Zadig was hardly able to speak.  He sent for Cador, and, without uttering a word, gave him the note.  Cador forced him to obey, and forthwith to take the road to Memphis.  “Shouldst thou dare,” said he, “to go in search of the queen, thou wilt hasten her death.  Shouldst thou speak to the king, thou wilt infallibly ruin her.  I will take upon me the charge of her destiny; follow thy own.  I will spread a report that thou hast taken the road to India.  I will soon follow thee, and inform thee of all that shall have passed in Babylon.”  At that instant, Cador caused two of the swiftest dromedaries to be brought to a private gate of the palace.  Upon one of these he mounted Zadig, whom he was obliged to carry to the door, and who was ready to expire with grief.  He was accompanied by a single domestic; and Cador, plunged in sorrow and astonishment, soon lost sight of his friend.

This illustrious fugitive arriving on the side of a hill, from whence he could take a view of Babylon, turned his eyes toward the queen’s palace, and fainted away at the sight; nor did he recover his senses but to shed a torrent of tears and to wish for death.  At length, after his thoughts had been long engrossed in lamenting the unhappy fate of the loveliest woman and the greatest queen in the world, he for a moment turned his views on himself and cried:  “What then is human life?  O virtue, how hast thou served me!  Two women have basely deceived me, and now a third, who is innocent, and more beautiful than both the others, is going to be put to death!  Whatever good I have done hath been to me a continual source of calamity and affliction; and I have only been raised to the height of grandeur, to be tumbled down the most horrid precipice of misfortune.”  Filled with these gloomy reflections, his eyes overspread with the veil of grief, his countenance covered with the paleness of death, and his soul plunged in an abyss of the blackest despair, he continued his journey toward Egypt.

THE WOMAN BEATEN

Zadig directed his course by the stars.  The constellation of Orion and the splendid Dog Star guided his steps toward the pole of Cassiopaea.  He admired those vast globes of light, which appear to our eyes but as so many little sparks, while the earth, which in reality is only an imperceptible point in nature, appears to our fond imaginations as something so grand and noble.

He then represented to himself the human species as it really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay.  This true image seemed to annihilate his misfortunes, by making him sensible of the nothingness of his own being, and of that of Babylon.  His soul launched out into infinity, and, detached from the senses, contemplated the immutable order of the universe.  But when afterwards, returning to himself, and entering into his own heart, he considered that Astarte had perhaps died for him, the universe vanished from his sight, and he beheld nothing in the whole compass of nature but Astarte expiring and Zadig unhappy.  While he thus alternately gave up his mind to this flux and reflux of sublime philosophy and intolerable grief, he advanced toward the frontiers of Egypt; and his faithful domestic was already in the first village, in search of a lodging.