Candide

Chapter 1:
How Candide Was Brought Up in a Magnificent Castle, and How He Was Expelled from It

[1.1] In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, there lived a youth who was blessed by nature with the gentlest manners. His appearance was a true picture of his soul. He combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit — which is why, as I understand, he was called “Candide.” The old servants of the family thought he might be the son of the Baron’s sister, by a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would never marry because he could prove he had just seventy-one quarterings,° the rest of his genealogical tree being lost to time.

[1.2] The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia.° His castle had not only a gate, but also windows. Even his great hall was hung with tapestry. All the dogs in his farmyards formed a pack of hounds when they were needed. The grooms in his stable were his huntsmen, and the village vicar was his responsible for distributing charity. They called him “My Lord,” and they laughed at all his stories.

[1.3] The Baron’s lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration. She did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her daughter, Cunegonde, was seventeen years old, fresh-colored, attractive, plump, and desirable. The Baron’s son seemed to be in every respect worthy of his father. The tutor, Pangloss, was the oracle of the family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of his age and character.

[1.4] Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolonigology. He admirably proved that there’s no effect without a cause, and that, in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron’s castle was the most magnificent of castles, and his lady the best of all possible Baronesses.

[1.5] “We can prove,” he said, “that things can’t be other than what they are. Since everything is created for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose. Observe that the nose has been created to bear spectacles — therefore we have spectacles. Legs are clearly designed for socks — and so we have socks. Stones were made to be cut and to construct castles — therefore my lord has a magnificent castle, for the greatest baron in the province should have the best lodgings. Pigs were made to be eaten — therefore we eat pork all the year round. Therefore, those who say ‘All is well’ are idiots: they should say ‘All is for the best.’”

[1.6] Candide listened carefully, and he believed innocently. He thought Miss Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to tell her so. He concluded that, after the happiness of being born of Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, the next level of happiness was to be Miss Cunegonde, the third that of seeing her every day, and the fourth that of hearing Master Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the entire province — and therefore of the whole world.

[1.7] One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle in a little wood they called a “park,” saw Dr. Pangloss between the bushes, giving a lesson in experimental natural philosophy to her mother’s chambermaid, a little brunette girl who was very pretty and very willing to learn. Since Miss Cunegonde had a talent for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the repeated experiments she witnessed. She clearly perceived the force of the Doctor’s reasons, the effects, and the causes; she turned back greatly disturbed, very thoughtful, and filled with the desire to be educated, dreaming that she might well be a sufficient reason for young Candide, and he for her.

[1.8] When she reached the castle she met Candide and blushed — Candide also blushed. She wished him “Good morning” in a hesitant tone, and Candide talked to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they left the table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen. Cunegonde let her handkerchief fall, Candide picked it up, she took him innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady’s hand with particular liveliness, sensibility, and grace . . . their lips met — their eyes sparkled — their knees trembled — their hands wandered. Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and, beholding this cause and effect, chased Candide from the castle with powerful kicks on the ass. Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness as soon as she came to herself; and everything was anxiety in this most magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.

Chapter 2:
What Became of Candide among the Bulgarians

[2.1] Candide, once he was driven from this earthly paradise, walked a long time without knowing where, crying, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often towards the most magnificent of castles, which imprisoned the purest of noble young ladies. In the middle of a field, between two furrows, he lay down to sleep without dinner. Snow fell in large flakes. The next day Candide, all numb, dragged himself towards the neighboring town, called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff. Having no money, and dying of hunger and fatigue, he stopped sadly at the door of an inn. Two men dressed in blue observed him.

[2.2] “Comrade,” said one, “here’s a well-built young guy, and of the right height.”

[2.3] They went up to Candide and very politely invited him to dinner.

[2.4] “Gentlemen,” replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, “you do me great honor, but I don’t have the money to pay my share.”

[2.5] “Oh, sir,” said one of the blues to him, “people of your appearance and of your merit never pay anything. Aren’t you five feet five inches high?”

[2.6] “Yes, sir, that’s my height,” answered he, making a low bow.

[2.7] “Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your bill, but we’ll never let a man like you have no money. Men are only born to assist one another.”

[2.8] “You’re right,” said Candide; “this is what I was always taught by Mr. Pangloss, and I clearly see that all is for the best.”

[2.9] They begged of him to accept a few coins. He took them, and wanted to give them an IOU. They refused. They seated themselves at table.

[2.10] “Don’t you love deeply?”

[2.11] “Oh yes,” answered he; “I deeply love Miss Cunegonde.”

[2.12] “No,” said one of the gentlemen. “We mean if you don’t deeply love the King of the Bulgarians?”

[2.13] “Not at all,” he said. “I’ve never seen him.”

[2.14] “What! He’s the best of kings, and we must drink his health.”

[2.15] “Oh! then very willingly, gentlemen!” And he drank.

[2.16] “That’s enough!” they told him. “Now you’re the help, the support, the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your glory is assured.”

[2.17] Instantly they chained him up and carried him away to the regiment. There he was made to wheel about to the right, and to the left, to draw his rammer,° to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march, and they beat him with a cudgel thirty times. The next day he did his exercise a little less badly, and he received just twenty blows. The day following they gave him only ten, and his comrades thought he was a prodigy.

[2.18] Candide, all stupefied, couldn’t yet figure out how he was a hero. One fine day in the spring he decided to go for a walk, marching straight before him, believing that it was the right of the human as well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased. He had gone about six miles when he was overtaken by four others, six-foot-tall heroes, who tied him up and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked which he’d prefer: to be whipped thirty-six times through all the regiment, or to be shot through the brain twelve times. To no avail he said “human will is free,” and that he chose neither one. He was forced to make a choice; he decided, thanks to that gift of God called “liberty,” to run the gauntlet thirty-six times. He got through it twice. The regiment consisted of two thousand men; that meant he received four thousand whippings, which laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck all the way down to his ass. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping, Candide, who could take no more, begged as a favor — that they’d be so good as to shoot him. He got this favor; they bandaged his eyes, and told him to kneel down. At this very moment the King of the Bulgarians passed by, and realized the nature of the crime. As he had great talent, he understood from all that he learned of Candide that he was a young metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he granted him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in all the journals, and throughout all ages.

[2.19] A talented surgeon cured Candide in three weeks, using lotions taught by Dioscorides.° Already he had a little bit of skin, and he was able to march when the King of the Bulgarians went to battle with the King of the Abares.

Chapter 3:
How Candide Made His Escape from the Bulgarians, and What Afterwards Became of Him

[3.1] There’s never been anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, oboes, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons, first of all, laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for several thousand deaths. The whole might add up to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.

[3.2] At length, while the two kings were ordering their camps to sing “Te Deum,”° Candide decided to go and reason about effects and causes somewhere else. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a neighboring village. It was in cinders — an Abare village that the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here old men covered with wounds looked at their wives, hugging their children to their bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters, disemboweled and breathing their last after having satisfied the needs of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the flames, begged to be put out of their misery. The earth was covered with brains, arms, and legs.

[3.3] Candide fled quickly to another village. It belonged to the Bulgarians, and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking over twitching limbs or across ruins, finally got beyond the scene of war, with a few supplies in his knapsack and Miss Cunegonde always in his heart. His supplies ran out when he arrived in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country, and that they were Christians, he had no doubt that he’d get the same treatment from them as he’d gotten in the Baron’s castle, before Miss Cunegonde’s bright eyes caused him to be expelled from it.

[3.4] He begged several serious-looking people for charity. They all answered him that, if he continued to follow this trade, they’d throw him in jail, where he’d be taught to earn a living.

[3.5] The next person he spoke to was a man who’d been lecturing a large assembly for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking askew, said:

[3.6] “What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause?”

[3.7] “There can be no effect without a cause,” Candide answered modestly. “The whole is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. It was necessary for me to have been banished from the presence of Miss Cunegonde, to have afterwards run the gauntlet, and now it’s necessary for me to beg for my bread until I learn to earn it. All this couldn’t be any other way.”

[3.8] “My friend,” said the orator to him, “do you believe the Pope to be Anti-Christ?”

[3.9] “I haven’t heard it,” answered Candide. “But whether or not he is, I don’t have bread.”

[3.10] “You don’t deserve to eat!” said the other. “Begone, you rogue! — begone, wretch! — don’t come near me again.”

[3.11] The orator’s wife stuck her head out the window. When she saw a man who wasn’t sure the Pope was Anti-Christ, she poured over him a full . . . Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the ladies.

[3.12] A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist named James, beheld the cruel and shameful treatment shown to one of his brethren, an “unfeathered biped with a rational soul.” He took him home, cleaned him, gave him bread and beer, presented him with two gold coins, and even asked to teach him the manufacture of Persian fabrics they make in Holland. Candide, almost bowing to the ground in front of him, cried:

[3.13] “Master Pangloss was right that all is for the best in this world! I’m infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than with the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black coat and his lady.”

[3.14] The next day, as he took a walk, he met a beggar all covered with scabs, his eyes diseased, the end of his nose eaten away, his mouth distorted, his teeth black, choking in his throat, tormented with a violent cough, and spitting out a tooth at each effort.

Chapter 4:
How Candide Found His Old Master Pangloss, and What Happened to Them

[4.1] Candide, moved with compassion even more than with horror, gave to this shocking beggar the two gold coins he received from the honest Anabaptist James. The ghostly figure looked at him very earnestly, dropped a few tears, and went to hug his neck. Candide recoiled in disgust.

[4.2] “Alas!” said one wretch to the other. “Don’t you recognize your dear Pangloss anymore?”

[4.3] “What?! You, my dear master! — you in this terrible situation! What terrible things have happened to you? Why aren’t you still in the most magnificent of castles? What happened to Miss Cunegonde, the pearl of girls, and nature’s masterpiece?”

[4.4] “I’m so weak that I can’t stand,” said Pangloss.

[4.5] On hearing this Candide carried him to the Anabaptist’s stable and gave him a crust of bread. As soon as Pangloss had refreshed himself a little:

[4.6] “Well,” said Candide — “Cunegonde?”

[4.7] “She’s dead,” replied the other.

[4.8] Candide fainted at this word. His friend brought him back to his senses with a little bad vinegar which he happened to find in the stable. Candide reopened his eyes.

[4.9] “Cunegonde is dead! Oh, best of worlds, where are you? . . . But what illness did she die of? Was it for grief, when she saw her father kick me out of his magnificent castle?”

[4.10] “No,” said Pangloss, “she was ripped open by the Bulgarian soldiers, after having been raped by many of them. They cracked the Baron’s head for trying to defend her. My lady, her mother, was cut in pieces; my poor pupil was treated in exactly the same manner as his sister; and as for the castle, they haven’t left one stone on top of another — not a barn, not a sheep, not a duck, not a tree. But we’ve had our revenge! — the Abares have done the exact same thing to a neighboring barony, which belonged to a Bulgarian lord.”

[4.11] At this speech Candide fainted again. But, coming to himself, and having said everything that could be said, asked about the cause and effect, as well as into the sufficient reason that had reduced Pangloss to so miserable a situation.

[4.12] “Alas!” said the other, “it was love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sensible beings — love, tender love.”

[4.13] “Alas!” said Candide, “I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that soul of our souls! But it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the ass. How could a cause so beautiful produce an effect so horrible?”

[4.14] Pangloss answered this way: “Oh, my dear Candide, you remember Paquette, that pretty girl who waited on our noble Baroness. In her arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hellish torments that you see have devoured me. She was infected with them — maybe she’s dead because of them. This Paquette got it from a learned Gray Friar, who had traced it to its source; he got it from an old countess, who got it from a cavalry captain, who got it from a marchioness, who got it from a page, who got it from a Jesuit — who, when he was still a novice, got it in a direct line from one of Christopher Columbus’s companions. As for me, I’m not going to give it to anybody. I’m dying.”

[4.15] “Oh, Pangloss!” cried Candide, “what a strange genealogy! Isn’t the Devil the real source of it?”

[4.16] “Not at all,” replied this great man. “It was unavoidable. It was a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds. If Columbus hadn’t caught this disease in an island in America — a disease that contaminates the source of life, sometimes even prevents reproduction, which is clearly opposed to the great purpose of nature — then we’d have neither chocolate° nor cochineal.° We should also observe that, on our continent, this disease is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the Japanese — they know nothing of it. But there is a sufficient reason for believing they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. Meanwhile, it’s made amazing progress among us, especially in those great armies composed of honest, well-disciplined mercenaries, the ones who decide the destiny of nations. We may safely say that, when an army of thirty thousand men fights another of the same number, about twenty thousand of them will get the pox° on each side.”

[4.17] “Well, this is astonishing!” said Candide, “but you must be cured.”

[4.18] “Alas! how can I?” said Pangloss, “I don’t have a penny, my friend. And all over the globe you can’t even get a bloodletting or an enema without paying, or having somebody pay for you.”

[4.19] These last words made up Candide’s mind. He went and flung himself at the feet of the charitable Anabaptist James, and gave him so touching a picture of the state to which his friend was reduced that the good man didn’t hesitate to take Dr. Pangloss into his house, and had him cured at his expense. In the cure Pangloss lost just one eye and one ear. Since he wrote well, and knew arithmetic perfectly, the Anabaptist James made him his bookkeeper. At the end of two months, needing to go to Lisbon on a business trip, he took the two philosophers with him in his ship. Pangloss explained to him how everything was arranged so that it couldn’t possibly be better. James didn’t share this opinion.

[4.20] “It’s more likely,” he said, “that mankind have corrupted nature a little. They weren’t born wolves, but they’ve become wolves. God didn’t give them twenty-four-pound cannons or bayonets, but they’ve made cannons and bayonets so they can destroy one another. I might add not only bankrupts, but also Justice, which seizes on the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors.”

[4.21] “All this was indispensable,” replied the one-eyed doctor. “Private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good.”

[4.22] While he reasoned the sky darkened, the winds blew from the four quarters, and the ship was assailed by a most terrible tempest within sight of the port of Lisbon.

Chapter 5:
Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and What Became of Doctor Pangloss, Candide, and James the Anabaptist

[5.1] Half dead of that unbelievable misery that a rolling ship produces, half the passengers weren’t even aware of the danger. The other half shrieked and prayed. The sails were torn, the masts were broken, the vessel gaped. No matter who worked, no one heard, no one commanded. The Anabaptist, since he was on deck, lent a hand, when a brutish sailor struck him roughly and knocked him down. The sailor hit him so hard he tumbled headfirst overboard, stuck on a piece of the broken mast. Honest James ran to help him, hauled him up, and from the effort he made was thrown into the sea in sight of the sailor — who left him to die, without bothering even to look at him. Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up forever. He was about to jump after him, but the philosopher Pangloss stopped him, and proved that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. While he was proving this à priori, the ship broke apart, and everyone died except Pangloss, Candide, and the brutal sailor who drowned the good Anabaptist. That villain swam safely to the shore, while Pangloss and Candide were carried there on a plank.

[5.2] As soon as they recovered they walked toward Lisbon. They had some money left, which they hoped would save them from starving after they escaped drowning. They had just reached the city, sad about the death of their benefactor, when they felt the earth tremble under their feet. The sea swelled and foamed in the harbor, and beat to pieces the vessels riding at anchor. Whirlwinds of fire and ashes covered the streets and public places; houses fell, roofs were flung on the pavements, and the pavements were scattered. Thirty thousand inhabitants of all ages and sexes were crushed under the ruins. The sailor, whistling and swearing, said there was loot to be gained here.

[5.3] “What can be the sufficient reason of this phenomenon?” said Pangloss.

[5.4] “This is the Last Day!” cried Candide.

[5.5] The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money. When he found it he took it, got drunk, and, having slept until he was sober, “purchased the favors” of the first good-natured wench he met on the ruins of the destroyed houses, amid the dying and the dead. Pangloss pulled him by the sleeve.

[5.6] “My friend,” he said, “this isn’t right. You sin against the universal reason; you choose your time badly.”

[5.7] “God damn it!” answered the other. “I’m a sailor, born in Batavia.° I’ve trampled on the crucifix four times in four voyages to Japan. To hell with your ‘universal reason.’”

[5.8] Some falling stones had wounded Candide. He lay stretched out in the street and covered with rubble.

[5.9] “Alas!” he said to Pangloss, “get me a little wine and oil. I’m dying.”

[5.10] “This concussion of the earth is no new thing,” answered Pangloss. “The city of Lima, in America, experienced the same convulsions last year: the same cause, the same effects. There’s certainly a vein of sulfur underground stretching from Lima to Lisbon.”

[5.11] “Nothing is more probable,” said Candide; “but for the love of God, a little oil and wine.”

[5.12] “What do you mean, ‘probable’?” replied the philosopher. “I insist the point can be proven.”

[5.13] Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a nearby fountain. The next day they rummaged around in the ruins and found supplies, with which they regained their exhausted strength. After this they joined with others in helping the inhabitants who had escaped death. Some of those they comforted gave them the best dinner they could manage in such disastrous circumstances. True, the meal was melancholy, and the company moistened their bread with tears. But Pangloss consoled them, assuring them that things could not be otherwise.

[5.14] “For,” he said, “all that is, is for the best. If there’s a volcano at Lisbon, it can’t be anywhere else. It’s impossible that things should be other than they are, because everything is right.”

[5.15] A little man dressed in black, Familiar of the Inquisition, who sat by him, politely took up his word and said:

[5.16] “Apparently, then, sir, you don’t believe in Original Sin — for if everything is for the best, there has then been neither Fall nor punishment.”

[5.17] “I humbly ask your Excellency’s pardon,” answered Pangloss, still more politely. “For the Fall and curse of man necessarily entered into the system of the best of worlds.”

[5.18] “Sir,” said the Familiar, “you don’t then believe in free will?”

[5.19] “Your Excellency will excuse me,” said Pangloss. “Free will is consistent with absolute necessity, because it was necessary that we should be free; for, in short, the determinate will ——”

[5.20] Pangloss was in the middle of his sentence when the Familiar beckoned to his footman, who gave him a glass of wine from Porto or Opporto.

Chapter 6:
How the Portuguese Made a Beautiful Auto-Da-Fé, to Prevent Any Further Earthquakes; and How Candide Was Publicly Whipped

[6.1] After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the wise men of that country could think of no more effective way to avoid utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fé. The University of Coimbra had decided that burning a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is a sure way to stop the earth from quaking.

[6.2] They therefore seized on a man from Biscay, convicted of having married his godmother, and on two Portuguese men, for rejecting the bacon mixed with the chicken they were eating. After dinner they came and arrested Dr. Pangloss and his disciple Candide, one for speaking his mind, the other for having listened approvingly. They were led to separate rooms, extremely cold, as they were never burdened by sunlight. Eight days later, they were dressed in san-benitos° and their heads were decorated with paper miters.° The miter and san-benito belonging to Candide were painted with reversed flames and with devils that had neither tails nor claws; but Pangloss’s devils had claws and tails and the flames were upright. They were marched in a parade dressed like that, and they heard a very moving sermon followed by fine church music. Candide was whipped to the beat while they were singing; the man from Biscay, and the two men who had refused to eat bacon, were burnt to death; and Pangloss was hanged, though that was unusual. The same day the earth sustained a most violent concussion.

[6.3] Candide — terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, shaking all over — said to himself:

[6.4] “If this is the best of possible worlds, then what are the others? Well, if I’d been only whipped I could put up with it, for I experienced that among the Bulgarians. But oh! — my dear Pangloss! — you greatest of philosophers! That I would have seen you hanged without knowing for what! Oh, my dear Anabaptist, you best of men, that you should have been drowned in the harbor! Oh, Miss Cunegonde, you pearl of girls! That you should have had your belly ripped open!”

[6.5] So he was musing — hardly able to stand, preached at, whipped, absolved, and blessed — when an old woman accosted, him saying:

[6.6] “My son, take courage and follow me.”

Chapter 7:
How the Old Woman Took Care of Candide, and How He Found the Object He Loved

[7.1] Candide didn’t take courage, but he followed the old woman to a run-down house, where she gave him a pot of ointment to rub on his sores, showed him a very neat little bed, with a suit of clothes hanging up, and left him something to eat and drink.

[7.2] “Eat, drink, sleep,” said she, “and may Our Lady of Atocha, the great St. Anthony of Padua, and the great St. James of Compostella receive you under their protection. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

[7.3] Candide, amazed at all he’d suffered and still more with the charity of the old woman, wanted to kiss her hand.

[7.4] “It’s not my hand you must kiss,” said the old woman; “I’ll be back tomorrow. Rub yourself with the ointment, eat, and sleep.”

[7.5] Candide, even after so many disasters, ate and slept. The next morning the old woman brought him his breakfast, looked at his back, and rubbed it herself with another ointment. In the same way she brought him his lunch, and at night she returned with his dinner. The next day she went through the very same ceremonies.

[7.6] “Who are you?” said Candide. “Who filled you with so much goodness? How can I repay you?”

[7.7] The good woman didn’t answer. She returned in the evening, but brought no dinner.

[7.8] “Come with me,” she said, “and say nothing.”

[7.9] She took him by the arm, and walked with him about a quarter of a mile into the country. They arrived at a lonely house, surrounded with gardens and canals. The old woman knocked at a little door and it opened. She led Candide up a private staircase into a small room, richly furnished. She left him on a brocaded sofa, shut the door, and went away. Candide thought he was dreaming — even that he’d been dreaming unluckily all his life, and that the present moment was the only good part of it.

[7.10] The old woman returned very soon, carrying with difficulty a trembling woman of a majestic figure, brilliant with jewels, and covered with a veil.

[7.11] “Take off that veil,” said the old woman to Candide.

[7.12] The young man approaches, he raises the veil with a timid hand — oh! — what a moment! — what surprise! He believes he beholds Miss Cunegonde? — he really sees her! — it’s really her! His strength fails him, he cannot utter a word, but drops at her feet. Cunegonde falls on the sofa. The old woman offers a bottle of smelling salts. They come themselves and are able to speak again. As they began speaking with hesitation, with questions and answers interchangeably interrupted with sighs, with tears, and cries, the old woman asked them to make less noise, and then she left them to themselves.

[7.13] “What, is it you?” said Candide. “You’re alive? I find you again in Portugal? then you haven’t been raped? — they didn’t rip open your belly, as Doctor Pangloss said?”

[7.14] “Yes, they did,” said the beautiful Cunegonde. “But those two accidents aren’t always fatal.”

[7.15] “But were your father and mother killed?”

[7.16] “It’s all too true,” answered Cunegonde, in tears.

[7.17] “And your brother?”

[7.18] “My brother also was killed.”

[7.19] “And why are you in Portugal? — and how did you know I was here? — and by what strange adventure did you arrange to bring me to this house?”

[7.20] “I’ll tell you all that,” replied the lady, “but first of all, let me know your history, since the innocent kiss you gave me and the kicks you received.”

[7.21] Candide respectfully obeyed her and, though he was still in a state of surprise, though his voice was feeble and trembling, though his back still pained him, still he gave her a most honest account of everything that had happened to him since they were separated. Cunegonde raised her eyes to heaven; she cried when she heard of the death of the good Anabaptist and of Pangloss. Then she spoke as follows to Candide, who didn’t lose a word, and devoured her with his eyes.

Chapter 8:
The Story of Cunegonde

[8.1] “I was in bed and fast asleep when it pleased God to send the Bulgarians to our delightful castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh. They killed my father and my brother, and they cut my mother to pieces. A tall Bulgarian, six feet high, when he noticed I had fainted at this sight, began to rape me, and this made me recover. I came to my senses, I cried, I struggled, I bit, I scratched, I wanted to tear out the tall Bulgarian’s eyes — because I didn’t know that what happened at my father’s house was what always happens in war. The brute gave me a cut in the left side with his sword, and the mark is still on me.”

[8.2] “Ah! I hope I’ll see it,” said honest Candide.

[8.3] “You will,” said Cunegonde, “but let’s go on.”

[8.4] “Do,” replied Candide.

[8.5] So she continued her story:

[8.6] “A Bulgarian captain came in, saw me bleeding, and the soldier wasn’t at all bothered. The captain flew into a rage at the brute’s disrespectful behavior, and killed him on my body. He ordered my wounds to be treated, and took me to his quarters as a prisoner of war. I washed the few shirts that he had and I did his cooking. He thought me very pretty — he swore it. On the other hand, I must admit he had a good figure, and a soft and white skin. But he had little or no mind and no philosophy, and you could tell he’d never been taught by Doctor Pangloss. In three months, having lost all his money, and being grown tired of my company, he sold me to a Jew named Don Issachar, who traded to Holland and Portugal, and had a strong passion for women. This Jew was very fond of my body, but he couldn’t triumph over it; I resisted him better than the Bulgarian soldier. A modest woman might be raped once, but her virtue is strengthened by it. To make me more obedient, he brought me to this country house. So far I had imagined that nothing could equal the beauty of Thunder-ten-Tronckh Castle, but I was wrong.

[8.7] “The Grand Inquisitor, seeing me one day at mass,° stared at me a long time, and sent a messenger to tell me he wanted to speak about something private. I was led to his palace, where I told him the story of my family, and he explained to me how much it was beneath my social rank to belong to an Israelite. A proposal was then made to Don Issachar that he should give me up to my lord. Don Issachar — who was the court banker and a man of credit — would hear nothing of it. The Inquisitor threatened him with an auto-da-fé. At last my Jew, intimidated, made a deal: the house and myself should belong to both of them. The Jew would have Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and the Inquisitor would have the rest of the week. It’s now six months since this agreement was made. They’ve had plenty of quarrels, because they couldn’t decide whether the night from Saturday to Sunday belonged to the old law or to the new. For my part, so far I’ve held out against both, and I really believe that this is why I’m still loved.

[8.8] “Eventually, to ward off the curse of earthquakes and to intimidate Don Issachar, my Lord Inquisitor was pleased to celebrate an auto-da-fé. He did me the honor to invite me to the ceremony. I had a very good seat, and the ladies were served with refreshments between mass and the execution. To be honest I was seized with horror at the burning of those two Jews, and of the honest many from Biscay who married his godmother. But think of my surprise, my fright, my trouble, when I saw a figure wearing a san-benito° and miter who looked like Pangloss! I rubbed my eyes, I looked at him attentively, I saw him hanged — I fainted. I had barely recovered my senses when I saw you stripped, stark naked, and this was the height of my horror, worry, grief, and despair. I tell you honestly that your skin is even farier and better colored than that of my Bulgarian captain. This sight just increased all the feelings which overwhelmed and devoured me. I screamed out, and would have said, ‘Stop, barbarians!’ but my voice failed me, and my cries would have been useless after you’d been whipped. How is it possible, I asked, that the beloved Candide and the wise Pangloss should both be at Lisbon, one to receive a hundred lashes of the whip, the other to be hanged by the Grand Inquisitor, of whom I’m the well-beloved? Pangloss cruelly deceived me when he said ‘everything in the world is for the best.’

[8.9] “I was shaken up, lost, sometimes beside myself and sometimes ready to die of weakness. My mind was filled with the massacre of my father, mother, and brother, with the nerve of the ugly Bulgarian soldier, with the stab that he gave me, with my servitude under the Bulgarian captain, with my hideous Don Issachar, with my abominable Inquisitor, with the execution of Doctor Pangloss, with the grand Miserere to which they whipped you, and especially with the kiss I gave you behind the screen that last day I saw you. I praised God for bringing you back to me after so many trials, and I ordered my old woman to take care of you, and to lead you here as soon as possible. She has done her duty perfectly. I’ve tasted the inexpressible pleasure of seeing you again, of hearing you, of speaking with you. But you must be hungry! As for me, I’m starving. Let’s have dinner.”

[8.10] They both sat down at the table and, when dinner was over, they sat on the sofa again, which is where they were when Signor Don Issachar arrived. It was the Jewish sabbath, and Issachar had come to enjoy his rights, and to explain his tender love.

Chapter 9:
What Happened to Cunegonde, Candide, the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew

[9.1] This Issachar was the most foul-tempered Jew who’d ever been seen in Israel since the Captivity in Babylon.

[9.2] “What!” he said, “you Galilean bitch, wasn’t the Inquisitor enough for you? Does this scoundrel also have to share with me?”

[9.3] As he said this he drew a long dagger which he always carried about him. Not imagining that his adversary had any weapons, he threw himself on Candide. But our honest Westphalian had been given a handsome sword by the old woman along with the suit of clothes. He drew his rapier, despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelite stone dead on the cushions at Cunegonde’s feet.

[9.4] “Holy Virgin!” cried she, “what will happen to us? A man has been killed in my apartment! If the officers of justice come, we’re lost!”

[9.5] “If Pangloss hadn’t been hanged,” said Candide, “he would give us good advice in this emergency — he was a profound philosopher. Since we don’t have him, let’s ask the old woman.”

[9.6] She was very thoughtful, and started to give her opinion, when suddenly another little door opened. It was an hour after midnight, the beginning of Sunday, and this day belonged to my lord the Inquisitor. He came in and saw the whipped Candide, sword in hand, with a dead man on the floor, Cunegonde astonished, and the old woman giving advice.

[9.7] At this moment, this is what went through Candide’s mind, and how he thought about it:

[9.8] If this holy man calls for help, I’m sure he’ll have me burnt, and maybe Cunegonde will be treated the same way. He’s the reason I was whipped so cruelly. He’s my rival and, now that I’ve started killing, I’ll kill away — there’s no time to waste. This reasoning was clear and instantaneous, so that — without giving the Inquisitor time to recover from his surprise — he pierced him through and through, and tossed him next to the Jew.

[9.9] “Yet again!” said Cunegonde, “now there’s no mercy for us! We’re excommunicated, our last hour has come. How could you do it? You — naturally so gentle — to kill a Jew and a churchman in two minutes!”

[9.10] “My beautiful young lady,” responded Candide, “when you’re a lover, jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, you stop at nothing.”

[9.11] The old woman then spoke up:

[9.12] “There are three Andalusian horses in the stable with bridles and saddles. Let the brave Candide get them ready. Madame has money, jewels; therefore let’s mount quickly on horseback (though I can sit only on one ass cheek). Let’s head for Cádiz, which has the best weather in the world, and there’s great pleasure in traveling in the cool of the night.”

[9.13] Right away Candide saddled the three horses, and Cunegonde, the old woman, and he traveled thirty miles at a stretch. While they were journeying, the Holy Brotherhood entered the house. My lord the Inquisitor was buried in a handsome church, and Issachar’s body was thrown on a dunghill.

[9.14] Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman had now reached the little town of Aracena in the mountains of the Sierra Morena, and were speaking as follows in a public inn.

Chapter 10:
In What Distress Candide, Cunegonde, and the Old Woman Arrived at Cádiz; and of Their Sailing

[10.1] “Who stole my money and jewels?” said Cunegonde, all bathed in tears. “How will we live? What will we do? Where will we find Inquisitors or Jews who’ll give me more?”

[10.2] “Alas!” said the old woman, “I’m suspicious of a reverend Grey Friar, who stayed last night in the same inn with us at Badajos. God keep me from judging rashly, but he came into our room twice, and he left on his trip long before we did.”

[10.3] “Alas!” said Candide, “dear Pangloss has often proven to me that the goods of this world are common to all men, and that each has an equal right to them. But, according to these principles, the Grey Friar should have left us enough to carry us through our journey. Don’t you have anything at all left, my dear Cunegonde?”

[10.4] “Not a penny,” said she.

[10.5] “Then what will we do?” said Candide.

[10.6] “Sell one of the horses,” replied the old woman. “I’ll ride behind Miss Cunegonde, though I can hold myself only on one ass-cheek, and we’ll make it to Cádiz.”

[10.7] In the same inn there was a Benedictine prior who bought the horse for a cheap price. Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman, once they passed through Lucena, Chillas, and Lebrixa, finally arrived at Cádiz. A fleet was there getting ready, and troops assembling to bring to reason the reverend Jesuit Fathers of Paraguay, who were accused of having made one of the native tribes in the neighborhood of San Sacrament revolt against the Kings of Spain and Portugal. Since Candide had been in the Bulgarian service and performed the military exercise in front the general of this little army so gracefully, so bravely, and with such agility and expedition, he was put in command of a company of foot soldiers. Now he was a captain! He set sail with Miss Cunegonde, the old woman, two servants, and the two Andalusian horses that had belonged to the grand Inquisitor of Portugal.

[10.8] During their voyage they reasoned a good deal on the philosophy of poor Pangloss.

[10.9] “We’re going into another world,” said Candide; “and I’m sure that there everything is for the best. I have to admit we have reason to complain a little about what happens in our world, in regard to both natural and moral philosophy.”

[10.10] “I love you with all my heart,” said Cunegonde; “but I’m still terrified by what I’ve seen and experienced.”

[10.11] “All will be well,” replied Candide. “The sea of this New World is already better than our European sea. It’s calmer, and the winds are more regular. I’m sure the New World is the best of all possible worlds.”

[10.12] “Please, God,” said Cunegonde; “but I’ve been so unhappy there that my heart has almost given up on hope.”

[10.13] “You complain,” said the old woman. “Alas! you haven’t known anything like my misfortunes.”

[10.14] Cunegonde almost broke out laughing, finding the good woman funny, for pretending to have been as unfortunate as she’d been.

[10.15] “Alas!” said Cunegonde. “My good mother, unless you’ve been raped by two Bulgarians, have received two deep wounds in your belly, have had two castles demolished, have had two mothers cut to pieces before your eyes, and two of your lovers whipped at an auto-da-fé — I can’t imagine how you’ve had it worse than me. Add that I was born a baroness of seventy-two quarterings° — and have been a cook!”

[10.16] “Miss,” replied the old woman, “you don’t know anything about my birth; and if I were to show you my backside, you wouldn’t talk that way — you’d reserve your judgment.”

[10.17] This speech raised extreme curiosity in the minds of Cunegonde and Candide, and the old woman spoke to them as follows.

Chapter 11:
The Story of the Old Woman

[11.1] “I didn’t always have bleary eyes and red eyelids. My nose didn’t always touch my chin, and I wasn’t always a servant. I’m the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina. Until I was fourteen I was raised in a palace, the sort of palace where all the castles of your German barons would hardly have served as stables. One of my robes was worth more than all the magnificence of Westphalia. As I grew up I improved in beauty, wit, and every graceful accomplishment, in the midst of pleasures, hopes, and respectful homage. Already I inspired love. My throat was formed, and such a throat! — white, firm, and shaped like that of the Venus of Medici! And what eyes! — what eyelids! — what black eyebrows! — flames leapt from my dark pupils and eclipsed the twinkling of the stars — as I was told by the poets in our part of the world. My maidservants, when they were dressing and undressing me, used to fall into an ecstasy, whether they viewed me before or behind. How glad the gentlemen would have been to carry out that duty for them!

[11.2] “I was engaged to the most excellent Prince of Massa Carara. Such a prince! — as handsome as myself, sweet-tempered, agreeable, brilliantly witty, and sparkling with love. I loved him as one loves for the first time — with idolatry, with rapture. The wedding was arranged. There was surprising pomp and magnificence; there were fêtes, carousals, continual opera bouffe; and all of Italy composed sonnets to praise me, though not one of them was any good. I was just about to reach the summit of bliss, when an old marchioness° who had been mistress to the Prince, my husband, invited him to drink chocolate with her. He died two hours later of the most horrible convulsions. But this is just a trifle. My mother, left hopeless and just as afflicted as I was, decided to go away for some time from so fatal a place. She had a very fine estate in the neighborhood of Gaeta. We boarded a ship of that country which was covered in gold like the great altar of St. Peter’s at Rome. A Sallee corsair° swooped down and boarded us. Our men defended themselves like the Pope’s soldiers: they flung themselves on their knees, threw down their weapons, and begged of the pirates for absolution in articulo mortis.°

[11.3] “They were immediately stripped as naked as monkeys. My mother, our maids of honor, and myself were all treated the same way. It’s amazing how quickly those gentry undress people. But what most surprised me was that they thrust their fingers into . . . that part of our bodies which most women allow no other instrument to enter but . . . pipes. It seemed a very strange kind of ceremony. But that’s how people judge of things when they haven’t seen the world. I afterwards learned that it was to find out whether we had hidden any diamonds. This is the practice established from time immemorial, among civilized nations that scour the seas. I was informed that the very religious Knights of Malta never fail to make this search when they take any Turkish prisoners of either sex. It’s a law of nations, one they never violate.

[11.4] “I don’t need to tell you how hard it was for a young princess and her mother to be made slaves and carried to Morocco. You can imagine everything we had to suffer on board the pirate ship. My mother was still very pretty; our maids of honor, and even our waiting women, had more charms than are to be found in all Africa. As for myself, I was beautiful, was exquisite, grace itself, and I was a virgin! But not for very long. This “flower,” which had been reserved for the handsome Prince of Massa Carara, was plucked by the pirate captain. He was an abominable Black man, but still he thought that he did me an honor. Certainly the Princess of Palestrina and myself must have been very strong to go through all of that until we arrived at Morocco. But let’s pass on. These are so common that they’re not worth mentioning.

[11.5] “Morocco was swimming in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the Emperor Muley-Ismael had their supporters; this produced fifty civil wars, of Blacks against Blacks, and Blacks against tawnies, and tawnies against tawnies, and mulattoes against mulattoes. It was a continual carnage throughout the empire.

[11.6] “As soon as we landed the Blacks of a different faction to that of my captain tried to rob his treasure. Next to jewels and gold, we were the most valuable things he had. I witnessed such a battle as you’ve never seen in your European climates. The northern nations don’t have that heat in their blood, nor that raging lust for women, that’s so common in Africa. It seems that you Europeans have only milk in your veins; but it’s vitriol, it’s fire which runs in those of the inhabitants of Mount Atlas and the neighboring countries. They fought with the fury of the lions, tigers, and serpents of the country, to see who should have us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm, while my captain’s lieutenant held her by the left; a Moorish soldier had hold of her by one leg, and one of our pirates held her by the other. So almost all our women were drawn in quarters° by four men. My captain hid me behind him; and with his drawn sword he cut and slashed everyone who got in his way. At last I saw all our Italian women, and my mother herself, torn, mangled, massacred, by the monsters who fought over them. The slaves, my companions, those who had taken them, soldiers, sailors, Blacks, whites, mulattoes, and at last my captain — they were all killed, and I was dying on a heap of dead bodies. Scenes like this were happened over an extent of a thousand miles — and yet they never missed the five prayers a day ordained by Mohammed.

[11.7] “With difficulty I disengaged myself from such a heap of slaughtered bodies, and crawled to a large orange tree on the bank of a nearby stream, where I fell, oppressed with fright, fatigue, horror, despair, and hunger. Immediately afterwards my overwhelmed senses gave way to sleep, though it was actually more “fainting” than “resting.” I was weak and unconscious, between life and death, when I felt myself pressed by something that moved on my body. I opened my eyes, and saw a white man with a good appearance who sighed, and who said between his teeth: ‘O, che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!’”°

Chapter 12:
The Adventures of the Old Woman, Continued

[12.1] “Amazed and delighted to hear my native language, and no less surprised at what this man said, I answered that there were much greater misfortunes than what he complained about. I told him in a few words of the horrors which I had endured, and I fainted a second time. He carried me to a neighboring house, put me to bed, gave me food, tended to me, consoled me, flattered me; he told me that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful, and that he never so much regretted the loss of what it was impossible to recover.

[12.2] “‘I was born at Naples,’ he said, ‘where they castrate two or three thousand children every year. Some die of the operation, others get a voice more beautiful than that of women, and others are promoted to official government business. This operation was performed on me with great success and I became chapel musician to madam, the Princess of Palestrina.’

[12.3] “‘To my mother!’ I shouted.

[12.4] “‘Your mother!’ he cried, weeping. ‘What! — can you be that young princess I raised until the age of six years, and who promised so early to be as beautiful as you?’

[12.5] “‘It’s me, yes — but my mother lies four hundred yards away, torn in four pieces, under a heap of dead bodies.’

[12.6] “I told him all my adventures, and he told me his. He said he’d been sent to the Emperor of Morocco by a Christian power, to negotiate a treaty with that prince, and for that reason he was to be furnished with military supplies and ships to help to demolish the commerce of other Christian Governments.

[12.7] “‘My mission is done,’ said the honest eunuch; ‘I’m sailing for Ceuta,° and will take you to Italy. Ma che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!’

[12.8] “I thanked him, crying tears of sympathy. Instead of taking me to Italy, he took me to Algiers, where he sold me to the Dey.° As soon as I was sold, the plague (which had made the tour of Africa, Asia, and Europe) broke out with great malignancy in Algiers. You’ve seen earthquakes, but tell me, miss, have you ever had the plague?”

[12.9] “Never,” answered Cunegonde.

[12.10] “If you had,” said the old woman, “you’d admit it’s far worse than an earthquake. It’s common in Africa, and I caught it. Imagine the misery of a Pope’s daughter, just fifteen years old, who in less than three months had felt the miseries of poverty and slavery, had been raped almost every day, had watched her mother been torn apart, had experienced famine and war, and was dying of the plague in Algiers. I didn’t die, though, but my eunuch, and the dey, and almost the whole harem of Algiers passed away.

[12.11] “As soon as the first fury of this terrible plague was over, the dey’s slaves were put on sale. I was bought by a merchant and carried to Tunis. This man sold me to another merchant, who sold me again to another at Tripoli; from Tripoli I was sold to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Smyrna, and from Smyrna to Constantinople. At last I became the property of an aga° of the Janissaries,° who was soon ordered away to defend Azof, which was being besieged by the Russians.

[12.12] “The aga, a very brave man, took his whole harem with him, and lodged us in a small fort on the Palus Méotides, guarded by two Black eunuchs and twenty soldiers. The Turks killed amazing numbers of the Russians, but the Russians got their revenge. Azof was destroyed by fire, the inhabitants put to the sword, neither sex nor age was spared. Eventually only our little fort remained, and the enemy wanted to starve us out. The twenty Janissaries swore they’d never surrender. The horrors of famine they suffered made them eat our two eunuchs, for fear of violating their oath. And at the end of a few days they decided to eat the women too.

[12.13] “We had a very pious and humane imam,— who preached an excellent sermon, exhorting them not to kill us all at once.

[12.14] “‘Only cut off one of each of those ladies’ asses,’ he said, ‘and you’ll do well. If you have to do it again, there’ll still be the same entertainment a few days from now. Heaven will be grateful for such a charitable action, and will send you relief.’

[12.15] “He had great eloquence; he persuaded them; we suffered this terrible operation. The imam applied the same ointment to us that he uses on children after circumcision, and we all nearly died.

[12.16] “The Janissaries had just finished the feast we gave them when the Russians came in flat-bottomed boats. Not one Janissary escaped. The Russians paid no attention to the condition we were in. There are French surgeons all over the world, and one of them who was very clever took us under his care — he cured us. As long as I live I’ll remember that, as soon as my wounds were healed, he proposed to me. He encouraged us all be in a good mood, telling us that things like this happened in many sieges, and that it was all according to the laws of war.

[12.17] “As soon as my companions could walk, they had to set out for Moscow. I was handed over to a boyard,° who made me his gardener and gave me twenty lashes a day. But since this prince was broken on the wheel° just two years later, along with thirty more boyards, over some quarrels at the court, I profited by that event — I fled. I went all the way across Russia. For a long time I was an innkeeper’s servant at Riga, the same at Rostock, at Vismar, at Leipzig, at Cassel, at Utrecht, at Leyden, at the Hague, at Rotterdam. I grew old in misery and disgrace, having only one half of my posteriors, and always remembering I was a Pope’s daughter. A hundred times I was about to kill myself — but I still loved life. This ridiculous foible may be one of our most fatal characteristics: is there anything more absurd than wanting to keep carrying a burden which you can always throw down? — to hate being alive, but still to cling to life? — in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart?

[12.18] “In the countries it was my fate to travel through, and the many inns where I was a servant, I’ve noticed a vast number of people who thought their own existence was abhorrent, but I never knew of more than eight who voluntarily put an end to their misery: three Blacks, four Englishmen, and a German professor named Robek. I ended by being servant to the Jew, Don Issachar, who placed me near your presence, my beautiful lady. I’m determined to share your fate, and have been much more moved by your misfortunes than with my own. I would never even have told you my misfortunes if you hadn’t piqued my curiosity a little, and if it weren’t traditional to tell stories on board a ship in order to pass away the time. In short, Miss Cunegonde, I’ve had experience, I know the world. I therefore advise you to entertain yourself, and convince every passenger to tell his story. If there’s even one of them who hasn’t cursed his life many a time, who hasn’t often thought he was the unhappiest of mortals, you have my permission to throw me headfirst into the sea.”

Chapter 13:
How Candide Was Forced Away from His Fair Cunegonde and the Old Woman

[13.1] When the beautiful Cunegonde heard the old woman’s history, she showed her all the respect due to a person of her rank and merit. She also accepted her proposal, and got all the passengers, one after the other, to relate their adventures. Then both she and Candide admitted that the old woman was right.

[13.2] “It’s a shame,” said Candide, “that the sage Pangloss was hanged, a violation of the usual custom at an auto-da-fé. He’d tell us most amazing things about the physical and moral evils across the earth and sea, and I’d be able to make a few respectful objections.”

[13.3] While each passenger was recounting his story, the ship made its way. They landed at Buenos Aires. Cunegonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman went to see the governor, Don Fernando d’Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This nobleman had a stateliness suitable for a person who had so many names. He spoke to men with so noble a disdain, carried his nose so high in the air, raised his voice so unmercifully, behaved so commandingly, and walked with such intolerable pride that those who met him all wanted to give him a good beating. Cunegonde appeared to him the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. The first thing he did was to ask whether she wasn’t the captain’s wife. The way he asked the question alarmed Candide; he didn’t say she was his wife, because she really wasn’t; nor did she dare to say she was his sister, because it wasn’t so. And although this obliging lie had been much in favor among the ancients, and although it could be useful to the moderns, his soul was too pure to betray the truth.

[13.4] “Miss Cunegonde,” he said, “is to do me the honor to marry me, and we beg Your Excellency to deign to sanction our marriage.”

[13.5] Don Fernando d’Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, turning up his mustache, smiled mockingly, and ordered Captain Candide to go and review his company. Candide obeyed, and the governor remained alone with Miss Cunegonde. He told her he loved her, protesting he would marry her the next day in the face of the church, or otherwise, whatever she wanted. Cunegonde asked a quarter of an hour to consider of it, to consult the old woman, and to make up her mind.

[13.6] The old woman spoke this way to Cunegonde:

[13.7] “Miss, you have seventy-two quarterings,° and not a penny; it’s now in your power to be wife to the greatest lord in South America, who has a very beautiful mustache. Is it your job to owrry about inviolable fidelity? You’ve been raped by Bulgarians; a Jew and an Inquisitor have enjoyed your favors. Misfortune isn’t a good enough excuse. I admit that, if I were in your place, I wouldn’t hesitate to marry the Governor and make the fortune of Captain Candide.”

[13.8] While the old woman spoke with all the wisdom that age and experience gave, a small ship entered the port. On board were an alcalde° and his alguazils.° This is what had happened.

[13.9] As the old woman cleverly guessed, it was a Gray Friar who stole Cunegonde’s money and jewels in the town of Badajos, when she and Candide were escaping. The friar wanted to sell some of the diamonds to a jeweler; the jeweler knew they belonged to the Grand Inquisitor. The friar, before he was hanged, confessed he’d stolen them. He described the people and the route they took. The flight of Cunegonde and Candide was already known. They were traced to Cádiz. A vessel was immediately sent to pursue them. The vessel was already in the port of Buenos Aires. The report spread that the alcalde was going to land, and that he was in pursuit of the murderers of my lord the Grand Inquisitor. The prudent old woman saw at once what had to be done.

[13.10] “You can’t run away,” she said to Cunegonde, “and you have nothing to fear, for you’re not the one who killed my lord. Besides, the Governor who loves you won’t let anyone treat you badly. So stay.”

[13.11] She immediately ran to Candide.

[13.12] “Run!” said she, “or in an hour you’ll be burnt.”

[13.13] There wasn’t a moment to lose. But how could he part from Cunegonde, and where could he run for shelter?

Chapter 14:
How Candide and Cacambo Were Received by the Jesuits of Paraguay

[14.1] Candide had brought the kind of servant with him from Cádiz that you encounter on the Spanish coasts and in the American colonies. He was one-quarter Spanish, born of a mongrel in Tucumán; he’d been a singing-boy, a church official, a sailor, a monk, a peddler, a soldier, and a lackey. His name was Cacambo, and he loved his master, because his master was a very good man. He quickly saddled the two Andalusian horses.

[14.2] “Come, master, let’s follow the old woman’s advice. Let’s start and go without looking back.”

[14.3] Candide cried.

[14.4] “Oh! my dear Cunegonde! — do I have to leave you just when the Governor was going to approve our wedding? Cunegonde, after being brought all the way here, what will happen to you?”

[14.5] “She’ll do as well as she can,” said Cacambo. “Women are never at a loss. God provides for them. Let’s run.”

[14.6] “Where are you carrying me? Where will we go? What will we do without Cunegonde?” said Candide.

[14.7] “By St. James of Compostella,” said Cacambo, “you were going to fight against the Jesuits; let’s go to fight for them. I know the road well, and I’ll lead you to their kingdom, where they’ll be charmed to have a captain that understands the Bulgarian exercise. You’ll make a huge fortune. If we can’t find our way in one world, we’ll do it in another. It’s a great pleasure to see and do new things.”

[14.8] “You’ve been in Paraguay before, then?” said Candide.

[14.9] “Oh, sure,” answered Cacambo. “I was servant in the College of the Assumption, and I know the government of the good Fathers as well as I know the streets of Cádiz. It’s a wonderful government. The kingdom is more than a thousand miles across, and divided into thirty provinces. The Fathers own everything there, and the people own nothing: it’s a masterpiece of reason and justice. For my part, I see nothing so divine as the Fathers who make war on the kings of Spain and Portugal here, and then Europe serve those kings there; who kill Spaniards here, and in Madrid send them to heaven. This delights me — let’s push forward. You’re going to be the happiest of mortals. What a treat it will be to those Fathers to hear that a captain who knows the Bulgarian exercise has come to them!”

[14.10] As soon as they reached the first barrier, Cacambo told the advanced guard that a captain wanted to speak with my lord the Commandant. He alerted the main guard, and immediately a Paraguayan officer ran and laid himself at the feet of the Commandant to give him the news. Candide and Cacambo were disarmed, and their two Andalusian horses seized. The strangers were introduced between two lines of riflemen. The Commandant was at the further end, with the three-cornered cap on his head, his gown tucked up, a sword by his side, and a small pike in his hand. He called them over, and the newcomers were immediately surrounded by twenty-four soldiers. A sergeant told them they had to wait, that the Commandant couldn’t speak to them, and that the reverend Father Provincial doesn’t let any Spaniard open his mouth except in his presence, or to stay above three hours in the province.

[14.11] “And where is the reverend Father Provincial?” said Cacambo.

[14.12] “He’s on the parade ground just after celebrating mass,” answered the sergeant, “and you can’t kiss his spurs for three hours.”

[14.13] “However,” said Cacambo, “the captain isn’t a Spaniard but a German — he’s about to die of hunger, and so am I. Can’t we have something for breakfast while we wait for his reverence?”

[14.14] The sergeant went immediately to tell the Commandant what he’d heard.

[14.15] “God be praised!” said the reverend Commandant. “Since he’s a German, I may speak to him; take him to my arbor.”

[14.16] Candide was immediately led to a beautiful summer house, decorated with a very pretty row of green and gold marble columns, and with trellises enclosing parrakeets, hummingbirds, guinea hens, and other rare birds. They provided an excellent breakfast in golden vessels, and while the Paraguayans were eating cornmeal out of wooden dishes, in the open fields and exposed to the heat of the sun, the reverend Father Commandant went off to his arbor.

[14.17] He was a handsome young man, with a full face, white skin but high in color. He had an arched eyebrow, a lively eye, red ears, vermilion lips, a bold air, but a kind of boldness that didn’t seem right for either a Spaniard or a Jesuit. They returned Candide’s and Cacambo’s weapons, along with the two Andalusian horses, and Cacambo gave the horses some oats to eat near the arbor, having an eye on them all the while for fear of a surprise.

[14.18] Candide first kissed the hem of the Commandant’s robe, then they sat down at the table.

[14.19] “You’re a German, then?” said the Jesuit to him in that language.

[14.20] “Yes, reverend Father,” answered Candide.

[14.21] As they pronounced these words they looked at each other with great amazement, and with an emotion they couldn’t hide.

[14.22] “And what part of Germany do you come from?” said the Jesuit.

[14.23] “I’m from the dirty province of Westphalia,” answered Candide. “I was born in the Castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh.”

[14.24] “Oh! Heavens! — is it possible?” cried the Commandant.

[14.25] “What a miracle!” cried Candide.

[14.26] “Is it really you?” said the Commandant.

[14.27] “It’s not possible!” said Candide.

[14.28] They drew back; they hugged; they shed streams of tears.

[14.29] “What, is it you, reverend Father? You, the brother of the beautiful Cunegonde! — you, who were killed by the Bulgarians! — you, the Baron’s son! — you, a Jesuit in Paraguay! I have to admit this is a strange world that we live in. Oh, Pangloss! Pangloss! — how glad you would be if you hadn’t been hanged!”

[14.30] The Commandant sent away the Black slaves and the Paraguayans, who served them with liquors in rock-crystal goblets. He thanked God and St. Ignatius a thousand times; he clasped Candide in his arms; and their faces were all drenched in tears.

[14.31] “You’ll be even more surprised, more moved, and transported,” said Candide, “when I tell you that Cunegonde, your sister — who you think was ripped open — is in perfect health!”

[14.32] “Where?”

[14.33] “In this area, with the Governor of Buenos Aires. And I was going to fight against you.”

[14.34] Every word they said in this long conversation just added wonder to wonder. Their souls fluttered on their tongues, listened in their ears, and sparkled in their eyes. As they were Germans, they sat a good while at the table, waiting for the reverend Father Provincial, and the Commandant spoke to his dear Candide as follows.

Chapter 15:
How Candide Killed the Brother of His Dear Cunegonde

[15.1] “I’ll always remember the terrible day when I saw my father and mother killed and my sister raped. When the Bulgarians left, my dear sister couldn’t be found. But my mother, my father, and myself, with two maidservants and three little boys — all of whom had been killed — were put in a hearse to be taken for burial in a chapel belonging to the Jesuits, within six miles of our family estate. A Jesuit sprinkled us with some holy water; it was horribly salty, and a few drops of it fell into my eyes. The father noticed that my eyelids moved a little, and he put his hand on my heart and felt it beat. I received aid, and within three weeks I recovered. You know, my dear Candide, I was very pretty; but I grew much prettier, and the reverend Father Didrie, Superior of that House, had the tenderest friendship for me. He gave me the habit° of the order, some years after I was sent to Rome. The Father-General needed new young German-Jesuit recruits. The sovereigns of Paraguay admit as few Spanish Jesuits as possible; they prefer those of other nations because they’re more obedient to their commands. I was judged fit by the reverend Father-General to go and work in this vineyard. We set out — a Pole, someone from the Tyrol, and me. When I arrived I was granted a sub-deaconship and a lieutenancy. Today I’m a colonel and a priest. We’ll give a warm reception to the King of Spain’s troops. I promise they’ll be excommunicated and well beaten. Providence sends you here to help us. But is it really true that my dear sister Cunegonde is in the neighborhood, with the Governor of Buenos Aires?”

[15.2] Candide assured him on oath that nothing could be more true, and their tears began flowing again.

[15.3] The Baron couldn’t resist hugging Candide. He called him his brother, his savior.

[15.4] “Ah! maybe,” he said, “we’ll enter the town as conquerors together, my dear Candide, and get my sister Cunegonde back.”

[15.5] “That’s all I want,” said Candide, “for I planned to marry her, and I still do.”

[15.6] “You insolent!” replied the Baron. “Would you have the nerve to marry my sister, who has seventy-two quarterings? You have the courage to mention such a presumptuous plan!”

[15.7] Candide, petrified at this speech, answered:

[15.8] “Reverend Father, all the quarterings in the world don’t mean anything. I rescued your sister from the arms of a Jew and of an Inquisitor. She has great obligations to me, and she wants to marry me. Master Pangloss always told me that all men are equal, and I’m definitely going to marry her.”

[15.9] “We’ll see that, you scoundrel!” said the Jesuit Baron de Thunder-ten-Tronckh, and that instant struck him across the face with the flat of his sword. Candide instantly drew his rapier, and plunged it up to the hilt in the Jesuit’s belly; but when he pulled it out, reeking hot, he burst into tears.

[15.10] “Good God!” he said, “I’ve killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law! I’m the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I’ve already killed three men — and two of those were priests!”

[15.11] Cacambo, who stood guard by the door of the arbor, ran to him.

[15.12] “There’s nothing to do but sell our lives for as much money as we can,” his master told him. “Someone is bound to enter the arbor soon, and we’ll have to die, sword in hand.”

[15.13] Cacambo, who had been in a great many scrapes in his lifetime, didn’t lose his head. He took the Baron’s Jesuit clothes, put it on Candide, gave him the square cap, and made him mount on horseback. All this was done in the twinkling of an eye.

[15.14] “Let’s gallop quickly, master. Everybody will take you for a Jesuit, going to give directions to your men, and we’ll pass the frontiers before they’re able to catch us.”

[15.15] He flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in Spanish:

[15.16] “Make way, make way, for the reverend Father Colonel!”

Chapter 16:
Adventures of the Two Travelers, with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and the Savages Called “Oreillons”

[16.1] Candide and his servant got beyond the barrier before anyone in the camp knew that the German Jesuit was dead. The cautious Cacambo had taken care to fill his bag with bread, chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few bottles of wine. With their Andalusian horses they penetrated into an unknown country, where they saw no beaten path. At length they came to a beautiful meadow, crossed with flowing streams. Here our two adventurers fed their horses. Cacambo urged his master to take some food, and he set him an example.

[16.2] “How can you ask me to eat ham,” said Candide, “after killing the Baron’s son, and being doomed never more to see the beautiful Cunegonde? What good does it do me to stretch out my wretched days and drag them far from her in regret and despair? And what will the Journal of Trevoux say?”

[16.3] While he was lamenting his fate, he went on eating. The sun went down. The two wanderers heard some little cries which seemed to be uttered by women. They didn’t know whether they were cries of pain or joy, but they started up suddenly, with that agitation and alarm that every little thing inspires in an unknown country. The noise was made by two naked girls, who ran along the meadow, while two monkeys were pursuing them and biting their asses. Candide was moved with pity; he’d learned to fire a gun in the Bulgarian service, and he was so clever at it, that he could shoot a filbert nut off a hedge without touching a leaf of the tree. He took up his double-barreled Spanish rifle, let it off, and killed the two monkeys.

[16.4] “God be praised! My dear Cacambo, I’ve rescued those two poor creatures from a most perilous situation. If I’ve committed a sin in killing an Inquisitor and a Jesuit, I’ve more than made up for it by saving the lives of these girls. Maybe they’re young ladies of noble family, and this adventure might bring us great advantages in this country.”

[16.5] He was continuing, but stopped short when he saw the two girls tenderly embracing the monkeys, bathing their bodies in tears, and rending the air with the most dismal lamentations.

[16.6] “I didn’t expect to see such good nature,” he finally said to Cacambo, who answered:

[16.7] “Master, you’ve done a fine thing now; you’ve killed the lovers of those two young ladies.”

[16.8] “The lovers! Is it possible? You’re joking, Cacambo! I can’t believe it!”

[16.9] “Dear master,” replied Cacambo; “you’re surprised at everything. Why would you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which earn the good graces of the ladies? They’re one-quarter human, as I’m one-quarter Spanish.”

[16.10] “Alas!” replied Candide, “I remember Master Pangloss once said that formerly accidents like this used to happen; that these mixtures produced centaurs, fauns, and satyrs; and that many of the ancients had seen such monsters, but I thought it was just a fairytale.”

[16.11] “Now you should be convinced,” said Cacambo, “that it’s the truth, and you see what use is made of those creatures, by people who haven’t been educated. I worry is that those ladies will take revenge on us.”

[16.12] These thoughts made Candide to leave the meadow and to walk into the woods. He had dinner there with Cacambo, and after cursing the Portuguese inquisitor, the Governor of Buenos Aires, and the Baron, they fell asleep on moss. When they woke up they couldn’t move — during the night the ladies told the Oreillons (who lived in that country) about them, and they tied them up with cords made of tree-bark. They were surrounded by fifty naked Oreillons, armed with bows and arrows, with clubs and flint hatchets. Some were making a large cauldron boil, others were preparing spits, and all cried:

[16.13] “A Jesuit! a Jesuit! We’ll be revenged, we’ll have excellent cheer, let’s eat the Jesuit, let’s eat him up!”

[16.14] “I told you, my dear master,” cried Cacambo sadly, “that those two girls would get their revenge.”

[16.15] Candide, when he saw the cauldron and the spits, cried out:

[16.16] “We’re certainly going to be either roasted or boiled. Ah! — what would Master Pangloss say, if he were to see how pure nature is formed? Maybe ‘everything is right,’ but I say it’s very hard to have lost Miss Cunegonde and to be put on a spit by Oreillons.”

[16.17] Cacambo never lost his head.

[16.18] “Don’t lose hope,” he said to the disconsolate Candide. “I understand a little of the jargon of these people, so I’ll speak to them.”

[16.19] “Be sure,” said Candide, “to explain how frightfully inhuman it is to cook men, and how very unchristian.”

[16.20] “Gentlemen,” said Cacambo, “you think you’re going to feast on a Jesuit today. It’s all very well, nothing is more unjust than to treat your enemies this way. The law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbor, and that’s the way it’s done all over the world. If we don’t get used to eating them, it’s because we have better food. But you don’t have the same resources we do. Certainly it’s much better to eat your enemies than to give the fruits of your victory over to the crows and rooks. But, gentlemen, surely you wouldn’t choose to eat your friends. You think you’re going to spit a Jesuit, but he’s your defender. It’s the enemy of your enemies that you’re going to roast. As for myself, I was born in your country. This gentleman is my master, and, far from being a Jesuit, he has just killed one, and he wears the clothes he took from him. That’s where your mistake comes from. To convince you of the truth of what I say, take his clothes and carry them to the first barrier of the Jesuit kingdom, and ask whether my master killed a Jesuit officer. It won’t take you long, and you can always eat us if you find that I’ve lied to you. But I’ve told you the truth. You’re too well acquainted with the principles of public law, humanity, and justice not to pardon us.”

[16.21] The Oreillons found this speech very reasonable. They selected two of their principal people right away to inquire into the truth of the matter; these two carried out their task like men of sense, and soon returned with good news. The Oreillons untied their prisoners, treated them kindly, offered them girls, gave them refreshment, and led them back to the confines of their territories, proclaiming with great joy:

[16.22] “He’s no Jesuit! He’s no Jesuit!”

[16.23] Candide couldn’t help being surprised at the cause of his rescue.

[16.24] “What people!” he said. “What men! What manners! If I hadn’t been so lucky as to run Miss Cunegonde’s brother through the body, I would have been eaten without redemption. But, after all, pure nature is good, since these people, instead of eating my flesh, have shown me a thousand courtesies when they learned I wasn’t a Jesuit.”

Chapter 17:
Arrival of Candide and His Servant at El Dorado, and What They Saw There

[17.1] “You see,” said Cacambo to Candide, as soon as they had reached the frontiers of the Oreillons, “that this hemisphere is no better than the others, take my word for it, Let’s go back to Europe by the shortest way.”

[17.2] “How go back?” said Candide, “and where will we go? — to my own country? The Bulgarians and the Abares are killing everyone. To Portugal? — there I’ll be burnt. And if we stay here we’re constantly in danger of being spitted. But how can I decide to leave a part of the world where my dear Cunegonde lives?”

[17.3] “Let’s turn toward Cayenne,”° said Cacambo. “We’ll find Frenchmen there, who roam all over the world. They might help us. Maybe God will have pity on us.”

[17.4] It wasn’t easy to get to Cayenne. They knew vaguely in which direction to go, but rivers, cliffs, robbers, savages obstructed them all the way. Their horses died of fatigue. Their supplies were consumed; they survived a whole month on wild fruit, and found themselves at last near a little river, bordered with cocoa trees, which sustained their lives and their hopes.

[17.5] Cacambo, who was as good a counsellor as the old woman, said to Candide:

[17.6] “We can’t wait any longer. We’ve walked enough. I see an empty canoe near the riverside; let’s fill it with coconuts, throw ourselves into it, and go with the current. A river always leads to some inhabited spot. If we don’t find good things, at least we’ll find new things.”

[17.7] “With all my heart,” said Candide. “Let’s recommend ourselves to Providence.”

[17.8] They rowed a few miles between banks, in some places flowery, in others barren; in some parts smooth, in others rugged. The stream kept growing wider, and finally lost itself under an arch of frightful rocks that reached to the sky. The two travelers had the courage to commit themselves to the current. The river, suddenly contracting at this place, whirled them along with a dreadful noise and speed. At the end of twenty-four hours they saw daylight again, but their canoe was dashed to pieces against the rocks. For three miles they had to creep from rock to rock, until finally they discovered a wide plain bounded by impassable mountains. The country was cultivated as much for pleasure as for necessity. On all sides, whatever was useful was also beautiful. The roads were covered, or rather adorned, with carriages of a glittering form and substance, in which were amazingly beautiful men and women, drawn by large red sheep that were faster than the finest horsesof Andalusia, Tetuan, and Mequinez.

[17.9] “Here, however, is a country,” said Candide, “that’s even better than Westphalia.”

[17.10] He stepped out with Cacambo toward the first village he saw. Some children dressed in tattered fabric played quoits on the outskirts. Our travelers from the other world amused themselves by watching. The quoits were large round pieces, yellow, red, and green, which had a remarkable shine. The travelers picked a few of them off the ground: this one was made of gold, that one of emeralds, the other of rubies — even the least of them would have been the greatest ornament on the mogul’s throne.

[17.11] “Without doubt,” said Cacambo, “these children must be the king’s sons that are playing quoits!”

[17.12] The village schoolmaster appeared at this moment and called them to school.

[17.13] “There,” said Candide, “is the preceptor of the royal family.”

[17.14] The little truants immediately left their game, leaving the quoits on the ground with all their other toys. Candide gathered them up, ran to the master, and presented them to him very humbly, trying to make him understand by signs that their royal highnesses had forgotten their gold and jewels. The schoolmaster, smiling, tossed them on the ground, then, looking at Candide with a good deal of surprise, went about his business.

[17.15] The travelers, however, took care to gather up the gold, rubies, and emeralds.

[17.16] “Where are we?” cried Candide. “The king’s children in this country must be well educated, since they’re taught to despise gold and precious stones.”

[17.17] Cacambo was as much surprised as Candide. Finally they drew near the first house in the village. It was built like a European palace. A crowd of people pressed about the door, and still more were in the house. They heard really beautiful music, and smelled delicious food cooking. Cacambo went up to the door and heard they were sepaking Peruvian. It was his mother tongue, for it’s well known that Cacambo was born in Tucumán, in a village where no other language was spoken.

[17.18] “I’ll be your interpreter here,” he said to Candide. “Let’s go in. It’s a public-house.”

[17.19] Immediately two waiters and two girls, dressed in cloth made of gold, with their hair tied up with ribbons, invited them to sit down at the table with the landlord. They served four dishes of soup, each garnished with two young parrots; a boiled condor, which weighed two hundred pounds; two roasted monkeys, of excellent flavor; three hundred hummingbirds in one dish, and six hundred fly-birds in another; exquisite stews; delicious pastries; all of it served in dishes made of a kind of rock crystal. The waiters and girls poured out several liqueurs made from sugar cane.

[17.20] Most of the company were traveling salesmen and wagoners, all extremely polite. They asked Cacambo a few questions with the greatest delicacy, and answered his as openly as possible.

[17.21] As soon as dinner was over, Cacambo and Candide decided they’d pay their bill by laying down two of those large gold pieces they had picked up. The landlord and landlady shouted with laughter and held their sides. When the fit was over:

[17.22] “Gentlemen,” said the landlord, “it’s obvious you’re strangers, and we’re not used to seeing guests. Pardon us, therefore, for laughing when you offered us the pebbles from our highroads to pay your bill. Surely you don’t have the money of the country, but you don’t need any money at all to have dinner in this house. All the inns created to support trade are paid by the government. You’ve had only a mediocre meal because this is a poor village, but everywhere else, you’ll get the treatment you deserve.”

[17.23] Cacambo explained this whole discourse with great astonishment to Candide, who was just as greatly astonished to hear it.

[17.24] “What sort of a country, then, is this?” they said to one another. “A country unknown to all the rest of the world, where nature is so different from ours? It’s probably the country where everything goes well, because there absolutely has to be one such place. And, whatever Master Pangloss might say, I often found that things went very badly in Westphalia.”

Chapter 18:
What They Saw in the Country of El Dorado

[18.1] Cacambo expressed his curiosity to the landlord, who answered:

[18.2] “I’m very ignorant, but no worse for that reason. But in this neighborhood we have an old man, who retired from court, and who’s the most learned and communicative person in the kingdom.”

[18.3] At once he took Cacambo to the old man. Candide acted now only a second character, and accompanied his servant. They entered a very simple house — the door was only made of silver, and the ceilings were only of gold — but it was made so tastefully that it could compete with the richest. The entryway was only encrusted with rubies and emeralds, but the order in which everything was arranged made up for this great simplicity.

[18.4] The old man invited the strangers in to sit on his sofa, which was stuffed with hummingbirds’ feathers, and ordered his servants to give them with liqueurs in diamond goblets, after which he satisfied their curiosity like this:

[18.5] “I’m now one hundred seventy-two years old, and I learned from my late father, Master of the Horse to the King, about the amazing revolutions of Peru — he’d been an eyewitness. The kingdom we now live in is the ancient country of the Incas, who left it very unwisely to conquer another part of the world, and were finally destroyed by the Spaniards.

[18.6] “Wiser by far were the princes of their family, who remained in their native country. They decreed, with the consent of the whole nation, that none of the inhabitants should ever be permitted to leave this little kingdom, and this has preserved our innocence and happiness. The Spaniards have had a confused notion of this country, and have called it “El Dorado”; and an Englishman, whose name was Sir Walter Raleigh, came very near it about a hundred years ago, but because we’re surrounded by inaccessible rocks and cliffs, so far we’ve been protected from the greed of European nations, who have an unimaginable passion for the pebbles and dirt of our land — for it they’d murder every single one of us.”

[18.7] The conversation was long: it focused mainly on their form of government, their manners, their women, their public entertainments, and the arts. Finally Candide, having always had a taste for metaphysics, made Cacambo ask whether there was any religion in that country.

[18.8] The old man reddened a little.

[18.9] “How,” he said, “could you doubt it? Do you think we’re ungrateful wretches?”

[18.10] Cacambo humbly asked, “What was the religion in El Dorado?”

[18.11] The old man reddened again.

[18.12] “Can there be two religions?” he asked. “We have, I believe, the religion of all the world: we worship God night and day.”

[18.13] “Do you worship just one God?” said Cacambo, who still acted as interpreter in representing Candide’s doubts.

[18.14] “Surely,” said the old man, “there aren’t two, or three, or four. I have to admit the people from your side of the world ask really extraordinary questions.”

[18.15] Candide wasn’t yet tired of interrogating the good old man. He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado.

[18.16] “We don’t pray to Him,” said the worthy wise man. “We have nothing to ask of Him; He has given us all we need, and we return Him thanks without ceasing.”

[18.17] Candide, having a curiosity to see the priests, asked where they were. The good old man smiled.

[18.18] “My friend,” he said, “we’re all priests. The king and all the heads of families sing solemn hymns of thanksgiving every morning, accompanied by five or six thousand musicians.”

[18.19] “What! — don’t you have any monks who teach, who argue, who govern, who plot, and who burn people that aren’t of their opinion?”

[18.20] “We’d have to be crazy if that were the case,” said the old man. “Here we’re all of the same opinion, and we don’t know what you mean by ‘monks.’”

[18.21] During this whole discourse Candide was ecstatic, and he said to himself:

[18.22] “This is so very different from Westphalia and the Baron’s castle. Had our friend Pangloss seen El Dorado he would no longer have said that the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh was the finest castle on earth. It’s obvious that you have to travel.”

[18.23] After this long conversation, the old man ordered a coach and six sheep to be got ready, and ordered twelve of his servants to lead the travelers to court.

[18.24] “Excuse me,” he said, “if my age deprives me of the honor of accompanying you. The king will receive you in a manner that can’t displease you. No doubt you’ll make an allowance for the customs of the country, if some things aren’t to your liking.”

[18.25] Candide and Cacambo got into the coach, the six sheep flew, and in less than four hours they reached the king’s palace, located at the far end of the capital. The gate was two hundred twenty feet high, and one hundred wide; but I don’t have the words to describe the materials it was made of. Clearly these materials must be vastly superior to those pebbles and sand which we call gold and precious stones.

[18.26] Twenty beautiful maidens of the king’s guard met Candide and Cacambo as they got down from the coach, led them to the bath, and dressed them in robes woven of the down of hummingbirds, after which the great crown officers, both men and women, led them to the king’s rooms, between two lines of musicians, a thousand on each side. When they got close to the audience chamber, Cacambo asked one of the great officers in what way he should show respect to His Majesty — whether they should throw themselves on their knees or on their stomachs; whether they should put their hands on their heads or behind their backs; whether they should lick the dust off the floor — in a word, what was the ceremony?

[18.27] “The custom,” said the great officer, “is to embrace the king, and to kiss him on each cheek.”

[18.28] Candide and Cacambo threw themselves round His Majesty’s neck. He greeted them with all the goodness imaginable, and politely invited them to dinner.

[18.29] While they waited they were shown the city, and saw the public buildings raised as high as the clouds, the marketplaces decorated with a thousand columns, the fountains of spring water, those of rose water, those of liqueurs drawn from sugarcane, flowing endlessly into the great squares, which were paved with a kind of precious stone, which gave off a delicious fragrance like cloves and cinnamon. Candide asked to see the court of justice, the parliament. They told him they had none, and that they had no lawsuits. He asked if they had any prisons, and they answered no. But what surprised him most and most pleased him was the palace of sciences, where he saw a gallery two thousand feet long, filled with mathematical and scientific instruments.

[18.30] After wandering around the city the whole afternoon, and seeing just one-thousandth of it, they were reconducted to the royal palace, where Candide sat down to table with His Majesty, his servant Cacambo, and several ladies. There was never any better entertainment, and never was more wit shown at the table than what fell from his Majesty. Cacambo explained the king’s bons mots° to Candide, and even though they were translated, they still appeared to be bons mots. Of all the things that surprised Candide, this wasn’t the least.

[18.31] They spent a month in this hospitable place. Candide often said to Cacambo:

[18.32] “I admit, my friend, once more that the castle where I was born is nothing in comparison with this. But, after all, Miss Cunegonde isn’t here, and I’m sure you have some mistress in Europe. If we stay here we’ll only be equal to the rest — whereas, if we return to our old world only with twelve sheep loaded with the pebbles of El Dorado, we’ll be richer than all the kings in Europe. We’ll have no more Inquisitors to fear, and we can easily rescue Miss Cunegonde.”

[18.33] This speech pleased Cacambo. People love roving, making a figure in their own countries, and boasting of what they’ve seen in their travels. The two happy ones decided not to be so any longer, but to ask His Majesty’s permission to leave the country.

[18.34] “You’re foolish,” said the king. “I know my kingdom is just a small place, but when a person is comfortably settled in any part he should stay there. I don’t have the right to detain strangers. It’s tyranny, and neither our manners nor our laws permit it. All men are free. Go when you like — but the going will be very difficult. It’s impossible to ascend that rapid river you came in on as if in a miracle, and it runs under vaulted rocks. The mountains that surround my kingdom are ten thousand feet high and as steep as walls. They’re each over thirty miles across, and there’s no other way to descend them than by precipices. But, since you really want to leave, I’ll give orders to my engineers to construct a machine that will carry you safely. When we’ve led you over the mountains, no one can accompany you further, for my subjects have vowed never to leave the kingdom, and they’re too wise to break that promise. Other than that, ask me anything you please.”

[18.35] “We want nothing from your Majesty,” says Candide, “except a few sheep loaded with supplies, pebbles, and the dirt of this country.”

[18.36] The king laughed.

[18.37] “I can’t imagine,” he said, “what pleasure you Europeans find in our yellow clay. But take as much as you like, and great good may it do you.”

[18.38] At once he gave ordered his engineers to construct a machine to hoist these two extraordinary men up and out of the kingdom. Three thousand good mathematicians went to work; it was ready in fifteen days, and didn’t cost more than £20 million in the currency of that country. They placed Candide and Cacambo on the machine. Two great red sheep were saddled and bridled to ride on as soon as they were beyond the mountains, twenty pack-sheep loaded with supplies, thirty with presents of the curiosities of the country, and fifty with gold, diamonds, and precious stones. The king embraced the two wanderers very tenderly.

[18.39] Their departure, with the ingenious manner in which they and their sheep were hoisted over the mountains, was a sight to behold. The mathematicians left said goodbye after conveying them to a place of safety, and Candide had no other desire, no other aim, than to present his sheep to Miss Cunegonde.

[18.40] “Now,” he said, “we can pay the Governor of Buenos Aires if Miss Cunegonde can be ransomed. Let’s head toward Cayenne. Let’s sail, and we’ll afterwards see what kingdom we’ll be able to purchase.”

Chapter 19:
What Happened to Them at Surinam and How Candide Got Acquainted with Martin

[19.1] Our travelers spent the first day very happily. They were delighted to possess more treasure than all Asia, Europe, and Africa could scrape together. Candide, in his enthusiasm, carved Cunegonde’s name on the trees. The second day two of their sheep plunged into a crevice, where they and their loads were lost; two more died of fatigue a few days after; seven or eight starved to death in a desert; and later others fell down cliffs. At last, after traveling a hundred days, only two sheep remained. Candide told Cacambo:

[19.2] “My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world. The only thing that’s solid is virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more.”

[19.3] “I agree with all of that,” said Cacambo. “But we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than the King of Spain will ever have. And I see a town — I think it’s Surinam, belonging to the Dutch. We’re at the end of all our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness.”

[19.4] As they got close to the town, they saw a Black man stretched on the ground, with only half his clothes — that is, his blue linen drawers. The poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand.

[19.5] “Good God!” said Candide in Dutch. “What are you doing there, friend, in that shocking condition?”

[19.6] “I’m waiting for my master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous merchant,” answered the Black man.

[19.7] “Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur,” said Candide, “who treated you this way?”

[19.8] “Yes, sir,” said the Black man, “it’s the tradition. They give us a pair of linen drawers for our whole garment twice a year. When we work at the sugarcanes, and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut off the hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg. Both of these happened to me. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe. Yet, when my mother sold me for ten patacons° on the coast of Guinea, she said to me: ‘My dear child, bless our idols, adore them for ever; they’ll make you live happily. You have the honor of being the slave of our lords, the whites, which is making the fortune of your father and mother.’ Alas! I don’t know whether I’ve made their fortunes. I do know that they haven’t made mine. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times happier than I am. The Dutch idols, who converted me, declare every Sunday that ‘We’re all of us children of Adam’ — Blacks as well as whites. I’m no genealogist,° but if these preachers tell truth, we’re all second cousins. Now, you have to agree that it’s impossible to treat one’s relations any more barbarously.”

[19.9] “Oh, Pangloss!” cried Candide, “you hadn’t guessed at this abomination. It’s the end. At last I have to renounce your optimism.”

[19.10] “What’s this ‘optimism’?” said Cacambo.

[19.11] “Alas!” said Candide, “it’s the insanity of insisting everything’s right when it’s wrong.”

[19.12] Looking at the Black man, he shed tears. Weeping, he entered Surinam.

[19.13] The first thing they asked about was whether there was a vessel in the harbor that could be sent to Buenos Aires. The person they asked was a Spanish sea captain, who offered to agree with them on reasonable terms. He arranged to meet them at an inn, where Candide and the faithful Cacambo went with their two sheep, and waited for him to arrive.

[19.14] Candide, who had his heart on his lips, told the Spaniard all his adventures, and swore he intended to elope with Miss Cunegonde.

[19.15] “In that case I’ll take good care not to carry you to Buenos Aires,” said the seaman. “I would be hanged, and so would you. The beautiful Cunegonde is my lord’s favorite mistress.”

[19.16] This was a thunderclap for Candide. He cried a long time. At last he took Cacambo aside.

[19.17] “Here, my dear friend,” he said to him, “this is what you have to do. Each of us have in our pockets five or six millions’ worth of diamonds. You’re smarter than I am, so you have to go and bring Miss Cunegonde from Buenos Aires. If the Governor gives you any trouble, give him a million; if he won’t release her, give him two. Since you haven’t killed an Inquisitor, they won’t suspect you. I’ll get another ship, and go and wait for you at Venice — that’s a free country, where there’s no danger from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews, or Inquisitors.”

[19.18] Cacambo approved this wise plan. He despaired at parting from so good a master, who had become his dear friend, but the pleasure of serving him was greater than the pain of leaving him. They hugged with tears. Candide ordered him not to forget the good old woman. Cacambo set out that very same day. This Cacambo was a very honest fellow.

[19.19] Candide stayed some time longer in Surinam, waiting for another captain to carry him and the two remaining sheep to Italy. After he’d hired household servants and bought everything he’d need for a long voyage, Mynheer Vanderdendur, captain of a large vessel, came and offered his services.

[19.20] “How much will you charge,” he asked this man, “to carry me straight to Venice — me, my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep?”

[19.21] The skipper asked ten thousand piastres.° Candide didn’t hesitate.

[19.22] “Oh! oh!” said the prudent Vanderdendur to himself, “this stranger gives ten thousand piastres without even blinking! He must be rich.”

[19.23] When he returned a little later, he told him that, on second thought, he couldn’t undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand piastres.

[19.24] “Well, you’ll have them,” said Candide.

[19.25] “Ay!” said the skipper to himself, “this man agrees to pay twenty thousand piastres with as much ease as ten.”

[19.26] He went back to him again, and declared that he couldn’t carry him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres.

[19.27] “Then you’ll have thirty thousand,” replied Candide.

[19.28] “Oh! oh!” said the Dutch skipper once more to himself, “thirty thousand piastres are a trifle to this man; surely these sheep must be carrying an immense treasure. Let’s say no more about it. First of all, let him pay down the thirty thousand piastres; then we’ll see.”

[19.29] Candide sold two small diamonds, the smaller of which was worth more than what the skipper asked for his freight. He paid him in advance. The two sheep were put on board. Candide followed in a little boat to join the vessel in the roads. The skipper seized his opportunity, set sail, and put out to sea, with the wind favoring him. Candide, dismayed and stunned, soon lost sight of the vessel.

[19.30] “Alas!” he said, “this is a trick worthy of the Old World!”

[19.31] He went back, overwhelmed with sorrow, for he’d lost enough to make the fortune of twenty monarchs. He visited the Dutch magistrate, and in his distress he knocked over loudly at the door. He entered and told his story, raising his voice with more vehemence than necessary. The magistrate began by fining him ten thousand piastres for making noise, then he listened patiently, promised to examine into his affair at the skipper’s return, and ordered him to pay ten thousand piastres for the expense of the hearing.

[19.32] This drove Candide to despair. He’d endured misfortunes a thousand times worse. The coolness of the magistrate and of the skipper who had robbed him made him angry and threw him into a deep depression. Human evil appeared in his imagination in all its deformity, and his mind was filled with gloomy ideas. Finally, hearing that a French ship was ready to set sail for Bordeaux, since he had no sheep loaded with diamonds to bring he hired a cabin at the usual fare. He announced in town that he would pay the fare and board and give two thousand piastres to any honest man who would make the voyage with him, provided this man was the most unhappy with his situation, and the most unfortunate in the whole province.

[19.33] So many candidates showed up that a fleet of ships could hardly have held them. Candide, hoping to pick one of the best, marked out about one twentieth of them who seemed sociable, and who all pretended to deserve his favor. He gathered them together at his inn and gave them dinner, on the condition that each swore an oath to tell his history honestly, promising to choose the one who seemed to have the best reason for being discontented with his situation in life, and to give presents to the rest.

[19.34] They sat until four o’clock in the morning. Candide, listening to all their adventures, remembered what the old woman said to him in their voyage to Buenos Aires, and her wager that there everyone on board the ship had met with very great misfortunes. He dreamed of Pangloss at every adventure he was told.

[19.35] “Pangloss would have trouble,” he said, “demonstrating his system. I wish he were here. Certainly, if all things are good, it’s true in El Dorado, not in the rest of the world.”

[19.36] Finally he chose a poor writer, who had worked ten years for the booksellers of Amsterdam. He judged that there wasn’t in the whole world a trade which could disgust one more.

[19.37] This philosopher was an honest man — but he’d been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and abandoned by his daughter, who got a Portuguese to run away with her. He had just lost the job that paid his bills, and he was persecuted by the preachers of Surinam, who thought he was a Socinian.° We have to admit that the others were at least as unhappy, but Candide hoped the philosopher would entertain him on the trip. All the other candidates complained that Candide had treated them unfairly, but he appeased them by giving a hundred piastres to each.

Chapter 20:
What Happened at Sea to Candide and Martin

[20.1] The old philosopher, whose name was Martin, saled for Bordeaux with Candide. Both had seen and suffered a great deal. If the ship had sailed from Surinam to Japan by the Cape of Good Hope, the subject of moral and natural evil would have let them entertain each another during the whole voyage.

[20.2] Candide, however, had one great advantage over Martin: he always hoped to see Miss Cunegonde. Martin, on the other hand, had nothing at all to hope for. Besides, Candide had of money and jewels, and though he’d lost a hundred large red sheep, loaded with the greatest treasure on earth — though the double-crossing Dutch skipper still sat heavy on his mind. Still, when he thought about what he had still left, and when he mentioned the name of Cunegonde, especially towards the end of dinner, he inclined to Pangloss’s doctrine.

[20.3] “But you, Mr. Martin,” he said to the philosopher, “what do you think of all this? What are your ideas on moral and natural evil?”

[20.4] “Sir,” answered Martin, “our priests accused me of being a Socinian,° but in reality I’m a Manichean.”

[20.5] “You’re joking,” said Candide. “There aren’t any Manicheans left in the world.”

[20.6] “I’m one,” said Martin. “I can’t help it. I don’t know how to think any other way.”

[20.7] “Surely you must be possessed by the devil,” said Candide.

[20.8] “He’s so deeply concerned in the affairs of this world,” answered Martin, “that he may well be in me, as well as in everybody else. But I admit that, when I look around this globe, or rather this little ball, I can’t help thinking that God abandoned it to some evil being. I always exclude El Dorado. I hardly ever knew a city that didn’t want to destroy some nearby city, nor a family that didn’t want to wipe out some other family. Everywhere the weak hate the powerful they shrink from. The powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one side of Europe to the other, earn their living by disciplined destruction and murder, because they have no more honest employment. Even in those cities that seem to enjoy peace, where the arts are flourishish, the inhabitants are more eaten up by more envy, concern, and uneasiness than you’d see in a town under siege. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. In a word, I’ve seen so much, and experienced so much, that I’m a Manichean.”

[20.9] “There are, however, some things that are good,” said Candide.

[20.10] “Maybe,” said Martin, “but I don’t know what they are.”

[20.11] In the middle of this argument they heard the sound of cannon; it echoed every instant. Each took out his telescope. They saw two ships in close fight about three miles off. The wind brought of them both so close to the French ship that our travelers had the pleasure of seeing the fight at their ease. Finally one let off a broadside, so low and so truly aimed, that the other sank to the bottom. Candide and Martin could clearly see a hundred men on the deck of the sinking vessel. They raised their hands to heaven and uttered terrible outcries — and the next moment they were swallowed up by the sea.

[20.12] “Well,” said Martin, “this is how men treat each another.”

[20.13] “It’s true,” said Candide. “There’s something diabolical in this affair.”

[20.14] While he was speaking, he saw something he didn’t recognize — something of a shining red, swimming close to the ship. They put out the long boat to see what it could be: it was one of his sheep! Candide was more delighted by the recovery of this one sheep than he’d been grieved at the loss of a hundred of them loaded with the huge diamonds of El Dorado.

[20.15] The French captain soon saw that the captain of the victorious vessel was a Spaniard, and that the other was a Dutch pirate, and the very same one who had robbed Candide. The tremendous stolen treasure this villain had amassed was buried with him in the sea, and out of the whole only a single sheep was saved.

[20.16] “You see,” said Candide to Martin, “crime is sometimes punished. This rogue of a Dutch skipper has had the fate he deserved.”

[20.17] “Yes,” said Martin. “But why should the passengers also be doomed to destruction? God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.”

[20.18] The French and Spanish ships continued on their way, and Candide continued his conversation with Martin. They argued for fifteen days in a row, and on the last day they had made no more progress than they had on the first. Still they chatted, they traded ideas, they comforted each other. Candide pet his sheep.

[20.19] “Since I’ve found you again,” he said, “I might also find my Cunegonde.”

Chapter 21:
Candide and Martin, Still Arguing, Approach the French Coast

[21.1] At length they could see the French coast.

[21.2] “Were you ever in France, Mr. Martin?” asked Candide.

[21.3] “Yes,” said Martin, “I’ve been in several provinces. In some half the people are fools, in others they’re too clever. In some they’re weak and simple, in others they pretend to be witty. In all of them the main concern is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.”

[21.4] “But, Mr. Martin, have you seen Paris?”

[21.5] “Yes, I have. All these kinds are found there. It’s a chaos — a confused mob, where everybody seeks pleasure and hardly any one finds it — at least, that’s how it appeared to me. I made just a short stay there. When I arrived I was robbed of all I had by pickpockets at the fair of St. Germain. I myself was mistaken for a robber and put in jail for eight days. Then I got a job as a proofreader at a press to earn the money I’d need to get back to Holland on foot. I knew the whole scribbling rabble, the party rabble, the fanatic rabble. They say there are very polite people in that city, and I want to believe it.”

[21.6] “As for me, I’m not interested in seeing France,” said Candide. “You can imagine that, after spending a month at El Dorado, I want to see nothing in this world but Miss Cunegonde. I’m traveling to wait for her in Venice. We’ll pass through France on our way to Italy. Will you keep me company?”

[21.7] “With all my heart,” said Martin. “They say Venice is suitable only for its own nobility, but that strangers are greeted kindly if they have a lot money. I have none. You have, so I’ll follow you all over the world.”

[21.8] “But do you believe,” asked Candide, “that the earth was originally a sea, as it’s argued in that large book belonging to the captain?”

[21.9] “I don’t believe a word of it,” said Martin, “no more than any of the crazy things that have been published lately.”

[21.10] “But for what purpose, then, has this world been formed?” said Candide.

[21.11] “To plague us to death,” answered Martin.

[21.12] “Aren’t you surprised,” continued Candide, “by the love these two girls of the Oreillons had for those monkeys, the ones I told you about?”

[21.13] “Not at all,” said Martin. “That passion doesn’t seem strange. I’ve seen so many unusual things that I’m not surprised anymore.”

[21.14] “Do you believe,” asked Candide, “that men have always massacred each other the way they do today? — that they’ve always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchées, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”

[21.15] “Do you believe,” asked Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they’ve found them?”

[21.16] “Yes, no doubt,” said Candide.

[21.17] “Well then,” said Martin, “if hawks have always had the same character, why would you imagine men have changed theirs?”

[21.18] “Oh!” said Candide, “there’s a huge difference, because free will ——”

[21.19] And arguing this way, they arrived at Bordeaux.

Chapter 22:
What Happened to Candide and Martin in France

[22.1] Candide stayed in Bordeaux only as long as he needed to sell a few of the pebbles of El Dorado, and to hire a good carriage that could hold two passengers. He couldn’t travel without his Philosopher Martin. He was only upset at leaving his sheep behind, which he left to the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, who set as a subject for that year’s essay prize, “to find why this sheep’s wool was red.” The prize was awarded to a learned man of the north who proved by A + B − C ÷ Z that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot.

[22.2] Meanwhile, all the travelers Candide met at inns along his route told him, “We’re going to Paris.” Their eagerness finally gave him, too, a desire to see the capital, and it wasn’t such a big detour off the road to Venice.

[22.3] He entered Paris by the suburb of St. Marceau, and imagined he was in the dirtiest village of Westphalia.

[22.4] Candide had just arrived at his inn when he found himself attacked by a slight illness, caused by fatigue. Since he had a very large diamond on his finger, and the people of the inn had noticed a tremendously heavy box among his baggage, there were two physicians to attend him, though he’d never sent for them, and two devotees who warmed his broths.

[22.5] “I remember,” Martin said, “I was also sick at Paris in my first voyage. I was very poor, so I had neither friends, devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered.”

[22.6] However, thanks to the medicines and the bloodletting, Candide’s illness became serious. A parson of the neighborhood came very humbly to ask for a bill for the other world, payable to the bearer. Candide would do nothing for him, but the devotees convinced him it was the new fashion. He answered that he wasn’t a man of fashion. Martin wanted to throw the priest of the window. The priest swore that they wouldn’t bury Candide. Martin swore that he’d bury the priest if he continued to be troublesome. The quarrel grew heated. Martin took him by the shoulders and roughly shoved him out the door, which led to a great scandal and a lawsuit.

[22.7] Candide got well again, and during his convalescence he had very good company to have dinner with him. They played high. Candide wondered why it was that the ace never came to him; but Martin wasn’t at all astonished.

[22.8] Among those who did him the honors of the town was a little Abbé of Perigord, one of those busybodies who are always alert, officious, forward, fawning, and complaisant; who watch for strangers as they pass through the capital, tell them the scandalous history of the town, and offer them pleasure at all prices. He first took Candide and Martin to La Comédie,° where they played a new tragedy. Candide happened to be seated near some of the fashionable wits. This didn’t keep him from shedding tears at the well-acted scenes. One of these critics at his side said to him between the acts:

[22.9] “Your tears are misplaced. That’s a shocking actress; the actor who plays with her is yet worse; and the play is even worse than the actors. The author doesn’t know a word of Arabic, yet the scene is in Arabia. What’s more, he’s doesn’t even believe in innate ideas.° Tomorrow I’ll bring you twenty pamphlets written against him.”

[22.10] “How many dramas do you have in France, sir?” said Candide to the Abbé.

[22.11] “Five or six thousand.”

[22.12] “What a number!” said Candide. “How many good?”

[22.13] “Fifteen or sixteen,” replied the other.

[22.14] “What a number!” said Martin.

[22.15] Candide was very pleased with an actress who played Queen Elizabeth in a somewhat bland tragedy that was sometimes acted.

[22.16] “That actress,” he said to Martin, “really pleases me. She looks like Miss Cunegonde. I’d be very glad to visit her.”

[22.17] The Perigordian Abbé offered to introduce him. Candide, brought up in Germany, asked what was the etiquette, and how they treated queens of England in France.

[22.18] “You have to make distinctions,” said the Abbé. “In the provinces, you take them to the inn. In Paris, you respect them when they’re beautiful, and toss them on the highway when they’re dead.”

[22.19] “Queens on the highway!” said Candide.

[22.20] “Yes, sure,” said Martin, “the Abbé is right. I was in Paris when Miss Monime ‘passed,’ as they say, ‘from this life to the other.’ She was refused what they call the honors of sepulture — that is, of rotting with all the beggars of the neighborhood in an ugly cemetery. She was buried all alone by her company at the corner of the Rue de Bourgogne, which should trouble her much, for she thought nobly.”

[22.21] “That was very rude,” said Candide.

[22.22] “What do you think should happen?” asked Martin. “These people are made like this. Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities — you’ll find them in the government, in the law courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation.”

[22.23] “Is it true that they always laugh in Paris?” said Candide.

[22.24] “Yes,” said the Abbé, “but it doesn’t mean anything. They complain of everything with great fits of laughter, and they do the most horrible things while laughing.”

[22.25] “Who,” asked Candide, “is that big pig who said terrible things about the piece that made me cry, and about the actors I liked so much?”

[22.26] “He’s a bad character,” answered the Abbé, “who earns a living by trash-talking all plays and all books. He hates whatever succeeds, just as as eunuchs hate people who can enjoy. He’s one of those serpents of literature, who live on dirt and spite. He’s a folliculaire.”

[22.27] “What’s a folliculaire?” said Candide.

[22.28] “It’s,” said the Abbé, “a pamphleteer — a Fréron.”

[22.29] So Candide, Martin, and the Perigordian talked on the staircase, while watching everyone go out after the performance.

[22.30] “Although I really want to see Cunegonde again,” Candide said, “I’d like to have dinner with Miss Clairon. She seems amazing to me.”

[22.31] The Abbé wasn’t the man to approach Miss Clairon, who saw only good company.

[22.32] “She’s busy this evening,” he said, “but I’ll have the honor to take you to the house of a lady of quality,° and there you’ll know Paris as if you’d lived in it for years.”

[22.33] Candide, who was naturally curious, let himself be taken to this lady’s house, at the end of the Faubourg St. Honoré. The company was occupied in playing faro;° a dozen sad gamblers held a little pack of cards in their hands — a sad record of their bad luck. Deep silence reigned; the gamblers’ faces were pale, the banker’s face anxious, and the hostess, sitting near the unpitying banker, noticed with lynx-eyes all the doubled and other increased stakes, as each player dog-eared his cards. She made them turn down the edges again with severe, but polite attention, and she showed no worry for fear of losing her customers. The lady insisted on being called the “Marchioness of Parolignac.” Her daughter, fifteen years old, was among the gamblers, and she used a sly look to identify the cheaters who tried to make up for fate’s cruelty. The Perigordian Abbé, Candide and Martin came in. No one rose, no one saluted them, no one looked at them. They were all entirely occupied with their cards.

[22.34] “The Baroness of Thunder-ten-Tronckh was more polite,” said Candide.

[22.35] But the Abbé whispered to the Marchioness, who stood halfway up, honored Candide with a gracious smile, and Martin with a condescending nod. She gave a seat and a pack of cards to Candide, who lost fifty thousand francs in two hands. Afterwards they ate dinner cheerfully, and everyone was amazed Candide wasn’t upset about his loss. The servants said among themselves, in the language of servants: —

[22.36] “Some English lord is here tonight.”

[22.37] At first the dinner went most dinners in Paris, in silence, followed by a noise of words that no one could make out, then with pleasantries, which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much evil speaking. They also discussed new books.

[22.38] “Have you seen,” asked the Perigordian Abbé, “the romance of Sieur Gauchat, doctor of divinity?”

[22.39] “Yes,” answered one of the guests, “but I haven’t been able to finish it. We have a lot of silly writings, but all together don’t approach the insolence of ‘Gauchat, Doctor of Divinity.’ I’m so sick the loads of rotten books we’re flooded with that I’m reduced to betting at faro.”

[22.40] “And the Mélanges of Archdeacon Trublet? — what do you think about that?” asked the Abbé.

[22.41] “Ah!” said the Marchioness of Parolignac, “such a tiresome person! It’s so odd how he repeats back to you everything the world already knows! How heavily he discusses what isn’t worth the trouble of lightly remarking on! How, without cleverness, he steals the cleverness of others! How he ruins what he steals! How he disgusts me! But he’ll disgust me no longer — it’s enough to have read a few of the Archdeacon’s pages.”

[22.42] There was at the table a wise man of taste, who sided with the Marchioness. Later they spoke about tragedies. The lady asked why there were tragedies that were sometimes acted, but that couldn’t be read. The man of taste explained very well how a piece could have some interest, and have almost no merit. He proved in few words that it wasn’t enough to introduce one or two of those situations you see in all romances, and which always seduce the audience, but that you had to be new without being odd, often sublime and always natural, to know the human heart and to make it speak; to be a great poet without allowing any person in the piece to appear to be a poet; to know language perfectly — to speak it precisely, with continuous harmony but without rhythm ever taking anything from sense.

[22.43] “Whoever,” he added, “doesn’t follow all these rules might produce one or two tragedies, applauded at a theatre, but he’ll never be placed in the ranks of good writers. There are very few good tragedies. Some are really pastoral poems in dialogue, well written and well rhymed. Others are really political arguments that just put you to sleep, or amplifications that put people off. Others demonic dreams written in a savage style, interrupted in sequence, with long speeches addressed to the gods, because they don’t know how to speak to human beings, with false sayings, with bombastic commonplaces!”

[22.44] Candide listened carefully to this speech, and came up with a great idea of the speaker. Since the Marchioness had taken care to put him next to her, he leaned towards her and took the liberty of asking who was the man who had spoken so well.

[22.45] “He’s a scholar,” said the lady, “who doesn’t play cards. The Abbé sometimes brings him to dinner. He’s perfectly at home among tragedies and books, and he has written a tragedy which was booed off the stage, and a book that’s never been seen outside of a bookshop, except for the one copy he dedicated to me.”

[22.46] “The great man!” said Candide. “He’s another Pangloss!”

[22.47] Then, turning towards him, he said:

[22.48] “Sir, you must think that all is for the best in the moral and physical world, and that nothing could be otherwise than it is?”

[22.49] “I, sir!” answered the scholar. “I don’t know anything about that. I find that everything goes wrong with me. No one knows his rank or his social class, what he does or what he should do. Except for dinner, which is always entertaining, and where there appears to be enough agreement, all the rest of the time is wasted in rude quarrels — Jansenist° against Molinist,° Parliament against the Church, writers against writers, courtesans against courtesans, financiers against the people, wives against husbands, relatives against relatives — it’s never-ending war.”

[22.50] “I’ve seen the worst,” Candide replied. “But a wise man, who since has had the misfortune to be hanged, taught me that everything is really good. These are just the shadows on a beautiful picture.”

[22.51] “Your hanged man mocked the world,” said Martin. “The shadows are horrible blots.”

[22.52] “They’re men who make the blots,” said Candide, “and we can’t do without them.”

[22.53] “It’s not their fault then,” said Martin.

[22.54] Most of the gamblers, who understood none of this language, drank. Martin argued with the scholar, and Candide told some of his adventures to his hostess.

[22.55] After dinner the Marchioness took Candide into her bedroom, and made him sit on a sofa.

[22.56] “Ah, well!” she said to him, “you desperately love Miss Cunegonde of Thunder-ten-Tronckh?”

[22.57] “Yes, madame,” answered Candide.

[22.58] The Marchioness replied to him with a tender smile:

[22.59] “You answer me like a young man from Westphalia. A Frenchman would have said, ‘It is true that I have loved Miss Cunegonde, but seeing you, madame, I think I no longer love her.’”

[22.60] “Alas! madame,” said Candide, “I’ll answer you as you wish.”

[22.61] “Your passion for her,” the Marchioness said, “began when you picked up her handkerchief. I wish that you would pick up my garter belt.”

[22.62] “With all my heart,” said Candide. And he picked it up.

[22.63] “But I wish that you would put it on,” said the lady.

[22.64] And Candide put it on.

[22.65] “You see,” she said, “you’re a foreigner. I sometimes make my Parisian lovers wait for fifteen days, but I give myself to you the first night because one must do the honors of one’s country to a young man from Westphalia.”

[22.66] Since the lady saw two enormous diamonds on the hands of the young foreigner, she praised them with such good faith that they passed from Candide’s fingers to her own.

[22.67] Candide, returning with the Perigordian Abbé, felt some regret about having been unfaithful to Miss Cunegonde. The Abbé was sympathetic. He’d had just a small part of the fifty thousand francs lost at play and of the value of the two diamonds, half given, half extorted. His plan was to benefit as much as he could from the advantages that came from knowing Candide. He spoke much of Cunegonde, and Candide told him that he’d ask forgiveness of that beautiful one for his infidelity when he should see her in Venice.

[22.68] The Abbé redoubled his politeness and attention, and took a tender interest in all that Candide said, in all that he did, in everything he wanted to do.

[22.69] “And so, sir, you have a plan to meet in Venice?”

[22.70] “Yes, monsieur Abbé,” answered Candide. “I absolutely have to meet Miss Cunegonde.”

[22.71] And then the pleasure of talking of what he loved led him to tell, as he usually did, part of his adventures with the beautiful Westphalian.

[22.72] “I believe,” said the Abbé, “that Miss Cunegonde has a lot of wit, and that she writes charming letters?”

[22.73] “I’ve never received any from her,” said Candide. “Since I was kicked out of the castle on her account, I had no chance to write to her. Right after that I heard she was dead, then I found her alive, then I lost her again. Most recently I sent an express to her seven thousand miles from here, and I’m waiting for an answer.”

[22.74] The Abbé listened attentively, and seemed to be in lost in thought. He soon said goodbye to the two foreigners after an affectionate hug. The following day, when Candide woke up, he received in these terms:

[22.75] “My very dear love, for eight days I’ve been ill in this town. I learn that you’re here. I’d fly to your arms if only I could move. I was told about your passage at Bordeaux, where I left faithful Cacambo and the old woman, who are to follow me very soon. The Governor of Buenos Aires has taken everything, but there remains to me your heart. Come! — your presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.”

[22.76] This charming and unexpected letter filled Candide with inexpressible joy, and the illness of his dear Cunegonde overwhelmed him with grief. Divided between those two passions, he took his gold and his diamonds and hurried away, with Martin, to the hotel where Miss Cunegonde was staying. He entered her room trembling, his heart pounding, his voice sobbing. He wanted to open the curtains of the bed, and asked for a light.

[22.77] “Be careful what you do,” said the servant maid. “The light hurts her.” Immediately she closed the curtain again.

[22.78] “My dear Cunegonde,” said Candide, weeping, “how are you? If you can’t see me, at least speak to me.”

[22.79] “She can’t speak,” said the maid.

[22.80] The lady then stuck out a plump hand from the bed, and Candide bathed it with his tears and afterwards filled it with diamonds, leaving a bag of gold on the easy chair.

[22.81] In the midst of these transports in came an officer, followed by the Abbé and a row of soldiers.

[22.82] “There,” he said, “are the two suspected foreigners!” At the same time he ordered them to be seized and carried to prison.

[22.83] “Travelers aren’t treated this way in El Dorado,” said Candide.

[22.84] “I’m more of a Manichean now than ever,” said Martin.

[22.] “Tell me, sir, where are you taking us?” said Candide.

[22.85] “To a dungeon,” answered the officer.

[22.86] Martin, when he recovered a little, realized that the lady who played the part of Cunegonde was a cheat, that the Perigordian Abbé was a conman who took advantage of Candidee’s honest simplicity. The officer was another knave, someone they could easily silence.

[22.] Candide, advised by Martin and impatient to see the real Cunegonde, rather than expose himself before a court of justice, proposed to the officer to give him three small diamonds, each worth about three thousand pistoles.

[22.87] “Ah, sir,” said the man with the ivory baton, “even if you had committed all the crimes I can imagine, you’d be me the most honest man in the world to me. Three diamonds! — worth three thousand pistoles each! Sir, instead of carrying you to jail, I’d give my life to serve you. There are orders for arresting all foreigners, but leave it to me. I have a brother at Dieppe in Normandy. I’ll take you there, and if you have a diamond to give him he’ll take care of you as well as I would.”

[22.88] “And why,” asked Candide, “should all foreigners be arrested?”

[22.89] “It’s because,” the Perigordian Abbé answered, “a poor beggar of the country of Atrébatie heard people say some stupid things. This led him to commit a parricide,° not such as that of 1610 in the month of May, but such as that of 1594 in the month of December, and such as others which have been committed in other years and other months by other poor devils who had heard nonsense spoken.”

[22.90] The officer then explained what the Abbé meant.

[22.91] “Ah, those monsters!” cried Candide. “What horrors among a people who dance and sing! Is there no way to get out of this country quickly, where monkeys provoke tigers? I’ve seen no bears in my country, but I’ve seen men nowhere except in El Dorado. In the name of God, sir, lead me to Venice, where I have to wait for Miss Cunegonde.”

[22.92] “I can lead you no further than lower Normandy,” said the officer.

[22.93] Immediately he ordered his chains to be struck off, admitted he was mistaken, sent away his men, set out with Candide and Martin for Dieppe, and left them in the care of his brother.

[22.94] There was then a small Dutch ship in the harbor. The Norman, who thanks to the power of three more diamonds had become the most subservient of men, put Candide and his attendants on board a ship that was just about to set sail for Portsmouth in England.

[22.95] This wasn’t the way to Venice, but Candide thought he’d made his way out of hell, and figured he’d soon have the opportunity to resume his journey.

Chapter 23:
Candide and Martin Touched on the Coast of England, and What They Saw There

[23.1] “Oh, Pangloss! Pangloss! Oh, Martin! Martin! Oh, my dear Cunegonde, what kind of a world is this?” said Candide on board the Dutch ship.

[23.2] “Something very stupid and abominable,” said Martin.

[23.3] “You know England? Are they as stupid there as they are in France?”

[23.4] “It’s a different kind of stupidity,” said Martin. “You know these two nations are at war over a few acres of snow in Canada, and they spend more on this beautiful war than Canada is worth. To tell you the truth, My imperfect mind can't decide whether there are more lunatics in one country than the other. All I know is that, in general, the people we’re going to see are very gloomy.”

[23.5] Talking this way they arrived at Portsmouth. The coast was lined with crowds of people, who were all looking at a fine man. He was kneeling, with his eyes bandaged, on board one of the warships in the harbor. Four soldiers stood across from this man. Each of them fired three bullets at his head, with all the calmness in the world. Then the whole crowd went away very satisfied.

[23.6] “What’s all this?” said Candide. “And what demon rules this country?”

[23.7] He then asked who was that fine man who had been killed with so much ceremony. They answered, he was an admiral.

[23.8] “And why kill this admiral?”

[23.9] “It’s because he didn’t kill enough men himself. He gave battle to a French admiral, and it's been proved he wasn’t close enough to him.”

[23.10] “But,” replied Candide, “the French admiral was just as far from the English admiral.”

[23.11] “There’s no doubt of it. But in this country it’s considered a good idea, from time to time, to kill one admiral to encourage the others.”

[23.12] Candide was so shocked and confused by what he saw and heard that he wouldn’t set foot on shore. He made a bargain with the Dutch captain(if he were even to rob him like the Surinam captain) to take him right away to Venice.

[23.13] The captain was ready in two days. They sailed along the coast ofFrance; they passed in sight of Lisbon, and Candide trembled. They passed through the Straits, and entered the Mediterranean. At last they landed at Venice.

[23.14] “God be praised!” said Candide, hugging Martin. “Here I’ once again see my beautiful Cunegonde. I trust Cacambo as well as I trust myself. All is well, all will be well, all goes as well as possible.”

Chapter 24:
Of Paquette and Friar Giroflée

[24.1] When they arrived in Venice, Candide went to search for Cacambo at every inn and coffeehouse, and among all the prostitutes, but to no purpose. Every day he asked for information about all the ships that came in. But there was no news of Cacambo.

[24.2] “What!” he said to Martin, “I’ve had time to travel from Surinam to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to Paris, from Paris to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Portsmouth, to coast along Portugal and Spain, to cross the whole Mediterranean, to spend some months, and yet the beautiful Cunegonde hasn’t arrived! Instead of her I’ve only met a Parisian wench and a Perigordian Abbé. Cunegonde is dead — I have no doubt — and there’s nothing left for me but to die. Alas! How much better it would have been if I had remained in the paradise of El Dorado than to come back to this cursed Europe! You’re right, my dear Martin. All is misery and illusion.”

[24.3] He fell into a deep depression. He didn't go to see the opera or any of the other Carnival entertainments. He even resisted the temptations of all the ladies.

[24.4] “You're really very naive,” Martin told him, “if you imagine that a mongrel valet, with five or six million in his pocket, would go to the other end of the world to seek your mistress and bring her to you to Venice. If he happens to find her, he’ll keep her for himself. If he doesn't find her he’ll get someone else. I encourage you to forget your servant Cacambo and your mistress Cunegonde.”

[24.5] Martin wasn’t helpful. Candide’s depression grew worse. Martin continued to prove to him that there was very little virtue or happiness on earth, except maybe in El Dorado, where nobody could get in.

[24.6] While they were arguing over this important subject and waiting for Cunegonde, Candide saw a young friar of the Theatine order in St. Mark’s Piazza, holding a girl on his arm. The friar looked fresh-colored, plump, and vigorous. His eyes were sparkling, his bearing was confident, his look was lofty, and his step was bold. The girl was very pretty, and sang; she looked lovingly at her Theatine friar, and from time to time she pinched his fat cheeks.

[24.7] “At least you’ll admit,” Candide told Martin, “that these two are happy. So far I’ve met only unfortunate people in the whole habitable globe, except in El Dorado. But as to this pair, I’d wager money that they’re very happy.”

[24.8] “I’ll bet you they’re not,” said Martin.

[24.9] “We just have to ask them to have dinner with us,” said Candide, “and you’ll see whether I’m mistaken.”

[24.10] Immediately he spoke to them, presented his compliments, and invited them to his inn to eat some pasta, with Lombard partridges, and caviar, and to drink some Montepulciano, Lachrymae Christi, Cyprus, and Samos wines. The girl blushed, the Theatine friar accepted the invitation, and she followed him, looking at Candide with confusion and surprise and shedding a few tears. As soon as she set foot in Candide’s apartment she cried out:

[24.11] “Oh! Mr. Candide doesn’t even know Paquette again.”

[24.12] Candide hadn't looked at her yet with attention, his thoughts being entirely taken up with Cunegonde. But he remembered her as she spoke.

[24.13] “Alas!” he said, “my poor child, you're the one who reduced Doctor Pangloss to the beautiful condition I saw him in?”

[24.14] “Alas! Yes, sir, it was me,” answered Paquette. “I see that you’ve heard all. I’ve been told about the terrible disasters that happened to the family of my lady Baroness and the beautiful Cunegonde. I swear to you that my fate has been just as sad. I was very innocent when you knew me. A Gray Friar, who heard my confessions, easily seduced me. The consequences were terrible. I was forced to leave the castle some time after the Baron had sent you away with kicks on the ass. If a famous surgeon hadn’t taken compassion on me, I would have died. For a while I was this surgeon’s mistress, simply out of gratitude. His wife, who was crazy with jealousy, beat me mercilessly every — she was a fury. The surgeon was one of the ugliest men in the world, and I was the most wretched woman, to be continually beaten for a man I didn’t love. You know, sir, how dangerous it is for an bad-tempered woman to be married to a doctor. Furious at his wife’s behavior, he one day gave her a cure for her cold that was so effective that she died two hours later in the most horrible convulsions. The wife’s relations prosecuted the husband; he ran off, and I was thrown in jail. My innocence wouldn’t have saved me if I hadn’t been good-looking. The judge set me free, on the condition that take up where the surgeon left off. I was soon replaced by a rival, kicked out of the house entirely destitute, and forced to continue this disgraceful profession, which appears so pleasant to you men, while to us women it’s the deepest abyss of misery. I’ve come to carry out this profession in Venice. Oh, sir, if you could only imagine what it's like to be obliged to stroke an old merchant, a lawyer, a monk, a gondolier, an abbé — to be exposed to abuse and insults — to be so poor you need to borrow a petticoat, only to go and have it lifted by a disgusting man; to be robbed by one man what you've earned from another; to be extorted by the legal system; to have nothing to look forward to but a frightful old age, a hospital, and a dunghill. You'd conclude that I’m one of the unhappiest creatures in the world.”

[24.15] So Paquette opened her heart to honest Candide, in the presence of Martin, who said to his friend:

[24.16] “You see I’ve already won half the bet.”

[24.17] Friar Giroflée stayed in the dining room and drank a glass of wine or two while he waited for dinner.

[24.18] “But,” said Candide to Paquette, “you looked so cheerful and content when I met you! You sang and you behaved so lovingly to the Theatine friar that you seemed to me as happy as you now pretend to be the opposite.”

[24.19] “Oh! sir,” answered Paquette, “this is one of the miseries of the trade. Yesterday I was robbed and beaten by an officer, but today I must put on a good mood to please a friar.”

[24.20] Candide didn’t need to be convinced any further. He admitted that Martin was right. They sat down at the table with Paquette and the Theatine friar; the meal was entertaining; and towards the end they talked confidently.

[24.21] “Father,” Candide said to the Friar, “you seem to have everything the world would envy. The flower of health shines in your face, and your expression shows clearly how happy you are. You have a very pretty girl for your enjoyment, and you seem happy with your position as a Theatine friar.”

[24.22] “Dear me, sir!” said Friar Giroflée. “I wish that all the Theatines were at the bottom of the ocean. A hundred times I’ve been tempted to set the monastery on fire, and to go and become a Turk.° When I was fifteen my parents forced me wear on this terrible outfit, just to make my rotten older brother a little richer — God damn him. The monastery is filled with jealousy, discord, and fury. True, I’ve preached a few bad sermons that have earned me a little money — the prior° stole half, while the rest pays for my girls. But when I get back to the monastery every night, I’m ready to bash my head against the dormitory walls. All the others feel the same way.”

[24.23] Martin turned towards Candide with his usual coolness.

[24.24] “Well,” he said, “haven't I won the whole bet?”

[24.25] Candide gave Paquette two thousand piastres, and a thousand to Friar Giroflée.

[24.26] “I promise,” he said, “that this will make them happy.”

[24.27] “I don’t believe it at all,” said Martin. “Maybe this money will just make them even more unhappy.”

[24.28] “However that may be,” said Candide, “one thing comforts me. I see we often meet people we never expected to see again. Maybe, just as I’ve found my red sheep and Paquette, I might find Cunegonde too.”

[24.29] “I hope,” Martin said, “she'll make you very happy one day, but I doubt it very much.”

[24.30] “You’re very hard to convince,” said Candide.

[24.31] “I have lived,” said Martin.

[24.32] “You see those gondoliers,”° said Candide. “Aren't they always singing?”

[24.33] “You don’t see them,” Martin said, “when they're at home with their wives and brats. The doge° has his troubles, the gondoliers have theirs. It’s true that, all things considered, the life of a gondolier is better than that of a doge. But I think the difference to be so tiny that it’s not worth examining.”

[24.34] “People talk,” said Candide, “of the Senator Pococurante, who lives in that fine palace on the Brenta, where he entertains foreigners in the politest way. They say this man has never felt any uneasiness.”

[24.35] “I’d be glad to see something so rare,” said Martin.

[24.36] Candide immediately sent a messenger to ask the Lord Pococurante permission to visit him the next day.

Chapter 25:
The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a Noble Venetian

[25.] Candide and Martin went in a gondola on the Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Signor Pococurante. The gardens, laid out with taste, were adorned with fine marble statues. The palace was beautifully built. The master of the house was a man of sixty, and very rich. He received the two travelers with polite indifference, which put Candide a little out of countenance, but wasn’t at all disagreeable to Martin.

[25.] First, two pretty girls, very neatly dressed, served them with chocolate, which was frothed exceedingly well. Candide couldn’t refrain from commending their beauty, grace, and address.

[25.] “They’re good enough creatures,” said the Senator. “I make them lie with me sometimes, for I’m very tired of the ladies of the town, of their coquetries, of their jealousies, of their quarrels, of their humors, of their pettinesses, of their prides, of their follies, and of the sonnets which one must make, or have made, for them. But after all, these two girls begin to weary me.”

[25.] After breakfast, Candide walking into a long gallery was surprised by the beautiful pictures. He asked, by what master were the two first.

[25.] “They’re by Raphael,” said the Senator. “I bought them at a great price, out of vanity, some years ago. They’re said to be the finest things in Italy, but they don’t please me at all. The colors are too dark, the figures aren’t sufficiently rounded, nor in good relief; the draperies in no way resemble stuffs. In a word, whatever may be said, I don’t find there a true imitation of nature. I only care for a picture when I think I see nature itself; and there are none of this sort. I have a great many pictures, but I prize them very little.”

[25.] While they were waiting for dinner Pococurante ordered a concert. Candide found the music delicious.

[25.] “This noise,” said the Senator, “may amuse one for half an hour; but if it were to last longer it would grow tiresome to everybody, though they durst not own it. Music, today, is only the art of executing difficult things, and what is only difficult cannot please long. Maybe I’d like the opera more if they hadn’t found the secret of making of it a monster which shocks me. Let who will go to see bad tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other end than to introduce two or three songs ridiculously out of place, to show off an actress’s voice. Let who will, or who can, die away with pleasure at the sight of an eunuch quavering the role of Caesar, or of Cato, and strutting awkwardly on the stage. For my part I’ve long since renounced those paltry entertainments which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are purchased so dearly by sovereigns.”

[25.] Candide disputed the point a little, but with discretion. Martin was entirely of the Senator’s opinion.

[25.] They sat down to table, and after an excellent dinner they went into the library. Candide, seeing a Homer magnificently bound, commended the virtuoso on his good taste.

[25.] “There,” he said, “is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany.”

[25.] “It’s not mine,” answered Pococurante coolly. “They used at one time to make me believe that I took a pleasure in reading him. But that continual repetition of battles, so extremely like one another; those gods that are always active without doing anything decisive; that Helen who is the cause of the war, and who yet hardly appears in the piece; that Troy, so long besieged without being taken; all these together caused me great weariness. I’ve sometimes asked learned men whether they were not as weary as I of that work. Those who were sincere have admitted to me that the poem made them fall asleep; yet it was necessary to have it in their library as a monument of antiquity, or like those rusty medals which are no longer of use in commerce.”

[25.] “But your Excellency doesn’t think this way of Virgil?” said Candide.

[25.] “I grant,” said the Senator, “that the second, fourth, and sixth books of his Æneid are excellent, but as for his pious Æneas, his strong Cloan, his friend Achates, his little Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his bourgeois Amata, his insipid Lavinia, I think there can be nothing more flat and disagreeable. I prefer Tasso a good deal, or even the soporific tales of Ariosto.”

[25.] “May I presume to ask you, sir,” said Candide, “whether you don’t receive a great deal of pleasure from reading Horace?”

[25.] “There are maxims in this writer,” answered Pococurante, “from which a man of the world may reap great benefit, and being written in energetic verse they’re more easily impressed on the memory. But I care little for his journey to Brundusium, and his account of a bad dinner, or of his low quarrel between one Rupilius whose words he says were full of poisonous filth, and another whose language was imbued with vinegar. I’ve read with much distaste his indelicate verses against old women and witches; nor do I see any merit in telling his friend Maecenas that if he’ll just rank him in the choir of lyric poets, his lofty head will touch the stars. Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like only what serves my purpose.”

[25.] Candide, having been educated never to judge for himself, was much surprised at what he heard. Martin found there was a good deal of reason in Pococurante’s remarks.

[25.] “Oh! here is Cicero,” said Candide. “Here is the great man I suspect you’re never tired of reading.”

[25.] “I never read him,” replied the Venetian. “What’s it to me whether he pleads for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself; his philosophical works seem to me better, but when I found that he doubted of everything, I concluded that I knew as much as he, and that I had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.”

[25.] “Ha! here are four-score volumes of the Academy of Sciences,” cried Martin. “Maybe there’s something valuable in this collection.”

[25.] “There might be,” said Pococurante, “if only one of those rakers of rubbish had shown how to make pins; but in all these volumes there’s nothing but chimerical systems, and not a single useful thing.”

[25.] “And what dramatic works I see here,” said Candide, “in Italian, Spanish, and French.”

[25.] “Yes,” replied the Senator, “there are three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything. As to those collections of sermons, which altogether aren’t worth a single page of Seneca, and those huge volumes of theology, you may well imagine that neither I nor any one else ever opens them.”

[25.] Martin saw some shelves filled with English books.

[25.] “I have a notion,” he said, “that a Republican must be greatly pleased with most of these books, which are written with a spirit of freedom.”

[25.] “Yes,” answered Pococurante, “it’s noble to write what you think; this is the privilege of humanity. In all our Italy we write only what we don’t think; those who inhabit the country of the Caesars and the Antoninuses don’t dare have a single idea without the permission of a Dominican friar. I” be pleased with the liberty that inspires the English genius if passion and party spirit didn’t corrupt all that’s estimable in this precious liberty.”

[25.] Candide, observing a Milton, asked whether he didn’t look on this author as a great man.

[25.] “Who?” said Pococurante, “that barbarian, who writes a long commentary in ten books of harsh verse on the first chapter of Genesis; that coarse imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the Creation, and who, while Moses represents the Eternal producing the world by a word, makes the Messiah take a great pair of compasses from the armory of heaven to circumscribe His work? How can I have any respect for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s hell and the devil, who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad and other times into a pigmy, who makes him repeat the same things a hundred times, who makes him dispute on theology, who, by a serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of firearms, represents the devils cannonading in heaven? Neither I nor any man in Italy could take pleasure in those melancholy extravagances; and the marriage of Sin and Death, and the snakes brought forth by Sin, are enough to turn the stomach of any one with the least taste, [and his long description of a pest-house is good only for a grave-digger]. This obscure, whimsical, and disagreeable poem was despised on its first publication, and I only treat it now as it was treated in its own country by contemporaries. For the matter of that I say what I think, and I care very little whether others think as I do.”

[25.] Candide was grieved at this speech, for he had a respect for Homer and was fond of Milton.

[25.] “Alas!” he said softly to Martin, “I’m afraid that this man holds our German poets in very great contempt.”

[25.] “There wouldn’t be much harm in that,” said Martin.

[25.] “Oh! what a superior man,” said Candide below his breath. “What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him.”

[25.] After their survey of the library they went down into the garden, where Candide praised its several beauties.

[25.] “I know of nothing in so bad a taste,” said the master. “All you see here is merely trifling. After tomorrow I’ll have it planted with a nobler design.”

[25.] “Well,” said Candide to Martin when they had said goodbye, “you’ll agree that this is the happiest of mortals, for he’s above everything he possesses.”

[25.] “But do you not see,” answered Martin, “that he’s disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs aren’t the best that reject all sorts of food.”

[25.] “But is there not a pleasure,” said Candide, “in criticizing everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?”

[25.] “That is to say,” replied Martin, “that there’s some pleasure in having no pleasure.”

[25.] “Well, well,” said Candide, “I find that I’ll be the only happy man when I’m blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegonde.”

[25.] “It’s always well to hope,” said Martin.

[25.] However, the days and the weeks passed. Cacambo didn’t come, and Candide was so overwhelmed with grief that he didn’t even reflect that Paquette and Friar Giroflée didn’t return to thank him.

Chapter 26:
Of a Dinner Which Candide and Martin Took with Six Strangers, and Who They Were

[26.] One evening that Candide and Martin were going to sit down to dinner with some foreigners who lodged in the same inn, a man whose complexion was as black as soot, came behind Candide, and taking him by the arm, said:

[26.] “Get yourself ready to go along with us; don’t fail.”

[26.] He then turned round and saw — Cacambo! Nothing but the sight of Cunegonde could have astonished and delighted him more. He was on the point of going mad with joy. He hugged his dear friend.

[26.] “Cunegonde is here, without doubt; where is she? Take me to her that I may die of joy in her company.”

[26.] “Cunegonde isn’t here,” said Cacambo, “she’s at Constantinople.”

[26.] “Oh, heavens! at Constantinople! But even if she were in China I’d go there, so let’s be off.”

[26.] “We’ll set out after dinner,” replied Cacambo. “I can tell you nothing more; I’m a slave, my master awaits me, I must serve him at table; speak not a word, eat, and then get ready.”

[26.] Candide, distracted between joy and grief, delighted at seeing his faithful agent again, astonished at finding him a slave, filled with the fresh hope of recovering his mistress, his heart palpitating, his understanding confused, sat down to table with Martin, who saw all these scenes completely unconcerned, and with six strangers who had come to spend the Carnival at Venice.

[26.] Cacambo waited at table on one of the strangers; towards the end of the entertainment he drew near his master, and whispered in his ear:

[26.] “Sire, your Majesty may start when you please, the vessel is ready.”

[26.] On saying these words he went out. The company in great surprise looked at one another without speaking a word, when another domestic approached his master and said to him:

[26.] “Sire, your Majesty’s chaise is at Padua, and the boat is ready.”

[26.] The master gave a nod and the servant went away. The company all stared at one another again, and their surprise redoubled. A third valet came up to a third stranger, saying:

[26.] “Sire, believe me, your Majesty shouldn’t stay here any longer. I’m going to get everything ready.”

[26.] And immediately he disappeared. Candide and Martin didn’t doubt that this was a masquerade of the Carnival. Then a fourth domestic said to a fourth master:

[26.] “Your Majesty may depart when you please.”

[26.] Saying this he went away like the rest. The fifth valet said the same thing to the fifth master. But the sixth valet spoke differently to the sixth stranger, who sat near Candide. He said to him:

[26.] “Faith, Sire, they’ll no longer give credit to your Majesty nor to me, and we may perhaps both of us be put in jail this very night. Therefore I’ll take care of myself. Adieu.”

[26.] The servants being all gone, the six strangers, with Candide and Martin, remained in a profound silence. At length Candide broke it.

[26.] “Gentlemen,” he said, “this really is a very good joke, but why should you all be kings? For me I admit that neither Martin nor I is a king.”

[26.] Cacambo’s master then gravely answered in Italian:

[26.] “I’m not at all joking. My name is Achmet III. I was Grand Sultan many years. I dethroned my brother; my nephew dethroned me, my viziers were beheaded, and I’m condemned to end my days in the old Seraglio. My nephew, the great Sultan Mahmoud, permits me to travel sometimes for my health, and I’m come to spend the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] A young man who sat next to Achmet, spoke then as follows:

[26.] “My name is Ivan. I was once Emperor of all the Russias, but was dethroned in my cradle. My parents were confined in prison and I was educated there; yet I’m sometimes allowed to travel in company with people who act as guards; and I’m come to spend the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] The third said:

[26.] “I’m Charles Edward, King of England; my father has resigned all his legal rights to me. I’ve fought in defense of them; and above eight hundred of my adherents have been hanged, drawn, and quartered. I’ve been confined in prison; I’m going to Rome, to pay a visit to the King, my father, who was dethroned as well as myself and my grandfather, and I’m come to spend the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] The fourth spoke this way in his turn:

[26.] “I’m the King of Poland; the fortune of war has stripped me of my hereditary dominions; my father underwent the same vicissitudes; I resign myself to Providence in the same manner as Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, and King Charles Edward, whom God long preserve; and I’m come to the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] The fifth said:

[26.] “I’m King of Poland also; I’ve been twice dethroned; but Providence has given me another country, where I’ve done more good than all the Sarmatian kings were ever capable of doing on the banks of the Vistula; I resign myself likewise to Providence, and am come to pass the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] It was now the sixth monarch’s turn to speak:

[26.] “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m not so great a prince as any of you; I am, however, a king. I am Theodore, elected King of Corsica; I had the title of Majesty, and now I’m hardly treated as a gentleman. I have coined money, and now am not worth a penny; I’ve had two secretaries of state, and now I have barely a valet; I’ve seen myself on a throne, and I’ve seen myself on straw in a common jail in London. I’m afraid that I’ll meet with the same treatment here though, like your majesties, I’m come to see the Carnival at Venice.”

[26.] The other five kings listened to this speech with generous compassion. Each of them gave twenty sequins to King Theodore to buy him clothes and linen; and Candide made him a present of a diamond worth two thousand sequins.

[26.] “Who can this private person be,” said the five kings to one another, “who is able to give, and really has given, a hundred times as much as any of us?”

[26.] Just as they rose from table, in came four Serene Highnesses, who had also been stripped of their territories by the fortune of war, and were come to spend the Carnival at Venice. But Candide paid no regard to these newcomers, his thoughts were entirely employed on his voyage to Constantinople, in search of his beloved Cunegonde.

Chapter 27:
Candide’s Voyage to Constantinople

[27.] The faithful Cacambo had already convinced the Turkish skipper, who was to conduct the Sultan Achmet to Constantinople, to receive Candide and Martin on his ship. They both embarked after having made their obeisance to his miserable Highness.

[27.] “You see,” said Candide to Martin on the way, “we had dinner with six dethroned kings, and of those six there was one to whom I gave charity. Maybe there are many other princes yet more unfortunate. For my part, I’ve only lost a hundred sheep; and now I’m flying into Cunegonde’s arms. My dear Martin, yet once more Pangloss was right: all is for the best.”

[27.] “I wish it,” answered Martin.

[27.] “But,” said Candide, “it was a very strange adventure we met with at Venice. It has never before been seen or heard that six dethroned kings have had dinner together at a public inn.”

[27.] “It’s not more extraordinary,” said Martin, “than most of the things that have happened to us. It’s a very common thing for kings to be dethroned; and as for the honor we have had of supping in their company, it’s a trifle not worth our attention.”

[27.] No sooner had Candide got on board the vessel than he flew to his old valet and friend Cacambo, and tenderly hugged him.

[27.] “Well,” he said, “what news of Cunegonde? Is she still a prodigy of beauty? Does she love me still? How is she? I’m sure you’ve bought her a palace at Constantinople?”

[27.] “My dear master,” answered Cacambo, “Cunegonde washes dishes on the banks of the Propontis, in the service of a prince, who has very few dishes to wash; she’s a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign named Ragotsky, to whom the Grand Turk allows three crowns a day in his exile. But what’s worse still is, that she has lost her beauty and has become horribly ugly.”

[27.] “Well, handsome or ugly,” replied Candide, “I’m a man of honor, and it’s my duty to love her still. But how came she to be reduced to so abject a state with the five or six millions that you took to her?”

[27.] “Ah!” said Cacambo, “was I not to give two millions to Senor Don Fernando d’Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza, Governor of Buenos Aires, for permitting Miss Cunegonde to come away? And didn’t a corsair bravely rob us of all the rest? Did not this corsair carry us to Cape Matapan, to Milo, to Nicaria, to Samos, to Petra, to the Dardanelles, to Marmora, to Scutari? Cunegonde and the old woman serve the prince I now mentioned to you, and I’m slave to the dethroned Sultan.”

[27.] “What a series of shocking calamities!” cried Candide. “But after all, I have some diamonds left; and I may easily pay Cunegonde’s ransom. Yet it’s a pity that she’s grown so ugly.”

[27.] Then, turning towards Martin: “Who do you think,” he said, “is most to be pitied — the Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, King Charles Edward, or I?”

[27.] “How should I know!” answered Martin. “I must see into your hearts to be able to tell.”

[27.] “Ah!” said Candide, “if Pangloss were here, he could tell.”

[27.] “I know not,” said Martin, “in what sort of scales your Pangloss would weigh the misfortunes of mankind and set a just estimate on their sorrows. All that I can presume to say is, that there are millions of people on earth who have a hundred times more to complain of than King Charles Edward, the Emperor Ivan, or the Sultan Achmet.”

[27.] “That may well be,” said Candide.

[27.] In a few days they reached the Bosphorus, and Candide began by paying a very high ransom for Cacambo. Then without losing time, he and his companions went on board a galley, in order to search on the banks of the Propontis for his Cunegonde, however ugly she might have become.

[27.] Among the crew there were two slaves who rowed very badly, and to whose bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from a bull’s dick. Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them with pity. Their features though greatly disfigured, had a slight resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Jesuit and Westphalian Baron, brother to Miss Cunegonde. This moved and saddened him. He looked at them still more attentively.

[27.] “Indeed,” he said to Cacambo, “if I hadn’t seen Master Pangloss hanged, and if I hadn’t had the misfortune to kill the Baron, I’d think they were the ones who were rowing.”

[27.] At the names of the Baron and of Pangloss, the two galley-slaves uttered a loud cry, held fast by the seat, and let drop their oars. The captain ran up to them and redoubled his blows with the bull’s dick.

[27.] “Stop! stop! sir,” cried Candide. “I’ll give you what money you please.”

[27.] “What! it is Candide!” said one of the slaves.

[27.] “What! it is Candide!” said the other.

[27.] “Do I dream?” cried Candide; “am I awake? or am I on board a galley? Is this the Baron whom I killed? Is this Master Pangloss whom I saw hanged?”

[27.] “It is we! it is we!” answered they.

[27.] “Well! is this the great philosopher?” said Martin.

[27.] “Ah! captain,” said Candide, “what ransom will you take for Monsieur de Thunder-ten-Tronckh, one of the first barons of the empire, and for Monsieur Pangloss, the profoundest metaphysician in Germany?”

[27.] “Dog of a Christian,” answered the Levantine captain, “since these two dogs of Christian slaves are barons and metaphysicians, which I doubt not are high dignities in their country, you’ll give me fifty thousand sequins.”

[27.] “You’ll have them, sir. Carry me back at once to Constantinople, and you’ll receive the money directly. But no; carry me first to Miss Cunegonde.”

[27.] When Candide made the first proposal, however, the Levantine captain had already tacked about, and made the crew ply their oars quicker than a bird cleaves the air.

[27.] Candide hugged the Baron and Pangloss a hundred times.

[27.] “And how happened it, my dear Baron, that I didn’t kill you? And, my dear Pangloss, how came you to life again after being hanged? And why are you both in a Turkish galley?”

[27.] “And it’s true that my dear sister is in this country?” said the Baron.

[27.] “Yes,” answered Cacambo.

[27.] “Then I behold, once more, my dear Candide,” cried Pangloss.

[27.] Candide presented Martin and Cacambo to them; they hugged each other, and all spoke at once. The galley flew; they were already in the port. Instantly Candide sent for a Jew, to whom he sold for fifty thousand sequins a diamond worth a hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to him by Abraham that he could give him no more. He immediately paid the ransom for the Baron and Pangloss. The latter threw himself at the feet of his deliverer, and bathed them with his tears; the former thanked him with a nod, and promised to return him the money on the first opportunity.

[27.] “But is it really possible that my sister can be in Turkey?” he said.

[27.] “Nothing is more possible,” said Cacambo, “since she scours the dishes in the service of a Transylvanian prince.”

[27.] Candide sent directly for two Jews and sold them some more diamonds, and then they all set out together in another galley to deliver Cunegonde from slavery.

Chapter 28:
What Happened to Candide, Cunegonde, Pangloss, Martin, Etc.

[28.] “I ask your pardon once more,” said Candide to the Baron, “your pardon, reverend father, for having run you through the body.”

[28.] “Say no more about it,” answered the Baron. “I was a little too hasty, I admit, but since you want to know by what fate I came to be a galley slave, I’ll tell you. After I had been cured by the surgeon of the college of the wound you gave me, I was attacked and carried off by a party of Spanish troops, who confined me in prison at Buenos Aires at the very time my sister was setting out from there. I asked permission to return to Rome to the General of my Order. I was appointed chaplain to the French Ambassador at Constantinople. I hadn’t been eight days in this employment when one evening I met with a young Ichoglan, who was a very handsome fellow. The weather was warm. The young man wanted to bathe, and I took this opportunity of bathing also. I didn’t know that it was a capital crime for a Christian to be found naked with a young Muslim. A cadi ordered me a hundred blows on the soles of the feet, and condemned me to the galleys. I don’t think there ever was a greater act of injustice. But I’d like to know how my sister came to be scullion to a Transylvanian prince who has taken shelter among the Turks.”

[28.] “But you, my dear Pangloss,” said Candide, “how can it be that I behold you again?”

[28.] “It’s true,” said Pangloss, “that you saw me hanged. I should have been burnt, but you may remember it rained exceedingly hard when they were going to roast me; the storm was so violent that they despaired of lighting the fire, so I was hanged because they could do no better. A surgeon purchased my body, carried me home, and dissected me. He began with making a crucial incision on me from the navel to the clavicula. One couldn’t have been worse hanged than I was. The executioner of the Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people marvelously well, but he wasn’t accustomed to hanging. The cord was wet and didn’t slip properly, and besides it was badly tied; in short, I still drew my breath, when the crucial incision made me give such a frightful scream that my surgeon fell flat on his back, and imagining that he’d been dissecting the devil he ran away, dying with fear, and fell down the staircase in his flight. His wife, hearing the noise, flew from the next room. She saw me stretched out on the table with my crucial incision. She was seized with yet greater fear than her husband, fled, and tumbled over him. When they came to themselves a little, I heard the wife say to her husband: ‘My dear, how could you take it into your head to dissect a heretic? Do you not know that these people always have the devil in their bodies? I’ll go and fetch a priest this minute to exorcise him.’ At this proposal I shuddered, and mustering up what little courage I had still remaining I cried out aloud, ‘Have mercy on me!’ At length the Portuguese barber plucked up his spirits. He sewed up my wounds; his wife even nursed me. I was on my legs at the end of fifteen days. The barber found me a place as lackey to a knight of Malta who was going to Venice, but finding that my master had no money to pay me my wages I entered the service of a Venetian merchant, and went with him to Constantinople. One day I took it into my head to step into a mosque, where I saw an old Iman and a very pretty young devotee who was saying her paternosters. Her bosom was uncovered, and between her breasts she had a beautiful bouquet of tulips, roses, anemones, ranunculus, hyacinths, and auriculas. She dropped her bouquet; I picked it up, and presented it to her with a profound reverence. I was so long in delivering it that the Iman began to get angry, and seeing that I was a Christian he called out for help. They carried me before the cadi, who ordered me a hundred lashes on the soles of the feet and sent me to the galleys. I was chained to the very same galley and the same bench as the young Baron. On board this galley there were four young men from Marseilles, five Neapolitan priests, and two monks from Corfu, who told us similar adventures happened daily. The Baron maintained that he’d suffered greater injustice than I, and I insisted that it was far more innocent to take up a bouquet and place it again on a woman’s bosom than to be found stark naked with an Ichoglan. We were continually disputing, and received twenty lashes with a bull’s dick when the concatenation of universal events brought you to our galley, and you were good enough to ransom us.”

[28.] “Well, my dear Pangloss,” said Candide to him, “when you’d been hanged, dissected, whipped, and were tugging at the oar, did you always think that everything happens for the best?”

[28.] “I’m still of my first opinion,” answered Pangloss, “for I’m a philosopher and I cannot retract, especially as Leibnitz could never be wrong; and besides, the pre-established harmony is the finest thing in the world, and so is his plenum and materia subtilis.”

Chapter 29:
How Candide Found Cunegonde and the Old Woman Again

[29.] While Candide, the Baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo were relating their several adventures, were reasoning on the contingent or non-contingent events of the universe, disputing on effects and causes, on moral and physical evil, on liberty and necessity, and on the consolations a slave may feel even on a Turkish galley, they arrived at the house of the Transylvanian prince on the banks of the Propontis. The first objects which met their sight were Cunegonde and the old woman hanging towels out to dry.

[29.] The Baron paled at this sight. The tender, loving Candide, seeing his beautiful Cunegonde embrowned, with bloodshot eyes, withered neck, wrinkled cheeks, and rough, red arms, recoiled three paces, seized with horror, and then advanced out of good manners. She hugged Candide and her brother; they hugged the old woman, and Candide ransomed them both.

[29.] There was a small farm in the neighborhood which the old woman proposed to Candide to make a shift with till the company could be provided for in a better manner. Cunegonde didn’t know she’d grown ugly, for nobody had told her of it; and she reminded Candide of his promise in so positive a tone that the good man durst not refuse her. He therefore intimated to the Baron that he intended marrying his sister.

[29.] “I won’t tolerate,” the Baron said, “such meanness on her part, and such insolence on yours; I’ll never be reproached with this scandalous thing; my sister’s children would never be able to enter the church in Germany. No; my sister will only marry a baron of the empire.”

[29.] Cunegonde flung herself at his feet, and bathed them with her tears; still he was inflexible.

[29.] “You foolish fellow,” said Candide; “I’ve rescued you out of the galleys, I’ve paid your ransom, and your sister’s also; she was a scullion, and is very ugly, yet I’m so condescending as to marry her; and you dare to oppose the match? I’d kill you again, if I listened to my anger.”

[29.] “You may kill me again,” said the Baron, “but you won’t marry my sister, at least while I’m alive.”

Chapter 30:
The Conclusion

[30.] At the bottom of his heart Candide didn’t want to marry Cunegonde. But the extreme rudeness of the Baron made him decide to go through with the match, and Cunegonde pressed him so strongly that he couldn’t go from his word. He consulted Pangloss, Martin, and the faithful Cacambo. Pangloss drew up an excellent memorial, wherein he proved that the Baron had no right over his sister, and that according to all the laws of the empire, she might marry Candide with her left hand. Martin was for throwing the Baron into the sea; Cacambo decided that it would be better to deliver him up again to the captain of the galley, after which they thought to send him back to the General Father of the Order at Rome by the first ship. This advice was well received, the old woman approved it; they said not a word to his sister; the thing was executed for a little money, and they had the double pleasure of entrapping a Jesuit, and punishing the pride of a German baron.

[30.] It’s natural to imagine that after so many disasters Candide married, and living with the philosopher Pangloss, the philosopher Martin, the prudent Cacambo, and the old woman, having besides brought so many diamonds from the country of the ancient Incas, must have led a very happy life. But he was so much imposed on by the Jews that he had nothing left except his small farm; his wife became uglier every day, more peevish and unsupportable; the old woman was infirm and even more fretful than Cunegonde. Cacambo, who worked in the garden, and took vegetables for sale to Constantinople, was fatigued with hard work, and cursed his destiny. Pangloss was in despair at not shining in some German university. For Martin, he was firmly persuaded that he would be as badly off elsewhere, and therefore bore things patiently. Candide, Martin, and Pangloss sometimes disputed about morals and metaphysics. They often saw passing under the windows of their farm boats full of Effendis, Pashas, and Cadis, who were going into banishment to Lemnos, Mitylene, or Erzeroum. And they saw other Cadis, Pashas, and Effendis coming to supply the place of the exiles, and afterwards exiled in their turn. They saw heads decently impaled for presentation to the Sublime Porte. Such spectacles as these increased the number of their dissertations; and when they didn’t dispute time hung so heavily on their hands, that one day the old woman ventured to say to them:

[30.] “I want to know which is worse, to be raped a hundred times by Black pirates, to have an ass-cheek cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in the galleys — in short, to go through all the miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?”

[30.] “It’s a great question,” said Candide.

[30.] This discourse gave rise to new reflections, and Martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust. Candide didn’t really agree to that, but he affirmed nothing. Pangloss admitted that he’d always suffered horribly, but as he’d once asserted that everything went wonderfully well, he asserted it still, though he no longer believed it.

[30.] What helped to confirm Martin in his detestable principles, to stagger Candide more than ever, and to puzzle Pangloss, was that one day they saw Paquette and Friar Giroflée land at the farm in extreme misery. They had soon squandered their three thousand piastres, parted, were reconciled, quarreled again, were thrown into jail, had escaped, and Friar Giroflée had finally become Turk. Paquette continued her trade wherever she went, but made nothing of it.

[30.] “I foresaw,” said Martin to Candide, “that your presents would soon be dissipated, and only make them the more miserable. You’ve rolled in millions of money, you and Cacambo; and yet you aren’t happier than Friar Giroflée and Paquette.”

[30.] “Ha!” said Pangloss to Paquette, “Providence has then brought you amongst us again, my poor child! Do you know that you cost me the tip of my nose, an eye, and an ear, as you may see? What a world is this!”

[30.] And now this new adventure set them philosophizing more than ever.

[30.] In the neighborhood there lived a very famous Dervish who was considered the best philosopher in all Turkey, and they went to consult him. Pangloss was the speaker.

[30.] “Master,” he said, “we come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal as man was made.”

[30.] “What are you meddling with?” said the Dervish; “is it your business?”

[30.] “But, reverend father,” said Candide, “there’s horrible evil in this world.”

[30.] “What signifies it,” said the Dervish, “whether there be evil or good? When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?”

[30.] “What, then, must we do?” said Pangloss.

[30.] “Hold your tongue,” answered the Dervish.

[30.] “I hoped,” said Pangloss, “that I’d reason with you a little about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony.”

[30.] At these words, the Dervish shut the door in their faces.

[30.] During this conversation, the news was spread that two Viziers and the Mufti had been strangled at Constantinople, and that several of their friends had been impaled. This catastrophe made a great noise for some hours. Pangloss, Candide, and Martin, returning to the little farm, saw a good old man taking the fresh air at his door under an orange bower. Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was argumentative, asked the old man what was the name of the strangled Mufti.

[30.] “I don’t know,” answered the worthy man, “and I haven’t known the name of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier. I’m entirely ignorant of the event you mention; I presume in general that they who meddle with the administration of public affairs die sometimes miserably, and that they deserve it; but I never trouble my head about what’s happening at Constantinople; I content myself with sending there for sale the fruits of the garden which I cultivate.”

[30.] Having said these words, he invited the strangers into his house; his two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet, which they made themselves, with Kaimak enriched with the candied-peel of citrons, with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of Batavia or the American islands. After which the two daughters of the honest Muslim perfumed the strangers’ beards.

[30.] “You must have a vast and magnificent estate,” said Candide to the Turk.

[30.] “I have only twenty acres,” replied the old man; “I and my children cultivate them; our labor preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and poverty.”

[30.] Candide, on his way home, made profound reflections on the old man’s conversation.

[30.] “This honest Turk,” he said to Pangloss and Martin, “seems to be in a situation far preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honor of supping.”

[30.] “Grandeur,” said Pangloss, “is extremely dangerous according to the testimony of philosophers. For, in short, Eglon, King of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud; Absalom was hung by his hair, and pierced with three darts; King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Baasa; King Ela by Zimri; Ahaziah by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity. You know how perished Crœsus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Caesar, Pompey, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II. of England, Edward II., Henry VI., Richard III., Mary Stuart, Charles I., the three Henrys of France, the Emperor Henry IV.! You know ——”

[30.] “I know also,” said Candide, “that we must cultivate our garden.”

[30.] “You’re right,” said Pangloss, “for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man wasn’t born to be idle.”

[30.] “Let’s work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it’s the only way to render life tolerable.”

[30.] The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to their different abilities. Their little plot of land produced plentiful crops. True, Cunegonde was very ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook; Paquette worked at embroidery; the old woman looked after the linen. They were all, not excepting Friar Giroflée, of some service or other; for he made a good joiner, and became a very honest man.

[30.] Pangloss sometimes said to Candide:

[30.] “There’s a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you hadn’t been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you hadn’t been put into the Inquisition: if you hadn’t walked over America: if you hadn’t stabbed the Baron: if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you wouldn’t be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.”

[30.] “All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”

Footnotes:

[2]P. 8. The Abares were a tribe of Tartars settled on the shores of the Danube, who later dwelt in part of Circassia.

[6]P. 23. This auto-da-fé actually took place, some months after the earthquake, on June 20, 1756.

[8]P. 24. The San-benito was a kind of loose over-garment painted with flames, figures of devils, the victim’s own portrait, etc., worn by people condemned to death by the Inquisition when going to the stake on the occasion of an auto-da-fé. Those who expressed repentance for their errors wore a garment of the same kind covered with flames directed downwards, while that worn by Jews, sorcerers, and renegades bore a St. Andrew’s cross before and behind.

[9]P. 26. “This Notre-Dame is of wood; every year she weeps on the day of her fête, and the people weep also. One day the preacher, seeing a carpenter with dry eyes, asked him how it was that he didn’t dissolve in tears when the Holy Virgin wept. ‘Ah, my reverend father,’ replied he, ‘it’s I who refastened her in her niche yesterday. I drove three great nails through her behind; it is then she would have wept if she’d been able.’” — Voltaire, Mélanges.

[10]P. 42. The following posthumous note of Voltaire’s was first added to M. Beuchot’s edition of his works issued in 1829; “See the extreme discretion of the author; there hasn’t been up to the present any Pope named Urban X.; he feared to give a bastard to a known Pope. What circumspection! What delicacy of conscience!” The last Pope Urban was the eighth, and he died in 1644.

[11]P. 45. Muley-Ismael was Emperor of Morocco from 1672 to 1727, and was a notoriously cruel tyrant.

[13]P. 48. Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, an Italian singer, born at Naples in 1705, without being exactly Minister, governed Spain under Ferdinand VI.; he died in 1782. He has been made one of the chief people in one of the comic operas of MM. Auber and Scribe.

[14]P. 53. Jean Robeck, a Swede, who was born in 1672, will be found mentioned in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse. He drowned himself in the Weser at Bremen in 1729, and was the author of a Latin treatise on voluntary death, first printed in 1735.

[16]P. 64. Later Voltaire substituted the name of the Father Croust for that of Didrie. Of Croust he said in the Dictionnaire Philosophique that he was “the most brutal of the Society.”

[18]P. 76. It has been suggested that Voltaire, in speaking of red sheep, referred to the llama, a South American ruminant allied to the camel. These animals are sometimes of a reddish color, and were notable as pack-carriers and for their fleetness.

[20]P. 90. Spanish half-crowns.

[21]P. 99. Socinians; followers of the teaching of Lalius and Faustus Socinus (16th century), which denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the devil, the native and total depravity of man, the vicarious atonement and eternal punishment. The Socinians are now represented by the Unitarians. Manicheans; followers of Manes or Manichæus (3rd century), a Persian who maintained that there are two principles, the one good and the other evil, each equally powerful in the government of the world.

[23]P. 108. The play referred to is supposed to be “Le Comte d’Essex,” by Thomas Corneille.

[24]P. 108. In France actors were at one time looked on as excommunicated people, not worthy of burial in holy ground or with Christian rites. In 1730 the “honors of sepulture” were refused to Mademoiselle Lecouvreur (doubtless the Miss Monime of this passage). Voltaire’s miscellaneous works contain a paper on the matter.

[25]P. 109. Élie-Catherine Fréron was a French critic (1719-1776) who incurred the enmity of Voltaire. In 1752 Fréron, in Lettres sur quelques écrits du temps, wrote pointedly of Voltaire as one who chose to be all things to all men, and Voltaire retaliated by references such as these in Candide.

[26]P. 111. Gabriel Gauchat (1709-1779), French ecclesiastical writer, was author of a number of works on religious subjects.

[27]P. 112. Nicholas Charles Joseph Trublet (1697-1770) was a French writer whose criticism of Voltaire was revenged in passages such as this one in Candide, and one in the Pauvre Diable beginning:

[28]P. 120. Damiens, who attempted the life of Louis XV. in 1757, was born at Arras, capital of Artois (Atrébatie).

[29]P. 120. On May 14, 1610, Ravaillac assassinated Henry VI.

[30]P. 120. On December 27, 1594, Jean Châtel attempted to assassinate Henry IV.

[32]P. 123. Admiral Byng was shot on March 14, 1757.