"Good God!" said he, "I have killed my old master, my friend, my
brother-in-law! I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I
have already killed three men, and of these three two were priests."
Cacambo, who stood sentry by the door of the arbour, ran to him.
"We have nothing more for it than to sell our lives as dearly as we
can," said his master to him, "without doubt some one will soon enter
the arbour, and we must die sword in hand."
Cacambo, who had been in a great many scrapes in his lifetime, did not
lose his head; he took the Baron's Jesuit habit, put it on Candide, gave
him the square cap, and made him mount on horseback. All this was done
in the twinkling of an eye.
"Let us gallop fast, master, everybody will take you for a Jesuit, going
to give directions to your men, and we shall have passed the frontiers
before they will be able to overtake us."
He flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in Spanish:
"Make way, make way, for the reverend Father Colonel."
XVI
ADVENTURES OF THE TWO TRAVELLERS, WITH TWO GIRLS, TWO MONKEYS, AND THE
SAVAGES CALLED OREILLONS.
Candide and his valet had got beyond the barrier, before it was known in
the camp that the German Jesuit was dead. The wary Cacambo had taken
care to fill his wallet with bread, chocolate, bacon, fruit, and a few
bottles of wine. With their Andalusian horses they penetrated into an
unknown country, where they perceived no beaten track. At length they
came to a beautiful meadow intersected with purling rills. Here our two
adventurers fed their horses. Cacambo proposed to his master to take
some food, and he set him an example.
"How can you ask me to eat ham," said Candide, "after killing the
Baron's son, and being doomed never more to see the beautiful Cunegonde?
What will it avail me to spin out my wretched days and drag them far
from her in remorse and despair? And what will the _Journal of
Trevoux_[17] say?"
While he was thus lamenting his fate, he went on eating. The sun went
down. The two wanderers heard some little cries which seemed to be
uttered by women. They did not know whether they were cries of pain or
joy; but they started up precipitately with that inquietude and alarm
which every little thing inspires in an unknown country. The noise was
made by two naked girls, who tripped along the mead, while two monkeys
were pursuing them and biting their buttocks. Candide was moved with
pity; he had learned to fire a gun in the Bulgarian service, and he was
so clever at it, that he could hit a filbert in a hedge without touching
a leaf of the tree. He took up his double-barrelled Spanish fusil, let
it off, and killed the two monkeys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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