Candide

HAT HAPPENED TO CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, PANGLOSS, MARTIN, ETC.

"I ask your pardon once more," said Candide to the Baron, "your pardon,
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 Ayres at
the very time my sister was setting out thence. I asked 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 Ichoglan, 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
Mussulman. A cadi 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 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 clavicula.
One could not have been worse hanged than I was. The executioner of the
Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people
marvellously 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 a heretic? Do you not know 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 mustering up what
little courage I had still remaining I cried out aloud, 'Have mercy on
me!' At length the Portuguese barber plucked up his spirits. He sewed 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 Iman and a very pretty young devotee who was
saying her paternosters. Her bosom was uncovered, and between her
breasts she had a beautiful bouquet of tulips, roses, anemones,
ranunculus, 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 Iman began to get angry, and seeing that I was
a Christian he called out for help. They carried me before the cadi, 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 stark naked with an Ichoglan. We were continually disputing,
and received twenty lashes with a bull's pizzle when 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 Pangloss, "for I am a
philosopher and I cannot retract, especially as Leibnitz could never be
wrong; and besides, the pre-established harmony is the finest thing in
the world, and so is his plenum and materia subtilis."