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.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Candide was now reduced to a state of misery as, in the freezing cold, he dragged himself toward the neighboring town, nearly dying from hunger and fatigue. At the door of an inn two uniformed men addressed him. Strangely enough, they offered to buy him food and to give him money simply because he was five feet five in height. "Men are made to help each other," explained one, and Candide was moved and delighted to hear this confirmation of Doctor Pangloss' teaching. They induced the youth to drink to the health of the Bulgarian king and then announced that he was a soldier in the King's army -- a hero whose glory and fortune were assured. Candide was now reduced to a state of misery as, in the freezing cold, he dragged himself toward the neighboring town, nearly dying from hunger and fatigue. At the door of an inn two uniformed men addressed him. Strangely enough, they offered to buy him food and to give him money simply because he was five feet five in height. "Men are made to help each other," explained one, and Candide was moved and delighted to hear this confirmation of Doctor Pangloss' teaching. They induced the youth to drink to the health of the Bulgarian king and then announced that he was a soldier in the King's army -- a hero whose glory and fortune were assured. For one so honored, the treatment Candide received was rather startling. He was placed in irons and taken to the regiment, where he was put through endless drills and nearly beaten to death. One day, he ran away, but before he had covered many miles four of his "fellow heroes" overtook him, bound him, and put him in a dungeon. Offered a choice, he understandably chose to be beaten unmercifully thirty-six times by the whole regiment rather than to be shot. As Voltaire described the punishment, the callow youth might have been wiser to have accepted death. But, just at the time when it seemed that he could not survive, the king of the Bulgarians appeared, made inquiries, and granted Candide a pardon. Three weeks later, the youth, restored to good health, was able to join his fellow soldiers in the war against the Abarians. In the third chapter, Voltaire described the "glories" of war -- the well-drilled troops, the martial music, and the "heroic" butchery, from which Candide hid himself as best he could. And while both kings were having their Te Deums sung, he decided the time was ripe for him to reason elsewhere about the cause and effect. He made his way over heaps of dead and dying men before reaching an Abarian village. It was in ashes, having been burned in accordance with the rules of international law. Candide saw firsthand how the horrors of war could be visited on the innocent civilians. Women, children, old men -- none had escaped. Candide fled to another village, which proved to be a Bulgarian one, and found that it and the inhabitants had received the same treatment. At last he escaped from the theater of war. Never did he forget Mademoiselle Cunegonde. When he reached Holland, he optimistically believed that he would be as well treated as he once had been in Westphalia, for were not the Hollanders Christian? But the starving youth found little charity. One native threatened him with prison when he asked for alms; another, a militant Protestant, excoriated him when he did not provide the expected answer as regards the Pope. It remained for an Anabaptist -- a man who had not even been baptized -- to play the role of the Good Samaritan. His generosity and kindness reaffirmed in Candide faith in the wisdom of Doctor Pangloss: all must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. At this point in the action, Candide met a beggar covered with sores. The beggar's eyes were lifeless and the tip of his nose had been eaten away by disease. His mouth was twisted and he was racked by a violent cough. He spat out a tooth with every spasm.

