She cries out, when in comes her husband with several other Laplanders. "What is the meaning of all this uproar?" say they. "It is," answers the little thing, "that this stranger-- Alas! I am choked with grief; he despises me." "So then," says the Lapland husband, "thou unpolite, dishonest, brutal, infamous, cowardly rascal, thou bringest disgrace upon my house; thou dost me the most sensible injury; thou refusest to admire my wife." "Lo! here's the good of our neighbour," cried our hero; "what would you have said, then, if I had taken your place?" "I would have wished thee all sort of prosperity," says 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 relations of the offended husband; and Candide, for fear of worse, was forced to betake himself to flight, and renounce for ever his good master; for how dared he present himself before him without money, whale-blubber, 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. "Mighty well," says Candide to himself; "these are philosophers. Gentlemen," says 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?" say the three travellers. "Yes," answers Candide, "and a Leibnitzian, which is more." "So much the worse for you," replied the philosophers. |
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