"That is as it should be! As for myself, I should never have refused any
request of Mr. Zacharias Seiler's! Come here and embrace your benefactor."

Charlotte ran toward him and the old man pressed her to his heart, gazing
long and earnestly at her, with eyes filled with tears. Then pleading
business he started home, with only a crust of bread in his basket for
breakfast.

Fifteen days afterward, Karl Imnant received the appointment of forester,
taking his father's place. Eight days later, he and Charlotte were
married.

The guests drank the rich Rikevir wine, so highly esteemed by Yeri
Foerster, and which seemed to him to have arrived so opportunely for the
feast.

Mr. Zacharias Seiler was not present that day at the wedding, being ill at
home. Since then he rarely goes fishing--and then, always to the
Bruennen--toward the lake--on the other side of the mountain.

ZADIG THE BABYLONIAN

BY FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE

THE BLIND OF ONE EYE

There lived at Babylon, in the reign of King Moabdar, a young man named
Zadig, of a good natural disposition, strengthened and improved by
education. Though rich and young, he had learned to moderate his passions;
he had nothing stiff or affected in his behavior, he did not pretend to
examine every action by the strict rules of reason, but was always ready
to make proper allowances for the weakness of mankind.

It was matter of surprise that, notwithstanding his sprightly wit, he
never exposed by his raillery those vague, incoherent, and noisy
discourses, those rash censures, ignorant decisions, coarse jests, and all
that empty jingle of words which at Babylon went by the name of
conversation. He had learned, in the first book of Zoroaster, that self
love is a football swelled with wind, from which, when pierced, the most
terrible tempests issue forth.

Above all, Zadig never boasted of his conquests among the women, nor
affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was
generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering the
grand precept of Zoroaster, "When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should
they even bite thee." He was as wise as it is possible for man to be, for
he sought to live with the wise.

Instructed in the sciences of the ancient Chaldeans, he understood the
principles of natural philosophy, such as they were then supposed to be;
and knew as much of metaphysics as hath ever been known in any age, that
is, l