At last, both of them having a little composed the tumult of their souls, Zadig acquainted her in a few words by what adventure he was brought into that meadow.  “But, O unhappy and respectable queen! by what means do I find thee in this lonely place, clothed in the habit of a slave, and accompanied by other female slaves, who are searching for a basilisk, which, by order of the physician, is to be stewed in rose water?”

“While they are searching for their basilisk,” said the fair Astarte, “I will inform thee of all I have suffered, for which Heaven has sufficiently recompensed me by restoring thee to my sight.  Thou knowest that the king, my husband, was vexed to see thee the most amiable of mankind; and that for this reason he one night resolved to strangle thee and poison me.  Thou knowest how Heaven permitted my little mute to inform me of the orders of his sublime majesty.  Hardly had the faithful Cador advised thee to depart, in obedience to my command, when he ventured to enter my apartment at midnight by a secret passage.  He carried me off and conducted me to the temple of Oromazes, where the mage his brother shut me up in that huge statue whose base reaches to the foundation of the temple and whose top rises to the summit of the dome.  I was there buried in a manner; but was saved by the mage; and supplied with all the necessaries of life.  At break of day his majesty’s apothecary entered my chamber with a potion composed of a mixture of henbane, opium, hemlock, black hellebore, and aconite; and another officer went to thine with a bowstring of blue silk.  Neither of us was to be found.  Cador, the better to deceive the king, pretended to come and accuse us both.  He said that thou hadst taken the road to the Indies, and I that to Memphis, on which the king’s guards were immediately dispatched in pursuit of us both.

“The couriers who pursued me did not know me.  I had hardly ever shown my face to any but thee, and to thee only in the presence and by the order of my husband.  They conducted themselves in the pursuit by the description that had been given them of my person.  On the frontiers of Egypt they met with a woman of the same stature with me, and possessed perhaps of greater charms.  She was weeping and wandering.  They made no doubt but that this woman was the Queen of Babylon and accordingly brought her to Moabdar.  Their mistake at first threw the king into a violent passion; but having viewed this woman more attentively, he found her extremely handsome and was comforted.  She was called Missouf.  I have since been informed that this name in the Egyptian language signifies the capricious fair one.  She was so in reality; but she had as much cunning as caprice.  She pleased Moabdar and gained such an ascendancy over him as to make him choose her for his wife.  Her character then began to appear in its true colors.  She gave herself up, without scruple, to all the freaks of a wanton imagination.  She would have obliged