Candide, Or, Optimism by Voltaire

Author:Voltaire
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Criticism, Literature: Classics, Literary Collections, Philosophy, Fiction, Literary, General, General & Literary Fiction, Literature - Classics, classics, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), Continental European
ISBN: 9781593080280
Publisher: Spark Educational Publishing
Published: 2003-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

XIX

What happened to them at Surinam,ay and how Candide got to know Martin

Our travellers’ first day’s journey was very pleasant; they were elated with the prospect of possessing more riches than were to be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa together. Candide, in an amorous mood, cut the name of Miss Cunégonde on almost every tree he came to. The second day, two of their sheep sank in a swamp, and were swallowed up, with their loads; two more died of fatigue; some few days afterward seven or eight perished with hunger in a desert; and others, at different times, tumbled down precipices, or were otherwise lost; so that, after travelling about a hundred days, they had only two sheep left of the hundred and two they brought with them from El Dorado. Candide said to Cacambo: “You see, my dear friend, how fleeting the riches of this world are; there is nothing solid but virtue.” “Very true,” said Cacambo ; “but we still have two sheep remaining, with more treasure than the King of Spain will ever have; and I see a town at a distance, which I take to be Surinam, a town belonging to the Dutch. We are now at the end of our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness.”

As they approached the town, they saw a negro stretched on the ground with only half of his outfit, which was a kind of linen frock, for the poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand. “Good God,” said Candide in Dutch; “what are you doing in this horrible condition?” “I am waiting for my master, Mynheeraz Vanderdendur, the famous trader,” answered the negro. “Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur who used you in this cruel manner?” “Yes, sir,” said the negro; “it is the custom here. They give us a linen garment twice a year, and that is all. When we work in the sugar factory, and the mill happens to snatch off a finger, they instantly chop off our hand; and when we attempt to run away they cut off a leg.ba Both these things have happened to me; and it is at this cost that you eat sugar in Europe;bb and yet when my mother sold me for ten Patagonian crowns on the coast of Guinea, she said to me: ‘My dear child, bless our fetishes; adore them for ever; they will make you happy; you have the honour to be a slave to our lords the whites, by which you will make the fortune of your parents. Alas! I don’t know if I have made their fortunes; but they have not made mine. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less wretched than I. The Dutch fetishists who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. I’m no genealogist; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must admit that no one could treat his own relations in a more horrible manner.

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