Page:Candide Smollett E. P. Dutton.djvu/21

 “She is dead,” replied the other.

Candide immediately fainted away: his friend recovered him by the help of a little bad vinegar which he found by chance in the stable. Candide opened his eyes.

“Dead! Miss Cunegund dead!” he said. “Ah, where is the best of worlds now? But of what illness did she die? Was it for grief upon seeing her father kick me out of his magnificent castle?”

“No,” replied Pangloss; “her belly was ripped open by the Bulgarian soldiers, after they had ravished her as much as it was possible for damsel to be ravished: 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 the sheep, the barns, and the trees: but we have had our revenge, for the Abares have done the very same thing in a neighbouring barony, which belonged to a Bulgarian lord.”

At hearing this, Candide fainted away a second time; but, 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 other, “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,” replied 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 the disease, and perhaps is since dead of it; she received this present of a learned cordelier, who derived it from the fountain-head; 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.” 1em