misfortunes he had so
deeply lamented, and for whose fate he had been so anxiously concerned.

He was for a moment deprived of the use of his senses, when he had fixed
his eyes on those of Astarte, which now began to open again with a languor
mixed with confusion and tenderness: "O ye immortal powers!" cried he,
"who preside over the fates of weak mortals, do ye indeed restore Astarte
to me! at what a time, in what a place, and in what a condition do I again
behold her!" He fell on his knees before Astarte and laid his face in the
dust at her feet. The Queen of Babylon raised him up, and made him sit by
her side on the brink of the rivulet. She frequently wiped her eyes, from
which the tears continued to flow afresh. She twenty times resumed her
discourse, which her sighs as often interrupted; she asked by what strange
accident they were brought together, and suddenly prevented his answers by
other questions; she waived the account of her own misfortunes, and
desired to be informed of those of Zadig.

At last, both of them having a little composed the tumult of their souls,
Zadig acquainted her in a few words by what adventure he was brought into
that meadow. "But, O unhappy and respectable queen! by what means do I
find thee in this lonely place, clothed in the habit of a slave, and
accompanied by other female slaves, who are searching for a basilisk,
which, by order of the physician, is to be stewed in rose water?"

"While they are searching for their basilisk," said the fair Astarte, "I
will inform thee of all I have suffered, for which Heaven has sufficiently
recompensed me by restoring thee to my sight. Thou knowest that the king,
my husband, was vexed to see thee the most amiable of mankind; and that
for this reason he one night resolved to strangle thee and poison me. Thou
knowest how Heaven permitted my little mute to inform me of the orders of
his sublime majesty. Hardly had the faithful Cador advised thee to depart,
in obedience to my command, when he ventured to enter my apartment at
midnight by a secret passage. He carried me off and conducted me to the
temple of Oromazes, where the mage his brother shut me up in that huge
statue whose base reaches to the foundation of the temple and whose top
rises to the summit of the dome. I was there buried in a manner; but was
saved by the mage; and supplied with all the necessaries of life. At break
of day his majesty's apothecary entered my chamber with a potion comp