d them by saying, "If there are no griffins, we cannot
possibly eat them; and thus either way we shall obey Zoroaster."

A learned man who had composed thirteen volumes on the properties of
the griffin, and was besides the chief theurgite, hastened away to
accuse Zadig before one of the principal magi, named Yebor, the
greatest blockhead and therefore the greatest fanatic among the
Chaldeans. This man would have impaled Zadig to do honors to the sun,
and would then have recited the breviary of Zoroaster with greater
satisfaction. The friend Cador (a friend is better than a hundred
priests) went to Yebor, and said to him, "Long live the sun and the
griffins; beware of punishing Zadig; he is a saint; he has griffins in
his inner court and does not eat them; and his accuser is an heretic,
who dares to maintain that rabbits have cloven feet and are not
unclean."

"Well," said Yebor, shaking his bald pate, "we must impale Zadig for
having thought contemptuously of griffins, and the other for having
spoken disrespectfully of rabbits." Cador hushed up the affair by means
of a maid of honor with whom he had a love affair, and who had great
interest in the College of the Magi. Nobody was impaled.

This levity occasioned a great murmuring among some of the doctors, who
from thence predicted the fall of Babylon. "Upon what does happiness
depend?" said Zadig. "I am persecuted by everything in the world, even
on account of beings that have no existence." He cursed those men of
learning, and resolved for the future to live with none but good
company.

He assembled at his house the most worthy men and the most beautiful
ladies of Babylon. He gave them delicious suppers, often preceded by
concerts of music, and always animated by polite conversation, from
which he knew how to banish that affectation of wit which is the surest
method of preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the
most agreeable society. Neither the choice of his friends, nor that of
the dishes was made by vanity; for in everything he preferred the
substance to the shadow; and by these means he procured that real
respect to which he did not aspire.

Opposite to his house lived one Arimazes, a man whose deformed
countenance was but a faint picture of his still more deformed mind.
His heart was a mixture of malice, pride, and envy. Having never been
able to succeed in any of his undertakings, he revenged himself on all
around him by loading them with