The next day, as Candide was walking out, he met a beggar all
covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose
eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak,
snuffling and coughing most violently, and every time he attempted
to spit out dropped a tooth.

Candide, divided between compassion and horror, but giving way to
the former, bestowed on this shocking figure the two florins which the
honest Anabaptist, James, had just before given to him. The specter
looked at him very earnestly, shed tears and threw his arms about
his neck. Candide started back aghast.

“Alas!” said the one wretch to the other, “don’t you know dear
Pangloss?”

“What do I hear? Is it you, my dear master! you I behold in this
piteous plight? What dreadful misfortune has befallen you? What has
made you leave the most magnificent and delightful of all castles?
What has become of Miss Cunegund, the mirror of young ladies, and
Nature’s masterpiece?”

“Oh, Lord!” cried Pangloss, “I am so weak I cannot stand,” upon
which Candide instantly led him to the Anabaptist’s stable, and
procured him something to eat.

As soon as Pangloss had a little refreshed himself, Candide began to
repeat his inquiries concerning Miss Cunegund.

“She is dead,” replied the other.

“Dead!” cried Candide, and immediately fainted away; his friend
restored him by the help of a little bad vinegar, which he found by
chance in the stable.

Candide opened his eyes, and again repeated: “Dead! is Miss Cunegund
dead? Ah, where is the best of worlds now? But of what illness did she
die? Was it of grief on seeing her father kick me out of his
magnificent castle?”

“No,” replied Pangloss, “her body was ripped open by the Bulgarian
soldiers, after they had subjected her to as much cruelty as a
damsel could survive; they knocked the Baron, her father, on the
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; they have destroyed all the ducks, and sheep, the barns,
and the trees; but we have had our revenge, for the Abares have done
the very same thing in a neighboring barony, which belonged to a
Bulgarian lord.”

At hearing this, Candide fainted away a second time, but, not
withstanding, having come to himself again, he said all that it became
him to say; he inquired into the cause and effect, as well as into the
sufficing reason that had reduced Pangloss to so miserable a
condition.

“Alas,” replied the preceptor, “it was love; love, the comfort of
the human species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of
all sensible beings; love! tender love!”

“Alas,” cried Candide, “I have had some knowledge of love myself,
this sovereign of hearts, this soul of souls; yet it never cost me
more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. But how could
this beautiful cause produce in you so hideous an effect?”

Pangloss made answer in these terms:

“O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty
wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the
pleasures of Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which
you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has
since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan,
who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old
countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a
marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who,
during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow
adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall give it to
nobody, I am a dying man.”

“O sage Pangloss,” cried Candide, “what a strange genealogy is this!
Is not the devil the root of it?”

“Not at all,” replied the great man, “it was a thing unavoidable,
a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had
not caught in an island in America this disease, which contaminates
the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself,
and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have
had neither chocolate nor cochineal. It is also to be observed,
that, even to the present time, in this continent of ours, this
malady, like our religious controversies, is peculiar to ourselves.
The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, and
the Japanese are entirely unacquainted with it; but there is a
sufficing reason for them to know it in a few centuries. In the
meantime, it is making prodigious havoc among us, especially in
those armies composed of well disciplined hirelings, who determine the
fate of nations; for we may safely affirm, that, when an army of
thirty thousand men engages another equal in size, there are about
twenty thousand infected with syphilis on each side.”

“Very surprising, indeed,” said Candide, “but you must get cured.”

“Lord help me, how can I?” said Pangloss. “My dear friend, I have
not a penny in the world; and you know one cannot be bled or have an
enema without money.”

This last speech had its effect on Candide; he flew to the
charitable Anabaptist, James; he flung himself at his feet, and gave
him so striking a picture of the miserable condition of his friend
that the good man without any further hesitation agreed to take Dr.
Pangloss into his house, and to pay for his cure. The cure was
effected with only the loss of one eye and an ear. As be wrote a
good hand, and understood accounts tolerably well, the Anabaptist made
him his bookkeeper. At the expiration of two months, being obliged
by some mercantile affairs to go to Lisbon he took the two
philosophers with him in the same ship; Pangloss, during the course of
the voyage, explained to him how everything was so constituted that it
could not be better. James did not quite agree with him on this point.

“Men,” said he “must, in some things, have deviated from their
original innocence; for they were not born wolves, and yet they
worry one another like those beasts of prey. God never gave them
twenty-four pounders nor bayonets, and yet they have made cannon and
bayonets to destroy one another. To this account I might add not
only bankruptcies, but the law which seizes on the effects of
bankrupts, only to cheat the creditors.”

“All this was indispensably necessary,” replied the one-eyed doctor,
“for private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private
misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good.”

While he was arguing in this manner, the sky was overcast, the winds
blew from the four quarters of the compass, and the ship was
assailed by a most terrible tempest, within sight of the port of
Lisbon.