Candide (17 page)

As soon as Candide set foot on board the vessel he flew to his old friend and valet, Cacambo; and throwing his arms around his neck, embraced him with joy. “Well,” said he, “what news of Miss Cunégonde? Is she still the paragon of beauty? Does she love me still? How is she? You have no doubt purchased a superb palace for her at Constantinople?”

“My dear master,” replied Cacambo, “Miss Cunégonde washes dishes on the banks of the Propontis,
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in the house of a prince who has very few to wash. She is at present a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign named Ragotsky,
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whom the grand Turk allows three crowns a day to maintain him in his exile; but the most melancholy circumstance of all this is that she has turned horribly ugly.” ”Ugly or handsome,” said Candide, ”I am a man of honour; and, as such, am obliged to love her still. But how could she have possibly been reduced to so abject a condition when I sent five or six millions to her by you?” “Well,” said Cacambo, ”wasn’t I obliged to give two millions to Seignor Don Fernando d’Ibaraa y Fagueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, the Governor of Buenos Ayres, for his permission to take Miss Cunégonde away with me? And then didn’t a pirate very gallantly strip us of all the rest? And then didn’t this same pirate carry us with him to Cape Matapan, to Milo, to Nicaria, to Samos, to Petra, to the Dardanelles, to Marmora, to Scutari ? Miss Cunégonde and the old woman are now servants to the prince I have told you of, and I myself am slave to the dethroned Sultan.” “What a chain of shocking accidents!” exclaimed Candide. ”But, after all, I still have some diamonds left, with which I can easily buy Miss Cunégonde’s liberty. It is a pity, though, she is grown so very ugly.”

Then turning to Martin, he asked, “What do you think? Whose condition is most to be pitied, the Emperor Achmet‘s, the Emperor Ivan’s, King Charles Edward’s, or mine?” “I don’t know at all,” said Martin. “I would need to enter the heart of each man to know.” “Ah!” cried Candide, “were Pangloss here now, he would have known and satisfied me at once.” “I don’t know,” said Martin, “what scales your Pangloss would use to weigh the misfortunes of mankind, and set a value on their sufferings. All that I pretend to know of the matter is that there are millions of men on the earth whose conditions are a hundred times more pitiable than those of King Charles Edward, the Emperor Ivan, or Sultan Achmet.” “You may very well be right,” answered Candide.

In a few days they reached the Bosphorous. Candide began by re-purchasing Cacambo at a very high price; then, without losing time, he and his companions went on board a galley in order to search for his Cunégonde on the banks of the Propontis, however ugly she may have grown.

There were two slaves among the crew of the galley, who rowed very poorly, and to whose bare backs the master of the vessel frequently applied a few lashes with a bullwhip. Candide naturally looked at these two slaves more attentively than at any of the rest, and out of pity moved closer to them. Certain features of their disfigured faces appeared to him to bear a resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Baron Jesuit, Miss Cunégonde’s brother. This notion moved and saddened him. He examined them more attentively than before. “In truth,” said he to Cacambo, “if I had not seen my master Pangloss hanged, and had not myself been unlucky enough to kill the Baron, I should absolutely think that those two rowers were the men.”

No sooner had Candide uttered the names of the Baron and Pangloss than the two slaves gave a great cry, ceased rowing, and dropped their oars from their hands. The master of the vessel seeing this, ran up to them, and redoubled the discipline of the bullwhip. “Stop, stop,” cried Candide, “I will give you as much money as you want.” “Good heavens! it is Candide,” said one of the men. “Candide !” cried the other. “Do I dream?” said Candide, “or am I awake? Am I actually on board this galley? Is this my Lord Baron whom I killed? and that my Master Pangloss, whom I saw hanged?”

“It is I! it is I!” they both cried together. “What, is this your great philosopher?” said Martin. “Sir,” said Candide to the captain of the ship, “how much do you want for the ransom of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, who is one of the first barons of the empire, and Mr. Pangloss, the most profound metaphysician in Germany ?” “Why, then, Christian cur,” replied the Turkish captain, “since these two dogs of Christian slaves are barons and meta-physicians, who are no doubt of high rank in their own country, you will give me fifty thousand sequins.”

“You will have them, sir; take me back as quickly as possible to Constantinople, and you will receive the money immediately. Or, no! take me to Miss Cunégonde.” The captain, at Candide’s first word, had turned his ship around, and he made the crew ply their oars so quickly that the vessel flew through the water quicker than a bird cleaves the air.

Candide embraced the Baron and Pangloss a hundred times. “And so, then, my dear Baron, I did not kill you? And you, my dear Pangloss, how can you be alive after your hanging? And why are you slaves on board a Turkish galley?” “Is it true that my dear sister is in this country?” said the Baron. “Yes,” said Cacambo. “And do I once again see my dear Candide?” said Pangloss. Candide presented Martin and Cacambo to them. They embraced each other, and all spoke together. The galley flew, and already they were back in port. Candide instantly sent for a Jew, and for fifty thousand sequins sold him a diamond worth one hundred thousand, though the buyer swore to him by Father Abraham that he gave him the most he could possibly afford. Candide immediately ransomed the Baron and Pangloss. The latter flung himself at the feet of his deliverer, and bathed him with his tears. The former thanked him with a gracious nod, and promised to return the money at the first opportunity. “But is it possible?” said he, “that my sister is in Turkey?” “Nothing is more possible,” answered Cacambo, “since she is the dishwasher in the house of a Transylvanian prince.” Candide sent for two Jews, and sold more diamonds to them. And then he set out with his companions in another galley, to free Miss Cunégonde from slavery.

“P
ardon me,” said Candide to the Baron; “once more let me beg your pardon, reverend father, for having run you through the body with my sword.” “Say no more about it,” replied the Baron; “I was a little too hasty, I admit. But as you seem to want to know how I came to be a slave on board the galley where you saw me, I will tell you. After I had been cured of the wound you gave me by the college apothecary, I was attacked and carried off by a party of Spanish troops, who put me in prison in Buenos Ayres, at the very time my sister was leaving there. I asked permission to return to Rome, from the general of my order. He instead appointed me chaplain to the French ambassador at Constantinople. I had not been a week in my new office when I happened to meet one evening a young Icoglan,
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who was extremely handsome and well made. The weather was very hot; the young man wanted to swim. I took the opportunity to swim with him. I did not know it was a crime for a Christian to be found naked with a young Turk. A cadi sentenced me to receive a hundred blows on the soles of my feet, and sent me to the galleys. I do not believe there was ever an act of more flagrant injustice. But I would like to know how my sister came to be a kitchen maid to a Transylvanian prince who had taken refuge among the Turks.”

“But you, my dear Pangloss,” said Candide. “How is it possible that I see you again?” “It is true,” answered Pangloss, “you saw me hanged, though I should have been burnt; but you may remember that it rained extremely hard when they were going to roast me. The storm was so violent that they found it impossible to light the fire, so they hanged me because they could do no better. A surgeon purchased my body, carried it home, and prepared to dissect me. He began by making a crucial incision from my navel to the clavicle. It is impossible for any one to have been more lamely hanged than I had been. The executioner of the holy Inquisition was a subdeacon, and knew how to burn people very well; but as for hanging, he was a novice; the rope was wet and not slipping properly, and the noose did not join. In short, I was still breathing; the crucial incision made me scream to such a degree that my surgeon fell flat upon his back; and imagining that it was the devil he was dissecting, he ran away, and in his fright tumbled downstairs. His wife, hearing the noise, ran in from the next room, and seeing me stretched upon the table with my crucial incision, was more terrified than her husband, fled and fell over him. When they had recovered a little, I heard her say to her husband, ‘My dear, how could you think of dissecting a heretic? Don’t you know that the devil is always in them? I’ll go directly to get a priest to come and drive the evil spirit out.’ I trembled from head to foot at hearing her talk in this manner, and I exerted what little strength I had left to cry out, ‘Have mercy on me!’ At length the Portuguese barber
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took courage, sewed up my wound, and his wife nursed me: and I was back on my feet in two week’s time. The barber got me a job as a lackey to a Knight of Malta,
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who was going to Venice; but finding my master had no money to pay me my wages, I entered into the service of a Venetian merchant, and went with him to Constantinople.

“One day I happened to enter a mosque, where I saw no one but an old imam
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and a very pretty young female worshipper, who was saying her prayers; her neck was quite bare, and between her two breasts she had a beautiful bouquet of tulips, roses, anemones, ranunculuses, hyacinths, and auriculas; she dropped her bouquet. I picked it up and presented it to her with the most respectful bow. I was so long in putting it back in place that the imam began to be angry, and seeing that I was a Christian, he cried out for help; they carried me before the Cadi, who ordered me to receive one hundred blows on the soles of my feet and sent me to the galleys. I was chained in the very galley and to the very same bench with the Baron. On board this galley there were four young men from Marseilles, five Neapolitan priests, and two monks of Corfu, who told us that these kinds of adventures happened every day. The Baron claimed that he had suffered a greater injustice than I; and insisted that there was far less harm in picking up a bouquet and putting it into a young woman’s bosom, than in being found stark naked with a young Icoglan. We were continually whipped, and received twenty lashes a day with a bullwhip, when the chain of events within this universe brought you on board our galley to ransom us from slavery.”

 

THE CRUCIAL INCISION

“Well, my dear Pangloss,” Candide said to them, “when you were hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, did you continue to think that everything in this world happens for the best?” “I have always abided by my first opinion,” answered Pangloss ; “for, after all, I am a philosopher, and it would not become me to retract my sentiments, especially since Leibniz could not be wrong, and besides pre-established harmony is the finest thing in the world, as well as a
plenum
and the
materia subtilis
.”
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