Classic Audiobook Collection - Candide by Voltaire ~ Full Audiobook [philosophy]
Episode Date: May 19, 2026Candide by Voltaire audiobook. Genre: philosophy Candide follows a young man raised to believe that he lives in the best of all possible worlds. Taught by his devoted tutor Pangloss to trust in a che...erful philosophy of universal good, Candide begins life innocent, hopeful, and certain that reason will explain everything. But after a sudden fall from comfort, he is hurled into a series of violent, bizarre, and often darkly funny adventures across Europe and beyond. Along the way he endures war, disaster, betrayal, greed, and hypocrisy, while searching for the woman he loves, Cunegonde, and trying to hold on to his faith in human goodness. As Candide meets soldiers, nobles, scholars, servants, and swindlers, each encounter exposes another layer of cruelty and foolishness in society. Voltaire uses Candide's misfortunes to mock blind optimism, challenge authority, and ask whether philosophical ideas can survive the real world. Fast-moving, sharp, and surprisingly modern, Candide is both an entertaining travel tale and a pointed satire about suffering, innocence, and the difficult search for a meaningful way to live. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:08:31) Chapter 01 (00:15:19) Chapter 02 (00:21:39) Chapter 03 (00:27:28) Chapter 04 (00:36:39) Chapter 05 (00:43:46) Chapter 06 (00:47:14) Chapter 07 (00:52:58) Chapter 08 (01:00:58) Chapter 09 (01:05:31) Chapter 10 (01:11:09) Chapter 11 (01:22:21) Chapter 12 (01:34:06) Chapter 13 (01:40:01) Chapter 14 (01:48:56) Chapter 15 (01:54:30) Chapter 16 (02:03:59) Chapter 17 (02:13:04) Chapter 18 (02:27:34) Chapter 19 (02:40:46) Chapter 20 (02:47:31) Chapter 21 (02:52:35) Chapter 22 (03:18:31) Chapter 23 (03:22:21) Chapter 24 (03:35:03) Chapter 25 (03:50:58) Chapter 26 (03:59:23) Chapter 27 (04:09:25) Chapter 28 (04:16:33) Chapter 29 (04:19:40) Chapter 30 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel. 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 150 years later than 1750.5.
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 Aires.
When Martin and Candide were sailing the length of the Mediterranean,
we should have had a contrast between naked, scarped, belleric cliffs
and headlands of Calabria in their me.
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 Boulter's
quick brush the doctrine that he wanted to expose, and he would choose a more complicated doctrine
than Dr. Pancloss'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.
Manoiselle Conaganda, the illustrious Westphalian, sprung from a family that could prove 71 quarterings,
descends and descends until we find her earning her keep by washing dishes in the propontas.
The aged, faithful attendant, victim of a hundred acts of rinketons, of rindex of rinketons.
by Negro pirates, remembers that she is the daughter of a Pope, and that in honor of her
approaching marriage with a prince of Massacarrara, 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 parity 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 today,
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, as saying 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 Beerbom's cartoons shows us the young 20th century, going at top speed, and watched by two of
his predecessors. Underneath is this legend. The grave misgivings of the 19th century and the wicked
amusement of the 18th in watching the progress, or whatever it is, of the 20th. This 18th century snuff-taking
and malicious is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he happens to think of it,
that not yet in the 20th century, not for all its speed mania, has anyone come near to equaling the speed of a prose tale by Voltaire.
Candide is a fool 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 propagandists satirical books have been written with Candide in mind, but not too many.
Today, 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.
Today, 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 pacivism, at so-and-so the pragmatist or the Freudian, and I hope, too, that they will without
trying hold their pens with an 18th-century lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale.
In Voltaire's fingers, as Anatoly France has said, the pen runs and laughs.
End of introduction.
Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
one of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
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 Thunderton Tronk, 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 71 quarterings,
the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through the injuries of time.
Le 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 farmyards formed a pack of hounds at need.
His grooms were his huntsmen,
and the curate of the village was his grand almaner.
They called him, my lord, and laughed at all his stories.
The baron's lady weighed about 350 pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration,
and she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect.
Her daughter, Kunaganda, was seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable.
The baron's son seemed to be in every respect worthy of his father.
The preceptor, Pancloss, 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, cosmology.
He proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause,
and that, in this, Belmonticology.
of all possible worlds, the baron's castle was the most magnificent of castles,
and as 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 Conaganda extremely beautiful,
though he never had the courage to tell her so,
he concluded that after the happiness of being born
of Baron of Thunderton Tronk,
the second degree of happiness was to be Miss Kunaganda,
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,
Cunaganda, 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 chambermaid, a little brown wench, very pretty, and very docile.
As Miss Cunaganda 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, they went from table.
Cunaganda and Candide found themselves behind a screen.
Conaganda let fall her handkerchief.
Candid 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 Thunderton trunk passed near the scene,
and beholding this cause and defect,
chased Candide from the castle with great kicks.
on the backside. Conaganda fainted away, and 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.
End of Chapter 1, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
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Chapter 2 of Candide by Voltaire.
Translated by Philip Lattel.
This LeBer Fox recorded.
as in the public domain.
What became of Candide among the Bulgarians?
Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise,
walked along 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 toward the neighboring town,
which was called Waldberghof-Truppdorf.
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 Candidee and very civilly invited him to dinner.
Gentlemen, replied Candide with a most engaging modesty.
You do me a great honor, 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 am.
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'll not deeply.
Oh, yes, answered he.
I deeply love Miss Conaganda.
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 to his health.
Oh, very willingly, gentlemen. And he drank. That is enough, they tell him. Now, you are
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 20 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 realize 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
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 favor
that they would be so good as to shoot him.
He obtained this favor, 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 emoliance taught by deus Cordides. He had already a little
skin and was able to march when the king of the Bulgarians gave battle to the king of the Abades.
End of chapter two, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 3 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel. This Libravox recording is in the
public domain. 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, fiefs, hout boys, drums, and cannon made music such as hell itself had never heard.
The cannons, first of all, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side.
The muskets swept away from this best-of-worlds, nine or 10,000 ruffians who infested its surface.
The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands.
The whole might amount to 30,000 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.
passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a neighboring village. It was in cinders,
it was in 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 disemboweled, and breathing their last,
after having satisfied the natural wants of Bulgarian heroes,
while others, half burnt in the flames, begged to be dispatched.
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 Kunaganda 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 Conaganda'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 Conaganda,
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 Antichrist?
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.
Be gone, rogue, be gone, 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 Antichrist, poured over him a fool.
Oh, heavens, to what excess does religious zeal carry the ladies.
A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist named Jeanne,
James, beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his brethren.
An unfethered biped by-pad 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 Pancloss 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.
End of Chapter 3. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 4 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Liebervox recording is in the public domain.
How Candide found his old master Pankloss, and what happened to them.
Candide, yet more moved with compassion than with horror,
gave to this shocking beggar the two Florens which she had received from the honest Anabaptist James.
The specter 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 Pancloss?
"'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 happened to Miss Kunaganda, the pearl of girls and nature's masterpiece?'
"'I am so weak that I cannot stand,' said Pancloss, 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, Conaganda, 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.
"'Kanaganda 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 attempt to,
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 Abare's have
done the very same thing to a neighboring.
barony, which belonged to a Bulgarian lord.
At this discourse, Candide fainted again, but coming to himself and having said awe 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?'
Panclos made answer in these terms.
Oh, my dear Candide, you remember, Packett, 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 went a knocker,
had it in a direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus.
For my part, I shall give it to nobody. I am dying.
Oh, Pengloss, cried Cantede.
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 coquineal.
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 marvelous 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 30,000 men fights another of an equal number, there are about 20,000 of them, PXD, on each side.
"'Well, this is wonderful,' said Candide.
"'But you must get cured.'
"'Alas, how can I?' said Pancloss.
"'I have not a farthing, my friend, and all over the globe there is no letting of blood
or taking a glister without paying, or somebody paying for you.'
These last words determined Candide.
He went and flung himself at the feet of the charitable Anabaptist James
and gave him so touching a picture of the state to which his friend was reduced,
that the good man did not scruple to take Dr. Pangloss into his house
and had him cured at his expense.
In the cure, Pangloss lost only an eye and an ear.
He wrote well and knew arithmetic perfectly.
The Anabaptist James made him his bookkeeper.
At the end of two months, being obliged to go to Lisbon about some mercantile affairs,
he took the two philosophers with him in his ship.
Pangloss explained to him how everything was so constituted that it could not be better.
James was not of this opinion.
"'It is more likely,' said he,
mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves.
God has given them neither canon of four-and-twenty-pounders, nor bayonets, and yet they have made cannon in bayonets to destroy one another.
Into this account I might throw not only bankrupts, but justice which seizes on the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors.
All this was indispensable, replied the one-eyed doctor.
For private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are,
the greater is the general good.
While he reasoned, the sky darkened.
The winds blew from the four quarters, and the ship was assailed by a most terrible tempest
within sight of the port of Lisbon.
End of Chapter 4. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 5 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Leverfox recording is in the public domain.
Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and What Became of Dr. Pancloss,
Candide, and James the Anabaptist.
Half dead of that inconceivable anguish which the rolling of a ship produces,
one half of the passengers were not even sensible of the danger.
The other half shrieked and prayed.
The sheets were rent, the masts broken, the vessel gaped.
Work who would, no one heard, no one commanded.
The Anabaptist being upon deck bore a hand,
when a brutish sailor struck him roughly and laid him sprawling.
But with the violence of the blow he himself tumbled head foremost overboard
and stuck upon a piece of the broken mast.
Honest James ran to his assistance, hauled him up,
and from the effort he made was precipitated into the sea in sight of the sailor
who left him to perish without deigning to look at him.
Candide drew near and saw his benefactor,
who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up forever.
He was just going to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss,
who demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptists to be drowned.
While he was proving this a priori, the ship foundered, all perished except Pangloss,
Candide, and that brutal sailor who had drowned the good Anabaptist.
The villain swam safely to shore, while Pangloss and Candide were born tither upon a plank.
As soon as they recovered themselves a little, they walked toward Lisbon.
They had some money left, with which they hoped to save themselves from starving,
after they had escaped drowning.
Scarcely had they reached the city, lamenting the death of their benefactor, when they felt
the earth tremble under their feet. The sea swelled and foamed in the harbor and beat to pieces the
vessels riding at anchor. Whirlwinds of fire and ashes covered the streets in public places.
Houses fell, roofs were flung upon the pavements, and the pavements were scattered.
Thirty thousand inhabitants of all ages and sexes were crushed under the ruins. The sailor,
whistling and swearing, said that there was booty to be gained here.
What can be the sufficient reason of this phenomenon?
said Pancloss.
This is the last day, cried Candide.
The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money.
Finding it, he took it, got drunk, and having slept himself sober,
purchased the favors of the first good-natured wench whom he met on the ruins of the destroyed houses,
and in the midst of the dying and the dead.
Pangloss pulled him by the sleeve,
My friend, said he,
This is not right.
You sin against the universal reason.
You choose your time badly.
Splod and fury, answered the other.
I am a sailor and bearer.
Born at Batavia, four times have I trampled upon the crucifix in four voyages to Japan,
a fig for thy universal reason.
Some falling stones had wounded candide.
He lay stretched in the street covered with rubbish.
Alas, said he to Pankloss.
Get me a little wine and oil.
I am dying.
This concussion of the earth is no news.
thing, answered Pangloss.
The city of Lima, in America, experienced the same convulsions last year, the same cause,
the same effects.
There is certainly a train of sulfur underground from Lima to Lisbon.
Nothing more probable, said Candide.
But, for the love of God, a little oil and wine.
How probable, replied the philosopher.
I maintain that the point is capable of being demonstrated.
Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a neighboring fountain.
The following day, they rummaged among the ruins and found provisions, with which they repaired their exhausted strength.
After this, they joined with others in relieving those inhabitants who had escaped.
death. Some, whom they had succored, gave them as good a dinner as they could in such
disastrous circumstances. True, the repast was mournful, and the company moistened their bread
with tears, but pangloss consoled them, assuring them that things could not be otherwise.
"'For,' said he, "'all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon, it cannot be
be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are, for everything is right."
A little man dressed in black, familiar of the Inquisition who sat by him, politely took up his word
and said, "'Apparently then, sir, you do not believe in original sin, for if all is for the best,
there has then been neither fall nor punishment.'
I humbly ask your excellencies, pardon, answered Pangloss still more politely.
For the fall and curse of man necessarily entered into the system of the best of worlds.
Sir, said the familiar, you do not then believe in liberty.
Your excellency will excuse me, said Pangloss.
is consistent with absolute necessity, for it was necessary we should be free, for in short,
the determinant will."
Pangloss was in the middle of his sentence when the familiar beckoned to his footman,
who gave him a glass of wine from Porto or a Porto.
End of Chapter 5, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 6 of Candide.
by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
How the Portuguese made a beautiful Autodefei to prevent any further earthquakes,
and how Candide was publicly whipped.
After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon,
the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin
than to give the people a beautiful Autodefei.
for it had been decided by the University of Combra
that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire
and with great ceremony
is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.
In consequence hereof, they had seized on a Biscaner,
convicted of having married his godmother,
and on two Portuguese for rejecting the bacon
in which larded a chicken they were eating.
After dinner they came and secured Dr. Pangloss and his disciple Candide,
the one for speaking his mind,
the other for having listened with an air of approbation.
They were conducted to separate apartments,
extremely cold,
as they were never incommoded by the sun.
Eight days after, they were dressed in San Benitos,
and their heads ornamented with paper mitres.
The mitre and st.
San Benito, belonging to Candide, were painted with reversed flames, and with devils that had neither
tails nor claws. But Pangloss's devils had claws and tails, and the flames were upright. They marched
in procession, thus habited, and heard a very pathetic sermon, followed by fine church music. Candid was
whipped in the cadence while they were singing. The Biscaner and the two men who had refused to eat bacon,
were burnt, and Pangloss was hanged, though that was not the custom.
The same day the earth sustained a most violent concussion.
Candide, terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, all palpitating, said to himself.
If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?
Well, if I had been only whipped I could put up with it,
For I experience that among the Bulgarians.
But, oh, my dear Pankloss, thou greatest of philosophers,
that I should have seen you hanged, without knowing for what?
Oh, my dear Anna Baptist, thou best of men,
that thou shouldst have been drowned in the very harbor.
Oh, Miss Conaganda, thou pearl of girls,
that thou shouldst have had thy belly ripped open.
Thus he was musing, scarce able to stand,
preached at, whipped, absolved, and blessed,
when an old woman accosted him saying,
My son, take courage, and follow me.
End of chapter six, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 7 of Candide by
Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
How the old woman took care of Candide and how he found the object he loved.
Candide did not take courage, but followed the old woman to a decayed house,
where she gave him a pot of pomatum to anoint his sores,
showed him a very neat little bed,
with a suit of clothes hanging up, and left him something to.
eat and drink.
Eat, drink, sleep, said she.
And may our lady of Artaucha, the great St. Anthony of Padua and the great St. James
of Campostella, receive you under their protection.
I shall be back tomorrow.
Candide amazed at all he had suffered, and still more what the charity of the old woman wished
to kiss her hand.
"'It is not my hand you must kiss,' said the old woman.
"'I shall be back to-morrow.
"'Aoint yourself with pormatum, eat and sleep.'
"'Candide, notwithstanding so many disasters, ate and slept.
"'The next morning the old woman brought him his breakfast,
"'looked at his back and rubbed it herself with another ointment.
"'In like manner she brought him as dinner,
"'and at night she returned with his breakfast.
supper, the day following she went through the very same ceremonies.
Who are you? said Candide.
Who has inspired you with so much goodness?
What return can I make you?
The good woman made no answer.
She returned in the evening, but brought no supper.
Come with me, she said, and say nothing.
She took him by the arm and walked with him about a quarter of a mile into the country.
They arrived at a lonely house, surrounded with gardens and canals.
The old woman knocked at a little door.
It opened.
She led Candide up a private staircase into a small apartment richly furnished.
She left him on a brocaded sofa, shut the door, and went away.
Candide thought himself in a dream, indeed, that he had been dreaming unluckily all his life,
and that the present moment was the only agreeable part of it all.
The old woman returned very soon, supporting with difficulty a trembling woman of a majestic figure,
brilliant with jewels and covered with a veil.
Take off that veil, said the old woman to Candy.
lead. The young man approaches. He raises the veil with a timid hand. Oh, what a moment. What surprise. He believes he
beholds, Miss Kunaganda. He really sees her. It is herself. His strength fails him. He cannot utter a
word but drops at her feet. Kunaganda falls upon the sofa. The old woman supplies a smell
bottle. They come to themselves and recover their speech, as they began with broken accents,
with questions and answers interchangeably interrupted with sighs, with tears and cries. The old
woman desired they would make less noise, and then she left them to themselves.
"'What, is it you?' said Candide. "'You live. I find you again in Portugal. Then
You have not been ravished?
Then they did not rip open your belly as Dr. Pangloss informed me.
Yes, they did, said the beautiful Kunaganda.
But those two accidents are not always mortal.
But were your father and mother killed?
It is but too true, answered Kunaganda in tears.
And your brother?
my brother also was killed and why are you in portugal and how did you know of my being here and by what strange adventure did you contrive to bring me to this house
i will tell you all that replied the lady but first of all let me know your history since the innocent kiss you gave me and the kicks which you received
Candide respectfully obeyed her, and though he was still in a surprise, though his voice was feeble and trembling, though his back still pained him, yet he gave her a most ingenuous account of everything that had befallen him since the moment of their separation.
Conaganda lifted up her eyes to heaven, shed tears upon hearing of the death of the good Anabaptist, and of pangloss, after which she saw her eyes.
spoke as follows to Candide, who did not lose a word and devoured her with his eyes.
End of Chapter 7, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 8 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
The History of Conaganda
I was in bed and fast asleep when it pleased God to say,
the Bulgarians to our delightful castle of Thunderton trunk.
They slew my father and brother,
and cut my mother in pieces.
A tall Bulgarian, six feet high,
perceiving that I had fainted away at this sight,
began to ravish me.
This made me recover.
I regained my senses.
I cried.
I struggled.
I bit.
I scratched.
I wanted to touch.
tear out the tall Bulgarian's eyes, not knowing that what happened at my father's house
was the usual practice of war. The brute gave me a cut in the left side with his hanger,
and the mark is still upon me. Ah, I hope I shall see it, said Honest Candide.
You shall, said Conaganda. But let us continue. Do so.
replied Candide.
Thus, she resumed the thread of her story.
A Bulgarian captain came in,
saw me all bleeding in the soldier,
not in the least disconcerted.
The captain flew into a passion
at the disrespectful behavior of the brute
and slew him on my body.
He ordered my wounds to be dressed
and took me to his quarters
as a prisoner of war.
I washed the few shirts that he had.
I did his cooking.
He thought me very pretty.
He avowed it.
On the other hand, I must own he had a good shape,
and a soft and white skin,
but he had little or no mind or philosophy,
and you might see plainly that he had never been instructed by Dr. Pangloss.
In three months' time, having lost all his money,
and being grown tired of my company,
he sold me to a Jew named Don Isacar,
who traded to Holland and Portugal
and had a strong passion for women.
This Jew was much attached to my person,
but could not triumph over it.
I resisted him better than the Bulgarian soldier.
A modest woman may be ravished once,
but her virtue is strengthened by it.
In order to render me more tractable, he brought me to this country house.
Hitherto I had imagined that nothing could equal the beauty of Thunderton Trunk Castle,
but I found I was mistaken.
The Grand Inquisitor, seeing me one day at Mass, stared long at me,
and sent to tell me that he wished to speak on private matters.
I was conducted to his place where I acquainted him with the history of my family,
and he represented to me how much it was beneath my rank to belong to an Israelite.
A proposal was then made to Don Isacar, that he should resign me to my lord.
Don Isacar, being the court banker and a man of credit, would hear nothing of it.
The Inquisitor threatened him with an auto de Fay.
At last, my Jew, intimidated, concluded a bargain by which the house and
myself should belong to both in common. The Jew should have for himself Monday, Wednesday,
and Saturday, and the Inquisitor should have the rest of the week. It is now six months
since this agreement was made. Quarrels have not been wanting, for they could not decide whether
the night from Saturday to Sunday belonged to the old law or to the new. For my part, I have so
far held out against both, and I verily believe that this is the reason why I am still beloved.
At length, to avert the scourge of earthquakes, and to intimidate Don Isacar, my lord inquisitor
was pleased to celebrate an auto de Fay. He did me the honor to invite me to this ceremony.
I had a very good seat, and the ladies were served with refreshments between mass and the execution.
I was in truth seized with horror at the burning of those two Jews
and of the honest Biscaynor who had married his godmother
but what was my surprise my fright
my trouble when I saw in a San Benito and mitre
a figure which resembled that of pangloss
I rubbed my eyes I looked at him attentively
I saw him hung I fainted
scarcely had I recovered my senses
than I saw you
stripped, stark naked,
and this was the height of my horror,
consternation, grief, and despair.
I tell you truthfully that your skin is yet whiter
and of a more perfect color than that of my Bulgarian captain.
This spectacle redoubled all the feelings
which overwhelmed and devoured me.
I screamed out,
and would have said,
Stop, barbarians!
But my voice failed me,
and my cries would have been useless
after you had been severely whipped.
How is it possible, said I,
that the beloved Candide and the wise Pankloss
should both be at Lisbon,
the one to receive a hundred lashes,
and the other to be hanged by the Grand Inquisitor,
of whom I am the well-beloved?
Pancloss most cruelly deceived me
when he said that everything in the world is for the best
agitated, lost,
sometimes beside myself and sometimes ready to die of weakness
my mind was filled with the massacre of my father, mother and brother
with the insolence of the ugly Bulgarian soldier
with the stab that he gave me
with my servitude under the Bulgarian captain,
with my hideous Don Isacar,
with my abominable inquisitor,
with the execution of Dr. Pangloss,
with the grand miserere to which they whipped you,
and especially with the kiss I gave you behind the screen
that day I had last seen you.
I praised God for bringing you back to me after so many trials,
and I charged my old woman to take care of you,
and to conduct you hither as soon as possible.
She has executed her commission perfectly well.
I have tasted the inexpressible pleasure of seeing you again,
of hearing you, of speaking with you.
But you must be hungry.
For myself, I am famished.
Let us have supper.
They both sat down the table,
and when supper was over,
they placed themselves once more on the sofa,
where they were when Signor Don Isacar arrived.
It was the Jewish Sabbath, and Isacar had come to enjoy his rights,
and to explain his tender love.
End of Chapter 8, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 9 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Librevox recording is in the public domain.
What became of Kanaganda?
Candide, the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew.
This Isacarar was the most cholera Hebrew that had ever been seen in Israel since the captivity
in Babylon.
What?
Said he.
Thou bitch of a Galilean?
Was not the inquisitor enough for thee?
Must this rascal also share with me?
In saying this he drew a long poniard, which he always carried about him, and not imagining
that his adversary had any arms, he threw himself upon Candide.
But our honest Westphalian had received a handsome sword from the old woman along with the
suit of clothes. He drew his rapier, despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelites stone dead
upon the cushions at Kunaganda's feet.
"'Holy Virgin!' cried she.
"'What will become of us? A man killed in my apartment? If the old
officers of justice come, we are lost. Had not Pangloss been hanged, said Candide,
he would give us good counsel in this emergency, for he was a profound philosopher, failing him,
let us consult the old woman. She was very prudent, and commenced to give her opinion,
when suddenly another little door opened. It was an hour after midnight. It was the beginning
of Sunday. This day belonged to my lord the inquisitor. He entered and saw the whipped Candide,
sword in hand, a dead man upon the floor, Conaganda aghast, and the old woman giving counsel.
At this moment, the following is what passed in the soul of Candide and how he reasoned.
If this holy man call in assistance, he will surely have me burnt, and Conaganda will perhaps be
served in the same manner. He was the cause of my being cruelly whipped. He is my rival. And as I have
now begun to kill, I will kill away, for there is no time to hesitate. This reasoning was clear
and instantaneous, so that without giving time to the inquisitor to recover from his surprise,
he pierced him through and through, and cast him beside the Jew. Yet again!
said Conaganda.
Now there is no mercy for us.
We are excommunicated.
Our last hour has come.
How could you do it?
You naturally so gentle to slay a Jew and a prelate in two minutes.
My beautiful young lady, responded Candide.
When one is a lover, jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, one stops at nothing.
The old woman then put in her word, saying,
There are three Andalusian horses in the stable with bridles and saddles.
Let the brave candide get them ready.
Madame has money, jewels.
Let us therefore mount quickly on horseback, though I can sit only on one buttock.
Let us set out for cadiz.
It is the finest weather in the world.
and there is great pleasure in traveling in the cool of the night.
Immediately Candide saddled the three horses, and Conaganda, the old woman and he,
traveled 30 miles at a stretch.
While they were journeying, the Holy Brotherhood entered the house.
My Lord the Inquisitor was interred in a handsome church,
and Isakar's body was thrown upon a dunghill.
Candide, Conaganda, and the old woman had now reached the little town of Avacena in the midst of the mountains of the Sierra Morena and were speaking as follows in a public inn.
End of Chapter 9, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 10 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Leiber Fox recording is in the public domain.
In what distress, Candide, Kunaganda and the old woman arrived at Cadiz, and of their embarkation.
"'Who was it that robbed me of my money and jewels?' said Conaganda, all bathed in tears.
"'How shall we live? What shall we do? Where find inquisitors or Jews who will give me more?'
"'Alas,' said the old woman.
"'I have a shrewd suspicion of a roe.
Reverend Gray-Friar, who stayed last night in the same inn with us at Badahos.
God preserve me from judging rashly, but he came into our room twice, and he set out upon his
journey long before us.
Alas, said Candide, dear Pangloss has often demonstrated to me that the goods of this world
are common to all men, and that each has been.
as an equal right to them, but according to these principles the Greyfriar ought to have left us
enough to carry us through our journey. Have you nothing at all left, my dear Conaganda?
Not a farthing, said she. What then must we do? said Candide.
Sell one of the horses, replied the old woman.
I will ride behind Miss Kanaganda, though I can hold myself only on one buttock, and we shall reach Cadiz.
In the same inn there was a Benedictine prior who bought the horse for a cheap price.
Candide, Conaganda, and the old woman, having passed through Lucena, Chias, and Labriksa, arrived at length at Cadiz.
A fleet was there getting ready, and troops assembling to bring to reason the Reverend Jesuit fathers of Paraguay,
accused of having made one of the native tribes in the neighborhood of San Sacrament,
revolt against the kings of Spain and Portugal.
Candide, having been in the Bulgarian service, performed the military exercise before the general of this little army
with so graceful an address, with so intrepid in air, and with such a
agility and expedition that he was given the command of a company of foot.
Now he was a captain. He set sail with Miss Conaganda, the old woman, two valets, and two
Andalusian horses, which had belonged to the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal. During their voyage,
they reasoned a good deal on the philosophy of poor Pangloss.
"'We are going into another world,' said Candide.
and surely it must be there that all is for the best, for I must confess,
there is reason to complain a little of what passeth in our world in regard to both natural
and moral philosophy.
I love you with all my heart, said Conaganda.
But my soul is still full of fright at that which I have seen and experienced.
All will be well, replied Candide.
The sea of this new world is already better than our European sea.
It is calmer, the winds more regular.
It is certainly the new world which is the best of all possible worlds.
God grant it, said Kanaganda.
But I have been so horribly unhappy there that my heart is almost close to hope.
You complain, said the old woman.
Alas, you have been so horribly unhappy there, that my heart is almost close to hope.
You have not known such misfortunes as mine.
Conaganda almost broke out laughing,
finding the good woman very amusing,
for pretending to have been as unfortunate as she.
Alas, said Conaganda.
My good mother, unless you have been ravished by two Bulgarians,
have received two deep wounds in your belly,
have had two castles demolished, have had two mothers cut to pieces before your eyes,
and two of your lovers whipped at an auto de Fay,
I do not conceive how you could be more unfortunate than I.
Add that I was born a baroness of 72 quarterings, and have been a cook.
Miss?
replied the old woman.
You do not know my birth, and were I to show you my backside,
you would not talk in that manner, but would suspend your judgment.
This speech, having raised extreme curiosity in the minds of Kunaganda and Candide,
the old woman spoke to them as follows.
End of Chapter 10, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah George.
Chapter 11 of Candide by Voltaire.
Translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
History of the Old Woman
I had not always bleared eyes and red eyelids.
Neither did my nose always touch my chin, nor was I always a servant.
I am the daughter of Pope Urban the 10th and of the Princess of Palestrina.
Until the age of 14 I was brought up in a palace,
to which all the castles of your German barons would scarcely have served for stables.
And one of my robes was worth more than all the magnificence of Westphalia.
As I grew up, I improved.
proved in beauty, wit, and every graceful accomplishment in the midst of pleasures,
hopes, and respectful homage.
Already I inspired love.
My throat was formed, and such a throat.
White, firm and shaped like that of the Venus of Medici.
And what eyes, what eyelids!
What black eyebrows!
Such flames darted from my dark pupils,
then they eclipsed the scintillation of the stars.
As I was told by the poets in our part of the world,
my waiting women, when dressing and undressing me,
used to fall into in ecstasy,
whether they viewed me from before,
o'er behind, how glad would the gentlemen have been to perform that office for them.
I was affianced to the most excellent prince of Massacarrara, such a prince, as handsome as myself,
sweet-tempered, agreeable, brilliantly witty, and sparkling with love. I loved him as one love. I loved him
as one loves for the first time.
With idolatry, with transport,
the nuptials were prepared.
There was surprising pomp and magnificence.
There were fats, carousals, continual opera buff,
and all Italy composed sonnets in my praise,
though not one of them was passable.
I was just upon the point.
point of reaching the summit of bliss.
When an old marchioness, who had been mistress to the prince, my husband, invited him to drink
chocolate with her, he died in less than two hours of most terrible convulsions, but
this is only a bagatelle.
My mother in despair and scarcely less afflicted than myself, determined.
to absent herself for some time from so fatal a place.
She had a very fine estate in the neighborhood of Gaeta.
We embarked on board a galley of the country
which was gilded like the great altar of St. Peter's at Rome.
A Salé corsair swooped down and boarded us.
Our men defended themselves,
like the Pope's soldiers.
They flung themselves upon their knees and threw down their arms,
begging of the corsair in absolution in Articulum Mortis.
Instantly, they were stripped as bare as monkeys.
My mother, our maids of honor, and myself, were all served in the same manner.
It is amazing with what expedition those gentlemen,
untress people.
But what surprised me most was
that they thrust their fingers into the part of our bodies,
which the generality of women suffer no other instrument but pipes to enter.
It appeared to me a very strange kind of ceremony,
but thus one judges of things when one has not seen the world.
I afterwards learned that,
it was to try whether we had concealed any diamonds.
This is the practice established from time immemorial
among civilized nations that scour the seas.
I was informed that the very religious knights of Malta
never fail to make this search when they take any Turkish prisoners of either sex.
It is a law of nations from which,
they never deviate.
I need not tell you how great a hardship it was for a young princess,
and her mother to be made slaves and carried to Morocco.
You may easily imagine all we had to suffer on board the pirate vessel.
My mother was still very handsome,
our maids of honor and even our waiting.
women had more charms than art to be found in all Africa. As for myself, I was ravishing,
was exquisite grace itself, and I was a virgin. I did not remain so long. This flower,
which had been reserved for the handsome prince of Masa Karara was plucked by the corsair,
captain. He was an abominable negro, and yet believed that he did me a great deal of honor.
Certainly the princess of Palestrina and myself must have been very strong to go through all
that we experienced until our arrival at Morocco. But let us pass on. These are such
common things as not to be worth mentioning.
Morocco swam in blood when we arrived.
Fifty sons of the Emperor Muli Ismail had each their adherents.
This produced 50 civil wars of blacks against blacks and blacks against tawnys and tawnys against tawnys and mulattoes
against mulattoes.
In short, it was a continual carnage throughout the empire.
No sooner were we landed than the blacks of a contrary faction to that of my captain
attempted to rob him of his booty.
Next to jewels and gold, we were the most valuable things he had.
I was witness to such a battle as you have never.
never seen in your European climates.
The northern nations have not that heat in their blood,
nor that raging lust for women so common in Africa.
It seems that you Europeans have only milk in your veins,
but it is vitriol, it is fire which runs in those of the inhabitants of Mount Atlas
and the neighboring countries.
They fought with the fury of lions, tigers, and serpents of the country to see who should have us.
Amor seized my mother by the right arm, while my captain's lieutenant held her by the left.
A moorish soldier had hold of her leg by one, and one of our corsairs held her by the other.
Thus, almost all our women were drawn in quarters by four men.
My captain concealed me behind him, and with his drawn skimitar cut and slashed everyone that opposed his fury.
At length, I saw all our Italian women and my mother herself, torn, mangled, massacred,
by the monsters who disputed over them.
The slaves, my companions,
those who had taken them,
soldiers, sailors, blacks, whites,
whites, mulattoes,
and at last my captain,
all were killed,
and I remained dying on a heap of dead.
Such scenes as this were transacted through an extent,
of three hundred leagues, and yet they never missed the five prayers a day ordained by Mahomet.
With difficulty, I disengaged myself from such a heap of slaughtered bodies,
and I crawled to a large orange tree on the bank of a neighboring rivulet,
where I fell, oppressed with fright,
fatigue, horror, despair, and hunger.
Immediately after, my senses overpowered me,
gave themselves up to sleep,
which was yet more swooning than repose.
I was in this state of weakness and insensibility
between life and death,
when I felt myself pressed by something that moved upon my body.
I opened my eyes and saw a white man of good countenance who sighed and who said between his teeth.
Oh, Che, Skia Gora, Deserre sensuoclione.
End of Chapter 11.
Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 12 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieberfox recording is in the public domain.
The Adventures of the Old Woman continued.
Astonished and delighted to hear my native language, and no less surprised at what this man said,
I made answer that there was much greater misfortunes than that of which he complained.
I told him, in a few words, of the horrors which I had endured,
and fainted a second time.
He carried me to a neighboring house,
put me to bed,
gave me food,
waited upon me,
consoled me,
flattered me.
He told me that he had never seen anyone so beautiful as I,
and that he never so much regretted the loss
of what it was impossible to recover.
I was born at Naples.
said he.
There they gelled two or three thousand children every year.
Some die of the operation.
Others acquire a voice more beautiful than that of women.
And others are raised to offices of state.
This operation was performed on me with great success,
and I was chapel musician to Madame the princess of Palestrina.
to my mother cried I your mother cried he weeping what can you be that young princess whom i brought up until the age of six years and who promised so early to be as beautiful as you
It is I indeed, but my mother lies 400 yards, hence torn in quarters under a heap of dead bodies.
I told him all my adventures, and he made me acquainted with his, telling me that he had been sent to the emperor of Morocco by a Christian power to conclude a treaty with that prince.
in consequence of which he was to be furnished with military stalls and ships to help to demolish the commerce of other Christian governments.
My mission is done, said this honest eunuch.
I go to embark for Choita and will take you to Italy,
much as Giacore de Ceresensiglioni.
I thanked him with tears of.
commiseration, and instead of taking me to Italy, he conducted me to Algiers, where he sold me to the day.
Scarcely was I sold, then the plague which had made the tour of Africa, Asia, and Europe,
broke out with great malignancy in Algiers.
You have seen earthquakes, but pray, miss, have you ever had the plague?
Never, answered Kunaganda.
If you had, said the old woman,
you would acknowledge that it is far more terrible than an earthquake.
It is common in Africa, and I caught it.
Imagine to yourself the distressed situation of the daughter of a pope,
only 15 years old, who in less than three months,
had felt the miseries of poverty,
and slavery, had been ravished almost every day, had beheld her mother drawn in quarters,
had experienced famine and war, and was dying of the plague in Algiers.
I did not die, however, but my eunuch, and the day, and almost the whole Saraglio of Algiers,
perished.
As soon as the first fury
of this terrible pestilence
was over,
a sale was made
of the day's slaves.
I was purchased
by a merchant
and carried to Tunis.
This man sold me
to another merchant
who sold me again
to another at Tripoli.
From Tripoli
I was sold
to Alexandria.
From Alexandria to Smyrna,
and Smyrna to Constantinople,
at length I became the property of an Agha of the Janissaries,
who was soon ordered away to the defense of Azof,
then besieged by the Russians.
The Agha, who was a very gallant man,
took his whole Saraglio with him,
and lodged us in a small fort on the Palus Miotides,
guarded by two black eunuchs and 20 soldiers.
The Turks killed prodigious numbers of the Russians,
but the latter had their revenge,
as off was destroyed by fire.
The inhabitants put to the sword,
neither sex nor age was spared,
until there remained only our little fort
and the enemy wanted to starve us out.
The twenty Janissaries had sworn they would never surrender.
The extremities of famine to which they were reduced
obliged them to eat our two eunuchs for fear of violating their oath.
At the end of a few days, they resolved also to defour the women.
We had a very pious and humane imam.
who preached in excellent sermon exhorting them not to kill us all at once.
Only cut off a buttock of each of those ladies, said he,
and you'll fare extremely well if you must go to it again,
there will be the same entertainment a few days hence.
Heaven will accept of so charitable an action and send you relief.
He had great eloquence. He persuaded them. We underwent this terrible operation.
The iman applied the same balsam to us as he does to children after circumcision,
and we all nearly died. Scarcely had the Janissaries finished the repast, with which we had
furnished them. Then the Russians came in flat-bottomed boats, not a Janissari's.
Sari escaped.
Other Russians paid no attention
to the condition we were in.
There are French surgeons
in all parts of the world.
One of them, who was very clever,
took us under his care.
He cured us,
and as long as I live,
I shall remember that as soon as my wounds were healed,
he made proposals to me.
He bid us all be of good cheer,
telling us that the like had happened in many sieges,
and that it was according to the laws of war.
As soon as my companions could walk,
they were obliged to set out for Moscow.
I fell to the share of a boyard who made me his gardener,
and gave me twenty lashes a day.
But this nobleman, having in two years' time,
and broke upon the wheel along with thirty more boyards,
for some broils at court,
I profited by that event.
I fled.
I traversed all Russia.
I was a long time an inholder's servant at Riga,
the same at Rostock, at Vizmar, at Leipzig,
at Castle, at Utrecht, at Laden, at the Heistock, at the Hesmar,
Hague at Rotterdam.
I waxed old in misery and disgrace,
having only one half of my posteriors,
and always remembering I was a Pope's daughter.
A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself,
but I still loved life.
This ridiculous foible is,
perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics.
For, is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can
always throw down?
To detest existence and yet to cling to one's existence?
In brief, to caress the serpent which devours us till he has even.
our very heart.
In the different countries which it has been my lot to traverse,
and the numerous inns where I have been servant,
I have taken notice of a vast number of people
who held their own existence in abhorrence,
and yet I never knew of more than eight
who voluntarily put an end to their misery.
three negroes, four Englishmen, and a German professor named Robeck.
I ended by being servant to the Jew, Don Isikar, who placed me near your presence, my fair lady.
I am determined to share your fate, and have been much more affected with your misfortunes than with my own.
I would never even have spoken to you of my misfortunes had you not piqued me a little,
and if it were not customary to tell stories on board a ship in order to pass away the time.
In short, Miss Conaganda, I have had experience.
I know the world.
Therefore, I advise you to divert yourself and prevail upon you.
each passenger to tell his story, and if there be one of them all that has not cursed his life
many a time, that has not frequently looked upon himself as the unhappiest of mortals,
I give you leave to throw me head foremost into the sea.
End of Chapter 12, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 13 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libra Fox recording is in the public domain.
How Candide was forced away from his fair Conaganda and the old woman.
The beautiful Conaganda, having heard the old woman's history, paid her all the civilities due to a person of her rank and merit.
She likewise accepted her proposal and engaged all the passengers, one after the other, to relate
their adventures, and then both she and Candide allowed that the old woman was in the right.
"'It is a great pity,' said Candide,
"'that the sage pangloss was hanged contrary to custom at an Otto de Fay.
He would tell us most amazing things in regard to the physical and moral evils that
overspread earth and sea, and I should be able, with due respect, to make a few objections.'
While each passenger was recounting a story, the ship made her way.
They landed at Buenos Aires.
Kanaganda, Captain Candide, and the old woman waited on the governor.
Don Fanando di Barra and Figuero, and Macquaras, and Sousa.
This nobleman had a stateliness becoming a person who bore so many names.
He spoke to men with so noble a disdain, carried his nose so loftily,
raised his voice so unmercifully, assumed so imperious an air and stalked with such intolerable
pride, that those who saluted him were strongly inclined to give him a good drubbing.
Kanaganda appeared to him the most beautiful he had ever met.
The first thing he did was to ask whether she was not the captain's wife.
The manner in which he asked the question alarmed Candide.
He durst not say she was his wife, because indeed she was.
was not. Neither durst he say she was his sister, because it was not so, and although this obliging
lie had been formerly much in favor among the ancients, and although it could be useful to the
moderns, his soul was too pure to betray the truth.
Miss Conaganda, said he, is to do me the honor to marry me, and we beseech your excellency
to deign to sanction our marriage.
Don Fernando Di Barra and Figuera and Macarena and Lamportos and Susa,
turning up his mustachios, smiled mockingly and ordered Captain Candide to go and review his company.
Candide obeyed, and the governor remained alone with Miss Conaganda.
He declared his passion, protesting he would marry her the next day in the face of the church,
or otherwise just as should be agreed.
to herself.
Kanaganda asked a quarter of an hour
to consider of it, to consult
the old woman, and to take
her resolution. The old
woman spoke thus to Kanaganda.
Miss,
you have 72
quarterings, and not
a farthing. It is now
in your power to be wife to the
greatest lord in South America
who has very beautiful
mustachios.
Is it for you to peek
yourself upon inviolable fidelity.
You have been ravished by Bulgarians.
A Jew, and an inquisitor, have enjoyed your favors.
Misfortune gives sufficient excuse.
I own that if I were in your place,
I should have no scruple in marrying the governor
and in making the fortune of Captain Candide.
While the old woman spoke with all the prudence which age,
and experience gave. A small ship entered the port, on board of which were in Al-Qad and his
al-Guiziels, and this was what happened. As the old woman had shrewdly guessed, it was a gray
friar who stole Kanaganda's money and jewels in the town of Badahos, when she and Candide
were escaping. The friar wanted to sell some of the diamonds to a jeweler. The jeweler knew them to be
the Grand Inquisitors. The friar, before he was hanged, confessed he had stolen them.
He described the persons and the route they had taken. The flight of Kanaganda and Candide
was already known. They were traced to Cadiz. A vessel was immediately sent in pursuit of them.
The vessel was already in the port of Buenos Aires. The report spread that the Al-Qaeda had was
going to land, and that he was in pursuit of the murderers of the murderers of the war.
of my lord the grand inquisitor.
The prudent old woman saw at once what was to be done.
You cannot run away, said she to Kunaganda.
And you have nothing to fear, for it was not you that killed my lord.
Besides, the governor who loves you will not suffer you to be ill-treated.
Therefore, stay.
She then ran immediately to Canaan.
Indeed.
Fly, said she.
Or in an hour you will be burnt.
There was not a moment to lose, but how could he part from Kunaganda?
And where could he flee for shelter?
End of Chapter 13, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
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Chapter 14 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel. This Theber Fox recording is in the public domain.
How Candide and Cacombo were received by the Jesuits of Paraguay.
Candide had brought such a valet with him from Cadiz, as one often meets with on the coasts of Spain
and in the American colonies. He was a quarter-spaniard, born of a mongrel in Tukumon.
He had been singing boy, sacristan, sailor, monk, peddler, soldier, and lackey. His name was
Cacombo, and he loved his master because his master was a very good man. He quickly settled the
two Andalusian horses. Come, master, let us follow the old woman's advice. Let us start and run without
looking behind us. Candide shed tears. Oh, my dear Coonaganda, must I leave you just at a time when the
governor was going to sanction our nuptials? Conagunda, brought to such a
distance what will become of you she will do as well as she can said cacombo the women are never at a loss god provides for them let us run
whither art thou carrying me where shall we go what shall we do without cunaganda said candide by st james of compostela said cacombo
you were going to fight against the Jesuits.
Let us go to fight for them.
I know the road well.
I'll conduct you to their kingdom,
where they will be charmed to have a captain
that understands the Bulgarian exercise.
You'll make a prodigious fortune.
If we cannot find our account in one world,
we shall in another.
It is a great pleasure to see and do new things.
You have before been in Paraguay, then, said Candide.
Aye, sure, answered Cacombo.
I was servant in the College of the Assumption, and am acquainted with the government of the
good fathers, as well as I am with the streets of Cadiz.
It is an admirable government.
The kingdom is upwards of 300 leagues in diameter, and divided into 30 provinces,
There the fathers possess all, and the people nothing.
It is a masterpiece of reason and justice.
For my part, I see nothing so divine as the fathers, who here make war upon the kings of Spain and Portugal,
and in Europe confess those kings who here kill Spaniards and in Madrid send them to heaven.
This delights me. Let us push forward.
You are going to be the happiest of mortals.
What pleasure will it be to those fathers to hear that a captain who knows the Bulgarian exercise has come to them?
As soon as they reached the first barrier, Cacombo told the advanced guard that a captain wanted to speak with my lord the commandant.
Notice was given to the main guard, and immediately a Paraguayan officer ran and laid himself at the feet of the commandant to impart this news to him.
Candide and Cacombo were disarmed, and their two Andalusian horses seized.
The strangers were introduced between two files of musketeers.
The commandant was at the further end with the three-cornered cap on his head.
His gown tucked up, a sword by his side, and a spontune in his hand.
He beckoned, and straightway the newcomers were encompassed by four and twenty soldiers.
A sergeant told them they must win.
that the commandant could not speak to them, and that the Reverend Father Provincial does not
suffer any Spaniard to open his mouth but in his presence, or to stay above three hours in the
province.
"'And where is the Reverend Father Provincial?' said Cacambo.
"'He is upon the parade, just after celebrating Mass,' answered the sergeant.
"'And you cannot kiss his spurs to three hours hence.'
"'However,' said Cacombo,
"'the captain is not a Spaniard, but a German.
"'He is ready to perish with hunger as well as myself.
"'Can not we have something for breakfast while we wait for his reverence?'
The sergeant went immediately to acquaint the commandant with what he had heard.
"'God be praised,' said the Reverend Commandant.
"'Since he is a German, I may speak to him.
Take him to my arbor.
Candide was at once conducted to a beautiful summer house, ornamented with a very pretty
colonnade of green and gold marble, and with trellises enclosing parakeets, hummingbirds, flybirds,
guinea hens, and all other rare birds.
An excellent breakfast was provided in vessels of gold, and while the Paraguayans were
eating maize out of wooden dishes in the open fields, and exposed to the heat of the sun,
the Reverend Father Commandant retired to his arbor.
He was a very handsome young man, with a full face, white skin, but high in color.
He had an arched eyebrow, a lively eye, red ears, vermilion lips, a bold air,
but such a boldness as neither belonged to a Spaniard nor.
a Jesuit. They returned their arms to Candide and Cacombo, and also the two Andalusian horses,
to whom Cacombo gave some oats to eat just by the arbor, having an eye upon them all the while
for fear of a surprise. Candide first kissed the hem of the commandant's robe, then they sat down to
table. "'You are then a German,' said the Jesuit to him in that language.
Yes, Reverend Father, answered Candide.
As they pronounced these words, they looked at each other with great amazement,
and with such an emotion as they could not conceal.
And from what part of Germany do you come?
Said the Jesuit.
I am from the dirty province of Westphalia,
answered Candide.
I was born in the castle of Thunderton Trunk.
Oh, heavens, is it possible?
cried the commandant.
What a miracle!
cried Candide.
Is it really you?
Said the commandant.
It is not possible, said Candide.
They drew back.
They embraced.
They shed rivulets of tears.
What, is it you, Reverend Father?
You, the brother of the fair,
Conaganda, you that was slain by the Bulgarians, you, the baron's son, you a Jesuit in Paraguay.
I must confess this is a strange world that we live in.
Oh, Pangloss, Pangloss, how glad you would be if you had not been hanged.
The commandant sent away the Negro slaves and the Paraguians, who served them with liquors
in goblets of rock crystal.
He thanked God and St. Ignatius a thousand times.
He clasped Candide in his arms, and their faces were all bathed with tears.
You will be more surprised, more affected, and transported, said Candide.
When I tell you that, Kondaganda, your sister whom you believe to have been ripped open, is in perfect health.
Where?
In your neighborhood, with the government.
of Buenos Aires, and I was going to fight against you.
Every word which they uttered in this long conversation but added wonder to wonder.
Their souls fluttered on their tongues, listened in their ears, and sparkled in their eyes.
As they were Germans, they sat a good while at table, waiting for the Reverend Father Provenceal,
and the commandant spoke to his dear Candide as follows.
Chapter 14, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 15 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieber Fox recording is in the public domain.
How Candide killed the brother of his dear Kunaganda.
I shall have ever present to my memory the dreadful day, on which I saw my father and mother killed, and my sister ravished.
when the Bulgarians retired.
My dear sister could not be found,
but my mother, my father, and myself,
with two maid-servants and three little boys,
all of whom had been slain, were put in a hearse,
to be conveyed for internment to a chapel belonging to the Jesuits
within two leagues of our family's seat.
A Jesuit sprinkled us with some holy water.
It was horribly salt.
A few drops of it fell onto my eyes.
The father perceived that my eyelids stirred a little.
He put his hand upon my heart and felt it beat.
I received assistance, and at the end of three weeks, I recovered.
You know, my dear Candide, I was very pretty, but I grew much prettier.
And the Reverend Father Deirdre, superior of that house, conceived the tenderest friendship for me,
He gave me the habit of the order some years after I was sent to Rome.
The Father General needed new levies of young German Jesuits.
The sovereigns of Paraguay admit as few Spanish Jesuits as possible.
They prefer those of other nations as being more subordinate to their commands.
I was judged fit by the Reverend Father General to go and work in this vineyard.
We set out, uphold, A Tyralese, and myself.
Upon my arrival I was honored with a sub-deaconship and a lieutenancy.
I am today Colonel and Priest.
We shall give a warm reception to the King of Spain's troops.
I will answer for it that they shall be excommunicated and well-beaten.
Providence sends you here to assist us,
but is it indeed true that my dear sister, Kanaganda, is in the neighborhood with the governor of Buenos Aires?
"'Candide assured him on oath that nothing was more true, and their tears began afresh.
"'The baron could not refrain from embracing Candide.
"'He called him his brother, his savior.
"'Ah, perhaps,' said he,
"'we shall together, my dear Condeed, enter the town as conquerors and recover my sister, Kunakanda.'
"'That is all I want,' said Candide.
"'for I intend to marry her, and I still hope to do so.'
"'You, insolent,' replied the Baron.
"'Would you have the imprudence to marry my sister, who has seventy-two quarterings?
"'I find thou hast the most consummate defrontary to dare to mention so presumptuous a design.'
"'Candeed, petrified at this speech, made answer.
Reverend Father, all the quarterings in the world signify nothing.
I rescued your sister from the arms of a Jew and of an inquisitor.
She has great obligations to me.
She wishes to marry me.
And Master Pangloss always told me that all men are equal, and certainly I will marry her.
We shall see that, thou scoundrel, said the Jesuit Baron, the Thunderton Tronk,
and that instant struck him across the face with the flat of his sword.
Candide, in an instant, drew his rapier,
and plunged it up to the hilt in the Jesuit's belly.
But, in pulling it out, reeking hot, he burst into tears.
Good God, said he,
I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law.
I am the best-natured creature in the world.
world, and yet I have already killed three men, and of these three, two were priests.
Cacombo, who stood sentry by the door of the arbor, ran to him.
We have nothing more for it than to sell our lives as dearly as we can, said his master to him.
Without doubt, someone will soon enter the arbor, and we must die, sword in hand.
Cacombo, who had been in a great many scrapes in his lifetime, did not lose his head.
He took the Baron's Jesuit habit, put it on Candide, gave him the square cap, and made him mount on horseback.
All this was done in the twinkling of an eye.
Let us gallop fast, master.
Everybody will take you for a Jesuit, going to give directions to your men,
and we shall have passed the frontiers before.
they will be able to overtake us.
He flew as he spoke these words, crying aloud in Spanish.
Make way, make way for the Reverend Father Colonel.
End of Chapter 15, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 16 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieber Fox recording is in the public domain.
Adventures of the two travelers with two girls, two monkeys, and the savages called O'Reilans.
Candide and his valet had got beyond the barrier before it was known in the camp that the German Jesuit was dead.
The weary cacombo had taken care to fill his wallet with bread, chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few bottles of wine.
With their Andalusian horses, they penetrated into an unwelcome.
known country where they perceived no beaten track. At length, they came to a beautiful meadow
intersected with pearling rills. Here, our two adventurers fed their horses. Cacombo proposed to
his master to take some food, and he set him an example. How can you ask me to eat ham?
Said Candide, after killing the barren son and being doomed never more to see the beautiful.
wonderful conaganda. What will it avail me to spin out my wretched days and drag them far from her in
remorse and despair? And what will the journal of Trevue say? While he was thus lamenting his
fate, he went on eating. The sun went down. The two wanderers heard some little cries which
seemed to be uttered by women. They did not know whether they were cries of pain or joy, but they
started up precipitately with that inquietude and alarm, which every little thing inspires in an
unknown country. The noise was made by two naked girls, who tripped along the mead while two
monkeys were pursuing them and biting their buttocks. Candide was moved with pity. He had
learned to fire a gun in the Bulgarian service, and he was so clever at it, that he could hit
a filbert in a hedge without touching a leaf of the tree. He took up his double-barreled Spanish
fusel, let it off, and killed the two monkeys. God be praised, my dear Cacombo, I have rescued those
two poor creatures from a most perilous situation. If I have committed a sin in killing an
inquisitor and a Jesuit, I have made ample amends by saving the lives of these girls. Perhaps
they are young ladies of family, and this adventure may procure us great advantages in this country.
He was continuing, but stopped short when he saw the two girls tenderly embracing the monkeys,
bathing their bodies in tears, and rending the air with the most dismal lamentations.
Little did I expect to see such good nature, said he at length to Cacombo, who made
answer.
Master, you have done a fine thing now.
You have slain the sweethearts of those two young ladies.
The sweethearts?
Is it possible?
You are just in Cacombo.
I can never believe it.
Dear Master, replied Cacombo.
You are surprised at everything.
Why should you think it so strange
that in some countries there are monkeys
which insinuate themselves into the good
graces of the ladies, they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard.
Alas, replied Candide.
I remember to have heard Master Pangloss say that formerly such accidents used to happen,
that these mixtures were productive of centaurs, fawns, and satyrs, and that many of the
ancients had seen such monsters, but I looked upon the whole as
fabulous. You ought now to be convinced, said Cacombo.
That it is the truth, and you see what use is made of those creatures by persons that have not
had a proper education. All I fear is that those ladies will play us some ugly trick.
These sound reflections induced Candide to leave the meadow and to plunge into a wood.
He supped there with Cacombo, and after cursory,
the Portuguese inquisitor, the governor of Buenos Aires, and the baron, they fell asleep on moss.
On awakening, they felt they could not move, for during the night the orylans who inhabited that
country, and to whom the ladies had denounced them, had bound them with cords made of the bark of
trees. They were encompassed by fifty naked orylons, armed with bows and arrows, with clubs and
flint hatchets. Some were making a large cauldron boil. Others were preparing spits, and all cried,
A Jesuit, a Jesuit, we shall be revenged. We shall have excellent cheer. Let us eat the Jesuit.
Let us eat him up.
I told you, my dear master, cried Cacombo sadly, that those two girls would play us some
ugly trick. Candide, seeing the cauldron and the spits, cried.
We are certainly going to be either roasted or boiled.
Ah, what would Master Pangloss say, were he to see how pure nature is formed?
Everything is right, may be, but I declare it is very hard to have lost Miss Kunaganda,
and to be put upon a spit by O'Reilans.
Cacombo never lost his head.
Do not despair, said he to the disconsolate Candide.
I understand a little of the jargon of these people.
I will speak to them.
Be sure, said Candide,
to represent to them how frightfully inhuman it is to cook men,
and how very unchristian.
Gentlemen, said Cacombo.
You reckon you are today going to feast upon a Jesuit.
It is all very well.
Nothing is more unjust than thus.
to treat your enemies. Indeed, the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbor, and such is the
practice all over the world. If we do not accustom ourselves to eating them, it is because we
have better fare. But you have not the same resources as we. Certainly it is much better to devour
your enemies than to resign to the crows and rooks the fruits of your victory. But,
Gentlemen, surely you would not choose to eat your friends.
You believe that you are going to spit a Jesuit, and he is your defender.
It is the enemy of your enemies that you are going to roast.
As for myself, I was born in your country.
This gentleman is my master, and far from being a Jesuit, he has just killed one,
who spoils he wears, and thence comes your mistake.
To convince you of the truth of what I say,
take his habit, and carry it to the first barrier of the Jesuit kingdom,
and inform yourselves whether my master did not kill a Jesuit officer.
It will not take you long, and you can always eat us if you find that I have lied to you.
But I have told you the truth.
You are too well acquainted with the principles of public law,
humanity, and justice, not to pardon us.
The O'Reillans found this speech very reasonable.
They deputed two of their principal people,
with all expedition to inquire into the truth of the matter.
These executed their commission like men of sense,
and soon returned with good news.
The O'Reillans untied their prisoners,
showed them all sorts of civilities, offered them girls, gave them refreshment,
and reconducted them to the confines of their territories, proclaiming with great joy.
He is no Jesuit! He is no Jesuit!
Candide could not help being surprised at the cause of his deliverance.
What people, said he,
what men, what manners! If I had not been so loved,
as to run Miss Kunaganda's brother through the body, I should have been devoured without redemption.
But, after all, pure nature is good, since these people, instead of feasting upon my flesh,
have shown me a thousand civilities when then I was not a Jesuit.
End of Chapter 16, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 17 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Librevox recording is in the public domain.
Arrival of Candide and his valet at El Dorado and what they saw there.
You see, said Cacombo to Candide, as soon as they had reached the frontiers of the Oriolans,
That this hemisphere is not better than the others. Take my word for it.
Let us go back to Europe by the shortest way.
How go back? said Candide.
And where shall we go?
To my own country?
The Bulgarians and the Abares are slaying all.
To Portugal.
There I shall be burnt.
And if we abide here, we are every moment in danger of being spitted.
But how can I resolve to quit a part of the world
where my dear Conaganda resides.
Let us turn towards Cajan, said Cacombo.
There we shall find Frenchmen who wander all over the world.
They may assist us.
God will perhaps have pity on us.
It was not easy to get to Cian.
They knew vaguely in which direction to go.
But rivers, precipices, robbers, savages,
obstructed them all the way. Their horses died of fatigue, their provisions were consumed.
They fed a whole month upon wild fruits and found themselves at last near a little river
bordered with cocoa trees, which sustained their lives and their hopes.
Cacombo, who was as good a counselor as the old woman, said to Candide,
We are able to hold out no longer. We have walked in. We have walked in.
Enough. I see an empty canoe near the river side. Let us fill it with coconuts, throw ourselves into it, and go with the current. Our river always leads to some inhabited spot. If we do not find pleasant things, we shall at least find new things.
With all my heart, said Candide, let us recommend ourselves to Providence.
They rode a few leagues between banks, and in some places flowery, in others barren,
in some parts smooth, in others rugged.
The stream ever widened, and at length lost itself under an arch of frightful rocks which reached to the sky.
The two travelers had the courage to commit themselves to the current.
The river, suddenly contracting at this place, whirled them along with a dreadful noise and rapidity.
At the end of four and twenty hours they saw daylight again, but their canoe was dashed to pieces against the rocks.
For a league they had to creep from rock to rock, until at length they discovered an extensive plain bounded by inaccessible mountains.
The country was cultivated as much for pleasure as for necessity.
On all sides, the useful was also the beautiful.
The roads were covered or rather adorned.
with carriages of a glittering form and substance,
in which were men and women of surprising beauty,
drawn by large red sheep,
which surpassed in fleetness the finest coursers of Andalusia,
Tetuan and Mechenez.
Here, however, is a country, said Candide,
which is better than Westphalia.
He stepped out with Cacombo toward the first village which he saw.
Some children dressed in tattered brocades played at quits on the outskirts.
Our travelers from the other world amuse themselves by looking on.
The quits were large round pieces, yellow, red, and green, which cast a singular luster.
The travelers picked a few of them off the ground.
This was of gold, that of emeralds, the other of rubies.
The least of them would have been the greatest ornament on the moon.
mughal's throne.
Without doubt, said Cacombo, these children must be the king's sons that are playing at quits.
The village schoolmaster appeared at this moment and called them to school.
There, said Candide, is the preceptor of the royal family.
The little truants immediately quitted their game, leaving the quits on the ground with all
their other playthings. Candide gathered them up, ran to the master, and presented them to him in a
most humbled manner, giving him to understand by signs that their royal highnesses had forgotten
their gold and jewels. The schoolmaster, smiling, flung them upon the ground. Then, looking at Candide
with a good deal of surprise, went about his business. The travelers, however, took care to gather up,
the gold, the rubies, and the emeralds.
Where are we? cried Candide.
The king's children in this country must be well brought up,
since they are taught to despise gold and the precious stones.
Cacombo was as much surprised as Candide.
At length they drew near the first house in the village.
It was built like an European palace.
A crowd of people pressed about the door,
and there were still more in the house.
They heard most agreeable music
and were aware of a delicious odor of cooking.
Cacamba went up to the door and heard they were talking Peruvian.
It was his mother tongue,
for it is well known that Cacamba was born in Tukuman
in a village where no other language was spoken.
I will be your interpreter here, said he to Candide.
Let us go in. It is a public house.
Immediately two waiters and two girls, dressed in cloth of gold, and their hair tied up with ribbons,
invited them to sit down to table with the landlord. They served four dishes of soup,
each garnished with two young parrots, a boiled condor which weighed 200 pounds,
two roasted monkeys of excellent flavor, 300 hummingbirds in one dish, and 600 flybirds in another,
exquisite ragoos, delicious pastries, the whole served up in dishes of a kind of rock crystal.
The waiters and girls poured out several liqueurs drawn from the sugar cane.
Most of the company were Chapman and Wagoners, all extremely polite.
They asked Cacombo a few questions with the greatest circumspection and answered his in the most
obliging manner.
As soon as dinner was over, Cacombo believed,
as well as Candide, that they might well pay their reckoning by laying down two of those large
gold pieces which they had picked up. The landlord and landlady shouted with laughter and held
their sides when the fit was over. Gentleman, said the landlord, it is plain, you are strangers,
and such guests we are not accustomed to see. Pardon us, therefore, for laughing when you
offered us the pebbles from our high roads in payment of your reckoning. You doubtless have not
the money of the country, but it is not necessary to have any money at all to dine in this house.
All hostelries established for the convenience of commerce are paid by the government. You have fared
but very indifferently because this is a poor village, but everywhere else you will be received as you
deserve. Cacombo explained this whole discourse with great astonishment to Candide,
who was as greatly astonished to hear it.
What sort of country then is this? said they to one another.
A country unknown to all the rest of the world, and where nature is a kind so different from
ours. It is probably the country where all is well, for there absolutely must be one such
place, and whatever Master Pangloss might say, I often found that things went very ill in
Westphalia.
End of Chapter 17, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 18 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain.
What They Saw in the Country of El Dorado
Cacombo expressed his curiosity to the landlord who made answer.
I am very ignorant, but not the worse on that account.
However, we have in this neighborhood an old man retired from court,
who is the most learned and most communicative person in the kingdom.
At once he took Cacombo to the old man.
Candide acted now only a second character and accompanied his vast.
They entered a very plain house, for the door was only of silver, and the ceilings were only of gold,
but wrought in so elegant a taste as to vie with the richest. The antechamber indeed was
only encrusted with rubies and emeralds, but the order in which everything was arranged
made amends for this great simplicity. The old man received the strangers on his sofa, which was
stuffed with hummingbird's feathers, and ordered his servants to present them with
liquors in diamond goblets, after which he satisfied their curiosity in the following terms.
I am now 172 years old, and I learnt of my late father, master of the horse to the king,
the amazing revolutions of Peru, of which he had been an eyewitness. The kingdom we now inhabit
it is the ancient country of the Incas, who quitted it very imprudently to conquer another part of the
world, and were at length destroyed by the Spaniards. More wise by far were the princes of their
family who remained in their native country, and they ordained with the consent of the whole
nation, that none of the inhabitants should ever be permitted to quit this little kingdom,
and this has preserved our innocence and happiness. The Spaniards have had a confused notion of this
country, and have called it El Dorado, and an Englishman, whose name was Sir Walter Rally,
came very near it about a hundred years ago, but, these people.
Surrounded by inaccessible rocks and precipices we have hitherto been sheltered from the repaciousness of European nations
Who have an inconceivable passion for the pebbles and dirt of our land
For the sake of which they would murder us to the last man
The conversation was long it turned chiefly on their form of government their manners their women
their public entertainments and the arts.
At length, Candide, having always had a taste for metaphysics,
made Cacombo ask whether there was any religion in that country.
The old man reddened a little.
How then? said he.
Can you doubt it?
Do you take us for ungrateful wretches?
Cacombo humbly asked.
What was the religion in El Dorado?
The old man reddened again.
Can there be two religions? said he.
We have, I believe, the religion of all the world.
We worship God night and morning.
Do you worship but one God?
said Cacombo, who still acted as interpreter in representing Candide's doubts.
Surely, said the old man.
there are not two nor three nor four,
I must confess the people from your side of the world
ask very extraordinary questions.
Candide was not yet tired of interrogating the good old man.
He wanted to know in what manner they prayed to God in El Dorado.
We do not pray to him, said the worthy sage.
We have nothing to ask of him.
He has given us all we need, and we return him thanks without ceasing.
Candide, having a curiosity to see the priests, asked where they were.
The good old man smiled.
My friend, said he, we are all priests.
The king and all the heads of families sing solemn canticles of Thanksgiving,
every morning accompanied by five or six thousand musicians.
What?
Have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people that are not of their opinion?
We must be mad indeed, if that were the case, said the old man.
Here we are all of one opinion, and we know we know.
not what you mean by monks.
During this whole discourse, Candide was in raptures, and he said to himself,
This is vastly different from Westphalia and the Baron's Castle. Had our friend Pangloss seen
El Dorado, he would no longer have said that the castle of Thunderton Trunk was the finest
upon earth. It is evident that one must travel. After this long,
conversation, the old man ordered a coach and six sheep to be got ready, and twelve of his
domestics to conduct the travelers to court.
"'Excuse me,' said he,
"'if my age deprives me of the honor of accompanying you, the king will receive you in a
manner that cannot displease you, and no doubt you will make an allowance for the customs
of the country, if some things should not be to your liking."
Candide and Cacombo got into the coach.
The six sheep flew, and in less than four hours they reached the king's palace,
situated at the extremity of the capital.
The portal was two hundred and twenty feet high, and one hundred wide,
but words were wanting to express the materials of which it was built.
It is plain such material.
must have prodigious superiority over those pebbles and sand which we call gold and precious stones.
Twenty beautiful damsels of the King's Guard received Candide and Cacombo as they alighted from the coach,
conducted them to the bath, and dressed them in robes woven of the down of hummingbirds,
after which the great crown officers of both sexes led them to the King's apartment,
between two files of musicians a thousand on each side.
When they drew near to the audience chamber,
Cacombo asked one of the great officers in what way he should pay his obeisance to his majesty.
Whether they should throw themselves upon their knees or on their stomachs,
whether they should put their hands upon their heads or behind their backs,
whether they should lick the dust off the floor, in a word,
What was the ceremony?
The custom, said the great officer, is to embrace the king and to kiss him on each cheek.
Candide and Cicambo threw themselves round his majesty's neck.
He received them with all the goodness imaginable and politely invited them to supper.
While waiting, they were shown the city and saw the public edifices raised as high as the clouds,
The marketplaces ornamented with a thousand columns,
the fountains of spring water, those of rose water, those of liquors drawn from sugarcane,
incessantly flowing into the great squares, which were paved with a kind of precious stone,
which gave off a delicious fragrance like that of cloves and cinnamon.
Candide asked to see the Court of Justice, the Parliament,
They told him they had none, and that they were strangers to lawsuits.
He asked if they had any prisons, and they answered, no.
But what surprised him most and gave him the greatest pleasure was the Palace of Sciences,
where he saw a gallery 2,000 feet long and filled with instruments employed in mathematics and physics.
After rambling about the city the whole afternoon, and seeing but a thousandth part of it,
they were reconducted to the royal palace, where Candide sat down to table with his majesty,
his valet Caccombo, and several ladies.
Never was there a better entertainment, and never was more wit shown at a table than that
which fell from his majesty.
Cacombo explained the king's bon mo to Candide, and not
Notwithstanding, they were translated, they still appeared to be Beaumont. Of all the things that surprised Candide, this was not the least. They spent a month in this hospitable place. Candide frequently said to Cacombo,
I own, my friend, once more that the castle where I was born is nothing in comparison with this. But, after all, Miss Conaganda is not here, and you have,
without doubt some mistress in Europe. If we abide here we shall only be upon a footing with the rest.
Whereas, if we return to our old world, only with twelve sheep laden with the pebbles of El Dorado,
we shall be richer than all the kings in Europe. We shall have no more inquisitors to fear,
and we may easily recover Miss Kunaganda. This speech was agreeable to Cacombo.
mankind are so fond of roving, of making a figure in their own country, and of boasting of what they have seen in their travels, that the two happy ones resolved to be no longer so, but to ask his majesty's leave to quit the country.
You are foolish, said the king.
I am sensible that my kingdom is but a small place, but when a person is comfortably settled in any part, he should abide there.
I have not the right to detain strangers.
It is a tyranny which neither our manners nor our laws permit.
All men are free.
Go when you wish, but the going will be very difficult.
It is impossible to ascend that rapid river on which you came as by a miracle
and which runs under vaulted rocks.
The mountains which surround my kingdom are ten thousand feet.
high and as steep as walls. They are each over ten leagues in breath, and there is no other way
to descend them than by precipices. However, since you absolutely wish to depart, I shall
give orders to my engineers to construct a machine that will convey you very safely. When we have
conducted you over the mountains, no one can accompany you further, for my subjects have made a vow
never to quit the kingdom, and they are too wise to break it.
Ask me besides anything that you please.
We desire nothing of your majesty, says Candide,
but a few sheep laden with provisions, pebbles, and the earth of this country.
The king laughed.
I cannot conceive, said he.
What pleasures you Europeans find in our yellow clay.
But take as much as you like, and great good may it do you.
At once he gave directions that his engineers should construct a machine
to hoist up these two extraordinary men out of the kingdom.
Three thousand good mathematicians went to work.
It was ready in fifteen days, and did not cost more than twenty million sterling
in the species of that country.
They placed Candide and Cacombo on the machine.
Sheen, there were two great red sheep, saddled and bridled to ride upon as soon as they were
beyond the mountains.
Twenty pack sheep laden with provisions, thirty with presence of the curiosities of the
country, and fifty with gold, diamonds, and precious stones.
The king embrace the two wanderers very tenderly.
Their departure with the ingenuous manner in which they and their sheep were hoisted over the
mountains was a splendid spectacle. The mathematicians took their leave after conveying them to a
place of safety, and Candide had no other desire, no other aim than to present his sheep to Miss
Conaganda.
Now, said he, we are able to pay the governor of Buenos Aires if Miss Conaganda can be ransomed.
Let us journey towards Cayenne. Let us embark, and we will afterwards see what kingdom we
shall be able to purchase.
End of Chapter 18, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 19 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
What happened to them at Suriname and how Candide got acquainted with Martin?
Our travelers spent the first day very agreeably.
They were delighted with possessing more treasure.
than all Asia, Europe, and Africa could scrape together.
Candide, in his raptures, cut Kanaganda's name on the trees.
The second day, two of their sheep plunged into a morass, where they and their burdens were
lost.
Two more died of fatigue a few days after.
Seven or eight perished with hunger in a desert, and others subsequently fell down precipices.
At length, after traveling a hundred days, only two sheep.
remained, said Candide to Cacombo.
My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world?
There is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunaganda once more.
I grant all you say, said Cacumbo, but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure
than the king of Spain will ever have, and I see a town which I take to be surreacted.
belonging to the Dutch. We are at the end of all our troubles and at the beginning of happiness.
As they drew near the town, they saw a negro stretched upon the ground with only one moiety of his
clothes, that is, of his blue linen drawers. The poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand.
Good God, said Candide and Dutch.
What art thou doing there, friend, in that shocking condition?
I am waiting for my master, mine here van derdender, the famous merchant, answered the negro.
Was it mine here van derdender, said Candide, that treated thee thus?
Yes, sir, said the negro. It is the custom.
They give us a pair of linen drawers for our whole garment,
Twice a year. When we work at the sugar canes and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut off the hand, and when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg.
Both cases have happened to me. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe. Yet when my mother sold me for ten Patagons on the coast of Guinea, she said to me, my dear child,
Bless our fetishes. Adore them forever. They will make thee live happily. Thou hast the honor of being the slave of our lords, the whites, which is making the fortune of thy father and mother. Alas, I know not whether I have made their fortunes. This I know, that they have not made mine. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots, are a thither.
thousand times less wretched than I. The Dutch fetishes, who have converted me, declare every
Sunday that we are all of us children of Adam, blacks, as well as whites. I am not a genealogist,
but if these preachers tell truth, we are all second cousins. Now, you must agree that it is
impossible to treat one's relations in a more barbarous manner.
Oh, Pangloss, cried Candide,
"'Thou hast not guessed at this abomination. It is the end. I must at last renounce thy optimism.'
"'What is this optimism?' said Cacombo.
"'Alas,' said Candide,
It is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.
Looking at the Negro, he shed tears and weeping he entered Suriname.
The first thing they inquired after was whether there was a vessel in the harbor
which could be sent to Buenos Aires.
The person to whom they applied was a Spanish sea captain,
who offered to agree with them upon reasonable terms.
He appointed to meet them at a public house,
whither Candide and the faithful Cacombo went with their two sheep and awaited his coming.
Candide, who had his heart upon his lips, told the Spaniard all his adventures,
and avowed that he intended to elope with Miss Conaganda.
Then I will take good care not to carry you to Buenos Aires, said the seaman.
I should be hanged, and so would you. The fair Conaganda is my lord's favorite mistress.
This was a thunder-clap for Candide.
He wept for a long while.
At last he drew Cacombo aside.
Here, my dear friend, said he to him.
This thou must do.
We have each of us in his pocket, five or six millions in diamonds.
You are more clever than I.
You must go and bring Miss Conaganda from Buenos Aires.
If the governor makes any difficulty,
Give him a million. If he will not relinquish her, give him two. As you have not killed an inquisitor,
they will have no suspicion of you. I'll get another ship and go and wait for you at Venice.
That's a free country, where there is no danger either from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews, or inquisitors.
Cacombo applauded this wise resolution. He despaired at parting from so good a master who had become his
intimate friend, but the pleasure of serving him prevailed over the pain of leaving him. They embraced with
tears. Candide charged him not to forget the good old woman. Cacombo set out that very same day. This
Cacombo was a very honest fellow. Candide stayed some time longer in Suriname,
waiting for another captain to carry him and the two remaining sheep to Italy.
After he had to hire domestics and purchased everything necessary for a long voyage,
Minehair van der Dender, captain of a large vessel, came and offered his services.
How much will you charge? said he to this man.
To carry me straight to Venice, me, my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep.
The skipper asked 10,000 piastres.
Candide did not hesitate.
Aha, said the prudent van der Dender to himself.
This stranger gives 10,000 piastres unhesitatingly.
He must be very rich.
Returning a little while after, he let him know that upon second consideration,
he could not undertake the voyage for less than 20,000 piastres.
Well, you shall have them, said Candide.
I, said the skipper to himself, this man agrees to pay 20,000 piastres with as much ease as ten.
He went back to him again, and declared that he could not carry him to Venice for less than 30,000 piastres.
Then you shall have 30,000, replied.
Candide.
Oh,
said the Dutch skipper, once more to himself.
Thirty thousand piastres are a trifle to this man.
Surely these sheep must be laden with an immense treasure.
Let us say no more about it.
First of all, let him pay down the thirty thousand piastres.
Then we shall see.
Candide sold two small diamonds,
the least of which was worth more than what the skipper asked for
his freight. He paid him in advance. The two sheep were put on board. Candide followed in a little
boat to join the vessel in the roads. The skipper seized this opportunity, set sail, and put out
to sea, the wind favoring him. Candide dismayed and stupefied, soon lost sight of the vessel.
Alas, said he, this is a trick worthy of the old world.
He put back, overwhelmed with sorrow, for indeed he had lost sufficient to make the fortune of
twenty monarchs. He waited upon the Dutch magistrate, and in his distress he knocked over loudly
at the door. He entered, and told his adventure, raising his voice with unnecessary vehemence.
The magistrate began by fining him ten thousand piastres for making a noise.
Then he listened patiently, promised to examine into his affair at the skipper's return,
and ordered him to pay ten thousand piastres for the expense of the hearing.
This drove candide to despair.
He had indeed endured misfortunes a thousand times worse,
the coolness of the magistrate and of the skipper who had robbed him,
roused his collar and flung him into a deep melancholy.
The villainy of mankind presented itself before his imagination in all its deformity,
and his mind was filled with gloomy ideas. At length, hearing that a French vessel was ready
to set sail for Bordeaux, as he had no sheep laden with diamonds to take along with him,
he hired a cabin at the usual price. He made it known in the town that he would pay the
passage and bored, and give two thousand piastres to any honest man who would make the voyage
with him, upon condition that this man was the most dissatisfied with his state, and the most
unfortunate in the whole province. Such a crowd of candidates presented themselves that a fleet
of ships could hardly have held them, Candide being desirous of selecting from among the best,
marked out about one-twentieth of them, who seemed to be sociable men, and who all pretended to merit his preference.
He assembled them at his inn, and gave them a supper on condition that each took an oath to relate his history faithfully,
promising to choose him who appeared to be most justly discontented with his state, and to bestow some presence upon the rest.
They sat until four o'clock in the morning.
Candide, in listening to all their adventures,
was reminded of what the old woman had said to him
in their voyage to Buenos Aires,
and of her wager,
that there was not a person on board the ship,
but had met with very great misfortunes.
He dreamed of pangloss at every adventure told to him.
"'This pangloss,' said he,
would be puzzled to demonstrate his system.
I wish that he were here.
Certainly, if all things are good,
it is in El Dorado and not in the rest of the world.
At length, he made choice of a poor man of letters
who had worked ten years for the booksellers of Amsterdam.
He judged that there was not in the whole world a trade
which could disgust one more.
This philosopher was an honest man,
but he had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and abandoned by his daughter,
who got a Portuguese to run away with her.
He had just been deprived of a small employment, on which he subsisted,
and he was persecuted by the preachers of Suriname, who took him for a Sosinian.
We must allow that the others were at least as wretched as he,
but Candide hoped that the philosopher would entertain him during the voyage.
All the other candidates complained that Candide had done them great injustice,
but he appeased them by giving 100 piastres to each.
End of Chapter 19, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 20 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieber Fox recording is in the public domain.
What Happened at Sea to Candide and Martin?
The old philosopher, whose name was Martin, embarked then with Candide for Bordeaux.
They had both seen and suffered a great deal, and if the vessel had sailed from Suriname to Japan by the Cape of Good Hope, the subject of moral and natural evil would have enabled them to entertain one another during the whole voyage.
Candide, however, had one great advantage over Martin, in that he always hoped to see Miss Conaghan.
Cunda, whereas Martin had nothing at all to hope.
Besides, Candide was possessed of money and jewels, and though he had lost one hundred large
red sheep, laden with the greatest treasure upon earth, though the knavery of the Dutch
skipper still set heavy upon his mind, yet when he reflected upon what he still had left,
and when he mentioned the name of Cunaganda, especially towards the latter end of a repast,
he inclined to Pangloss's doctrine.
"'But you, Mr. Martin,' said he to the philosopher,
"'what do you think of all this?
What are your ideas on moral and natural evil?'
"'Sir,' answered Martin,
"'a priests accused me of being a Sosinian,
"'but the real fact is I am a Manichayan.'
"'You jest,' said Candide,
There are no longer Manichaeans in the world.
I am one, said Martin.
I cannot help it.
I know not how to think otherwise.
Surely you must be possessed by the devil, said Candide.
He is so deeply concerned in the affairs of this world, answered Martin,
that he may very well be in me as well as in everybody else,
But I own to you that when I cast an eye on this globe, or rather on this little ball,
I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being.
I accept always, El Dorado.
I scarcely ever knew a city that did not desire the destruction of a neighboring city,
nor a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family.
family. Everywhere, the weak execrate the powerful before whom they cringe, and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell.
A million regimented assassins from one extremity of Europe to the other get their bred by disciplined depredation and murder for want of more honest employment.
Even in those cities which seem to enjoy peace and where the arts flourish,
the inhabitants are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness than are experienced by a besieged town.
Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.
In a word, I have seen so much and experienced so much that I am a Manichaean.
"'There are, however, some things good,' said Candide.
"'That may be,' said Martin.
"'But I know them not.'
In the middle of this dispute, they heard the report of Cannon.
It redoubled every instant. Each took out his glass.
They saw two ships in close fight, about three miles off.
The wind brought both so near to the French vessel
that our travellers had the pleasure of seeing the fight at their ease.
At length one let off a broadside, so low and so truly aimed,
that the other sank to the bottom.
Candide and Martin could plainly perceive a hundred men on the deck of the sinking vessel.
They raised their hands to heaven and uttered terrible outcries,
and the next moment were swallowed up.
up by the sea.
Well, said Martin, this is how men treat one another.
It is true, said Candide.
There is something diabolical in this affair.
While speaking, he saw he knew not what, of a shining red, swimming close to the vessel.
They put out the long boat to see what it could be.
It was one of his sheep.
Candide was more rejoiced at the recovery of this one sheep than he had been grieved at the loss of the
hundred laden with the large diamonds of El Dorado. The French captain soon saw that the captain
of victorious vessel was a Spaniard, and that the other was a Dutch pirate, and the very same one who
had robbed Candide. The immense plunder which this villain had amassed was buried with him in the sea,
Out of the whole, only one sheep was saved.
You see, said Candide to Martin,
that crime is sometimes punished.
This rogue of a Dutch skipper has met with the fate he deserved.
Yes, said Martin.
But why should the passengers be doomed also to destruction?
God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.
The French and Spanish ships continued their course, and Candide continued his conversation with Martin.
They disputed fifteen successive days, and on the last of those 15 days, they were as far advanced as on the first.
But, however, they chatted, they communicated ideas, they consoled each other.
Candide caressed his sheep.
"'Since I have found thee again,' said he,
I may likewise chance to find my conagunda.
End of chapter 20, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 21 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Librevox recording is in the public domain.
Candide and Martin, reasoning, drawl near the coast of France.
At length, they describe the coast of France.
Were you ever in France, Mr. Martin?
said Candide.
Yes, said Martin.
I have been in several provinces.
In some one half of the people are fools.
In others they are too cunning.
In some they are weak and simple.
In others they affect to be witty.
In all, the principal occupation is love.
The next is sland.
and the third is talking nonsense.
But Mr. Martin, have you seen Paris?
Yes, I have.
All these kinds are found there.
It is a chaos, a confused multitude,
where everybody seeks pleasure and scarcely anyone finds it,
at least as it appeared to me.
I made a short stay there.
On my arrival, I will.
was robbed of all I had by pickpockets at the Fair of Saint Germain. I myself was taken for a robber
and was imprisoned for eight days after which I served as corrector of the press to gain the money
necessary for my return to Holland on foot. I knew the whole scribbling rabble, the party rabble,
the fanatic rabble. It is said that there are
very polite people in that city, and I wish to believe it.
For my part, I have no curiosity to see France, said Candide.
You may easily imagine that, after spending a month at El Dorado, I can desire to behold
nothing upon earth but Miss Conagonda. I go to await her at Venice. We shall pass through
France on our way to Italy. Will you bear me company?
With all my heart, said Martin.
It is said that Venice is fit only for its own nobility,
but that strangers meet with a very good reception if they have a good deal of money.
I have none of it.
You have.
Therefore I will follow you all over the world.
But do you believe, said Candide,
that the earth was originally a sea,
as we find it asserted in that large book belonging to the captain.
I do not believe a word of it, said Martin,
any more than I do of the many ravings which have been published lately.
But for what end then has this world been formed?
Said Candide.
To plague us to death?
Answered Martin.
Are you not great?
greatly surprised, continued Candide, at the love which these two girls of the O'Reilons
had for those monkeys, of which I have already told you.
Not at all, said Martin.
I do not see that that passion was strange. I have seen so many extraordinary things
that I have ceased to be surprised.
Do you believe? said Candide.
That men have always massacred each other, as they do today,
that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded,
columniators, debauches, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?
Do you believe?
said Martin, that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them.
Yes, without doubt, said Candide.
Well then, said Martin, if hawks have always had the same character,
why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?
Oh, said Candide, there is a vast deal of difference.
for free will.
And reasoning thus, they arrived at Bordeaux.
End of Chapter 21, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 22 of Candide by Voltaire.
Translated by Philip Lattel, this Libravox recording is in the public domain.
What happened in France to Candide and Martin?
Candide stayed in Bordeaux no longer than was necessary for the celibrovo.
of a few of the pebbles of El Dorado, and for hiring a good chaise to hold two passengers,
for he could not travel without his philosopher Martin.
He was only vexed at parting with his sheep, which he left to the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences,
who set as a subject for that year's prize to find why the sheep's wool was red,
and the prize was awarded to a learned man of the north, who demonstrated by A plus B minus C,
by Z, that the sheep must be red and die of the rot.
Meanwhile, all the travellers whom Candide met in the inns along his route said to him,
We go to Paris.
This general eagerness at length gave him, too, a desire to see this capital,
and it was not so very great a detour from the road to Venice.
He entered Paris by the suburb of St. Marceau,
and fancied that he was in the dirtiest village.
of Westphalia. Scarcely was Candide arrived at his inn, then he found himself attacked by a slight
illness, caused by fatigue, and as he had a very large diamond on his finger, and the people of the
inn had taken notice of a prodigiously heavy box among his baggage, there were two physicians
to attend him, although he had never sent for them, and two devotees who warmed his broths.
I remember, Martin said.
Also to have been sick at Paris in my first voyage.
I was very poor, thus I had neither friends, devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered.
However, what with physic and bleeding, Candide's illness became serious.
A parson of the neighborhood came with great meekness to ask for a bill for the other world
payable to the bearer. Candide would do nothing for him, but the devotees assured him it was the new
fashion. He answered that he was not a man of fashion. Martin wished to throw the priest out of the window.
The priest swore that they would not bury Candide. Martin swore that he would bury the priest
if he continued to be troublesome. The quarrel grew heated. Martin took him by the shoulders and roughly
turned him out of doors, which occasioned great scandal and a lawsuit.
Candide got well again, and during his convalescence, he had very good company to sup with him.
They played high.
Candide wondered why it was that the ace never came to him, but Martin was not at all astonished.
Among those who did him the honors of the town was a little Abbe of Perigord, one of those
busy bodies who are ever alert, officious, forward, fawning, and complacent, who watch for strangers
in their passage to the capital, tell them the scandalous history of the town, and offer pleasure at all
prices. He first took Candide and Martin to La Comedee, where they played a new tragedy. Candide happened
to be seated near some of the fashionable wits. This did not prevent his shedding tears at the well-acted
scenes. One of these critics at his side said to him between the acts,
Your tears are misplaced. That is a shocking actress. The actor who plays with her is yet
worse, and the play is still worse than the actors. The author does not know a word of Arabic,
yet the scene is in Arabia. Moreover, he is a man that does not believe in innate ideas,
and I will bring you tomorrow twenty pamphlets written against him.
How many dramas have you in France, sir? said Candide to the Abbe.
Five or six thousand.
What a number, said Candide.
How many are good?
Fifteen or sixteen, replied the other.
What a number!
Said Martin. Candide was very pleased with an actress who played Queen Elizabeth in a somewhat insipid tragedy sometimes acted.
That actress, said he to Martin,
Pleases me much. She has a likeness to Miss Conaganda. I should be very glad to wait upon her.
The Paragordian Abbe offered to introduce him. Candide brought up in Germany, asked what was the etiquette,
and how they treated queens of England in France.
It is necessary to make distinctions, said the Abbe.
In the provinces one takes them to the inn.
In Paris, one respects them when they are beautiful
and throws them on the highway when they are dead.
Queens on the highway, said Candide.
Yes, truly, said Martin.
The Abbe is right.
I was in Paris when Miss Monimee passed, as the saying is, from this life to the other.
She was refused what people call the honors of sepulture.
That is to say, of rotting with all the beggars of the neighborhood in an ugly cemetery,
she was interred all alone by her company at the corner of the Rue de Bourgeoisieone,
which ought to trouble her much, for she thought nobly.
That was very uncivil, said Candide.
What would you have?
Said Martin.
These people are made thus.
Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities.
You will find them in the government, in the law courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation.
It is true that they always laugh in Paris, said Candide.
yes said the abb but it means nothing for they complain of everything with great fits of laughter they even do the most detestable things while laughing
who said candide is that great pig who spoke so ill of the peace at which i wept and of the actors who gave me so much pleasure he is a bad character answered the abbot
who gains his livelihood by saying evil of all plays and of all books.
He hates whatever succeeds as the eunuchs hate those who enjoy.
He is one of the serpents of literature who nourish themselves on dirt and spite.
He is a folliculaire.
What is a follicular? said Candide.
It is, said the Abbe,
A pamphleteer, a freron!
Thus Candide, Martin, and the Paragordian conversed on the staircase, while watching everyone go out after the performance.
Although I am eager to see Conaganda again, said Candide, I should like to sup with Miss Claren, for she appears to me admirable.
The Abbe was not the man to approach Miss Claron, who saw her.
only good company.
She is engaged for this evening, he said.
But I shall have the honor to take you to the house of a lady of quality,
and there you will know Paris as if you have lived in it for years.
Candide, who was naturally curious,
let himself be taken to this lady's house at the end of the Fowborg Saint-honore.
The company was occupied in playing faro,
A dozen melancholy punters held each in his hand a little pack of cards, a bad record of his misfortunes.
Profound silence reigned, pallor was on the faces of the punters, anxiety on that of the banker,
and the hostess, sitting near the unpidying banker, noticed with Link's eyes all the doubled and other increased stakes,
as each player dogs eared his cards.
She made them turn down the edges again with severe but polite attention.
She showed no vexation for fear of losing her customers.
The lady insisted upon being called the Marchioness of Pirolignac.
Her daughter, aged 15, was among the punters and notified with a covert glance the cheatings
of the poor people who tried to repair the cruelties of fate.
The Paragordian Abbey, Candide and Martin, entered.
No one rose, no one saluted them, no one looked at them.
All were profoundly occupied with their cards.
The Baroness of Thunderton Trunk was more polite, said Candide.
However, the Abbe whispered to the marchioness, who half rose,
honored Candide with a gracious smile, and Martin with a condescending nod.
She gave a seat and a pack of cards to Candide,
who lost 50,000 francs,
in two deals, after which they supped very gaily, and everyone was astonished that Candide
was not moved by his loss. The servants said among themselves in the language of servants,
Some English lord is here this evening. The supper passed at first, like most Parisian suppers,
in silence, followed by a noise of words which could not be distinguished, then with pleasantries
of which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much
evil-speaking, they also discussed new books.
"'Have you seen?' said the Paragordian Abbe.
"'The romance of Seer Graschat, Doctor of Divinity.'
"'Yes,' answered one of the guests.
"'But I have not been able to finish it. We have a crowd of silly writings, but all to
together do not approach the impertinence of Garshot Doctor of Divinity,
I am so satiated with the great number of detestable books,
with which we are inundated, that I am reduced to punting at Pharaoh.
And the melange of Archdeacon Trebley, what do you say of that?
said the Abbe.
Ah, said the marchioness of Periliniac.
the wearisome mortal, how curiously he repeats to you all that the world knows,
how heavily he discusses that which is not worth the trouble of lightly remarking upon,
how without wit he appropriates the wit of others,
how he spoils what he steals, how he disgusts me,
but he will disgust me no longer,
it is enough to have read a few of the archdeacon's pages.
There was at table a wise man of taste who supported the marchioness.
They spoke afterwards of tragedies.
The lady asked why there were tragedies which were sometimes played and which could not be read.
The man of taste explained very well how a piece could have some interest and have almost no merit.
He proved in a few words that it was not enough to introduce one or two of those situations
which one finds in all romances, and which always seduced the spectator,
but that it was necessary to be new without being odd, often sublime and always natural,
to know the human heart, and to make it speak, to be a great poet without allowing any person
in the piece to appear to be a poet, to know language perfectly, to speak it with purity,
with continuous harmony and without rhythm ever taking anything from sense.
"'Whoever,' added he,
"'does not observe all these rules can produce one or two tragedies,
"'applauded at a theatre.
"'But he will never be counted in the ranks of good writers.
"'There are very few good tragedies.
"'Some are idols, in dialogue, well written, and well rhymed.
Others, political reasonings which lull to sleep, or amplifications which repel.
Others demoniac dreams in barbarous style, interrupted in sequence with long apostrophes to the gods,
because they do not know how to speak to men, with false maxims, with bombastic commonplaces.
Candide listened with attention to this discourse
and conceived a great idea of the speaker,
and as the Marchioness had taken care to place him beside her,
he leaned toward her and took the liberty of asking,
who was the man who had spoken so well.
He is a scholar, said the lady.
Who does not play, whom the Abbe sometimes brings to supper.
He is perfectly at home among tragedies.
and books, and he has written a tragedy which was hissed, and a book of which nothing has ever been
seen outside his bookseller's shop, accepting the copy which he dedicated to me.
The great man, said Candide, he is another pangloss.
Then turning towards him, he said, sir, you think doubtless that all is for the best in the moral and
physical world, and that nothing could be otherwise than it is.
I, sir, answered the scholar, I know nothing of all that.
I find that all goes awry with me, that no one knows either what is his rank, nor what is
his condition, what he does, nor what he ought to do, and that except supper which is
always gay, and where there appears to be enough concord, all the rest of the time is
passed in impertinent quarrels, Jancyanist against mullinist, parliament against the church,
men of letters against men of letters, courtesans against courtesans, financiers against the
people, wives against husbands, relatives against relatives. It is easy.
eternal war.
I have seen the worst,
Candide replied.
But a wise man,
who since has had the misfortune to be hanged,
taught me that all is marvelously well.
These are but the shadows on a beautiful picture.
Your hanged man mocked the world, said Martin.
The shadows are horrible blots.
They are men who make the blots.
said Candide.
And they cannot be dispensed with?
It is not their fault, then, said Martin.
Most of the punters who understood nothing of this language drank.
And Martin reasoned with the scholar,
and Candide related some of his adventures to his hostess.
After supper, the Marchioness took Candide into her boudoir
and made him sit upon a sofa.
Ah, well, said she to him.
"'You love desperately Miss Kunaganda of Thunderton Trunk?'
"'Yes, madame,' answered Candide.
The Marchioness replied to him with a tender smile.
"'You answer me like a young man from Westphalia.
A Frenchman would have said,
"'It is true that I have loved Miss Conaganda,
"'but seeing you, madame, I think I no longer love her.'
"'Alasse, madame,' said Candide,
I will answer you as you wish.
Your passion for her, said the Marchioness.
Commenced by picking up her handkerchief.
I wish that you would pick up my garter.
With all my heart, said Candide, and he picked it up.
But I wish that you would put it on, said the lady, and Candide put it on.
You see, said she,
You are a foreigner. I sometimes make my Parisian lovers languish for 15 days,
but I give myself to you the first night, because one must do the honors of one's country
to a young man from Westphalia."
The lady, having perceived two enormous diamonds upon the hands of the young foreigner,
praised them with such good faith that from Candide's fingers they passed to her own.
Candide, returning with the Paragordian Abbe, felt some remorse in having been unfaithful to Miss Conagunda.
The Abbe sympathized in his trouble.
He had had but a light part of the fifty thousand francs lost at play,
and of the value of the two brilliance, half given, half extorted.
His design was to profit as much as he could by the advantages
which the acquaintance of Candide could procure for him.
He spoke much of Kunaganda, and Candide told him that he should ask forgiveness of that beautiful one for his infidelity when he should see her in Venice.
The Abbe redoubled his politeness and attentions and took a tender interest in all that Candide said, in all that he did, in all that he wished to do.
Oh, so, sir, you have a rendezvous at Venice?
Yes, Monsieur Abbe, answered Camus.
Indeed, it is absolutely necessary that I go to meet Miss Conaganda.
And then the pleasure of talking of that which he loved induced him to relate,
according to his custom, part of his adventures with the fair Westphalian.
I believe, said the Abbe, that Miss Conaganda has a great deal of wit,
and that she writes charming letters.
I have never received any from her.
said Candide. For being expelled from the castle on her account, I had not an opportunity for writing to her.
Soon after that, I heard she was dead. Then I found her alive. Then I lost her again.
And last of all, I sent an express to her 2,500 leagues from here, and I wait for an answer.
The Abbe listened attentively, and seemed to be in a brown study.
He soon took his leave of the two foreigners after a most tender embrace.
The following day, Candide received, on waking, a letter couched in these terms.
My very dear love, for eight days I have been ill in this town.
I learn that you are here.
I would fly to your arms if I could but move.
I was informed of your passage at Bordeaux, where I left faithful Cacombo and the old woman,
who are to follow me very soon.
The governor of Buenos Aires has taken all, but there remains to me your heart.
Come, your presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.
This charming, this unhoped-for letter, transported Candide with an inexpressible joy,
and the illness of his dear Conaganda overwhelmed him with grief.
Divided between those two passions,
he took his gold and his diamonds and hurried away,
with Martin to the hotel where Miss Conaganda was lodged.
He entered her room trembling,
his heart palpitating, his voice sobbing.
He wished to open the curtains of the bed and asked for a light.
Take care what you do, said the servant made,
The light hurts her.
And immediately she drew the curtain again.
My dear Conaganda, said Candide, weeping.
How are you?
If you cannot see me, at least speak to me.
She cannot speak, said the maid.
The lady then put a plump hand out from the bed,
and Candide bathed it with his tears,
and afterwards filled it with diamonds,
leaving a bag of gold upon the easy-chair.
In the midst of these transports, in came an officer,
followed by the Abbe and a file of soldiers.
There, said he, are the two suspected foreigners.
And at the same time he ordered them to be seized and carried to prison.
Travelers are not treated thus in El Dorado, said Candide.
I am more a Manichaean.
now than ever, said Martin.
But pray, sir, where are you going to carry us?
said Candide.
To a dungeon, answered the officer.
Martin, having recovered himself a little, judged that the lady who acted the part of
Kunagunda was a cheat, that the Paragordian Abbey was a knave who had imposed upon
the honest simplicity of Candide, and that the officer was another knave.
whom they might easily silence.
Candide, advised by Martin, an impatient to see the real Conagunda,
rather than expose himself before a court of justice,
proposed to the officer to give him three small diamonds,
each worth about three thousand pistoles.
"'Ah, sir,' said the man with the ivory baton,
"'had you committed all the imaginable crimes,
"'you would be to me the most honest man in the world.
"'Three diamonds!'
Each were three thousand pistoles, sir, instead of carrying you to jail, I would lose my life to serve you.
There are orders for arresting all foreigners, but leave it to me. I have a brother in Dieppe in Normandy.
I'll conduct you tither, and if you have a diamond to give him, he'll take as much care of you as I would.
And why? said Candide.
Should all foreigners be arrested?
It is, the Paragordian Abbe then made answer,
because a poor beggar of the country of Atrabati heard some foolish things said,
this induced him to commit a parasite,
not such as that of 1610 in the month of May,
but such as that of 1594 in the month of December,
and such as others which have been committed in other,
years and other months by other poor devils who had heard nonsense spoken the officer then explained
what the abbey meant ah the monsters cried candide what horrors among a people who dance and sing
is there no way of getting quickly out of this country where monkeys provoke tigers i have seen
no bears in my country, but men I have beheld nowhere except an El Dorado.
In the name of God, sir, conduct me to Venice, where I am to await Miss Conaganda.
I can conduct you no further than Lower Normandy, said the officer.
Immediately he ordered the irons to be struck off, acknowledged himself mistaken, sent away his men,
set out with Candide and Martin for Dieppe and left them in the care of his brother.
There was then a small Dutch ship in the harbor, the Norman, who by the virtue of three more diamonds,
had become the most subservient of men, put Candide and his attendants on board a vessel
that was just ready to set sail for Portsmouth in England.
This was not the way to Venice, but Candide thought he had made his way out of hell,
and reckoned that he would soon have an opportunity for resuming his journey.
End of Chapter 22, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 23 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
Candide and Martin touched upon the coast of England and what they saw there.
A pangloss, pangloss.
"'Ah, Martin, Martin, oh, my dear Conaganda,
"'what sort of world is this?'
"'said Candide on board the Dutch ship.
"'Something very foolish and abominable,' said Martin.
"'You know England?
"'Are they as foolish there as in France?'
"'It is another kind of folly,' said Martin.
"'You know that these two names,
are at war for a few acres of snow in Canada,
and that they spend over this beautiful war
much more than Canada is worth.
To tell you exactly whether there are more people
fit to send to a madhouse in one country than the other
is what my imperfect intelligence will not permit.
I only know in general that the people we are going to see,
are very at Trebilious.
Talking thus they arrived at Portsmouth.
The coast was lined with crowds of people
whose eyes were fixed on a fine man,
kneeling with his eyes bandaged,
on board one of the men of war in the harbor.
Four soldiers stood opposite to this man.
Each of them fired three balls at his head,
with all the calmness in the world,
and the whole assembly went away,
very well satisfied.
What is all this? said Candide.
And what demon is it that exercises his empire in this country?
He then asked who was that fine man who had been killed with so much ceremony.
They answered, he was an admiral.
And why kill this admiral?
It is because he did not kill a sufficient number of men himself,
He gave battle to a French admiral, and it has been proved that he was not near enough to him.
But, replied Candide,
the French admiral was as far from the English admiral?
There is no doubt of it, but in this country it is found good from time to time,
to kill one admiral to encourage the others.
Candide was so shocked and bewildered by what he saw and heard
that he would not set foot on shore
and he made a bargain with the Dutch skipper
were he even to rob him like the Suriname captain
to conduct him without delay to Venice.
The skipper was ready in two days.
They coasted France, they passed in sight of Lisbon
and Candide trembled.
They passed through the straits
and entered the Mediterranean.
At last they landed at Venice.
God be praised, said Candide, embracing Martin.
It is here that I shall see again, my beautiful conagunda.
I trust Cacombo as myself.
All is well.
All will be well.
All goes as well as possible.
End of Chapter 23, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 24 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Librovat's recording is in the public domain.
Of Paquette and Friar Girofle.
Upon their arrival at Venice, Candide went to search for Cacombo at every inn and coffee house,
and among all the ladies of pleasure, but to no purpose.
He sent every day to inquire on all the ships that came in, but there was no
No news of Cacombo.
What?
said he to Martin.
I have had time to voyage from Suriname to Bordeaux.
To go from Bordeaux to Paris.
From Paris to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Portsmouth, to coast along Portugal in Spain,
to cross the whole Mediterranean, to spend some months,
and yet the beautiful Kanaganda has not arrived.
Instead of her, I have only been.
met a Parisian wench and a Paragordian Abbe.
Gunaganda is dead without doubt, and there is nothing for me but to die.
Alas, how much better it would have been for me to have remained in the paradise of El Dorado,
than to come back to this cursed Europe.
You are in the right, my dear Martin.
All is misery and illusion.
He fell into a deep melancholy.
and neither went to see the opera nor any of the other diversions of the carnival.
Nay, he was proof against the temptations of all the ladies.
You are in truth very simple, said Martin to him.
If you imagine that a mongrel valet, who has five or six millions in his pocket,
we'll go to the other end of the world to seek your mistress and bring her to you to venerable.
If he find her, he will keep her to himself.
If he do not find her, he will get another.
I advise you to forget your valet cacambo and your mistress Kunaganda.
Martin was not consoling.
Candide's melancholy increased, and Martin continued to prove to him
that there was very little virtue or happiness up on earth,
except perhaps in El Dorado, where nobody could gain admittance.
While they were disputing on this important subject and waiting for Conaganda,
Candide saw a young Thietan friar in St. Mark's Piazza, holding a girl on his arm.
The Thetan looked fresh, colored, plump, and vigorous.
His eyes were sparkling, his air assured, his look lofty, and his step bold.
The girl was very pretty and sang.
She looked amorously at her theater, and from time to time pinched his fat cheeks.
"'At least you will allow me,' said Candide to Martin,
"'that these two are happy.
Hitherto I have met with none but unfortunate people in the whole habitable globe,
except in El Dorado.
But as to this pair, I would venture to lay a wager that they are
very happy.
I lay you, they are not, said Martin.
We need only ask them to dine with us, said Candide, and you will see whether I am mistaken.
Immediately he accosted them, presented his compliments, and invited them to his inn to eat
some macaroni with lombard partridges and caviar, and to drink some multipalciano,
L'Achrome Christi, Cyprus, and Samos wine.
The girl blushed.
The Thiatin accepted the invitation, and she followed him,
casting her eyes on Candide with confusion and surprise,
and dropping a few tears.
No sooner had she set foot in Candide's apartment, then she cried out.
Ah, Mr. Candide does not know Piquet again.
Candide had not viewed her as yet.
yet with attention, his thoughts being entirely taken up with Kanaganda, but recollecting
her as she spoke, "'Alas!' said he,
"'My poor child, is it you who reduced Dr. Pangloss to the beautiful condition
in which I saw him?'
"'Alas, it was I, sir, indeed,' answered Paget.
"'I see that you have heard all. I have been informed of the frightful disasters that
befell the family of my lady baroness and the fair conagunda. I swear to you that my fate has been
scarcely less sad. I was very innocent when you knew me. A grey friar who was my confessor
easily seduced me. The consequences were terrible. I was obliged to quit the castle
some time after the Baron had sent you away with kicks on the backside.
If a famous surgeon had not taken compassion on me, I should have died.
For some time, I was this surgeon's mistress, merely out of gratitude.
His wife, who was mad with jealousy, beat me every day unmercifully.
She was a fury.
The surgeon was one of the ugliest of men.
and I the most wretched of women to be continually beaten for a man I did not love.
You know, sir, what a dangerous thing it is for an ill-natured woman to be married to a doctor.
In sense that the behavior of his wife, he one day gave her so effectual a remedy
to cure her from a slight cold that she died two hours after in most horrid convulsions.
The wife's relations prosecuted the husband.
He took flight, and I was thrown in jail.
My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been good-looking.
The judge set me free on condition that he succeeded the surgeon.
I was soon supplanted by a rival, turned out of doors quite destitute,
and obliged to continue this abominable trade,
which appears so pleasant to you men,
while to us women it is the utmost abyss of misery.
I have come to exercise the profession at Venice.
Ah, sir, if you could only imagine what it is to be obliged to caress indifferently
an old merchant, a lawyer, a monk, a gondolier, an abbé,
to be exposed to abuse and insults,
to be often reduced to borrowing a petticoat,
only to go and have it raised by a disagreeable man,
to be robbed by one of what one has earned from another,
to be subject to the extortions of the officers of justice,
and to have in prospect only a frightful old age,
a hospital, and a dunghill,
you would conclude that I am one of the most unhappy creatures in the world.
Packett thus opened her heart to honest candide,
in the presence of Martin, who said to his friend,
You see that already I have won half the wager.
Friar Girophilae stayed in the dining room
and drank a glass or two of wine while he was waiting for dinner.
But, said Candide to Paquette,
You looked so gay and content when I met you.
You sang and you behaved so lovingly to the theater
that you seem to me as happy as you pretend to be now the reverse.
Ah, sir, answered Piquette.
This is one of the miseries of the trade.
Yesterday I was robbed and beaten by an officer,
yet today I must put on good humor to please a friar.
Candide wanted no more convincing.
He owned that Martin was in the right.
They sat down to table with Paget and the theater.
The repast was entertaining, and towards the end they conversed with all confidence.
"'Father,' said Candide to the friar,
"'You appear to me to enjoy a state that all the world might envy. The flower of health shines in your face.
Your expression makes plain your happiness. You have a very pretty girl for your recreation,
and you seem well satisfied with your state as a theatin.'
"'My faith, sir,' said Friarch Girofle,
"'I wish that all the theatins were at the bottom of the sea.
I have been tempted a hundred times to set fire to the convent,
and go and become a Turk.
My parents forced me at the age of fifteen
to put on this detestable habit
to increase the fortune of a cursed elder brother,
whom God confound.
Jealousy, discord, and fury dwell in the convent,
It is true I have preached a few bad sermons that have brought me in a little money, of which the prior stole half, while the rest serves to maintain my girls.
But when I return at night to the monastery, I am ready to dash my head against the walls of the dormitory, and all my fellows are in the same case.
Martin turned towards Candide with his usual coolness.
Well, said he,
Have I not won the whole wager?
Candide gave 2,000 piastres to Paquette
and 1,000 to friar Girafelais.
I'll answer for it, said he,
that with this they will be happy.
I do not believe it at all,
said Martin.
You will, perhaps, with these piastres only render them the more unhappy.
Let that be as it may, said Candide.
But one thing consoles me.
I see that we often meet with those whom we expected never to see more,
so that perhaps, as I have found my red sheep and Paquette,
it may well be that I shall also find Conagunda.
I wish, said Martin.
She may one day make you very happy, but I doubt it very much.
You are very hard of belief, said Candide.
I have lived, said Martin.
You see those gondoliers, said Candide.
Are they not perpetually singing?
You do not see them, said Martin.
At home with their wendilers.
wives and brats. The doge has his troubles. The gondoliers have theirs. It is true that all
things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that of a doge, but I believe the difference
to be so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining. People talk, said Candide,
of the senator, Pococurante, who lives in that fine palace on the Brenta,
where he entertains foreigners in the politest manner.
They pretend that this man has never felt any uneasiness.
I should be glad to see such a rarity, said Martin.
Candide immediately sent to ask the Lord Pocoquireante permission to wait upon him the next day.
End of Chapter 24. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 25 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel. This Libravox recording is in the
public domain. The visit to Lord Poco Curante, a noble Venetian.
Candide and Martin went in a gondola on the Brenta and arrived at the palace of the noble
Signor Poco Curante. The gardens laid out with tape.
were adorned with fine marble statues. The palace was beautifully built. The master of the house was a man of
60 and very rich. He received the two travelers with polite indifference, which put Candide a little out
of countenance, but was not at all disagreeable to Martin. First, two pretty girls, very neatly dressed,
served them with chocolate, which was frothed exceedingly well. Candide could not refrain from command
mending their beauty, grace, and address.
They are good enough creatures, said the senator.
I make them lie with me sometimes, for I am very tired of the ladies of the town,
of their coquetrys, of their jealousies, of their quarrels, of their humors,
of their pettinesses, of their prides, of their follies,
and of the sonnets which one must make or have made for them,
but after all, these two girls begin to weary me.
After breakfast, Candide walking into a long gallery,
was surprised by the beautiful pictures.
He asked by what master were the two first.
They are by Raphael, said the senator.
I bought them at a great.
Great price out of vanity, some years ago.
They are said to be the finest things in Italy, but they do not please me at all.
The colors are too dark.
The figures are not sufficiently rounded, nor in good relief.
The draperies, in no way, resemble stuffs.
In a word, whatever may be said, I do not find there a truble.
imitation of nature. I only care for a picture when I think I see nature itself, and there are
none of this sort. I have a great many pictures, but I prize them very little. While they were
waiting for dinner, Poco Curante ordered a concert. Candide found the music delicious.
This noise, said the senator.
amuse one for half an hour, but if it were to last longer, it would grow tiresome to everybody,
though they durst not own it. Music today is only the art of executing difficult things,
and that which is only difficult cannot please long. Perhaps I should be fonder of the opera
if they had not found the secret of making it a monster with shocks me.
Let, who will, go to see bad tragedies set to music,
where the scenes are contrived for no other end
than to introduce two or three songs ridiculously out of place,
to show off an actress's voice.
Let who will, or who can, die away with pleasure,
at the sight of a eunuch, quavering the role of Caesar, or of Cato, and strutting awkwardly upon
the stage. For my part, I have long since renounced those paltry entertainments
which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are purchased so dearly by sovereigns.
Candide disputed the point a little, but with discretion.
Martin was entirely of the senator's opinion.
They sat down the table, and after an excellent dinner, they went into the library.
Candide, seeing a Homer magnificently bound, commended the virtuoso on his good taste.
There, said he, is a book that was once the delight of the great pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany.
It is not mine.
answered Pococurante coolly.
They used at one time to make me believe that I took a pleasure in reading him,
but that continual repetition of battles so extremely like one another,
those gods that are always active without doing anything decisive,
that Helen, who is the cause of the war and who yet scarcely appears in the peace,
that Troy, so long besieged without being taken,
all these together caused me great weariness.
I have sometimes asked learned men
whether they were not as weary as I of that work.
Those who were sincere have owned to me
that the poem made them fall asleep.
Yet it was necessary to have it in their library
as a monument of antiquity,
or like those rusty medals
which are no longer of use in commerce.
But your excellency does not think thus of Virgil,
said Candide.
I grant, said the senator,
that the second, fourth,
and sixth books of his aneered are excellent.
But as for his post,
Aeus Aeneas, his strong Clonthus, his friend Achaetes, his little Ascanius, his silly king Latinus, his bourgeois Amata, his insipid lavinia. I think there can be nothing more flat and disagreeable. I prefer Tassau a great deal, or even the sopriced tales of Ariosto.
"'May I presume to ask you, sir,' said Candide,
"'whether you do not receive a great deal of pleasure from reading Horace?'
"'There are maxims in this writer,' answered Poco Curante,
"'from which a man of the world may reap great benefit,
"'and being written in energetic verse,
"'they are more easily impressed upon the memory.
"'But I care little for,
for his journey to Brundusium and his account of a bad dinner,
or of his low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words he says were full of poisonous filth,
and another whose language was imbued with vinegar.
I have read with much distaste, his indelicate verses against old women and witches,
nor do I see any merit in telling his friend Messanus that if he will but rank him in the choir of lyric poets,
his lofty head shall touch the stars.
Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.
For my part, I read only to please myself.
I like only that which serves my purpose.
Candide, having been educated never to judge for himself, was much surprised at what he heard.
Martin found there was a good deal of reason in Poco Curante's remarks.
Oh, here is Cicero, said Candide.
Here is the great man whom I fancy you are never tired of reading.
I never read him, replied the Venetian.
What is it to me whether he pleads for Rebirius or Cluentius?
I try causes enough myself.
His philosophical work seemed to me better,
but when I found that he doubted of everything,
I concluded that I knew as much as he,
and that I had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.
Ah, here are four score volumes of the Academy.
me of sciences, cried Martin.
Perhaps there is something valuable in this collection.
There might be, said poco curante.
If only one of those rakers of rubbish had shown how to make pins, but in all these volumes
there is nothing but chimerical systems and not a single useful thing.
And what dramatic works I see here, said Candide, in Italian, Spanish, and French?
Yes, replied the Senator.
There are three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything.
As to those collections of sermons, which altogether are not worth a single page of Seneca,
and those huge volumes of theology,
you may well imagine that neither I nor anyone else ever opens them.
Martin saw some shelves filled with English books.
I have a notion, said he,
that a Republican must be greatly pleased with most of these books,
which are written with a spirit of freedom.
Yes, yes, answered.
Poco Curante.
It is noble to write as one thinks.
This is the privilege of humanity.
In all our Italy, we write only what we do not think.
Those who inhabit the country of the Caesars and the Antoninus's
dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a Dominican friar.
I should be pleased with the liberty which inspired.
the English genius, if passion and party's spirit did not corrupt all that is estimable in this precious liberty."
Candide, observing a Milton, asked whether he did not look upon this author as a great man.
"'Who?' said Poco Curante.
"'That barbarian who writes a long commentary in ten books of harsh verse,
on the first chapter of Genesis, that coarse imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation,
and who, while Moses represents the eternal producing the world by a word, makes the Messiah
take a great pair of compasses from the armory of heaven to circumscribe his work?
How can I have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell?
and the devil, who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad and other times into a pygmy,
who makes him repeat the same things, a hundred times, who makes him dispute on theology,
who by a serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of firearms,
represents the devil cannon-nodding in heaven?
Neither I nor any man in Italy could take pleasure in those melancholy extravagances.
And the marriage of sin and death, and the snakes brought forth by sin,
are enough to turn the stomach of anyone with the least taste.
And his long description of a pest house is good only for a grave-digger.
This obscure, whimsical and disagreeable poem was despised upon its first publication, and I only treat it now as it was treated in its own country by contemporaries.
For the matter of that, I say what I think, and I care very little whether others think as I do.
Candide was grieved at this speech, for he had a respect for Homer and was fond of Milton.
Alas, said he softly to Martin,
I am afraid that this man holds our German poets in very great contempt.
There would be not much harm in that, said Martin.
Oh, what a superior man, said Candide,
below his breath.
What a great genius is this poco curante.
Nothing can please him.
After their survey of the library, they went down into the garden,
where Candide praised its several beauties.
I know of nothing in so bad a taste, said the master.
All you see here is merely trifling.
After tomorrow, I will have it planted with a nobler design.
"'Well,' said Candide to Martin when they had taken their leave,
"'you will agree that this is the happiest of mortals,
"'for he is above everything he possesses.'
"'But you do not see,' answered Martin,
"'that he is disgusted with all he possesses.
"'Plateau observed a long while ago
"'that those stomachs are not the best
"'that reject all sorts of food.
But is there not a pleasure, said Candide, in criticizing everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?
That is to say, replied Martin, that there is some pleasure in having no pleasure.
Well, well, said Candide, I find that I shall be the only happy man when I am blessed with the sight of
my dear Kunaganda.
It is always well to hope, said Martin.
However, the days and the weeks passed.
Cacombo did not come, and Candide was so overwhelmed with grief that he did not even reflect
that Peket and friar Giroflay did not return to thank him.
End of Chapter 25.
Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter 26
Of a supper which Candide and Martin took with six strangers and who they were.
One evening that Candide and Martin were going to sit down to supper with some foreigners
who lodged in the same inn, a man whose complexion was as black as soot came behind
Candide, and taking him by the arms, said,
Get yourself ready to go along with us. Do not fail.
Upon this he turned round and saw, Cacombo.
Nothing but the sight of Conaganda could have astonished and delighted him more.
He was on the point of going mad with joy.
He embraced his dear friend.
Conaganda is here, without doubt.
Where is she?
Take me to her that I may die of joy in her company.
"'Kuneganda is not here,' said Kacombo.
"'She is at Constantinople.'
"'Oh, heavens! At Constantinople!
But were she in China I would fly tither? Let us be off.'
"'We shall set out after supper,' replied Kacombo.
"'I can tell you nothing more. I am a slave. My master awaits me.
I must serve him at table. Speak not a word. Eat, and then get ready.'
Candy, distracted between joy and grief, delighted at seeing his faithful agent again,
astonished at finding him a slave, filled with the fresh hope of recovering his mistress,
his heart palpitating, his understanding confused, sat down to table with Martin,
who saw all these scenes quite unconcerned, and with six strangers who had come to spend
the carnival at Venice.
Kakamba waited at table upon one of the strangers.
Towards the end of the entertainment he drew near his master and whispered in his ear.
Sire, your majesty may start when you please.
The vessel is ready.
On saying these words, he went out.
The company, in great surprise, looked at one another without speaking a word,
when another domestic approached his master and said to him,
"'Sire, your majesty's chase is at Padua, and the boat is ready.'
The master gave a nod, and the servant went away.
The company all stared at one another again, and their surprise redoubled.
A third valet came up to a third stranger, saying,
"'Sire, believe me, your majesty ought not to stay here any longer.
I am going to get everything ready.'
And immediately he disappeared.
Candide and Martin did not doubt that this was a masquerade of the carnival.
Then a fourth domestic said to a fourth master.
Your majesty may depart when you please.
Saying this, he went away like the rest.
The fifth valet said the same thing to the fifth master,
but the sixth valet spoke differently to the sixth stranger who sat near Candide.
He said to him,
Faith, sire, they will no longer give credit to your majesty, nor to me, and we may perhaps both of us be put in jail this very night.
Therefore, I will take care of myself. Adieu.
The servants being all gone, the six strangers, with Candide and Martin, remained in a profound silence.
At length, Candide broke it.
Gentlemen, said he, this is a very much.
very good joke indeed, but why should you all be kings? For me, I own that neither Martin nor I
is a king. Cacombo's master then gravely answered in Italian, I am not at all joking. My name
is Akhamed III. I was a grand sultan many years. I dethroned my brother. My nephew dethroned
me. My viziers were beheaded. And I,
am condemned to end my days in the old Saraglio. My nephew, the great Sultan Mahmoud,
permits me to travel some times for my health, and I am come to spend the carnival at Venice.
A young man who sat next to Ahmed, spoke then as follows.
My name is Ivan. I was once emperor of all the rushes, but was dethroned in my cradle. My parents
were confined in prison, and I was educated there, yet I am sometimes allowed to travel in company
with persons who act as guards, and I am come to spend the carnival at Venice.
The third said, I am Charles Edward, king of England. My father has resigned all his legal
rights to me. I have fought in defense of them, and above 800 of my adherents have been hanged
drawn and quartered. I have been confined in prison. I am going to Rome, to pay a visit to the king,
my father, who was dethroned as well as myself, and my grandfather, I am come to spend the
carnival at Venice. The fourth spoke thus in his turn. I am the king of Poland. The fortune of war
has stripped me of my hereditary dominions. My father underwent the same vicissitude.
I resign myself to Providence in the same manner as Sultan Akmeh, the Emperor Ivan,
then King Charles Edward, whom God long preserve, and I am come to the carnival at Venice.
The fifth said, I am King of Poland also. I have been twice dethroned,
but Providence has given me another country, where I have done more good than all the Samaritan
kings were ever capable of doing on the banks of the Vistula. I resign myself likewise to
Providence, and am come to pass the carnival at Venice. It was now the sixth monarch's turn
to speak. Gentlemen, said he, I am not so great a prince as any of you. However, I am a king.
I am Theodore, elected king of Corsica. I had the title of Majesty. I had the title of Majesty.
and now I am scarcely treated as a gentleman.
I have coined money, and now am not worth a farthing.
I have had two secretaries of state,
and now I have scarce a valet.
I have seen myself on a throne,
and I have seen myself upon straw in a common jail in London.
I am afraid that I shall meet with the same treatment here,
though, like your majesties,
I am come to see the carnival,
at Venice.
The other five kings listened to this speech with generous compassion.
Each of them gave twenty sequins to King Theodore to buy him clothes and linen,
and Candide made him a present of a diamond worth two thousand sequins.
Who can this private person be? said the five kings to one another,
who is able to give, and really has given a hundred times as much as any of us.
Just as they rose from table, in came four serene highnesses,
who had also been stripped of their territories by the fortune of war,
and were come to spend the carnival at Venice.
But Candide paid no regard to these newcomers,
his thoughts were entirely employed on his voyage to Constantinople
in search of his beloved Conaganda.
End of Chapter 26, recording by John Van Stan,
Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 27 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieber Fox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter 27.
Candide's voyage to Constantinople.
The faithful Cacombo had already prevailed upon the Turkish skipper,
who was to conduct the Sultan Ahmed to Constantinople,
to receive Candide and Martin on his ship.
They both embarked after having made the ship.
their obeisance to his miserable highness.
You see, said Candide to Martin on the way,
We supped with six dethroned kings,
And of those six there was one to whom I gave charity.
Perhaps there are many other princes yet more unfortunate.
For my part, I have only lost a hundred sheep,
And now I am flying into Kunaganda's arms.
My dear Martin, yet once more Pangloss was right,
All is for the best.
I wish it, answered Martin.
But, said Candide,
It was a very strange adventure we met with at Venice.
It has never before been seen or heard
that sixty-throned kings have supped together at a public inn.
It is not more extraordinary, said Martin.
Then most of the things that have happened to us,
It is a very common thing for kings to be dethroned,
and as for the honour we have had of supping in their company,
it is a trifle not worth our attention.
No sooner had Candide got on board the vessel,
then he flew to his old valet and friend Cacombo, and tenderly embraced him.
Well, said he,
What news of Conaganda?
Is she still a prodigy of beauty?
Does she love me still?
How is she?
Thou hast doubtless brought her a palace at Constantinople.
My dear master, answered Cicumbo.
Kanaganda washes dishes on the banks of the Propontes,
in the service of a prince who has very few dishes to wash.
She is a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign named Raghotsky,
to whom the Grand Turk allows three days.
crowns a day in his exile, but what is worse still is that she has lost her beauty and has become
horribly ugly.
Well, the handsome or ugly, replied Candide, I am a man of honor, and it is my duty to love her still,
but how came she to be reduced to so abject a state with the five or six millions that you took
to her?
Ah, said Cacombo,
"'was I not to give two millions
"'to signor Don Fernando di Barra and figuara
"'I masqueranees and Lamportos
"'I Susa, governor of Buenos Aires,
"'for permitting Miss Gunaganda to come away?
"'And did not a corsair bravely rob us
"'of all the rest?
"'Did not this corsair carry us to Cape Matapan,
"'to Milo, to Nicaria, to Sam.
to Petra, to the Dardanelles, to Mamora, to Scutari.
Kunaganda, and the old woman serve the prince I now mention to you,
and I am the slave to the dethroned sultan.
What a series of shocking calamities!
cried Candide.
But, after all, I have some diamonds left,
and I may easily pay Kunaganda's ransom.
Yet it is a pity that she has grown so up.
ugly. Then, turning towards Martin,
What do you think? said he.
Is most to be pitied, the Sultan Ahmed, the Emperor Ivan, King Charles Edward, or I?
How should I know? answered Martin.
I must see into your hearts to be able to tell.
Ah, said Candide.
If Pangloss were here, he could tell.
"'I know not,' said Martin.
"'In what sort of scales your pangloss would weigh the misfortunes of mankind
"'and set a just estimate on their sorrows.
"'All that I can presume to say is that there are millions of people upon earth
"'who have a hundred times more to complain of than King Charles Edward,
"'the Emperor Ivan, or the Sultan Archbett.
That may well be, said Candide.
In a few days, they reached the Bosphorus, and Candide began by paying a very high ransom for Cacombo.
Then, without losing time, he and his companions went on board a galley in order to search on the banks of the Propontas for his Conaganda, however ugly she might have become.
Among the crew there were two slaves who rode very badly, and to whose bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from a bull's-pizzle.
Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them with pity.
Their features, though greatly disfigured, had a slight resemblance to those of Pancloss and the unhappy Jesuit,
and Westphalian baron brother to Miss Conaganda.
This moved and saddened him.
He looked at them still more attentively.
Indeed, said he to Cacombo.
If I had not seen Master Pangloss hanged,
and if I had not had the misfortune to kill the Baron,
I should think it was they that were rowing.
At the names of the Baron and of Panclos,
the two galley slaves uttered a loud cry.
held fast by the seat and let drop their oars.
The captain ran up to them and redoubled his blows with the bull's pizzle.
Stop, stop, sir, cried Candide.
I will give you what money you please.
What, it is Candide? said one of the slaves.
What, it is Candide? said the other.
Do I dream?
cried Candide.
Am I awake?
Or am I on board a galley?
Is this the baron whom I killed?
Is this master Pangloss whom I saw hanged?
It is we.
It is we, answered they.
Well, is this the great philosopher?
Said Martin.
Ah, Captain, said Candide.
What ransom will you take for Monsieur de Thunderton trunk,
one of the first barons of the empire, and for Monsieur Pancelos, the profoundest metaphysician in Germany.
Dog of a Christian, answered the Levantine captain.
Since these two dogs of Christian slaves are barons and metaphysicians, which I doubt are not high
dignities in their country, you shall give me fifty thousand sequins.
You shall have them, sir.
"'Carry me back at once to Constantinople, and you shall receive the money directly.
But no, carry me first to Miss Kunaganda.'
Upon the first proposal made by Candide, however, the Levantine captain had already tacked about,
and made the crew ply their oars quicker than a bird cleaves the air.
Candide embraced the Baron and Pangloss a hundred times.
"'And how happened it, my dear Baron, that I did not kill him?'
you? And my dear Pangloss, how came you to life again after being hanged? And why are both of you
in a Turkish galley? And it is true that my dear sister is in this country? said the Baron.
Yes, answered Cacombo. Then I behold once more, my dear Candide, cried Pangloss.
Candide presented Martin and Cacombo to them.
They embraced each other, and all spoke at once.
The galley flew.
They were already in the port.
Instantly Candide sent for a Jew, to whom he sold for 50,000 sequence, a diamond worth
a hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to him by Abraham that he could give him no more.
He immediately paid the ransom for the Baron and Pancloss.
The latter threw himself at the feet.
of his deliverer and bathed them with his tears. The former thanked him with a nod and promised to
return him the money on the first opportunity. But is it indeed possible that my sister can be in Turkey?
Said he. Nothing is more possible, said Cacombo, since she scours the dishes in the service of a
Transylvanian prince. Candide sent directly for two Jews.
and sold them some more diamonds, and then they all set out together in another galley to deliver
Kanaganda from slavery.
End of Chapter 27, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 28 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Libravox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter 28
What happened to Candide, Conaganda, Pangloss, Martin, etc.
I ask your pardon once more, said Candide to the Baron.
Your pardoned, Reverend Father, for having run you through the body.
Say no more about it, answered the Baron.
I was a little too hasty I own, but since you wish to know by what fatality I came to be a galley slave,
I will inform you.
After I had been cured by the surgeon of the College of the wound you gave me,
I was attacked and carried off by a party of Spanish troops, who confined me in prison at Buenos Aires,
at the very time my sister was setting out thence.
I hast leave to return to Rome to the general of my order.
I was appointed chaplain to the French ambassador at Constantinople.
I had not been eight days in this employment, when one evening I met with a young Icoglan,
who was a very handsome fellow.
The weather was warm, the young man wanted to bathe, and I took this opportunity of bathing also.
I did not know that it was a capital crime for a Christian to be found naked with a young Muslim.
Akadi ordered me a hundred blows on the soles of the feet, and condemned me to the galleys.
I do not think there ever was a greater act of injustice.
But I should be glad to know how my sister came to be scullion.
to a Transylvanian prince
who has taken shelter among the Turks.
But you, my dear Pangloss, said Candide,
how can it be that I behold you again?
It is true, said Pangloss,
that you saw me hanged, I should have been burnt,
but you may remember it rained exceedingly hard
when they were going to roast me.
The storm was so violent that they were,
despaired of lighting the fire, so I was hanged because they could do no better. A surgeon purchased my
body, carried me home, and dissected me. He began with making a crucial incision on me, from the
navel to the clavicular. One could not have been worse hanged than I was. The executioner of the
whole inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people marvelously well,
But he was not accustomed to hanging.
The cord was wet and did not slip properly.
And besides, it was badly tied.
In short, I still drew my breath.
When the crucial incision made me give such a frightful scream
that my surgeon fell flat upon his back
and imagining that he had been dissecting the devil,
he ran away, dying with fear,
and fell down the staircase in his flight.
His wife, hearing the noise, flew from the next room.
She saw me stretched out upon the table with my crucial incision.
She was seized with yet greater fear than her husband, fled and tumbled over him.
When they came to themselves a little, I heard the wife say to her husband,
My dear, how could you take it into your head to dissect the heretic?
Do you know not that these people always have the devil in their bodies?
I will go and fetch a priest this minute to exorcise him.
At this proposal, I shuddered, and mustered up what little courage I had still remaining,
I cried aloud.
Have mercy on me.
At length, the Portuguese barber plucked up his spirits.
He sowed up my wounds, his wife,
even nursed me. I was upon my legs at the end of fifteen days. The barber found me a place as
lackey to a knight of Malta, who was going to Venice. But finding that my master had no money to pay me
my wages, I entered the service of a Venetian merchant and went with him to Constantinople. One day I took
it into my head to step into a mosque where I saw an old imam and a very pretty young devotee who
was saying her paternoster's. Her bosom was uncovered and between her breasts she had a beautiful
bouquet of tulips, roses, anemones, runiculas, hyacinths and auriculas. She dropped her bouquet. I picked it up
and presented it to her with a profound reverence.
I was so long in delivering it that the Imam began to get angry,
and seeing that I was a Christian, he called out for help.
They carried me before the Cardi,
who ordered me a hundred lashes on the soles of the feet,
and sent me to the galleys.
I was chained to the very same galley,
and the same bench as the young baron.
On board this galley, there were four young men from Marseilles, five Neapolitan priests, and two monks from Corfu, who told us similar adventures, happened daily.
The Baron maintained that he had suffered greater injustice than I, and I insisted that it was far more innocent to take up a bouquet and place it again on a woman's bosom than to be found stock naked with an icoglan.
We were continually disputing
And received 20 lashes with a bull's pitzel
And the concatenation of universal events
Brought you to our galley
And you were good enough to ransom us
Well, my dear pangloss
Said Candide to him
When you had been hanged, dissected,
whipped, and were tugging at the oar
Did you always think that everything
happens for the best?
I am still of my first opinion, answered Pankloss.
For I am a philosopher, and I cannot retract, especially as Leibniz could never be wrong,
and besides, the pre-established harmony is the finest thing in the world, and so is his
plenum and materia subtulis.
End of Chapter 28
Recording by John Van Stan
Savannah, Georgia
Chapter 29 of Candide by Voltaire
Translated by Philip Lattel
This Lever Fox recording is in the public domain
Chapter 29
How Candide found Kunaganda
And the Old Woman again
While Candide, the Baron,
Pangloss, Martin,
and Cacombo were relating their
several adventures, were reasoning on the contingent or non-contingent events of the universe,
disputing on effects and causes on moral and physical evil, on liberty and necessity,
and on the consolations a slave may feel even on a Turkish galley. They arrived at the house
of the Transylvanian prince on the banks of the Propontas. The first objects which met their
sight were, Kunaganda and the old woman, hanging towels out to dry.
The Baron paled at this sight, the tender, loving Candide, seeing his beautiful Kunaganda
in browned, with bloodshot eyes, withered neck, wrinkled cheeks, and rough red arms,
recoiled three paces, seized with horror, and then advanced out of good manners.
She embraced Candide and her brother.
They embraced the old woman, and Candide ransomed them both.
There was a small farm in the neighborhood which the old woman.
woman proposed to Candide to make a shift with till the company could be provided for in a better
manner.
Conaganda did not know she had grown ugly, for nobody had told her of it, and she reminded Candide
of his promise, in so positive a tone, that the good man durst not refuse her.
He therefore intimated to the Baron that he intended marrying his sister.
I will not suffer.
said the baron.
Such meanness on her part, and such insolence on yours.
I will never be reproached with this scandalous thing.
My sister's children would never be able to enter the church in Germany.
No, my sister shall only marry a baron of the empire.
Koneganda flung herself at his feet and bathed them with her tears.
Still he was inflexible.
"'Thou foolish fellow,' said Candide,
I have delivered thee out of the galleys.
I have paid thy ransom and thy sisters also.
She was a scullion and is very ugly.
Yet I am so condescending as to marry her,
and dost thou pretend to oppose the match?
I should kill thee again,
where I only to consult my anger.
Thou mayest kill me again, said the Baron,
but thou shalt not marry my sister.
at least whilst I am living.
End of Chapter 29, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.
Chapter 30 of Candide by Voltaire, translated by Philip Lattel.
This Lieber Fox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter 30, the conclusion.
At the bottom of his heart, Candide had no wish to marry Conaganda,
but the extreme impertinence of the Baron
determined him to conclude the match, and Kanaganda pressed him so strongly that he could not go from
his word. He consulted Pangloss, Martin, and the faithful Cacombo. Pangloss drew up an excellent
memorial wherein he proved that the baron had no right over his sister, and that according to all the
laws of the empire, she might marry Candide with her left hand. Martin was for throwing the baron
into the sea. Cacombo decided that it would be better to deliver him up again to the captain of the
galley, after which they thought to send him back to the general father of the order at Rome
by the first ship. This advice was well received. The old woman approved it. They said not a word
to his sister. The thing was executed for a little money, and they had the double pleasure
of entrapping a Jesuit and punishing the pride of a German baron.
It is natural to imagine that after so many disasters, Candide married, and living with the philosopher Pangloss, the philosopher Martin, the prudent Cacombo, and the old woman, having besides brought so many diamonds from the country of the ancient Incas, must have led a very happy life. But he was so much imposed upon by the Jews that he had nothing left except his small farm.
His wife became uglier every day, more peevish and unsupportable.
The old woman was infirm and even more fretful than Kunaganda.
Cacombo, who worked in the garden and took vegetables for sale to Constantinople,
was fatigued with hard work and cursed his destiny.
Pangloss was in despair at not shining in some German university.
For Martin, he was firmly pershing.
persuaded that he would be as badly off elsewhere, and therefore bore things patiently.
Candide, Martin, and Pankloss sometimes disputed about morals and metaphysics.
They often saw passing under the windows of their farm, boats full of offendis,
pashas and cadis, who were going into banishment, to lemnos, mittelene, or azim.
and they saw other cadis, pashas, and effendies coming to supply the place of the exiles,
and afterwards exiled in their turn.
They saw heads decently impaled, for presentation to the sublime port.
Such spectacles as these increased the number of their dissertations,
and when they did not dispute, time hung so heavily upon their hands
that one day the old woman ventured to say to them,
I want to know which is worse, to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates,
to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians,
to be whipped and hanged at an auto da fe,
to be dissected, to row in the galleys,
in short, to go through all the miseries we have undergone,
or to stay here and have nothing to do.
It is a great question, said Candide.
This discourse gave rise to new reflections,
and Martin especially concluded that man was born to live
either in a state of distracting in quietude
or of lethargic disgust.
Candide did not quite agree to that,
but he affirmed nothing.
Pangloss owned that he had always suffered horribly, but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully well, he asserted it still, though he no longer believed it.
What helped to confirm Martin in his detestable principles, to stagger candide more than ever, and to puzzle Pancloss, was that one day they saw Pachette and Friar-Jor-O-Fle land at the farm in exchange.
extreme misery. They had soon squandered their three thousand piastres, parted, were reconciled,
quarreled again, were thrown into jail, had escaped, and Friar Girafle had at length become
Turk. Packett continued her trade wherever she went, but made nothing of it.
I foresaw, said Martin to Candide,
that your presence would soon be dissipated and only make them the more miserable.
You have rolled in millions of money, you and Cacambo, and yet you are not happier than Friars Geroflay and Pachette.
Ha, said Pankloss to Paget,
Providence has then brought you amongst us again, my poor child.
Do you know that you cost me the tithe?
of my nose, an eye and an ear, as you may see. What a world is this! And now this new adventure
set them philosophizing more than ever. In the neighborhood there lived a very famous dervish,
who was esteemed the best philosopher in all Turkey, and they went to consult him.
Pangloss was the speaker.
Master! said he.
We come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal as man was made.
With what medallest thou?
Said the dervish, is it thy business?
But, Reverend Father, said Candide,
There is a horrible evil in this world.
What signifies it?
Said the dervish, whether there be evil or good.
when His Highness sends a ship to Egypt,
does he trouble his head,
whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?
What then must we do?
Said Pankloss.
Hold your tongue, answered the dervish.
I was in hopes, said Pankloss,
that I should reason with you a little
about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul,
and the pre-established harmony.
At these words, the dervish shut the door in their faces.
During this conversation, the news was spread that two viziers and the Mufti had been strangled at Constantinople,
and that several of their friends had been impaled.
This catastrophe made a great noise for some hours.
Pangloss, Candide, and Martin, returning to the little farm,
saw a good old man taking the fresh air at his door under an orange bower.
Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was argumentative,
asked the old man, what was the name of the strangled mufti?
I do not know, answered the worthy man,
and I have not known the name of any Mufti nor of any vizier.
I am entirely ignorant of the event you mention.
I presume, in general, that they who meddle with the administration of public affairs
die sometimes miserably, and that they deserve it.
But I never trouble my head about what is transacting at Constantinople.
I content myself
With sending there for sale
The fruits of the garden
Which I cultivate
Having said these words
He invited the strangers into his house
His two sons and two daughters
Presented them with several sorts of Sherbert
Which they made themselves
With Chimac enriched
With the candied peel of citrons
With oranges, lemons
pineapples, pistachio nuts, and mocha coffee, unadulterated with the bad coffee of Batavia or the American Islands,
after which the two daughters of the honest Muslim perfumed the stranger's beards.
You must have a vast and magnificent estate, said Candide to the Turk.
I only have twenty acres, replied the old man.
I and my children cultivate them.
Our labor preserves us from three great evils,
weariness, vice, and want."
Candide, on his way home,
made profound reflections on the old man's conversation.
This honest Turk, said he to Pankloss and Martin,
seems to be in a situation far preferable to that of the six kings
with whom we had the honour of supping.
Grander, said Pangloss,
is extremely dangerous, according to the testimony of philosophers,
for in short, Eglon, king of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud.
Absalom was hung by his hair and pierced with three dots.
King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Barsar.
King Ella by Zimri.
Ahaziah by Yehu.
Attalia by Jehoiada.
The kings, Jehoakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah were led into captivity.
You know how perished Croceus, Astiagis, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrus, Pesius, Hanesius, Hanobius, Hanobius, Hanobius, Hanob.
Chagerta, Ariovistus, Caesar, Pompeii, Nero Otho, Vitellus, Domitian, Richard II of England, Edward
the second, Henry the 6th, Richard the 3rd, Mary Stuart, Charles I, the 1st, the 3rd,
three Henrys of France, the Emperor Henry the Fourth, you know?
I also know, said Candide, that we must cultivate our garden.
You are right, said Pangloss.
For when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there out operator
aum that he might cultivate it, which shows that man was not born to be idle.
Let us work, said Martin.
Without disputing, it is the only way to render life tolerable.
The whole little society entered into this laudable design.
According to their different abilities, their little plot of land produced plentiful crops.
Kanaganda was indeed very ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook.
Piquette worked at embroidery.
The old woman looked after the linen.
They were all, not accepting Friar Girafle, of some service or other, for he made a good
joiner and became a very honest man.
Pankloss sometimes said to Candide,
There is a concordination of events in this best of all parts.
possible worlds, for if you had not been kicked out of the magnificent castle for the love of
Miss Conakunda, if you had not been put into the Inquisition, if you had not walked over America,
if you had not stabbed the baron, if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country
of El Dorado, you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pastasio nuts.
all that is very well answered candide but let us cultivate our garden end of chapter thirty end of candide by voltaire translated by philip letell
