s the consternation and despair into which he was thrown
upon reading these words: "Fly this instant, or thou art a dead man.
Fly, Zadig, I conjure thee by our mutual love and my yellow ribbons. I
have not been guilty, but I find I must die like a criminal."

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