personal advantages, and more simplicity, reticence, and modesty.
"It is astonishing that, having so much wit, he never insulted with his ridicule the chatterings, so vague, desultory, and confused, the reckless disparagements, the ignorant decisions, the gross jests, the vain noise of words, which is called conversation in Babylon. He had learnt in the first book of Zoroaster that self-love is a balloon filled with wind, whence issue tempests when it is pricked. Zadig, above all, did not make a boast of despising and conquering women. He was generous; he was not afraid of bestowing favours on the ungrateful, observing the great precept of Zoroaster: 'When you are eating, give something to the dogs lest they bite you.' He was also as wise as it is possible to be, for it was his aim to live with wise men. Learned in the sciences of the ancient Chaldeans, he was not ignorant of the facts of nature as ascertained in his own time, and knew of metaphysics as much as in all ages has been known—that is to say, very little. He was firmly persuaded that there were three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter in the year, in spite of the new philosophy of the day, and that the sun was in the centre of the world; and when the chief Magians told him, with insulting superciliousness, that his sentiments were pernicious, and that to believe that the sun turned on itself, and that there were twelve months in the year, was to be the enemy of the State, he held his tongue, without anger, and without disdain."
In Zadig's early projects of matrimony he discovers, and submits with philosophic good-humour to, the inconstancy of women. He has a friend called Cador, and a wife called Azora; and the reader of their domestic history can hardly fail to be reminded of Genonville and Suzanne de Livry. There is also an envious man (an Abbé Desfontaines), who is always doing Zadig ill offices, which he requites with benefits. A certain bishop, Boyer,
