter of the people.” He chose Azora, the wisest and best-born girl in the city. He married her and for a month lived in the bliss of the most affectionate union. Only, he noticed in his wife a certain frivolity of temperament and much inclination to think that the best-built young men had necessarily the most virtue and wit.

  II. THE NOSE

  One day Azora came back from a walk very angry and expostulating loudly.

  “What is the matter, dear wife?” asked Zadig. “Who has put you out?”

  “Alas!” replied Azora. “You would be as indignant as I am if you had seen what I have seen. I have been to console Cosrou, the young widow, who erected a tomb to her young husband two days ago near the stream which borders this plain. In her anguish she promised the gods to stay by the tomb so long as the stream should flow close to it.”

  “Well,” said Zadig, “she is an estimable woman who really loved her husband.”

  “Ah!” continued Azora, “if only you knew what she was doing when I called on her!”

  “What was she doing, beautiful Azora?”

  “She was changing the course of the stream.”

  Azora indulged in such lengthy protestations, burst into such fierce reproach of the young widow, that Zadig found her display of virtue offensive.

  He had a friend named Cador, one of the young men his wife thought better and more honest than the rest. He took him into his confidence and by making him a present of considerable value assured himself, so far as was possible, of his loyalty. Azora had passed two days at the house of one of her friends in the country, and returned home on the third day. The servants in tears announced that her husband had died suddenly that very night, that they had not dared bring her such melancholy news, and that they had just buried him at the end of the garden in the tomb of his fathers.

  Azora wept, tore her hair, and swore to kill herself. That night Cador asked permission to speak with her, and they wept together. The next day they wept less and dined together. Cador confided that his friend had left him the greater part of his wealth, and let Azora understand that his happiness would be to share his fortune with her. The lady wept, grew angry, calmed down. The supper was longer than the dinner. They talked to each other with more confidence. Azora sang the praises of the dead man, but admitted he had faults from which Cador was free.

  In the middle of the meal Cador complained of a violent pain in his spleen. The lady, anxious and assiduous, sent for all the essences with which she perfumed herself to see if perchance there was one that was good for a pain in the spleen. She was very sorry the great Hermes was no longer in Babylon, and even condescended to touch the place where Cador felt such sharp twinges. “Are you subject to this cruel malady?” she asked tenderly.

  “Sometimes I nearly die of it,” answered Cador, “and the only thing that relieves me is to apply to the spot the nose of a man twenty-four hours dead.”

  “What a strange remedy!” said Azora.

  “Not stranger than Mr. Arnoult’s sachets for apoplexy,” replied Cador.

  This answer, coupled with the young man’s extreme merit, decided the lady. “After all,” she said, “when my husband goes over the bridge Tchinavar from the world of yesterday into the world of tomorrow, will the angel Asrael let him pass any the less because his nose will be a little shorter in the second life than it was in the first?”

  She took a razor, therefore, went to her husband’s tomb, watered it with her tears, and advanced to cut off the nose of Zadig, whom she found stretched out in the grave. Zadig got up, holding his nose with one hand, and checking the razor with the other.

  “Madam,” he said, “do not cry out any more against young widow Cosrou. The project of cutting off my nose is quite as good as that of changing the course of a stream.”

  III. THE DOG AND THE HORSE

  Zadig found that the first month of marriage, even as it is written in the book of Zend, is the moon of honey, and the second is the moon of wormwood. After a time he had to get rid of Azora, who had become too difficult to live with, and he tried to find his happiness in the study of nature. “No one is happier,” said he, “than a philosopher who reads in this great book that God has placed before our eyes. The truths he discovers belong to him. He nourishes and ennobles his soul. He lives in peace, fearing nothing from men, and his dear wife does not come to cut off his nose.”

  Filled with these ideas, he retired to a house in the country on the banks of the Euphrates. There he did not pass his time calculating how many inches of water flow in one second under the arches of a bridge, or if a cubic line more rain fell in the month of the Mouse than in the month of the Sheep. He did not try to make silk from spiders’ webs, or porcelain from broken bottles; but he studied above all the characteristics of animals and plants, and soon acquired a perspicacity which showed him a thousand differences where other men see only uniformity.

  While walking one day near a little wood he saw one of the queen’s eunuchs hastening toward him, followed by several officers who seemed to be greatly troubled, and ran hither and thither like distracted men seeking something very precious they have lost.

  “Young man,” cried the Chief Eunuch, “you haven’t seen the queen’s dog, have you?”

  “It’s not a dog,” answered Zadig modestly, it’s a bitch.”

  “That’s so,” said the Chief Eunuch.

  “It’s a very small spaniel,” added Zadig, “which has had puppies recently; her left forefoot is lame, and she has very long ears.”

  “You have seen her then?” said the Eunuch, quite out of breath.

  “Oh, no!” answered Zadig. “I have not seen the animal, and I never knew the queen had a bitch.”

  Just at this moment, by one of the usual freaks of fortune, the finest horse in the king’s stables escaped from a groom’s hands and fled into the plains of Babylon. The Master of the King’s Hounds and all the other officials rushed after it with as much anxiety as the Chief Eunuch after the bitch. The Master of the King’s Hounds came up to Zadig and asked if he had not seen the king’s horse pass by.

  “The horse you are looking for is the best galloper in the stable,” answered Zadig. “It is fifteen hands high, and has a very small hoof. Its tail is three and a half feet long. The studs on its bit are of twenty-three carat gold, and its shoes of eleven scruple silver.”

  “Which road did
it take?” asked the Master of the King’s Hounds. “Where is it?”

  “I have not seen the horse,” answered Zadig, “and I have never heard speak of it”

  The Master of the King’s Hounds and the Chief Eunuch had no doubt but that Zadig had stolen the king’s horse and the queen’s bitch, and they had him taken before the Grand Destur who condemned him to the knout and afterwards to spend the rest of his days in Siberia. Hardly had judgment been pronounced than the horse and the bitch were found. The judges were in the sad necessity of having to rescind their judgment, but they condemned Zadig to pay four hundred ounces of gold for having denied seeing what he had seen. Only after the fine had been paid was Zadig allowed to plead his cause, which he did in the following terms.

  “Stars of Justice,” he said, “Unfathomable Wells of Knowledge, Mirrors of Truth, that have the solidity of lead, the hardness of iron, the radiance of the diamond, and much affinity with gold, since I am permitted to speak before this august assembly, I swear to you by Ormuzd that I have never seen the queen’s honorable bitch or the king of kings’ sacred horse. Let me tell you what happened.

  “I was walking toward the little wood where I met later the venerable Chief Eunuch and the very illustrious Master of the King’s Hounds. I saw an animal’s tracks on the sand and I judged without difficulty they were the tracks of a small dog. The long, shallow furrows printed on the little ridges of sand between the tracks of the paws informed me that the animal was a bitch with pendent dugs, who hence had had puppies recently. Other tracks in a different direction, which seemed all the time to have scraped the surface of the sand beside the forepaws, gave me the idea that the bitch had very long ears; and as I remarked that the sand was always less hollowed by one paw than by the three others, I concluded that our august queen’s bitch was somewhat lame, if I dare say so.

  “As regards the king of kings’ horse, you may know that as I walked along the road in this wood I saw the marks of horseshoes, all equal distances apart. That horse, said I, gallops perfectly. The dust on the trees in this narrow road only seven feet wide brushed off a little right and left three and a half feet from the middle of the road. This horse, said I, has a tail three and a half feet long, and its movement right and left has swept away this dust. I saw beneath the trees, which made a cradle five feet high, some leaves newly fallen from the branches, and I recognized that this horse had touched there and was hence fifteen hands high. As regards his bit, it must be of twenty-three carat gold, for he rubbed the studs against a stone which I knew to be a touch-stone and tested. From the marks his hoofs made on certain pebbles I knew the horse was shod with eleven scruple silver.”

  All the judges admired Zadig’s profound and subtle perspicacity, news of which came to the ears of the king and queen. In the anterooms, the throne-room, and the closet Zadig was the sole topic of conversation, and although several of the Magi thought he should be burned as a sorcerer, the king ordered the fine of four hundred ounces of gold to which he had been condemned to be returned to him. The clerk of the court, the ushers, the attorneys called on him with great pomp to bring him these four hundred ounces. They retained only three hundred and ninety-eight for judicial costs, and their lackeys demanded largess.

  Zadig saw how dangerous it was sometimes to be too knowing, and promised himself, on the first occasion that offered, not to say what he had seen.

  The occasion soon presented itself. A state prisoner escaped, and passed beneath the window of Zadig’s house. Zadig was questioned, and made no reply. But it was proved he had looked out of the window. For this crime he was condemned to five hundred ounces of gold, and as is the custom in Babylon, he thanked his judges for their indulgence.

  “Good God!” he said to himself. “A man who walks in a wood where the queen’s bitch or the king’s horse have passed is to be pitiedl How dangerous it is to look out of the window! How difficult it is to be happy in this life!”

  IV. THE ENVIOUS MAN

  Zadig resolved to find in philosophy and friendship consolation for the tricks fortune had played him. In a suburb of Babylon he had an elegantly decorated house where he brought together all the arts and pleasures worthy of an honest man. In the morning his library was open to all scholars, at night his table was free to all good fellows. But he soon learned how dangerous scholars are. A great dispute started over one of the laws of Zarathustra which forbade eating the griffon. “How can the griffon be forbidden,” asked some, “if this animal does not exist?”

  “The griffon must exist,” said others, “seeing that Zarathustra does not wish it to be eaten.”

  Zadig tried to bring the disputants into harmony. “If there are griffons,” he said, “do not let us eat them: if there are no griffons, we shall eat still less: anyway we shall all be obeying Zarathustra.”

  A scholar who had written thirteen books on the characteristics of the griffon, and was moreover a great theurgist, hastened to accuse Zadig before an Archmagus named Yébor, the most stupid of the Chaldeans and, consequently, the most fanatic. This man would have had Zadig impaled for the greater glory of the sun, and for this same glory would have recited Zarathustra’s breviary in an even more satisfied voice than usual. Friend Cador (one friend is worth more than a hundred priests) went to see the aged Yébor. “Long live the sun and the griffons!” he cried. “And take good care not to punish Zadig! He is a saint: he has some griffons in his poultry-yard, and he does not eat them at all. His accuser is a heretic who dares assert that although rabbits are cloven-footed they are in no way unclean.”

  “Well,” mumbled Yébor, wagging his bald head, “Zadig must be impaled for thinking wickedly about the griffons, and the other for speaking wickedly about the rabbits.”

  Cador composed the matter through the agency of a maid of honor whom he had provided with a baby, and who had much influence in the sacred college. No one was impaled, and this made several of the doctors murmur and predict that the omission presaged the fall of Babylon.

  “Where, ohl where, is happiness?” cried Zadig. “I am persecuted by everything in the world, and even by things which are not!” He cursed the scholars, and wished thenceforward to live only with good fellows.

  He brought together in his house the most honorable men and the most amiable women in Babylon. He gave dainty suppers preceded often by concerts, and enlivened by charming conversation whence he managed to banish the desire to show off one’s own wit—which is the surest way both of having none and of spoiling the most brilliant society. Vanity influenced the choice of neither his friends nor his viands, for he preferred in everything to be rather than to appear: and in this way he won for himself the sincere esteem to which he did not pretend.

  Opposite Zadig’s house lived Arimaze, a person whose mean soul was depicted on his coarse face. He was corroded with gall and swollen with conceit, and to cap these qualities he had a tedious wit. He slandered the world in revenge for his complete lack of success in it. Although he was rich, he had great difficulty in getting sycophants to come to his house. The carriages which entered Zadig’s courtyard each evening annoyed him; the noise of Zadig’s renown irritated him still more. Occasionally he went to Zadig’s and sat himself at table without being asked. There, he spoiled the company’s pleasure, just as harpies are said to defile the meats they touch. When one day he wished to give a party in honor of a lady, she refused his invitation and went to sup with Zadig. On another occasion, while he was talking with Zadig in the palace, they came up with one of the ministers who invited Zadig to supper and did not invite Arimaze. The most implacable hatreds often have no more important cause. This man, whom everyone in Babylon called “Arimaze The Envious,” wished to get rid of Zadig because the latter was always called “Zadig The Happy.” As Zarathustra says—The opportunity of doing harm presents itself a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.

  The Envious went to Zadig’s house and found him walking in his gardens with two friends and a lady to whom he often paid
compliments without other intention than to be pleasant. The conversation turned to a war which the king had just concluded successfully against his vassal, the King of Hircania. Zadig, who in this short war had shown his courage, praised the king greatly and the lady still more. He took his tablets and wrote four verses which he composed on the spot and gave to this beautiful person to read. His friends begged him to let them hear the verses. Modesty or, rather, a quite understandable vanity, stopped him. He knew that impromptu verses never seem good save to her in whose honor they are composed. He broke in half the tablet on which he had just written, and threw the two pieces into a rosebush, where his friends looked for them in vain. It started to rain a little, and they returned to the house. The Envious stayed in the garden and searched so hard that he found a piece of the tablet. It was broken in such a way that each half of a verse, which filled a line, made sense and even a verse of shorter measure; but by a still stranger chance these little verses made a sense which contained the most horrible insults against the king. This is what they said: