XVII. THE FISHERMAN
A few leagues from Arbogad’s castle he found himself on the bank of a little river. He was still bewailing his lot and looking on himself as the model of misery. He saw lying on the bank a fisherman who held a net loosely in his listless hand, seeming to let it go while he raised his eyes to the sky.
“I am certainly the most miserable of men,” the fisherman was saying. “I was, as everyone acknowledged, the most famous cream-cheese merchant in Babylon, and now I am ruined. I had the prettiest wife a man of my station could have, and she deceived me. I still had a miserable little house, and it was plundered and destroyed. I took refuge in a hut, and now my sole source of livelihood is fishing, and I do not catch any fish. O my net, I will throw thee into the water no more, I will throw myself instead.”
As he said these words he stood up and walked toward the water with the bearing of a man who is going to hurl himself into the river and end his life.
“Really!” said Zadig to himself, “so there are other men as unhappy as I am.” An eager desire to save the fisherman’s life came promptly with this reflection. Zadig ran to him, stopped him and questioned him gently and consolingly. It is claimed that a man is less miserable when he shares his misery with someone else, but according to Zarathustra this is due not to man’s malignity but to his need When one is sad one feels drawn to an unhappy man as to a fellow-creature. The joy of a happy man would be an insult, but two unhappy men are like two young trees which, leaning on each other, brace themselves against the storm.
“Why do you yield to your misfortunes?” Zadig asked the fisherman.
“Because,” replied the fisherman, “I see nothing else to do. I was the most highy respected man in the village of Derlback near Babylon, and with my wife’s help I made the best cream-cheeses in the whole empire. Queen Astarte and Zadig, the famous minister, adored them. I had supplied them with six hundred cheeses and went to town one day to be paid. On reaching Babylon I learned that Zadig and the queen had disappeared. I ran to the house of my lord Zadig, whom I had never seen, and found there the constables of the Grand Destur: armed with a royal warrant, they were faithfully and methodically ransacking the house. I fled to the queen’s kitchens; some of the royal cooks told me she was dead, others that she was in prison, others said she had fled, but all assured me I should not be paid for my cheeses. I went with my wife to my lord Orcan, who was one of my customers, and asked his protection in our affliction. He accorded it to my wife, but refused it to me. She was whiter than the cream-cheeses which started my misfortune, and the glory of Tyrian purple was not more lustrous than the roses that lent life to her whiteness. That is what made Orcan keep her and drive me out of his house. I wrote my dear wife the letter of a man in the depths of despair. She said to the bearer: ‘Oh, yes, let me see! I know who wrote this; I have heard speak of him. They say he makes excellent cream-cheeses: let some be brought to me, and let him be paid.’
“In my distress I thought of applying to the courts of justice. I had six ounces of gold left: of these I had to give two to the man of law I consulted, two to the attorney who undertook my case, two to the chief judge’s secretary. When that was done my case had not yet started, and I had spent more money than my cheeses and my wife were worth. I went back to my village with the intention of selling my house so that I might have my wife. My house was well worth sixty ounces of gold, but people saw I was poor and eager to sell. The first man I approached offered thirty ounces, the second twenty, and the third ten. So deluded was I that I was about to accept when a Prince of Hyrcania came to Babylon, and laid waste everything on his road. My house was first sacked and then burned.
“Having thus lost my money, my wife, and my house, I retired to this country where you see me now. I have tried to live by plying the fisherman’s trade. The fish, like the men, laugh at me. I catch nothing, and am dying of hunger, and if it were not for you, august consoler, I was going to die in the river.”
The fisherman did not tell this tale all at once, for at every moment Zadig, overcome with emotion, interrupted him with—“What! you know nothing of the queen’s fate?”
“No, my lord,” replied the fisherman, “I know nothing of the queen’s fate, but I do know that neither she nor Zadig paid for my cream-cheeses, that my wife has been filched from me, and that I am in despair.”
“I trust you will not lose all your money,” said Zadig. “I have heard speak of this Zadig, he is an honest man, and if he returns to Babylon (as he hopes to) he will give you more than he owes you. As regards your wife, who is not so honest, I counsel you not to try to get her back. Listen to me. Go to Babylon. I shall be there before you because I am on horseback and you are on foot. Go to see the illustrious Cador, tell him you have met his friend. Await me at his house. Go along, perhaps you will not be unhappy always.”
“All-powerful Ormuzdl” he continued, “you use me to console this man. Whom will you use to console me?”
Speaking thus he gave the fisherman half of all the money he had brought from Arabia, and the fisherman, overcome with delight, kissed the feet of Cador’s friend. “You are my angel deliverer!” he cried.
Zadig, however, went on asking for news, and wept.
“But, lord,” said the fisherman, “are you also unfortunate, you who do good?”
“A hundred times more unfortunate than you,” answered Zadig.
“But how can it be,” pursued the good man, “that he who gives is more to be pitied than he who receives?”
“The reason is that your greatest misfortune was poverty, whereas mine is a trouble of the heart,” replied Zadig.
“Did Orcan by chance steal your wife?” asked the fisherman.
This question reminded Zadig of all his adventures. He recited the list of his misfortunes, starting with the queen’s bitch right up to his meeting with the brigand Arbogad. “Ah!” he said to the fisherman, “Orcan deserves to be punished, but usually it is just those people who are the favorites of fate. At all events, go to my lord Cador’s house and wait for me there.”
They parted, the fisherman thanking his fate as he walked, and Zadig cursing his as he rode.
XVIII. THE BASILISK
On reaching a beautiful meadow, Zadig saw a number of women looking for something with much diligence. He took the liberty of approaching one of them and asked if he might have the honor of helping them in their search.
“Do nothing of the sortl” answered the Syrian girl. “What we seek may be touched only by women.”
“That is very strange,” said Zadig. “Dare I ask what it is that only women may touch?”
“We seek a basilisk,” she replied.
“A basilisk, Madam? and why do you seek a basilisk, if you please?”
“It is for Ogul, our lord and master, whose castle you see on the river bank at the edge of this meadow. We are his very humble slaves. My lord Ogul is sick, and his doctor has ordered him to eat a basilisk cooked in rosewater. As this animal is very rare and lets itself be captured only by women, my lord Ogul has promised to choose for his well-beloved wife the girl who brings him a basilisk. Let me go on looking, please; you can see what it would cost me if I were forestalled by my companions.”
Zadig left the Syrian girl and her companions to look for their basilisk and continued his walk across the meadow. When he reached the bank of a little stream, he saw lying on the grass another lady who was looking for nothing. She appeared to be of majestic stature, but her face was covered with a veil. She was leaning toward the stream and uttering deep sighs. In her hand she held a little stick with which she was tracing some characters on the fine sand between the grass and the water. Zadig was curious to see what she was writing. He saw the letter Z, then an A: he was surprised: then a D; he started. Never was astonishment greater than his when he saw the last two letters of his own name. For some time he stood motionless. At last, breaking the silence in a halting voice—“Generous lady,” he stammered, “forgive a stranger, an un
fortunate, daring to ask by what odd chance I find the name of ZADIG traced here by your divine hand.”
At this voice, at these words, the lady lifted her veil with trembling hands, looked at Zadig, uttered a cry of affection, surprise, and joy, and succumbing to the variety of emotions that assailed her soul all at once, fell swooning in his arms.
It was Astarte herself, the Queen of Babylon, the woman Zadig adored and whom he reproached himself with adoring. It was the woman for whose fate he had so wept and feared. For a moment he lost the use of his faculties. Then looking at Astarte’s eyes, which opened again languidly with a look of mingled love and confusion—“ Can it be true?” he cried. “Immortal powers that preside over the destinies of frail mortals, do you give me back Astarte? When, where, in what plight do I see her once morel” He threw himself on his knees before her and fell on his face in the dust at her feet. The Queen of Babylon lifted his head and made him sit beside her on the riverbank: many times did she wipe from her eyes the tears which would not stop flowing. Twenty times did she start and start again telling him things which her lamentations interrupted. She questioned him on the chance which had reunited them, and suddenly forestalled his answers with other questions. She broached the recital of her own misadventures and wanted to hear all about Zadig’s. When at last both had calmed the tumult in their souls somewhat, Zadig related briefly by what accident he happened to be in this meadow.
“But, unfortunate and honored queen,” he asked, “how is it I find you in this lovely spot clad as a slave and in the company of other slave-women who seek a basilisk to have it cooked in rosewater by doctor’s orders?”
“While they are looking for the basilisk,” said beautiful Astarte, “I will tell you all I have suffered and all the things I forgive heaven for now that I see you again. You know that the king my husband took it ill that you were the most lovable of men. It was for this reason that he decided one night to have you strangled and me poisoned. You know how heaven allowed my little dwarf to warn me of his sublime majesty’s order. Hardly had faithful Cador forced you to obey me and depart, than he dared enter my rooms in the middle of the night by a secret door. He carried me off to the temple of Ormuzd where his brother the Magus shut me up in a huge statue of which the foot touched the temple’s foundations, and the head the dome. I was as it were buried, but the Magus looked after me, and I lacked nothing I needed.
“Meanwhile, his majesty’s apothecary went at day-break to my room with a potion of henbane, opium, hemlock, black hellebore and aconite, while another officer went to your rooms with a blue silk cord. They found no one. The better to deceive the king, Cador pretended to betray us: he said you had taken the road to India, and I the road to Memphis. Couriers were sent out after us both.
“The couriers looking for me did not know me by sight. Barely ever had I shown my face to anyone but you, in my husband’s presence and by his order. They pursued me on a picture of me made specially for the occasion. A woman of my height, who had greater charms maybe, was noticed by them near the Egyptian frontier. She was wandering about, distraught. They had no doubts as to this being the Queen of Babylon, and brought her to Moabdar. At first their mistake sent the king into a violent rage, but after looking at this woman more closely he discovered she was very beautiful, and was consoled. Her name was Missouf. I have learned since that in Egyptian this name signifies the capricious beauty. And indeed she was capricious, but she had as much cunning as caprice. She pleased Moabdar and mastered him to the point of having herself proclaimed his wife. Then her nature displayed itself in its entirety. She gave herself up fearlessly to all the mad whims of her imagination. She had a fancy to force the Chief of the Magi, who was old and gouty, to dance before her, and when he refused she persecuted him with the utmost fury. She ordered her master-of-the-horse to make her a jam tart. The master-of-the-horse pleaded in vain that he was no pastrycook; he had to make the tart, and then Missouf had him dismissed because the tart was burned. She gave the post of master-of-the-horse to her dwarf, and that of chancellor to a page. Everyone missed me.
“The king, who was an honorable enough man up to the time he wished to poison me and strangle you, seemed to have drowned his qualities in the prodigious love he had for the capricious beauty. He came to the temple on the great day of the sacred fire. I heard him pray to the gods for Missouf at the feet of the very statue where I was imprisoned. I raised my voice: ‘The gods,’ I cried, ‘refuse the prayers of a king turned tyrant, who wanted to have his sensible wife killed that he might marry a wild scatterbrain.’
“Moabdar was so dumbfounded by these words that his mind was unhinged. The oracle I had delivered, coupled with Missouf’s tyranny, made him lose his reason. In a few days he was quite mad.
“His madness, which seemed a punishment from heaven, was the signal for revolution. The people rose in revolt and ran to arms. Babylon, so long immersed in emasculate indolence, became the theater of terrible civil war. I was taken out of my statue and put at the head of one faction. Cador rushed to Memphis to bring you back to Babylon. The Prince of Hyrcania, learning the disastrous news, returned with his army to make a third faction in Chaldea. He attacked the king, who fled before him with his harebrained Egyptian woman. Moabdar died transpierced. Missouf fell into the hands of the conqueror. My misfortune was to be captured by a party of Hyrcanians and led before the prince at precisely the same moment as Missouf. You will be flattered doubtless to learn that the prince thought me more beautiful than the Egyptian, but you will be sorry to learn that he marked me for his harem. He told me very determinedly that he would come to fetch me when he had completed a military expedition he was about to undertake. You can judge of my sorrow. My bonds with Moabdar being broken, I could belong to Zadig, and I fell into this barbarian’s chains. I answered him with the pride my rank and feelings gave me. I had always heard that heaven gave persons of my rank a characteristic majesty which with a word and a glance could drive into the humbleness of deepest respect those who were rash enough to stray beyond it. I spoke as a queen, but I was treated like a chambermaid. The Hyrcanian, without even condescending to speak to me, told his black eunuch I was a saucy wench but he thought me pretty. He ordered him to look after me and put me on the regime of the favorites, so as to refresh my complexion and make me more worthy of his favors when it should be convenient for him to honor me with them. I told him I should kill myself. He laughed, and replied that people did not kill themselves, that he was accustomed to all these little affectations; whereupon he left me, much as a man who has just put a new parrot in his menagerie. What a state of affairs for the first queen in the world and, I will add, for a heart which belonged to Zadig!”
At these words Zadig fell at her knees and bathed them with tears. Tenderly did Astarte lift him up, and continue her story.
“I found myself,” she went on, “a barbarian’s chattel and the rival of a madwoman with whom I was shut up. She told me the story of her adventure in Egypt. I judged from the description she gave of you, from the time, the dromedary on which you were mounted, from all the details in short, that it was Zadig who had fought for her. I had no doubts as to your being at Memphis, and I resolved to get away there. Beautiful Missouf,’ I said to her, you are much nicer than I am, you will entertain the Prince of Hyrcania much better than I shall, help me to escape. You will reign alone, and you will make me happy while you relieve yourself of a rival.’ Missouf devised with me my plans of escape. I left secretly, therefore, with an Egyptian slave-woman.
“I was already near Arabia when a famous brigand named Arbogad carried me off and sold me to some merchants who brought me to this castle where lives my lord Ogul. He bought me without knowing who I was. He is a voluptuary who thinks nothing but good living, and believes God placed him in the world to eat. He is enormously fat and hence is nearly always at the point of suffocation. His doctor has little influence with him when his digestion is in order, but governs him like a despot when he has overeaten himse
lf. This doctor has persuaded him that a basilisk cooked in rosewater will cure him. Lord Ogul has promised his hand to whichever of his slaves brings him a basilisk. As you can see, I let them flock to merit this honor, and I have never had less desire to find the basilisk than since heaven has let me see you again.”
Astarte and Zadig then confided to each other all that long-repressed emotion, misfortune, and love could inspire in the noblest and most passionate hearts; and the genii who rule love carried their words right to the realms of Venus.
The women returned to Ogul’s castle without having found anything. Zadig was presented to Ogul, and spoke to him in these terms: ‘May immortal health descend from heaven to watch over your days! I am a doctor, and having heard of your illness have hastened to your side, bringing you a basilisk cooked in rosewater. Not that I claim the right to be your wife. All I ask is the freedom of a young Babylonian slave whom you have had only a few days, and should I not be so fortunate as to cure the great lord Ogul, I consent to slavery in her stead.”
The offer was accepted, and Astarte left for Babylon with Zadig’s servant, having promised to send a courier at once to let him know all that happened. Their farewells were as tender as had been their meeting. The moment of reunion and the moment of parting are the two greatest times in life, as the great book of Zend says. Zadig loved the queen as much as he swore, and the queen loved Zadig more than she said.
While Astarte was on the way to Babylon, Zadig had a talk with Ogul. “My lord,” he said, “my basilisk must not be eaten, all its virtues must enter your system by the pores of your skin. I have put it in a little leather bag, which has been well blown out and covered with a fine skin. You must hit this bag with all your strength, and I will send it back to you over and over again. A few days of this treatment will show you the power of my art.”
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 36