WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM AT SURINAM, AND HOW
CANDIDE BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MARTIN
Our travelers' first day's journey was very pleasant; they were elated with the
prospect of possessing more riches than were to be found in Europe, Asia,
and Africa together. Candide, in amorous transports, cut the name of Miss
Cunegonde on almost every tree he came to. The second day two of their
sheep sunk in a morass, and were swallowed up with their Jading; two more
died of fatigue; some few days afterwards seven or eight perished with
hunger in a desert, and others, at different times, tumbled down precipices,
or were otherwise lost, so that, after traveling about a hundred days they
had only two sheep left of the hundred and two they brought with them from
El Dorado.
Said Candide to Cacambo, "You see, my dear friend, how perishable the
riches of this world are; there is nothing solid but virtue."
"Very true", said Cacambo, "but we have still two sheep remaining, with
more treasure than ever the King of Spain will be possessed of; and I espy
a town at a distance, which I take to be Surinam, a town belonging to the
Dutch. We are now at the end of our troubles, and at the beginning of
happiness."
As they drew near the town they saw a Negro stretched on the ground with
only one half of his habit, which was a kind of linen frock; for the poor man
had lost his left leg and his right hand.
"Good God", said Candide in Dutch, "what dost thou here, friend, in this
deplorable condition?"
"I am waiting for my master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous trader",
answered the Negro.
"Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur that used you in this cruel manner?"
"Yes, sir", said the Negro; "it is the custom here. They give a linen garment
twice a year, and that is all our covering. When we labor in the sugar works,
and the mill happens to snatch hold of a finger, they instantly chop off our
hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg. Both these
cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in
Europe; and yet when my mother sold me for ten patacoons on the coast of
Guinea, she said to me, 'My dear child, bless our fetishes; adore them
forever; they will make thee live happy; thou hast the honor to be a slave to
our lords the whites, by which thou wilt make the fortune of us thy parents.'
"Alas! I know not whether I have made their fortunes; but they have not
made mine; dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less
wretched than I. The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday
that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call
Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what
these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow
that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are."
"O Pangloss!" cried out Candide, "such horrid doings never entered thy
imagination. Here is an end of the matter. I find myself, after all, obliged to
renounce thy Optimism."
"Optimism", said Cacambo, "what is that?"
"Alas!" replied Candide, "it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is
best when it is worst."
And so saying he turned his eyes towards the poor Negro, and shed a flood
of tears; and in this weeping mood he entered the town of Surinam.
Immediately upon their arrival our travelers inquired if there was any vessel
in the harbor which they might send to Buenos Ayres. The person they
addressed themselves to happened to be the master of a Spanish bark, who
offered to agree with them on moderate terms, and appointed them a
meeting at a public house. Thither Candide and his faithful Cacambo went
to wait for him, taking with them their two sheep.
Candide, who was all frankness and sincerity, made an ingenuous recital of
his adventures to the Spaniard, declaring to him at the same time his
resolution of carrying off Miss Cunegonde from the Governor of Buenos
Ayres.
"Oh, ho!" said the shipmaster, "if that is the case, get whom you please to
carry you to Buenos Ayres; for my part, I wash my hands of the affair. It
would prove a hanging matter to us all. The fair Cunegonde is the
Governor's favorite mistress."
These words were like a clap of thunder to Candide; he wept bitterly for a
long time, and, taking Cacambo aside, he said to him, "I'll tell you, my dear
friend, what you must do. We have each of us in our pockets to the value of
five or six millions in diamonds; you are cleverer at these matters than I; you
must go to Buenos Ayres and bring off Miss Cunegonde. If the Governor
makes any difficulty give him a million; if he holds out, give him two; as you
have not killed an Inquisitor, they will have no suspicion of you. I'll fit out
another ship and go to Venice, where I will wait for you. Venice is a free
country, where we shall have nothing to fear from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews
or Inquisitors."
Cacambo greatly applauded this wise resolution. He was inconsolable at the
thoughts of parting with so good a master, who treated him more like an
intimate friend than a servant; but the pleasure of being able to do him a
service soon got the better of his sorrow. They embraced each other with a
flood of tears. Candide charged him not to forget the old woman. Cacambo
set out the same day. This Cacambo was a very honest fellow.
Candide continued some days longer at Surinam, waiting for any captain to
carry him and his two remaining sheep to Italy. He hired domestics, and
purchased many things necessary for a long voyage; at length Mynheer
Vanderdendur, skipper of a large Dutch vessel, came and offered his
service.
"What will you have", said Candide, "to carry me, my servants, my
baggage, and these two sheep you see here, directly to Venice?"
The skipper asked ten thousand piastres, and Candide agreed to his
demand without hestitation.
"Ho, ho!" said the cunning Vanderdendur to himself, "this stranger must be
very rich; he agrees to give me ten thousand piastres without hesitation."
Returning a little while after, he told Candide that upon second consideration
he could not undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand.
"Very well; you shall have them", said Candide.
"Zounds!" said the skipper to himself, "this man agrees to pay twenty
thousand piastres with as much ease as ten."
Accordingly he went back again, and told him roundly that he would not
carry him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres.
"Then you shall have thirty thousand", said Candide.
"Odso!" said the Dutchman once more to himself, "thirty thousand piastres
seem a trifle to this man. Those sheep must certainly be laden with an
immense treasure. I'll e'en stop here and ask no more; but make him pay
down the thirty thousand piastres, and then we may see what is to be done
farther."
Candide sold two small diamonds, the least of which was worth more than all
the skipper asked. He paid him beforehand, the two sheep were put on
board, and Candide followed in a small boat to join the vessel in the road.
The skipper took advantage of his opportunity, hoisted sail, and put out to
sea with a favorable wind. Candide, confounded and amazed, soon lost
sight of the ship.
"Alas!" said he, "this is a trick like those in our old world!"
He returned back to the shore overwhelmed with grief; and, indeed, he had
lost what would have made the fortune of twenty monarchs.
Straightway upon his landing he applied to the Dutch magistrate; being
transported with passion he thundered at the door, which being opened, he
went in, told his case, and talked a little louder than was necessary. The
magistrate began with fining him ten thousand piastres for his petulance,
and then listened very patiently to what he had to say, promised to examine
into the affair on the skipper's return, and ordered him to pay ten thousand
piastres more for the fees of the court.
This treatment put Candide out of all patience; it is true, he had suffered
misfortunes a thousand times more grievous, but the cool insolence of the
judge, and the villainy of the skipper raised his choler and threw him into a
deep melancholy. The villainy of mankind presented itself to his mind in all
its deformity, and his soul was a prey to the most gloomy ideas. After some
time, hearing that the captain of a French ship was ready to set sail for
Bordeaux, as he had no more sheep loaded with diamonds to put on board,
he hired the cabin at the usual price; and made it known in the town that he
would pay the passage and board of any honest man who would give him
his company during the voyage; besides making him a present of ten
thousand piastres, on condition that such person was the most dissatisfied
with his condition, and the most unfortunate in the whole province.
Upon this there appeared such a crowd of candidates that a large fleet
could not have contained them. Candide, willing to choose from among
those who appeared most likely to answer his intention, selected twenty,
who seemed to him the most sociable, and who all pretended to merit the
preference. He invited them to his inn, and promised to treat them with a
supper, on condition that every man should bind himself by an oath to relate
his own history; declaring at the same time, that he would make choice of
that person who should appear to him the most deserving of compassion,
and the most justly dissatisfied with his condition in life; and that he would
make a present to the rest.
This extraordinary assembly continued sitting till four in the morning.
Candide, while he was listening to their adventures, called to mind what the
old woman had said to him in their voyage to Buenos Ayres, and the wager
she had laid that there was not a person on board the ship but had met with
great misfortunes. Every story he heard put him in mind of Pangloss.
"My old master", said he, "would be confoundedly put to it to demonstrate
his favorite system. Would he were here! Certainly if everything is for the
best, it is in El Dorado, and not in the other parts of the world."
At length he determined in favor of a poor scholar, who had labored ten
years for the booksellers at Amsterdam: being of opinion that no
employment could be more detestable.
This scholar, who was in fact a very honest man, had been robbed by his
wife, beaten by his son, and forsaken by his daughter, who had run away
with a Portuguese. He had been likewise deprived of a small employment on
which he subsisted, and he was persecuted by the clergy of Surinam, who
took him for a Socinian. It must be acknowledged that the other competitors
were, at least, as wretched as he; but Candide was in hopes that the
company of a man of letters would relieve the tediousness of the voyage. All
the other candidates complained that Candide had done them great
injustice, but he stopped their mouths by a present of a hundred piastres to
each.