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Zadig proceeded on his journey with a mind full of disquiet and perplexity, and wholly employed on the unhappy Astarte, on the King of Babylon, on his faithful friend Cador, on the happy robber Arbogad; in a word, on all the misfortunes and disappointments he had hitherto suffered.
"Oh, angels watch over me!" said Tancred to himself as Queen Astarte fixed her violet eyes upon him with a glance of love that could not be mistaken, and led him back into the hall of audience. There he saw Fakredeen bending over a maiden with a flower-like face, and large, dark, lustrous eyes. "She is my foster-sister, Eva," said Fakredeen. "The Ansareys captured her on the plain of Aleppo."
Then he could not help recalling their meetings in the grove of Astarte, her self-forgetting, passionate tenderness, and the wonderfully delicate beauty of her foreign type. True, she had never laughed in his presence; but what a peculiar charm there was in her smile! Had he really lost her entirely and forever?
For them religion had nothing to do with morality. Thieves might have gods favorable to them quite as well as righteous men. The worship of Diana of the Ephesians or of Astarte in the groves of the Asia Minor coast could be so unspeakably licentious and vile as not to admit of description to-day. Yet this was all religion.
'What are these pigeons that you are flying without letters! exclaimed Astarte, looking very perplexed. 'Ah! beautiful Astarte, said Fakredeen, with a sigh; 'you did not know my mother. 'How should I know your mother, Emir of the castles of Lebanon? Have I ever left these mountains, which are dearer to me than the pyramids of Egypt to the great Pasha?
"He spent a month in the temple of Hator, he listened to the highest wisdom, and immediately afterward betook himself to the Phoenicians. What do I say? He visited the idol house of Astarte and took thence a priestess an offence against all religions. After that he reviled my piety, in public; conspired with such frivolous minds as his own, and with the aid of Phoenicians stole state secrets.
At our publishers', however, the eyes of that distinguished Orientalist, the Rev. Mr. Osborn, chanced to fall upon a proof of the American goddess in the fourth note to this chapter, which he at once recognized as Astarte, represented according to an antique pattern.
Meanwhile a good deal of signalling had been proceeding between the Colossus, ourselves, and the Astarte; and just as I reached the deck the order was given to make sail, the two frigates having been instructed to chase the strangers, and for us, in addition, to pursue and recapture the large ship which had by this time vanished altogether in the south-eastern board.
"Well, Poitou, does it go better?" he said cheerfully, "or must we try them of the other sex and somewhat younger, as I at first proposed?" He let the door slip back, and the action of a powerful spring shut out Astarte.
"Astarte, vilest beast," he cried, "have I not a thousand times warned you to be silent and wait outside when I am at work within my chamber?" The she-wolf eyed her master as he went back towards his table. Then, seeing him lift his pen, with a sigh of content she dropped down upon the warm hearthstone, lying with her haunches towards the blazing logs and her bristling head couched upon her paws.
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