," said he, "to go in search of
the queen, thou wilt hasten her death. Shouldst thou speak to the king,
thou wilt infallibly ruin her. I will take upon me the charge of her
destiny; follow thy own. I will spread a report that thou hast taken the
road to India. I will soon follow thee, and inform thee of all that shall
have passed in Babylon." At that instant, Cador caused two of the swiftest
dromedaries to be brought to a private gate of the palace. Upon one of
these he mounted Zadig, whom he was obliged to carry to the door, and who
was ready to expire with grief. He was accompanied by a single domestic;
and Cador, plunged in sorrow and astonishment, soon lost sight of his
friend.

This illustrious fugitive arriving on the side of a hill, from whence he
could take a view of Babylon, turned his eyes toward the queen's palace,
and fainted away at the sight; nor did he recover his senses but to shed a
torrent of tears and to wish for death. At length, after his thoughts had
been long engrossed in lamenting the unhappy fate of the loveliest woman
and the greatest queen in the world, he for a moment turned his views on
himself and cried: "What then is human life? O virtue, how hast thou
served me! Two women have basely deceived me, and now a third, who is
innocent, and more beautiful than both the others, is going to be put to
death! Whatever good I have done hath been to me a continual source of
calamity and affliction; and I have only been raised to the height of
grandeur, to be tumbled down the most horrid precipice of misfortune."
Filled with these gloomy reflections, his eyes overspread with the veil of
grief, his countenance covered with the paleness of death, and his soul
plunged in an abyss of the blackest despair, he continued his journey
toward Egypt.

THE WOMAN BEATEN

Zadig directed his course by the stars. The constellation of Orion and the
splendid Dog Star guided his steps toward the pole of Cassiopeia. He
admired those vast globes of light, which appear to our eyes but as so
many little sparks, while the earth, which in reality is only an
imperceptible point in nature, appears to our fond imaginations as
something so grand and noble.

He then represented to himself the human species as it really is, as a
parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay. This
true image seemed to annihilate his misfortunes, by making him sensible of
the nothingness of his own being, and of that of Babylo