There they found all the people in a great stir. A fire had broken out in the suburb of Pera; five or six hundred houses were already consumed, and two or three thousand persons perished in the flames. “What a horrible disaster,” cried Candide! “All is well,” said Pangloss, “these little accidents happen every year. It is entirely natural for the fire to catch houses built of wood, and for those who are in them to be burned. Besides, this procures some resources to honest people, who languish in misery.” “What is this I hear?” said an officer of the sublime porte. “How, wretch, darest thou say that all is well when half Constantinople is in flames. Dog, be cursed of our prophet, receive the punishment due to thy impudence!” And as he uttered these words he took Pangloss by the middle and flung him headlong into the flames. Candide, half dead with fright, crept on all fours as well as he could to a neighboring quarter, where all was more quiet; and we shall see what became of him in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XI.
CANDIDE CONTINUES HIS TRAVELS.
“I have nothing left,” said our philosopher, “but to make myself either a slave or a Turk. Happiness has forsaken me forever. A turban would corrupt all my pleasures. I shall be incapable of tasting tranquillity of soul in a religion full of imposture, into which I enter merely from a motive of vile interest. No, I shall never be content if I cease to be an honest man; let me make myself then a slave.” Candide had no sooner taken this resolution than he set about putting it into execution. He chose an Armenian merchant for his master, who was a man of a very good character, and passed for virtuous, as much as an Armenian can be. He gave Candide two hundred sequins as the price of his liberty. The Armenian was upon the point of departing for Norway; he took Candide with him, in the hope that a philosopher would be of use to him in his traffic. They embarked, and the wind was so favorable for them that they were not above half the usual time in their passage. They even had no occasion for buying a wind from the Lapland witches, and contented themselves with giving them some stock-fish, that they might not disturb their good fortune with their enchantments; which sometimes happens, if we may believe Moréri’s dictionary on this head.
The Armenian no sooner landed than he provided a stock of whale-blubber and ordered our philosopher to go over all the country to buy him some dried salt fish; Candide acquitted himself of his commission in the best manner possible, returned with several reindeer loaded with this merchandise, and made profound reflections on the astonishing difference which is to be found between the Laplanders and other men. A very diminutive female Laplander, whose head was a little bigger than her body, her eyes red and full of fire, a flat nose and very wide mouth, wished him a good day with an infinite grace. “My little lord,” said this being (a foot and ten inches high) to him, “I think you very handsome; do me the favor to love me a little.” So saying, she flew to him and caught him round the neck. Candide pushed her away with horror. She cried out, when her husband came in with several other Laplanders. “What is the meaning of all this uproar?” said they. “It is,” answered the little thing, “that this stranger — Alas! I am choked with grief; he despises me.” “So, then,” said the Lapland husband, “thou impolite, dishonest, brutal, infamous, cowardly rascal, thou bringest disgrace upon my house; thou dost me the most sensible injury; thou refusest to embrace my wife.” “Lo! here’s a strange custom,” cried our hero; “what would you have said, then, if I had embraced her?” “I would have wished thee all sort of prosperity,” said the Laplander to him in wrath; “but thou only deservest my indignation.” At uttering this he discharged on Candide’s back a volley of blows with a cudgel. The reindeer were seized by the relatives of the offended husband, and Candide, for fear of worse, was forced to betake himself to flight and renounce forever his good master; for how dared he present himself before him without money, whaleblubber, or reindeer?
CHAPTER XII.
CANDIDE STILL CONTINUES HIS TRAVELS — NEW ADVENTURES.
Candide travelled a long time without knowing whither he was going. At length he resolved to go to Denmark, where he had heard that everything went pretty well. He had a few pieces of money about him, which the Armenian had made him a present of; and this sum, though inconsiderable, he hoped would carry him to the end of his journey. Hope rendered his misery supportable to him, and he still passed some happy moments. He found himself one day in an inn with three travellers, who talked to him with great warmth about a plenum and the materia subtilis. “This is well,” said Candide to himself, “these are philosophers. Gentlemen,” said he to them, “a plenum is incontestable; there is no vacuum in nature, and the materia subtilis is a well-imagined hypothesis.” “You are then a Cartesian?” cried the three travellers. “Yes,” answered Candide, “and a Leibnitzian, which is more.” “So much the worse for you,” replied the philosophers. “Descartes and Leibnitz had not common sense. We are Newtonians, and we glory in it; if we dispute, it is only the better to confirm ourselves in our opinions, and we all think the same. We search for truth in Newton’s tract, because we are persuaded that Newton is a very great man.” “And Descartes, too, and Leibnitz and Pangloss likewise,” said Candide; “these great men are worth a thousand of yours.” “You are a fool, friend,” answered the philosophers; “do you know the laws of refraction, attraction, and motion? Have you read the truths which Dr. Clarke has published in answer to the vagaries of your Leibnitz? Do you know what centrifugal and centripetal force is? and that colors depend on their density? Have you any notion of the theory of light and gravitation? Do you know the period of twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years, which unluckily do not agree with chronology? No, undoubtedly, you have but false ideas of all these things; peace then, thou contemptible monad, and beware how you insult giants by comparing them to pygmies.” “Gentlemen,” answered Candide, “were Pangloss here, he would tell you very fine things; for he is a great philosopher; he has a sovereign contempt for your Newton; and, as I am his disciple, I likewise make no great account of him.” The philosophers, enraged beyond measure, fell upon poor Candide and drubbed him most philosophically.
Their wrath subsiding, they asked our hero’s pardon for their too great warmth. Upon this one of them began a very fine harangue on mildness and moderation.
While they were talking they saw a grand funeral procession pass by; our philosophers thence took occasion to descent on the foolish vanity of man. “Would it not be more reasonable,” said one of them, “that the relatives and friends of the deceased should, without pomp and noise, carry the bier themselves? would not this funeral act, by presenting to them the idea of death, produce an effect the most salutary, the most philosophical? This reflection, which would offer itself, namely, ‘the body I carry is that of my friend, my relative; he is no more; and, like him, I must cease to be in this world;’ would not this, I say, be a means of lessening the number of crimes in this vile world, and of bringing back to virtue beings who believe in the immortality of the soul? Men are too much inclined to remove from them the thoughts of death, for fear of presenting too strong images of it.