Chapter 24 — Paquette and the friar

In Venice Candide searches for Cacambo in every inn and coffeehouse and among every lady of pleasure, without success. He sends inquiries to every ship that comes in. Months pass. No Cunégonde. He says to Martin: I have had time to sail from Surinam to Bordeaux, to Paris, to Dieppe, to Portsmouth, to skirt Portugal and Spain, to cross the Mediterranean, to spend months here — and still she has not come. Cunégonde is dead. He falls into a deep melancholy.

He notices in St Mark's Square a young Theatine friar with a girl on his arm. The friar is fresh-faced, plump, vigorous; the girl is very pretty and is singing and pinching his cheeks. Candide says to Martin: at least you must grant me that those two are happy. I bet you they aren't, says Martin. He invites them to his inn. The girl turns red on entering. As they sit down, she cries out: Mr. Candide doesn't recognize Paquette anymore. It is the chambermaid from the castle — the one whose syphilis put Pangloss into the state Candide found him in.

Paquette tells her story without softening. After Pangloss, after the castle was destroyed, a Grey Friar seduced her. A famous surgeon took pity on her — but his wife beat her every day; the surgeon poisoned the wife and fled, and Paquette was thrown in jail. The judge there set her free on condition that he succeed the surgeon; soon she was supplanted by a rival and thrown out penniless. Friar Giroflée then gives his story: forced into the convent at fifteen by his family to enrich an elder brother; ready a hundred times to set the place on fire; preaches a few bad sermons for a little money, half stolen by the prior; ready to dash his head against the wall every night. Martin turns to Candide: have I won the wager? Candide gives Paquette two thousand piastres and Giroflée a thousand.