Chapter 1
The castle and the screen
Westphalia. The castle of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh, distinguished from other castles by possessing both a gate and windows. The Baron's wife weighs three hundred and fifty pounds; his daughter Cunégonde is seventeen, rosy, plump; the tutor Pangloss teaches metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology and proves admirably that this is the best of all possible worlds. Candide, the innocent illegitimate nephew, listens devoutly. One afternoon Cunégonde sees Pangloss giving a chambermaid an "experimental natural philosophy" lesson in the bushes. She and Candide kiss behind a screen. The Baron walks past. Candide is kicked out before lunch.
Chapter 2
Among the Bulgarians
Candide wanders, half-frozen, hungry. Two men in blue invite him to dinner, observe he is exactly five feet five inches, pay his bill, and ask whether he loves the King of the Bulgarians. He has never met him. They make him drink the King's health and clap him in irons. The next morning he is being drilled and given thirty strokes for not doing it well. One spring day, believing it the privilege of all animals to use their legs, he goes for a walk; he is hauled back and made to choose between the gauntlet through two thousand men or twelve lead balls. He runs the gauntlet twice before begging to be shot. The King passes by and pardons him.
Chapter 3
The heroic butchery
The two armies are dashing, smart, brilliant. The cannons lay flat six thousand on each side; muskets sweep nine or ten thousand more. Total: thirty thousand souls. Candide trembles like a philosopher and hides as well as he can. He climbs over the dead and reaches a nearby village — Abarian, burned by the Bulgarians "in accordance with the laws of war." Then a Bulgarian village treated identically by the Abarians. He arrives in Holland half starved, is driven off by a Protestant orator whose wife empties a chamber pot over his head. An Anabaptist named James, who has never been baptised, takes him in.
Chapter 4
Pangloss diseased
Candide gives the beggar his last two florins. The beggar weeps, falls on his neck — it is Pangloss, with syphilis. The news of the castle: Bulgarians sacked it; the Baron and son killed; the Baroness cut to pieces; Cunégonde raped, stabbed, apparently dead. Pangloss explains he caught the disease from Paquette, traceable through a Franciscan, a countess, a captain, a Jesuit, all the way back to one of Columbus's companions. He maintains it was a necessary ingredient of the best world — without it Europe would have neither chocolate nor cochineal. Two months later they sail for Lisbon.
Chapter 5
The Lisbon earthquake
The storm sinks the ship. James drowns rescuing a brutal sailor who knocks him overboard and refuses to look back. Pangloss prevents Candide from jumping in to help, demonstrating a priori that the Bay of Lisbon was made on purpose for the Anabaptist to drown in it. They walk into Lisbon. The ground trembles. Whirlwinds of fire sweep the streets; thirty thousand inhabitants are crushed. Candide lies bleeding under rubble asking for wine and oil. Pangloss explains there is a vein of sulfur underground running from Lima to Lisbon. A Familiar of the Inquisition reports him.
Chapter 6
The auto-da-fé
The University of Coimbra has determined that burning a few people alive over a slow fire, with great ceremony, is an infallible secret for keeping the earth from quaking. They arrest a Biscayan convicted of marrying his godmother; two Portuguese for picking the bacon out of a chicken; Pangloss for having spoken; Candide for having listened approvingly. Sanbenitos and paper miters. Candide is whipped in time to the singing. The Biscayan and the two Portuguese are burned. Pangloss is hanged. The same day the earth shakes again. An old woman approaches: "Take courage and follow me."
Chapter 7
The lifted veil
The old woman leads Candide to a hovel, gives him ointment, food, a bed. He is astonished at the kindness. Two days later she leads him out into the country to a richly furnished apartment surrounded by gardens and canals, leaves him on a brocaded sofa, disappears. He thinks he is dreaming. She returns helping a trembling, veiled lady of majestic figure into the room. "Take off that veil," the old woman says. He lifts it with a timid hand. It is Cunégonde — alive. He drops at her feet.
Chapter 8
Cunégonde's history
Cunégonde tells her story. The Bulgarians took the castle while she was in bed. Father, brother, mother killed; she herself raped and stabbed by a Bulgarian soldier — a captain killed the soldier and took her as a prisoner of war; sold her after three months to the Jewish merchant Don Issachar; threatened by the Grand Inquisitor of Lisbon, who wanted her too, Don Issachar struck a bargain to share her, Mondays-Wednesdays-Saturdays for the Jew, the rest for the Inquisitor. She saw Pangloss hanged at the auto-da-fé and Candide whipped; she sent the old woman.
Chapter 9
Two corpses
Don Issachar attacks Candide with a long dagger. Candide, who has received a sword from the old woman with the suit of clothes, draws his rapier and lays the merchant dead at Cunégonde's feet. They are still discussing what to do when the Grand Inquisitor walks in; this is, after all, his Sunday. Candide's reasoning is given in a paragraph: this man will have me burned; he is my rival; I have begun to kill. He runs the Inquisitor through. The old woman names three horses in the stable. They flee for Cadiz.
Chapter 10
The road to Cadiz
Their money and jewels are stolen at the inn — almost certainly by a Franciscan in the next room. They sell a horse to fund the journey. They reach Cadiz. A fleet is being fitted out to subdue the Jesuit Fathers of Paraguay, accused of inciting a tribe to revolt. Candide demonstrates his Bulgarian drill so impressively he is made captain of an infantry company. He sails for Paraguay with Cunégonde, the old woman, and the two Andalusian horses that had belonged to the Grand Inquisitor. On the voyage Cunégonde insists no one has suffered as she has. The old woman replies that she would not say so if she had ever seen her backside.
Chapter 11
The daughter of a pope
She was the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina; beautiful, witty, being prepared for marriage to a prince of Massa-Carrara when an old marchioness, a previous mistress of his, invited him for hot chocolate; he died in two hours of convulsions. Her mother took her on a galley to her estate at Gaeta. A Salé pirate ship boarded them. The pirates conducted a ceremony she did not at first understand: they searched the women's bodies for hidden diamonds. She arrived in Morocco a slave during the fifty civil wars; her captors fought over her. A weeping Italian-speaking eunuch lifted her from the heap.
Chapter 12
The buttock
The eunuch is a Neapolitan musician who once served her mother. He sells her to the Dey of Algiers. Plague kills the eunuch and the Dey. She is sold across Africa to Constantinople and becomes the property of an Aga at the siege of Azov. The fortress is starved out. The Janissaries swear they will not surrender; they eat the two eunuchs first; a humane Imam suggests cutting one buttock from each of the women. The Russians arrive afterwards. A French surgeon cures her wounds and propositions her. She tells Cunégonde to ask every passenger whether they have ever cursed their life.
Chapter 13
Buenos Aires
They land at Buenos Aires. They call on the Governor — Don Fernando d'Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, a man whose self-importance matches his name. He decides at once to have Cunégonde. Candide proposes marriage himself. The Governor smiles mockingly and orders Captain Candide to inspect his company. The Franciscan thief is hanged in Spain and confesses; the Inquisition's police arrive to take Candide. The old woman warns him to flee within the hour. He goes, with a new servant — Cacambo, a quarter Spaniard from Tucumán who will turn out to be the most resourceful man in the novel.
Chapter 14
The Jesuits of Paraguay
Cacambo proposes a brilliant solution: they were on their way to fight the Jesuits; let them fight for them instead. He praises the kingdom — three hundred leagues across, the Fathers own everything and the people own nothing. They reach the first checkpoint. The Commandant is German and will see them. He receives them in a beautiful arbor. He is a young man of striking appearance. The travelers and the Commandant look at each other in astonishment. The Commandant is Cunégonde's brother — the young Baron, who survived the Bulgarian massacre.
Chapter 15
The second killing
The Baron explains how he survived: a Jesuit priest sprinkling holy water noticed his eyelids twitching, found him alive, ordained him, sent him to Rome and then Paraguay. Reunion gives way to outrage when Candide announces he intends to marry Cunégonde. The Baron refuses on principle — she has seventy-two quarterings; the marriage is impossible. He strikes Candide across the face with the flat of his sword. Candide draws his rapier and runs the Baron through. Cacambo strips the Baron's Jesuit habit, dresses Candide in it, mounts the horses, gallops through the checkpoint shouting "Make way for the reverend Father Colonel."
Chapter 16
The Oreillons
Crossing an unknown country, they hear cries in the meadow. Two naked girls are running, pursued by two monkeys biting their buttocks. Candide kills both monkeys. The girls weep over the corpses. Cacambo explains: the monkeys were the girls' lovers. The Oreillon tribe captures them while they sleep and prepares cauldrons to cook a Jesuit. Cacambo gives a speech: this man is not a Jesuit, he just killed one. Two Oreillons run to verify. They confirm. The captives are escorted to the border. "He's no Jesuit! He's no Jesuit!"
Chapter 17
Into El Dorado
Cacambo proposes Cayenne; getting there is impossible. After a month of wild fruit they find a canoe, fill it with coconuts, drift. The river vanishes under an arch of terrifying rocks. After twenty-four hours of darkness they see daylight; their canoe smashes; they crawl out onto a wide plain. Children are playing quoits with disks of gold, emerald, ruby; the schoolmaster waves them away. Candide and Cacambo pocket them. The inn serves a two-hundred-pound condor, three hundred hummingbirds. They try to pay with gold. The landlord laughs: gold is the highway pebble here.
Chapter 18
The choice to leave
An old man explains the country: the ancient kingdom of the Incas, walled in by impassable cliffs, untouched for two centuries. Religion: a single God whom they thank every morning and ask nothing of. No monks, no quarrels. They are taken to the capital, met by twenty maidens, dressed in robes of hummingbird down. The custom is to embrace the King and kiss him on each cheek. They spend a month. Then Candide explains he wants Cunégonde — and to be richer than all the kings of Europe combined. Three thousand mathematicians build a machine in fifteen days to lift them, twenty pack-sheep loaded with gold, over the mountains.
Chapter 19
The Surinam slave
One hundred days of travel; ninety-eight sheep lost. They reach Surinam with two. On the road they encounter a Black man stretched on the ground in linen drawers, his left leg gone and his right hand. The hand was caught in the sugar mill. The leg: he tried to run away. "That's the price at which you eat sugar in Europe." Candide weeps and renounces optimism on the spot. In Surinam, the Dutch sea captain Vanderdendur swindles him out of his sheep loaded with diamonds. He sends Cacambo to ransom Cunégonde and selects Martin, a Manichaean scholar, as his traveling companion.
Chapter 20
Martin at sea
Martin and Candide debate moral and physical evil across the Atlantic. Candide still has hope and so leans toward Pangloss. Martin is sure the earth has been abandoned to a malevolent being; almost every city he has seen wishes its neighbor destroyed. They watch two ships fight in the distance. One sinks straight to the bottom; the crew of a hundred raise their hands and disappear. "This is how men treat each other." Then something red is seen swimming near the ship: it is one of Candide's sheep, recovered. He is more overjoyed at the one than he was grieved at the hundred.
Chapter 21
France in sight
Approaching France, Martin gives his summary: in some provinces half the people are fools, in others they're too clever; the main occupation is love, the next slander, the third nonsense. Candide proposes they go to Italy via France. Then a long passage of skeptical reasoning. Have men always been the way they are now — liars, cheats, traitors, fanatics? Martin: have hawks always eaten pigeons? Candide: yes, of course. Martin: then if hawks have always had the same character, why think men might have changed theirs? Reasoning like this they arrive at Bordeaux.
Chapter 22
Paris
Paris by the suburb of Saint-Marceau — the filthiest village of Westphalia. He falls slightly ill; physicians and devout women descend on him. Recovered, he is befriended by a busybody Périgordian abbé, taken to a salon where the Marquise de Parolignac and her fifteen-year-old daughter run a faro game. Candide loses fifty thousand francs; the Marquise relieves him of two diamonds. A forged letter from "Cunégonde" lures him into a trap; soldiers arrest him; the abbé is part of the racket. Candide bribes the officer with three diamonds. He is put on a Dutch ship to Portsmouth.
Chapter 23
Portsmouth
Approaching Portsmouth, Martin remarks the English are a different kind of fool — spending more on a war over a few acres of snow in Canada than the whole of Canada is worth. The shore is lined with people watching a handsome man kneel blindfolded on a warship; four soldiers fire three balls each into his head. He was an Admiral. Why kill him? Because he did not kill enough men himself. The French Admiral was just as far away. No doubt — but in this country it is considered good, from time to time, to kill an Admiral in order to encourage the others. Candide refuses to set foot on shore.
Chapter 24
Paquette and the friar
Months pass in Venice. No Cacambo. No Cunégonde. Candide notices a young Theatine friar in St Mark's Square with a girl on his arm, both apparently happy; he bets Martin they are happy. The girl is Paquette — the Baroness's chambermaid from Chapter 1. She tells her story: seduced, abandoned, mistress of an ugly surgeon, beaten by his jealous wife, in prison after the surgeon's poisoning, ended in the trade. The friar Giroflée hates the convent — forced into orders at fifteen. Martin wins the wager. Candide gives Paquette two thousand piastres and Giroflée a thousand.
Chapter 25
Pococurante
The visit to Senator Pococurante's palace on the Brenta. Two pretty girls he is tired of. He owns Raphaels he does not love. The concert is amusing for half an hour. Homer puts him to sleep. Virgil's Aeneid is flat; Horace mostly vulgar; Cicero superfluous; the eighty volumes of the Academy of Sciences fanciful systems with not a single useful pin; Milton a barbarian. The garden is in poor taste; he will have it replanted. Candide marvels — what a great genius. Martin diagnoses: there is some pleasure in having no pleasure.
Chapter 26
Six dethroned kings
One evening at the inn, a man as black as soot comes up behind Candide and tells him to be ready to leave. It is Cacambo — now a slave; his master is at the table with five other foreigners. Cunégonde is in Constantinople. Through the meal, six valets address each foreigner as "Your Majesty." The six are: Achmet III, dethroned by his nephew. Ivan, Emperor of all the Russias, dethroned in his cradle. Charles Edward, the Young Pretender. Two Kings of Poland. Theodore, elected King of Corsica. Candide gives Theodore a diamond worth two thousand sequins.
Chapter 27
Galley to Constantinople
On the Turkish skipper's ship to Constantinople, Cacambo gives the news: Cunégonde is on the Sea of Marmara, scullery slave to a dethroned Transylvanian prince, and has lost her beauty. Candide is dismayed but firm — a man of honor keeps his word. He reaches the Bosporus and ransoms Cacambo. Boarding a galley to find Cunégonde, he notices two oarsmen rowing badly, being whipped with a bull's pizzle. They cry out at the names of Pangloss and the Baron. "It is us! It is us!" Candide pays a Levantine captain fifty thousand sequins to ransom them.
Chapter 28
How they survived
The Baron explains: Candide's sword wound healed, he was captured by Spanish troops, sent to Constantinople, caught bathing with a young Turk — capital crime — sentenced to the soles of his feet and the galleys. Pangloss explains: at Lisbon the rope was wet and didn't slide, he was hanged badly; a surgeon bought his body for dissection, made an incision, and Pangloss screamed; he eventually reached Constantinople and was sentenced to the galleys for picking up a bouquet in a mosque. Candide asks whether he still thinks all is for the best. Pangloss: "I am still of my first opinion."
Chapter 29
Cunégonde, ugly
They reach the house of the Transylvanian prince on the banks of the Propontis. The first sight is Cunégonde and the old woman hanging out laundry. The Baron goes pale. Candide, seeing her weather-beaten, eyes bloodshot, neck withered, cheeks wrinkled, recoils three paces and comes forward out of good manners. He pays both ransoms. Cunégonde, ignorant of her own ugliness, presses Candide on his promise. He agrees. He informs the Baron. The Baron refuses. "My sister's children would never be able to enter the chapters of the nobility in Germany." Candide threatens to kill him a third time.
Chapter 30
The garden
Candide does not in fact want to marry Cunégonde, but the Baron's snobbery decides him. Cacambo's plan: ship the Baron off to Rome on the first vessel. Done. The little community settles on a Turkish farm. They visit a Dervish, who tells them to hold their tongue and shuts the door. They meet an old Turkish farmer with twenty acres: our labor preserves us from three great evils — boredom, vice, and want. Pangloss launches one last metaphysical lecture. Candide cuts him off: I know also that we must cultivate our garden. Martin: let us work without arguing.