Zadig to do honors to the sun, and would then have
recited the breviary of Zoroaster with greater satisfaction. The friend
Cador (a friend is better than a hundred priests) went to Yebor, and said
to him, "Long live the sun and the griffins; beware of punishing Zadig; he
is a saint; he has griffins in his inner court and does not eat them; and
his accuser is an heretic, who dares to maintain that rabbits have cloven
feet and are not unclean."

"Well," said Yebor, shaking his bald pate, "we must impale Zadig for
having thought contemptuously of griffins, and the other for having spoken
disrespectfully of rabbits." Cador hushed up the affair by means of a maid
of honor with whom he had a love affair, and who had great interest in the
College of the Magi. Nobody was impaled.

This levity occasioned a great murmuring among some of the doctors, who
from thence predicted the fall of Babylon. "Upon what does happiness
depend?" said Zadig. "I am persecuted by everything in the world, even on
account of beings that have no existence." He cursed those men of
learning, and resolved for the future to live with none but good company.

He assembled at his house the most worthy men and the most beautiful
ladies of Babylon. He gave them delicious suppers, often preceded by
concerts of music, and always animated by polite conversation, from which
he knew how to banish that affectation of wit which is the surest method
of preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the most
agreeable society. Neither the choice of his friends nor that of the
dishes was made by vanity; for in everything he preferred the substance to
the shadow; and by these means he procured that real respect to which he
did not aspire.

Opposite to his house lived one Arimazes, a man whose deformed countenance
was but a faint picture of his still more deformed mind. His heart was a
mixture of malice, pride, and envy. Having never been able to succeed in
any of his undertakings, he revenged himself on all around him by loading
them with the blackest calumnies. Rich as he was, he found it difficult to
procure a set of flatterers. The rattling of the chariots that entered
Zadig's court in the evening filled him with uneasiness; the sound of his
praises enraged him still more. He sometimes went to Zadig's house, and
sat down at table without being desired; where he spoiled all the pleasure
of the company, as the harpies are said to infect the viands they touch.