A
conciseness
to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire.
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire.
Candide by Voltaire
?
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Title: Candide
Author: Voltaire
Commentator: Philip Littell
Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19942]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Voltaire. ]
CANDIDE
BY VOLTAIRE
INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP LITTELL
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1918, by
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
Printed in the United States of America
INTRODUCTION
Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote "Candide" in ridicule of the notion
that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a
gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or
six generations have found that its laughter does not grow old.
"Candide" has not aged. Yet how different the book would have looked if
Voltaire had written it a hundred and fifty years later than 1759. It
would have been, among other things, a book of sights and sounds. A
modern writer would have tried to catch and fix in words some of those
Atlantic changes which broke the Atlantic monotony of that voyage from
Cadiz to Buenos Ayres. When Martin and Candide were sailing the length
of the Mediterranean we should have had a contrast between naked scarped
Balearic cliffs and headlands of Calabria in their mists. We should have
had quarter distances, far horizons, the altering silhouettes of an
Ionian island. Colored birds would have filled Paraguay with their
silver or acid cries.
Dr. Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says
that noses were made to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles. A
modern satirist would not try to paint with Voltaire's quick brush the
doctrine that he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more
complicated doctrine than Dr. Pangloss's optimism, would study it more
closely, feel his destructive way about it with a more learned and
caressing malice. His attack, stealthier, more flexible and more patient
than Voltaire's, would call upon us, especially when his learning got a
little out of control, to be more than patient. Now and then he would
bore us. "Candide" never bored anybody except William Wordsworth.
Voltaire's men and women point his case against optimism by starting
high and falling low. A modern could not go about it after this fashion.
He would not plunge his people into an unfamiliar misery. He would just
keep them in the misery they were born to.
But such an account of Voltaire's procedure is as misleading as the
plaster cast of a dance. Look at his procedure again. Mademoiselle
Cunegonde, the illustrious Westphalian, sprung from a family that could
prove seventy-one quarterings, descends and descends until we find her
earning her keep by washing dishes in the Propontis. The aged faithful
attendant, victim of a hundred acts of rape by negro pirates, remembers
that she is the daughter of a pope, and that in honor of her
approaching marriage with a Prince of Massa-Carrara all Italy wrote
sonnets of which not one was passable. We do not need to know French
literature before Voltaire in order to feel, although the lurking parody
may escape us, that he is poking fun at us and at himself. His laughter
at his own methods grows more unmistakable at the last, when he
caricatures them by casually assembling six fallen monarchs in an inn at
Venice.
A modern assailant of optimism would arm himself with social pity. There
is no social pity in "Candide. " Voltaire, whose light touch on familiar
institutions opens them and reveals their absurdity, likes to remind us
that the slaughter and pillage and murder which Candide witnessed among
the Bulgarians was perfectly regular, having been conducted according to
the laws and usages of war. Had Voltaire lived to-day he would have done
to poverty what he did to war. Pitying the poor, he would have shown us
poverty as a ridiculous anachronism, and both the ridicule and the pity
would have expressed his indignation.
Almost any modern, essaying a philosophic tale, would make it long.
"Candide" is only a "Hamlet" and a half long. It would hardly have been
shorter if Voltaire had spent three months on it, instead of those three
days. A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by
the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit
where that came from.
One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century
going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath
is this legend: "The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the
Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or
whatever it is) of the Twentieth. " This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking
and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he
happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for
all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a
prose tale by Voltaire. "Candide" is a full book. It is filled with
mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat
and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is
never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the
rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this
destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost
made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books
in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages
by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.
Many propagandist satirical books have been written with "Candide" in
mind, but not too many. To-day, especially, when new faiths are changing
the structure of the world, faiths which are still plastic enough to be
deformed by every disciple, each disciple for himself, and which have
not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance,
to-day "Candide" is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates
one of these new faiths, or hates every interpretation of it but his
own. Either hatred will serve as a motive to satire.
That is why the present is one of the right moments to republish
"Candide. " I hope it will inspire younger men and women, the only ones
who can be inspired, to have a try at Theodore, or Militarism; Jane, or
Pacifism; at So-and-So, the Pragmatist or the Freudian. And I hope, too,
that they will without trying hold their pens with an eighteenth century
lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale. In Voltaire's
fingers, as Anatole France has said, the pen runs and laughs. PHILIP
LITTELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How Candide was brought up in a
Magnificent Castle, and how he was
expelled thence 1
II. What became of Candide among the
Bulgarians 5
III. How Candide made his escape from the
Bulgarians, and what afterwards became
of him 9
IV. How Candide found his old Master
Pangloss, and what happened to them 13
V. Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and
what became of Doctor Pangloss,
Candide, and James the Anabaptist 18
VI. How the Portuguese made a Beautiful
Auto-da-fe, to prevent any further
Earthquakes: and how Candide was
publicly whipped 23
VII. How the Old Woman took care of
Candide, and how he found the Object
he loved 26
VIII. The History of Cunegonde 30
IX. What became of Cunegonde, Candide,
the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew 35
X. In what distress Candide, Cunegonde,
and the Old Woman arrived at
Cadiz; and of their Embarkation 38
XI. History of the Old Woman 42
XII. The Adventures of the Old Woman
continued 48
XIII. How Candide was forced away from his
fair Cunegonde and the Old Woman 54
XIV. How Candide and Cacambo were received
by the Jesuits of Paraguay 58
XV. How Candide killed the brother of his
dear Cunegonde 64
XVI. Adventures of the Two Travellers,
with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and
the Savages called Oreillons 68
XVII. Arrival of Candide and his Valet at El
Dorado, and what they saw there 74
XVIII. What they saw in the Country of El
Dorado 80
XIX. What happened to them at Surinam and
how Candide got acquainted with
Martin 89
XX. What happened at Sea to Candide and
Martin 98
XXI. Candide and Martin, reasoning, draw
near the Coast of France 102
XXII. What happened in France to Candide
and Martin 105
XXIII. Candide and Martin touched upon the
Coast of England, and what they saw
there 122
XXIV. Of Paquette and Friar Giroflee 125
XXV. The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a
Noble Venetian 133
XXVI. Of a Supper which Candide and Martin
took with Six Strangers, and who
they were 142
XXVII. Candide's Voyage to Constantinople 148
XXVIII. What happened to Candide, Cunegonde,
Pangloss, Martin, etc. 154
XXIX. How Candide found Cunegonde and
the Old Woman again 159
XXX. The Conclusion 161
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE]
CANDIDE
I
HOW CANDIDE WAS BROUGHT UP IN A MAGNIFICENT CASTLE, AND HOW HE WAS
EXPELLED THENCE.
In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the
most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He
combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the
reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of
the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by
a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would
never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one
quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through
the injuries of time.
The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his
castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung
with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at
need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was
his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his
stories.
The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was
therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of
the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her
daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely,
plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be in every respect
worthy of his father. The Preceptor Pangloss[1] was the oracle of the
family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of
his age and character.
Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He
proved admirably that there is 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.
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as
they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the
best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear
spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for
stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to
construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the
greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were
made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently
they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should
have said all is for the best. "
Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for 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 second degree 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 whole
province, and consequently of the whole world.
One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which
they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson
in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a
little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a
great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the
repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived
the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she
turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire
to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a _sufficient reason_ for
young Candide, and he for her.
She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushed; Candide blushed
also; she wished him good morrow in a faltering tone, and Candide spoke
to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they
went from table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen;
Cunegonde let fall her handkerchief, Candide picked it up, she took him
innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's
hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met,
their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed. Baron
Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and
effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside;
Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness, as
soon as she came to herself; and all was consternation in this most
magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.
II
WHAT BECAME OF CANDIDE AMONG THE BULGARIANS.
Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise, walked a long while without
knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often
towards the most magnificent of castles which imprisoned the purest of
noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle
of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day
Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town
which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of
hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two
men dressed in blue observed him.
"Comrade," said one, "here is a well-built young fellow, and of proper
height. "
They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner.
"Gentlemen," replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, "you do me
great honour, but I have not wherewithal to pay my share. "
"Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and
of your merit never pay anything: are you not five feet five inches
high? "
"Yes, sir, that is my height," answered he, making a low bow.
"Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your reckoning, but we
will never suffer such a man as you to want money; men are only born to
assist one another. "
"You are right," said Candide; "this is what I was always taught by Mr.
Pangloss, and I see plainly that all is for the best. "
They begged of him to accept a few crowns. He took them, and wished to
give them his note; they refused; they seated themselves at table.
"Love you not deeply? "
"Oh yes," answered he; "I deeply love Miss Cunegonde. "
"No," said one of the gentlemen, "we ask you if you do not deeply love
the King of the Bulgarians? "
"Not at all," said he; "for I have never seen him. "
"What! he is the best of kings, and we must drink his health. "
"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank.
"That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support,
the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your
glory is assured. "
Instantly they fettered him, 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
gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a
little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following
they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a
prodigy.
Candide, all stupefied, could not yet very well realise how he was a
hero. He resolved one fine day in spring to go for a walk, marching
straight before him, believing that it was a privilege of the human as
well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased.
He had advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four others, heroes
of six feet, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked
which he would like the best, to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.
An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares. [2]
III
HOW CANDIDE MADE HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BULGARIANS, AND WHAT AFTERWARDS
BECAME OF HIM.
There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, 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 the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their
bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains,
arms, and legs.
Candide fled quickly to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians;
and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking
always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond
the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss
Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived
in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country,
and that they were Christians, he did not doubt but he should meet with
the same treatment from them as he had met with in the Baron's castle,
before Miss Cunegonde's bright eyes were the cause of his expulsion
thence.
He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him,
that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living.
The next he addressed was a man who had been haranguing a large assembly
for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking
askew, said:
"What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause? "
"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide;
"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 is necessary
I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be
otherwise. "
"My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be
Anti-Christ? "
"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether
he be not, I want bread. "
"Thou dost not deserve to eat," said the other. "Begone, rogue; begone,
wretch; do not come near me again. "
The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man
that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full. .
A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by
the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit
where that came from.
One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century
going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath
is this legend: "The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the
Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or
whatever it is) of the Twentieth. " This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking
and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he
happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for
all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a
prose tale by Voltaire. "Candide" is a full book. It is filled with
mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat
and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is
never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the
rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this
destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost
made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books
in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages
by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.
Many propagandist satirical books have been written with "Candide" in
mind, but not too many. To-day, especially, when new faiths are changing
the structure of the world, faiths which are still plastic enough to be
deformed by every disciple, each disciple for himself, and which have
not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance,
to-day "Candide" is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates
one of these new faiths, or hates every interpretation of it but his
own. Either hatred will serve as a motive to satire.
That is why the present is one of the right moments to republish
"Candide. " I hope it will inspire younger men and women, the only ones
who can be inspired, to have a try at Theodore, or Militarism; Jane, or
Pacifism; at So-and-So, the Pragmatist or the Freudian. And I hope, too,
that they will without trying hold their pens with an eighteenth century
lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale. In Voltaire's
fingers, as Anatole France has said, the pen runs and laughs. PHILIP
LITTELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How Candide was brought up in a
Magnificent Castle, and how he was
expelled thence 1
II. What became of Candide among the
Bulgarians 5
III. How Candide made his escape from the
Bulgarians, and what afterwards became
of him 9
IV. How Candide found his old Master
Pangloss, and what happened to them 13
V. Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and
what became of Doctor Pangloss,
Candide, and James the Anabaptist 18
VI. How the Portuguese made a Beautiful
Auto-da-fe, to prevent any further
Earthquakes: and how Candide was
publicly whipped 23
VII. How the Old Woman took care of
Candide, and how he found the Object
he loved 26
VIII. The History of Cunegonde 30
IX. What became of Cunegonde, Candide,
the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew 35
X. In what distress Candide, Cunegonde,
and the Old Woman arrived at
Cadiz; and of their Embarkation 38
XI. History of the Old Woman 42
XII. The Adventures of the Old Woman
continued 48
XIII. How Candide was forced away from his
fair Cunegonde and the Old Woman 54
XIV. How Candide and Cacambo were received
by the Jesuits of Paraguay 58
XV. How Candide killed the brother of his
dear Cunegonde 64
XVI. Adventures of the Two Travellers,
with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and
the Savages called Oreillons 68
XVII. Arrival of Candide and his Valet at El
Dorado, and what they saw there 74
XVIII. What they saw in the Country of El
Dorado 80
XIX. What happened to them at Surinam and
how Candide got acquainted with
Martin 89
XX. What happened at Sea to Candide and
Martin 98
XXI. Candide and Martin, reasoning, draw
near the Coast of France 102
XXII. What happened in France to Candide
and Martin 105
XXIII. Candide and Martin touched upon the
Coast of England, and what they saw
there 122
XXIV. Of Paquette and Friar Giroflee 125
XXV. The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a
Noble Venetian 133
XXVI. Of a Supper which Candide and Martin
took with Six Strangers, and who
they were 142
XXVII. Candide's Voyage to Constantinople 148
XXVIII. What happened to Candide, Cunegonde,
Pangloss, Martin, etc. 154
XXIX. How Candide found Cunegonde and
the Old Woman again 159
XXX. The Conclusion 161
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE]
CANDIDE
I
HOW CANDIDE WAS BROUGHT UP IN A MAGNIFICENT CASTLE, AND HOW HE WAS
EXPELLED THENCE.
In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the
most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He
combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the
reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of
the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by
a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would
never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one
quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through
the injuries of time.
The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his
castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung
with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at
need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was
his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his
stories.
The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was
therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of
the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her
daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely,
plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be in every respect
worthy of his father. The Preceptor Pangloss[1] was the oracle of the
family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of
his age and character.
Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He
proved admirably that there is 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.
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as
they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the
best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear
spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for
stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to
construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the
greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were
made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently
they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should
have said all is for the best. "
Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for 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 second degree 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 whole
province, and consequently of the whole world.
One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which
they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson
in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a
little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a
great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the
repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived
the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she
turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire
to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a _sufficient reason_ for
young Candide, and he for her.
She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushed; Candide blushed
also; she wished him good morrow in a faltering tone, and Candide spoke
to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they
went from table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen;
Cunegonde let fall her handkerchief, Candide picked it up, she took him
innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's
hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met,
their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed. Baron
Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and
effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside;
Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness, as
soon as she came to herself; and all was consternation in this most
magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.
II
WHAT BECAME OF CANDIDE AMONG THE BULGARIANS.
Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise, walked a long while without
knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often
towards the most magnificent of castles which imprisoned the purest of
noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle
of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day
Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town
which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of
hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two
men dressed in blue observed him.
"Comrade," said one, "here is a well-built young fellow, and of proper
height. "
They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner.
"Gentlemen," replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, "you do me
great honour, but I have not wherewithal to pay my share. "
"Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and
of your merit never pay anything: are you not five feet five inches
high? "
"Yes, sir, that is my height," answered he, making a low bow.
"Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your reckoning, but we
will never suffer such a man as you to want money; men are only born to
assist one another. "
"You are right," said Candide; "this is what I was always taught by Mr.
Pangloss, and I see plainly that all is for the best. "
They begged of him to accept a few crowns. He took them, and wished to
give them his note; they refused; they seated themselves at table.
"Love you not deeply? "
"Oh yes," answered he; "I deeply love Miss Cunegonde. "
"No," said one of the gentlemen, "we ask you if you do not deeply love
the King of the Bulgarians? "
"Not at all," said he; "for I have never seen him. "
"What! he is the best of kings, and we must drink his health. "
"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank.
"That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support,
the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your
glory is assured. "
Instantly they fettered him, 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
gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a
little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following
they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a
prodigy.
Candide, all stupefied, could not yet very well realise how he was a
hero. He resolved one fine day in spring to go for a walk, marching
straight before him, believing that it was a privilege of the human as
well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased.
He had advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four others, heroes
of six feet, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked
which he would like the best, to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.
An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares. [2]
III
HOW CANDIDE MADE HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BULGARIANS, AND WHAT AFTERWARDS
BECAME OF HIM.
There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, 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 the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their
bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains,
arms, and legs.
Candide fled quickly to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians;
and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking
always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond
the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss
Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived
in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country,
and that they were Christians, he did not doubt but he should meet with
the same treatment from them as he had met with in the Baron's castle,
before Miss Cunegonde's bright eyes were the cause of his expulsion
thence.
He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him,
that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living.
The next he addressed was a man who had been haranguing a large assembly
for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking
askew, said:
"What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause? "
"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide;
"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 is necessary
I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be
otherwise. "
"My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be
Anti-Christ? "
"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether
he be not, I want bread. "
"Thou dost not deserve to eat," said the other. "Begone, rogue; begone,
wretch; do not come near me again. "
The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man
that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full. . . . Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the
ladies.
A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James,
beheld the cruel and ignominious 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 florins,
and even wished to teach him the manufacture of Persian stuffs which
they make in Holland. Candide, almost prostrating himself before him,
cried:
"Master Pangloss has well said that all is for the best in this world,
for I am infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than with
the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black coat and his lady. "
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.
IV
HOW CANDIDE FOUND HIS OLD MASTER PANGLOSS, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM.
Candide, yet more moved with compassion than with horror, gave to this
shocking beggar the two florins which he had received from the honest
Anabaptist James. The spectre looked at him very earnestly, dropped a
few tears, and fell upon his neck. Candide recoiled in disgust.
"Alas! " said one wretch to the other, "do you no longer know your dear
Pangloss? "
"What do I hear? You, my dear master! you in this terrible plight! What
misfortune has happened to you? Why are you no longer in the most
magnificent of castles? What has become of Miss Cunegonde, the pearl of
girls, and nature's masterpiece? "
"I am so weak that I cannot stand," said Pangloss.
Upon which Candide carried him to the Anabaptist's stable, and gave him
a crust of bread. As soon as Pangloss had refreshed himself a little:
"Well," said Candide, "Cunegonde? "
"She is dead," replied the other.
Candide fainted at this word; his friend recalled his senses with a
little bad vinegar which he found by chance in the stable. Candide
reopened his eyes.
"Cunegonde is dead! Ah, best of worlds, where art thou? But of what
illness did she die? Was it not for grief, upon seeing her father kick
me out of his magnificent castle? "
"No," said Pangloss, "she was ripped open by the Bulgarian soldiers,
after having been violated by many; they broke the Baron's head for
attempting to defend her; my lady, her mother, was cut in pieces; my
poor pupil was served just in the same manner as his sister; and as for
the castle, they have not left one stone upon another, not a barn, nor a
sheep, nor a duck, nor a tree; but we have had our revenge, for the
Abares have done the very same thing to a neighbouring barony, which
belonged to a Bulgarian lord. "
At this discourse Candide fainted again; but coming to himself, and
having said all that it became him to say, inquired into the cause and
effect, as well as into the _sufficient reason_ that had reduced
Pangloss to so miserable a plight.
"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. "
"Alas! " said Candide, "I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that
soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty
kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an
effect so abominable? "
Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember
Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her
arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell
torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she
is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned
Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old
countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a
marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit,
who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of
Christopher Columbus. [3] For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am
dying. "
"Oh, Pangloss! " cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the
Devil the original stock of it? "
"Not at all," replied this great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a
necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in
an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source
of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently
opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor
cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this
distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot.
The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the
Japanese, know nothing of it; but there is a sufficient reason for
believing that they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. In
the meantime, it has made marvellous progress among us, especially in
those great armies composed of honest well-disciplined hirelings, who
decide the destiny of states; for we may safely affirm that when an army
of thirty thousand men fights another of an equal number, there are
about twenty thousand of them p-x-d on each side. "
"Well, this is wonderful! " said Candide, "but you must get cured. "
"Alas! how can I?
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Title: Candide
Author: Voltaire
Commentator: Philip Littell
Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19942]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Voltaire. ]
CANDIDE
BY VOLTAIRE
INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP LITTELL
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1918, by
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
Printed in the United States of America
INTRODUCTION
Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote "Candide" in ridicule of the notion
that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a
gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or
six generations have found that its laughter does not grow old.
"Candide" has not aged. Yet how different the book would have looked if
Voltaire had written it a hundred and fifty years later than 1759. It
would have been, among other things, a book of sights and sounds. A
modern writer would have tried to catch and fix in words some of those
Atlantic changes which broke the Atlantic monotony of that voyage from
Cadiz to Buenos Ayres. When Martin and Candide were sailing the length
of the Mediterranean we should have had a contrast between naked scarped
Balearic cliffs and headlands of Calabria in their mists. We should have
had quarter distances, far horizons, the altering silhouettes of an
Ionian island. Colored birds would have filled Paraguay with their
silver or acid cries.
Dr. Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says
that noses were made to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles. A
modern satirist would not try to paint with Voltaire's quick brush the
doctrine that he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more
complicated doctrine than Dr. Pangloss's optimism, would study it more
closely, feel his destructive way about it with a more learned and
caressing malice. His attack, stealthier, more flexible and more patient
than Voltaire's, would call upon us, especially when his learning got a
little out of control, to be more than patient. Now and then he would
bore us. "Candide" never bored anybody except William Wordsworth.
Voltaire's men and women point his case against optimism by starting
high and falling low. A modern could not go about it after this fashion.
He would not plunge his people into an unfamiliar misery. He would just
keep them in the misery they were born to.
But such an account of Voltaire's procedure is as misleading as the
plaster cast of a dance. Look at his procedure again. Mademoiselle
Cunegonde, the illustrious Westphalian, sprung from a family that could
prove seventy-one quarterings, descends and descends until we find her
earning her keep by washing dishes in the Propontis. The aged faithful
attendant, victim of a hundred acts of rape by negro pirates, remembers
that she is the daughter of a pope, and that in honor of her
approaching marriage with a Prince of Massa-Carrara all Italy wrote
sonnets of which not one was passable. We do not need to know French
literature before Voltaire in order to feel, although the lurking parody
may escape us, that he is poking fun at us and at himself. His laughter
at his own methods grows more unmistakable at the last, when he
caricatures them by casually assembling six fallen monarchs in an inn at
Venice.
A modern assailant of optimism would arm himself with social pity. There
is no social pity in "Candide. " Voltaire, whose light touch on familiar
institutions opens them and reveals their absurdity, likes to remind us
that the slaughter and pillage and murder which Candide witnessed among
the Bulgarians was perfectly regular, having been conducted according to
the laws and usages of war. Had Voltaire lived to-day he would have done
to poverty what he did to war. Pitying the poor, he would have shown us
poverty as a ridiculous anachronism, and both the ridicule and the pity
would have expressed his indignation.
Almost any modern, essaying a philosophic tale, would make it long.
"Candide" is only a "Hamlet" and a half long. It would hardly have been
shorter if Voltaire had spent three months on it, instead of those three
days. A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by
the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit
where that came from.
One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century
going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath
is this legend: "The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the
Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or
whatever it is) of the Twentieth. " This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking
and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he
happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for
all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a
prose tale by Voltaire. "Candide" is a full book. It is filled with
mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat
and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is
never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the
rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this
destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost
made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books
in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages
by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.
Many propagandist satirical books have been written with "Candide" in
mind, but not too many. To-day, especially, when new faiths are changing
the structure of the world, faiths which are still plastic enough to be
deformed by every disciple, each disciple for himself, and which have
not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance,
to-day "Candide" is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates
one of these new faiths, or hates every interpretation of it but his
own. Either hatred will serve as a motive to satire.
That is why the present is one of the right moments to republish
"Candide. " I hope it will inspire younger men and women, the only ones
who can be inspired, to have a try at Theodore, or Militarism; Jane, or
Pacifism; at So-and-So, the Pragmatist or the Freudian. And I hope, too,
that they will without trying hold their pens with an eighteenth century
lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale. In Voltaire's
fingers, as Anatole France has said, the pen runs and laughs. PHILIP
LITTELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How Candide was brought up in a
Magnificent Castle, and how he was
expelled thence 1
II. What became of Candide among the
Bulgarians 5
III. How Candide made his escape from the
Bulgarians, and what afterwards became
of him 9
IV. How Candide found his old Master
Pangloss, and what happened to them 13
V. Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and
what became of Doctor Pangloss,
Candide, and James the Anabaptist 18
VI. How the Portuguese made a Beautiful
Auto-da-fe, to prevent any further
Earthquakes: and how Candide was
publicly whipped 23
VII. How the Old Woman took care of
Candide, and how he found the Object
he loved 26
VIII. The History of Cunegonde 30
IX. What became of Cunegonde, Candide,
the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew 35
X. In what distress Candide, Cunegonde,
and the Old Woman arrived at
Cadiz; and of their Embarkation 38
XI. History of the Old Woman 42
XII. The Adventures of the Old Woman
continued 48
XIII. How Candide was forced away from his
fair Cunegonde and the Old Woman 54
XIV. How Candide and Cacambo were received
by the Jesuits of Paraguay 58
XV. How Candide killed the brother of his
dear Cunegonde 64
XVI. Adventures of the Two Travellers,
with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and
the Savages called Oreillons 68
XVII. Arrival of Candide and his Valet at El
Dorado, and what they saw there 74
XVIII. What they saw in the Country of El
Dorado 80
XIX. What happened to them at Surinam and
how Candide got acquainted with
Martin 89
XX. What happened at Sea to Candide and
Martin 98
XXI. Candide and Martin, reasoning, draw
near the Coast of France 102
XXII. What happened in France to Candide
and Martin 105
XXIII. Candide and Martin touched upon the
Coast of England, and what they saw
there 122
XXIV. Of Paquette and Friar Giroflee 125
XXV. The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a
Noble Venetian 133
XXVI. Of a Supper which Candide and Martin
took with Six Strangers, and who
they were 142
XXVII. Candide's Voyage to Constantinople 148
XXVIII. What happened to Candide, Cunegonde,
Pangloss, Martin, etc. 154
XXIX. How Candide found Cunegonde and
the Old Woman again 159
XXX. The Conclusion 161
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE]
CANDIDE
I
HOW CANDIDE WAS BROUGHT UP IN A MAGNIFICENT CASTLE, AND HOW HE WAS
EXPELLED THENCE.
In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the
most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He
combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the
reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of
the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by
a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would
never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one
quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through
the injuries of time.
The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his
castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung
with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at
need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was
his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his
stories.
The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was
therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of
the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her
daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely,
plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be in every respect
worthy of his father. The Preceptor Pangloss[1] was the oracle of the
family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of
his age and character.
Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He
proved admirably that there is 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.
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as
they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the
best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear
spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for
stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to
construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the
greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were
made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently
they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should
have said all is for the best. "
Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for 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 second degree 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 whole
province, and consequently of the whole world.
One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which
they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson
in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a
little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a
great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the
repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived
the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she
turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire
to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a _sufficient reason_ for
young Candide, and he for her.
She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushed; Candide blushed
also; she wished him good morrow in a faltering tone, and Candide spoke
to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they
went from table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen;
Cunegonde let fall her handkerchief, Candide picked it up, she took him
innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's
hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met,
their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed. Baron
Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and
effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside;
Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness, as
soon as she came to herself; and all was consternation in this most
magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.
II
WHAT BECAME OF CANDIDE AMONG THE BULGARIANS.
Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise, walked a long while without
knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often
towards the most magnificent of castles which imprisoned the purest of
noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle
of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day
Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town
which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of
hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two
men dressed in blue observed him.
"Comrade," said one, "here is a well-built young fellow, and of proper
height. "
They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner.
"Gentlemen," replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, "you do me
great honour, but I have not wherewithal to pay my share. "
"Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and
of your merit never pay anything: are you not five feet five inches
high? "
"Yes, sir, that is my height," answered he, making a low bow.
"Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your reckoning, but we
will never suffer such a man as you to want money; men are only born to
assist one another. "
"You are right," said Candide; "this is what I was always taught by Mr.
Pangloss, and I see plainly that all is for the best. "
They begged of him to accept a few crowns. He took them, and wished to
give them his note; they refused; they seated themselves at table.
"Love you not deeply? "
"Oh yes," answered he; "I deeply love Miss Cunegonde. "
"No," said one of the gentlemen, "we ask you if you do not deeply love
the King of the Bulgarians? "
"Not at all," said he; "for I have never seen him. "
"What! he is the best of kings, and we must drink his health. "
"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank.
"That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support,
the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your
glory is assured. "
Instantly they fettered him, 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
gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a
little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following
they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a
prodigy.
Candide, all stupefied, could not yet very well realise how he was a
hero. He resolved one fine day in spring to go for a walk, marching
straight before him, believing that it was a privilege of the human as
well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased.
He had advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four others, heroes
of six feet, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked
which he would like the best, to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.
An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares. [2]
III
HOW CANDIDE MADE HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BULGARIANS, AND WHAT AFTERWARDS
BECAME OF HIM.
There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, 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 the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their
bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains,
arms, and legs.
Candide fled quickly to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians;
and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking
always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond
the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss
Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived
in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country,
and that they were Christians, he did not doubt but he should meet with
the same treatment from them as he had met with in the Baron's castle,
before Miss Cunegonde's bright eyes were the cause of his expulsion
thence.
He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him,
that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living.
The next he addressed was a man who had been haranguing a large assembly
for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking
askew, said:
"What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause? "
"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide;
"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 is necessary
I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be
otherwise. "
"My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be
Anti-Christ? "
"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether
he be not, I want bread. "
"Thou dost not deserve to eat," said the other. "Begone, rogue; begone,
wretch; do not come near me again. "
The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man
that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full. .
A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who
can say a plagiarizing enemy "steals much, spends little, and has
nothing left," a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as
easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by
the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit
where that came from.
One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century
going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath
is this legend: "The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the
Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or
whatever it is) of the Twentieth. " This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking
and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he
happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for
all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a
prose tale by Voltaire. "Candide" is a full book. It is filled with
mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat
and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is
never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the
rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this
destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost
made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books
in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages
by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.
Many propagandist satirical books have been written with "Candide" in
mind, but not too many. To-day, especially, when new faiths are changing
the structure of the world, faiths which are still plastic enough to be
deformed by every disciple, each disciple for himself, and which have
not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance,
to-day "Candide" is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates
one of these new faiths, or hates every interpretation of it but his
own. Either hatred will serve as a motive to satire.
That is why the present is one of the right moments to republish
"Candide. " I hope it will inspire younger men and women, the only ones
who can be inspired, to have a try at Theodore, or Militarism; Jane, or
Pacifism; at So-and-So, the Pragmatist or the Freudian. And I hope, too,
that they will without trying hold their pens with an eighteenth century
lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale. In Voltaire's
fingers, as Anatole France has said, the pen runs and laughs. PHILIP
LITTELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How Candide was brought up in a
Magnificent Castle, and how he was
expelled thence 1
II. What became of Candide among the
Bulgarians 5
III. How Candide made his escape from the
Bulgarians, and what afterwards became
of him 9
IV. How Candide found his old Master
Pangloss, and what happened to them 13
V. Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and
what became of Doctor Pangloss,
Candide, and James the Anabaptist 18
VI. How the Portuguese made a Beautiful
Auto-da-fe, to prevent any further
Earthquakes: and how Candide was
publicly whipped 23
VII. How the Old Woman took care of
Candide, and how he found the Object
he loved 26
VIII. The History of Cunegonde 30
IX. What became of Cunegonde, Candide,
the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew 35
X. In what distress Candide, Cunegonde,
and the Old Woman arrived at
Cadiz; and of their Embarkation 38
XI. History of the Old Woman 42
XII. The Adventures of the Old Woman
continued 48
XIII. How Candide was forced away from his
fair Cunegonde and the Old Woman 54
XIV. How Candide and Cacambo were received
by the Jesuits of Paraguay 58
XV. How Candide killed the brother of his
dear Cunegonde 64
XVI. Adventures of the Two Travellers,
with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and
the Savages called Oreillons 68
XVII. Arrival of Candide and his Valet at El
Dorado, and what they saw there 74
XVIII. What they saw in the Country of El
Dorado 80
XIX. What happened to them at Surinam and
how Candide got acquainted with
Martin 89
XX. What happened at Sea to Candide and
Martin 98
XXI. Candide and Martin, reasoning, draw
near the Coast of France 102
XXII. What happened in France to Candide
and Martin 105
XXIII. Candide and Martin touched upon the
Coast of England, and what they saw
there 122
XXIV. Of Paquette and Friar Giroflee 125
XXV. The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a
Noble Venetian 133
XXVI. Of a Supper which Candide and Martin
took with Six Strangers, and who
they were 142
XXVII. Candide's Voyage to Constantinople 148
XXVIII. What happened to Candide, Cunegonde,
Pangloss, Martin, etc. 154
XXIX. How Candide found Cunegonde and
the Old Woman again 159
XXX. The Conclusion 161
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE]
CANDIDE
I
HOW CANDIDE WAS BROUGHT UP IN A MAGNIFICENT CASTLE, AND HOW HE WAS
EXPELLED THENCE.
In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the
most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He
combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the
reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of
the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by
a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would
never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one
quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through
the injuries of time.
The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his
castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung
with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at
need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was
his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his
stories.
The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was
therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of
the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her
daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely,
plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be in every respect
worthy of his father. The Preceptor Pangloss[1] was the oracle of the
family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of
his age and character.
Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He
proved admirably that there is 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.
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as
they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the
best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear
spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for
stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to
construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the
greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were
made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently
they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should
have said all is for the best. "
Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for 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 second degree 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 whole
province, and consequently of the whole world.
One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which
they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson
in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a
little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a
great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the
repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived
the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she
turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire
to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a _sufficient reason_ for
young Candide, and he for her.
She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushed; Candide blushed
also; she wished him good morrow in a faltering tone, and Candide spoke
to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they
went from table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen;
Cunegonde let fall her handkerchief, Candide picked it up, she took him
innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's
hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met,
their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed. Baron
Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and
effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside;
Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness, as
soon as she came to herself; and all was consternation in this most
magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.
II
WHAT BECAME OF CANDIDE AMONG THE BULGARIANS.
Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise, walked a long while without
knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often
towards the most magnificent of castles which imprisoned the purest of
noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle
of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day
Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town
which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of
hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two
men dressed in blue observed him.
"Comrade," said one, "here is a well-built young fellow, and of proper
height. "
They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner.
"Gentlemen," replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, "you do me
great honour, but I have not wherewithal to pay my share. "
"Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and
of your merit never pay anything: are you not five feet five inches
high? "
"Yes, sir, that is my height," answered he, making a low bow.
"Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your reckoning, but we
will never suffer such a man as you to want money; men are only born to
assist one another. "
"You are right," said Candide; "this is what I was always taught by Mr.
Pangloss, and I see plainly that all is for the best. "
They begged of him to accept a few crowns. He took them, and wished to
give them his note; they refused; they seated themselves at table.
"Love you not deeply? "
"Oh yes," answered he; "I deeply love Miss Cunegonde. "
"No," said one of the gentlemen, "we ask you if you do not deeply love
the King of the Bulgarians? "
"Not at all," said he; "for I have never seen him. "
"What! he is the best of kings, and we must drink his health. "
"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank.
"That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support,
the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your
glory is assured. "
Instantly they fettered him, 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
gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a
little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following
they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a
prodigy.
Candide, all stupefied, could not yet very well realise how he was a
hero. He resolved one fine day in spring to go for a walk, marching
straight before him, believing that it was a privilege of the human as
well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased.
He had advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four others, heroes
of six feet, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked
which he would like the best, to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.
An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares. [2]
III
HOW CANDIDE MADE HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BULGARIANS, AND WHAT AFTERWARDS
BECAME OF HIM.
There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, 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 the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their
bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains,
arms, and legs.
Candide fled quickly to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians;
and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking
always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond
the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss
Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived
in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country,
and that they were Christians, he did not doubt but he should meet with
the same treatment from them as he had met with in the Baron's castle,
before Miss Cunegonde's bright eyes were the cause of his expulsion
thence.
He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him,
that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living.
The next he addressed was a man who had been haranguing a large assembly
for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking
askew, said:
"What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause? "
"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide;
"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 is necessary
I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be
otherwise. "
"My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be
Anti-Christ? "
"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether
he be not, I want bread. "
"Thou dost not deserve to eat," said the other. "Begone, rogue; begone,
wretch; do not come near me again. "
The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man
that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full. . . . Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the
ladies.
A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James,
beheld the cruel and ignominious 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 florins,
and even wished to teach him the manufacture of Persian stuffs which
they make in Holland. Candide, almost prostrating himself before him,
cried:
"Master Pangloss has well said that all is for the best in this world,
for I am infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than with
the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black coat and his lady. "
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.
IV
HOW CANDIDE FOUND HIS OLD MASTER PANGLOSS, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM.
Candide, yet more moved with compassion than with horror, gave to this
shocking beggar the two florins which he had received from the honest
Anabaptist James. The spectre looked at him very earnestly, dropped a
few tears, and fell upon his neck. Candide recoiled in disgust.
"Alas! " said one wretch to the other, "do you no longer know your dear
Pangloss? "
"What do I hear? You, my dear master! you in this terrible plight! What
misfortune has happened to you? Why are you no longer in the most
magnificent of castles? What has become of Miss Cunegonde, the pearl of
girls, and nature's masterpiece? "
"I am so weak that I cannot stand," said Pangloss.
Upon which Candide carried him to the Anabaptist's stable, and gave him
a crust of bread. As soon as Pangloss had refreshed himself a little:
"Well," said Candide, "Cunegonde? "
"She is dead," replied the other.
Candide fainted at this word; his friend recalled his senses with a
little bad vinegar which he found by chance in the stable. Candide
reopened his eyes.
"Cunegonde is dead! Ah, best of worlds, where art thou? But of what
illness did she die? Was it not for grief, upon seeing her father kick
me out of his magnificent castle? "
"No," said Pangloss, "she was ripped open by the Bulgarian soldiers,
after having been violated by many; they broke the Baron's head for
attempting to defend her; my lady, her mother, was cut in pieces; my
poor pupil was served just in the same manner as his sister; and as for
the castle, they have not left one stone upon another, not a barn, nor a
sheep, nor a duck, nor a tree; but we have had our revenge, for the
Abares have done the very same thing to a neighbouring barony, which
belonged to a Bulgarian lord. "
At this discourse Candide fainted again; but coming to himself, and
having said all that it became him to say, inquired into the cause and
effect, as well as into the _sufficient reason_ that had reduced
Pangloss to so miserable a plight.
"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. "
"Alas! " said Candide, "I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that
soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty
kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an
effect so abominable? "
Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember
Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her
arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell
torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she
is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned
Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old
countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a
marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit,
who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of
Christopher Columbus. [3] For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am
dying. "
"Oh, Pangloss! " cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the
Devil the original stock of it? "
"Not at all," replied this great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a
necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in
an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source
of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently
opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor
cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this
distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot.
The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the
Japanese, know nothing of it; but there is a sufficient reason for
believing that they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. In
the meantime, it has made marvellous progress among us, especially in
those great armies composed of honest well-disciplined hirelings, who
decide the destiny of states; for we may safely affirm that when an army
of thirty thousand men fights another of an equal number, there are
about twenty thousand of them p-x-d on each side. "
"Well, this is wonderful! " said Candide, "but you must get cured. "
"Alas! how can I?
