Candide - Voltaire (world of reading txt) 📗

priests.”

Cacambo, who stood sentry by the door of the arbour, ran to him.

“We have nothing more for it than to sell our lives as dearly as we can,” said his master to him, “without doubt someone will soon enter the arbour, and we must die sword in hand.”

Cacambo, who had been in a great many scrapes in his lifetime, did not lose his head; he took the Baron’s Jesuit habit, put it on Candide, gave him the square cap, and made him mount on horseback. All this was done in the twinkling of an eye.

“Let us gallop fast, master, everybody will take you for a Jesuit, going to give directions to your men, and we shall have passed the frontiers before they will be able to overtake us.”

He flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in Spanish:

“Make way, make way, for the reverend Father Colonel.”

XVI Adventures of the Two Travellers, with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and the Savages Called Oreillons

Candide and his valet had got beyond the barrier, before it was known in the camp that the German Jesuit was dead. The wary Cacambo had taken care to fill his wallet with bread, chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few bottles of wine. With their Andalusian horses they penetrated into an unknown country, where they perceived no beaten track. At length they came to a beautiful meadow intersected with purling rills. Here our two adventurers fed their horses. Cacambo proposed to his master to take some food, and he set him an example.

“How can you ask me to eat ham,” said Candide, “after killing the Baron’s son, and being doomed never more to see the beautiful Cunégonde? What will it avail me to spin out my wretched days and drag them far from her in remorse and despair? And what will the Journal of Trevoux17 say?”

While he was thus lamenting his fate, he went on eating. The sun went down. The two wanderers heard some little cries which seemed to be uttered by women. They did not know whether they were cries of pain or joy; but they started up precipitately with that inquietude and alarm which every little thing inspires in an unknown country. The noise was made by two naked girls, who tripped along the mead, while two monkeys were pursuing them and biting their buttocks. Candide was moved with pity; he had learned to fire a gun in the Bulgarian service, and he was so clever at it, that he could hit a filbert in a hedge without touching a leaf of the tree. He took up his double-barrelled Spanish fusil, let it off, and killed the two monkeys.

“God be praised! My dear Cacambo, I have rescued those two poor creatures from a most perilous situation. If I have committed a sin in killing an Inquisitor and a Jesuit, I have made ample amends by saving the lives of these girls. Perhaps they are young ladies of family; and this adventure may procure us great advantages in this country.”

He was continuing, but stopped short when he saw the two girls tenderly embracing the monkeys, bathing their bodies in tears, and rending the air with the most dismal lamentations.

“Little did I expect to see such good-nature,” said he at length to Cacambo; who made answer:

“Master, you have done a fine thing now; you have slain the sweethearts of those two young ladies.”

“The sweethearts! Is it possible? You are jesting, Cacambo, I can never believe it!”

“Dear master,” replied Cacambo; “you are surprised at everything. Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuate themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard.”

“Alas!” replied Candide, “I remember to have heard Master Pangloss say, that formerly such accidents used to happen; that these mixtures were productive of Centaurs, Fauns, and Satyrs; and that many of the ancients had seen such monsters, but I looked upon the whole as fabulous.”

“You ought now to be convinced,” said Cacambo, “that it is the truth, and you see what use is made of those creatures, by persons that have not had a proper education; all I fear is that those ladies will play us some ugly trick.”

These sound reflections induced Candide to leave the meadow and to plunge into a wood. He supped there with Cacambo; and after cursing the Portuguese inquisitor, the Governor of Buenos Aires, and the Baron, they fell asleep on moss. On awaking they felt that they could not move; for during the night the Oreillons, who inhabited that country, and to whom the ladies had denounced them, had bound them with cords made of the bark of trees. They were encompassed by fifty naked Oreillons, armed with bows and arrows, with clubs and flint hatchets. Some were making a large cauldron boil, others were preparing spits, and all cried:

“A Jesuit! a Jesuit! we shall be revenged, we shall have excellent cheer, let us eat the Jesuit, let us eat him up!”

“I told you, my dear master,” cried Cacambo sadly, “that those two girls would play us some ugly trick.”

Candide seeing the cauldron and the spits, cried:

“We are certainly going to be either roasted or boiled. Ah! what would Master Pangloss say, were he to see how pure nature is formed? Everything is right, may be, but I declare it is very hard to have lost Miss Cunégonde and to be put upon a spit by Oreillons.”

Cacambo never lost his head.

“Do not despair,” said he to the disconsolate Candide, “I understand a little of the jargon of these people, I will speak to them.”

“Be sure,” said Candide, “to represent to them how frightfully inhuman it is to cook men, and how very unchristian.”

“Gentlemen,” said Cacambo, “you reckon you are today going to feast upon a Jesuit. It is all very well, nothing is more unjust than thus to treat your enemies.