prompt:
Chapter: The faithful Cacambo had already prevailed upon the Turkish skipper, who
was to conduct the Sultan Achmet to Constantinople, to receive Candide
and Martin on his ship. They both embarked after having made their
obeisance to his miserable Highness.

"You see," said Candide to Martin on the way, "we supped with six
dethroned kings, and of those six there was one to whom I gave charity.
Perhaps there are many other princes yet more unfortunate. For my part,
I have only lost a hundred sheep; and now I am flying into Cunegonde's
arms. My dear Martin, yet once more Pangloss was right: all is for the
best."

"I wish it," answered Martin.

"But," said Candide, "it was a very strange adventure we met with at
Venice. It has never before been seen or heard that six dethroned kings
have supped together at a public inn."

"It is not more extraordinary," said Martin, "than most of the things
that have happened to us. It is a very common thing for kings to be
dethroned; and as for the honour we have had of supping in their
company, it is a trifle not worth our attention."

No sooner had Candide got on board the vessel than he flew to his old
valet and friend Cacambo, and tenderly embraced him.

"Well," said he, "what news of Cunegonde? Is she still a prodigy of
beauty? Does she love me still? How is she? Thou hast doubtless bought
her a palace at Constantinople?"

"My dear master," answered Cacambo, "Cunegonde washes dishes on the
banks of the Propontis, in the service of a prince, who has very few
dishes to wash; she is a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign
named Ragotsky,[35] to whom the Grand Turk allows three crowns a day in
his exile. But what is worse still is, that she has lost her beauty and
has become horribly ugly."

"Well, handsome or ugly," replied Candide, "I am a man of honour, and it
is my duty to love her still. But how came she to be reduced to so
abject a state with the five or six millions that you took to her?"

"Ah!" said Cacambo, "was I not to give two millions to Senor Don
Fernando d'Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza,
Governor of Buenos Ayres, for permitting Miss Cunegonde to come away?
And did not a corsair bravely rob us of all the rest? Did not this
corsair carry us to Cape Matapan, to Milo, to Nicaria, to Samos, to
Petra, to the Dardanelles, to Marmora, to Scutari? Cunegonde and the old
woman serve the prince I now mentioned to you, and I am slave to the
dethroned Sultan."

"What a series of shocking calamities!" cried Candide. "But after all, I
have some diamonds left; and I may easily pay Cunegonde's ransom. Yet it
is a pity that she is grown so ugly."

Then, turning towards Martin: "Who do you think," said he, "is most to
be pitied--the Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, King Charles Edward, or
I?"

"How should I know!" answered Martin. "I must see into your hearts to be
able to tell."

"Ah!" said Candide, "if Pangloss were here, he could tell."

"I know not," said Martin, "in what sort of scales your Pangloss would
weigh the misfortunes of mankind and set a just estimate on their
sorrows. All that I can presume to say is, that there are millions of
people upon earth who have a hundred times more to complain of than King
Charles Edward, the Emperor Ivan, or the Sultan Achmet."

"That may well be," said Candide.

In a few days they reached the Bosphorus, and Candide began by paying a
very high ransom for Cacambo. Then without losing time, he and his
companions went on board a galley, in order to search on the banks of
the Propontis for his Cunegonde, however ugly she might have become.

Among the crew there were two slaves who rowed very badly, and to whose
bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from
a bull's pizzle. Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two
slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them
with pity. Their features though greatly disfigured, had a slight
resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Jesuit and Westphalian
Baron, brother to Miss Cunegonde. This moved and saddened him. He looked
at them still more attentively.

"Indeed," said he to Cacambo, "if I had not seen Master Pangloss hanged,
and if I had not had the misfortune to kill the Baron, I should think it
was they that were rowing."

At the names of the Baron and of Pangloss, the two galley-slaves uttered
a loud cry, held fast by the seat, and let drop their oars. The captain
ran up to them and redoubled his blows with the bull's pizzle.

"Stop! stop! sir," cried Candide. "I will give you what money you
please."

"What! it is Candide!" said one of the slaves.

"What! it is Candide!" said the other.

"Do I dream?" cried Candide; "am I awake? or am I on board a galley? Is
this the Baron whom I killed? Is this Master Pangloss whom I saw
hanged?"

"It is we! it is we!" answered they.

"Well! is this the great philosopher?" said Martin.

"Ah! captain," said Candide, "what ransom will you take for Monsieur de
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, one of the first barons of the empire, and for
Monsieur Pangloss, the profoundest metaphysician in Germany?"

"Dog of a Christian," answered the Levantine captain, "since these two
dogs of Christian slaves are barons and metaphysicians, which I doubt
not are high dignities in their country, you shall give me fifty
thousand sequins."

"You shall have them, sir. Carry me back at once to Constantinople, and
you shall receive the money directly. But no; carry me first to Miss
Cunegonde."

Upon the first proposal made by Candide, however, the Levantine captain
had already tacked about, and made the crew ply their oars quicker than
a bird cleaves the air.

Candide embraced the Baron and Pangloss a hundred times.

"And how happened it, my dear Baron, that I did not kill you? And, my
dear Pangloss, how came you to life again after being hanged? And why
are you both in a Turkish galley?"

"And it is true that my dear sister is in this country?" said the Baron.

"Yes," answered Cacambo.

"Then I behold, once more, my dear Candide," cried Pangloss.

Candide presented Martin and Cacambo to them; they embraced each other,
and all spoke at once. The galley flew; they were already in the port.
Instantly Candide sent for a Jew, to whom he sold for fifty thousand
sequins a diamond worth a hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to
him by Abraham that he could give him no more. He immediately paid the
ransom for the Baron and Pangloss. The latter threw himself at the feet
of his deliverer, and bathed them with his tears; the former thanked him
with a nod, and promised to return him the money on the first
opportunity.

"But is it indeed possible that my sister can be in Turkey?" said he.

"Nothing is more possible," said Cacambo, "since she scours the dishes
in the service of a Transylvanian prince."

Candide sent directly for two Jews and sold them some more diamonds, and
then they all set out together in another galley to deliver Cunegonde
from slavery.

"I ask your pardon once more," said Candide to the Baron, "your pardon,
reverend father, for having run you through the body."

"Say no more about it," answered the Baron. "I was a little too hasty, I
own, but since you wish to know by what fatality I came to be a
galley-slave I will inform you. After I had been cured by the surgeon of
the college of the wound you gave me, I was attacked and carried off by
a party of Spanish troops, who confined me in prison at Buenos Ayres at
the very time my sister was setting out thence. I asked leave to return
to Rome to the General of my Order. I was appointed chaplain to the
French Ambassador at Constantinople. I had not been eight days in this
employment when one evening I met with a young Ichoglan, who was a very
handsome fellow. The weather was warm. The young man wanted to bathe,
and I took this opportunity of bathing also. I did not know that it was
a capital crime for a Christian to be found naked with a young
Mussulman. A cadi ordered me a hundred blows on the soles of the feet,
and condemned me to the galleys. I do not think there ever was a greater
act of injustice. But I should be glad to know how my sister came to be
scullion to a Transylvanian prince who has taken shelter among the
Turks."

"But you, my dear Pangloss," said Candide, "how can it be that I behold
you again?"

"It is true," said Pangloss, "that you saw me hanged. I should have been
burnt, but you may remember it rained exceedingly hard when they were
going to roast me; the storm was so violent that they despaired of
lighting the fire, so I was hanged because they could do no better. A
surgeon purchased my body, carried me home, and dissected me. He began
with making a crucial incision on me from the navel to the clavicula.
One could not have been worse hanged than I was. The executioner of the
Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people
marvellously well, but he was not accustomed to hanging. The cord was
wet and did not slip properly, and besides it was badly tied; in short,
I still drew my breath, when the crucial incision made me give such a
frightful scream that my surgeon fell flat upon his back, and imagining
that he had been dissecting the devil he ran away, dying with fear, and
fell down the staircase in his flight. His wife, hearing the noise,
flew from the next room. She saw me stretched out upon the table with my
crucial incision. She was seized with yet greater fear than her husband,
fled, and tumbled over him. When they came to themselves a little, I
heard the wife say to her husband: 'My dear, how could you take it into
your head to dissect a heretic? Do you not know that these people always
have the devil in their bodies? I will go and fetch a priest this minute
to exorcise him.' At this proposal I shuddered, and mustering up what
little courage I had still remaining I cried out aloud, 'Have mercy on
me!' At length the Portuguese barber plucked up his spirits. He sewed up
my wounds; his wife even nursed me. I was upon my legs at the end of
fifteen days. The barber found me a place as lackey to a knight of Malta
who was going to Venice, but finding that my master had no money to pay
me my wages I entered the service of a Venetian merchant, and went with
him to Constantinople. One day I took it into my head to step into a
mosque, where I saw an old Iman and a very pretty young devotee who was
saying her paternosters. Her bosom was uncovered, and between her
breasts she had a beautiful bouquet of tulips, roses, anemones,
ranunculus, hyacinths, and auriculas. She dropped her bouquet; I picked
it up, and presented it to her with a profound reverence. I was so long
in delivering it that the Iman began to get angry, and seeing that I was
a Christian he called out for help. They carried me before the cadi, who
ordered me a hundred lashes on the soles of the feet and sent me to the
galleys. I was chained to the very same galley and the same bench as the
young Baron. On board this galley there were four young men from
Marseilles, five Neapolitan priests, and two monks from Corfu, who told
us similar adventures happened daily. The Baron maintained that he had
suffered greater injustice than I, and I insisted that it was far more
innocent to take up a bouquet and place it again on a woman's bosom than
to be found stark naked with an Ichoglan. We were continually disputing,
and received twenty lashes with a bull's pizzle when the concatenation
of universal events brought you to our galley, and you were good enough
to ransom us."

"Well, my dear Pangloss," said Candide to him, "when you had been
hanged, dissected, whipped, and were tugging at the oar, did you always
think that everything happens for the best?"

"I am still of my first opinion," answered Pangloss, "for I am a
philosopher and I cannot retract, especially as Leibnitz could never be
wrong; and besides, the pre-established harmony is the finest thing in
the world, and so is his _plenum_ and _materia subtilis_."

While Candide, the Baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo were relating
their several adventures, were reasoning on the contingent or
non-contingent events of the universe, disputing on effects and causes,
on moral and physical evil, on liberty and necessity, and on the
consolations a slave may feel even on a Turkish galley, they arrived at
the house of the Transylvanian prince on the banks of the Propontis. The
first objects which met their sight were Cunegonde and the old woman
hanging towels out to dry.

The Baron paled at this sight. The tender, loving Candide, seeing his
beautiful Cunegonde embrowned, with blood-shot eyes, withered neck,
wrinkled cheeks, and rough, red arms, recoiled three paces, seized with
horror, and then advanced out of good manners. She embraced Candide and
her brother; they embraced the old woman, and Candide ransomed them
both.

There was a small farm in the neighbourhood which the old woman
proposed to Candide to make a shift with till the company could be
provided for in a better manner. Cunegonde did not know she had grown
ugly, for nobody had told her of it; and she reminded Candide of his
promise in so positive a tone that the good man durst not refuse her. He
therefore intimated to the Baron that he intended marrying his sister.

"I will not suffer," said the Baron, "such meanness on her part, and
such insolence on yours; I will never be reproached with this scandalous
thing; my sister's children would never be able to enter the church in
Germany. No; my sister shall only marry a baron of the empire."

Cunegonde flung herself at his feet, and bathed them with her tears;
still he was inflexible.

"Thou foolish fellow," said Candide; "I have delivered thee out of the
galleys, I have paid thy ransom, and thy sister's also; she was a
scullion, and is very ugly, yet I am so condescending as to marry her;
and dost thou pretend to oppose the match? I should kill thee again,
were I only to consult my anger."

"Thou mayest kill me again," said the Baron, "but thou shalt not marry
my sister, at least whilst I am living."

At the bottom of his heart Candide had no wish to marry Cunegonde. But
the extreme impertinence of the Baron determined him to conclude the
match, and Cunegonde pressed him so strongly that he could not go from
his word. He consulted Pangloss, Martin, and the faithful Cacambo.
Pangloss drew up an excellent memorial, wherein he proved that the Baron
had no right over his sister, and that according to all the laws of the
empire, she might marry Candide with her left hand. Martin was for
throwing the Baron into the sea; Cacambo decided that it would be better
to deliver him up again to the captain of the galley, after which they
thought to send him back to the General Father of the Order at Rome by
the first ship. This advice was well received, the old woman approved
it; they said not a word to his sister; the thing was executed for a
little money, and they had the double pleasure of entrapping a Jesuit,
and punishing the pride of a German baron.

It is natural to imagine that after so many disasters Candide married,
and living with the philosopher Pangloss, the philosopher Martin, the
prudent Cacambo, and the old woman, having besides brought so many
diamonds from the country of the ancient Incas, must have led a very
happy life. But he was so much imposed upon by the Jews that he had
nothing left except his small farm; his wife became uglier every day,
more peevish and unsupportable; the old woman was infirm and even more
fretful than Cunegonde. Cacambo, who worked in the garden, and took
vegetables for sale to Constantinople, was fatigued with hard work, and
cursed his destiny. Pangloss was in despair at not shining in some
German university. For Martin, he was firmly persuaded that he would be
as badly off elsewhere, and therefore bore things patiently. Candide,
Martin, and Pangloss sometimes disputed about morals and metaphysics.
They often saw passing under the windows of their farm boats full of
Effendis, Pashas, and Cadis, who were going into banishment to Lemnos,
Mitylene, or Erzeroum. And they saw other Cadis, Pashas, and Effendis
coming to supply the place of the exiles, and afterwards exiled in their
turn. They saw heads decently impaled for presentation to the Sublime
Porte. Such spectacles as these increased the number of their
dissertations; and when they did not dispute time hung so heavily upon
their hands, that one day the old woman ventured to say to them:

"I want to know which is worse, to be ravished a hundred times by negro
pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the
Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an _auto-da-fe_, to be
dissected, to row in the galleys--in short, to go through all the
miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?"

"It is a great question," said Candide.

This discourse gave rise to new reflections, and Martin especially
concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting
inquietude or of lethargic disgust. Candide did not quite agree to that,
but he affirmed nothing. Pangloss owned that he had always suffered
horribly, but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully
well, he asserted it still, though he no longer believed it.

What helped to confirm Martin in his detestable principles, to stagger
Candide more than ever, and to puzzle Pangloss, was that one day they
saw Paquette and Friar Giroflee land at the farm in extreme misery. They
had soon squandered their three thousand piastres, parted, were
reconciled, quarrelled again, were thrown into gaol, had escaped, and
Friar Giroflee had at length become Turk. Paquette continued her trade
wherever she went, but made nothing of it.

"I foresaw," said Martin to Candide, "that your presents would soon be
dissipated, and only make them the more miserable. You have rolled in
millions of money, you and Cacambo; and yet you are not happier than
Friar Giroflee and Paquette."

"Ha!" said Pangloss to Paquette, "Providence has then brought you
amongst us again, my poor child! Do you know that you cost me the tip of
my nose, an eye, and an ear, as you may see? What a world is this!"

And now this new adventure set them philosophising more than ever.

In the neighbourhood there lived a very famous Dervish who was esteemed
the best philosopher in all Turkey, and they went to consult him.
Pangloss was the speaker.

"Master," said he, "we come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal
as man was made."

"With what meddlest thou?" said the Dervish; "is it thy business?"

"But, reverend father," said Candide, "there is horrible evil in this
world."

"What signifies it," said the Dervish, "whether there be evil or good?
When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head
whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?"

"What, then, must we do?" said Pangloss.

"Hold your tongue," answered the Dervish.

"I was in hopes," said Pangloss, "that I should reason with you a little
about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin
of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony."

At these words, the Dervish shut the door in their faces.

During this conversation, the news was spread that two Viziers and the
Mufti had been strangled at Constantinople, and that several of their
friends had been impaled. This catastrophe made a great noise for some
hours. Pangloss, Candide, and Martin, returning to the little farm, saw
a good old man taking the fresh air at his door under an orange bower.
Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was argumentative, asked the old
man what was the name of the strangled Mufti.

"I do not know," answered the worthy man, "and I have not known the name
of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier. I am entirely ignorant of the event you
mention; I presume in general that they who meddle with the
administration of public affairs die sometimes miserably, and that they
deserve it; but I never trouble my head about what is transacting at
Constantinople; I content myself with sending there for sale the fruits
of the garden which I cultivate."

Having said these words, he invited the strangers into his house; his
two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet,
which they made themselves, with Kaimak enriched with the candied-peel
of citrons, with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha
coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of Batavia or the American
islands. After which the two daughters of the honest Mussulman perfumed
the strangers' beards.

"You must have a vast and magnificent estate," said Candide to the Turk.

"I have only twenty acres," replied the old man; "I and my children
cultivate them; our labour preserves us from three great
evils--weariness, vice, and want."

Candide, on his way home, made profound reflections on the old man's
conversation.

"This honest Turk," said he to Pangloss and Martin, "seems to be in a
situation far preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the
honour of supping."

"Grandeur," said Pangloss, "is extremely dangerous according to the
testimony of philosophers. For, in short, Eglon, King of Moab, was
assassinated by Ehud; Absalom was hung by his hair, and pierced with
three darts; King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Baasa; King
Ela by Zimri; Ahaziah by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings
Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity. You know how
perished Croesus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus,
Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Caesar, Pompey, Nero, Otho,
Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II. of England, Edward II., Henry VI.,
Richard III., Mary Stuart, Charles I., the three Henrys of France, the
Emperor Henry IV.! You know----"

"I know also," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden."

"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the
Garden of Eden, he was put there _ut operaretur eum_, that he might
cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."

"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to
render life tolerable."

The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to
their different abilities. Their little plot of land produced plentiful
crops. Cunegonde was, indeed, very ugly, but she became an excellent
pastry cook; Paquette worked at embroidery; the old woman looked after
the linen. They were all, not excepting Friar Giroflee, of some service
or other; for he made a good joiner, and became a very honest man.

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide:

"There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds:
for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of
Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had
not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had
not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would
not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."

"All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our
garden."

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

completion: Cacambo had made arrangements for Candide and himself to sail aboard a ship commanded by a Turkish captain under orders of the Sultan Ahmed. Both prostrated themselves before his "miserable Highness." En route, Candide, in whose breast hope sprang eternal, contemplated the lot of the six kings he had met in Venice and compared their lot with his own, now that he was flying to the arms of Cunegonde. He assured Martin that Pangloss had been right: "All is well." Martin could only express his hope that the youth was right. Unlike his companion, he saw nothing extraordinary in the fact that they had dined with six dethroned rulers; such dethronements were common enough. Cacambo had made arrangements for Candide and himself to sail aboard a ship commanded by a Turkish captain under orders of the Sultan Ahmed. Both prostrated themselves before his "miserable Highness." En route, Candide, in whose breast hope sprang eternal, contemplated the lot of the six kings he had met in Venice and compared their lot with his own, now that he was flying to the arms of Cunegonde. He assured Martin that Pangloss had been right: "All is well." Martin could only express his hope that the youth was right. Unlike his companion, he saw nothing extraordinary in the fact that they had dined with six dethroned rulers; such dethronements were common enough. Candide turned to Cacambo and asked him many questions about Cunegonde. What was she doing? Was she still the peerless beauty? Had Cacambo bought her a palace in Constantinople? He was told that the lady was a lowly servant in the household of a former sovereign named Ragotsky . Much worse, she had lost her beauty. Candide gallantly declared that, ugly or beautiful, it was his duty to love her. But how, he asked, had she been reduced to such an abject state? Did not Cacambo have vast wealth in his possession? The valet told of the ransom he had had to pay to the governor of Buenos Aires, and of the large sums that he had been forced to turn over to the pirates. He himself was a slave to the deposed sultan. Candide consoled himself with the thought that he still had a few diamonds left and that he would be able to rescue Cunegonde. But now he wondered if his lot were not really worse than that of the six kings. He assured Martin that Pangloss would have been able to provide an answer. But Martin was convinced that there were millions far worse off than Candide and the deposed rulers. When they arrived at Bosporus, Candide secured the freedom of Cacambo and, without waste of time, headed for the shores of the Propontis to find Cunegonde. Again there occurred one of those amazing coincidences. Two galley slaves turned out to be none other than Doctor Pangloss and the Jesuit baron, Cunegonde's brother! "Is it a dream?" asked Candide. "Is that My Lord Baron, whom I killed? Is that Doctor Pangloss, whom I saw hanged?" Then he made immediate arrangements with the Levantine captain for ransoming the two. Since they were "dogs of Christian convicts," one a baron and the other a metaphysician, the price was an exorbitant one, but Candide did not protest. He also paid the captain to take them all to the nearest port. Candide introduced Martin and Cacambo to the baron and Pangloss. They all embraced; they all talked at once. When they reached port, Candide sold a diamond worth a hundred thousand sequins for 50,000 and immediately paid the ransom for the two former galley slaves. He sold more diamonds, and they all set out in another galley to deliver Cunegonde, now a kitchen slavey in the household of the Prince of Transylvania. Again Candide implored the baron's pardon for having given him the great sword thrust through the body. "Let's say no more about it," said the baron, and he admitted that he had been a little too hasty himself. He then told his story. After having been cured of his wound by the brother apothecary of the Jesuit College, he was carried off by a party of Spaniards and imprisoned in Buenos Aires just after his sister left; next he was chosen to go to Constantinople and serve as almoner with the ambassador of France. A week after he had assumed his duties, he met a very attractive young page to the sultan. Since it was very hot, the two bathed together. But in Turkey it was a capital crime for a Christian to be found naked with a young Moslem. A cadi sentenced the baron to be given one hundred lashes on the soles of his feet and condemned him to the galleys. This was unjust enough, he concluded, but why should his sister be in the kitchen of a refugee Transylvanian prince? Next Candide turned to Pangloss and asked how it happened that he had survived. Yes, he had been hanged rather than burned because of the heavy downpour of rain. A surgeon had bought his body, took it to his home, and dissected it. No one had been worse hanged than Pangloss. The Holy Inquisition's Executor of High Operations, a sub-deacon, did burn people marvelously, but he was a rank amateur at hanging. The wet rope had slipped badly and had become knotted. And thus Pangloss was still breathing. He had cried out loudly when the doctor made an incision in his body, and the frightened man fled, convinced that he had been dissecting a devil. When the doctor's wife came running into the room, she was more frightened than her husband, over whose prone body she stumbled as she ran. "My dear," she said, "what are you thinking of, dissecting a heretic? Don't you know that the devil is always in those people?" When Pangloss heard her say that she would summon a priest quickly to exorcise him, he shuddered and cried out for them to take pity on him. Finally, the "Portuguese barber," as Pangloss called him, recovered enough courage to sew up Pangloss. Further, he found Pangloss a job as lackey to a knight of Malta who was going to Venice. But since the knight was penniless, Pangloss entered the services of a Venetian merchant and went with him to Constantinople. One day he entered a mosque where an old iman and a very seductive appearing young devotee were present. The girl dropped the beautiful bouquet she had placed between her uncovered breasts. The gallant Pangloss retrieved and replaced it, but took so long in doing so that the iman grew angry. Recognizing Pangloss as a Christian, he cried out for help. And, like the baron, Pangloss was taken before a magistrate and given the same sentence his fellow-sufferer had received. In the galley were four young men from Marseilles, five Neapolitan priests, and two monks who told the baron that what had happened to him was a daily occurrence. The baron and Pangloss argued about who had suffered most, the latter insisting that it was far more permissible to replace a bouquet on a woman's bosom than to be stark naked with the page of a sultan, when Candide appeared and ransomed them. "Well, my dear Pangloss," said Candide, "when you were hanged, racked with blows, and rowing in the galleys, did you still think that all was for the best?" And the philosopher assured the youth that he was still of his first opinion, arguing that Leibnitz cannot be wrong. En route to the house of the prince of Transylvania on the shore of the Propontis, Candide, the baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo talked at length about their adventures, reasoned on the contingent and non-contingent events of the world, argued about causes and effects, moral and physical evil, and free will and necessity. When they landed at the prince's house, they saw Cunegonde and the old woman hanging towels on a line to dry. The baron paled at the sight of his once beautiful sister. She was now dark-skinned; her eyes were blood shot; her cheeks wrinkled; her arms red and rough. No longer did she have the enticing figure he had remembered. She embraced her brother and Candide, who in turn embraced the old woman. Candide ransomed both women. The old woman, never without a plan, suggested that they buy a small farm in the neighborhood and await a better destiny. Poor Cunegonde, who did not know that she had grown ugly, reminded Candide of his promise to marry her. "I shall never endure such baseness on her part or insolence on Candide's," exclaimed the baron. He could not bear the thought that his sister's children would be barred from the aristocracy. Although Cunegonde threw herself at his feet and wept bitter tears, he was adamant. Candide called him the maddest of madmen and reminded him of all he had done for his sister. The baron replied, "You may kill me again, but you shall not marry my sister while I am alive." Candide really had no desire to marry Cunegonde, but the baron's arrogance and Cunegonde's pleading made him determined to do so. He consulted Pangloss, Martin, and the faithful Cacambo. Pangloss prepared a fine memoir by which he proved to his own satisfaction that the baron had no right to interfere, that she could make a morganatic marriage. Martin thought that the baron should be thrown into the sea. Cacambo decided that the baron should be returned to galleys and then be sent by the first ship to the Father General in Rome. All but Cunegonde, who had been told nothing, approved of the plan. So they had the pleasure of trapping a Jesuit and punishing a German baron for excessive pride. It would seem that Candide, married to Cunegonde and living with two philosophers and the prudent Cacambo, would now lead a pleasant life, but he had nothing left but the little farm. His wife became uglier and more shrewish every day. The old woman, now an invalid, became more intolerable than Cunegonde. Nor was Cacambo happy. He was overworked and bewailed his fate. Pangloss was disappointed because he was not flourishing at some German university. As for Martin, his pessimism was more pronounced than ever, but he accepted his lot patiently. Candide, Martin, and Pangloss spent much of their time arguing about metaphysics and morality and watching the sights. They often saw Turkish officers of all ranks on farm boats that took them into exile; and they saw other officials arriving to take their places, ones who would later be exiled. They saw "properly impaled heads" being taken to the Sublime Port . These sights redoubled the discourse of the three. But the boredom increased, and the old woman proposed a question: was it worse to be raped a thousand times by pirates, have a buttock cut off, run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in the auto-da-fe, be dissected, row in the galleys -- in short, to undergo all the miseries they had experienced -- or stay where they were and do nothing? A great question, as Candide remarked, one that called for reflection. Martin was sure that it was humanity's lot to live in a state of anxiety and boredom. Candide disagreed but asserted nothing. Pangloss admitted that his life had been filled with suffering, but he still defended his position that everything was wonderful, even if he himself did not believe so. When they saw Paquette and Giroflee in a state of utter misery coming to the farm, Martin was absolutely convinced that his dark view of life was the correct one. The two had squandered the money Candide had given them; they had quarreled and then become reconciled to each other; they had been put in prison, from which they had escaped. Now the friar had made good his threat to turn Turk, and the pathetic Paquette endeavored, unsuccessfully, to ply her trade everywhere. Martin told Candide that he had known that the young man and Cacambo would dissipate their wealth, that they were no happier than these two most recent arrivals. As for Pangloss, he greeted Paquette by telling her that she had cost him the end of his nose, an eye, and an ear. This new adventure led them to philosophize more than ever. In an attempt to get some answers to basic questions, they consulted a very famous dervish, one considered to be the best philosopher in Turkey, and posed this question to him: why was such a strange animal as man ever created? The dervish replied that they were meddling in matters that were no concern of theirs, that it does not matter if there is a horrible amount of evil on earth. "When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt, is he bothered about whether the mice in the ship are comfortable or not?" All they should do, the dervish continued, was to hold their tongues. Pangloss was crushed. He had hoped to reason with this man about effects and causes, the best of all possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and pre-established harmony. But the dervish slammed the door in the face of his visitors. Meanwhile, the news had gone round that in Constantinople the authorities had just strangled two viziers of the Divan and impaled several of their friends. The catastrophe had created quite a stir for a few hours. Upon returning to the farm, Pangloss, Candide, and Martin met an old man relaxing under a bower of orange trees. They asked him the name of the mufti who had just been strangled. The old man professed to know nothing; he had always assumed that those who meddle with public affairs sometime suffer and deserve to do so. As for him, he contented himself with cultivating his garden. Then he invited the three into his house and provided them with refreshments. His two daughters perfumed the visitors' beards. Candide was most impressed. He was sure that his good Moslem must have a vast estate but learned that his host possessed only twenty acres. "I cultivate them with my children," said the Turk. "Work keeps away three great evils: boredom, vice, and need." As he went back to the farm, Candide pondered deeply what the old man had said. He informed Pangloss and Martin that the man had made a life for himself which was far better than that of the six kings they had met in Venice. Pangloss held forth at his usual length, appealing to Biblical and secular history, to prove that great eminence is always dangerous. "I also know," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden." His philosopher friend agreed. "Let us work without reason," added Martin. "It is the only way to make life bearable." And so the little society entered into this laudable plan -- Cunegonde, Paquette, Friar Giroflee included. That irrepressible optimist Pangloss sometimes repeated his belief that all events were linked together logically in this best of all possible worlds. He argued that had not Candide been expelled from a fine castle and experienced so many difficulties, he would not now be enjoying candied citrons and pistachios. "That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden."


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.

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

completion: Chapter 1. those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best. Candide lives in the castle of the baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia. Candide is the illegitimate son of the baron's sister. His mother refused to marry his father because his father's family tree could only be traced through "seventy-one quarterings. The castle's tutor, Pangloss, teaches "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology" and believes that this world is the "best of all possible worlds. Candide listens to Pangloss with great attention and faith. Miss Cunegonde, the baron's daughter, spies Pangloss and a maid, Paquette, engaged in a lesson in "experimental physics. Seized with the desire for knowledge, she hurries to find Candide. They flirt and steal a kiss behind a screen. The baron catches them and banishes Candide


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

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

completion: Candide wanders to the next town, where two men find him half-dead with hunger and fatigue. They give him money, feed him, and ask him to drink to the health of the king of the Bulgars. They then conscript him to serve in the Bulgar army, where Candide suffers abuse and hardship as he is indoctrinated into military life. When he decides to go for a walk one morning, four soldiers capture him and he is court-martialed as a deserter. He is given a choice between execution and running the gauntlet thirty-six times. Candide tries to choose neither option by arguing that "the human will is free," but his argument is unsuccessful. He finally chooses to run the gauntlet. After running the gauntlet twice, Candide's skin is nearly flayed from his body. The king of the Bulgars happens to pass by. Discovering that Candide is a metaphysician and "ignorant of the world," the king pardons him. Candide's wounds heal in time for him to serve in a war between the Bulgars and the Abares


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

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

completion: The war results in unbelievable carnage, and Candide deserts at the first opportunity. In both kingdoms he sees burning villages full of butchered and dying civilians. Candide escapes to Holland, where he comes upon a Protestant orator explaining the value of charity to a crowd of listeners. The orator asks Candide whether he supports "the good cause. Remembering Pangloss's teachings, Candide replies that "here is no effect without a cause. The orator asks if Candide believes that the Pope is the Antichrist. Candide explains that he does not know, but that in any case he is hungry and must eat. The orator curses Candide and the orator's wife dumps human waste over Candide's head. A kind Anabaptist, Jacques, takes Candide into his home and employs Candide in his rug factory. Jacques's kindness revives Candide's faith in Pangloss's theory that everything is for the best in this world


prompt:
Chapter: 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: Candide finds a deformed beggar in the street. The beggar is Pangloss. Pangloss tells Candide that the Bulgars attacked the baron's castle and killed the baron, his wife, and his son, and raped and murdered Cunegonde. Pangloss explains that syphilis, which he contracted from Paquette, has ravaged his body. Still, he believes that syphilis is necessary in the best of worlds because the line of infection leads back to a man who traveled to the New World with Columbus. If Columbus had not traveled to the New World and brought syphilis back to Europe, then Europeans would also not have enjoyed New World wonders such as chocolate. Jacques finds a doctor to cure Pangloss, who loses an eye and an ear to the syphilis. Jacques hires Pangloss as his bookkeeper and then takes Candide and Pangloss on a business trip to Lisbon. Jacques disagrees with Pangloss's assertion that this is the best of worlds and claims that "men have somehow corrupted Nature. God never gave men weapons, he claims, but men created them "in order to destroy themselves


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.

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

completion: A furious storm overtakes Candide's ship on its way to Lisbon. Jacques tries to save a sailor who has almost fallen overboard. He saves the sailor but falls overboard himself, and the sailor does nothing to help him. The ship sinks, and Pangloss, Candide, and the sailor are the only survivors. They reach shore and walk toward Lisbon. Lisbon has just experienced a terrible earthquake and is in ruins. The sailor finds some money in the ruins and promptly gets drunk and pays a woman for sex. Meanwhile the groans of dying and buried victims rise from the ruins. Pangloss and Candide help the wounded, and Pangloss comforts the victims by telling them the earthquake is for the best. One of the officers of the Inquisition accuses Pangloss of heresy because an optimist cannot possibly believe in original sin. The fall and punishment of man, the Catholic Inquisitor claims, prove that everything is not for the best. Through some rather twisted logic, Pangloss attempts to defend his theory


prompt:
Chapter: 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."

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

completion: The Portuguese authorities decide to burn a few people alive to prevent future earthquakes. They choose one man because he has married his godmother, and two others because they have refused to eat bacon. The authorities hang Pangloss for his opinions and publicly flog Candide for "listening with an air of approval. When another earthquake occurs later the same day, Candide finds himself doubting that this is the best of all possible worlds


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

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

completion: Just then an old woman approaches Candide, treats his wounds, gives him new clothes, and feeds him. After two days, she leads him to a house in the country to meet his real benefactor, Cunegonde


prompt:
Chapter: "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.

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

completion: Cunegonde explains to Candide that the Bulgars have killed her family. After executing a soldier whom he found raping Cunegonde, a Bulgar captain took Cunegonde as his mistress and later sold her to a Jew, Don Issachar. After seeing her at Mass, the Grand Inquisitor wanted to buy her from Don Issachar; when Don Issachar refused, the Grand Inquisitor threatened him with auto-da-fe. The two agreed to share Cunegonde; the Grand Inquisitor would have her four days a week, Don Issachar the other three. Cunegonde was present to see Pangloss hanged and Candide whipped, the horror of which made her doubt Pangloss's teachings. Cunegonde told the old woman, her servant, to care for Candide and bring him to her


prompt:
Chapter: 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.

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

completion: Don Issachar arrives to find Cunegonde and Candide alone together, and attacks Candide in a jealous rage. Candide kills Don Issachar with a sword given to him by the old woman. The Grand Inquisitor arrives to enjoy his allotted time with Cunegonde and is surprised to find Candide. Candide kills him. Cunegonde gathers her jewels and three horses from the stable and flees with Candide and the old woman. The Holy Brotherhood gives the Grand Inquisitor a grand burial, but throws Don Issachar's body on a dunghill


prompt:
Chapter: "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.

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

completion: A Franciscan friar steals Cunegonde's jewels. Despite his agreement with Pangloss's philosophy that "the fruits of the earth are a common heritage of all," Candide nonetheless laments the loss. Candide and Cunegonde sell one horse and travel to Cadiz, where they find troops preparing to sail to the New World. Paraguayan Jesuit priests have incited an Indian tribe to rebel against the kings of Spain and Portugal. Candide demonstrates his military experience to the general, who promptly makes him a captain. Candide takes Cunegonde, the old woman, and the horses with him, and predicts that it is the New World that will prove to be the best of all possible worlds. But Cunegonde claims to have suffered so much that she has almost lost all hope. The old woman admonishes Cunegonde for complaining because Cunegonde has not suffered as much as she has


prompt:
Chapter: "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]

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

completion: The old woman tells her story. It turns out that she is the daughter of Pope Urban X and the princess of Palestrina. She was raised in the midst of incredible wealth. At fourteen, already a stunning beauty, she was engaged to the prince of Massa Carrara. The two of them loved each another passionately. However, during the lavish wedding celebration, the prince's mistress killed the prince with a poisoned drink, and the old woman and her mother set sail to mourn at their estate in Gaeta. On the way, pirates boarded the ship and the pope's soldiers surrendered without a fight. The pirates examined every bodily orifice of their prisoners, searching for hidden jewels. They raped the women and sailed to Morocco to sell them as slaves. A civil war was underway in Morocco, and the pirates were attacked. The old woman saw her mother and their maids of honor ripped apart by the men fighting over them. After the fray ended, the old woman climbed out from under a heap of dead bodies and crawled to rest under a tree. She awoke to find an Italian eunuch vainly attempting to rape her