declared an insuperable aversion to one-eyed men, she was that very night to be wedded to Orcan. At this unexpected ill news, poor Zadig fell senseless on the earth; and was so greatly affected with his disappointment, that it threw him into a violent illness, which lasted some months. At length, reason prevailed over his affliction, and the reflection of the guilt he had experienced in her, served to give him consolation.

'Since I have suffered,' said he, the effects of such cruel caprice, from a woman educated at court, I will now wed the daughter of some substantial citizen.' Accordingly, he made choice of Azora, a young lady of genteel education, an excellent economist, and descended from parents the most respectable. Shortly after, they were married, and lived for a whole month in all the delights of the most tender union. But he soon began to perceive, that Azora possessed some small degree of levity, and had a strong propensity to believe that those young men who had the most agreeable persons, were always the most virtuous and witty.

CHAPTER II.

THE NOSE.

AZORA had been one day walking, when she returned filled with rage, and uttering loud exclamations 'Why, O my dear wife! are you afflicted?' said he 'Who has been able thus to disturb you ?'—' Alas !' said she,' you would have been equally enraged, had

you seen what I have just beheld. I have been to comfort the young widow Cosrou, who has been these two days erecting a monument to the memory of her deceased husband, near the rivulet which runs by the side of this meadow. In the height of her grief, she made a solemn vow to stay at his tomb as long as the rivulet kept it's course.'-' Well,' said Zadig,' this woman is worthy of esteem; she loved her husband with perfect sincerity.'-' Ah!' replied Azora,' did you know how she was employed, when I went to visit her, you would not say so.'-' How was it, lovely Azora ?' said he; ' was she turning the stream of the rivulet?' Azora answered by long invectives; and uttered such bitter reproaches against the young widow, that Zadig was disgusted at her ostentation of virtue.

Zadig had an intimate friend, named Cador, whose wife was perfectly virtuous, and actually preferred her husband to all the world besides; this friend Zadig made his confident, and secured his fidelity by a considerable present.

Azora had been two days in the country, visiting one of her friends: at her return home, on the third, she was informed by her domestics, who were all in tears, that Zadig died suddenly the night before; that they had not dared to carry her this fatal news; and that they had just buried him in the tomb of his fathers, at the end of the garden. She burst into a flood of tears, tore her hair, and vowed that she would immediately follow him. In the evening, Cador came, and begged to be permitted to condole with her; and they both joined their lamentations. The next day they wept less, and dined together; when Cador informed her, that Zadig had left him the

greatest part of his wealth, and gave her to understand, that his happiness depended on her sharing his fortune. The lady again burst into tears; grew angry; and became reconciled. They sat longer at supper than they had done at dinner, and talked together with greater confidence. Azora was lavish in her encomiums on the deceased; but at the same time observed, that he had faults from which Cador was exempt. In the midst of their entertainment, Cador suddenly complained of a violent pain in his side. The lady, afflicted, and eager to serve him, ordered the essences of flowers and drugs to be brought; and with these she anointed him, to try if any of them would assuage his anguish: she was much concerned that the great Hermes was not still in Babylon, and condescended to lay her warm hand on the part affected. 'Are you subject to this tormenting malady?' said she, in a soft compassionate tone. Sometimes,' said Cador, I am so violently affected with it, that it brings me to the very brink of the grave: nor is there but a single remedy which can give me ease, and that is, to apply to my side the nose of a man lately dead.' 'This is a strange remedy!' said Azora. 'Not more strange,' replied he, than the satchels of the great Arnou*, against the apoplexy.'

This reason, added to the person and merit of the young man, at last determined her in his favour. 'After all,' said she, when my husband passes the bridge Tchimavar, the Angel Asrail will not stop his

There was at this time in Babylon, a famous doctor, named Arnou, who (in the Gazettes) cured apoplectic fits, and prevented them from affecting his patients, by hanging a little bag about their necks.

passage, though his nose be somewhat shorter in the next life than it was in this.' She then took a razor, went to the tomb of her husband, bedewed it with her tears, and approached to cut off his nose, as he lay extended in his coffin. Zadig mounted in a moment, holding his nose with one hand, and putting back the instrument with the other. Azora,' said he, do not so loudly exclaim against the widow Cosrou; the project of cutting off my nose, is equal to that of turning a rivulet.'

CHAPTER III.

THE DOG AND THE HORSE.

ZADIG found by experience, that the first month of marriage, as it is written in the book of Zind, is the moon of honey; but that the second is the moon of wormwood. In short, he was some time after obliged to repudiate Azora, who became too hard to be pleased, and seek for happiness in the study of nature. 'None,' said he, can enjoy greater felicity than the philosopher, who judiciously peruses that spacious book which God has placed before his eyes. The truths he discovers become useful to himself: he nourishes and exalts his soul; lives in tranquillity; fears nothing from men; and has no tender spouse to cut off his nose.'

Filled with these ideas, he retired to a house in the country, that stood on the banks of the Euphrates. He did not there employ himself in calculating how many drops of water flow in a second of time under

the arches of a bridge; or if there fell a cube-line of rain in the month of the Mouse, more than in the month of the Sheep. He formed no projects for making silk gloves and stockings with the webs of spiders, nor china-ware out of broken glass bottles ; but he chiefly studied the properties of animals and plants; and was very soon, by his strict and repeated enquiries, enabled to discover a thousand variations in visible objects, that others, less curious, imagined all alike.

As he was one day walking by the side of a thicket, he saw one of the queen's eunuchs approaching towards him, followed by many officers, who appeared under the greatest perplexity, running here and there like persons almost distracted, and seeking with impatience something extremely precious. 'Young man,' said the first eunuch, 'have you seen the queen's dog?' Zadig coolly replied,' You mean, I presume, her bitch ?'' You are in the right, sir!' returned the eunuch; it is a spaniel-bitch, indeed!'—' And very small,' said Zadig. 'She has lately whelped, she limps on the left-foot before, and has very long ears.' -You have then seen her?' said the eunuch, quite out of breath. 'No,' answered Zadig, 'I have never seen her; nor do I know, but by you, that the queen had such a bitch.'

Just at this time, by one of the ordinary caprices of fortune, the finest horse in the king's stables had escaped from the groom, and got upon the plains of Babylon. The principal huntsman, and all the inferior officers, ran after him with as much concern as the first eunuch after the bitch. The principal huntsman addressed himself to Zadig, and asked, if he had