Page:Candide Smollett E. P. Dutton.djvu/84

 He entered the city by the suburbs of St. Marceau, and thought himself in one of the vilest hamlets in all Westphalia.

Candide had not been long at his inn before he was seized with a slight disorder owing to the fatigue he had undergone. As he wore a diamond of an enormous size on his finger, and had, among the rest of his equipage, a strong box that seemed very weighty, he soon found himself between two physicians whom he had not sent for, a number of intimate friends whom he had never seen, and who would not quit his bedside, and two female devotees who warmed his soup for him.

“I remember,” said Martin to him, "that the first time I came to Paris I was likewise taken ill; I was very poor, and, accordingly, I had neither friends, nurses, nor physicians, and yet I did very well.”

However, by dint of purging and bleeding Candide’s disorder became very serious. The priest of the parish came with all imaginable politeness to desire a note of him, payable to the bearer in the other world. Candide refused to comply with his request; but the two devotees assured him that it was a new fashion. Candide replied that he was not one that followed the fashion. Martin was for throwing the priest out of the window. The clerk swore Candide should not have Christian burial. Martin swore in his turn that he would bury the clerk alive, if he continued to plague them any longer. The dispute grew warm; Martin took him by the shoulders, and turned him out of the room, which gave great scandal, and occasioned a lawsuit.

Candide recovered; and, till he was in a condition to go abroad, had a great deal of very good company to pass the evenings with him in his chamber. They played deep. Candide was surprised to find he could never turn a trick; and Martin was not at all surprised at the matter.

Among those who did him the honours of the place, was a little spruce Abbé from Périgord, one of those insinuating, busy, fawning, impudent, accommodating fellows, that lie in wait for strangers at their arrival, tell them all the scandal of the town, and offer to minister to their pleasures at various prices. This man conducted Candide and Martin to the playhouse: they were acting a new tragedy. Candide found himself placed near a cluster of wits: this, however, did not prevent him from shedding tears at some scenes which were perfectly acted. One of these talkers said to him between the acts:

“You are greatly to blame in shedding tears; that actress plays horribly, and the man that plays with her still worse, and the piece itself is still more execrable 1em