Candide | Page 5

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