Chapter 22 — Paris

Candide stays in Bordeaux long enough to sell a few El Dorado pebbles and hire a carriage. His only regret is leaving his sheep, which he donates to the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. The Academy sets it as the year's prize topic to discover why the wool is red. He enters Paris by the suburb of Saint-Marceau and thinks he is in the filthiest village of Westphalia.

He falls slightly ill from exhaustion. Two physicians and two devout women descend because he has a large diamond on his finger. Between medicine and bloodletting his illness grows serious. A parish priest comes to ask for a bill of exchange drawn on the next world; Candide refuses. Recovered, he is befriended by a Périgordian abbé — busybody, officious, fawning. The abbé takes him to the salon of the Marquise de Parolignac, where the company plays faro in profound silence and the Marquise's fifteen-year-old daughter signals the cheats. Candide loses fifty thousand francs in two deals. After supper the Marquise takes him aside, wrings two enormous diamonds from his hands.

The next morning Candide receives a letter purporting to be from Cunégonde, ill in the same town, begging him to come at once. He flies, with Martin, to the address; the bedroom is dark; an unknown plump hand is held out from behind the curtains; he kisses it, fills it with diamonds. An officer enters with the abbé and a squad of soldiers and arrests Candide and Martin as suspected foreigners. Martin concludes the bedridden lady was a swindler, the abbé a scoundrel, and the officer another scoundrel they could easily silence. Candide offers the officer three diamonds; the officer becomes the most honest man in the world. They reach Dieppe. The Norman, by virtue of three more diamonds, puts them on a Dutch ship sailing for Portsmouth in England. This is not the way to Venice — but Candide is convinced he has escaped from hell.