Cacambo testified to his guest all his curiosity; the host said to him:
“I am very ignorant, and I am well pleased with it; but here we have an old man removed from the court, who is the most learned man in the kingdom, and the most communicative.“
Immediately he leads Cacambo to the old man. Candide played only the second personage, and accompanied his servant. They entered a very simple house, for the door was only of silver, and the paneling of the apartments was only of gold, but worked with so much taste, that the richest paneling did not efface it. The antechamber was in reality incrusted with nothing but rubies and emeralds; but the order in which everything was arranged was a remedy for this extreme simplicity. The old man received the two strangers on a sofa padded with hummingbird feathers, and presented them with liqueurs in diamond vases; after which he satisfied their curiosity in these terms:
“I am a hundred and seventy-two years old, and I learned from the late my father, the king’s squire, the astonishing revolutions of Peru, of which he had been a witness. The kingdom where we are is the ancient homeland of the Incas, who came out of it very imprudently to subdue part of the world, and which were finally destroyed by the Spaniards.
“The princes of their families who remained in their native country were wiser; they ordained, by the consent of the nation, that no inhabitant should ever leave our little kingdom; and this has preserved our innocence and our felicity. The Spaniards had a confused knowledge of this country, they called it Eldorado; and an Englishman, named Raleigh Knight, even approached it about a hundred years ago; but as we are surrounded by unaffordable rocks and precipices, we have hitherto been sheltered from the rapacity of the nations of Europe, which have an inconceivable fury for the pebbles and for the mire of our land , and who, to have any, would kill us all to the last.“
The conversation was long; it rolled over the form of government, morals, women, public spectacles, and the arts. Finally Candide, who always had a taste for metaphysics, asked Cacambo whether there was a religion in the country.
The old man blushed a little.
“How then!” he said, “can you doubt it? Do you consider us ungrateful?“
Cacambo humbly asked what was the religion of Eldorado. The old man blushed again:
“Can there be two religions?” he said. “We have, I believe, the religion of everybody; we worship God from evening until morning.“
“Do you worship only one God?“ said Cacambo, who always served as an interpreter for Candide’s doubts.
“Apparently,” said the old man, “there are not two, three, or four. I must admit that the people of your world are asking very singular questions.“ Candide never tired of having this good old man questioned; he wanted to know how God was prayed in Eldorado. “We do not pray to him,“ said the good and respectable sage; “we have nothing to ask of him; he has given us everything we need; we thank him unceasingly.“ Candide had the curiosity to see priests; he asked where they were. The good old man smiled. “My friends,” he said, “we are all priests; the king and all the heads of families sing praise-songs solemnly every morning, and five or six thousand musicians accompany them.”
“You have no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people who are not of their opinion?”
“We ought to have been mad,” said the old man; “we are all of the same opinion, and we do not hear what you mean with your monks.“
Candide to all these discourses remained in ecstasy, and said to himself, ‘This is very different from Vestphalia and the baron’s castle. If our friend Pangloss had seen Eldorado, he would have said no more than the castle od Thunder-ten-tronckh was the best thing on earth; it is certain that one must travel.“
After this long conversation the good old man had a carriage loaded with six sheep, and gave twelve of his servants to the two travelers to take them to court.
“Excuse me,” he said, “if my age deprives me of the honor of accompanying you. The king will receive you in a manner in which you will not be discontented, and you will doubtless forgive the customs of the country, if there are some which displease you.“
Candide and Cacambo ride in a carriage; the six sheep flew, and in less than four hours they reached the palace of the king, situated at one end of the capital. The gate was two hundred and twenty feet high, and a hundred yards wide; it is impossible to express what the matter was. We can see enough what a prodigious superiority it ought to have on these pebbles and on this sand, which we call gold and precious stones.
Twenty beautiful girls of the guard received Candide and Cacambo at the descent of the coach, conducted them to the baths, dressed them in robes of hummingbird down; after which the great officers and officers of the crown led them to the apartment of his majesty in the midst of two rows, each of a thousand musicians, according to the usual custom. When they approached the throne-room, Cacambo asked a great officer how it was necessary to greet his majesty: if one threw himself on his knees or belly on the ground; if you put your hands on your head or on your back; if they licked the dust of the room: in a word, what was the ceremony?
“The custom,“ said the Grand Officer, “is to embrace the King and kiss him on both sides.“
Candide and Cacambo leaped to the neck of his majesty, who received them with all imaginable grace, and who politely begged them to supper.
In the meantime they were shown the city, the public buildings erected to the skies, the markets adorned with a thousand columns, the fountains of pure water, the fountains of rose-water, and the liqueurs of sugar-canes which flowed continually in large squares paved with a kind of precious stones, which gave off an odor similar to that of clove and cinnamon. Candide asked to see the court of justice, the parliament; they told him that there was none, and that they never pleaded. He inquired if there were any prisons, and he was told not. What surprised him most, and which gave him the greatest pleasure, was the palace of science, in which he saw a gallery of two thousand paces full of instruments of mathematics and physics.
After having traveled the whole of the afternoon about a thousandth part of the town, they were returned to the king. Candide sat at table between his majesty, his valet Cacambo, and several ladies. Never was there a better dear, and no one had more wit to supper than his majesty. Cacambo explained the king’s good words to Candide, and, although translated, they always sounded good words. Of all that astonished Candide, it was not that which astonished him the least.
They spent a month in this hospice. Candide never ceased to say to Cacambo:
“It is true, my friend, that the castle where I was born is not worth the country where we are; but at last Miss Cunegonde is not there, and you have, no doubt, some mistress in Europe. If we remain here, we shall be there only like the rest; whereas, if we return to our world, only with twelve sheep loaded with stones of Eldorado, we shall be richer than all the kings together, we shall have no more inquisitors to fear, and we can easily recover Miss Cunegonde.“
This speech pleased Cacambo; he loves so much to run, to make the best of ourselves, to make a parade of what has been seen in his travels, that the two happily resolved to no longer stay, and to ask their leave to his majesty.
“You are doing a foolish thing,” said the king; “I know very well that my country is little; but when one is quite somewhere, one must remain there. I certainly do not have the right to retain foreigners; it is a tyranny which is neither in our morals nor in our laws; all men are free; leave when you want, but the exit is very difficult. It is impossible to ascend the rapid river on which you have arrived by a miracle, and which runs beneath rocks of rocks. The mountains which surround my whole kingdom are ten thousand feet in height, and are as straight as walls: they occupy each in width a space of more than ten leagues; we can only descend from it by precipices. However, since you absolutely want to leave, I will give orders to the stewards of the machines to make one that can transport you conveniently. When you have been led to the rear of the mountains, no one will be able to accompany you; for my subjects have vowed never to leave their precincts, and they are too wise to break their vows. Ask me whatever you please.”
“We ask your majesty,” said Cacambo, “only a few sheep loaded with provisions, pebbles, and the mud of the country.” The King laughed.
“I do not understand,” he said, “what taste your people in Europe have for our yellow mud; but take away as much as you please, and do good to you.”
He ordered his engineers at once to make a machine to guard these two extraordinary men outside the kingdom. Three thousand good physicists worked there; it was ready at the end of a fortnight, and cost no more than twenty millions of pounds sterling, the currency of the country. They put on the machine Candide and Cacambo; there were two large red sheep saddled and bridled to serve as a mount for them when they had crossed the mountains, twenty sheep packed with food, thirty carrying presents of what the country has most curious, and fifty laden, gold, precious stones, and diamonds. The king embraced tenderly the two vagabonds.
It was a fine sight to see their depart, and the ingenious way in which they and their sheep were hoisted to the top of the mountains. The physicists took leave of them after having put them in safety, and Candide had no other desire and object than to go and present his sheep to Miss Cunegonde.
“We have,” he said, “the means of paying the governor of Buenos Ayres, if Miss Cunegonde can be priced. Let‘s go towards Cayenne, let us embark, and then we shall see which kingdom we can buy.“
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