by Voltaire
Candide, noting the caldron and spits, cried out: —We are surely going to be roasted or boiled. Ah, what would Master Pangloss say if he could see these men in a state of nature? All is for the best, I agree; but I must say it seems hard to have lost Miss Cunégonde and to be stuck on a spit by the Biglugs.
Cacambo did not lose his head.
—Don’t give up hope, said he to the disconsolate Candide; I understand a little of the jargon these people speak, and I’m going to talk to them.
—Don’t forget to remind them, said Candide, of the frightful inhumanity of eating their fellow men, and that Christian ethics forbid it.
—Gentlemen, said Cacambo, you have a mind to eat a Jesuit today? An excellent idea; nothing is more proper than to treat one’s enemies so. Indeed, the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbor, and that’s how men behave the whole world over. Though we Europeans don’t exercise our right to eat our neighbors, the reason is simply that we find it easy to get a good meal elsewhere; but you don’t have our resources, and we certainly agree that it’s better to eat your enemies than to let the crows and vultures have the fruit of your victory. But, gentlemen, you wouldn’t want to eat your friends. You think you will be spitting a Jesuit, and it’s your defender, the enemy of your enemies, whom you will be roasting. For my part, I was born in your country; the gentleman whom you see is my master, and far from being a Jesuit, he has just killed a Jesuit, the robe he is wearing was stripped from him; that’s why you have taken a dislike to him. To prove that I am telling the truth, take his robe and bring it to the nearest frontier of the kingdom of Los Padres; find out for yourselves if my master didn’t kill a Jesuit officer. It won’t take long; if you find that I have lied, you can still eat us. But if I’ve told the truth, you know too well the principles of public justice, customs, and laws, not to spare our lives.
The Biglugs found this discourse perfectly reasonable; they appointed chiefs to go posthaste and find out the truth; the two messengers performed their task like men of sense, and quickly returned bringing good news. The Biglugs untied their two prisoners, treated them with great politeness, offered them girls, gave them refreshments, and led them back to the border of their state, crying joyously: —He isn’t a Jesuit, he isn’t a Jesuit!
Candide could not weary of exclaiming over his preservation.
—What a people! he said. What men! what customs! If I had not had the good luck to run a sword through the body of Miss Cunégonde’s brother, I would have been eaten on the spot! But, after all, it seems that uncorrupted nature is good, since these folk, instead of eating me, showed me a thousand kindnesses as soon as they knew I was not a Jesuit.
CHAPTER 17
Arrival of Candide and His Servant at the Country of Eldorado,52 and What They Saw There
When they were out of the land of the Biglugs, Cacambo said to Candide: —You see that this hemisphere is no better than the other; take my advice, and let’s get back to Europe as soon as possible.
—How to get back, asked Candide, and where to go? If I go to my own land, the Bulgars and Abares are murdering everyone in sight; if I go to Portugal, they’ll burn me alive; if we stay here, we risk being skewered any day. But how can I ever leave this part of the world where Miss Cunégonde lives?
—Let’s go toward Cayenne, said Cacambo, we shall find some Frenchmen there, for they go all over the world; they can help us; perhaps God will take pity on us.
To get to Cayenne was not easy; they knew more or less which way to go, but mountains, rivers, cliffs, robbers, and savages obstructed the way everywhere. Their horses died of weariness; their food was eaten; they subsisted for one whole month on wild fruits, and at last they found themselves by a little river fringed with coconut trees, which gave them both life and hope.
Cacambo, who was as full of good advice as the old woman, said to Candide: —We can go no further, we’ve walked ourselves out; I see an abandoned canoe on the bank, let’s fill it with coconuts, get into the boat, and float with the current; a river always leads to some inhabited spot or other. If we don’t find anything pleasant, at least we may find something new.
—Let’s go, said Candide, and let Providence be our guide.
They floated some leagues between banks sometimes flowery, sometimes sandy, now steep, now level. The river widened steadily; finally it disappeared into a chasm of frightful rocks that rose high into the heavens. The two travelers had the audacity to float with the current into this chasm.53 The river, narrowly confined, drove them onward with horrible speed and a fearful roar. After twenty-four hours, they saw daylight once more; but their canoe was smashed on the snags. They had to drag themselves from rock to rock for an entire league; at last they emerged to an immense horizon, ringed with remote mountains. The countryside was tended for pleasure as well as profit; everywhere the useful was joined to the agreeable.54 The roads were covered, or rather decorated, with elegantly shaped carriages made of a glittering material, carrying men and women of singular beauty, and drawn by great red sheep which were faster than the finest horses of Andalusia, Tetuan, and Mequinez.55
—Here now, said Candide, is a country that’s better than Westphalia.
Along with Cacambo, he climbed out of the river at the first village he could see. Some children of the town, dressed in rags of gold brocade, were playing quoits at the village gate; our two men from the other world paused to watch them; their quoits were rather large, yellow, red, and green, and they glittered with a singular luster. On a whim, the travelers picked up several; they were of gold, emeralds, and rubies, and the least of them would have been the greatest ornament of the Grand Mogul’s throne.
—Surely, said Cacambo, these quoit players are the children of the king of the country.
The village schoolmaster appeared at that moment, to call them back to school.
—And there, said Candide, is the tutor of the royal household.
The little rascals quickly gave up their game, leaving on the ground their quoits and playthings. Candide picked them up, ran to the schoolmaster, and presented them to him humbly, giving him to understand by sign language that their royal highnesses had forgotten their gold and jewels. With a smile, the schoolmaster tossed them to the ground, glanced quickly but with great surprise at Candide’s face, and went his way.
The travelers did not fail to pick up the gold, rubies, and emeralds.
—Where in the world are we? cried Candide. The children of this land must be well trained, since they are taught contempt for gold and jewels.56
Cacambo was as much surprised as Candide. At last they came to the finest house of the village; it was built like a European palace. A crowd of people surrounded the door, and even more were in the entry; delightful music was heard, and a delicious aroma of cooking filled the air. Cacambo went up to the door, listened, and reported that they were talking Peruvian; that was his native language, for every reader must know that Cacambo was born in Tucuman, in a village where they talk that language exclusively.57
—I’ll act as interpreter, he told Candide; it’s an hotel, let’s go in.
Promptly two boys and two girls of the staff, dressed in cloth of gold, and wearing ribbons in their hair, invited them to sit at the host’s table. The meal consisted of four soups, each one garnished with a brace of parakeets, a boiled condor which weighed two hundred pounds, two roast monkeys of an excellent flavor, three hundred birds of paradise in one dish and six hundred humming birds in another, exquisite stews, delicious pastries, the whole thing served up in plates of what looked like rock crystal. The boys and girls of the staff poured them various beverages made from sugar cane.
The diners were for the most part merchants and travelers, all extremely polite, who questioned Cacambo with the most discreet circumspection, and answered his questions very directly.
When the meal was over, Cacambo as well as Candide supposed he could settle his bill handsomely by tossing onto the table two of those big pieces of gold which they
had picked up; but the host and hostess burst out laughing, and for a long time nearly split their sides. Finally they subsided.
—Gentlemen, said the host, we see clearly that you’re foreigners; we don’t meet many of you here. Please excuse our laughing when you offered us in payment a couple of pebbles from the roadside. No doubt you don’t have any of our local currency, but you don’t need it to eat here. All the hotels established for the promotion of commerce are maintained by the state. You have had meager entertainment here, for we are only a poor town; but everywhere else you will be given the sort of welcome you deserve.58
Cacambo translated for Candide all the host’s explanations, and Candide listened to them with the same admiration and astonishment that his friend Cacambo showed in reporting them.
—What is this country, then, said they to one another, unknown to the rest of the world, and where nature itself is so different from our own? This probably is the country where everything is for the best; for it’s absolutely necessary that such a country should exist somewhere. And whatever Master Pangloss said of the matter, I often had occasion to notice that things went pretty badly in Westphalia.
CHAPTER 18
What They Saw in the Land of Eldorado
Cacambo revealed his curiosity to the host, and the host told him:—I am an ignorant man and content to remain so; but we have here an old man, retired from the court, who is the most knowing person in the kingdom, and the most talkative.
Thereupon he brought Cacambo to the old man’s house. Candide now played second fiddle, and acted as servant to his own valet. They entered an austere little house, for the door was merely of silver and the paneling of the rooms was only gold, though so tastefully wrought that the finest paneling would not surpass it. If the truth must be told, the lobby was only decorated with rubies and emeralds; but the patterns in which they were arranged atoned for the extreme simplicity.
The old man received the two strangers on a sofa stuffed with bird-of-paradise feathers, and offered them several drinks in diamond carafes; then he satisfied their curiosity in these terms.
—I am a hundred and seventy-two years old, and I heard from my late father, who was liveryman to the king, about the astonishing revolutions in Peru which he had seen. Our land here was formerly the native land of the Incas, who rashly left it in order to conquer another part of the world, and who were ultimately destroyed by the Spaniards. The wisest princes of their house were those who never left their native valley; they decreed, with the consent of the nation, that henceforth no inhabitant of our little kingdom should ever leave it; and this rule is what has preserved our innocence and our happiness. The Spaniards heard vague rumors about this land, they called it El Dorado; and an English knight named Raleigh59 even came somewhere close to it about a hundred years ago; but as we are surrounded by unscalable mountains and precipices, we have managed so far to remain hidden from the rapacity of the European nations, who have an inconceivable rage for the pebbles and mud of our land, and who, in order to get some, would butcher us all to the last man.
The conversation was a long one; it turned on the form of the government, the national customs, on women, public shows, the arts. At last Candide, whose taste always ran to metaphysics, told Cacambo to ask if the country had any religion.
The old man grew a bit red.
—How’s that? he said. Can you have any doubt of it? Do you suppose we are altogether thankless scoundrels?
Cacambo asked meekly what was the religion of Eldorado. The old man flushed again.
—Can there be two religions? he asked. I suppose our religion is the same as everyone’s, we worship God from morning to evening.
—Then you worship a single deity? said Cacambo, who acted throughout as interpreter of the questions of Candide.
—It’s obvious, said the old man, that there aren’t two or three or four of them. I must say the people of your world ask very remarkable questions.
Candide could not weary of putting questions to this good old man; he wanted to know how the people of Eldorado prayed to God.
—We don’t pray to him at all, said the good and respectable sage; we have nothing to ask him for, since everything we need has already been granted; we thank God continually.
Candide was interested in seeing the priests; he had Cacambo ask where they were. The old gentleman smiled.
—My friends, said he, we are all priests; the king and all the heads of household sing formal psalms of thanksgiving every morning, and five or six thousand voices accompany them.
—What! you have no monks to teach, argue, govern, intrigue, and burn at the stake everyone who disagrees with them?
—We should have to be mad, said the old man; here we are all of the same mind, and we don’t understand what you’re up to with your monks.
Candide was overjoyed at all these speeches, and said to himself: —This is very different from Westphalia and the castle of My Lord the Baron; if our friend Pangloss had seen Eldorado, he wouldn’t have called the castle of Thunder-Ten-Tronckh the finest thing on earth; to know the world one must travel.
After this long conversation, the old gentleman ordered a carriage with six sheep made ready, and gave the two travelers twelve of his servants for their journey to the court.
—Excuse me, said he, if old age deprives me of the honor of accompanying you. The king will receive you after a style which will not altogether displease you, and you will doubtless make allowance for the customs of the country if there are any you do not like.
Candide and Cacambo climbed into the coach; the six sheep trotted off like the wind, and in less than four hours they reached the king’s palace at the edge of the capital. The entryway was two hundred and twenty feet high and a hundred wide; it is impossible to describe all the materials of which it was made. But you can imagine how much finer it was than those pebbles and sand which we call gold and jewels.
Twenty beautiful girls of the guard detail welcomed Candide and Cacambo as they stepped from the carriage, took them to the baths, and dressed them in robes woven of humming-bird feathers; then the high officials of the crown, both male and female, led them to the royal chamber between two long lines, each of a thousand musicians, as is customary. As they approached the throne room, Cacambo asked an officer what was the proper method of greeting his majesty: if one fell to one’s knees or on one’s belly; if one put one’s hands on one’s head or on one’s rear; if one licked up the dust of the earth—in a word, what was the proper form?60
—The ceremony, said the officer, is to embrace the king and kiss him on both cheeks.
Candide and Cacambo warmly embraced his majesty, who received them with all the dignity imaginable, and asked them politely to dine.
In the interim, they were taken about to see the city, the public buildings rising to the clouds, the public markets and arcades, the fountains of pure water and of rose water, those of sugar cane liquors which flowed perpetually in the great plazas paved with a sort of stone which gave off odors of gillyflower and rose petals. Candide asked to see the supreme court and the hall of parliament; they told him there was no such thing, that lawsuits were unknown. He asked if there were prisons, and was told there were not. What surprised him more, and gave him most pleasure, was the palace of sciences, in which he saw a gallery two thousand paces long, entirely filled with mathematical and physical instruments.
Having passed the whole afternoon seeing only a thousandth part of the city, they returned to the king’s palace. Candide sat down to dinner with his majesty, his own valet Cacambo, and several ladies. Never was better food served, and never did a host preside more jovially than his majesty. Cacambo explained the king’s witty sayings to Candide, and even when translated they still seemed witty. Of all the things which astonished Candide, this was not, in his eyes, the least astonishing.
They passed a month in this refuge. Candide never tired of saying to Cacambo:—It’s true, my friend, I’ll say it again, the castle where I w
as born does not compare with the land where we now are; but Miss Cunégonde is not here, and you doubtless have a mistress somewhere in Europe. If we stay here, we shall be just like everybody else, whereas if we go back to our own world, taking with us just a dozen sheep loaded with Eldorado pebbles, we shall be richer than all the kings put together, we shall have no more inquisitors to fear, and we shall easily be able to retake Miss Cunégonde.
This harangue pleased Cacambo; wandering is such pleasure, it gives a man such prestige at home to be able to talk of what he has seen abroad, that the two happy men resolved to be so no longer, but to take their leave of his majesty.
—You are making a foolish mistake, the king told them; I know very well that my kingdom is nothing much; but when you are pretty comfortable somewhere, you had better stay there. Of course I have no right to keep strangers against their will, that sort of tyranny is not in keeping with our laws or our customs; all men are free; depart when you will, but the way out is very difficult. You cannot possibly go up the river by which you miraculously came; it runs too swiftly through its underground caves. The mountains which surround my land are ten thousand feet high, and steep as walls; each one is more than ten leagues across; the only way down is over precipices. But since you really must go, I shall order my engineers to make a machine which can carry you conveniently. When we take you over the mountains, nobody will be able to go with you, for my subjects have sworn never to leave their refuge, and they are too sensible to break their vows. Other than that, ask of me what you please.
—We only request of your majesty, Cacambo said, a few sheep loaded with provisions, some pebbles, and some of the mud of your country.
The king laughed.
—I simply can’t understand, said he, the passion you Europeans have for our yellow mud; but take all you want, and much good may it do you.
He promptly gave orders to his technicians to make a machine for lifting these two extraordinary men out of his kingdom. Three thousand good physicists worked at the problem; the machine was ready in two weeks’ time, and cost no more than twenty million pounds sterling, in the money of the country. Cacambo and Candide were placed in the machine; there were two great sheep, saddled and bridled to serve them as steeds when they had cleared the mountains, twenty pack sheep with provisions, thirty which carried presents consisting of the rarities of the country, and fifty loaded with gold, jewels, and diamonds. The king bade tender farewell to the two vagabonds.