The third said:
I am Charles Edward, King of England; my father has renounced his right to the throne in my favour. I have fought in defence of my rights, and eight hundred of my followers have had their hearts taken out of their bodies alive and thrown in their faces. I have myself been confined in a prison. I am going to Rome to visit the King my father, who was dethroned as well as myself and my grandfather; and I am come to spend the carnival at Venice.”
The fourth spoke thus:
“I am the King of Poland; the fortune of war has stripped me of my hereditary dominions. My father experienced the same vicissitudes of fate. I resign myself to the will of Providence, in the same manner as Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, and King Charles Edward, whom God long preserve; and I am come to spend the carnival at Venice.”
The fifth said:
“I am King of Poland also. I have twice lost my kingdom; but Providence has given me other dominions, where I have done more good than all the Sarmatian kings put together were ever able to do on the banks of the Vistula: I resign myself likewise to Providence; and am come to spend the carnival at Venice.”
It now came to the sixth monarch’s turn to speak.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I am not so great a prince as the rest of you, it is true; but I am, however, a crowned head. I am Theodore, elected King of Corsica. I have had the title of Majesty, and am now hardly treated with common civility. I have coined money, and am not now worth a single ducat. I have had two secretaries of state, and am now without a valet. I was once seated on a throne, and since that have lain upon a truss of straw in a common gaol in London, and I very much fear I shall meet with the same fate here in Venice, where I come, like your Majesties, to divert myself at the carnival.”
The other five kings listened to this speech with great attention; it excited their compassion; each of them made the unhappy Theodore a present of twenty sequins to get clothes and shirts, and Candide gave him a diamond worth just an hundred times that sum.
“Who can this private person be,” said the five kings, “who is able to give, and has actually given, a hundred times as much as any of us? Are you, Sir, also a king?”
“No, gentlemen, and I have no wish to be one.”
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