Chapter 3: The Dog and the Horse
Original French
Le chien et le cheval.
Zadig éprouva que le premier mois du mariage, comme il est écrit dans le livre du Zend, est la lune du miel, et que le second est la lune de l'absinthe. Il fut quelque temps après obligé de répudier Azora, qui était devenue trop difficile à vivre, et il chercha son bonheur dans l'étude de la nature. Rien n'est plus heureux, disait-il, qu'un philosophe qui lit dans ce grand livre que Dieu a mis sous nos yeux. Les vérités qu'il découvre sont à lui: il nourrit et il élève son âme, il vit tranquille; il ne craint rien des hommes, et sa tendre épouse ne vient point lui couper le nez.
Plein de ces idées, il se retira dans une maison de campagne sur les bords de l'Euphrate. Là il ne s'occupait pas à calculer combien de pouces d'eau coulaient en une seconde sous les arches d'un pont, ou s'il tombait une ligne cube de pluie dans le mois de la souris plus que dans le mois du mouton. Il n'imaginait point de faire de la soie avec des toiles d'araignée, ni de la porcelaine avec des bouteilles cassées; mais il étudia surtout les propriétés des animaux et des plantes, et il acquit bientôt une sagacité qui lui découvrait mille différences où les autres hommes ne voient rien que d'uniforme.
Un jour, se promenant auprès d'un petit bois, il vit accourir à lui un eunuque de la reine, suivi de plusieurs officiers qui paraissaient dans la plus grande inquiétude, et qui couraient çà et là comme des hommes égarés qui cherchent ce qu'ils ont perdu de plus précieux. Jeune homme, lui dit le premier eunuque, n'avez-vous point vu le chien de la reine? Zadig répondit modestement, C'est une chienne, et non pas un chien. Vous avez raison, reprit le premier eunuque. C'est une épagneule très petite, ajouta Zadig; elle a fait depuis peu des chiens; elle boite du pied gauche de devant, et elle a les oreilles très longues. Vous l'avez donc vue? dit le premier eunuque tout essoufflé. Non, répondit Zadig, je ne l'ai jamais vue, et je n'ai jamais su si la reine avait une chienne.
Précisément dans le même temps, par une bizarrerie ordinaire de la fortune, le plus beau cheval de l'écurie du roi s'était échappé des mains d'un palefrenier dans les plaines de Babylone. Le grand-veneur et tous les autres officiers couraient après lui avec autant d'inquiétude que le premier eunuque après la chienne. Le grand-veneur s'adressa à Zadig, et lui demanda s'il n'avait point vu passer le cheval du roi. C'est, répondit Zadig, le cheval qui galope le mieux; il a cinq pieds de haut, le sabot fort petit; il porte une queue de trois pieds et demi de long; les bossettes de son mors sont d'or à vingt-trois carats; ses fers sont d'argent à onze deniers. Quel chemin a-t-il pris? où est-il? demanda le grand-veneur. Je ne l'ai point vu, répondit Zadig, et je n'en ai jamais entendu parler.
Le grand-veneur et le premier eunuque ne doutèrent pas que Zadig n'eût volé le cheval du roi et la chienne de la reine; ils le firent conduire devant l'assemblée du grand Desterham, qui le condamna au knout, et à passer le reste de ses jours en Sibérie. A peine le jugement fut-il rendu qu'on retrouva le cheval et la chienne. Les juges furent dans la douloureuse nécessité de réformer leur arrêt; mais ils condamnèrent Zadig à payer quatre cents onces d'or, pour avoir dit qu'il n'avait point vu ce qu'il avait vu. Il fallut d'abord payer cette amende; après quoi il fut permis à Zadig de plaider sa cause au conseil du grand Desterham; il parla en ces termes:
«Étoiles de justice, abîmes de science, miroirs de vérité, qui avez la pesanteur du plomb, la dureté du fer, l'éclat du diamant, et beaucoup d'affinité avec l'or, puisqu'il m'est permis de parler devant cette auguste assemblée, je vous jure par Orosmade, que je n'ai jamais vu la chienne respectable de la reine, ni le cheval sacré du roi des rois. Voici ce qui m'est arrivé: Je me promenais vers le petit bois où j'ai rencontré depuis le vénérable eunuque et le très illustre grand-veneur. J'ai vu sur le sable les traces d'un animal, et j'ai jugé aisément que c'étaient celles d'un petit chien. Des sillons légers et longs, imprimés sur de petites éminences de sable entre les traces des pattes, m'ont fait connaître que c'était une chienne dont les mamelles étaient pendantes, et qu'ainsi elle avait fait des petits il y a peu de jours. D'autres traces en un sens différent, qui paraissaient toujours avoir rasé la surface du sable à côté des pattes de devant, m'ont appris qu'elle avait les oreilles très longues; et comme j'ai remarqué que le sable était toujours moins creusé par une patte que par les trois autres, j'ai compris que la chienne de notre auguste reine était un peu boiteuse, si je l'ose dire.
«A l'égard du cheval du roi des rois, vous saurez que, me promenant dans les routes de ce bois, j'ai aperçu les marques des fers d'un cheval; elles étaient toutes à égales distances. Voilà, ai-je dit, un cheval qui a un galop parfait. La poussière des arbres, dans une route étroite qui n'a que sept pieds de large, était un peu enlevée à droite et à gauche, à trois pieds et demi du milieu de la route. Ce cheval, ai-je dit, a une queue de trois pieds et demi, qui, par ses mouvements de droite et de gauche, a balayé cette poussière. J'ai vu sous les arbres qui formaient un berceau de cinq pieds de haut, les feuilles des branches nouvellement tombées; et j'ai connu que ce cheval y avait touché, et qu'ainsi il avait cinq pieds de haut. Quant à son mors, il doit être d'or à vingt-trois carats; car il en a frotté les bossettes contre une pierre que j'ai reconnue être une pierre de touche, et dont j'ai fait l'essai. J'ai jugé enfin par les marques que ses fers ont laissées sur des cailloux, d'une autre espèce, qu'il était ferré d'argent à onze deniers de fin.»
Tous les juges admirèrent le profond et subtil discernement de Zadig; la nouvelle en vint jusqu'au roi et à la reine. On ne parlait que de Zadig dans les antichambres, dans la chambre, et dans le cabinet; et quoique plusieurs mages opinassent qu'on devait le brûler comme sorcier, le roi ordonna qu'on lui rendît l'amende des quatre cents onces d'or à laquelle il avait été condamné. Le greffier, les huissiers, les procureurs, vinrent chez lui en grand appareil lui rapporter ses quatre cents onces; ils en retinrent seulement trois cent quatre-vingt-dix-huit pour les frais de justice, et leurs valets demandèrent des honoraires.
Zadig vit combien il était dangereux quelquefois d'être trop savant, et se promit bien, à la première occasion, de ne point dire ce qu'il avait vu.
Cette occasion se trouva bientôt. Un prisonnier d'état s'échappa; il passa sous les fenêtres de sa maison. On interrogea Zadig, il ne répondit rien; mais on lui prouva qu'il avait regardé par la fenêtre. Il fut condamné pour ce crime à cinq cents onces d'or, et il remercia ses juges de leur indulgence, selon la coutume de Babylone.
Grand Dieu! dit-il en lui-même, qu'on est à plaindre quand on se promène dans un bois où la chienne de la reine et le cheval du roi ont passé! qu'il est dangereux de se mettre à la fenêtre! et qu'il est difficile d'être heureux dans cette vie!
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation made directly from Voltaire’s French in Beuchot’s 1829 edition: Approbation, dedicatory epistle and all twenty-one chapters, including The Dance and Blue Eyes. Voltaire’s notes are retained; later editors’ notes are omitted. Source-language review is recorded with the source witness.
The Dog and the Horse.
Zadig discovered that the first month of marriage, as the book of the Zend says, is the moon of honey, and the second the moon of wormwood. Before long he was obliged to divorce Azora, who had become too difficult to live with, and sought his happiness in the study of nature. “No one is happier,” he said, “than a philosopher reading the great book God has set before our eyes. The truths he discovers are his own; he nourishes and elevates his soul, lives in peace, fears nothing from men, and his tender wife does not come to cut off his nose.”
Filled with these ideas, he retired to a country house on the banks of the Euphrates. There he did not busy himself calculating how many inches of water flowed in a second beneath the arches of a bridge, or whether a cubic line more rain fell in the month of the mouse than in the month of the sheep. He did not dream of making silk from cobwebs or porcelain from broken bottles; instead, he studied above all the properties of animals and plants, and soon acquired a discernment that revealed a thousand differences where other men saw only sameness.
One day, walking near a small wood, he saw one of the queen's eunuchs running toward him, followed by several officers who seemed deeply alarmed, dashing this way and that like distracted men searching for their most precious possession. “Young man,” the chief eunuch said, “have you seen the queen's dog?” Zadig modestly answered, “It is a bitch, not a dog.” “You are right,” the chief eunuch replied. “A very small spaniel,” Zadig added. “She has recently had puppies; she limps on her left foreleg and has very long ears.” “Then you have seen her?” the chief eunuch asked, quite out of breath. “No,” Zadig answered. “I have never seen her, and never knew whether the queen had a bitch.”
At precisely the same time, by one of fortune's ordinary oddities, the finest horse in the royal stable had escaped a groom on the plains of Babylon. The master of the hunt and all the other officers were chasing it as anxiously as the chief eunuch was chasing the bitch. The master of the hunt approached Zadig and asked whether he had seen the king's horse pass by. “It is,” Zadig replied, “a horse with a perfect gallop; it stands five feet high, with very small hooves, and has a tail three and a half feet long. The bosses on its bit are twenty-three-karat gold; its shoes are silver of eleven-twelfths purity.” “Which way did it go? Where is it?” the master of the hunt demanded. “I have not seen it,” Zadig replied, “and have never heard of it.”
The master of the hunt and the chief eunuch had no doubt that Zadig had stolen the king's horse and the queen's bitch. They had him brought before the court of the Great Desterham, which sentenced him to the knout and to spend the rest of his days in Siberia. Scarcely had judgment been delivered when the horse and the bitch were found. The judges were under the painful necessity of reversing their verdict; but they sentenced Zadig to pay four hundred ounces of gold for saying he had not seen what he had seen. First he had to pay the fine; then he was allowed to plead his case before the council of the Great Desterham. He spoke in these terms:
“Stars of justice, abysses of learning, mirrors of truth, who have the weight of lead, the hardness of iron, the brilliance of diamonds, and a great affinity with gold, since I am permitted to address this august assembly, I swear to you by Orosmade that I have never seen the queen's respectable bitch or the sacred horse of the king of kings. This is what happened. I was walking toward the little wood where I later met the venerable eunuch and the most illustrious master of the hunt. I saw an animal's tracks in the sand, and readily judged them to be a small dog's. Long, light furrows imprinted on little ridges of sand between the paw marks told me it was a bitch with hanging teats, and that she had therefore had puppies a few days before. Other marks, running in a different direction and always seeming to have brushed the surface of the sand beside the forepaws, taught me that her ears were very long; and as I noticed that one paw always pressed less deeply into the sand than the other three, I understood that our august queen's bitch was a little lame, if I may venture to say so.
“As for the horse of the king of kings, you should know that while walking along the paths of this wood I noticed the marks of a horse's shoes, all at equal distances. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘is a horse with a perfect gallop.’ On a narrow path only seven feet wide, the dust on the trees had been brushed away on either side, three and a half feet from the middle of the path. ‘This horse,’ I said, ‘has a tail three and a half feet long, which has swept away the dust by moving from side to side.’ Beneath trees forming a canopy five feet high, I saw leaves newly fallen from the branches, and knew that the horse had touched them, and was therefore five feet tall. As for its bit, it must be twenty-three-karat gold, for it had rubbed its bosses against a stone I recognized as a touchstone and on which I made a test. Lastly, from the marks its shoes left on pebbles of another kind, I judged that it was shod with silver of eleven-twelfths purity.”
All the judges admired Zadig's profound and subtle discernment; the news reached the king and queen. In the antechambers, the royal chamber, and the private study, everyone spoke of Zadig; and although several magi held that he should be burned as a sorcerer, the king ordered that the four-hundred-ounce fine imposed on him be returned. The clerk, the ushers, and the attorneys came to his house in great state to bring back his four hundred ounces; they withheld only three hundred and ninety-eight for legal costs, and their servants asked for fees.
Zadig saw how dangerous too much learning could sometimes be, and firmly resolved that at the next opportunity he would not say what he had seen.
The opportunity soon came. A prisoner of state escaped and passed beneath his windows. Zadig was questioned; he said nothing. But it was proved that he had looked out of the window. For this crime he was sentenced to pay five hundred ounces of gold, and thanked his judges for their leniency, as was the custom in Babylon.
“Great God!” he said to himself. “How pitiable a man is who walks in a wood through which the queen's bitch and the king's horse have passed! How dangerous it is to go to the window! And how difficult it is to be happy in this life!”
Plain English translation
Complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the French, in separate source-only translation tasks, not from the Musean edition or a published English translation. Same complete scope and author’s notes; later editors’ notes are omitted. Source-language review is recorded with the source witness.
The Dog and the Horse.
Zadig discovered that, as the book of Zend says, the first month of marriage is the month of honey, and the second is the month of wormwood. Some time later he had to divorce Azora, who had become too difficult to live with. He looked for happiness in studying nature. "No one is happier," he said, "than a philosopher reading this great book that God has put before our eyes. The truths he discovers are his own. He feeds and improves his soul, lives in peace, and has nothing to fear from other people. And his loving wife doesn't come to cut off his nose."
With these thoughts in mind, he moved to a country house on the banks of the Euphrates. There he did not spend his time calculating how many inches of water flowed under a bridge's arches in a second, or whether a cubic twelfth of an inch more rain fell in the month of the mouse than in the month of the sheep. He had no plans to make silk out of spiderwebs or porcelain out of broken bottles. Instead, he mainly studied the characteristics of animals and plants. He soon developed a sharp eye that showed him a thousand differences where other people saw only sameness.
One day, while walking near a small wood, he saw one of the queen's eunuchs running toward him. Several officers followed, looking deeply worried and running here and there like frantic men searching for the most precious thing they had lost. "Young man," the chief eunuch asked him, "have you seen the queen's dog?" Zadig answered modestly, "It's a female, not a male." "You're right," the chief eunuch replied. "She's a very small spaniel," Zadig added. "She's recently had puppies, she limps on her left front leg, and her ears are very long." "So you've seen her?" the chief eunuch asked, quite out of breath. "No," Zadig answered. "I've never seen her, and I never knew the queen had a female dog."
At exactly the same time, in one of fortune's usual strange twists, the finest horse in the king's stable had escaped from a groom on the plains of Babylon. The chief huntsman and all the other officers were chasing it as anxiously as the chief eunuch was chasing the dog. The chief huntsman asked Zadig whether he had seen the king's horse pass by. "It's a horse with the finest gallop," Zadig answered. "It's five feet tall, with very small hooves and a tail three and a half feet long. The knobs on its bit are twenty-three-karat gold, and its shoes are silver eleven parts fine out of twelve." "Which way did it go? Where is it?" the chief huntsman asked. "I haven't seen it," Zadig replied, "and I've never heard of it."
The chief huntsman and the chief eunuch had no doubt that Zadig had stolen the king's horse and the queen's dog. They had him brought before the assembly of the Great Desterham, which sentenced him to a flogging with the knout and the rest of his life in Siberia. Hardly had the judgment been given when the horse and dog were found. The judges faced the painful necessity of changing their ruling. But they sentenced Zadig to pay four hundred ounces of gold for saying he had not seen what he had seen. He had to pay this fine first. After that, he was allowed to argue his case before the Great Desterham's council. He spoke as follows:
"Stars of justice, bottomless wells of learning, mirrors of truth, you have the weight of lead, the hardness of iron, the sparkle of diamonds, and a great affinity for gold. Since I am allowed to speak before this honored assembly, I swear to you by Orosmade that I have never seen the queen's respected dog or the sacred horse of the king of kings. Here is what happened to me. I was walking toward the small wood where I later met the respected eunuch and the very distinguished chief huntsman. I saw an animal's tracks in the sand and easily recognized them as a small dog's. There were long, shallow grooves in the little rises of sand between the paw prints. These showed me that it was a female with hanging teats, so she had given birth a few days before. Other marks ran in a different direction, always seeming to brush the surface of the sand beside the front paws. They told me that her ears were very long. And I noticed that one paw always made a shallower print in the sand than the other three. So I realized that our honored queen's dog had a slight limp, if I may say so.
"As for the horse of the king of kings, you should know that while walking along the paths in this wood I noticed hoofprints. They were all equally spaced. 'Here is a horse with a perfect gallop,' I said. On a narrow path only seven feet wide, some dust had been brushed off the trees on either side, three and a half feet from the middle of the path. 'This horse has a tail three and a half feet long,' I said. 'As it swung from side to side, it swept this dust away.' Under trees that formed an arch five feet high, I saw leaves that had just fallen from the branches. I realized the horse had touched them and was therefore five feet tall. As for its bit, it must be twenty-three-karat gold. The horse had rubbed its knobs against a stone that I recognized as a touchstone, and I tested it. Finally, from the marks its shoes had left on stones of another kind, I judged that it was shod with silver eleven parts fine out of twelve."
All the judges admired Zadig's deep and subtle powers of observation. News of them reached the king and queen. In the royal waiting rooms, bedroom, and private study, people talked of nothing but Zadig. Several magi thought he should be burned as a sorcerer, but the king ordered that the fine of four hundred ounces of gold be returned to him. The clerk, the court officers, and the attorneys came to his house with great ceremony to bring back his four hundred ounces. They kept only three hundred and ninety-eight for legal expenses, and their servants asked for tips.
Zadig saw how dangerous it could sometimes be to know too much. He firmly promised himself that, the next time he had the chance, he would not say what he had seen.
The chance soon came. A political prisoner escaped and passed under the windows of his house. Zadig was questioned and said nothing, but it was proved that he had looked out the window. For this crime he was sentenced to pay five hundred ounces of gold. Following Babylonian custom, he thanked his judges for their leniency.
"Great God!" he said to himself. "How unfortunate it is to walk in a wood where the queen's dog and the king's horse have passed! How dangerous it is to look out the window! And how hard it is to be happy in this life!"
About this section
Chapter 3: The Dog and the Horse is part of Zadig, or Destiny by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 5 of 23 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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