by Voltaire
But Zadig’s desire to fight for her was now gratified. ‘It’s other people’s turn,’ he replied. ‘You won’t catch me again.’ Besides, he was wounded and bleeding. and had need of attention; and the sight of four Babylonians, probably sent by King Moabdar, filled him with disquiet. He hastened towards the village, unable to conceive why four couriers from Babylon should come and arrest this Egyptian woman, and rapt in astonishment at the character of the lady herself.
CHAPTER 10
SLAVERY
WHEN he entered the Egyptian village, he found himself surrounded by people crying : ‘There’s the man who ran off with the lovely Missouf and murdered Cletophis!’
‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘God forbid that I should ever run off with your lovely Missouf; she’s too fickle for me. And as for Cletophis, I assure you I didn’t murder him; I merely defended myself. He tried to kill me, because I humbly asked him to have mercy on the lovely Missouf, whom he was beating so pitilessly. I am a stranger, and have come to take sanctuary in Egypt. It’s not likely that, in coming to ask your protection, I should begin by running off with a woman and murdering a man.’
At that time the Egyptians had a sense of justice and humanity. They led Zadig to the town hall, where first his wound was dressed; he and his servant were then separately questioned to discover the truth. Zadig was found to be no murderer; but he was guilty of shedding blood, and was sentenced by law to be a slave. His two camels were sold for the benefit of the community; all the gold he had about him was distributed amongst the villagers; and both he and his travelling companion were put up for sale in the market square. An Arabian merchant called Setoc was the highest bidder, but the manservant fetched a better price than his master, because he was better fitted for hard work. Indeed there was no comparison between the two men, and Zadig was therefore ranked below his servant. They were chained together by the ankles, and in this wise they followed the Arabian merchant to his house. On the way Zadig consoled his servant, and bid him have patience; but as his habit was, he made some reflexions on the life of man.
‘I see,’ said he to his servant, ‘that the unhappiness of my fate has encroached upon yours. So far, everything has taken a peculiar turn for me. I have been fined for not noticing a bitch; I thought I was to be burnt at the stake for a griffin; I have been condemned to execution for making verses in praise of the King; I was very nearly strangled because the Queen had yellow ribbons; and here we are in slavery, you and I, just because a brutal fellow beat his mistress. Well, we mustn’t be discouraged! Perhaps there’ll be an end to it all! Arabian merchants must necessarily have slaves, and why should not I be one as much as another, since I am as much a man as another? This merchant will not be harsh to us; he must treat his slaves well, if he wants to use them.’
These were his words, but at the bottom of his heart he was wondering what had happened to the Queen of Babylon.
Two days later, Setoc the Merchant left for the Arabian desert with his slaves and his camels. His tribe lived near the desert of Horeb, and the route was long and wearisome. On the journey, Setoc rated the manservant higher than his master because he knew more about loading camels, and accordingly he received every little favour.
A camel died two days’ journey from Horeb, and its load was distributed over each slave’s back; Zadig took his share. When he saw his slaves bent under their burdens, Setoc started laughing; but Zadig took the liberty of explaining the reason, and told him about the laws of equilibrium. The merchant was astonished, and began to take a different view of him. Seeing that he had excited his curiosity, Zadig increased it by teaching him many things he knew about the merchant’s line of business, such as the specific gravity of equal volumes of metals and other materials, the characteristics of several useful animals, and the method of training those that are not useful. In short, Zadig gained the reputation of a sage, and Setoc gave him preference over the fellow-slave he had so highly rated. He treated him well, and had no cause to repent of it.
Once more amongst his own people, Setoc demanded repayment of five hundred ounces of silver which he had lent to a Jew in the presence of two witnesses; but since both witnesses were dead, and the debt could not be proved, the Jew appropriated the merchant’s money and thanked God for enabling him to cheat an Arab. Setoc mentioned his difficulty to Zadig, who had now become his adviser.
‘Whereabouts was it,’ asked Zadig, ‘that you lent your five hundred ounces of silver to this infidel?’
‘On a large stone,’ replied the merchant, ‘near Mount Horeb.’
‘What sort of a character has your debtor?’ said Zadig.
‘He’s a swindler,’ replied Setoc.
‘Yes,’ said Zadig. ‘But what I am asking you is whether he is quick-witted or dull. Is he cautious, or is he imprudent?’
‘Of all the welshers I’ve ever known, he’s the smartest,’ said the merchant.
‘Very well,’ replied Zadig, ‘allow me to plead your cause before the Judge.’
Thereupon he summoned the Jew before the Tribunal, and addressed the Judge as follows:
‘Most gracious Cushion upon the Throne of Equity, I have come to sue this man, in the name of my master, for five hundred ounces of silver which he will not repay.’
‘Have you any witnesses?’ asked the Judge.
‘No, they are dead; but there remains a large stone on which the silver was counted. If it please your Honour to give orders that the stone be fetched, I hope it will bear witness. The Jew and I will stay here until the stone arrives. I shall send for it at the expense of Setoc my master.’
‘Very well,’ said the Judge, who then proceeded to other business.
At the end of the session, the Judge addressed Zadig, and said:
‘So your stone has not arrived yet?’
The Jew laughed at this, and replied :
‘If Your Honour were to stay here till tomorrow, the stone would still not have arrived; it’s more than six miles from here, and it would need fifteen men to remove it.’
‘Well,’ cried Zadig, ‘I was quite right in saying that the stone would bear witness; since this man knows where it is, he admits that the silver was counted upon it.’
This so much disconcerted the Jew that he was soon forced to make a clean breast of it. The Judge ordered that he should be bound to the stone, without food or drink, until he gave back the five hundred ounces. They were soon paid.
The slave Zadig and the stone were held in great esteem throughout Arabia.
CHAPTER 11
THE FUNERAL PYRE
SETOC was delighted, and made an intimate friend of his slave. Like the King of Babylon, he could no longer do without him; and Zadig was glad that Setoc had no wife. He discovered that his master was naturally benevolent, and possessed a large measure of honesty and good sense; but he was displeased to see him worshipping the celestial host, that is to say the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, as the ancient custom is in Arabia. He spoke to him about it with great discretion on several occasions. At length he told him that these bodies were in no way supernatural, and deserved no more homage than a rock or a tree.
‘But,’ said Setoc, ‘they are eternal beings from which we derive all benefits: they give life to Nature, they rule the seasons, and they are besides so far-removed from us that one can’t help revering them.’
‘You derive more good,’ replied Zadig, ‘from the waters of the Red Sea which bears your merchandise to the Indies. Why shouldn’t that be as old as the stars? And if you worship what is so remote, you ought to worship the land of the Gangarides, which is at the other end of the world.’
‘No,’ said Setoc. ‘The stars are so brilliant that I cannot help worshipping them.’
That same evening Zadig lit a great number of candles in the tent where he was to have supper with Setoc, and as soon as his patron arrived, he fell upon his knees before the lighted tapers, and addressed them thus :
‘Bright and everlasting luminaries, look ever favourably
upon me.’
Having uttered these words, he sat down to table without taking any notice of Setoc.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Setoc to him in astonishment.
‘I am doing what you do,’ replied Zadig. ‘I am worshipping these candles, and I am taking no notice of their master and mine.’
Setoc perceived the meaning underlying this performance. His slave’s wisdom entered into his soul, and instead of wasting incense on the objects of Creation, he worshipped the Eternal Being who made them.
There was at that time in Arabia a horrible custom which originally came from Scythia; it had been established in India by the authority of the Brahmins, and threatened to overrun the whole of the East. When a married man died and his devoted wife wished to be assured of sanctification, she burnt herself alive in public on the body of her husband. It was a solemn festival, and was called the Pyre of Widowhood. The tribe which could claim the greatest number of burned women was the most respected. An Arab of Setoc’s tribe had died; and his widow, Almona, a very devout woman, had announced the day and hour when she would throw herself into the fire to the sound of tambours and trumpets. Zadig represented to Setoc that this horrible custom was contrary to the welfare of the human race; he pointed out that every day young widows were allowed to be burned who could have produced children for the State, or who could at least have brought up their own; and he made him agree that if possible such a barbarous custom should be abolished. But Setoc replied:
‘For more than a thousand years women have had the right to burn themselves. Which of us shall dare to alter a law which time has consecrated? Is there anything more respectable than an ancient abuse?’
‘Reason is more ancient,’ replied Zadig. ‘Speak to the leaders of the tribes, while I go and find the young widow.’
He gained admission to her, and after ingratiating himself with praise of her beauty, and saying what a pity it was that so many charms should be committed to the flames, he praised her still more for her constancy and courage.
‘You must have been devoted to your husband,’ he said to her.
‘Indeed I wasn’t,’ replied the Arabian lady. ‘He was a brutal creature, consumed with jealousy, a quite insufferable fellow; but I am firmly resolved to throw myself upon his funeral pyre.’
‘There must evidently be a most delicious pleasure in being burnt alive,’ said Zadig.
‘Ah,’ said the lady, ‘it makes me tremble to think of it, but it has to be endured. I am a devout woman, and I should lose my reputation. Everyone would laugh at me if I did not burn myself.’
After making her agree that she was going to burn herself in deference to others and to gratify her vanity, Zadig spoke to her at length in such a way as to make her feel some love of living. He even succeeded in arousing in her a measure of goodwill towards himself.
‘Well, then, what will you do,’ he said, ‘if you decide not to make this useless sacrifice?’
The lady sighed, as she answered: ‘I think I should beg you to marry me.’
This declaration made no appeal to Zadig, whose mind was still possessed by the image of Astarte; but he went immediately to find the leaders of the tribes and tell them what had happened. He advised them to make a law forbidding a widow to burn herself until after she had conversed in private with a young man for the space of a whole hour. Since that time not a woman in Arabia has burnt herself alive. To Zadig alone was the credit due of having destroyed in one day such a cruel custom, which had lasted for so many centuries. He was therefore the benefactor of Arabia.
CHAPTER 12
THE SUPPER PARTY
SETOC, who could not bear to be parted from the man with whom wisdom had taken up her abode, brought him to the Great Fair of Balsora, where all the greatest merchants of the habitable world were accustomed to meet. For Zadig it was a source of delight to see so many men from different countries met together in one place. It seemed to him that the universe was one large family, which had assembled at Balsora. He was seated at table on the second day with an Egyptian, an Indian from the banks of the Ganges, an inhabitant of Cathay, a Greek, a Celt, and several other strangers who in their frequent journeys to the Arabian Gulf had learnt enough Arabic to make themselves understood. The Egyptian seemed to be in a great rage.
‘What an odious country Balsora is!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have been refused a thousand ounces of gold on the best security in the world.’
‘Indeed!’ said Setoc. ‘What security did you offer, that you were refused such a sum?’
‘Nothing less than my aunt’s body,’ replied the Egyptian. ‘And she was the handsomest woman in Egypt. She used to accompany me everywhere; but she died on the way, and I had her made into the most beautiful mummy. In my own country I should get all I wanted with her as deposit. It’s very strange that here they won’t even give me a thousand ounces of gold on such solid security.’
Angry as he was, he was going to help himself to an excellent boiled fowl, when the Indian took him by the hand and sorrowfully exclaimed :
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I am going to eat a bit of this fowl,’ said the man with the mummy.
‘Do be careful,’ replied the man from the Ganges. ‘It may very well happen that the dead woman’s soul has entered the body of this fowl, and you would not wish to be in danger of eating your aunt. To have fowls cooked is the clearest outrage upon Nature.’
‘What do you mean, with your Nature and your fowls?’ replied the testy Egyptian. ‘We worship a bull, and we eat it too.’
‘You worship a bull! Oh, surely not!’ said the man from the Ganges.
‘Certainly we do,’ replied the other. ‘What’s more, we have been doing it for a hundred and thirty-five thousand years, and none of us see anything wrong in it.’
‘A hundred and thirty-five thousand years!’ said the Indian. ‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration. It is only eighty thousand years since India was first inhabited, and we are certainly a more ancient race than you are. Besides, Brahma forbade us to eat oxen before you had ever thought of putting them on your altars and your spits.’
‘Your Brahma’s a ridiculous creature to be compared with Apis!’ said the Egyptian. ‘What has Brahma done to boast of?’
‘It was he,’ the Brahmin replied, ‘who taught men to read and write, and to whom the whole world is indebted for the game of chess.’
‘You are mistaken,’ said a Chaldean sitting near him. ‘It is to the fish Oannes that we owe these great benefits, and it is not right to offer homage to any but him. Everyone will tell you that he was a divine being with a golden tail and a beautiful human head, who rose from the water to come and preach on earth for three hours every day. He had several children, all of whom were Kings, as everyone knows. I have his portrait at home, which I worship as in duty bound. You can eat as much beef as you like, but it is certainly a gross impiety to cook fish; though really you are both of too recent and ignoble origin for me to dispute with. The Egyptian nation goes back only one hundred and thirty-five thousand years, and the Indians cannot boast of more than eighty thousand, whereas we have almanacks eighty centuries old. So take my advice: give up your follies, and I will present each of you with a beautiful portrait of Oannes.’
The man from Cambalu then began to speak, and said:
‘I have a great respect for the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Celts, Brahma, the bull Apis, and the beautiful fish Oannes; but Li, or Tien,* as we should prefer to call him, surely ranks higher than bulls and fish. I shall say nothing about my country; it is as big as Egypt, Chaldea, and the Indies put together. I shall not dispute its age, because it is enough to be happy, and it is of small moment to be old; but if there were need to talk of almanacks, I should say that the whole of Asia accepts ours, and that we had very good ones before arithmetic was known in Chaldea.’
‘What a lot of ignorant fellows you are,’ exclaimed the Greek. ‘Don’t you know that Chaos is the father of all,
and that form and matter have brought the world to the state it is now in?’
The Greek spoke for a long time, but at last he was interrupted by the Celt, who had drunk a good deal while the dispute was going on, and so believed that he was wiser than the others. He swore an oath and said it was only Teutath and the mistletoe on the oak tree that were worth discussing, and that for his part he always carried a piece of mistletoe in his pocket. He added that his ancestors the Scythians were the only honest people there had ever been on the earth, that admittedly they had often eaten men, but that that did not prevent their nation from being held in great respect; and lastly that if anyone spoke ill of Teutath, he would teach him better manners. Upon this the quarrel grew warm, and Setoc feared bloodshed at the table. Zadig, who had kept silent throughout the dispute, rose to his feet at last. He addressed the Celt first, since he was the most angry. He told him that he was right, and asked him for some mistletoe. He praised the Greek for his eloquence, and cooled the heat of the party. He said very little to the man from Cathay, because he had been the most reasonable of all. He then spoke to them as follows :
‘My friends, you were going to quarrel about nothing; for you are all of the same opinion.’
At this they all protested.
‘Isn’t it true,’ he said to the Celt, ‘that what you worship is not this mistletoe, but him who made the mistletoe and the oak?’
‘Yes, of course,’ replied the Celt.
Then turning to the Egyptian, he said: ‘What you revere is not really the bull himself but the giver of all good bulls. Is that so?’
