Candide | Page 3

his stern. As they were preparing to make him set out the third time our
young hero, unable to support it any longer, begged as a favor that they
would be so obliging as to shoot him through the head; the favor being
granted, a bandage was tied over his eyes, and he was made to kneel
down.
At that very instant, His Bulgarian Majesty happening to pass by made

a stop, and inquired into the delinquent's crime, and being a prince of
great penetration, he found, from what he heard of Candide, that he was
a young metaphysician, entirely ignorant of the world; and therefore,
out of his great clemency, he condescended to pardon him, for which
his name will be celebrated in every journal, and in every age. A
skillful surgeon made a cure of the flagellated Candide in three weeks
by means of emollient unguents prescribed by Dioscorides. His sores
were now skimmed over and he was able to march, when the King of
the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the Abares.

CHAPTER 3
How Candide Escaped from the Bulgarians and What Befell Him
Afterward
Never was anything so gallant, so well accoutred, so brilliant, and so
finely disposed as the two armies. The trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums,
and cannon made such harmony as never was heard in Hell itself. The
entertainment began by a discharge of cannon, which, in the twinkling
of an eye, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side. The musket bullets
swept away, out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand
scoundrels that infested its surface. The bayonet was next the sufficient
reason of the deaths of several thousands. The whole might amount to
thirty thousand souls. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and
concealed himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deums to be sung in
their camps, Candide took a resolution to go and reason somewhere
else upon causes and effects. After passing over heaps of dead or dying
men, the first place he came to was a neighboring village, in the
Abarian territories, which had been burned to the ground by the
Bulgarians, agreeably to the laws of war. Here lay a number of old men
covered with wounds, who beheld their wives dying with their throats
cut, and hugging their children to their breasts, all stained with blood.
There several young virgins, whose bodies had been ripped open, after

they had satisfied the natural necessities of the Bulgarian heroes,
breathed their last; while others, half-burned in the flames, begged to be
dispatched out of the world. The ground about them was covered with
the brains, arms, and legs of dead men.
Candide made all the haste he could to another village, which belonged
to the Bulgarians, and there he found the heroic Abares had enacted the
same tragedy. Thence continuing to walk over palpitating limbs, or
through ruined buildings, at length he arrived beyond the theater of war,
with a little provision in his budget, and Miss Cunegund's image in his
heart. When he arrived in Holland his provision failed him; but having
heard that the inhabitants of that country were all rich and Christians,
he made himself sure of being treated by them in the same manner as
the Baron's castle, before he had been driven thence through the power
of Miss Cunegund's bright eyes.
He asked charity of several grave-looking people, who one and all
answered him, that if he continued to follow this trade they would have
him sent to the house of correction, where he should be taught to get
his bread.
He next addressed himself to a person who had just come from
haranguing a numerous assembly for a whole hour on the subject of
charity. The orator, squinting at him under his broadbrimmed hat,
asked him sternly, what brought him thither and whether he was for the
good old cause?
"Sir," said Candide, in a submissive manner, "I conceive there can be
no effect without a cause; everything is necessarily concatenated and
arranged for the best. It was necessary that I should be banished from
the presence of Miss Cunegund; that I should afterwards run the
gauntlet; and it is necessary I should beg my bread, till I am able to get
it. All this could not have been otherwise."
"Hark ye, friend," said the orator, "do you hold the Pope to be
Antichrist?"
"Truly, I never heard anything about it," said Candide, "but whether he

is or not, I am in want of something to eat."
"Thou deservest not to eat or to drink," replied the orator, "wretch,
monster, that thou art! hence! avoid my sight, nor ever come near me
again while thou livest."
The