In two days the abscess broke of its own accord and Zadig was perfectly cured.  Hermes wrote a book to prove that it ought not to have been cured.  Zadig did not read it; but, as soon as he was able to go abroad, he went to pay a visit to her in whom all his hopes of happiness were centered, and for whose sake alone he wished to have eyes.  Semira had been in the country for three days past.  He learned on the road that that fine lady, having openly declared that she had an unconquerable aversion to one-eyed men, had the night before given her hand to Orcan.  At this news he fell speechless to the ground.  His sorrow brought him almost to the brink of the grave.  He was long indisposed; but reason at last got the better of his affliction, and the severity of his fate served to console him.

“Since,” said he, “I have suffered so much from the cruel caprice of a woman educated at court, I must now think of marrying the daughter of a citizen.”  He pitched upon Azora, a lady of the greatest prudence, and of the best family in town.  He married her and lived with her for three months in all the delights of the most tender union.  He only observed that she had a little levity; and was too apt to find that those young men who had the most handsome persons were likewise possessed of most wit and virtue.

THE NOSE

One morning Azora returned from a walk in a terrible passion, and uttering the most violent exclamations.  “What aileth thee,” said he, “my dear spouse?  What is it that can thus have discomposed thee?”

“Alas,” said she, “thou wouldst be as much enraged as I am hadst thou seen what I have just beheld.  I have been to comfort the young widow Cosrou, who, within these two days, hath raised a tomb to her young husband, near the rivulet that washes the skirts of this meadow.  She vowed to heaven, in the bitterness of her grief, to remain at this tomb while the water of the rivulet should continue to run near it.”—­“Well,” said Zadig, “she is an excellent woman, and loved her husband with the most sincere affection.”

“Ah,” replied Azora, “didst thou but know in what she was employed when I went to wait upon her!”

“In what, pray, beautiful Azora?  Was she turning the course of the rivulet?”

Azora broke out into such long invectives and loaded the young widow with such bitter reproaches, that Zadig was far from being pleased with this ostentation of virtue.

Zadig had a friend named Cador, one of those young men in whom his wife discovered more probity and merit than in others.  He made him his confidant, and secured his fidelity as much as possible by a considerable present.  Azora, having passed two days with a friend in the country, returned home on the third.  The servants told her, with tears in their eyes, that her husband died suddenly the night before; that they were afraid to send her an account of this mournful event; and that they had just been depositing his corpse in the tomb of his ancestors, at the end of the garden.