In this manner he daily discovered the subtilty of his genius and the
goodness of his heart. The people at once admired and loved him. He passed
for the happiest man in the world. The whole empire resounded with his
name. All the ladies ogled him. All the men praised him for his justice.
The learned regarded him as an oracle; and even the priests confessed that
he knew more than the old archmage Yebor. They were now so far from
prosecuting him on account of the griffin, that they believed nothing but
what he thought credible.
There had reigned in Babylon, for the space of fifteen hundred years, a
violent contest that had divided the empire into two sects. The one
pretended that they ought to enter the temple of Mitra with the left foot
foremost; the other held this custom in detestation and always entered
with the right foot first. The people waited with great impatience for the
day on which the solemn feast of the sacred fire was to be celebrated, to
see which sect Zadig would favor. All the world had their eyes fixed on
his two feet, and the whole city was in the utmost suspense and
perturbation. Zadig jumped into the temple with his feet joined together,
and afterwards proved, in an eloquent discourse, that the Sovereign of
heaven and earth, who accepted not the persons of men, makes no
distinction between the right and left foot. The envious man and his wife
alleged that his discourse was not figurative enough, and that he did not
make the rocks and mountains to dance with sufficient agility.
"He is dry." said they, "and void of genius: he does not make the flea to
fly, and stars to fall, nor the sun to melt wax; he has not the true
Oriental style." Zadig contented himself with having the style of reason.
All the world favored him, not because he was in the right road or
followed the dictates of reason, or was a man of real merit, but because
he was prime vizier.
He terminated with the same happy address the grand difference between the
white and the black magi. The former maintained that it was the height of
impiety to pray to God with the face turned toward the east in winter; the
latter asserted that God abhorred the prayers of those who turned toward
the west in summer. Zadig decreed that every man should be allowed to turn
as he pleased.
Thus he found out the happy secret of finishing all affairs, whether of a
private or a public nature, in the morning. The rest of the day he
employed in superintending and promoting the embellishments of Babylon. He
exhibited tragedies that drew tears from the eyes of the spectators, and
comedies that shook their sides with laughter; a custom which had long
been disused, and which his good taste now induced him to revive. He never
affected to be more knowing in the polite arts than the artists
themselves; he encouraged them by rewards and honors, and was never
jealous of their talents. In the evening the king was highly entertained
with his conversation, and the queen still more. "Great minister!" said
the king. "Amiable minister!" said the queen; and both of them added, "It
would have been a great loss to the state had such a man been hanged."
Never was a man in power obliged to give so many audiences to the ladies.
Most of them came to consult him about no business at all, that so they
might have some business with him. But none of them won his attention.
Meanwhile Zadig perceived that his thoughts were always distracted, as
well when he gave audience as when he sat in judgment. He did not know to
what to attribute this absence of mind; and that was his only sorrow.
He had a dream in which he imagined that he laid himself down upon a heap
of dry herbs, among which there were many prickly ones that gave him great
uneasiness, and that he afterwards reposed himself on a soft bed of roses
from which there sprung a serpent that wounded him to the heart with its
sharp and venomed tongue. "Alas," said he, "I have long lain on these dry
and prickly herbs, I am now on the bed of roses; but what shall be the
serpent?"