The woman returned to Ogul without having found the basilisk.  Zadig was introduced to this mighty lord and spoke to him in the following terms:  “May immortal health descend from heaven to bless all thy days!  I am a physician; at the first report of thy indisposition I flew to thy castle and have now brought thee a basilisk stewed in rose water.  Not that I pretend to marry thee.  All I ask is the liberty of a Babylonian slave, who hath been in thy possession for a few days; and, if I should not be so happy as to cure thee, magnificent Lord Ogul, I consent to remain a slave in her place.”

The proposal was accepted.  Astarte set out for Babylon with Zadig’s servant, promising, immediately upon her arrival, to send a courier to inform him of all that had happened.  Their parting was as tender as their meeting.  The moment of meeting and that of parting are the two greatest epochs of life, as sayeth the great book of Zend.  Zadig loved the queen with as much ardor as he professed; and the queen loved him more than she thought proper to acknowledge.

Meanwhile Zadig spoke thus to Ogul:  “My lord, my basilisk is not to be eaten; all its virtues must enter through thy pores.  I have inclosed it in a little ball, blown up and covered with a fine skin.  Thou must strike this ball with all thy might and I must strike it back for a considerable time; and by observing this regimen for a few days thou wilt see the effects of my art.”  The first day Ogul was out of breath and thought he should have died with fatigue.  The second he was less fatigued, slept better.  In eight days he recovered all the strength, all the health, all the agility and cheerfulness of his most agreeable years.

“Thou hast played at ball, and thou hast been temperate,” said Zadig; “know that there is no such thing in nature as a basilisk; that temperance and exercise are the two great preservatives of health; and that the art of reconciling intemperance and health is as chimerical as the philosopher’s stone, judicial astrology, or the theology of the magi.”

Ogul’s first physician, observing how dangerous this man might prove to the medical art, formed a design, in conjunction with the apothecary, to send Zadig to search for a basilisk in the other world.  Thus, having suffered such a long train of calamities on account of his good actions, he was now upon the point of losing his life for curing a gluttonous lord.  He was invited to an excellent dinner and was to have been poisoned in the second course, but, during the first, he happily received a courier from the fair Astarte.  “When one is beloved by a beautiful woman,” says the great Zoroaster, “he hath always the good fortune to extricate himself out of every kind of difficulty and danger.”

THE COMBATS