Part 3

As soon as Candide had saddled the three horses, Cunégonde, the old woman, and he covered thirty miles without stopping. While they were making their escape, the holy hermandad arrived at the house; my lord was buried in a fine church, and Issachar was thrown onto the dunghill.

Candide, Cunégonde, and the old woman were already in the little town of Avacéna, amid the mountains of the Sierra-Morena; and they spoke thus in a tavern.

CHAPTER X. In what distress Candide, Cunégonde, and the old woman arrive at Cadiz, and their embarkation.

“Who then could have stolen my pistoles and my diamonds?” said Cunégonde, weeping. “What shall we live on? What shall we do? Where shall we find inquisitors and Jews to give me others? Alas!” said the old woman, “I strongly suspect a reverend father cordelier, who lodged last night at the same inn as we did at Badajos; God preserve me from rash judgment! but he came into our room twice, and he set off long before us.” “Alas!” said Candide, “the good Pangloss had often proved to me that the goods of the earth are common to all men, and that each has an equal right to them. This cordelier, following those principles, ought certainly to have left us enough to finish our journey. Have you then nothing left at all, my fair Cunégonde?” “Not a maravédis,” said she. “What course to take?” said Candide. “Let us sell one of the horses,” said the old woman; “I will ride behind the lady, though I can only sit on one buttock, and we shall reach Cadiz.”

There was in the same inn a prior of Benedictines; he bought the horse cheap. Candide, Cunégonde, and the old woman passed through Lucena, through Chillas, through Lebrixa, and at last arrived at Cadiz. A fleet was being fitted out there, and troops assembled, to bring to reason the reverend fathers Jesuits of Paraguay, who were accused of having made one of their hordes revolt against the kings of Spain and Portugal, near the town of the Holy Sacrament[1]. Candide, having served among the Bulgarians, went through the Bulgarian exercise before the general of the little army with such grace, celerity, skill, pride, and agility, that he was given a company of infantry to command. There he is a captain; he embarks with Miss Cunégonde, the old woman, two valets, and the two Andalusian horses which had belonged to the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal.

[1] See vol. XVII, page 470; and in the Miscellanies, year 1759, the Letter of Mr. Mead to the authors of the Encyclopedic Journal. B.

During the whole crossing they reasoned much on the philosophy of poor Pangloss. “We are going into another world,” said Candide; “it is in that one, no doubt, that all is well: for one must confess that one might complain a little of what passes in ours, in physics and in morals.” “I love you with all my heart,” said Cunégonde; “but my soul is still all affrighted at what I have seen, at what I have endured.” “All will go well,” replied Candide; “the sea of this new world is already better than the seas of our Europe; it is calmer, the winds more constant. It is certainly the New World which is the best of possible worlds.” “God grant it!” said Cunégonde; “but I have been so horribly unhappy in mine, that my heart is almost closed to hope.” “You complain,” said the old woman to them; “alas! you have not experienced misfortunes such as mine.” Cunégonde almost began to laugh, and found this good woman very droll in pretending to be more unhappy than herself. “Alas!” said she to her, “my good woman, unless you have been ravished by two Bulgarians, unless you have received two knife-thrusts in the belly, unless two of your castles have been demolished, unless two mothers and two fathers have been slaughtered before your eyes, and unless you have seen two of your lovers whipped in an auto-da-fé, I do not see that you can surpass me; add that I was born a baroness with seventy-two quarterings, and that I have been a scullion.” “Miss,” answered the old woman, “you know not what my birth is; and if I were to show you my backside, you would not speak as you do, and you would suspend your judgment.” This discourse awakened extreme curiosity in the mind of Cunégonde and Candide. The old woman spoke to them in these terms.

CHAPTER XI. History of the old woman.

“I have not always had bleary eyes and rims bordered with scarlet; my nose has not always touched my chin, and I have not always been a servant. I am the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrine[a]. I was brought up until the age of fourteen in a palace to which all the castles of your German barons would not have served as a stable; and one of my robes was worth more than all the magnificence of Westphalia. I grew in beauty, in graces, in talents, amid pleasures, respects, and hopes: I already inspired love; my bosom was forming; and what a bosom! white, firm, shaped like that of the Venus of Medici; and what eyes! what eyelids! what black eyebrows! what flames shone in my two pupils, and eclipsed the twinkling of the stars! as the poets of the quarter told me. The women who dressed me and undressed me fell into ecstasy looking at me from before and behind; and all the men would have wished to be in their place.

[a] See the extreme discretion of the author; there has been up to now no pope named Urban X; he fears to give a bastard to a known pope. What circumspection! what delicacy of conscience!—This note of Voltaire is posthumous. It was not even in the Kehl editions. I have it from the late Décrois. The last pope of the name of Urban is Urban VIII, died in 1644. B.

“I was betrothed to a sovereign prince of Massa-Carrara: what a prince! as beautiful as myself, molded of sweetness and agreeableness, brilliant in wit and burning with love; I loved him as one loves for the first time, with idolatry, with transport. The nuptials were prepared: it was a pomp, a magnificence unheard-of; there were feasts, carousels, continual opera-buffa; and all Italy made sonnets for me, of which there was not one passable. I was touching the moment of my happiness, when an old marchioness, who had been mistress of my prince, invited him to take chocolate at her house; he died in less than two hours with frightful convulsions; but that is only a trifle. My mother in despair, and much less afflicted than I, wished to withdraw for some time from so fatal a abode. She had a very fine estate near Gaeta: we embarked on a galley of the country, gilded like the altar of Saint Peter of Rome. Thereupon a corsair of Sale fell upon us and boarded us: our soldiers defended themselves like soldiers of the pope; they all fell on their knees, throwing down their arms, and asking the corsair for absolution in articulo mortis.

“Straightway they were stripped naked as monkeys, and my mother also, our maids of honor also, and I also. It is a wonderful thing, the diligence with which these gentlemen undress the world; but what surprised me more, was that they all put a finger in a place where we women ordinarily allow only clysters. This ceremony seemed very strange to me: that is how one judges of everything when one has not left one's country. I soon learned that it was to see if we had not hidden some diamonds there; it is a custom established from time immemorial among the polished nations who roam the sea. I have known that the reverend knight-religious of Malta never fail at it when they take Turks and Turkish women; it is a law of the law of nations from which one has never derogated.

“I will not tell you how hard it is for a young princess to be led a slave to Morocco with her mother: you can well conceive all we had to suffer in the corsair vessel. My mother was still very beautiful: our maids of honor, our simple chamber-women, had more charms than can be found in all Africa: as for me, I was ravishing, I was beauty, grace itself, and I was a virgin: I was not so long. That flower, which had been reserved for the handsome prince of Massa-Carrara, was ravished from me by the corsair captain; he was an abominable negro, who still thought he did me great honor. Certainly madame the Princess of Palestrine and I must have been very strong to resist all we underwent until our arrival at Morocco! But let us pass; these things are so common, they are not worth the trouble of speaking of them.

“Morocco was swimming in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the emperor Muley Ismael[1] each had his party; which produced in effect fifty civil wars, of blacks against blacks, of blacks against swarthy, of swarthy against swarthy, of mulattoes against mulattoes: it was a continual carnage throughout the extent of the empire.

[1] On Muley Ismael, who reigned in 1702, and lived a hundred and five years, see vol. XVI, page 197; vol. XVIII, page 420; vol. XX, chapter XVIII of the Age of Louis XIV; vol. XXX, page 126. B.

“Scarcely were we landed, than blacks of a faction enemy to that of my corsair presented themselves to wrest his booty from him. We were, after diamonds and gold, what he had most precious. I was witness to a combat such as you never see in your climates of Europe. The northern peoples have not blood enough ardent; they have not the rage of women to the point where it is common in Africa. It seems your Europeans have milk in their veins; it is vitriol, it is fire that flows in those of the inhabitants of Mount Atlas and neighboring lands. They fought with the fury of lions, tigers, and serpents of the country, to know who should have us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm, the lieutenant of my captain held her by the left; a Moorish soldier took her by one leg, one of our pirates held the other. Our girls found themselves almost all at once thus pulled by four soldiers. My captain held me hidden behind him; he had his scimitar in hand, and killed all who opposed his rage. At last I saw all our Italians and my mother torn, cut, massacred by the monsters who disputed them. The captives, my companions, those who had taken them, soldiers, sailors, blacks, swarthy, whites, mulattoes, and finally my captain, all were killed, and I remained dying on a heap of dead.

“Scenes like these passed, as is known, over an extent of more than three hundred leagues, without failing at the five prayers a day ordained by Mahomet.

“I disentangled myself with much difficulty from the crowd of so many bloody corpses heaped together, and dragged myself under a great orange-tree on the bank of a neighboring brook; there I fell from fright, weariness, horror, despair, and hunger. Soon after my overwhelmed senses gave way to a sleep that was more like a swoon than repose. I was in that state of weakness and insensibility, between death and life, when I felt myself pressed by something that stirred upon my body; I opened my eyes, I saw a white man of good appearance who sighed, and who said between his teeth: O che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!

CHAPTER XII. Continuation of the misfortunes of the old woman.

“Astonished and delighted to hear the language of my country, and no less surprised at the words this man uttered, I answered him that there were greater misfortunes than that of which he complained; I informed him in few words of the horrors I had endured, and fell back in a faint. He carried me into a neighboring house, had me put to bed, had me given food, served me, consoled me, flattered me, told me he had never seen anything so beautiful as I, and that never had he so much regretted what no one could restore to him. ‘I was born at Naples,’ said he to me; ‘there they capon two or three thousand children every year; some die of it, others acquire a voice more beautiful than that of women, others go to govern states[1]. I was operated on with very great success, and I have been musician of the chapel of madame the Princess of Palestrine.’ ‘Of my mother!’ cried I. ‘Of your mother!’ cried he, weeping; ‘what! you would be that young princess whom I brought up to the age of six years, and who already promised to be as beautiful as you are?’—‘It is myself; my mother is four hundred paces from here cut in quarters under a heap of dead….’

[1] Farinelli, Italian singer, born at Naples in 1705, without being minister, governed Spain under Ferdinand VI; he died in 1782. Voltaire speaks again of this Farinelli in the Conversation of the Intendant of the Menus in exercise: see the Miscellanies, year 1761. B.

“He told me all that had happened to him; he told me also his adventures, and informed me how he had been sent to the king of Morocco by a Christian power, to conclude with that monarch a treaty by which one would furnish him powder, cannon, and vessels, to help him exterminate the commerce of other Christians. ‘My mission is done,’ said this honest eunuch; ‘I am going to embark at Ceuta, and I will take you back to Italy. Ma che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!'

“I thanked him with tears of tenderness; and instead of taking me to Italy, he conducted me to Algiers, and sold me to the dey of that province. Scarcely was I sold, than that plague which has made the tour of Africa, Asia, and Europe, declared itself in Algiers with fury. You have seen earthquakes; but, miss, have you ever had the plague?” “Never,” answered the baroness.

“If you had had it,” resumed the old woman, “you would confess that it is far above an earthquake. It is very common in Africa; I was attacked by it. Figure to yourself what a situation for the daughter of a pope, aged fifteen, who in three months' time had experienced poverty, slavery, had been ravished almost every day, had seen her mother cut in four, had endured hunger and war, and was dying of the plague in Algiers! I did not die of it, however; but my eunuch and the dey, and almost all the seraglio of Algiers, perished.

“When the first ravages of that frightful plague were past, they sold the dey's slaves. A merchant bought me, and took me to Tunis; he sold me to another merchant who resold me to Tripoli; from Tripoli I was resold to Alexandria, from Alexandria resold to Smyrna; from Smyrna to Constantinople. I belonged at last to an aga of the janissaries, who was soon commanded to go defend Azof against the Russians who were besieging it.

“The aga, who was a very gallant man, took with him all his seraglio, and lodged us in a little fort on the Palus-Maeotis, guarded by two black eunuchs and twenty soldiers. They killed prodigiously many Russians, but they returned it well: Azof was put to fire and sword[2], and no quarter was given to sex or age; there remained only our little fort; the enemies wished to take us by famine. The twenty janissaries had sworn never to surrender. The extremities of hunger to which they were reduced constrained them to eat our two eunuchs, for fear of violating their oath. After a few days they resolved to eat the women.

[2] The Russians took Azof under Peter the Great, in 1696, and gave it back at the peace, in 1711; retook it in 1739, fortified it; but at the peace of 1789, they returned it after having dismantled it. The taking of Azof, under Catherine II, is ten years later than Candide. B.

“We had a very pious and very compassionate imam, who made them a fine sermon, by which he persuaded them not to kill us altogether. ‘Cut,’ said he, ‘only one buttock from each of these ladies, you will make very good cheer; if need be to return, you will have as much again in a few days; heaven will be grateful to you for so charitable an action, and you will be succored.’

“He had much eloquence; he persuaded them: they performed this horrible operation on us; the imam applied the same balm to us as to children just circumcised: we were all at the point of death.

“Scarcely had the janissaries made the meal we had furnished them, than the Russians arrive in flat boats; not a janissary escaped. The Russians paid no attention to the state we were in. There are French surgeons everywhere: one of them, very skillful, took care of us, he cured us; and I shall remember all my life, that when my wounds were well closed, he made proposals to me. For the rest, he told us all to console ourselves; he assured us that in several sieges the like had happened, and that it was the law of war.

“As soon as my companions could walk, they were made to go to Moscow; I fell by lot to a boyard who made me his gardener, and who gave me twenty blows of the whip a day; but this lord having been broken on the wheel after two years with some thirty boyards for some court intrigue, I profited by this adventure; I fled; I crossed all Russia; I was long a tavern servant at Riga, then at Rostock, at Wismar, at Leipsick, at Cassel, at Utrecht, at Leyden, at the Hague, at Rotterdam: I have grown old in misery and in opprobrium, having but half a backside, remembering always that I was daughter of a pope; I wished a hundred times to kill myself, but I still loved life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most fatal inclinations; for is there anything more foolish than to wish continually to carry a burden one always wants to throw to the ground; to have one's being in horror, and to cling to one's being; finally, to caress the serpent that devours us, until he has eaten our heart?

“I have seen in the countries fate made me traverse, and in the taverns where I served, a prodigious number of persons who held their existence in execration; but I have seen only twelve who voluntarily put an end to their misery, three negroes, four English, four Genevans, and a German professor named Robeck[3]. I ended by being servant to the Jew don Issachar; he placed me near you, my fair lady; I attached myself to your destiny, and was more occupied with your adventures than with my own. I would never even have spoken to you of my misfortunes, if you had not a little piqued me, and if it were not the custom, in a vessel, to tell stories to pass the time. In short, miss, I have experience, I know the world; give yourself a pleasure, engage each passenger to tell you his story, and if there is found a single one who has not often cursed his life, who has not often said to himself that he was the most unhappy of men, throw me into the sea head first.”

[3] Robeck (John), born at Calmar in Sweden, in 1672, drowned himself voluntarily in 1739. J.-J. Rousseau speaks of Robeck in his New Heloise, twenty-first letter of the third part. B.

CHAPTER XIII. How Candide was obliged to separate from the fair Cunégonde and the old woman.

The fair Cunégonde, having heard the history of the old woman, paid her all the courtesies due to a person of her rank and merit. She accepted the proposal; she engaged all the passengers, one after another, to tell their adventures. Candide and she acknowledged that the old woman was right. “It is a great pity,” said Candide, “that the wise Pangloss was hanged against custom in an auto-da-fé; he would tell us admirable things on the physical evil and the moral evil that cover the earth and the sea, and I should feel enough strength to dare make him respectfully some objections.”

As each told his story, the vessel advanced. They landed at Buenos-Ayres. Cunégonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman, went to the governor don Fernando d’Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza. This lord had a pride suitable to a man who bore so many names. He spoke to men with the most noble disdain, carrying his nose so high, raising his voice so pitilessly, taking so imposing a tone, affecting so haughty a gait, that all who saluted him were tempted to beat him. He loved women furiously. Cunégonde appeared to him the most beautiful he had ever seen. The first thing he did was to ask if she were not the captain's wife. The air with which he made this question alarmed Candide: he dared not say she was his wife; because in fact she was not; he dared not say she was his sister, because she was not either; and though this officious lie had been very much in fashion among the ancients[1], and might be useful to the moderns, his soul was too pure to betray the truth. “Miss Cunégonde,” said he, “does me the honor of being about to marry me, and we beseech your excellency to deign to perform our nuptials.”

[1] See the article ABRAHAM, vol. XXVI, page 48. B.

Don Fernando d’Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza, raising his mustache, smiled bitterly, and ordered Captain Candide to go review his company. Candide obeyed; the governor remained with Miss Cunégonde. He declared his passion to her, protested that the next day he would marry her before the face of the Church, or otherwise, as her charms should please. Cunégonde asked him a quarter of an hour to collect herself, to consult the old woman, and to determine.

The old woman said to Cunégonde: “Miss, you have seventy-two quarterings and not a penny; it rests with you alone to be the wife of the greatest lord of southern America, who has a very fine mustache; is it for you to pride yourself on a fidelity proof against all? You have been ravished by the Bulgarians; a Jew and an inquisitor have had your good graces: misfortunes give rights. I confess that if I were in your place, I should make no scruple of marrying monsieur the governor, and of making the fortune of monsieur Captain Candide.” While the old woman spoke with all the prudence that age and experience give, there was seen entering the port a little vessel; it bore an alcade and alguazils, and here is what had happened.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”