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The Perplexity Of Zadig

from The Strange Story Book

On the banks of the river Euphrates there once lived a man called Zadig,
who spent all his days watching the animals he saw about him and in
learning their ways, and in studying the plants that grew near his hut.
And the more he knew of them, the more he was struck with the
differences he discovered even in the beasts or flowers which he thought
when he first saw them were exactly alike.

One morning as he was walking through a little wood there came running
towards him an officer of the queen's household, followed by several of
her attendants. Zadig noticed that one and all seemed in the greatest
anxiety and glanced from side to side with wild eyes as if they had lost
something they held to be very precious, and hoped against hope that it
might be lurking in some quite impossible place.

On catching sight of Zadig, the first of the band stopped suddenly.

'Young man,' he said, panting for breath, 'have you seen the queen's pet
dog?'

'It is a tiny spaniel, is it not?' answered Zadig, 'which limps on the
left fore-paw, and has very long ears?'

'Ah then, you have seen it!' exclaimed the steward joyfully, thinking
that his search was at an end and his head was safe, for he knew of many
men who had lost theirs for less reason.

'No,' replied Zadig, 'I have never seen it. Indeed, I did not so much as
know that the queen had a dog.'

At these words the faces of the whole band fell, and with sighs of
disappointment they hurried on twice as fast as before, to make up for
lost time.

Strange to say, it had happened that the finest horse in the king's
stable had broken away from its groom and galloped off no one knew
where, over the boundless plains of Babylon. The chief huntsman and all
the other officials pursued it with the same eagerness that the officers
of the household had displayed in running after the queen's dog and,
like them, met with Zadig who was lying on the ground watching the
movements of some ants.

'Has the king's favourite horse passed by here?' inquired the great
huntsman, drawing rein.

'You mean a wonderful galloper fifteen hands high, shod with very small
shoes, and with a tail three feet and a half long? The ornaments of his
bit are of gold and he is shod with silver?'

'Yes, yes, that is the runaway,' cried the chief huntsman; 'which way
did he go?'

'The horse? But I have not seen him,' answered Zadig, 'and I never even
heard of him before.'

* * * * *

Now Zadig had described both the horse and the dog so exactly that both
the steward and the chief huntsman did not doubt for a moment that they
had been stolen by him.

The chief huntsman said no more, but ordered his men to seize the thief
and to bring him before the supreme court, where he was condemned to be
flogged and to pass the rest of his life in exile. Scarcely, however,
had the sentence been passed than the horse and dog were discovered and
brought back to their master and mistress, who welcomed them with
transports of delight. But as no one would have respected the judges any
longer if they had once admitted that they had been altogether mistaken,
they informed Zadig that, although he was to be spared the flogging and
would not be banished from the country, he must pay four hundred ounces
of gold for having declared he had not seen what he plainly had
seen.

With some difficulty Zadig raised the money, and when he had paid it
into court, he asked permission to say a few words of explanation.

'Moons of justice and mirrors of truth,' he began. 'I swear to you by
the powers of earth and of air that never have I beheld the dog of the
queen nor the horse of the king. And if this august assembly will deign
to listen to me for a moment, I will inform them exactly what happened.
Before I met with the officers of the queen's household I had noticed on
the sand the marks of an animal's paws, which I instantly recognised to
be those of a small dog; and as the marks were invariably fainter on one
side than on the three others, it was easy to guess that the dog limped
on one paw. Besides this, the sand on each side of the front paw-marks
was ruffled on the surface, showing that the ears were very long and
touched the ground.

'As to the horse, I had perceived along the road the traces of shoes,
always at equal distances, which proved to me that the animal was a
perfect galloper. I then detected on closer examination, that though the
road was only seven feet wide, the dust on the trees both on the right
hand and on the left had been swept to a height of three and a half
feet, and from that I concluded the horse's tail, which had switched off
the dust, must be three and a half feet long. Next, five feet from the
ground I noticed that twig and leaves had been torn off the trees, so
evidently he was fifteen hands high. As to the ornaments on his bit, he
had scraped one of them against a rock on turning a corner too sharply,
and some traces of gold remained on it, while the light marks left on
the soil showed that his shoes were not of iron but of a less heavy
metal, which could only be silver.'

Great was the amazement of the judges and of everybody else at the
perception and reasoning of Zadig. At court, no one talked of anything
else; and though many of the wise men declared that Zadig should be
burnt as a wizard, the king commanded that the four hundred ounces of
gold, which he had paid as a fine, should be restored to him. In
obedience to this order, the clerk of the court and the ushers came in
state to Zadig's hut, bringing with them the four hundred ounces; but,
when they arrived, they told Zadig that three hundred and ninety-eight
of them were due for law expenses, so he was not much better off than
before.

Zadig said nothing, but let them keep the money. He had learned how
dangerous it is to be wiser than your neighbours, and resolved never
again to give any information to anybody, or to say what he had seen.

He had very speedily a chance of putting this determination into
practice. A prisoner of state escaped from the great gaol of Babylon,
and in his flight happened to pass beneath the window of Zadig's hut.
Not long after, the warders, of the gaol discovered which way he had
gone, and cross-questioned Zadig closely. Zadig, warned by experience,
kept silence; but notwithstanding, it was proved--or at least, they said
so--that Zadig had been looking out of the window when the man went by,
and for this crime he was sentenced by the judges to pay five hundred
ounces of gold.

'Good gracious!' he murmured to himself as, according to the custom of
Babylon, he thanked the court for its indulgence. 'What is one to do? It
is dangerous to stand at your own window, or to be in a wood which the
king's horse and the queen's dog have passed through. How hard it is to
live happily in this life!'

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