Part 6

This scholar, who was moreover a good-natured man, had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and deserted by his daughter, who had allowed herself to be carried off by a Portuguese. He had just been deprived of a small post on which he subsisted; and the preachers of Surinam persecuted him, because they took him for a Socinian. It must be confessed that the others were at least as unhappy as he; but Candide hoped that the scholar would help him pass the time on the voyage. All his other rivals thought Candide did them a great injustice; but he appeased them by giving each a hundred piastres.

CHAPTER XX. What befell Candide and Martin at sea.

The old scholar, whose name was Martin, therefore embarked for Bordeaux with Candide. Both had seen much and suffered much; and had the ship been bound from Surinam to Japan by the Cape of Good Hope, they would have had matter enough to discourse of moral and physical evil throughout the whole voyage.

Candide, however, had a great advantage over Martin, which was that he still hoped to see Miss Cunégonde again, whereas Martin had nothing to hope for; moreover, he had gold and diamonds; and though he had lost a hundred big red sheep laden with the greatest treasures of the earth, though the knavery of the Dutch skipper still lay heavy on his heart, yet when he thought of what remained in his pockets, and when he spoke of Cunégonde, especially toward the end of the meal, he then inclined toward Pangloss's system.

"But you, Mr. Martin," said he to the scholar, "what do you think of all this? what is your notion of moral and physical evil?" "Sir," answered Martin, "my priests accused me of being a Socinian[1]; but the truth of the matter is that I am a Manichaean[2]." "You are jesting with me," said Candide; "there are no more Manichaeans in the world." "There is myself," said Martin; "I know not what to do about it; but I cannot think otherwise." "You must have the devil in your body," said Candide. "He meddles so much in the affairs of this world," said Martin, "that he may well be in my body, as everywhere else: but I own to you that, casting my eye over this globe, or rather this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some malignant being; I always except Eldorado. I have scarce seen a city that did not desire the ruin of its neighbor city, not a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak hold in execration the powerful before whom they cringe, and the powerful treat them like flocks whose wool and flesh are sold. A million of enlisted murderers, traversing Europe from end to end, practice murder and robbery with discipline to earn their bread, because they have no honester trade; and in the cities that seem to enjoy peace, and where the arts flourish, men are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness, than a besieged city suffers calamities. Secret griefs are yet more cruel than public miseries. In short, I have seen and felt so much, that I am a Manichaean."

[1] The Socinians reject mysteries and admit only what is evident: see vol. XXVIII, page 435. B.

[2] The Manichaeans admit a good and an evil principle: see vol. XV, pages 27, 314-315. B.

"There is nevertheless some good," Candide would reply. "That may be," said Martin; "but I know it not."

In the midst of this dispute, a noise of cannon was heard. The noise redoubled from moment to moment. Each took his glass. Two ships were perceived fighting at about three miles' distance: the wind brought them both so near the French vessel, that they had the pleasure of seeing the battle at their ease. At last one of the two ships poured into the other so low and so well-aimed a broadside, that she sank her. Candide and Martin distinctly perceived a hundred men on the deck of the sinking ship; they all lifted their hands to heaven, and uttered dreadful cries: in an instant all was engulfed.

"Well," said Martin, "that is how men treat one another. It is true," said Candide, "that there is something diabolical in this affair." While speaking thus, he perceived I know not what of a bright red, which was swimming near his vessel. The boat was sent out to see what it could be; it was one of his sheep. Candide had more joy at finding this sheep, than he had been afflicted at losing a hundred all laden with great diamonds of Eldorado.

The French captain soon perceived that the captain of the sinking ship was a Spaniard, and that of the sunk ship a Dutch pirate; it was the very man who had robbed Candide. The immense riches of which this scoundrel had possessed himself were buried with him in the sea, and only one sheep was saved. "You see," said Candide to Martin, "that crime is sometimes punished; that Dutch skipper knave has met the fate he deserved." "Yes," said Martin; "but need the passengers who were on his ship perish also? God punished the rogue, the devil drowned the others."

Meanwhile the French ship and the Spanish continued their course, and Candide continued his conversations with Martin. They disputed fifteen days in succession, and at the end of fifteen days they were as far advanced as at first. But at last they talked, they communicated ideas, they consoled one another. Candide caressed his sheep. "Since I have found you again," said he, "I may well find Cunégonde again."

CHAPTER XXI. Candide and Martin approach the coasts of France, and reason.

At length the coasts of France were descried. "Have you ever been in France, Mr. Martin?" said Candide. "Yes," said Martin, "I have traveled through several provinces. There are some where half the inhabitants are mad, some where men are too cunning, others where they are commonly gentle enough and silly enough: others where they affect wit; and, in all, the chief occupation is love; the second, slander; and the third, saying foolish things. But, Mr. Martin, have you seen Paris?" "Yes, I have seen Paris; it partakes of all those kinds; it is a chaos, it is a crowd in which every one seeks pleasure, and where almost no one finds it, at least as it appeared to me. I stayed there but a short time; I was robbed, on arriving, of all I had, by knaves, at the fair of Saint-Germain; I myself was taken for a thief, and was eight days in prison; after which I became a proofreader to earn enough to return on foot to Holland. I knew the scribbling rabble, the caballing rabble, and the convulsionary rabble. They say there are very polite people in that city: I am willing to believe it." "For my part, I have no curiosity to see France," said Candide; "you easily guess that when one has passed a month in Eldorado, one cares to see nothing on earth but Miss Cunégonde: I am going to wait for her at Venice; we will cross France to go into Italy; will you not accompany me?" "Very willingly," said Martin; "they say Venice is good only for the Venetian nobles, but that nevertheless strangers are very well received there when they have plenty of money; I have none; you have some, I will follow you everywhere." "By the way," said Candide, "do you think the earth was originally a sea, as is asserted in that big book belonging to the ship's captain[1]?" "I do not believe it at all," said Martin, "any more than all the dreams they retail to us of late." "But to what end then was this world formed?" said Candide. "To drive us mad," answered Martin.

"Are you not much surprised," continued Candide, "at the love those two girls of the Oreillons had for those two monkeys, of whom I told you the adventure?" "Not at all," said Martin; "I see nothing strange in that passion; I have seen so many extraordinary things, that nothing is extraordinary to me any more."

"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always mutually massacred one another as they do today? that they have always been liars, knaves, traitors, ungrateful, robbers, weak, fickle, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunkards, avaricious, ambitious, sanguinary, slanderers, debauched, fanatical, hypocrites, and fools?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they found them?" "Yes, doubtless," said Candide. "Well," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character, why would you have men changed theirs?" "Oh!" said Candide, "there is a great difference, for free will…"

Reasoning thus, they arrived at Bordeaux.

[1] The Bible. We read in Genesis, chapter I, verse 2: Tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi, words which De Maillet gives as presenting the same idea as this line of Ovid (Metam., 1, 15):

"Quaque erat et tellus, illic et pontus et aer."

See the first day of Telliamed, where it is said that the sea was superior by a great number of cubits to the highest of all our mountains. Voltaire often speaks of De Maillet and his Telliamed. See among others, in the Miscellanies, year 1768, chapter XVIII of the Singularities of Nature; and year 1777, the eleventh of the Dialogues of Euhemerus. B.

CHAPTER XXII[1]. What befell Candide and Martin in France.

[1] This chapter XXII was much enlarged in 1761; see my note, lower down. B.

Candide stayed in Bordeaux only as long as was needed to sell some pebbles from Eldorado, and to furnish himself with a good two-seated carriage; for he could no longer do without his philosopher Martin; he was only very sorry to part with his sheep, which he left to the academy of sciences of Bordeaux, which proposed as the subject of that year's prize to find why the wool of this sheep was red; and the prize was awarded to a scholar of the North, who demonstrated by A, plus B, minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the clavelée[2].

[2] However much the sciences may have advanced, it is impossible that, among ten thousand men who cultivate them in Europe, and among three hundred academies established there, there should not be found some academy that proposes ridiculous prizes, and some scholars who make strange applications of the most useful sciences. This ridicule had struck M. de Voltaire during his stay at Berlin. The scholars of the North still preserved at that epoch some remains of the old scholastic barbarism; and the bold, but hypothetical and absurd philosophy of Leibniz, had not contributed to strip them of it. K.

Meanwhile all the travelers whom Candide met in the roadside taverns said to him: "We are going to Paris." This general eagerness at last gave him the desire to see that capital; it was not much out of the way to Venice.

He entered by the faubourg Saint-Marceau, and thought himself in the vilest village of Westphalia.

Scarcely was Candide in his inn, when he was attacked by a slight illness, caused by his fatigues. As he had an enormous diamond on his finger, and as had been noticed in his equipage a prodigiously heavy casket, he had forthwith about him two physicians whom he had not sent for, some intimate friends who never left him, and two devotees who heated his broths. Martin said: "I remember being ill also at Paris on my first journey; I was very poor: accordingly I had neither friends, nor devotees, nor physicians, and I recovered."

However, by dint of medicines and bleedings, Candide's illness became serious. A frequenter of the quarter came with mildness to ask him for a note payable to the bearer for the other world: Candide would do nothing of the kind; the devotees assured him it was a new fashion: Candide answered that he was not a man of fashion. Martin would have thrown the frequenter out of the windows. The clerk swore they would not bury Candide. Martin swore he would bury the clerk, if he continued to importune them. The quarrel grew warm: Martin took him by the shoulders, and rudely turned him out; which caused a great scandal, of which a report was made.

Candide recovered; and during his convalescence he had very good company to sup with him at his lodgings. They played deep. Candide was quite astonished that the aces never came to him; and Martin was not astonished at it.

Among those who did him the honors of the city, there was a little abbé of Périgord, one of those eager fellows, always alert, always helpful, impudent, caressing, accommodating, who watch for strangers as they pass, tell them the scandalous history of the town, and offer them pleasures at any price. This one first led Candide and Martin to the comedy. A new tragedy was played there. Candide found himself placed near some fine wits. That did not prevent him from weeping at scenes perfectly acted. One of the reasoners who was beside him said to him in an interval: "You are much to blame to weep; that actress is very bad; the actor who plays with her is a worse actor still; the piece is worse yet than the actors; the author does not know a word of Arabic, and yet the scene is in Arabia[3]; and, moreover, he is a man who does not believe in innate ideas; I will bring you tomorrow twenty pamphlets against him[4]." "Sir, how many plays have you in France?" said Candide to the abbé; who answered: "Five or six thousand." "That is a great many," said Candide; "how many of them are good?" "Fifteen or sixteen," replied the other. "That is a great many," said Martin.

[3] La Grange Chancel addressed to Voltaire, in 1718, an Epistle to M. Arouet de Voltaire, in which are found these lines:

That your exactness in depicting manners Extend even to the names of your least actors, And that, in pronouncing them, they make us know The countries and the times where you make them reborn. I see with spite, to produce nothing, In Theban Oedipus, Hidaspe the Indian.

Voltaire profited by the criticism, and put Araspe instead of Hidaspe. It is perhaps to these lines of La Grange Chancel that Voltaire here alludes. B.

[4] In the edition of 1759, we read:

"… against him. Sir, said the Périgord abbé to him, have you noticed that young person who has so piquant a face and so fine a figure? It will cost you but ten thousand francs a month, and for fifty thousand crowns in diamonds. I have but a day or two to give her, answered Candide, because I have a rendezvous at Venice, which presses.

The evening, after supper, the insinuating Périgourdin redoubled his politeness and attentions. You have then, sir, said he, a rendezvous at Venice, etc." (See page 306.)

The present text exists from 1761. B.

Candide was very pleased with an actress who played queen Elizabeth, in a rather flat tragedy[5], which is sometimes acted. "This actress," said he to Martin, "pleases me much; she has a false air of Miss Cunégonde; I should be glad to salute her." The Périgord abbé offered to introduce him to her. Candide, brought up in Germany, asked what the etiquette was, and how they treated in France the queens of England. "You must distinguish," said the abbé: "in the provinces, they take them to the tavern; at Paris, they respect them when they are handsome, and throw them on the dungheap when they are dead." "Queens on the dungheap!" said Candide. "Yes truly," said Martin; "Mr. Abbé is right; I was at Paris when Miss Monime[6] passed, as they say, from this life to the other; they refused her, what these people call the honors of sepulture, that is to say, to rot with all the beggars of the quarter in a vile cemetery; she was buried all alone of her band at the corner of the rue de Bourgogne; which must have given her extreme pain, for she thought very nobly." "That is very impolite," said Candide. "What would you have?" said Martin; "these people are made thus. Imagine all the contradictions, all the incompatibilities possible, you will see them in the government, in the courts, in the churches, in the theatres of this queer nation." "Is it true that they always laugh at Paris?" said Candide. "Yes," said the abbé, "but in raging; for they complain of everything there with great bursts of laughter; even[7] they do the most detestable actions there in laughing."

[5] It is probably the Count of Essex, tragedy by Thomas Corneille. (Note by M. Decroix.)

[6] Miss Lecouvreur.—On the refusal of burial to Miss Lecouvreur, in 1730, see, vol. XII, the piece entitled: The Death of Miss Lecouvreur. B.

[7] The late Decroix proposed, instead of even, to put here like. I have found this version in no edition. B.

"Who is that fat hog," said Candide, "who spoke so ill of the piece where I wept so much, and of the actors who gave me so much pleasure?" "He is a worthless fellow," answered the abbé, "who earns his living by speaking ill of all plays and all books; he hates whoever succeeds, as eunuchs hate those who enjoy; he is one of those serpents of literature who feed on filth and venom; he is a pamphleteer." "What do you call a pamphleteer?" said Candide. "He is," said the abbé, "a maker of sheets, a Fréron."

Thus Candide, Martin, and the Périgourdin, reasoned on the staircase, seeing the world defile as they left the piece. "Though I am very eager to see Miss Cunégonde again," said Candide, "I should nevertheless like to sup with Miss Clairon, for she seemed to me admirable."

The abbé was not a man to approach Miss Clairon, who saw only good company. "She is engaged for this evening," said he; "but I shall have the honor to take you to a lady of quality, and there you will know Paris as if you had been there four years."

Candide, who was naturally curious, let himself be led to the lady's, at the end of the faubourg Saint-Honoré; they were occupied there with a faro; twelve melancholy punters each held in hand a little book of cards, horned register of their misfortunes. A deep silence reigned, paleness was on the punters' brows, uneasiness on the banker's; and the lady of the house, seated near this pitiless banker, noted with lynx eyes all the parolis, all the seven-and-the-va of the country, with which each player horned his cards; she made them unhorn with a severe but polite attention, and grew not angry, for fear of losing her customers. The lady was called the marchioness of Parolignac. Her daughter, aged fifteen, was among the punters, and warned by a wink of the knaveries of those poor folks who strove to repair the cruelties of fate. The Périgord abbé, Candide, and Martin, entered; no one rose, nor saluted them, nor looked at them; all were profoundly occupied with their cards. "The baroness of Thunder-ten-tronckh was more civil," said Candide.

However, the abbé approached the marchioness's ear, who half rose, honored Candide with a gracious smile, and Martin with a perfectly noble toss of the head; she had a seat and a pack of cards given to Candide, who lost fifty thousand francs in two deals: after which they supped very gaily, and every one was astonished that Candide was not moved by his loss; the lackeys said among themselves, in their lackeys' language: "He must be some English milord." The supper was like most Paris suppers, first silence, then a noise of words one does not distinguish, then jests mostly insipid, false news, bad reasoning, a little politics, and much slander; they even spoke of new books. "Have you seen," said the Périgord abbé, "the novel of sir Gauchat, doctor in theology?" "Yes," answered one of the guests, "but I could not finish it. We have a crowd of impertinent writings; but all together do not approach the impertinence of Gauchat, doctor in theology[8]; I am so surfeited with this immensity of detestable books that inundate us, that I have taken to punting at faro." "And the Miscellanies of archdeacon Trublet, what say you of them?" said the abbé. "Ah!" said Madame de Parolignac, "the tiresome mortal! how curiously he tells you what every one knows! how heavily he discusses what is not worth being slightly noticed! how, without wit, he appropriates the wit of others! how he spoils what he pilfers! how he disgusts me! but he shall disgust me no more; it is enough to have read some pages of the archdeacon."

[8] He made a bad work entitled: Letters on some writings of this time. He was given an abbey, and was more richly rewarded than if he had made The Spirit of Laws, and solved the problem of the precession of the equinoxes. K.—It is D'Alembert who solved the problem of the precession of the equinoxes: see, vol. XXI, the editors' note on chapter XLIII of the Precis of the Age of Louis XV. B.

There was at table a man of learning and taste who supported what the marchioness said. They then spoke of tragedies; the lady asked why there were tragedies sometimes acted, which could not be read. The man of taste explained very well how a piece might have some interest, and yet have scarce any merit; he proved in few words that it was not enough to bring in one or two of those situations found in all romances, and which always seduce the spectators; but that one must be novel without being bizarre, often sublime and always natural, know the human heart and make it speak; be a great poet, without any personage of the piece ever seeming a poet; perfectly know one's language, speak it with purity, with a continual harmony, without the rhyme ever costing anything to the sense. "Whoever," added he, "observes not all these rules, may make one or two tragedies applauded at the theatre, but he will never be counted among the good writers; there are very few good tragedies: some are idylls in well-written and well-rhymed dialogue; others, political reasonings that send one to sleep, or amplifications that repel; others, dreams of a possessed, in barbarous style, broken speeches, long apostrophes to the gods, because they know not how to speak to men, false maxims, swollen commonplaces."

Candide listened to this discourse with attention, and conceived a great idea of the speaker; and, as the marchioness had taken care to place him beside her, he approached her ear, and took the liberty to ask her who this man was who spoke so well. "He is a scholar," said the lady, "who does not punt, and whom the abbé sometimes brings me to sup; he knows tragedies and books perfectly, and has made a tragedy hissed, and a book of which never was seen out of his bookseller's shop but one copy which he dedicated to me." "The great man!" said Candide; "he is another Pangloss."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”