Chapter 12 — the eunuch, the plague, the buttock

The eunuch turns out to be a Neapolitan castrated as a boy and trained as a musician for the chapel of her mother. He weeps at the recognition. He promises to take her to Italy. Instead he takes her to Algiers and sells her to the Dey. Plague — making the rounds of Africa, Asia, and Europe — breaks out. The eunuch dies of it; so does the Dey; so does almost the entire harem. She lives. She is sold from merchant to merchant: Tunis, Tripoli, Alexandria, Smyrna, Constantinople. Eventually she becomes the property of an Aga of the Janissaries, ordered to the defense of Azov against the Russians.

Azov is burned to the ground; only a small fort holds out. The Russians try to starve them. The twenty Janissaries have sworn never to surrender. Famine drives them to eat the two eunuchs rather than break their oath. After a few days they are about to eat the women. A pious and humane Imam preaches the famous solution: "Just cut off a buttock from each of these ladies, and you'll dine extremely well. If you need more later, the same meal will be available in a few days." The men are persuaded. The Imam applies to them the same balm used on children after circumcision. They all very nearly die.

The Russians arrive. Not one Janissary escapes. A French surgeon takes the wounded women into his care and cures them — and as soon as they are healed, propositions her. She is taken to Moscow, works as a Boyar's gardener, is whipped twenty times a day for two years until the Boyar is broken on the wheel. She flees, crosses Russia, serves at inns at Riga, Rostock, Wismar, Leipzig, Kassel, Utrecht, the Hague, Rotterdam. She has been on the point of suicide a hundred times. Voltaire gives her the line: "Is there anything more ridiculous than always insisting on carrying a burden we could set down at any moment?" She suggests Cunégonde poll every passenger as to whether they have ever cursed their life.