HOW CANDIDE FOUND HIS OLD MASTER PANGLOSS
AGAIN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM
The next day, as Candide was walking out, he met a beggar all covered with
scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose eaten off, his mouth
drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak, snuffling and coughing
most violently, and every time he attempted to spit out dropped a tooth.
Candide, divided between compassion and horror, but giving way to the
former, bestowed on this shocking figure the two florins which the honest
Anabaptist, James, had just before given to him. The specter looked at him
very earnestly, shed tears and threw his arms about his neck. Candide
started back aghast.
"Alas!" said the one wretch to the other, "don't you know dear Pangloss?"
"What do I hear? Is it you, my dear master! you I behold in this piteous
plight? What dreadful misfortune has befallen you? What has made you
leave the most magnificent and delightful of all castles? What has become of
Miss Cunegonde, the mirror of young ladies, and Nature's masterpiece?"
"Oh, Lord!" cried Pangloss, "I am so weak I cannot stand", upon which
Candide instantly led him to the Anabaptist's stable, and procured him
something to eat.
As soon as Pangloss had a little refreshed himself, Candide began to repeat
his inquiries concerning Miss Cunegonde.
"She is dead", replied the other.
"Dead!" cried Candide, and immediately fainted away; his friend restored
him by the help of a little bad vinegar, which he found by chance in the
stable.
Candide opened his eyes, and again repeated: "Dead! is Miss Cunegonde
dead? Ah, where is the best of worlds now? But of what illness did she die?
Was it of grief on seeing her father kick me out of his magnificent castle?"
"No", replied Pangloss, "her body was ripped open by the Bulgarian
soldiers, after they had subjected her to as much cruelty as a damsel could
survive; they knocked the Baron, her father, on the head for attempting 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; they have destroyed all the ducks, and
sheep, the barns, and the trees; but we have had our revenge, for the
Abares have done the very same thing in a neighboring barony, which
belonged to a Bulgarian lord."
At hearing this, Candide fainted away a second time, but, not withstanding,
having come to himself again, he said all that it became him to say; he
inquired into the cause and effect, as well as into the sufficing reason that
had reduced Pangloss to so miserable a condition.
"Alas", replied the preceptor, "it was love; love, the comfort of the human
species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of all sensible beings;
love! tender love!"
"Alas", cried Candide, "I have had some knowledge of love myself, this
sovereign of hearts, this soul of souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss
and twenty kicks on the backside. But how could this beautiful cause
produce in you so hideous an effect?"
Pangloss made answer in these terms:
"O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty wench,
who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the pleasures of
Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which you see me
devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of
it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan, who derived it from
the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a
captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the
page had it of a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from
one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall
give it to nobody, I am a dying man."
"O sage Pangloss", cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy is this! Is not
the devil the root of it?"
"Not at all", replied the great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary
ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not caught in an island
in America this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and
frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed to the great
end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal. It is
also to be observed, that, even to the present time, in this continent of ours,
this malady, like our religious controversies, is peculiar to ourselves. The
Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, and the
Japanese are entirely unacquainted with it; but there is a sufficing reason
for them to know it in a few centuries. In the meantime, it is making
prodigious havoc among us, especially in those armies composed of well
disciplined hirelings, who determine the fate of nations; for we may safely
affirm, that, when an army of thirty thousand men engages another equal in
size, there are about twenty thousand infected with syphilis on each side."
"Very surprising, indeed", said Candide, "but you must get cured."
"Lord help me, how can I?" said Pangloss. "My dear friend, I have not a
penny in the world; and you know one cannot be bled or have an enema
without money."
This last speech had its effect on Candide; he flew to the charitable
Anabaptist, James; he flung himself at his feet, and gave him so striking a
picture of the miserable condition of his friend that the good man without
any further hesitation agreed to take Dr. Pangloss into his house, and to
pay for his cure. The cure was effected with only the loss of one eye and
an ear. As be wrote a good hand, and understood accounts tolerably well,
the Anabaptist made him his bookkeeper. At the expiration of two months,
being obliged by some mercantile affairs to go to Lisbon he took the two
philosophers with him in the same ship; Pangloss, during the course of the
voyage, explained to him how everything was so constituted that it could not
be better. James did not quite agree with him on this point.
"Men", said he "must, in some things, have deviated from their original
innocence; for they were not born wolves, and yet they worry one another
like those beasts of prey. God never gave them twenty-four pounders nor
bayonets, and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one
another. To this account I might add not only bankruptcies, but the law
which seizes on the effects of bankrupts, only to cheat the creditors."
"All this was indispensably necessary", replied the one-eyed doctor, "for
private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private misfortunes
there are, the greater is the general good."
While he was arguing in this manner, the sky was overcast, the winds blew
from the four quarters of the compass, and the ship was assailed by a most
terrible tempest, within sight of the port of Lisbon.