Candide by Voltaire Read Free Book Online Page B

with the governor of Buenos Ayres?” Candide swore that nothing could be more true; and the tears began to trickle down their cheeks again.
    The baron knew no end of embracing Candide; he called him his brother, his deliverer. “Perhaps,” said he, “my dear Candide, we shall be fortunate enough to enter the town sword in hand, and recover my sister Cunégonde.” “Ah! that is all I desire,” replied Candide, “for I intended to marry her; and I hope I shall still be able to.” “Insolent fellow!” replied the baron. “You! you have the impudence to marry my sister, who bears seventy-two quarterings! Really I think you are very presumptuous to dare so much as to mention such an audacious design to me.” Candide, thunderstruck at the oddness of this speech, answered: “Reverend father, all the quarterings in the world are of no significance. I have rescued your sister from a Jew and an Inquisitor; she is under many obligations to me, and she wants to marry me. My master Pangloss always told me that all people are by nature equal. Therefore, I will certainly marry your sister.” “We will see about that, villain!” said the Jesuit baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, and struck him across the face with the flat side of his sword. Candide in an instant drew his rapier, and plunged it up to the hilt in the Jesuit’s body; but in pulling it out, reeking hot, he burst into tears. “Good God,” cried he, “I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law. I am the best man in the world, and yet I have already killed three men; and of these three two were priests.”
    Cacambo, who was standing sentry near the door of the arbour, instantly ran up. “We can do nothing,” said his master, “but sell our lives as dearly as possible. They will undoubtedly look into the arbour; we must die sword in hand.” Cacambo, who had seen many of these kind of adventures, was not discouraged. He stripped the baron of his Jesuit’s habit and put it upon Candide, then gave him the dead man’s three-cornered cap, and made him mount on horse-back. All this was done in the wink of an eye. “Gallop, master,” cried Cacambo; “everybody will take you for a Jesuit going to give orders, and we will have passed the frontiers before they can overtake us.” He flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in Spanish: “Make way! make way for the reverend father-colonel!”

XVI
    What happened to our two Travellers with two Girls, two Monkeys, and the savages called Oreillons au
    C andide and his valet had already passed the frontiers before it was known that the German Jesuit was dead. The wary Cacambo had taken care to fill his satchel with bread, chocolate, some ham, some fruit, and a few bottles of wine. They pushed their Andalusian horses forward into a strange country, where there were no roads. At length, a beautiful meadow, divided by several streams, opened to their view. Cacambo suggested to his master that they eat, and he promptly set the example. “How can you expect me to feast upon ham when I have killed the baron’s son, and am doomed never more to see the beautiful Cunégonde? How will it serve me to prolong a wretched life that might be spent far from her in remorse and despair? And then what will the journal of Trevoux av say about all this?”
    While he was making these reflections he still continued eating. The sun was now at the point of setting when our two wanderers heard cries which seemed to be uttered by a female voice. They could not tell whether these were cries of grief or joy; however, they instantly started up, full of that inquietude and apprehension which a strange place naturally inspires. The cries came from two young women who were tripping stark naked along the meadow while two monkeys followed close at their heels, biting their backs. Candide was moved to pity; he had learned to shoot while he was among the Bulgarians, and he could hit a nut off a bush without touching a leaf. Accordingly