The Perplexity Of Zadig

: 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!'