CHAPTER XXIII
Candide and Martin Reach the Coast of England; and What They Saw There
“Ah! Pangloss, Panglossl Ah! Martin, Martin! Ah! my dear Cunegondel What sort of a world is this?” said Candide on the Dutch ship. “Something very mad and very abominable,” replied Martin. “You know England; are the people there as mad as they are in France?” “ ’Tis another sort of madness,” said Martin. “You know these two nations are at war for a few acres of snow in Canada, and that they are spending more on this fine war than all Canada is worth. It is beyond my poor capacity to tell you whether there are more madmen in one country than in the other; all I know is that in general the people we are going to visit are extremely melancholic.” Talking thus, they arrived at Portsmouth. There were multitudes of people on the shore, looking attentively at a rather fat man with his eyes bandaged who was kneeling down on the deck of one of the ships in the fleet; four soldiers placed opposite this man each shot three bullets into his brain in the calmest manner imaginable; and the whole assembly returned home with great satisfaction. “What is all this?” said Candide. “And what Demon exercises his power everywhere?” He asked who was the fat man who had just been killed so ceremoniously. “An admiral,” was the reply. “And why kill the admiral?” “Because,” he was told, “he did not kill enough people. He fought a battle with a French admiral and it was held that the English admiral was not close enough to him.” “But,” said Candide, “the French admiral was just as far from the English admiral!” “That is indisputable,” was the answer, “but in this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.” Candide was so bewildered and so shocked by what he saw and heard that he would not even set foot on shore, but bargained with the Dutch captain (even if he had to pay him as much as the Surinam robber) to take him at once to Venice. The captain was ready in two days. They sailed down the coast of France; and passed in sight of Lisbon, at which Candide shuddered. They entered the Straits and the Mediterranean and at last reached Venice. “Praised be God!” said Candide, embracing Martin, “here I shall see the fair Cunegonde again. I trust Cacambo as I would myself. All is well, all goes well, all goes as well as it possibly could.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Paquette and Friar Giroflée
As soon as he reached Venice, he inquired for Cacambo in all the taverns, in all the cafés, and of all the ladies of pleasure; and did not find him. Every day he sent out messengers to all ships and boats; but there was no news of Cacambo. “What!” said he to Martin, “I have had time to sail from Surinam to Bordeaux, to go from Bordeaux to Paris, from Paris to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Portsmouth, to sail along the coasts of Portugal and Spain, to cross the Mediterranean, to spend several months at Venice, and the fair Cunegonde has not yet arrived! Instead of her I have met only a jade and an abbé from Périgord! Cunegonde is certainly dead and the only thing left for me is to die too. Ah! It would have been better to stay in the Paradise of Eldorado instead of returning to this accursed Europe. How right you are, my dear Martin! Everything is illusion and calamity!” He fell into a black melancholy and took no part in the opera à la mode or in the other carnival amusements; not a lady caused him the least temptation. Martin said: “You are indeed simple-minded to suppose that a half-breed valet with five or six millions in his pocket will go and look for your mistress at the other end of the world and bring her to you at Venice. If he finds her, he will take her for himself; if he does not find her, he will take another. I advise you to forget your valet Cacambo and your mistress Cunegonde.” Martin was not consoling. Candide’s melancholy increased, and Martin persisted in proving to him that there was little virtue and small happiness in the world except perhaps in Eldorado where nobody could go. While arguing about this important subject and waiting for Cunegonde, Candide noticed a young Theatine monk in the Piazza San Marco, with a girl on his arm. The Theatine looked fresh, plump, and vigorous; his eyes were bright, his air assured, his countenance firm, and his step lofty. The girl was very pretty and was singing; she gazed amorously at her Theatine and every now and then pinched his fat cheeks. “At least you will admit,” said Candide to Martin, “that those people are happy. Hitherto I have only found unfortunates in the whole habitable earth, except in Eldorado; but I wager that this girl and the Theatine are very happy creatures.” “I wager they are not,” said Martin. “We have only to ask them to dinner,” said Candide, “and you will see whether I am wrong.” He immediately accosted them, paid his respects to them, and invited them to come to his hotel to eat macaroni, Lombardy partridges, and caviar, and to drink Montepulciano, Lacryma Christi, Cyprus, and Samos wine. The young lady blushed, the Theatine accepted the invitation, and the girl followed, looking at Candide with surprise and confusion in her eyes which were filled with a few tears. Scarcely had they entered Candide’s room when she said: “What! Monsieur Candide does not recognize Paquettel” At these words Candide, who had not looked at her very closely because he was occupied entirely by Cunegonde, said to her: “Alas! my poor child, so it was you who put Dr. Pangloss into the fine state I saw him in?” “Alas! sir, it was indeed,” said Paquette. “I see you have heard all about it. I have heard of the terrible misfortunes which happened to Her Ladyship the Baroness’s whole family and to the fair Cunegonde. I swear to you that my fate has been just as sad. I was very innocent when you knew me. A Franciscan friar who was my confessor easily seduced me. The results were dreadful; I was obliged to leave the castle shortly after His Lordship the Baron expelled you by kicking you hard and frequently in the backside. If a famous doctor had not taken pity on me I should have died. For some time I was the doctor’s mistress from gratitude to him. His wife, who was madly jealous, beat me every day relentlessly; she was a fury. The doctor was the ugliest of men, and I was the most unhappy of all living creatures at being continually beaten on account of a man I did not love. You know, sir, how dangerous it is for a shrewish woman to be the wife of a doctor. One day, exasperated by his wife’s behavior, he gave her some medicine for a little cold and it was so efficacious that she died two hours afterward in horrible convulsions. The lady’s relatives brought a criminal prosecution against the husband; he fled and I was put in prison. My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been rather pretty. The judge set me free on condition that he took the doctor’s place. I was soon supplanted by a rival, expelled without a penny, and obliged to continue the abominable occupation which to you men seems so amusing and which to us is nothing but an abyss of misery. I came to Venice to practice this profession. Ah! sir, if you could imagine what it is to be forced to caress impartially an old tradesman, a lawyer, a monk, a gondolier, an abbé; to be exposed to every insult and outrage; to be reduced often to borrow a petticoat in order to go and find some disgusting man who will lift it; to be robbed by one of what one has earned with another, to be despoiled by the police, and to contemplate for the future nothing but a dreadful old age, a hospital and a dunghill, you would conclude that I am one of the most unfortunate creatures in the world.” Paquette opened her heart in this way to Candide in a side room, in the presence of Martin, who said to Candide: “You see, I have already won half my wager.” Friar Giroflée had remained in the dining room, drinking a glass while he waited for dinner. “But,” said Candide to Paquette, “when I met you, you looked so gay, so happy; you were singing, you were caressing the Theatine so naturally; you seemed to me to be as happy as you are unfortunate.” “Ah! sir,” replied Paquette, “that is one more misery of our profession. Yesterday I was robbed and beaten by an officer, and today I must seem to be in a good humor to please a monk.” Candide wanted to hear no more; he admitted that Martin was right. They sat down to table with Paquette and the Theatine. The meal was quite amusing and toward the end they were talking with some confidence. “Father,” said Candide to the monk, “you seem to me to enjoy a fate which everybody should envy; the flower of health shines on your cheek, your face is radiant with happiness; y
ou have a very pretty girl for your recreation and you appear to be very well pleased with your state of life as a Theatine.” “Faith, Sir,” said Friar Giroflée, “I wish all the Theatines were at the bottom of the sea. A hundred times I have been tempted to set fire to the monastery and to go and be a Turk. My parents forced me at the age of fifteen to put on this detestable robe, in order that more money might be left to my cursed elder brother, whom God confound! Jealousy, discord, fury, inhabit the monastery. It is true, I have preached a few bad sermons which bring me in a little money, half of which is stolen from me by the prior; the remainder I spend on girls; but when I go back to the monastery in the evening I feel ready to smash my head against the dormitory walls, and all my colleagues are in the same state.” Martin turned to Candide and said with his usual calm: “Well, have I not won the whole wager?” Candide gave two thousand piastres to Paquette and a thousand to Friar Giroflée. “I warrant,” said he, “that they will be happy with that.” “I don’t believe it in the very least,” said Martin. “Perhaps you will make them still more unhappy with those piastres.” “That may be,” said Candide, “but I am consoled by one thing; I see that we often meet people we thought we should never meet again; it may very well be that as I met my red sheep and Paquette, I may also meet Cunegonde again.” “I hope,” said Martin, “that she will one day make you happy; but I doubt it very much.” “You are very hard,” said Candide. “That’s because I have lived,” said Martin. “But look at these gondoliers,” said Candide, “they sing all day long.” “You do not see them at home, with their wives and their brats of children,” said Martin. “The Doge has his troubles, the gondoliers have theirs. True, looking at it all round, a gondolier’s lot is preferable to a Doge’s; but I think the difference so slight that it is not worth examining.” “They talk,” said Candide,
“about Senator Pococurante who lives in that handsome palace on the Brenta and who is hospitable to foreigners. He is supposed to be a man who has never known a grief.” “I should like to meet so rare a specimen,” said Martin. Candide immediately sent a request to Lord Pococurante for permission to wait upon him next day.
CHAPTER XXV
Visit to the Noble Venetian, Lord Pococurante
Candide and Martin took a gondola and rowed to the noble Pococurante’s palace. The gardens were extensive and ornamented with fine marble statues; the architecture of the palace was handsome. The master of this establishment, a very wealthy man of about sixty, received the two visitors very politely but with very little cordiality, which disconcerted Candide but did not displease Martin. Two pretty and neatly dressed girls served them with very frothy chocolate. Candide could not refrain from praising their beauty, their grace, and their skill. “They are quite good creatures,” said Senator Pococurante, “and I sometimes make them sleep in my bed, for I am very tired of the ladies of the town, with their coquetries, their jealousies, their quarrels, their humors, their meanness, their pride, their folly, and the sonnets one must write or have written for them; but, after all, I am getting very tired of these two girls.” After this collation, Candide was walking in a long gallery and was surprised by the beauty of the pictures. He asked what master had painted the two first. “They are by Raphael,” said the Senator. “Some years ago 1 bought them at a very high price out of mere vanity; I am tola they are the finest in Italy, but they give me no pleas. are; the color has gone very dark, the faces are not sufficiently rounded and do not stand out enough; the draperies have not the least resemblance to material; in short, whatever they may say,.I do not consider them a true imitation of nature. I shall only like a picture when it makes me think it is nature itself; and there are none of that kind. I have a great many pictures, but I never look at them now.” While they waited for dinner, Pococurante gave them a concert. Candide thought the mu sic delicious. “This noise,” said Pococurante, “is amusing for half an hour; but if it lasts any longer, it wearies everybody although nobody dares to say so. Music nowadays is merely the art of executing difficulties and in the end that which is only difficult ceases to please. Perhaps I should like the opera more, if they had not made it a monster which revolts me. Those who please may go to see bad tragedies set to music, where the scenes are only composed to bring in clumsily two or three ridiculous songs which show off an actress’s voice; those who will or can, may swoon with pleasure when they see a eunuch humming the part of Caesar and Cato as he awkwardly treads the boards; for my part, I long ago abandoned such trivialities, which nowadays are the glory of Italy and for which monarchs pay so dearly.” Candide demurred a little, but discreetly. Martin entirely agreed with the Senator. They sat down to table and after an excellent dinner went into the library. Candide saw a magnificently bound Homer and compli mented the Illustrissimo on his good taste. “That is the book,” said he, “which so much delighted the great Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of Germany.” “It does not delight me,” said Pococurante coldly; “formerly I was made to believe that I took pleasure in reading it; but this continual repetition of battles which are all alike, these gods who are perpetually active and achieve nothing decisive, this Helen who is the cause of the war and yet scarcely an actor in the piece, this Troy which is always besieged and never taken—all bore me extremely. I have sometimes asked learned men if they were as bored as I am by reading it; all who were sincere confessed that the book fell from their hands, but that it must be in every library, as a monument of antiquity, and like those rusty coins which cannot be put into circulation.” “Your Excellency has a different opinion of Virgil?” said Candide. “I admit,” said Pococurante, “that the second, fourth and sixth books of his Aeneid are excellent, but as for his pious Aeneas and the strong Cloanthes and the faithful Achates and the little Ascanius and the imbecile king Latinus and the middle-class Amata and the insipid Lavinia, I think there could be nothing more frigid and disagreeable. I prefer Tasso and the fantastic tales of Ariosto.” “May I venture to ask you, sir,” said Candide, “if you do not take great pleasure in reading Horace?” “He has two maxims,” said Pococurante, “which might be useful to a man of the world, and which, being compressed in energetic verses, are more easily impressed upon the memory; but I care very little for his Journey to Brundisium, and his description of a Bad Dinner, and the street brawlers’ quarrel between—what is his name?—Rupilius, whose words, he says, were full of pus, and another person whose words were all vinegar. I was extremely disgusted with his gross verses against old women and witches; and I cannot see there is any merit in his telling his friend Maecenas that, if he is placed by him among the lyric poets, he will strike the stars with his lofty brow. Fools admire everything in a celebrated author. I only read to please myself, and I only like what suits me.” Candide, who had been taught never to judge anything for himselr, was greatly surprised by what he heard; and Man tin thought Pococurante’s way of thinking quite reasonable. “Oh! There is a Cicero,” said Candide. “I suppose you are never tired of reading that great man?” “I never read him,” replied the Venetian. “What do I care that he pleaded for Rabirius or Cluentius? I have enough cases to judge myself; I could better have endured his philosophical works; but when I saw that he doubted everything, I concluded I knew as much as he and did not need anybody else in order to be ignorant.” “Ah! There are eighty volumes of the Proceedings of an Academy of Sciences,” exclaimed Martin, “there might be something good in them.” “There would be,” said Pococurante, “if a single one of the authors of all that rubbish had invented even the art of making pins; but in all those books there is nothing but vain systems and not a single useful thing.” “What a lot of plays I see there,” said Candide. “Italian, Spanish, and French!” “Yes,” said the Senator, “there are three thousand and not three dozen good ones. As for those collections of sermons, which all together are not worth a page of Seneca, and all those large volumes of theology, you may well suppose that they are never opened by me or anybody else.” Martin noticed some shelves filled with English
books. “I should think,” he said, “that a republican would enjoy most of those works written with so much freedom.” “Yes,” replied Pococurante, “it is good to write as we think; it is the privilege of man. In all Italy, we only write what we do not think; those who inhabit the country of the Caesars and the Antonines dare not have an idea without the permission of a Dominican monk. I should applaud the liberty which inspires Englishmen of genius if passion and party spirit did not corrupt everything estimable in that precious liberty.” Candide, in noticing a Milton, asked him if he did not consider that author to be a very great man. “Who?” said Pococurante. “That barbarian who wrote a long commentary on the first chapter of Genesis in ten books of harsh verses? That gross imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the Creation, and who, while Moses represents the Eternal Being as producing the world by speech, makes the Messiah take a large compass from the heavenly cupboard in order to trace out his work? Should I esteem the man who spoiled Tasso’s hell and devil; who disguises Lucifer sometimes as a toad, sometimes as a pigmy; who makes him repeat the same things a hundred times; makes him argue about theology; and imitates seriously Ariosto’s comical invention of firearms by making the devils fire a cannon in Heaven? Neither I nor anyone else in Italy could enjoy such wretched extravagances. The marriage of Sin and Death and the snakes which Sin brings forth nauseate any man of delicate taste, and his long description of a hospital would only please a gravedigger. This obscure, bizarre and disgusting poem was despised at its birth; I treat it today as it was treated by its contemporaries in its own country. But then I say what I think, and care very little whether others think as I do.” Candide was distressed by these remarks; he respected Homer and rather liked Milton. “Alas?” he whispered to Martin, “I am afraid this man would have a sovereign contempt for our German poets.” “There wouldn’t be much harm in that,” said Martin. “Oh! What a superior manl” said Candida under his breath. “What a great genius this Pococurante is! Nothing can please him.” After they had thus reviewed all his books they went down into the garden. Candide praised all its beauties. “I have never met anything more tasteless,” said the owner. “We have nothing but gewgaws; but tomorrow I shall begin to plant one on a more noble plan.” When the two visitors had taken farewell of his Excellency, Candide said to Martin: “Now you will admit that he is the happiest of men, for he is superior to everything he possesses.” “Do you not see,” said Martin, “that he is disgusted with everything he possesses? Plato said long ago that the best stomachs are not those which refuse all food.” “But,” said Candide, “is there not pleasure in criticizing, in finding faults where other men think they see beauty?” “That is to say,” answered Martin, “that there is pleasure in not being pleased.” “Ohl Well,” said Candide, “then there is no one happy except me—when I see Mademoiselle Cunegonde again.” “It is always good to hope,” said Martin. However, the days and weeks went by; Cacambo did not return and Candide was so much plunged in grief that he did not even notice that Paquette and Friar Giroflée had not once come to thank him.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 28