Page:Candide Smollett E. P. Dutton.djvu/56

 set out in company with a Pole and a Tyrolese. Upon my arrival, I was honoured with a subdeaconship and a lieutenancy. Now I am colonel and priest. We shall give a warm reception to the King of Spain’s troops; I can assure you, they will be well excommunicated and beaten. Providence has sent you hither to assist us. But is it true that my dear sister Cunegund is in the neighbourhood with the Governor of Buenos Ayres?”

Candide swore that nothing could be more true; and the tears began again to trickle down their cheeks.

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 rescue my sister Cunegund.”

“Ah! that would crown my wishes,” replied Candide, “for I intended to marry her; and I hope I shall still be able to do so.”

“Insolent fellow!” replied the Baron. “You! you have the impudence to marry my sister, who bears seventy-two quarterings! I think you have an insufferable degree of assurance to dare so much as to mention such an audacious design to me.”

Candide, thunder-struck at the oddness of this speech, answered, “Reverend Father, all the quarterings in the world are of no significance. I have delivered your sister from a Jew and an Inquisitor; she is under many obligations to me, and she is resolved to give me her hand. Master Pangloss always told me that mankind are by nature equal. Therefore, you may depend upon it, that I will marry your sister.”

“We shall 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 mildest man in the world, and yet I have already killed three men; and of these three two were priests.”

Cacambo, standing sentry near the door of the arbour, instantly ran up.

“Nothing remains,” said his master, “but to 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 1em