Part 5
The travelers did not fail to pick up the gold, the rubies, and the emeralds. “Where are we?” cried Candide. “The children of the kings of this country must be very well brought up, since they are taught to despise gold and precious stones.” Cacambo was as astonished as Candide. They at last drew near to the first house of the village; it was built like a European palace. A crowd of people thronged the door, and still more the interior; very agreeable music was to be heard, and a delicious smell of cooking was to be scented. Cacambo drew near the door, and heard them speaking Peruvian; it was his mother tongue; for everyone knows that Cacambo was born in Tucuman, in a village where no other language was known. “I will serve as your interpreter,” said he to Candide; “let us go in, this is an inn.”
Immediately two boys and two girls of the inn, clothed in cloth of gold, and their hair tied with ribbons, invited them to sit at the host’s table. They were served four soups, each garnished with two parrots, a boiled condor weighing two hundred pounds, two roasted monkeys of excellent flavor, three hundred hummingbirds on one dish, and six hundred sunbirds on another; exquisite ragouts, delicate pastries; all upon dishes of a kind of rock crystal. The boys and girls of the inn poured several liqueurs made from sugar cane.
The guests were for the most part merchants and carriers, all of extreme politeness, who put a few questions to Cacambo with the most circumspect discretion, and answered his with a manner that satisfied him.
When the meal was finished, Cacambo, as well as Candide, thought to pay his share handsomely, by throwing upon the host’s table two of the large gold pieces he had picked up; the host and hostess burst out laughing, and held their sides a long time. At last they recovered. “Gentlemen,” said the host, “we see plainly that you are strangers; we are not accustomed to see any. Pardon us for laughing when you offered us the pebbles of our highways in payment. You have no doubt no money of the country, but it is not needful to have any to dine here. All the inns established for the convenience of commerce are paid by the government. You have fared poorly here, because it is a poor village, but everywhere else you will be received as you deserve to be.” Cacambo explained to Candide all the host’s discourse, and Candide listened to it with the same admiration and the same bewilderment that his friend Cacambo showed in relating it. “What country is this,” said they one and the other, “unknown to all the rest of the earth, and where all nature is of a kind so different from our own? It is probably the country where all is well; for there must absolutely be one of that sort. And, whatever Master Pangloss may have said, I have often perceived that all went rather ill in Westphalia.”
CHAPTER XVIII What they saw in the country of Eldorado[1].
[1] On the country of Eldorado, see vol. XVII, page 436. B.
Cacambo expressed to his host all his curiosity; the host said to him: “I am very ignorant, and am the better for it; but we have here an old man retired from court who is the most learned man in the kingdom, and the most communicative.” Thereupon he took Cacambo to the old man. Candide now played only the second part, and accompanied his valet. They entered a very plain house, for the door was only of silver, and the wainscoting of the rooms only of gold, but wrought with so much taste that the richest wainscoting could not surpass it. The antechamber was indeed incrusted only with rubies and emeralds; but the order in which all was arranged made ample amends for this extreme simplicity.
The old man received the two strangers upon a sofa stuffed with hummingbird feathers, and had liquors served to them in vessels of diamond; after which he satisfied their curiosity in these terms:
“I am a hundred and seventy-two years old, and I learned from my late father, the king’s equerry, the astonishing revolutions of Peru of which he had been a witness. The kingdom where we are is the ancient native land of the Incas, who left it very imprudently to go and subjugate a part of the world, and who were at last destroyed by the Spaniards.
“The princes of their family who remained in their native country were wiser; they ordained, with the nation’s consent, that no inhabitant should ever leave our little kingdom; and it is this that has preserved to us our innocence and our happiness. The Spaniards have had a confused knowledge of this country, they have called it Eldorado; and an Englishman, named Sir Walter Raleigh, even approached it about a hundred years ago; but, as we are surrounded by inaccessible rocks and precipices, we have always hitherto been safe from the rapacity of the nations of Europe, who have an inconceivable fury for the pebbles and the mud of our earth, and who, to have them, would kill us all to the last man.”
The conversation was long; it turned upon the form of government, upon manners, upon women, upon public spectacles, upon the arts. At last Candide, who had always a taste for metaphysics, made Cacambo ask whether in the country there was a religion.
The old man reddened a little. “How now!” said he, “can you doubt it? Do you take us for ingrates?” Cacambo asked humbly what the religion of Eldorado was. The old man reddened again: “Can there be two religions?” said he. “We have, I believe, the religion of all the world; we worship God from evening to morning.” “Do you worship but one God?” said Cacambo, who still served as interpreter of Candide’s doubts. “It appears,” said the old man, “that there are neither two, nor three, nor four. I confess to you that the people of your world ask very singular questions.” Candide wearied not of having this good old man questioned; he wished to know how God was prayed to in Eldorado. “We pray not to Him,” said the good and venerable sage; “we have nothing to ask of Him, He has given us all we need; we thank Him without ceasing.” Candide had the curiosity to see the priests; he had it asked where they were. The good old man smiled. “My friends,” said he, “we are all priests; the king and all the heads of families sing canticles of thanksgiving solemnly every morning, and five or six thousand musicians accompany them.” “What! have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn those who are not of their opinion?” “We should have to be mad,” said the old man; “we are all here of the same opinion, and we understand not what you mean with your monks.” At all this discourse Candide remained in ecstasy, and said to himself: “This is very different from Westphalia and from the castle of Monsieur the Baron: if our friend Pangloss had seen Eldorado, he would no longer say that the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh was the best upon earth; it is certain one must travel.”
After this long conversation, the good old man had a carriage drawn by six sheep harnessed, and gave twelve of his domestics to the two travelers to conduct them to court. “Pardon me,” said he to them, “if my age deprives me of the honor of accompanying you. The king will receive you in a manner you will not be displeased with, and you will doubtless pardon the customs of the country, if there be any that displease you.”
Candide and Cacambo mounted the carriage; the six sheep flew, and in less than four hours they arrived at the king’s palace, situated at one end of the capital. The gateway was two hundred and twenty feet high, and a hundred wide; it is impossible to express what was its material. One may well see what prodigious superiority it must have over those pebbles and that sand which we call gold and precious stones.
Twenty fair girls of the guard received Candide and Cacambo at alighting from the carriage, conducted them to the baths, clothed them in robes of a stuff of hummingbird down; after which the great officers and the great officer-ladies of the crown led them to his majesty’s apartment amid two files, each of a thousand musicians, according to custom. When they drew near the throne room, Cacambo asked a great officer how they must proceed to salute his majesty: whether they threw themselves on their knees or flat on their faces; whether they put their hands on their heads or behind their backs; whether they licked the dust of the room: in a word, what was the ceremony. “The custom,” said the great officer, “is to embrace the king and kiss him on both cheeks.” Candide and Cacambo sprang upon his majesty’s neck, who received them with all imaginable grace, and politely invited them to supper.
Meanwhile they were shown the city, the public buildings raised to the clouds, the markets adorned with a thousand columns, the fountains of pure water, the fountains of rose-water, those of sugar-cane liqueurs which flowed continually in great squares paved with a kind of precious stones that shed an odor like that of cloves and cinnamon. Candide asked to see the court of justice, the parliament; he was told there was none, and that they never went to law. He inquired if there were prisons, and was told no. What surprised him most, and pleased him best, was the palace of sciences, in which he saw a gallery two thousand paces long, entirely full of mathematical and physical instruments.
After spending the whole afternoon upon about the thousandth part of the city, they were brought back to the king. Candide placed himself at table between his majesty, his valet Cacambo, and several ladies. Never was better cheer, and never more wit at supper than his majesty showed. Cacambo explained the king’s good sayings to Candide, and though translated they always appeared good sayings. Of all that astonished Candide, this was not what astonished him least.
They passed a month in this hospice. Candide ceased not to say to Cacambo: “It is true, my friend, once more, that the castle where I was born is not worth the country where we are; but after all Mademoiselle Cunégonde is not here, and you have no doubt some mistress in Europe. If we stay here, we shall be but as the others; whereas if we return to our world, only with twelve sheep laden with the pebbles of Eldorado, we shall be richer than all the kings together, we shall have no inquisitors to fear, and we could easily recover Mademoiselle Cunégonde.”
This discourse pleased Cacambo; one loves so much to roam, to distinguish oneself among one’s own, to make a parade of what one has seen in one’s travels, that the two happy men resolved to be so no longer, and to ask their leave of his majesty.
“You are doing a foolish thing,” said the king to them: “I know well my country is of little account; but, when one is tolerably well somewhere, one must stay there. I have certainly not the right to detain strangers; that is a tyranny which is in neither our customs nor our laws; all men are free; depart when you will, but the exit is very difficult. It is impossible to go back up the rapid river by which you arrived by miracle, and which runs under vaults of rock. The mountains which surround all my kingdom are ten thousand feet high, and are straight as walls: they each occupy in breadth a space of more than ten leagues; one can descend them only by precipices. However, since you absolutely wish to depart, I will give order to the superintendents of machines to make one that can convey you comfortably. When they have conducted you to the farther side of the mountains, no one can accompany you; for my subjects have made a vow never to quit their enclosure, and they are too wise to break their vow. Ask me besides whatever you please.” “We ask of your majesty,” said Cacambo, “only some sheep laden with provisions, with pebbles, and with the mud of the country.” The king laughed: “I cannot conceive,” said he, “what taste your people of Europe have for our yellow mud: but carry away as much as you will, and much good may it do you.”
He gave order on the spot to his engineers to make a machine to hoist these two extraordinary men out of the kingdom. Three thousand good physicists worked at it; it was ready at the end of fifteen days, and cost no more than twenty millions of pounds sterling, money of the country. Upon the machine were placed Candide and Cacambo; there were two great red sheep, saddled and bridled, to serve them as mounts when they should have cleared the mountains, twenty pack-sheep laden with provisions, thirty which carried presents of the most curious things of the country, and fifty laden with gold, precious stones, and diamonds. The king tenderly embraced the two wanderers.
It was a fine spectacle, their departure, and the ingenious manner in which they and their sheep were hoisted to the top of the mountains. The physicists took leave of them after setting them in safety, and Candide had no other desire and no other object than to go and present his sheep to Mademoiselle Cunégonde. “We have enough,” said he, “to pay the governor of Buenos Aires, if Mademoiselle Cunégonde can be bought. Let us march toward Cayenne, let us embark, and we shall afterwards see what kingdom we can buy.”
CHAPTER XIX. What happened to them at Surinam, and how Candide made the acquaintance of Martin.
The first day of our two travelers was pleasant enough. They were encouraged by the idea of seeing themselves possessors of more treasures than Asia, Europe, and Africa could amass together. Transported, Candide wrote the name of Cunégonde upon the trees. On the second day two of their sheep sank into marshes, and were lost there with their loads; two other sheep died of fatigue a few days after; seven or eight then perished of hunger in a desert; others fell after a few days into precipices. At last, after a hundred days of marching, there remained to them but two sheep. Candide said to Cacambo: “My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue and the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Cunégonde again.” “I confess it,” said Cacambo; “but we still have two sheep with more treasures than the King of Spain will ever have; and I see from afar a city which I suspect to be Surinam, belonging to the Dutch. We are at the end of our troubles and at the beginning of our happiness.”
In approaching the city, they met a negro stretched upon the ground, having no more than half his clothing, that is to say a pair of blue linen drawers; this poor man lacked his left leg and his right hand. “Oh! my God!” said Candide to him in Dutch, “what do you there, my friend, in the horrible state in which I see you?” “I await my master, M. Vanderdendur, the famous merchant,” answered the negro. “Is it M. Vanderdendur,” said Candide, “who treated you thus?” “Yes, sir,” said the negro, “it is the custom. They give us a pair of linen drawers for all clothing twice a year. When we work at the sugar mills, and the grindstone catches our finger, they cut off our hand: when we would flee, they cut off our leg: I found myself in both cases. It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe. However, when my mother sold me for ten patagon dollars on the coast of Guinea, she said to me: ‘My dear child, bless our fetishes, adore them always, they will make you live happy; you have the honor to be the slave of our white lords, and you thereby make the fortune of your father and mother.’ Alas! I know not if I made their fortune, but they have not made mine. The dogs, the monkeys, and the parrots, are a thousand times less unhappy than we: the Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that we are all children of Adam, white and black. I am no genealogist; but if these preachers say true, we are all cousins-german. Now you will own that one cannot use one’s relations in a more horrible manner.”
“O Pangloss!” cried Candide, “you had not guessed this abomination; it is all over, I must at last renounce your optimism.” “What is optimism?” said Cacambo. “Alas!” said Candide, “it is the rage of maintaining that all is well when one is ill”; and he shed tears in looking at his negro; and weeping, he entered Surinam.
The first thing they inquire is whether there is not some ship in port that could be sent to Buenos Aires. He to whom they addressed themselves was precisely a Spanish captain who offered to make an honest bargain with them. He gave them a rendezvous at an inn. Candide and the faithful Cacambo went to wait for him there with their two sheep.
Candide, who wore his heart upon his lips, told the Spaniard all his adventures, and confessed to him that he wished to carry off Mademoiselle Cunégonde. “I shall take good care not to pass you to Buenos Aires,” said the captain: “I should be hanged, and you too; the fair Cunégonde is the favorite mistress of my lord the governor.” This was a thunderbolt for Candide, he wept a long time; at last he took Cacambo aside. “Here, my dear friend,” said he to him, “is what you must do. We have each in our pockets some five or six millions of diamonds, you are more clever than I; go and fetch Mademoiselle Cunégonde from Buenos Aires. If the governor makes any difficulty, give him a million: if he does not yield, give him two; you have killed no inquisitor, they will not suspect you. I will fit out another vessel, I will go wait for you at Venice: it is a free country where one has nothing to fear from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews, or inquisitors.” Cacambo applauded this wise resolution. He was in despair at parting from a good master become his intimate friend; but the pleasure of being useful to him prevailed over the grief of leaving him. They embraced with tears; Candide recommended him not to forget the good old woman. Cacambo departed that very day; he was a very good man, this Cacambo.
Candide remained some time yet at Surinam, and waited for another captain who would take him to Italy, him and the two sheep that remained to him. He took servants, and bought all that was necessary for a long voyage; at last M. Vanderdendur, master of a large vessel, came and presented himself to him. “How much do you want,” he asked the man, “to take me straight to Venice, myself, my people, my baggage, and the two sheep there?” The captain agreed for ten thousand piastres: Candide hesitated not.
“Oh! oh!” said to himself the prudent Vanderdendur, “this stranger gives ten thousand piastres at once! he must be very rich.” Then returning a moment after, he signified that he could not depart for less than twenty thousand. “Well! you shall have them,” said Candide.
“Hum!” said the merchant softly to himself, “this man gives twenty thousand piastres as easily as ten thousand.” He came back again, and said he could not conduct him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres. “Then you shall have thirty thousand,” answered Candide.
“Oh! oh!” said again the Dutch merchant to himself, “thirty thousand piastres cost this man nothing; no doubt the two sheep carry immense treasures; let us insist no further: let us first have the thirty thousand piastres paid, and then we shall see.” Candide sold two small diamonds, of which the least was worth more than all the money the captain asked. He paid him in advance. The two sheep were embarked. Candide followed in a small boat to join the ship in the roads; the captain takes his time, sets sail, gets under way; the wind favors him. Candide, distraught and stupefied, soon loses sight of him. “Alas!” cried he, “there is a trick worthy of the Old World.” He returns to shore, plunged in grief; for he had after all lost enough to make the fortune of twenty monarchs.
He goes to the Dutch judge; and, as he was somewhat troubled, he knocked rudely at the door; he entered, told his adventure, and cried a little louder than was fitting. The judge began by making him pay ten thousand piastres for the noise he had made: then he listened to him patiently, promised to examine his affair as soon as the merchant should return, and made him pay ten thousand more piastres for the costs of the audience.
This proceeding completed Candide’s despair; he had indeed suffered misfortunes a thousand times more painful; but the coolness of the judge, and that of the captain by whom he was robbed, kindled his bile, and plunged him into a black melancholy. The wickedness of men presented itself to his mind in all its ugliness, he nourished himself only with sad ideas. At last a French vessel being about to depart for Bordeaux, as he had no more sheep laden with diamonds to embark, he hired a cabin of the vessel at a fair price, and caused it to be proclaimed in the town that he would pay the passage, the food, and give two thousand piastres to an honest man who would make the voyage with him, on condition that this man should be the most disgusted with his state, and the most unhappy in the province.
There presented themselves a crowd of candidates whom a fleet could not have contained. Candide, wishing to choose among the most notable, distinguished some twenty persons who seemed sociable, and who all pretended to merit the preference. He assembled them in his inn, and gave them supper, on condition that each should swear to relate faithfully his story, promising to choose him who should seem to him most to be pitied and most discontented with his state, with most justice, and to give the others some gratifications.
The session lasted until four in the morning. Candide, in listening to all their adventures, remembered what the old woman had said to him going to Buenos Aires, and the wager she had made, that there was no one on board the vessel who had not met with very great misfortunes. He thought of Pangloss at each adventure related to him. “That Pangloss,” said he, “would be much embarrassed to demonstrate his system. I wish he were here. Certainly if all is well, it is in Eldorado, and not in the rest of the earth.” At last he determined in favor of a poor scholar who had worked ten years for the booksellers at Amsterdam. He judged that there was no trade in the world of which one should be more disgusted.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”