Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/248

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
222
The Princess of Babylon.

sovereign courts another sort of glory. She has sent forth her armies to be the messengers of peace, not only to prevent men from being the destroyers, but to oblige them to be the benefactors of one another. Her standards are the ensigns of public tranquillity."

The phœnix was quite charmed with what he heard from this nobleman. He told him that though he had lived twenty-seven thousand nine hundred years and seven months in this world he had never seen anything like it. He then inquired after his friend Amazan. The Cimmerian gave the same account of him that the princess had already heard from the Chinese and the Scythians. It was Amazan's constant practice to run away from all the courts he visited the instant any lady noticed him in particular and seemed anxious to make his acquaintance. The phœnix soon acquainted Formosanta with this fresh instance of Amazan's fidelity—a fidelity so much the more surprising since he could not imagine his princess would ever hear of it.

Amazan had set out for Scandinavia, where he was entertained with sights still more surprising. In this place he beheld monarchy and liberty existing together in a manner thought incompatible in other states; the laborers of the ground shared in the legislature with the grandees of the realm. In another place he saw what was still more extraordinary—a prince equally remarkable for his extreme youth and uprightness, who possessed a sov-