riches of this world are; there is nothing solid but virtue and the joy of seeing Miss Cunegund again.”
“Very true,” said Cacambo; “but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than ever the King of Spain will be possessed of; and I espy a town at a distance, which I take to be Surinam, a town belonging to the Dutch. We are now at the end of our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness.”
As they drew near the town, they saw a negro stretched on the ground with only one half of his habit, which was a pair of blue cotton drawers; for the poor man had lost his left leg, and his right hand.
“Good God,” said Candide in Dutch, “what dost thou here, friend, in this deplorable condition?”
“I am waiting for my master Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous trader,” answered the negro.
“Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur that used you in this cruel manner?”
“Yes, Sir,” said the negro; “it is the custom here. They give a pair of cotton drawers twice a year, and that is all our covering. When we labour in the sugar-works, and the mill happens to snatch hold of a finger, they instantly chop off our hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg. Both these cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in Europe; and yet when my mother sold me for ten pattacoons on the coast of Guinea, she said to me, ‘My dear child, bless our fetishes; adore them for ever; they will make thee live happy; thou hast the honour to be a slave to our lords the whites, by which thou wilt make the fortune of us thy parents.’ Alas! I know not whether I have made their fortunes; but they have not made mine: dogs, monkeys, and parrots, are a thousand times less wretched than me. The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that, blacks and whites, we are all children of Adam. As for me, I do not understand any thing of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow, that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are.”
“O Pangloss!” cried out Candide, “such horrid doings never entered my imagination. Here is an end of the matter; I find myself, after all, obliged to renounce thy Optimism.”
“Optimism!” said Cacambo, “what is that?”
“Alas!” replied Candide, “it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst”: and so saying, he turned his eyes towards the poor
