“Of all the slow payers,” said Sétoc, “he’s the sharpest I’ve ever met.”
“Well,” insisted Zadig, “let me plead your cause before the judge.”
And so he summoned the Hebrew before the tribunal, and spoke thus to the judge:
“Ear of the Throne of Justice,” he said, “I come on behalf of my master to claim from this man the return of five hundred ounces of silver which he will not give up.”
“Have you any witnesses?” asked the judge.
“No, they are both dead, but there is still a large stone on which the money was counted, and if it please your Highness to order the stone to be fetched I hope it will bear witness. The Hebrew and I will stay here until the stone arrives. I will have it brought at my master Sétoc’s expense.”
“Very well,” said the judge, and set to disposing of other matters.
At the end of the sitting he turned to Zadig. “Well,” he said, “your stone is not here yet?”
“Your Highness might wait until tomorrow,” grinned the Hebrew, “and even then the stone would not be here. It is more than six miles away, and it would take fifteen men to move it”
“Therel” cried Zadig. “I told you the stone would bear witness. As this man knows where it is, he confesses it is the stone on which the money was paid.”
The disconcerted Hebrew was at last constrained to admit everything, and the judge ordered him to be bound to the stone and left without food or drink until he had returned the five hundred ounces of silver. They were soon returned.
The slave Zadig and the stone were held in great esteem throughout Arabia.
XI. THE FUNERAL PYRE
Sétoc was enchanted and made an intimate friend of his slave. He was no more able to do without him than the king of Babylon had been; and Zadig was glad Sétoc had no wife. He found in his master a natural predilection for virtue, much uprightness, and good sense. He was sorry to see that Sétoc worshiped the celestial army —that is to say, the sun, moon, and stars, in accordance with ancient Arabian custom. At times he spoke. to him of it very discreetly. He finished by telling him that they were bodies like the others, and no more deserved his worship than a tree or a rock.
“But,” said Sétoc, “they are the Eternal Beings whence we draw all our blessings. They give life to nature and regulate the seasons, and besides, they are so far away one can barely help holding them in veneration.”
“You receive more blessings from the waters of the Red Sea,” replied Zadig, “on which is borne your merchandise from the Indies. Why should not they be as old as the stars? And if you worship what is distant you should worship the people of the Ganges, which is at the end of the earth.”
“No,” answered Sétoc, “the stars shine too brightly for me not to worship them.”
When night came Zadig lit a large number of tapers in the tent where he was to sup with Setoc, and as soon as his patron appeared threw himself on his knees before them and cried: “Eternal and Radiant Lights, grant me always your favors!”—after which he sat down to table without looking at Sétoc.
“What are you doing?” asked Sétoc, astonished.
“I do as you do,” replied Zadig. “I worship these candles, and neglect their master and mine.”
Sétoc grasped the profound meaning of this apologue. His slave’s wisdom entered his soul. He no longer burned his incense in honor of things, but worshiped the Eternal Being who had created them.
There was at that time in Arabia a ghastly custom which came originally from Scythia and, having established itself in India on the authority of the Brahmins, threatened to overrun the whole of the Orient. When a married man died and his well-beloved widow wished to be cleansed from sin, she burned herself publicly on her husband’s body. It was the solemn ceremony known as “the pyre of widowhood.” The tribe in which the most women had been burned was the most esteemed.
An Arab of Sétoc’s tribe having died, his widow, Almona by name, a very pious girl, made known the day and the hour when she would throw herself in the fire to the sound of drums and trumpets. Zadig protested to Sétoc how opposed this horrible custom was to the good of the human race. He pointed out that every day young widows were allowed to burn who might otherwise give children to the state, or at least rear those they already had, and he made him agree that such a barbarous habit should, if possible, be abolished.
“But,” said Sétoc, “women have had the privilege of burning themselves for more than a thousand years: who among us would dare alter a law thus hallowed by time? Is there anything more worthy of respect than an abuse dating from ancient times?”
“Well,” answered Zadig, “reason is more ancient still. Speak to the chiefs of the tribes, and I will go to find the young widow.”
He had himself presented to her and, having gained admittance to her mind by praising her beauty and saying what a pity it was to set fire to so many charms, did homage further to her constancy and courage.
“You loved your husband enormously, then?” he asked her.
“Love him!” replied the Arab lady. “Not in the least! He was a jealous brute, an intolerable man! But I am absolutely determined to throw myself on his funeral pyre.”
“It seems,” said Zadig, “that there is a quite exquisite pleasure in being burned alive.”
“Ah!” said the lady, “it makes one’s flesh creep, but one must go through with it. I am a pious woman, my reputation would be lost, and everyone would laugh at me if I did not burn myself.”
Zadig got her to agree that she was burning herself out of vanity and for other people, and then spoke to her at length in such a way as to make her love life a little. He even managed to inspire in her some friendliness for the man who was talking to her. “What would you do,” he asked her, “if the vanity of burning yourself ceased to possess you?”
“Lack-a-day!” answered the lady, “I think I should ask you to marry me.”
Zadig’s heart was too full of Astarte for him not to evade this declaration, but he went at once in search of the chiefs of the tribe, told them what had passed, and counseled them to make a law whereby it would be forbidden for a widow to burn herself unless she had first had a tête-à-tête with a young man lasting a complete hour.
From that time forth no lady in Arabia burned herself, and the Arabians were under an obligation to Zadig for having destroyed in a day a cruel custom that had endured for so many centuries. He was therefore the benefactor of Arabia.
XII. THE SUPPER
Sétoc could not part with this man in whom wisdom dwelt, and he took him to the great fair at Bassora, where the chief merchants of the inhabited world were accustomed to congregate. For Zadig it was an evident consolation to see so many men assembled in one place. The universe seemed to him to be a big family, the members of which gathered together at Bassora.
From the second day he found himself eating with an Egyptian, an Indian from the Ganges country, an inhabitant of Cathay, a Creek, a Celt, and several other foreigners who in their frequent travels toward the Ara bian Gulf had learned enough Arabic to make themselves understood. The Egyptian seemed very wroth.
“What an accursed place Bassora is!” he said. “No one here will lend me a thousand ounces of gold on a parcel of the finest dry-goods in the world.”
“What are the dry-goods,” asked Sétoc, “on which you cannot obtain that amount?”
“My aunt’s body,” replied the Egyptian. “She was the finest woman in Egypt. She always used to accompany me, and now she has died on the road, I’ve had her made into one of the finest mummies we have. In my own country I could pawn her for as much as I liked. It’s very strange that here nobody will give me a paltry thousand ounces of gold on such solid security.”
Getting angrier and angrier, he was about to eat some excellent boiled fowl. The Indian took his hand and stopped him. “What are you going to do?” he cried sorrowfully.
“Eat this chicken,” said the man with the mummy.
“Take care,” continued
the man from the Canges, “take care! Your dead aunt’s soul may have passed into this chicken’s body, and you do not wish to expose yourself to the possibility of eating your aunt To cook a chicken is a manifest outrage on nature.”
“What are you talking about with your nature and your chickens?” demanded the choleric Egyptian. “We worship a bull, and many a good meal do we make of beef.”
“You worship a bull! is it possible?” said the man from the Ganges.
“Nothing more possible,” answered the other. “We’ve done so for a hundred and thirty-five thousand years, and none of us find anything amiss in it ”
“A hundred and thirty-five thousand years?” returned the Indian. “You exaggerate somewhat. Why, India has only been populated eighty thousand, and we’re certainly older than you. Brahma forbade us to eat beef before you dreamed of putting the ox on either the altar or the spit.”
“A nice booby Brahma to compare with our Apis,” sneered the Egyptian. “What did your Brahma do that was so wonderful?”
“It was Brahma taught men to read and write,” answered the Brahmin, “and it’s to him the world owes the game of chess.”
“Not a bit of it,” interrupted a Chaldean seated nearby, “we owe such great benefits to the fish Oannes, and it is only fair to render unto him the things that are his. Everyone will tell you he was a divine being, that he had a golden tail and a fine human head, and that he came out of the water to preach on land for three hours each day. He had numerous children who were all kings, as everyone knows. I have his picture at home, and I hold it in veneration, as is my duty. You may eat beef as much as you like, but it is assuredly very great sacrilege to cook fish. And besides, you are both of too recent and too ignoble origin for you to argue with me. The Egyptian nation counts a mere hundred and thirty-five thousand years, the Indians boast of only a palty eighty thousand. We have almanacs dating back four thousand centuries. Listen to me, renounce your follies, and I will give each of you a beautiful picture of Cannes!”
The man from Cambalu took up the conversation. “I have a great respect,” he said, “for the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, and Celts, for Brahma, the bull Apis, the beautiful fish Oannes; but maybe Li or Tien, whichever you prefer to call him, is well worth the bulls and the fishes. I will say nothing about my own country: it is as big as the lands of Egypt, Chaldea, and India put together. I do not argue about antiquity because to be happy is sufficient, and to be old precious little, but if you are talking about almanacs let me tell you the whole of Asia accepts ours—and we had some very good ones before they knew arithmetic in Chaldea.”
“You’re all blockheads!” cried the Greek, “the whole lot of you! Don’t you know that Chaos is father of every thing, that Form and Matter have set the world in the state it is?”
This Greek spoke for a long time, but was interrupted at last by the Celt who, having drunk deeply while they were arguing, thought himself wiser than all the others. With an oath on his lips he said that only Teutath and oak-mistletoe were worth talking about, that he for his part always carried a sprig of mistletoe in his pocket, that his ancestors the Scythians were the only people worth anything who had ever existed, that they had indeed sometimes eaten men, but that such a detail was no reason why his race should not be held in great respect. Further, he threatened that if anyone spoke ill of Teutath, he would teach him how to behave.
Thenceforward the quarrel became more heated, and Sétoc saw the moment coming when the table would be running with blood. Zadig, who had kept silence throughout the dispute, rose at last, and as the Celt seemed the maddest addressed him first. He said the Celt was quite right, and asked him for some mistletoe. He congratulated the Greek on his eloquence, and calmed all their heated spirits. To the man from Cathay he said very little, because that worthy had been the most reasonable of them all. “My friends,” he wound up, “you are going to quarrel about nothing, for you all hold the same views.” At these words all his listeners cried out in protest. “But is it not true,” Zadig asked the Celt, “that you worship not the mistletoe but him who made the mistletoe and the oak?”
“That is so,” answered the Celt:
“And you, Mr. Egyptian, you worship in a particular bull him who has given you all bulls?”
“Yes,” said the Egyptian.
“The fish Oannes,” he continued, “must be subject to him who made the sea and the fishes?”
“Agreed,” said the Chaldean.
“The Indian,” added Zadig, “and the Cathayan recognize a first principle as you do. I did not understand very well the admirable things the Greek said, but I am sure he too admits a superior Being on whom Form and Matter depend.”
The Greek, who was much admired, said that Zadig had grasped his meaning very well.
“Well, then,” continued Zadig, “you all think the same thing, and consequently there is no reason for quarreling.”
Everyone embraced him. Sétoc, having sold his wares at very good prices, took him back to the tribe. On arriving Zadig learned that he had been tried in his absence, and condemned to be burned over a slow fire.
XIII. THE ASSIGNATION
During his journey to Bassora, the priests of the stars had resolved to punish him. The trinkets and precious stones of the young women they sent to the funeral pyre were their perquisites, and it was certainly the least they could do to have Zadig burned for the trick he had played them. They accused him, therefore, of holding unorthodox opinions about the celestial army, and deposed against him on oath that they had heard him say that the stars did not sink into the sea. This appalling blasphemy made the judges shudder. They nearly tore their clothes in anguish when they heard these impious words, and doubtless they would actually have done so had Zadig had the money to pay for new ones. In their exceeding sorrow, however, they contented themselves with condemning him to be burned over a slow fire.
Sétoc, despairing, in vain used all his influence to save his friend: he was soon forced to hold his tongue. Almona, the young widow, who had developed a considerable liking for life (which she owed to Zadig) resolved to get him out of the pyre, with the abuses of which he had acquainted her. She turned her plan over in her head without mentioning it to anyone. Zadig was to be executed on the following day; she had only the night in which to save him. This is how she showed herself a discreet and charitable woman.
Having perfumed herself, she set off her beauty with the richest and most seductive dress she had, and went to beg secret audience of the chief priest of the stars. When she was in the presence of this venerable old man she spoke to him as follows:
“Eldest Son of the Great Bear,” she said, “Brother of Taurus, Cousin of the Dog-Star (these were the pontiff’s titles), I come to confide to you my twinges of conscience. I fear greatly that I have committed a terrible sin in not burning myself on my dear husband’s funeral pyre. What indeed have I saved? Only my mortal flesh, which is already withered.” As she said these words she drew from her long silk sleeves two naked arms of beautiful shape and dazzling whiteness. “You see,” she continued, “how little it is worth.”
The pontiff thought in his heart that it was worth a great deal. His eyes said so, and his mouth confirmed the opinion of his eyes. He swore he had never in his life seen such lovely arms.
“Alas,” said the widow, “the arms may be less unlovely than the rest of me, but you will admit the neck is not worthy of my regard.” She let him see the most charming bosom nature had ever formed. A rosebud on an ivory apple would have seemed in comparison but a madder-root on a piece of boxwood, and lambs coming from the wash-pen of a brownish-yellow shade. This breast, her great black eyes languishing with a flame of gentle fire in their depths, her ardent cheeks of the most lovely rose mingled with purest milk-white, her nose which was not like the Tower of Lebanon, her lips like two coral reefs enclosing the most beautiful pearls in the Arabian Sea—all together made the old man feel he was but twenty. Stammering, he made a declaration of love. Almona,
seeing he was on fire, begged mercy for Zadig.
“Alas, my beautiful lady!” he replied. “My indulgence would be useless alone. You would need the signatures of three of my colleagues as well.”
“Anyway,” said Almona, “sign for yourself.”
“Willingly,” returned the priest, “on condition that your favors are the price of my compliance.”
“You do me too much honor,” answered Almona. “You have but to come to my room when the sun has set, and as soon as the bright star Scheat is on the horizon you will find me on a rose-colored couch which you may make use of as you will with your servant.”
Carrying his signature, she left him. The old man was brimming over with love and distrust of his powers. He spent the rest of the day bathing himself, and while he waited impatiently for the star Scheat to appear drank a liqueur composed of Ceylon cinnamon and precious spices from Tidor and Ternate.
Meanwhile, Almona went to find the second pontiff, who assured her that the sun and moon and all the stars of the firmament were but wills o’ the wisp compared with her charms. She begged the same mercy, and he asked the same price. She let herself be conquered, and gave to the second pontiff an assignation at the rising of the star Algenib. Thence she went to the third and fourth priests, collecting a signature each time, and making assignations from star to star. After this, she had word sent to the judges asking them to come to her house on important business. They came, and she showed the four signatures, telling the judges the price at which the priests had sold mercy for Zadig. Each priest arrived at his appointed hour, and each was much astonished to find his colleagues there and, still more, the judges, to whom their infamy was manifest.
Sétoc was so charmed with Almona’s artfulness that he made her his wife.
XIV. THE DANCE
Sétoc had to go on business to the Isle of Serendib, but the first month of marriage being, as we know, the honeymoon, he could not either leave his wife or think he ever would be able to leave her. He therefore asked his friend Zadig to make the journey for him.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 34