CHAPTER XXIV
Of Pacquette and Friar Giroflée
Upon their arrival at Venice, he went in search of Cacambo at every inn and coffee-house, and among all the ladies of pleasure; but could hear nothing of him. He sent every day to inquire of every ship and every vessel that came in: still no news of Cacambo.
“It is strange!” said he to Martin, “very strange! that I should have had time to sail from Surinam to Bordeaux; to travel from thence to Paris, to Dieppe, to Portsmouth; to sail along the coast of Portugal and Spain, and up the Mediterranean, to spend some months in Venice; and that my lovely Cunegund should not have arrived. Instead of her, I only met with a Parisian impostor, and a rascally Abbé of Périgord. Cunegund is actually dead, and I have nothing to do but to follow her. Alas! how much better would it have been for me to have remained in the paradise of El Dorado than to have returned to this cursed Europe! You are in the right, my dear Martin; you are certainly in the right; all is misery and deceit.”
He fell into a deep melancholy, and neither went to the opera in vogue, nor partook of any of the diversions of the Carnival; not a woman caused him even a moment’s temptation.
