Chapter 25 — Pococurante

Candide and Martin go by gondola along the Brenta to the palace of Pococurante, a sixty-year-old Venetian noble of great wealth. He receives them with polite indifference. Two pretty girls serve them frothed chocolate; Candide praises their grace; Pococurante says they are good enough, they sometimes lie with him, but he is utterly tired of them. They wander the long gallery. The two paintings at the entrance are Raphaels, bought years ago at a great price out of vanity; he does not find them a true imitation of nature. The concert is amusing for half an hour; anything merely difficult ceases to please for long.

In the library Candide compliments him on a magnificently bound Homer. Pococurante answers that the book is not his. People used to try to make him believe he took pleasure in Homer; he asked the honest scholars and they admitted it put them to sleep too. The constant repetition of battles; the gods always busy but doing nothing decisive; Helen the cause of the war who hardly appears; Troy besieged so long without ever being taken — it bored him greatly. Virgil? Some books of the Aeneid are excellent, but the rest is flat. Cicero? He never reads him. The eighty volumes of the Academy of Sciences? They might be of value if one of those rubbish-rakers had shown how to make pins. Milton: barbarian, coarse imitator of the Greeks.

Candide is distressed — he has respect for Homer and is fond of Milton. Martin agrees with everything Pococurante says. They go down to the garden. Pococurante observes that everything in it is in poor taste; he will have it replanted on a nobler design after tomorrow. Walking back, Candide says to Martin: you must admit this is the happiest of mortals, for he is above everything he possesses. Martin replies: don't you see he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed long ago that those stomachs are not the best which reject all sorts of food. Candide protests: but isn't there pleasure in criticizing everything? Martin gives the chapter's epigram: that is to say there is some pleasure in having no pleasure. Candide concludes that he himself will be the only happy man, once he has Cunégonde. Meanwhile, days and weeks pass. Cacambo does not come.