Candide | Page 6

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?" said Pangloss, "I have not a farthing, my friend, and
all over the globe there is no letting of blood or taking a glister, without
paying,