CHAPTER XIV. Continuation of the Loves of Candida. THE only consolation that Candida felt was in conversing with Zenoida in the presence of their hosts. "How happens it," said he to her one day, "that the monarch to whom you have access has suffered such injustice to be done to your family? Assuredly you have sufficient reason to hate him?" "How!" said Zenoida, "who can hate the king? who can do otherwise than love that person to whose hand is consigned the keen-edged sword of the laws? Kings are the living images of the Deity, and we ought never to arraign their conduct; obedience and respect is the duty of a subject." "I admire you more and more," said Candide; "indeed, madam, I do. Pray do you know the great Leibnitz, and the great Pangloss, who was burnt, after having escaped a hanging bout? Are you acquainted with the monads, the materia subtilis, and the vortices?" "No, sir," replied Zenoida; "I never heard my father mention any of these; he only gave me a slight tincture of experimental philosophy, and taught me to hold in contempt all those kinds of philosophy that do not directly tend to make mankind happy; that give him false notions of his duty to himself and his neighbour; that do not teach him to regulate his conduct, and fill his mind only with uncouth terms or ill-founded conjectures; that do not give him a clearer idea of the Author of Nature than what he may acquire from his works, and the wonders that are every day passing before our sight." "Once again, Miss, you enchant me; you ravish me; you are an angel that heaven has sent to remove from before my eyes the mist of Master Pangloss's sophistical arguments. Poor wretch that I was! |
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