How Candide Found His Old Master Pangloss Again and What Happened to

    Him

  The next day, as Candide was walking out, he met a beggar all
covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose
eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak,
snuffling and coughing most violently, and every time he attempted
to spit out dropped a tooth.

  Candide, divided between compassion and horror, but giving way to
the former, bestowed on this shocking figure the two florins which the
honest Anabaptist, James, had just before given to him. The specter
looked at him very earnestly, shed tears and threw his arms about
his neck. Candide started back aghast.

  "Alas!" said the one wretch to the other, "don't you know dear
Pangloss?"

  "What do I hear? Is it you, my dear master! you I behold in this
piteous plight? What dreadful misfortune has befallen you? What has
made you leave the most magnificent and delightful of all castles?
What has become of Miss Cunegund, the mirror of young ladies, and
Nature's masterpiece?"

  "Oh, Lord!" cried Pangloss, "I am so weak I cannot stand," upon
which Candide instantly led him to the Anabaptist's stable, and
procured him something to eat.

  As soon as Pangloss had a little refreshed himself, Candide began to
repeat his inquiries concerning Miss Cunegund.

  "She is dead," replied the other.

  "Dead!" cried Candide, and immediately fainted away; his friend
restored him by the help of a little bad vinegar, which he found by
chance in the stable.

  Candide opened his eyes, and again repeated: "Dead! is Miss Cunegund
dead? Ah, where is the best of worlds now? But of what illness did she
die? Was it of grief on seeing her father kick me out of his
magnificent castle?"

  "No," replied Pangloss, "her body was ripped open by the Bulgarian
soldiers, after they had subjected her to as much cruelty as a
damsel could survive; they knocked the Baron, her father, on the
head for attempting to defend her; My Lady, her mother, was cut in
pieces; my poor pupil was served just in the same manner as his
sister; and as for the castle, they have not left one stone upon
another; they have destroyed all the ducks, and sheep, the barns,
and the trees; but we have had our revenge, for the Abares have done
the very same thing in a neighboring barony, which belonged to a
Bulgarian lord."

  At hearing this, Candide fainted away a second time, but, not
withstanding, having come to himself again, he said all that it became
him to say; he inquired into the cause and effect, as well as into the
sufficing reason that had reduced Pangloss to so miserable a
condition.

  "Alas," replied the preceptor, "it was love; love, the comfort of
the human species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of
all sensible beings; love! tender love!"

  "Alas," cried Candide, "I have had some knowledge of love myself,
this sovereign of hearts, this soul of souls; yet it never cost me
more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. But how could
this beautiful cause produce in you so hideous an effect?"

  Pangloss made answer in these terms:

  "O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty
wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the
pleasures of Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which
you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has
since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan,
who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old
countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a
marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who,
during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow
adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall give it to
nobody, I am a dying man."

  "O sage Pangloss," cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy is this!
Is not the devil the root of it?"

  "Not at all," replied the great man, "it was a thing unavoidable,
a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had
not caught in an island in America this disease, which contaminates
the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself,
and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have
had neither chocolate nor cochineal. It is also to be observed,
that, even to the present time, in this continent of ours, this
malady, like our religious controversies, is peculiar to ourselves.
The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, and
the Japanese are entirely unacquainted with it; but there is a
sufficing reason for them to know it in a few centuries. In the
meantime, it is making prodigious havoc among us, especially in
those armies composed of well disciplined hirelings, who determine the
fate of nations; for we may safely affirm, that, when an army of