INTRODUCTORY. 1 I 



portation 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 that he had seen that which he had not seen. 



The first thing was to pay the fine ; afterwards Zadig 

 was permitted to open his defense 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 sacro- 

 sanct horse of the king of kings. 



"This is what happened : I was taking a walk toward 

 the little wood near which I subsequently had the honor 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 

 foot marks convinced me that it was a she dog with pend- 

 ent dugs, showing that she must have had puppies not 

 many days since. Other scrapings of the sand, which al- 

 ways 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 trav- 

 erse the wood, I noticed the marks of horseshoes. They 

 were all equidistant. ' Ah,' said I, ' this is a famous gallop- 

 er.' In a narrow alley, only seven feet wide, the dust upon 



