he King's horse and the Queen's spaniel, so
they haled him before the High Court of Desterham, which at once
condemned him to the knout, and transportation for life to
Siberia. But the sentence was hardly pronounced when the lost
horse and spaniel were found. So the judges were under the
painful necessity of reconsidering their decision: but they
fined Zadig four hundred ounces of gold for saying he had seen
that which he had not seen.

"The first thing was to pay the fine; afterwards Zadig was
permitted to open his defence to the court, which he did in the
following terms:

"'Stars of justice, abysses of knowledge, mirrors of truth,
whose gravity is as that of lead, whose inflexibility is as that
of iron, who rival the diamond in clearness, and possess no
little affinity with gold; since I am permitted to address your
august assembly, I swear by Ormuzd that I have never seen the
respectable lady dog of the Queen, nor beheld the sacrosanct
horse of the King of Kings.

"'This is what happened. I was taking a walk towards the little
wood near which I subsequently had the honour to meet the
venerable chief eunuch and the most illustrious grand huntsman.
I noticed the track of an animal in the sand, and it was easy to
see that it was that of a small dog. Long faint streaks upon the
little elevations of sand between the footmarks convinced me
that it was a she dog with pendent dugs, showing that she must
have had puppies not many days since. Other scrapings of the
sand, which always lay close to the marks of the forepaws,
indicated that she had very long ears; and, as the imprint of
one foot was always fainter than those of the other three, I
judged that the lady dog of our august Queen was, if I may
venture to say so, a little lame.

"'With respect to the horse of the King of Kings, permit me to
observe that, wandering through the paths which traverse the
wood, I noticed the marks of horse-shoes. They were all
equidistant. "Ah!" said I, "this is a famous galloper." In a
narrow alley, only seven feet wide, the dust upon the trunks of
the trees was a little disturbed at three feet and a half from
the middle of the path. "This horse," said I to myself, "had a
tail three feet and a half long, and, lashing it from one side
to the other, he has swept away the dust." Branches of the trees
met overhead at the height of five feet, and under them I