HOW CANDIDE ESCAPED FROM THE BULGARIANS AND
WHAT BEFELL HIM AFTERWARDS
Never was anything so gallant, so well accoutred, so brilliant, and so finely
disposed as the two armies. The trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and
cannon made such harmony as never was heard in Hell itself. The
entertainment began by a discharge of cannon, which, in the twinkling of an
eye, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side. The musket bullets swept away,
out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand scoundrels that
infested its surface. The bayonet was next the sufficient reason of the
deaths of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand
souls. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and concealed himself as well
as he could during this heroic butchery.
At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deums to be sung in their
camps, Candide took a resolution to go and reason somewhere else upon
causes and effects. After passing over heaps of dead or dying men, the
first place he came to was a neighboring village, in the Abarian territories,
which had been burned to the ground by the Bulgarians, agreeably to the
laws of war. Here lay a number of old men covered with wounds, who
beheld their wives dying with their throats cut, and hugging their children to
their breasts, all stained with blood. There several young virgins, whose
bodies had been ripped open, after they had satisfied the natural
necessities of the Bulgarian heroes, breathed their last; while others,
half-burned in the flames, begged to be dispatched out of the world. The
ground about them was covered with the brains, arms, and legs of dead
men.
Candide made all the haste he could to another village, which belonged to
the Bulgarians, and there he found the heroic Abares had enacted the same
tragedy. Thence continuing to walk over palpitating limbs, or through ruined
buildings, at length he arrived beyond the theater of war, with a little
provision in his budget, and Miss Cunegonde's image in his heart. When he
arrived in Holland his provision failed him; but having heard that the
inhabitants of that country were all rich and Christians, he made himself
sure of being treated by them in the same manner as the Baron's castle,
before he had been driven thence through the power of Miss Cunegonde's
bright eyes.
He asked charity of several grave-looking people, who one and all answered
him, that if he continued to follow this trade they would have him sent to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get his bread.
He next addressed himself to a person who had just come from haranguing
a numerous assembly for a whole hour on the subject of charity. The orator,
squinting at him under his broadbrimmed hat, asked him sternly, what
brought him thither and whether he was for the good old cause?
"Sir", said Candide, in a submissive manner, "I conceive there can be no
effect without a cause; everything is necessarily concatenated and
arranged for the best. It was necessary that I should be banished from the
presence of Miss Cunegonde; that I should afterwards run the gauntlet; and
it is necessary I should beg my bread, till I am able to get it. All this could
not have been otherwise."
"Hark ye, friend", said the orator, "do you hold the Pope to be Antichrist?"
"Truly, I never heard anything about it", said Candide, "but whether he is or
not, I am in want of something to eat."
"Thou deservest not to eat or to drink", replied the orator, "wretch, monster,
that thou art! hence! avoid my sight, nor ever come near me again while
thou livest."
The orator's wife happened to put her head out of the window at that instant,
when, seeing a man who doubted whether the Pope was Antichrist, she
discharged upon his head a utensil full of water. Good heavens, to what
excess does religious zeal transport womankind!
A man who had never been christened, an honest Anabaptist named
James, was witness to the cruel and ignominious treatment showed to one
of his brethren, to a rational, two-footed, unfledged being. Moved with pity
he carried him to his own house, caused him to be cleaned, gave him meat
and drink, and made him a present of two florins, at the same time
proposing to instruct him in his own trade of weaving Persian silks, which
are fabricated in Holland.
Candide, penetrated with so much goodness, threw himself at his feet,
crying, "Now I am convinced that my Master Pangloss told me truth when he
said that everything was for the best in this world; for I am infinitely more
affected with your extraordinary generosity than with the inhumanity of that
gentleman in the black cloak and his wife."