the chief of the magi, who was old and gouty, to dance before her; and on his refusal, she persecuted him with the most unrelenting cruelty.  She ordered her master of the horse to make her a pie of sweetmeats.  In vain did he represent that he was not a pastry-cook; he was obliged to make it, and lost his place, because it was baked a little too hard.  The post of master of the horse she gave to her dwarf, and that of chancellor to her page.  In this manner did she govern Babylon.  Everybody regretted the loss of me.  The king, who till the moment of his resolving to poison me and strangle thee had been a tolerably good kind of man, seemed now to have drowned all his virtues in his immoderate fondness for this capricious fair one.  He came to the temple on the great day of the feast held in honor of the sacred fire.  I saw him implore the gods in behalf of Missouf, at the feet of the statue in which I was inclosed.  I raised my voice, I cried out, ’The gods reject the prayers of a king who is now become a tyrant, and who attempted to murder a reasonable wife, in order to marry a woman remarkable for nothing but her folly and extravagance.’  At these words Moabdar was confounded and his head became disordered.  The oracle I had pronounced, and the tyranny of Missouf, conspired to deprive him of his judgment, and in a few days his reason entirely forsook him.

“Moabdar’s madness, which seemed to be the judgment of Heaven, was the signal to a revolt.  The people rose and ran to arms; and Babylon, which had been so long immersed in idleness and effeminacy, became the theater of a bloody civil war.  I was taken from the heart of my statue and placed at the head of a party.  Cador flew to Memphis to bring thee back to Babylon.  The Prince of Hircania, informed of these fatal events, returned with his army and made a third party in Chaldea.  He attacked the king, who fled before him with his capricious Egyptian.  Moabdar died pierced with wounds.  I myself had the misfortune to be taken by a party of Hircanians, who conducted me to their prince’s tent, at the very moment that Missouf was brought before him.  Thou wilt doubtless be pleased to hear that the prince thought me beautiful; but thou wilt be sorry to be informed that he designed me for his seraglio.  He told me, with a blunt and resolute air, that as soon as he had finished a military expedition, which he was just going to undertake, he would come to me.  Judge how great must have been my grief.  My ties with Moabdar were already dissolved; I might have been the wife of Zadig; and I was fallen into the hands of a barbarian.  I answered him with all the pride which my high rank and noble sentiment could inspire.  I had always heard it affirmed that Heaven stamped on persons of my condition a mark of grandeur, which, with a single word or glance, could reduce to the lowliness of the most profound respect those rash and forward persons who presume to deviate from the rules of politeness.  I spoke