IO INTRODUCTORY. 



could tend to nothing but the increase of a man's own 

 welfare and the good of his fellow men. But Zadig was 

 fated to experience the vanity of such expectations. 



One day walking near a little w T ood, he saw, hastening 

 that way, one of the queen's chief eunuchs, followed by a 

 troop of officials who appeared to be in the greatest anxiety, 

 running hither and thither like men distraught, in search of 

 some lost treasure. 



"Young man," cried the eunuch, "have you seen the 

 queen's dog ?" Zadig answered modestly, "A bitch, I think, 

 not a dog." " Quite right," replied the eunuch ; and Zadig 

 continued : " A very small spaniel who has lately had pup- 

 pies ; she limps with the left fore leg, and has very long 

 ears." " Ah ! you have seen her, then ?" said the breathless 

 eunuch. " No," answered Zadig, " I have not seen her ; 

 and I really was not aware that the queen possessed a 

 spaniel." 



By an odd coincidence, at the very same time, the hand- 

 somest horse in the king's stables broke away from his groom 

 in the Babylonian plains. The grand huntsman and all his 

 staff were seeking the horse with as much anxiety as the 

 eunuch and his people, the spaniel; and the grand huntsman 

 asked Zadig if he had not seen the king's horse go that 

 way. " A first-rate galloper, small hoofed, five feet high; 

 tail three feet and a half long ; cheek pieces of the bit of 

 twenty-three carat gold ; shoes silver," said Zadig. 



" Which way did he go? Where is he?" cried the 

 grand huntsman. 



" I have not seen anything of the horse, and I never 

 heard of him before," replied Zadig. 



The grand huntsman and the chief eunuch made sure 

 that Zadig had stolen both the king's horse and the queen's 

 spaniel; so they haled him before the high Court of Dester- 

 ham, which at once condemned him to the knout and trans- 



