CHAPTER XIX
What Happened to Them at Surinam and How Candide Made the Acquaintance of Martin
Our two travelers’ first day was quite pleasant. They were encouraged by the idea of possessing more treasures than all Asia, Europe, and Africa could collect. Candide in transport carved the name of Cunegonde on the trees. On the second day two of the sheep stuck in a marsh and were swallowed up with their loads; two other sheep died of fatigue a few days later; then seven or eight died of hunger in a desert; several days afterwards others fell off precipices. Finally, after they had traveled for a hundred days, they had only two sheep left. Candide said to Cacambo: “My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; nothing is steadfast but virtue and the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Cunegonde again.” “I admit it,” said Cacambo, “but we still have two sheep with more treasures than ever the King of Spain will have, and in the distance I see a town I suspect is Surinam, which belongs to the Dutch. We are at the end of our troubles and the beginning of our happiness.” As they drew near the town they came upon a Negro lying on the ground wearing only half his clothes, that is to say, a pair of blue cotton drawers; this poor man had no left leg and no right hand. “Good heavens!” said Candide to him in Dutch, “what are you doing there, my friend, in that horrible state?” “I am waiting for my master, the famous merchant Monsieur Vanderdendur.” “Was it Monsieur Vanderdendur,” said Candide, “who treated you in that way?” “Yes, sir,” said the Negro, “it is the custom. We are given a pair of cotton drawers twice a year as clothing. When we work in the sugar mills and the grindstone catches our fingers, they cut off the hand; when we try to run away, they cut off a leg. Both these things happened to me. This is the price paid for the sugar you eat in Europe. But when my mother sold me for ten patagons on the coast of Guinea, she said to me: ‘My dear child, give thanks to our fetishes, always worship them, and they will make you happy; you have the honor to be a slave of our lords the white men and thereby you have made the fortune of your father and mother.’ Alas! I do not know whether I made their fortune, but they certainly did not make mine. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are; the Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me that we are all of us, whites and blacks, the children of Adam. I am not a genealogist, but if these preachers tell the truth, we are all second cousins. Now, you will admit that no one could treat his relatives in a more horrible way.” “0 Pangloss!” cried Candide. “This is an abomination you had not guessed; this is too much, in the end I shall have to renounce optimism.” “What is optimism?” said Cacambo. “Alas!” said Candide, “it is the mania of maintaining that everything is well when we are wretched.” And he shed tears as he looked at his Negro; and he entered Surinam weeping. The first thing they inquired was whether there was any ship in the port which could be sent to Buenos Aires. The person they addressed happened to be a Spanish captain, who offered to strike an honest bargain with them. He arranged to meet them at an inn. Candide and the faithful Cacambo went and waited for him with their two sheep. Candide, who blurted everything out, told the Spaniard all his adventures and confessed that he wanted to elope with Mademoiselle Cunegonde. “I shall certainly not take you to Buenos Aires,” said the captain. “I should be hanged and you would, too. The fair Cunegonde is his Lordship’s favorite mistress.” Candide was thunderstruck; he sobbed for a long time; then he took Cacambo aside. “My dear friend,” said he, “this is what you must do. We have each of us in our pockets five or six millions worth of diamonds; you are more skillful than I am; go to Buenos Aires and get Mademoiselle Cunegonde. If the governor makes any difficulties give him a million; if he is still obstinate give him two; you have not killed an Inquisitor so they will not suspect you. I will fit out another ship, I will go and wait for you at Venice; it is a free country where there is nothing to fear from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews, or Inquisitors.” Cacambo applauded this wise resolution; he was in despair at leaving a good master who had become his intimate friend; but the pleasure of being useful to him overcame the grief of leaving him. They embraced with tears. Candide urged him not to forget the good old woman. Cacambo set off that very same day; he was a very good man, this Cacambo. Candide remained some time longer at Surinam waiting for another captain to take him to Italy with the two sheep he had left. He engaged servants and bought everything necessary for a long voyage. At last Monsieur Vanderdendur, the owner of a large ship, came to see him. “How much do you want,” he asked this man, “to take me straight to Venice with my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep?” The captain asked for ten thousand piastres. Candide did not hesitate. “Oh! Ho!” said the prudent Vanderdendur to himself, “this foreigner gives ten thousand piastres immediatelyl He must be very rich.” He returned a moment afterwards and said he could not sail for less than twenty thousand. “Very well, you shall have them,” said Candide. “Whew!” said the merchant to himself, “this man gives twenty thousand piastres as easily as ten thousand.” He came back again, and said he could not take him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres. “Then you shall have thirty thousand,” replied Candide. “Oho!” said the Dutch merchant to himself again, “thirty thousand piastres is nothing to this man; obviously the two sheep are laden with immense treasures; I will not insist any further; first let me make him pay the thirty thousand piastres, and then we will see.” Candide sold two little diamonds, the smaller of which was worth more than all the money the captain asked. He paid him in advance. The two sheep were taken on board. Candide followed in a little boat to join the ship which rode at anchor; the captain watched his time, set his sails, and weighed anchor; the wind was favorable. Candide, bewildered and stupefied, soon lost sight of him. “Alas!” he cried, “this is a trick worthy of the old world.” He returned to shore, in grief; for he had lost enough to make the fortunes of twenty kings. He went to the Dutch judge; and, as he was rather disturbed, he knocked loudly at the door; he went in, related what had happened, and talked a little louder than he ought to have done. The judge began by fining him ten thousand piastres for the noise he had made; he then listened patiently to him, promised to look into his affair as soon as the merchant returned, and charged him another ten thousand piastres for the expenses of the audience. This behavior reduced Candide to despair; he had indeed . endured misfortunes a thousand times more painful; but the calmness of the judge and of the captain who had robbed him, stirred up his bile and plunged him into a black melancholy. The malevolence of men revealed itself to his mind in all its ugliness; he entertained only gloomy ideas. At last a French ship was about to leave for Bordeaux and, since he no longer had any sheep laden with diamonds to put on board, he hired a cabin at a reasonable price and announced throughout the town that he would give the passage, food and two thousand piastres to an honest man who would make the journey with him, on condition that this man was the most unfortunate and the most disgusted with his condition in the whole province. Such a crowd of applicants arrived that a fleet would not have contained them. Candide, wishing to choose among the most likely, picked out twenty persons who seemed reasonably sociable and who all claimed to deserve his preference. He collected them in a tavern and gave them supper, on condition that each took an oath to relate truthfully the story of his life, promising that he would choose the man who seemed to him the most deserving of pity and to have the most cause for being discontented with his condition, and that he would give the others a little money. The sitting lasted until four o’clock in the morning. As Candide listened to their adventures he remembered what the old woman had said on the voyage to Buenos Aires and how she had wagered that there was nobody on the boat who had not experienced very great misfortunes. At each story which was told him, he thought of Pangloss. “This Pangloss,” said he, “would have some difficulty in supporting his system. I wish he were here. Certainly, if everything is well, it is only in Eldorado and not in the rest of the world.” He finally determined in favor of a poor man of letters who had w
orked ten years for the booksellers at Amsterdam. He judged that there was no occupation in the world which could more disgust a man. This man of letters, who was also a good man, had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and abandoned by his daughter, who had eloped with a Portuguese. He had just been deprived of a small post on which he depended and the preachers of Surinam were persecuting him because they thought he was a Socinian. It must be admitted that the others were at least as unfortunate as he was; but Candide hoped that this learned man would help to pass the time during the voyage. All his other rivals considered that Candide was doing them a great injustice; but he soothed them down by giving each of them a hundred piastres.
CHAPTER XX
What Happened to Candide and Martin at Sea
So the old man, who was called Martin, embarked with Candide for Bordeaux. Both had seen and suffered much; and if the ship had been sailing from Surinam to Japan by way of the Cape of Good Hope they would have been able to discuss moral and physical evil during the whole voyage. However, Candide had one great advantage over Martin, because he still hoped to see Mademoiselle Cunegonde again, and Martin had nothing to hope for; moreover, he possessed gold and diamonds; and, although he had lost a hundred large red sheep laden with the greatest treasures on earth, although he was still enraged at being robbed by the Dutch captain, yet when he thought of what he still had left in his pockets and when he talked of Cunegonde, especially at the end of a meal, he still inclined toward the system of Pangloss. “But what do you think of all this, Martin?” said he to the man of letters. “What is your view of moral and physical evil?” “Sir,” replied Martin, “my priests accused me of being a Socinian; but the truth is I am a Manichaean.” “You are poking fun at me,” said Candide, “there are no Manichaeans left in the world.” “I am one,” said Martin. “I don’t know what to do about it, but I am unable to think in any other fashion.” “You must be possessed by the devil,” said Candide. “He takes so great a share in the affairs of this world,” said Martin, “that he might well be in me, as he is everywhere else; but I confess that when I consider this globe, or rather this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some evil creature—always excepting Eldorado. I have never seen a town which did not desire the ruin of the next town, never a family which did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak loathe the powerful before whom they cower and the powerful treat them like flocks of sheep whose wool and flesh are to be sold. A million drilled assassins go from one end of Europe to the other murdering and robbing with discipline in order to earn their bread, because there is no honester occupation; and in the towns which seem to enjoy peace and where the arts flourish, men are devoured by more envy, troubles, and worries than the afflictions of a besieged town. Secret griefs are even more cruel than public miseries. In a word, I have seen so much and endured so much that I have become a Manichaean.” “Yet there is some good,” replied Candide. “There may be,” said Martin, “but I do not know it.” In the midst of this dispute they heard the sound of cannon. The noise increased every moment. Everyone took his telescope. About three miles away they saw two ships engaged in battle; and the wind brought them so near the French ship that they had the pleasure of seeing the fight at their ease. At last one of the two ships fired a broadside so accurately and so low down that the other ship began to sink. Candide and Martin distinctly saw a hundred men on the main deck of the sinking ship; they raised their hands to Heaven and uttered frightful shrieks; in a moment all were engulfed. “Well!” said Martin, “that is how men treat each other.” “It is certainly true,” said Candide, “that there is something diabolical in this affair.” As he was speaking, he saw something of a brilliant red swimming near the ship. They launched a boat to see what it could be; it was one of his sheep. Candide felt more joy at recovering this sheep than grief at losing a hundred all laden with large diamonds from Eldorado. The French captain soon perceived that the captain of the remaining ship was a Spaniard and that the sunken ship was a Dutch pirate; the captain was the very same who had robbed Candide. The immense wealth this scoundrel had stolen was swallowed up with him in the sea and only a sheep was saved. “You see,” said Candide to Martin, “that crime is sometimes punished; this scoundrel of a Dutch captain has met the fate he deserved.” “Yes,” said Martin, “but was it necessary that the other passengers on his ship should perish too? God punished the thief, and the devil punished the others.” Meanwhile the French and Spanish ships continued on their way and Candide continued his conversation with Martin. They argued for a fortnight and at the end of the fortnight they had got no further than at the beginning. But after all, they talked, they exchanged ideas, they consoled each other. Candide stroked his sheep. “Since I have found you again,” said he, “I may very likely find Cunegonde.”
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 26