Candide

OW 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, fifes, hautboys, drums, and
cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first
of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept
away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested
its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand 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. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an 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,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. 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
Cunegonde 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 Cunegonde'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
Cunegonde, 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
Anti-Christ?"

"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. "Begone, rogue; begone,
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 Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full.... Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the
ladies.

A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James,
beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his
brethren, an unfeathered biped 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 Pangloss 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.