4 ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG i 



" ' Which way did ho 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. 



11 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 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 

 that which he had not seen. 



" The first thing was to pay the fine ; afterwards Zadig vraa 

 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 respect- 

 able lady dog of the Queen, nor beheld 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 hunts- 

 man. I noticed the track of an animal in the sand, and it \\.is 

 easy to see that it was that of a small dog. Long faint streaks 

 upon the little elevations of sand between the footmarks con- 

 vinced 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 

 forepaws, indicated that she had very long ears ; and, as the im- 

 print 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 



