prompt:
Chapter: Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--that the
great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to
find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it
would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed
with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage
containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the
gates. Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, and
for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness, I could
consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still
than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for the first time,
I could see in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis.
What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too
little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness
of my colleague's act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect
of which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of
making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching
the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up
at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the
consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be
known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I
wandered with that manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place
and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for
the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart.

The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner,
little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no
glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change
taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the
piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled and
befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her
confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in
by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had
already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and
I learned below that he had breakfasted--in the presence of a couple of
the maids--with Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he
said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have
expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What
he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled:
there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean for myself in
especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung
to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had
perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction
that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that,
by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the
care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining
to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate
his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown,
moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night,
I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither
challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas.
Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the
accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the
beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the
eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow.

To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my
meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so
that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside
of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared
Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light.
Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again--how my
equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut
my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with
was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking
"nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous
ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but
demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw
of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require
more tact than just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature.
How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of
reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make
reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort
of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as
that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare
in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found even now--as he
had so often found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me
off. Wasn't there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude,
broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?--the fact
that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it
would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one
might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been
given him for but to save him? Mightn't one, to reach his mind, risk the
stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were
face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way.
The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance.
Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets
and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some
humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: "I say, my dear,
is she really very awfully ill?"

"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better. London
will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take
your mutton."

He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and,
when he was established, went on. "Did Bly disagree with her so terribly
suddenly?"

"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on."

"Then why didn't you get her off before?"

"Before what?"

"Before she became too ill to travel."

I found myself prompt. "She's NOT too ill to travel: she only might
have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The
journey will dissipate the influence"--oh, I was grand!--"and carry it
off."

"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to
his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, from the day of
his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever
he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He
was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more
conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things
than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into
peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the
briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately
removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his
little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of the wide
window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We
continued silent while the maid was with us--as silent, it whimsically
occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at
the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only
when the waiter had left us. "Well--so we're alone!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: With Mrs. Grose and Flora gone, the governess focuses on her impending confrontation with Miles. She senses that the maids and men at Bly are staring at her and reacts by parading around to appear "remarkably firm. Her marching around the house doesn't seem to affect Miles. From a maid, the governess learns that Miles had breakfasted with Flora before Flora's departure. The governess braces herself for a fight "against nature," which will require "only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. The governess dines with Miles, who asks about his sister's illness. The governess reassures him that Flora will soon get well. He prods further, asking if Flora's aversion to Bly occurred all at once. The conversation continues, with the governess proclaiming that Flora was not too ill to travel. Their meal is brief. When it is done and the waiter gone, Miles exclaims that they are alone


prompt:
Chapter: "Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. We
shouldn't like that!" I went on.

"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others."

"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred.

"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his hands in
his pockets and planted there in front of me, "they don't much count, do
they?"

I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It depends on what you call
'much'!"

"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" On this, however,
he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague,
restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead
against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the
dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work," behind
which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had
repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the
moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which
I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the
worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a
meaning from the boy's embarrassed back--none other than the impression
that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp
intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was
positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a
kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at
any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I
took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted
pane, for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in
the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very
first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he
watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his
usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small
strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet
me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. "Well, I think I'm
glad Bly agrees with ME!"

"You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good
deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," I went on bravely,
"that you've been enjoying yourself."

"Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles away.
I've never been so free."

He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with
him. "Well, do you like it?"

He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do
YOU?"--more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain.
Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with
the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. "Nothing could
be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we're alone
together now it's you that are alone most. But I hope," he threw in,
"you don't particularly mind!"

"Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help
minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company--you're so
beyond me--I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?"

He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver
now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. "You stay
on just for THAT?"

"Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest
I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth
your while. That needn't surprise you." My voice trembled so that I felt
it impossible to suppress the shake. "Don't you remember how I told you,
when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was
nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you?"

"Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone
to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out
through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. "Only
that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!"

"It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. "But, you know,
you didn't do it."

"Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, "you wanted
me to tell you something."

"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know."

"Ah, then, is THAT what you've stayed over for?"

He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest
little quiver of resentful passion; but I can't begin to express the
effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as
if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. "Well,
yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for
that."

He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the
assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said
was: "Do you mean now--here?"

"There couldn't be a better place or time." He looked round him
uneasily, and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very
first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear.
It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me--which struck me indeed as
perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort
I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so
gentle as to be almost grotesque. "You want so to go out again?"

"Awfully!" He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery
of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up
his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that
gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of
what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what
did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt
on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the
possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't it base to create for a
being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into
our situation a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem
to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision
of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and
scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other
we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll
tell you everything," Miles said--"I mean I'll tell you anything you
like. You'll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I WILL
tell you--I WILL. But not now."

"Why not now?"

My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window
in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop.
Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside,
someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. "I have to see
Luke."

I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt
proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my
truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. "Well, then,
go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for
that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request."

He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a
little to bargain. "Very much smaller--?"

"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work preoccupied
me, and I was offhand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the
hall, you took, you know, my letter."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The governess demurs that they are not totally alone, and Miles agrees that there are "the others. Miles turns to the window. Turning back around, Miles expresses his happiness that Bly agrees with him. The governess asks if he has enjoyed his day of freedom. Miles turns the question on her, asking if she has enjoyed it. He says that, if they stay on at Bly together, she will be more alone than he. The governess says she misses his company--it is the only reason she has stayed on. Miles's expression turns grave. The two skirt around the issue of what the governess wants to know. She says now is the time and place, and she asks if he wants to go out again. He assents, saying he will tell her everything, but not now. First he needs to see Luke. The governess consents and requests that before he goes, Miles tell her whether he took her letter


prompt:
Chapter: My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something
that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke
that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind
movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just
fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively
keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us
that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view
like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from
outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the
glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his
white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place
within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made;
yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time
recovered her grasp of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the
immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw
and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I can
call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how
transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon for a
human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human
soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--had a
perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was
close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it
presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further
away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance.

"Yes--I took it."

At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while
I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his
little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on
the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have
likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather
the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was
such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were,
my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the
scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that
I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time,
of the child's unconsciousness, that made me go on. "What did you take
it for?"

"To see what you said about me."

"You opened the letter?"

"I opened it."

My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles's own face,
in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage
of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his
sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in
presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and
that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes
went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again and--by
my personal triumph--the influence quenched? There was nothing there. I
felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. "And you
found nothing!"--I let my elation out.

He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing."

"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy.

"Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated.

I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with it?"

"I've burned it."

"Burned it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at school?"

Oh, what this brought up! "At school?"

"Did you take letters?--or other things?"

"Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and
that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did
reach him. "Did I STEAL?"

I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it
were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him
take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the
world. "Was it for that you mightn't go back?"

The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. "Did you
know I mightn't go back?"

"I know everything."

He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?"

"Everything. Therefore DID you--?" But I couldn't say it again.

Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal."

My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but it
was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all
for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. "What then did
you do?"

He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his
breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have
been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some
faint green twilight. "Well--I said things."

"Only that?"

"They thought it was enough!"

"To turn you out for?"

Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little to explain it
as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner
quite detached and almost helpless. "Well, I suppose I oughtn't."

"But to whom did you say them?"

He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. "I don't
know!"

He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was
indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left
it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even
then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was
already that of added separation. "Was it to everyone?" I asked.

"No; it was only to--" But he gave a sick little headshake. "I don't
remember their names."

"Were they then so many?"

"No--only a few. Those I liked."

Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker
obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity
the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the
instant confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then
on earth was _I_? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the
question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he
turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window,
I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. "And
did they repeat what you said?" I went on after a moment.

He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again
with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against
his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim
day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an
unspeakable anxiety. "Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they must have
repeated them. To those THEY liked," he added.

There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it
over. "And these things came round--?"

"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. "But I didn't know
they'd tell."

"The masters? They didn't--they've never told. That's why I ask you."

He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. "Yes, it was
too bad."

"Too bad?"

"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home."

I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such
a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard
myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" But the next
after that I must have sounded stern enough. "What WERE these things?"

My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him
avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and
an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against
the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the
hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I felt a sick
swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that
the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I
saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the
perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still
to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax
of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. "No more, no
more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my
visitant.

"Is she HERE?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the
direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, with
a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a sudden fury
gave me back.

I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to
Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still
than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the window--straight
before us. It's THERE--the coward horror, there for the last time!"

At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled
dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light,
he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place
and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the
taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. "It's HE?"

I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to
challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?"

"Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its
convulsed supplication. "WHERE?"

They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his
tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own?--what will he
EVER matter? _I_ have you," I launched at the beast, "but he has lost
you forever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, "There, THERE!" I
said to Miles.

But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and
seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he
uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with
which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall.
I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a passion;
but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that
I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart,
dispossessed, had stopped.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: In the middle of this conversation, the governess is suddenly distracted by Peter Quint looking in through the window. She springs up and draws Miles close, his back to the window. Miles confesses that he took the letter. Moaning with joy, the governess embraces him and notes the quickness of his pulse. Miles says he wanted to know what the letter said about him but found it said nothing and burned it. The governess asks if he had stolen letters at school. Surprised, Miles asks if she had known that he couldn't go back to school. The governess claims to know everything. Denying the charge, Miles says he "said things" to boys he liked. The governess presses the issue. Miles shifts, and she springs forward upon him, pressing him against her. Miles asks if "she" is here. The governess says the "coward horror" is here. Miles searches in the direction of the governess's gaze and names Peter Quint, crying out "ou devil. and asking where. The governess yells at the ghost and points him out. Miles's heart stops.


prompt:
Chapter: In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the
most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He
combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the
reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of
the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by
a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would
never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one
quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through
the injuries of time.

The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his
castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung
with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at
need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was
his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his
stories.

The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was
therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of
the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her
daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely,
plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be in every respect
worthy of his father. The Preceptor Pangloss[1] was the oracle of the
family, and little Candide heard his lessons with all the good faith of
his age and character.

Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He
proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause, and that, in
this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most
magnificent of castles, and his lady the best of all possible
Baronesses.

"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as
they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the
best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear
spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for
stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to
construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the
greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were
made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently
they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should
have said all is for the best."

Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for he thought
Miss Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to
tell her so. He concluded that after the happiness of being born of
Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, the second degree of happiness was to be
Miss Cunegonde, the third that of seeing her every day, and the fourth
that of hearing Master Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the whole
province, and consequently of the whole world.

One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which
they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson
in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a
little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a
great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the
repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived
the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she
turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire
to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a _sufficient reason_ for
young Candide, and he for her.

She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushed; Candide blushed
also; she wished him good morrow in a faltering tone, and Candide spoke
to her without knowing what he said. The next day after dinner, as they
went from table, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen;
Cunegonde let fall her handkerchief, Candide picked it up, she took him
innocently by the hand, the youth as innocently kissed the young lady's
hand with particular vivacity, sensibility, and grace; their lips met,
their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed. Baron
Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and
effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside;
Cunegonde fainted away; she was boxed on the ears by the Baroness, as
soon as she came to herself; and all was consternation in this most
magnificent and most agreeable of all possible castles.

Candide, driven from terrestrial paradise, walked a long while without
knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often
towards the most magnificent of castles which imprisoned the purest of
noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle
of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day
Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town
which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of
hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two
men dressed in blue observed him.

"Comrade," said one, "here is a well-built young fellow, and of proper
height."

They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner.

"Gentlemen," replied Candide, with a most engaging modesty, "you do me
great honour, but I have not wherewithal to pay my share."

"Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and
of your merit never pay anything: are you not five feet five inches
high?"

"Yes, sir, that is my height," answered he, making a low bow.

"Come, sir, seat yourself; not only will we pay your reckoning, but we
will never suffer such a man as you to want money; men are only born to
assist one another."

"You are right," said Candide; "this is what I was always taught by Mr.
Pangloss, and I see plainly that all is for the best."

They begged of him to accept a few crowns. He took them, and wished to
give them his note; they refused; they seated themselves at table.

"Love you not deeply?"

"Oh yes," answered he; "I deeply love Miss Cunegonde."

"No," said one of the gentlemen, "we ask you if you do not deeply love
the King of the Bulgarians?"

"Not at all," said he; "for I have never seen him."

"What! he is the best of kings, and we must drink his health."

"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank.

"That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support,
the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your
glory is assured."

Instantly they fettered him, and carried him away to the regiment. There
he was made to wheel about to the right, and to the left, to draw his
rammer, to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march, and they
gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a
little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following
they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a
prodigy.

Candide, all stupefied, could not yet very well realise how he was a
hero. He resolved one fine day in spring to go for a walk, marching
straight before him, believing that it was a privilege of the human as
well as of the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased.
He had advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four others, heroes
of six feet, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked
which he would like the best, to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.

An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares.

There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and
cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first
of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept
away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested
its surface. The bayonet was also a _sufficient reason_ for the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.

At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their
bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters,
disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the
natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the
flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains,
arms, and legs.

Candide fled quickly to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians;
and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking
always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond
the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss
Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived
in Holland; but having heard that everybody was rich in that country,
and that they were Christians, he did not doubt but he should meet with
the same treatment from them as he had met with in the Baron's castle,
before Miss Cunegonde's bright eyes were the cause of his expulsion
thence.

He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him,
that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the
house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living.

The next he addressed was a man who had been haranguing a large assembly
for a whole hour on the subject of charity. But the orator, looking
askew, said:

"What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause?"

"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide;
"the whole is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. It was
necessary for me to have been banished from the presence of Miss
Cunegonde, to have afterwards run the gauntlet, and now it is necessary
I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be
otherwise."

"My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be
Anti-Christ?"

"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether
he be not, I want bread."

"Thou dost not deserve to eat," said the other. "Begone, rogue; begone,
wretch; do not come near me again."

The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man
that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a
full.... Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the
ladies.

A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James,
beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his
brethren, an unfeathered biped with a rational soul, he took him home,
cleaned him, gave him bread and beer, presented him with two florins,
and even wished to teach him the manufacture of Persian stuffs which
they make in Holland. Candide, almost prostrating himself before him,
cried:

"Master Pangloss has well said that all is for the best in this world,
for I am infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than with
the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black coat and his lady."

The next day, as he took a walk, he met a beggar all covered with scabs,
his eyes diseased, the end of his nose eaten away, his mouth distorted,
his teeth black, choking in his throat, tormented with a violent cough,
and spitting out a tooth at each effort.

Candide, yet more moved with compassion than with horror, gave to this
shocking beggar the two florins which he had received from the honest
Anabaptist James. The spectre looked at him very earnestly, dropped a
few tears, and fell upon his neck. Candide recoiled in disgust.

"Alas!" said one wretch to the other, "do you no longer know your dear
Pangloss?"

"What do I hear? You, my dear master! you in this terrible plight! What
misfortune has happened to you? Why are you no longer in the most
magnificent of castles? What has become of Miss Cunegonde, the pearl of
girls, and nature's masterpiece?"

"I am so weak that I cannot stand," said Pangloss.

Upon which Candide carried him to the Anabaptist's stable, and gave him
a crust of bread. As soon as Pangloss had refreshed himself a little:

"Well," said Candide, "Cunegonde?"

"She is dead," replied the other.

Candide fainted at this word; his friend recalled his senses with a
little bad vinegar which he found by chance in the stable. Candide
reopened his eyes.

"Cunegonde is dead! Ah, best of worlds, where art thou? But of what
illness did she die? Was it not for grief, upon seeing her father kick
me out of his magnificent castle?"

"No," said Pangloss, "she was ripped open by the Bulgarian soldiers,
after having been violated by many; they broke the Baron's 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, not a barn, nor a
sheep, nor a duck, nor a tree; but we have had our revenge, for the
Abares have done the very same thing to a neighbouring barony, which
belonged to a Bulgarian lord."

At this discourse Candide fainted again; but coming to himself, and
having said all that it became him to say, inquired into the cause and
effect, as well as into the _sufficient reason_ that had reduced
Pangloss to so miserable a plight.

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

"Alas!" said Candide, "I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that
soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty
kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an
effect so abominable?"

Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember
Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her
arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell
torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she
is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned
Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old
countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a
marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit,
who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of
Christopher Columbus.[3] For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am
dying."

"Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the
Devil the original stock of it?"

"Not at all," replied this great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a
necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in
an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source
of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently
opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor
cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this
distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot.
The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the
Japanese, know nothing of it; but there is a sufficient reason for
believing that they will know it in their turn in a few centuries. In
the meantime, it has made marvellous progress among us, especially in
those great armies composed of honest well-disciplined hirelings, who
decide the destiny of states; for we may safely affirm that when an army
of thirty thousand men fights another of an equal number, there are
about twenty thousand of them p-x-d on each side."

"Well, this is wonderful!" said Candide, "but you must get cured."

"Alas! how can I?" said Pangloss, "I have not a farthing, my friend, and
all over the globe there is no letting of blood or taking a glister,
without paying, or somebody paying for you."

These last words determined Candide; he went and flung himself at the
feet of the charitable Anabaptist James, and gave him so touching a
picture of the state to which his friend was reduced, that the good man
did not scruple to take Dr. Pangloss into his house, and had him cured
at his expense. In the cure Pangloss lost only an eye and an ear. He
wrote well, and knew arithmetic perfectly. The Anabaptist James made him
his bookkeeper. At the end of two months, being obliged to go to Lisbon
about some mercantile affairs, he took the two philosophers with him in
his ship. Pangloss explained to him how everything was so constituted
that it could not be better. James was not of this opinion.

"It is more likely," said he, "mankind have a little corrupted nature,
for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has
given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and
yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. Into this
account I might throw not only bankrupts, but Justice which seizes on
the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors."

"All this was indispensable," replied the one-eyed doctor, "for private
misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes
there are the greater is the general good."

While he reasoned, the sky darkened, the winds blew from the four
quarters, and the ship was assailed by a most terrible tempest within
sight of the port of Lisbon.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Endowed with an "honest mind" and "great simplicity of heart," Candide lives in the castle of the Baron of Westphalia. He is rumored to be the illegitimate son of the Baroness, an imposing three hundred and fifty-pound woman. His tutor Pangloss, who inspires from an early age the greatest reverence, instills in him a doctrine of optimism whereby "everything is for the best." One day, Candide and Miss Cunegonde, the attractive daughter of the Baron, kiss behind a screen. The Baron discovers them and banishes Candide from the castle. In despair over his newfound state of exile and separation from Miss Cunegonde, Candide finds consolation in a tavern with two men, who invite him to dinner. But they soon put him in shackles and consign him to the army of the King of the Bulgars. Candide is whipped into discipline and emerges a military prodigy, much to his own astonishment. When he innocently wanders outside the camp to take a morning walk, he is accused of defection. The King pardons him of the crime, saving Candide from further flogging and punishment by the army. Candide escapes from the Bulgar army during a gruesome battle with the neighboring Abares and travels to Holland, where Jacques the Anabaptist charitably takes Candide under his care. Walking in the street, Candide comes upon a beggar in wretched condition and tosses him a few coins. The man reveals himself to be Pangloss, who narrowly escaped a vicious and bloody attack at the Castle of Westphalia. He informs Candide that Miss Cunegonde was raped and killed, and the Baron's skull bashed in. Pangloss also explains that his physical deterioration is due to a bout of syphilis, transmitted by Miss Cunegonde's maidservant Paquette. When Candide challenges Pangloss to reconcile his personal misfortune with his doctrine of optimism, Pangloss stubbornly rationalizes his own illness as a "necessary ingredient." "Private misfortunes make for public welfare," he concludes. Dispensing with further philosophical debate, Candide pragmatically pays a doctor to heal Pangloss.


prompt:
Chapter: Half dead of that inconceivable anguish which the rolling of a ship
produces, one-half of the passengers were not even sensible of the
danger. The other half shrieked and prayed. The sheets were rent, the
masts broken, the vessel gaped. Work who would, no one heard, no one
commanded. The Anabaptist being upon deck bore a hand; when a brutish
sailor struck him roughly and laid him sprawling; but with the violence
of the blow he himself tumbled head foremost overboard, and stuck upon a
piece of the broken mast. Honest James ran to his assistance, hauled him
up, and from the effort he made was precipitated into the sea in sight
of the sailor, who left him to perish, without deigning to look at him.
Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one
moment and was then swallowed up for ever. He was just going to jump
after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who
demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for
the Anabaptist to be drowned. While he was proving this _a priori_, the
ship foundered; all perished except Pangloss, Candide, and that brutal
sailor who had drowned the good Anabaptist. The villain swam safely to
the shore, while Pangloss and Candide were borne thither upon a plank.

As soon as they recovered themselves a little they walked toward Lisbon.
They had some money left, with which they hoped to save themselves from
starving, after they had escaped drowning. Scarcely had they reached the
city, lamenting the death of their benefactor, when they felt the earth
tremble under their feet. The sea swelled and foamed in the harbour, and
beat to pieces the vessels riding at anchor. Whirlwinds of fire and
ashes covered the streets and public places; houses fell, roofs were
flung upon the pavements, and the pavements were scattered. Thirty
thousand inhabitants of all ages and sexes were crushed under the
ruins.[4] The sailor, whistling and swearing, said there was booty to be
gained here.

"What can be the _sufficient reason_ of this phenomenon?" said Pangloss.

"This is the Last Day!" cried Candide.

The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money; finding it,
he took it, got drunk, and having slept himself sober, purchased the
favours of the first good-natured wench whom he met on the ruins of the
destroyed houses, and in the midst of the dying and the dead. Pangloss
pulled him by the sleeve.

"My friend," said he, "this is not right. You sin against the _universal
reason_; you choose your time badly."

"S'blood and fury!" answered the other; "I am a sailor and born at
Batavia. Four times have I trampled upon the crucifix in four voyages to
Japan[5]; a fig for thy universal reason."

Some falling stones had wounded Candide. He lay stretched in the street
covered with rubbish.

"Alas!" said he to Pangloss, "get me a little wine and oil; I am dying."

"This concussion of the earth is no new thing," answered Pangloss. "The
city of Lima, in America, experienced the same convulsions last year;
the same cause, the same effects; there is certainly a train of sulphur
under ground from Lima to Lisbon."

"Nothing more probable," said Candide; "but for the love of God a little
oil and wine."

"How, probable?" replied the philosopher. "I maintain that the point is
capable of being demonstrated."

Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a
neighbouring fountain. The following day they rummaged among the ruins
and found provisions, with which they repaired their exhausted strength.
After this they joined with others in relieving those inhabitants who
had escaped death. Some, whom they had succoured, gave them as good a
dinner as they could in such disastrous circumstances; true, the repast
was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with tears; but
Pangloss consoled them, assuring them that things could not be
otherwise.

"For," said he, "all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at
Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be
other than they are; for everything is right."

A little man dressed in black, Familiar of the Inquisition, who sat by
him, politely took up his word and said:

"Apparently, then, sir, you do not believe in original sin; for if all
is for the best there has then been neither Fall nor punishment."

"I humbly ask your Excellency's pardon," answered Pangloss, still more
politely; "for the Fall and curse of man necessarily entered into the
system of the best of worlds."

"Sir," said the Familiar, "you do not then believe in liberty?"

"Your Excellency will excuse me," said Pangloss; "liberty is consistent
with absolute necessity, for it was necessary we should be free; for, in
short, the determinate will----"

Pangloss was in the middle of his sentence, when the Familiar beckoned
to his footman, who gave him a glass of wine from Porto or Opporto.

After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of
that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter
ruin than to give the people a beautiful _auto-da-fe_[6]; for it had
been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few
people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible
secret to hinder the earth from quaking.

In consequence hereof, they had seized on a Biscayner, convicted of
having married his godmother, and on two Portuguese, for rejecting the
bacon which larded a chicken they were eating[7]; after dinner, they
came and secured Dr. Pangloss, and his disciple Candide, the one for
speaking his mind, the other for having listened with an air of
approbation. They were conducted to separate apartments, extremely cold,
as they were never incommoded by the sun. Eight days after they were
dressed in _san-benitos_[8] and their heads ornamented with paper
mitres. The mitre and _san-benito_ belonging to Candide were painted
with reversed flames and with devils that had neither tails nor claws;
but Pangloss's devils had claws and tails and the flames were upright.
They marched in procession thus habited and heard a very pathetic
sermon, followed by fine church music. Candide was whipped in cadence
while they were singing; the Biscayner, and the two men who had refused
to eat bacon, were burnt; and Pangloss was hanged, though that was not
the custom. The same day the earth sustained a most violent concussion.

Candide, terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, all palpitating, said
to himself:

"If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? Well,
if I had been only whipped I could put up with it, for I experienced
that among the Bulgarians; but oh, my dear Pangloss! thou greatest of
philosophers, that I should have seen you hanged, without knowing for
what! Oh, my dear Anabaptist, thou best of men, that thou should'st have
been drowned in the very harbour! Oh, Miss Cunegonde, thou pearl of
girls! that thou should'st have had thy belly ripped open!"

Thus he was musing, scarce able to stand, preached at, whipped,
absolved, and blessed, when an old woman accosted him saying:

"My son, take courage and follow me."

Candide did not take courage, but followed the old woman to a decayed
house, where she gave him a pot of pomatum to anoint his sores, showed
him a very neat little bed, with a suit of clothes hanging up, and left
him something to eat and drink.

"Eat, drink, sleep," said she, "and may our lady of Atocha,[9] the great
St. Anthony of Padua, and the great St. James of Compostella, receive
you under their protection. I shall be back to-morrow."

Candide, amazed at all he had suffered and still more with the charity
of the old woman, wished to kiss her hand.

"It is not my hand you must kiss," said the old woman; "I shall be back
to-morrow. Anoint yourself with the pomatum, eat and sleep."

Candide, notwithstanding so many disasters, ate and slept. The next
morning the old woman brought him his breakfast, looked at his back, and
rubbed it herself with another ointment: in like manner she brought him
his dinner; and at night she returned with his supper. The day following
she went through the very same ceremonies.

"Who are you?" said Candide; "who has inspired you with so much
goodness? What return can I make you?"

The good woman made no answer; she returned in the evening, but brought
no supper.

"Come with me," she said, "and say nothing."

She took him by the arm, and walked with him about a quarter of a mile
into the country; they arrived at a lonely house, surrounded with
gardens and canals. The old woman knocked at a little door, it opened,
she led Candide up a private staircase into a small apartment richly
furnished. She left him on a brocaded sofa, shut the door and went away.
Candide thought himself in a dream; indeed, that he had been dreaming
unluckily all his life, and that the present moment was the only
agreeable part of it all.

The old woman returned very soon, supporting with difficulty a trembling
woman of a majestic figure, brilliant with jewels, and covered with a
veil.

"Take off that veil," said the old woman to Candide.

The young man approaches, he raises the veil with a timid hand. Oh!
what a moment! what surprise! he believes he beholds Miss Cunegonde? he
really sees her! it is herself! His strength fails him, he cannot utter
a word, but drops at her feet. Cunegonde falls upon the sofa. The old
woman supplies a smelling bottle; they come to themselves and recover
their speech. As they began with broken accents, with questions and
answers interchangeably interrupted with sighs, with tears, and cries.
The old woman desired they would make less noise and then she left them
to themselves.

"What, is it you?" said Candide, "you live? I find you again in
Portugal? then you have not been ravished? then they did not rip open
your belly as Doctor Pangloss informed me?"

"Yes, they did," said the beautiful Cunegonde; "but those two accidents
are not always mortal."

"But were your father and mother killed?"

"It is but too true," answered Cunegonde, in tears.

"And your brother?"

"My brother also was killed."

"And why are you in Portugal? and how did you know of my being here? and
by what strange adventure did you contrive to bring me to this house?"

"I will tell you all that," replied the lady, "but first of all let me
know your history, since the innocent kiss you gave me and the kicks
which you received."

Candide respectfully obeyed her, and though he was still in a surprise,
though his voice was feeble and trembling, though his back still pained
him, yet he gave her a most ingenuous account of everything that had
befallen him since the moment of their separation. Cunegonde lifted up
her eyes to heaven; shed tears upon hearing of the death of the good
Anabaptist and of Pangloss; after which she spoke as follows to Candide,
who did not lose a word and devoured her with his eyes.

"I was in bed and fast asleep when it pleased God to send the Bulgarians
to our delightful castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh; they slew my father and
brother, and cut my mother in pieces. A tall Bulgarian, six feet high,
perceiving that I had fainted away at this sight, began to ravish me;
this made me recover; I regained my senses, I cried, I struggled, I bit,
I scratched, I wanted to tear out the tall Bulgarian's eyes--not knowing
that what happened at my father's house was the usual practice of war.
The brute gave me a cut in the left side with his hanger, and the mark
is still upon me."

"Ah! I hope I shall see it," said honest Candide.

"You shall," said Cunegonde, "but let us continue."

"Do so," replied Candide.

Thus she resumed the thread of her story:

"A Bulgarian captain came in, saw me all bleeding, and the soldier not
in the least disconcerted. The captain flew into a passion at the
disrespectful behaviour of the brute, and slew him on my body. He
ordered my wounds to be dressed, and took me to his quarters as a
prisoner of war. I washed the few shirts that he had, I did his cooking;
he thought me very pretty--he avowed it; on the other hand, I must own
he had a good shape, and a soft and white skin; but he had little or no
mind or philosophy, and you might see plainly that he had never been
instructed by Doctor Pangloss. In three months time, having lost all his
money, and being grown tired of my company, he sold me to a Jew, named
Don Issachar, who traded to Holland and Portugal, and had a strong
passion for women. This Jew was much attached to my person, but could
not triumph over it; I resisted him better than the Bulgarian soldier. A
modest woman may be ravished once, but her virtue is strengthened by it.
In order to render me more tractable, he brought me to this country
house. Hitherto I had imagined that nothing could equal the beauty of
Thunder-ten-Tronckh Castle; but I found I was mistaken.

"The Grand Inquisitor, seeing me one day at Mass, stared long at me, and
sent to tell me that he wished to speak on private matters. I was
conducted to his palace, where I acquainted him with the history of my
family, and he represented to me how much it was beneath my rank to
belong to an Israelite. A proposal was then made to Don Issachar that he
should resign me to my lord. Don Issachar, being the court banker, and a
man of credit, would hear nothing of it. The Inquisitor threatened him
with an _auto-da-fe_. At last my Jew, intimidated, concluded a bargain,
by which the house and myself should belong to both in common; the Jew
should have for himself Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and the
Inquisitor should have the rest of the week. It is now six months since
this agreement was made. Quarrels have not been wanting, for they could
not decide whether the night from Saturday to Sunday belonged to the old
law or to the new. For my part, I have so far held out against both, and
I verily believe that this is the reason why I am still beloved.

"At length, to avert the scourge of earthquakes, and to intimidate Don
Issachar, my Lord Inquisitor was pleased to celebrate an _auto-da-fe_.
He did me the honour to invite me to the ceremony. I had a very good
seat, and the ladies were served with refreshments between Mass and the
execution. I was in truth seized with horror at the burning of those two
Jews, and of the honest Biscayner who had married his godmother; but
what was my surprise, my fright, my trouble, when I saw in a
_san-benito_ and mitre a figure which resembled that of Pangloss! I
rubbed my eyes, I looked at him attentively, I saw him hung; I fainted.
Scarcely had I recovered my senses than I saw you stripped, stark naked,
and this was the height of my horror, consternation, grief, and despair.
I tell you, truthfully, that your skin is yet whiter and of a more
perfect colour than that of my Bulgarian captain. This spectacle
redoubled all the feelings which overwhelmed and devoured me. I screamed
out, and would have said, 'Stop, barbarians!' but my voice failed me,
and my cries would have been useless after you had been severely
whipped. How is it possible, said I, that the beloved Candide and the
wise Pangloss should both be at Lisbon, the one to receive a hundred
lashes, and the other to be hanged by the Grand Inquisitor, of whom I am
the well-beloved? Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that
everything in the world is for the best.

"Agitated, lost, sometimes beside myself, and sometimes ready to die of
weakness, my mind was filled with the massacre of my father, mother, and
brother, with the insolence of the ugly Bulgarian soldier, with the stab
that he gave me, with my servitude under the Bulgarian captain, with my
hideous Don Issachar, with my abominable Inquisitor, with the execution
of Doctor Pangloss, with the grand Miserere to which they whipped you,
and especially with the kiss I gave you behind the screen the day that I
had last seen you. I praised God for bringing you back to me after so
many trials, and I charged my old woman to take care of you, and to
conduct you hither as soon as possible. She has executed her commission
perfectly well; I have tasted the inexpressible pleasure of seeing you
again, of hearing you, of speaking with you. But you must be hungry, for
myself, I am famished; let us have supper."

They both sat down to table, and, when supper was over, they placed
themselves once more on the sofa; where they were when Signor Don
Issachar arrived. It was the Jewish Sabbath, and Issachar had come to
enjoy his rights, and to explain his tender love.

This Issachar was the most choleric Hebrew that had ever been seen in
Israel since the Captivity in Babylon.

"What!" said he, "thou bitch of a Galilean, was not the Inquisitor
enough for thee? Must this rascal also share with me?"

In saying this he drew a long poniard which he always carried about him;
and not imagining that his adversary had any arms he threw himself upon
Candide: but our honest Westphalian had received a handsome sword from
the old woman along with the suit of clothes. He drew his rapier,
despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelite stone dead upon the
cushions at Cunegonde's feet.

"Holy Virgin!" cried she, "what will become of us? A man killed in my
apartment! If the officers of justice come, we are lost!"

"Had not Pangloss been hanged," said Candide, "he would give us good
counsel in this emergency, for he was a profound philosopher. Failing
him let us consult the old woman."

She was very prudent and commenced to give her opinion when suddenly
another little door opened. It was an hour after midnight, it was the
beginning of Sunday. This day belonged to my lord the Inquisitor. He
entered, and saw the whipped Candide, sword in hand, a dead man upon the
floor, Cunegonde aghast, and the old woman giving counsel.

At this moment, the following is what passed in the soul of Candide, and
how he reasoned:

If this holy man call in assistance, he will surely have me burnt; and
Cunegonde will perhaps be served in the same manner; he was the cause of
my being cruelly whipped; he is my rival; and, as I have now begun to
kill, I will kill away, for there is no time to hesitate. This reasoning
was clear and instantaneous; so that without giving time to the
Inquisitor to recover from his surprise, he pierced him through and
through, and cast him beside the Jew.

"Yet again!" said Cunegonde, "now there is no mercy for us, we are
excommunicated, our last hour has come. How could you do it? you,
naturally so gentle, to slay a Jew and a prelate in two minutes!"

"My beautiful young lady," responded Candide, "when one is a lover,
jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, one stops at nothing."

The old woman then put in her word, saying:

"There are three Andalusian horses in the stable with bridles and
saddles, let the brave Candide get them ready; madame has money, jewels;
let us therefore mount quickly on horseback, though I can sit only on
one buttock; let us set out for Cadiz, it is the finest weather in the
world, and there is great pleasure in travelling in the cool of the
night."

Immediately Candide saddled the three horses, and Cunegonde, the old
woman and he, travelled thirty miles at a stretch. While they were
journeying, the Holy Brotherhood entered the house; my lord the
Inquisitor was interred in a handsome church, and Issachar's body was
thrown upon a dunghill.

Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman, had now reached the little town
of Avacena in the midst of the mountains of the Sierra Morena, and were
speaking as follows in a public inn.

"Who was it that robbed me of my money and jewels?" said Cunegonde, all
bathed in tears. "How shall we live? What shall we do? Where find
Inquisitors or Jews who will give me more?"

"Alas!" said the old woman, "I have a shrewd suspicion of a reverend
Grey Friar, who stayed last night in the same inn with us at Badajos.
God preserve me from judging rashly, but he came into our room twice,
and he set out upon his journey long before us."

"Alas!" said Candide, "dear Pangloss has often demonstrated to me that
the goods of this world are common to all men, and that each has an
equal right to them. But according to these principles the Grey Friar
ought to have left us enough to carry us through our journey. Have you
nothing at all left, my dear Cunegonde?"

"Not a farthing," said she.

"What then must we do?" said Candide.

"Sell one of the horses," replied the old woman. "I will ride behind
Miss Cunegonde, though I can hold myself only on one buttock, and we
shall reach Cadiz."

In the same inn there was a Benedictine prior who bought the horse for a
cheap price. Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman, having passed
through Lucena, Chillas, and Lebrixa, arrived at length at Cadiz. A
fleet was there getting ready, and troops assembling to bring to reason
the reverend Jesuit Fathers of Paraguay, accused of having made one of
the native tribes in the neighborhood of San Sacrament revolt against
the Kings of Spain and Portugal. Candide having been in the Bulgarian
service, performed the military exercise before the general of this
little army with so graceful an address, with so intrepid an air, and
with such agility and expedition, that he was given the command of a
company of foot. Now, he was a captain! He set sail with Miss Cunegonde,
the old woman, two valets, and the two Andalusian horses, which had
belonged to the grand Inquisitor of Portugal.

During their voyage they reasoned a good deal on the philosophy of poor
Pangloss.

"We are going into another world," said Candide; "and surely it must be
there that all is for the best. For I must confess there is reason to
complain a little of what passeth in our world in regard to both
natural and moral philosophy."

"I love you with all my heart," said Cunegonde; "but my soul is still
full of fright at that which I have seen and experienced."

"All will be well," replied Candide; "the sea of this new world is
already better than our European sea; it is calmer, the winds more
regular. It is certainly the New World which is the best of all possible
worlds."

"God grant it," said Cunegonde; "but I have been so horribly unhappy
there that my heart is almost closed to hope."

"You complain," said the old woman; "alas! you have not known such
misfortunes as mine."

Cunegonde almost broke out laughing, finding the good woman very
amusing, for pretending to have been as unfortunate as she.

"Alas!" said Cunegonde, "my good mother, unless you have been ravished
by two Bulgarians, have received two deep wounds in your belly, have had
two castles demolished, have had two mothers cut to pieces before your
eyes, and two of your lovers whipped at an _auto-da-fe_, I do not
conceive how you could be more unfortunate than I. Add that I was born a
baroness of seventy-two quarterings--and have been a cook!"

"Miss," replied the old woman, "you do not know my birth; and were I to
show you my backside, you would not talk in that manner, but would
suspend your judgment."

This speech having raised extreme curiosity in the minds of Cunegonde
and Candide, the old woman spoke to them as follows.

"I had not always bleared eyes and red eyelids; neither did my nose
always touch my chin; nor was I always a servant. I am the daughter of
Pope Urban X,[10] and of the Princess of Palestrina. Until the age of
fourteen I was brought up in a palace, to which all the castles of your
German barons would scarcely have served for stables; and one of my
robes was worth more than all the magnificence of Westphalia. As I grew
up I improved in beauty, wit, and every graceful accomplishment, in the
midst of pleasures, hopes, and respectful homage. Already I inspired
love. My throat was formed, and such a throat! white, firm, and shaped
like that of the Venus of Medici; and what eyes! what eyelids! what
black eyebrows! such flames darted from my dark pupils that they
eclipsed the scintillation of the stars--as I was told by the poets in
our part of the world. My waiting women, when dressing and undressing
me, used to fall into an ecstasy, whether they viewed me before or
behind; how glad would the gentlemen have been to perform that office
for them!

"I was affianced to the most excellent Prince of Massa Carara. Such a
prince! as handsome as myself, sweet-tempered, agreeable, brilliantly
witty, and sparkling with love. I loved him as one loves for the first
time--with idolatry, with transport. The nuptials were prepared. There
was surprising pomp and magnificence; there were _fetes_, carousals,
continual _opera bouffe_; and all Italy composed sonnets in my praise,
though not one of them was passable. I was just upon the point of
reaching the summit of bliss, when an old marchioness who had been
mistress to the Prince, my husband, invited him to drink chocolate with
her. He died in less than two hours of most terrible convulsions. But
this is only a bagatelle. My mother, in despair, and scarcely less
afflicted than myself, determined to absent herself for some time from
so fatal a place. She had a very fine estate in the neighbourhood of
Gaeta. We embarked on board a galley of the country which was gilded
like the great altar of St. Peter's at Rome. A Sallee corsair swooped
down and boarded us. Our men defended themselves like the Pope's
soldiers; they flung themselves upon their knees, and threw down their
arms, begging of the corsair an absolution _in articulo mortis_.

"Instantly they were stripped as bare as monkeys; my mother, our maids
of honour, and myself were all served in the same manner. It is amazing
with what expedition those gentry undress people. But what surprised me
most was, that they thrust their fingers into the part of our bodies
which the generality of women suffer no other instrument but--pipes to
enter. It appeared to me a very strange kind of ceremony; but thus one
judges of things when one has not seen the world. I afterwards learnt
that it was to try whether we had concealed any diamonds. This is the
practice established from time immemorial, among civilised nations that
scour the seas. I was informed that the very religious Knights of Malta
never fail to make this search when they take any Turkish prisoners of
either sex. It is a law of nations from which they never deviate.

"I need not tell _you_ how great a hardship it was for a young princess
and her mother to be made slaves and carried to Morocco. You may easily
imagine all we had to suffer on board the pirate vessel. My mother was
still very handsome; our maids of honour, and even our waiting women,
had more charms than are to be found in all Africa. As for myself, I was
ravishing, was exquisite, grace itself, and I was a virgin! I did not
remain so long; this flower, which had been reserved for the handsome
Prince of Massa Carara, was plucked by the corsair captain. He was an
abominable negro, and yet believed that he did me a great deal of
honour. Certainly the Princess of Palestrina and myself must have been
very strong to go through all that we experienced until our arrival at
Morocco. But let us pass on; these are such common things as not to be
worth mentioning.

"Morocco swam in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the Emperor
Muley-Ismael[11] had each their adherents; this produced fifty civil
wars, of blacks against blacks, and blacks against tawnies, and tawnies
against tawnies, and mulattoes against mulattoes. In short it was a
continual carnage throughout the empire.

"No sooner were we landed, than the blacks of a contrary faction to that
of my captain attempted to rob him of his booty. Next to jewels and gold
we were the most valuable things he had. I was witness to such a battle
as you have never seen in your European climates. The northern nations
have not that heat in their blood, nor that raging lust for women, so
common in Africa. It seems that you Europeans have only milk in your
veins; but it is vitriol, it is fire which runs in those of the
inhabitants of Mount Atlas and the neighbouring countries. They fought
with the fury of the lions, tigers, and serpents of the country, to see
who should have us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm, while my
captain's lieutenant held her by the left; a Moorish soldier had hold of
her by one leg, and one of our corsairs held her by the other. Thus
almost all our women were drawn in quarters by four men. My captain
concealed me behind him; and with his drawn scimitar cut and slashed
every one that opposed his fury. At length I saw all our Italian women,
and my mother herself, torn, mangled, massacred, by the monsters who
disputed over them. The slaves, my companions, those who had taken them,
soldiers, sailors, blacks, whites, mulattoes, and at last my captain,
all were killed, and I remained dying on a heap of dead. Such scenes as
this were transacted through an extent of three hundred leagues--and yet
they never missed the five prayers a day ordained by Mahomet.

"With difficulty I disengaged myself from such a heap of slaughtered
bodies, and crawled to a large orange tree on the bank of a neighbouring
rivulet, where I fell, oppressed with fright, fatigue, horror, despair,
and hunger. Immediately after, my senses, overpowered, gave themselves
up to sleep, which was yet more swooning than repose. I was in this
state of weakness and insensibility, between life and death, when I
felt myself pressed by something that moved upon my body. I opened my
eyes, and saw a white man, of good countenance, who sighed, and who said
between his teeth: '_O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!_'"[12]

"Astonished and delighted to hear my native language, and no less
surprised at what this man said, I made answer that there were much
greater misfortunes than that of which he complained. I told him in a
few words of the horrors which I had endured, and fainted a second time.
He carried me to a neighbouring house, put me to bed, gave me food,
waited upon me, consoled me, flattered me; he told me that he had never
seen any one so beautiful as I, and that he never so much regretted the
loss of what it was impossible to recover.

"'I was born at Naples,' said he, 'there they geld two or three thousand
children every year; some die of the operation, others acquire a voice
more beautiful than that of women, and others are raised to offices of
state.[13] This operation was performed on me with great success and I
was chapel musician to madam, the Princess of Palestrina.'

"'To my mother!' cried I.

"'Your mother!' cried he, weeping. 'What! can you be that young
princess whom I brought up until the age of six years, and who promised
so early to be as beautiful as you?'

"'It is I, indeed; but my mother lies four hundred yards hence, torn in
quarters, under a heap of dead bodies.'

"I told him all my adventures, and he made me acquainted with his;
telling me that he had been sent to the Emperor of Morocco by a
Christian power, to conclude a treaty with that prince, in consequence
of which he was to be furnished with military stores and ships to help
to demolish the commerce of other Christian Governments.

"'My mission is done,' said this honest eunuch; 'I go to embark for
Ceuta, and will take you to Italy. _Ma che sciagura d'essere senza
coglioni!_'

"I thanked him with tears of commiseration; and instead of taking me to
Italy he conducted me to Algiers, where he sold me to the Dey. Scarcely
was I sold, than the plague which had made the tour of Africa, Asia, and
Europe, broke out with great malignancy in Algiers. You have seen
earthquakes; but pray, miss, have you ever had the plague?"

"Never," answered Cunegonde.

"If you had," said the old woman, "you would acknowledge that it is far
more terrible than an earthquake. It is common in Africa, and I caught
it. Imagine to yourself the distressed situation of the daughter of a
Pope, only fifteen years old, who, in less than three months, had felt
the miseries of poverty and slavery, had been ravished almost every day,
had beheld her mother drawn in quarters, had experienced famine and war,
and was dying of the plague in Algiers. I did not die, however, but my
eunuch, and the Dey, and almost the whole seraglio of Algiers perished.

"As soon as the first fury of this terrible pestilence was over, a sale
was made of the Dey's slaves; I was purchased by a merchant, and carried
to Tunis; this man sold me to another merchant, who sold me again to
another at Tripoli; from Tripoli I was sold to Alexandria, from
Alexandria to Smyrna, and from Smyrna to Constantinople. At length I
became the property of an Aga of the Janissaries, who was soon ordered
away to the defence of Azof, then besieged by the Russians.

"The Aga, who was a very gallant man, took his whole seraglio with him,
and lodged us in a small fort on the Palus Meotides, guarded by two
black eunuchs and twenty soldiers. The Turks killed prodigious numbers
of the Russians, but the latter had their revenge. Azof was destroyed by
fire, the inhabitants put to the sword, neither sex nor age was spared;
until there remained only our little fort, and the enemy wanted to
starve us out. The twenty Janissaries had sworn they would never
surrender. The extremities of famine to which they were reduced, obliged
them to eat our two eunuchs, for fear of violating their oath. And at
the end of a few days they resolved also to devour the women.

"We had a very pious and humane Iman, who preached an excellent sermon,
exhorting them not to kill us all at once.

"'Only cut off a buttock of each of those ladies,' said he, 'and you'll
fare extremely well; if you must go to it again, there will be the same
entertainment a few days hence; heaven will accept of so charitable an
action, and send you relief.'

"He had great eloquence; he persuaded them; we underwent this terrible
operation. The Iman applied the same balsam to us, as he does to
children after circumcision; and we all nearly died.

"Scarcely had the Janissaries finished the repast with which we had
furnished them, than the Russians came in flat-bottomed boats; not a
Janissary escaped. The Russians paid no attention to the condition we
were in. There are French surgeons in all parts of the world; one of
them who was very clever took us under his care--he cured us; and as
long as I live I shall remember that as soon as my wounds were healed he
made proposals to me. He bid us all be of good cheer, telling us that
the like had happened in many sieges, and that it was according to the
laws of war.

"As soon as my companions could walk, they were obliged to set out for
Moscow. I fell to the share of a Boyard who made me his gardener, and
gave me twenty lashes a day. But this nobleman having in two years' time
been broke upon the wheel along with thirty more Boyards for some broils
at court, I profited by that event; I fled. I traversed all Russia; I
was a long time an inn-holder's servant at Riga, the same at Rostock, at
Vismar, at Leipzig, at Cassel, at Utrecht, at Leyden, at the Hague, at
Rotterdam. I waxed old in misery and disgrace, having only one-half of
my posteriors, and always remembering I was a Pope's daughter. A hundred
times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life.
This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics;
for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a
burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to
cling to one's existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours
us, till he has eaten our very heart?

"In the different countries which it has been my lot to traverse, and
the numerous inns where I have been servant, I have taken notice of a
vast number of people who held their own existence in abhorrence, and
yet I never knew of more than eight who voluntarily put an end to their
misery; three negroes, four Englishmen, and a German professor named
Robek.[14] I ended by being servant to the Jew, Don Issachar, who placed
me near your presence, my fair lady. I am determined to share your fate,
and have been much more affected with your misfortunes than with my own.
I would never even have spoken to you of my misfortunes, had you not
piqued me a little, and if it were not customary to tell stories on
board a ship in order to pass away the time. In short, Miss Cunegonde, I
have had experience, I know the world; therefore I advise you to divert
yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story; and if
there be one of them all, that has not cursed his life many a time, that
has not frequently looked upon himself as the unhappiest of mortals, I
give you leave to throw me headforemost into the sea."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Jacques is thrown overboard while trying to help a sailor tossed by the tempest. In the ensuing shipwreck, Candide is injured by falling stonework. Pangloss invokes universal reason: "Things could not possibly be otherwise." At an Auto-da-fe, a public ceremony of repentance and humiliation, Candide is flogged and Pangloss hanged by authorities who round up several townspeople for communal rites intended as "an infallible specific against earthquakes." Candide plunges into despair, wondering what the cause of all this hardship is. An Old Woman takes Candide in and nurses his wounds. She later escorts him to the countryside and presents him to Miss Cunegonde, who has survived the rape and pillaging of the castle, contrary to what Pangloss claimed. They tell each other of their trials and tribulations. Miss Cunegonde tells her story: after a brutal rape at the Castle of Westphalia, a Bulgar captain sells her to Jewish merchant Don Issachar. The Grand Inquisitor takes notice of Miss Cunegonde at mass and insists on a shared living arrangement with Don Issachar. He invites her to an Auto-da-fe where, in horror, she witnesses the torture of Candide and apparent execution of Pangloss. Don Issachar discovers Candide and Miss Cunegonde lying together on the sofa and draws a dagger. Candide drives a long sword into the Israelite, killing him instantly. Miss Cunegonde panics, and at that instant, the Grand Inquisitor walks in. Without hesitation, Candide drives the sword through his other rival. The Old Woman suggests that they escape by horseback to Cadiz, thirty miles away. Candide, Miss Cunegonde and the Old Woman stop at a tavern in Aracena along the route to Cadiz. Miss Cunegonde's jewels and diamonds are stolen at the tavern. The Old Woman suspects the Franciscan priest. Once again penniless, they sell one of their horses to a Benedictine friar and continue on their journey to Cadiz. Candide impresses the general of an army with his military skills and procures two additional horses. They ruminate on Pangloss's philosophy. Miss Cunegonde and the Old Woman compete with each other for the title of most aggrieved and unfortunate. The Old Woman reveals the extent of her own hardships. Daughter of a pope and a princess, the Old Woman grew up in a luxurious castle contracted in marriage to the Prince of Massa Carrara. Before the marriage, he dies from liquid chocolate served by a former mistress. She and her mother end up as slaves in Morocco, where a Moorish captain takes her virginity. In a gory battle between competing native tribes, everyone is slain except her, left standing in a heap of corpses. The young princess falls unconscious, only to be awoken by an Italian man, who offers to transport her to Italy. Instead, he sells her to the Dey of an Algerian province. The plague sweeps the African nation, killing everyone except her. After the first wave of pestilence dies down, she is sold to a string of other merchants from Tripoli to Constantinople. She finally lands in the custody of a janissary, who is attacked by the Russians and whose fort is blockaded and starved to the point of famine. A man proposes to cut one buttock off each woman to feed the rest. They all undergo this painful procedure. Later liberated, she is healed by a French surgeon. She ends by disavowing any self-pitying stance, and challenges Miss Cunegonde and Candide to find someone who does not consider himself "the most wretched of mortals."