Candide and Other Stories by Voltaire; Pearson Roger;

Author:Voltaire; Pearson, Roger;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
Published: 2006-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Jealousy

ZADIG’S downfall stemmed from his very good fortune, and in particular from his own exceptional qualities. Each day he would call on the King and Astarte, his noble consort. The delightful nature of his conversation was further enhanced by that desire to please which is to wit what ornament is to beauty. By insensible degrees his youth and charm began to make an impression on Astarte, an impression of which she was not at first aware. Her love grew within the bosom of innocence. Astarte gave herself up, without a moment’s thought or apprehension, to the pleasure of seeing and hearing a man who was dear to her husband and to the nation. She did not cease to sing his praises to the King. She would talk about him to her women, who would add yet further words of approbation. Everything served, without her noticing, to drive the dart ever deeper into her heart. She gave Zadig presents of a more suggestive kind than she realized. She thought to speak to him merely as a Queen well-pleased with his services, but sometimes her turns of phrase were those of a woman of feeling.

Astarte was much more beautiful than that Semira who had such an aversion to one-eyed men, or that other woman who had wanted to cut her husband’s nose off. Astarte’s confiding tone, her tender remarks (which were beginning to bring a blush to her face), and those glances which she tried to direct elsewhere but which kept meeting his, all combined to light a fire in Zadig’s heart, a fire which surprised him. He fought against it. He summoned the aid of philosophy, which had always helped him in the past: it simply shone further light, and offered no comfort. Duty, gratitude, and the thought of sovereign majesty besmirched rose up before his eyes as so many vengeful deities. He fought on, and he triumphed; but this victory, which had to be won and rewon with every moment, cost him many a groan and many a tear. He no longer dared to speak to the Queen with that sweet freedom which they had both found so captivating. His eyes would cloud over; his speech became forced and incoherent; he would lower his gaze, and when, in spite of himself, his eyes would turn towards Astarte, they would find the Queen’s eyes all moist with tears and darting looks of fire. Each of them seemed to be saying to the other: ‘We adore each other, and yet we dare not love. Each of us burns with a flame, yet this flame we repudiate.’

Zadig would leave her presence thoroughly bewildered and distraught, his heart weighed down by a burden he could no longer bear. In the violence of his agitation he let slip his secret to his friend Cador, rather as a man who, having long suffered the repeated stabbing of a sharp pain, finally betrays his ailment by a cry wrenched from him by a new and sharper spasm, and by the cold sweat dripping from his forehead.

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