474 THE HORSE'S POSITION IN THE ANIMAL WORLD 



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 resj^ectable lady dog of the queen, nor Iteheld 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 fore-paws 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 valley only 7 feet wide the dust upon 

 the trunks of the trees was a little disturbed at 3|- feet from the middle 

 of the path. ' This horse,' said I to myself, ' had a tail 3^ feet 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 5 feet, and under 

 them I saw newly-fallen leaves; so I knew that the horse had brushed 

 some of the branches and was therefore 5 feet high. As to his bit, it 

 must have been made of twenty-three-carat gold, for he had rubbed it 

 against a stone which had turned out to be a touchstone; with the pro- 

 perties of which I am familiar by experiment. Lastly, by the marks which 

 his shoes left upon pebbles of another kind I was led to think that his 

 shoes were of fine silver.' 



"All the judges admired Zadig's profound and subtle discernment; 



