III
How Candide escaped from the Bulgarians, and what happened to him afterwards
Never was anything so gallant, so well accoutred, so brilliant, and so finely disposed as the two armies. The trumpets, fifes, oboes, drums and cannon made such harmony as never was heard in hell itself. The entertainment began by a discharge of the cannon, which in the twinkling of an eye lay flat about 6,000 men on each side. The musket balls swept away, out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand scoundrels that infected its surface. The bayonet was next the sufficient reasone of the deaths of several thousands more. The whole might amount to 30,000 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 Deum”Ɨ to be sung in each of their camps, Candide decided 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 neighbouring village in the Abarian territories which had been burnt to the ground by the Bulgarians, in accordance with 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 burnt in the flames, begged to be despatched out of the world. The ground about them was covered with the brains, arms and legs of dead men.
Candide made haste to another village, which belonged to the Bulgarians, and there he found that the heroic Abares had enacted the same tragedy. From there, continuing to walk over palpitating limbs, or through ruined buildings, at length he arrived beyond the theatre of war, with a little provision in his budget and Miss Cunégonde’s image in his heart. When he arrived in Holland, his provisions ran out; 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 at the baron’s castle, before he had been driven from there through the power of Miss Cunégonde’s bright eyes.
He asked charity of several grave-looking people, who one and all answered him, that if he continued to beg, they would have him sent to the house of correction, where he would be taught to earn his bread.
He next addressed himself to a personf who was just come from haranguing a numerous assembly for a whole hour on the subject of charity. The orator, squinting at him under his broad-brimmed hat, asked him sternly what brought him there, and whether he was for the good 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 Cunégonde; that I should afterwards be flogged; and it is necessary that I should beg for my bread, till I am able to get it: all this could not have been otherwise.” “Hark ye, friend,” said the orator, “do you think the Pope is 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 you are! Away with you! Out of my sight, never come near me again as long as you live.” 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 emptied on his head a chamber-pot full of——Good heavens! to what excess does religious zeal transport the female kind.
A man who had never been christened, an honest Anabaptistg named James, was witness to the cruel and ignominious treatment inflicted on one of his brethren, to a rational, two-footed, unfledged being.h Moved with pity, he carried Candide to his own house, washed him, gave him meat and drink, and presented him with two florins, at the same time proposing to instruct him in his own trade of weaving Persian silks, which are manufactured in Holland. Candide, moved by 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 touched by your extraordinary generosity than with the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black coat, and his wife.” The next day, as Candide was walking out, he met a beggar all covered with scabs, his eyes were 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.
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