Just as he was preparing for death the king’s parrot flew from its cage and alighted on a rosebush in Zadig’s garden.  A peach had been driven thither by the wind from a neighboring tree, and had fallen on a piece of the written leaf of the pocketbook to which it stuck.  The bird carried off the peach and the paper and laid them on the king’s knee.  The king took up the paper with great eagerness and read the words, which formed no sense, and seemed to be the endings of verses.  He loved poetry; and there is always some mercy to be expected from a prince of that disposition.  The adventure of the parrot set him a-thinking.

The queen, who remembered what had been written on the piece of Zadig’s pocketbook, caused it to be brought.  They compared the two pieces together and found them to tally exactly; they then read the verses as Zadig had wrote them.

TYRANTS ARE PRONE TO FLAGRANT CRIMES. 
  TO CLEMENCY HIS CROWN HE OWES. 
  TO CONCORD AND TO PEACEFUL TIMES. 
  LOVE ONLY IS THE WORST OF FOES.

The king gave immediate orders that Zadig should be brought before him, and that his two friends and the lady should be set at liberty.  Zadig fell prostrate on the ground before the king and queen; humbly begged their pardon for having made such bad verses and spoke with so much propriety, wit, and good sense, that their majesties desired they might see him again.  He did himself that honor, and insinuated himself still farther into their good graces.  They gave him all the wealth of the envious man; but Zadig restored him back the whole of it.  And this instance of generosity gave no other pleasure to the envious man than that of having preserved his estate.

The king’s esteem for Zadig increased every day.  He admitted him into all his parties of pleasure, and consulted him in all affairs of state.  From that time the queen began to regard him with an eye of tenderness that might one day prove dangerous to herself, to the king, her august comfort, to Zadig, and to the kingdom in general.  Zadig now began to think that happiness was not so unattainable as he had formerly imagined.

THE GENEROUS

The time now arrived for celebrating a grand festival, which returned every five years.  It was a custom in Babylon solemnly to declare at the end of every five years which of the citizens had performed the most generous action.  The grandees and the magi were the judges.  The first satrap, who was charged with the government of the city, published the most noble actions that had passed under his administration.  The competition was decided by votes; and the king pronounced the sentence.  People came to this solemnity from the extremities of the earth.  The conqueror received from the monarch’s hand a golden cup adorned with precious stones, his majesty at the same time making him this compliment: 

“Receive this reward of thy generosity, and may the gods grant me many subjects like to thee.”