This scholar, who was in fact a very honest man, had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and forsaken by his daughter, who had run away with a Portuguese. He had been likewise deprived of a small employment on which he subsisted, and he was persecuted by the clergy of Surinam, who took him for a Socinian. It must be acknowledged that the other competitors were at least as wretched as he. But Candide was in hopes that the company of a man of letters would relieve the tediousness of the voyage. All the other candidates complained that Candide had done them great injustice, but he stopped their mouths by a present of a hundred piastres to each. CHAPTER XX. What befell Candide and Martin on their Passage. THE old philosopher, whose name was Martin, took shipping with Candide for Bordeaux. They both had seen and suffered a great deal; and had the ship been to go from Surinam to Japan round the Cape of Good Hope, they could have found sufficient entertainment for each other daring the whole voyage in discoursing upon moral and natural evil. Candide, however, had one advantage over Martin; he lived in the pleasing hopes of seeing Miss Cunegund once more whereas the poor philosopher had nothing to hope for; besides, Candide had money and jewels, and notwithstanding he had lost an hundred red sheep laden with the greatest treasure on the earth, and though he still smarted from the reflection of the Dutch skipper's knavery, yet when he considered what he had still left, and repeated the name of Cunegund, especially after meal times, he inclined to Pangloss's doctrine. |
|||||||||
|
