aused all kinds of essences to
be brought, with which she anointed him, to try if some of them might not
possibly ease him of his pain. She lamented that the great Hermes was not
still in Babylon. She even condescended to touch the side in which Cador
felt such exquisite pain.

"Art thou subject to this cruel disorder?" said she to him with a
compassionate air.

"It sometimes brings me," replied Cador, "to the brink of the grave; and
there is but one remedy that can give me relief, and that is to apply to
my side the nose of a man who is lately dead."

"A strange remedy, indeed!" said Azora.

"Not more strange," replied he, "than the sachels of Arnon against the
apoplexy." This reason, added to the great merit of the young man, at last
determined the lady.

"After all," says she, "when my husband shall cross the bridge Tchinavar,
in his journey to the other world, the angel Asrael will not refuse him a
passage because his nose is a little shorter in the second life than it
was in the first." She then took a razor, went to her husband's tomb,
bedewed it with her tears, and drew near to cut off the nose of Zadig,
whom she found extended at full length in the tomb. Zadig arose, holding
his nose with one hand, and, putting back the razor with the other,
"Madam," said he, "don't exclaim so violently against young Cosrou; the
project of cutting off my nose is equal to that of turning the course of a
rivulet." Zadig found by experience that the first month of marriage, as
it is written in the book of Zend, is the moon of honey, and that the
second is the moon of wormwood. He was some time after obliged to
repudiate Azora, who became too difficult to be pleased; and he then
sought for happiness in the study of nature. "No man," said he, "can be
happier than a philosopher who reads in this great book which God hath
placed before our eyes. The truths he discovers are his own; he nourishes
and exalts his soul; he lives in peace; he fears nothing from men; and his
tender spouse will not come to cut off his nose."

Possessed of these ideas he retired to a country house on the banks of the
Euphrates. There he did not employ himself in calculating how many inches
of water flow in a second of time under the arches of a bridge, or whether
there fell a cube line of rain in the month of the Mouse more than in the
month of the Sheep. He never dreamed of making silk of cobwebs, or
porcelain of broken bottles; but he chiefly studied th