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CHAPTER XIX WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM AT SURINAM AND HOW
CANDIDE GOT ACQUAINTED WITH MARTIN.
Our travellers spent the first day very agreeably.
They were delighted with possessing more treasure than all Asia, Europe, and Africa
could scrape together.
Candide, in his raptures, cut Cunegonde's name on the trees.
The second day two of their sheep plunged into a morass, where they and their burdens
were lost; two more died of fatigue a few days after; seven or eight perished with
hunger in a desert; and others subsequently fell down precipices.
At length, after travelling a hundred days, only two sheep remained.
Said Candide to Cacambo:
"My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing
solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more."
"I grant all you say," said Cacambo, "but we have still two sheep remaining, with
more treasure than the King of Spain will ever have; and I see a town which I take to
be Surinam, belonging to the Dutch.
We are at the end of all our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness."
As they drew near the town, they saw a *** stretched upon the ground, with only
one moiety of his clothes, that is, of his blue linen drawers; the poor man had lost
his left leg and his right hand.
"Good God!" said Candide in Dutch, "what art thou doing there, friend, in that
shocking condition?"
"I am waiting for my master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous merchant,"
answered the ***. "Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur," said
Candide, "that treated thee thus?"
"Yes, sir," said the ***, "it is the custom.
They give us a pair of linen drawers for our whole garment twice a year.
When we work at the sugar-canes, and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut
off the hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg; both cases have
happened to me.
This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.
Yet when my mother sold me for ten patagons on the coast of Guinea, she said to me: 'My
dear child, bless our fetiches, adore them for ever; they will make thee live happily;
thou hast the honour of being the slave of
our lords, the whites, which is making the fortune of thy father and mother.'
Alas!
I know not whether I have made their fortunes; this I know, that they have not
made mine. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand
times less wretched than I.
The Dutch fetiches, who have converted me, declare every Sunday that we are all of us
children of Adam--blacks as well as whites.
I am not a genealogist, but if these preachers tell truth, we are all second
cousins.
Now, you must agree, that it is impossible to treat one's relations in a more
barbarous manner."
"Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "thou hadst not guessed at this abomination; it is the
end. I must at last renounce thy optimism."
"What is this optimism?" said Cacambo.
"Alas!" said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when
it is wrong." Looking at the ***, he shed tears, and
weeping, he entered Surinam.
The first thing they inquired after was whether there was a vessel in the harbour
which could be sent to Buenos Ayres.
The person to whom they applied was a Spanish sea-captain, who offered to agree
with them upon reasonable terms.
He appointed to meet them at a public- house, whither Candide and the faithful
Cacambo went with their two sheep, and awaited his coming.
Candide, who had his heart upon his lips, told the Spaniard all his adventures, and
avowed that he intended to elope with Miss Cunegonde.
"Then I will take good care not to carry you to Buenos Ayres," said the ***.
"I should be hanged, and so would you. The fair Cunegonde is my lord's favourite
mistress."
This was a thunderclap for Candide: he wept for a long while.
At last he drew Cacambo aside. "Here, my dear friend," said he to him,
"this thou must do.
We have, each of us in his pocket, five or six millions in diamonds; you are more
clever than I; you must go and bring Miss Cunegonde from Buenos Ayres.
If the Governor makes any difficulty, give him a million; if he will not relinquish
her, give him two; as you have not killed an Inquisitor, they will have no suspicion
of you; I'll get another ship, and go and
wait for you at Venice; that's a free country, where there is no danger either
from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews, or Inquisitors."
Cacambo applauded this wise resolution.
He despaired at parting from so good a master, who had become his intimate friend;
but the pleasure of serving him prevailed over the pain of leaving him.
They embraced with tears; Candide charged him not to forget the good old woman.
Cacambo set out that very same day. This Cacambo was a very honest fellow.
Candide stayed some time longer in Surinam, waiting for another captain to carry him
and the two remaining sheep to Italy.
After he had hired domestics, and purchased everything necessary for a long voyage,
Mynheer Vanderdendur, captain of a large vessel, came and offered his services.
"How much will you charge," said he to this man, "to carry me straight to Venice--me,
my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep?"
The skipper asked ten thousand piastres.
Candide did not hesitate. "Oh! oh!" said the prudent Vanderdendur to
himself, "this stranger gives ten thousand piastres unhesitatingly!
He must be very rich."
Returning a little while after, he let him know that upon second consideration, he
could not undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand piastres.
"Well, you shall have them," said Candide.
"Ay!" said the skipper to himself, "this man agrees to pay twenty thousand piastres
with as much ease as ten."
He went back to him again, and declared that he could not carry him to Venice for
less than thirty thousand piastres. "Then you shall have thirty thousand,"
replied Candide.
"Oh! oh!" said the Dutch skipper once more to himself, "thirty thousand piastres are a
trifle to this man; surely these sheep must be laden with an immense treasure; let us
say no more about it.
First of all, let him pay down the thirty thousand piastres; then we shall see."
Candide sold two small diamonds, the least of which was worth more than what the
skipper asked for his freight.
He paid him in advance. The two sheep were put on board.
Candide followed in a little boat to join the vessel in the roads.
The skipper seized his opportunity, set sail, and put out to sea, the wind
favouring him. Candide, dismayed and stupefied, soon lost
sight of the vessel.
"Alas!" said he, "this is a trick worthy of the old world!"
He put back, overwhelmed with sorrow, for indeed he had lost sufficient to make the
fortune of twenty monarchs.
He waited upon the Dutch magistrate, and in his distress he knocked over loudly at the
door. He entered and told his adventure, raising
his voice with unnecessary vehemence.
The magistrate began by fining him ten thousand piastres for making a noise; then
he listened patiently, promised to examine into his affair at the skipper's return,
and ordered him to pay ten thousand piastres for the expense of the hearing.
This drove Candide to despair; he had, indeed, endured misfortunes a thousand
times worse; the coolness of the magistrate and of the skipper who had robbed him,
roused his choler and flung him into a deep melancholy.
The villainy of mankind presented itself before his imagination in all its
deformity, and his mind was filled with gloomy ideas.
At length hearing that a French vessel was ready to set sail for Bordeaux, as he had
no sheep laden with diamonds to take along with him he hired a cabin at the usual
price.
He made it known in the town that he would pay the passage and board and give two
thousand piastres to any honest man who would make the voyage with him, upon
condition that this man was the most
dissatisfied with his state, and the most unfortunate in the whole province.
Such a crowd of candidates presented themselves that a fleet of ships could
hardly have held them.
Candide being desirous of selecting from among the best, marked out about one-
twentieth of them who seemed to be sociable men, and who all pretended to merit his
preference.
He assembled them at his inn, and gave them a supper on condition that each took an
oath to relate his history faithfully, promising to choose him who appeared to be
most justly discontented with his state, and to bestow some presents upon the rest.
They sat until four o'clock in the morning.
Candide, in listening to all their adventures, was reminded of what the old
woman had said to him in their voyage to Buenos Ayres, and of her wager that there
was not a person on board the ship but had met with very great misfortunes.
He dreamed of Pangloss at every adventure told to him.
"This Pangloss," said he, "would be puzzled to demonstrate his system.
I wish that he were here.
Certainly, if all things are good, it is in El Dorado and not in the rest of the
world."
At length he made choice of a poor man of letters, who had worked ten years for the
booksellers of Amsterdam. He judged that there was not in the whole
world a trade which could disgust one more.
This philosopher was an honest man; but he had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his
son, and abandoned by his daughter who got a Portuguese to run away with her.
He had just been deprived of a small employment, on which he subsisted; and he
was persecuted by the preachers of Surinam, who took him for a Socinian.
We must allow that the others were at least as wretched as he; but Candide hoped that
the philosopher would entertain him during the voyage.
All the other candidates complained that Candide had done them great injustice; but
he appeased them by giving one hundred piastres to each.