Chapter 8 — Cunégonde's history

Cunégonde recounts her life since the castle. She was in bed and fast asleep when it pleased God to send the Bulgarians to Thunder-ten-Tronckh. They slaughtered her father and brother; her mother was cut to pieces. A Bulgarian, six feet tall, seeing she had fainted, began to rape her. She screamed and struggled, not knowing this was the usual custom of war. The brute gave her a gash in her left side with his sword; the scar is still there. ("Ah! I hope I shall see it," says honest Candide.) A Bulgarian captain came in, killed the soldier on top of her, took her to his quarters as a prisoner of war. After three months, having lost his money, he sold her to a Jew named Don Issachar.

Don Issachar was passionately attached to her but could not triumph over her. To make her more tractable he brought her to a country house. The Grand Inquisitor of Lisbon, seeing her one day at Mass, sent for her on private matters and threatened Issachar with an auto-da-fé. Issachar struck a bargain: the house and Cunégonde would belong to both in common, the Jew taking Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, the Inquisitor having the rest of the week. Quarrels persist about whether Saturday-to-Sunday night belongs to the old law or the new.

Six months ago, to ward off earthquakes and intimidate Don Issachar, the Inquisitor staged the auto-da-fé and invited her. She was given a good seat. She was horrified to see the Biscayan burned, but her real horror came when she saw, in a sanbenito and miter, a figure that looked like Pangloss; she watched him hanged, fainted, came to and saw Candide stripped naked and whipped. She thanks God for bringing him back to her and sent the old woman to find him. They sit down to supper. After supper they sit on the sofa where they were when Don Issachar arrives. It is the Jewish Sabbath. He has come to claim his rights.