The first day is agreeable. They hold more treasure than Asia, Europe, and Africa could scrape together. Candide, in raptures, cuts Cunegonde's name on the trees. The second day two sheep plunge into a morass with their burdens. Two more die of fatigue. Seven or eight perish with hunger in a desert; others fall down precipices. After a hundred days only two sheep remain. Candide says the riches of this world are perishable; nothing is solid but virtue and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde. Cacambo grants it, then notes they still have more treasure than the King of Spain, and a town he takes for Surinam. They are at the end of their troubles and the beginning of happiness.
Near the town they see a negro stretched on the ground in half a pair of blue linen drawers, missing his left leg and his right hand. He is waiting for his master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous merchant. It is the custom, he says. They give a pair of drawers twice a year. When the sugar-mill snatches a finger they cut off the hand. When a slave runs they cut off the leg. Both have happened to him. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe. His mother sold him for ten patagons on the coast of Guinea and told him to bless the fetiches: he had the honour of being slave to the whites, which would make the fortune of his father and mother. He does not know if he has made theirs; they have not made his. Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are less wretched. Dutch preachers say all are children of Adam, black and white. If so they are second cousins. It is impossible to treat one's relations in a more barbarous manner. Oh Pangloss, cries Candide, thou hadst not guessed at this abomination; it is the end. He must renounce optimism. What is this optimism, asks Cacambo. The madness, says Candide, of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong. He sheds tears and, weeping, enters Surinam.
A Spanish captain will not sail them to Buenos Ayres. He would be hanged. The fair Cunegonde is my lord's favourite mistress. Candide weeps, then sends Cacambo with millions in diamonds to bring her away, a million or two for the Governor if needed. Cacambo has not killed an Inquisitor. They will meet in Venice, a free country. They embrace. Cacambo leaves that day. Candide hires a voyage with Vanderdendur, the same merchant. The skipper asks ten thousand piastres, then twenty, then thirty, each time reading Candide's ease as proof of hidden sheep. Candide sells two small diamonds, pays in advance, and follows in a little boat. Vanderdendur seizes the wind and sails. This, says Candide, is a trick worthy of the old world. He knocks too loudly at the Dutch magistrate. He is fined ten thousand piastres for making a noise, promised an examination at the skipper's return, and ordered to pay ten thousand more for the hearing. The coolness of thief and judge flings him into melancholy. The villainy of mankind presents itself in all its deformity. A French ship is bound for Bordeaux. With no sheep left to load, he hires a cabin at the usual price and offers passage, board, and two thousand piastres to the most dissatisfied, most unfortunate honest man in the province. A crowd comes that a fleet could hardly hold. He feeds a twentieth of them on condition each swears to tell his history. He is reminded of the old woman's wager on the way to Buenos Ayres. He dreams of Pangloss at every tale. If all things are good, it is in El Dorado and not in the rest of the world. He chooses a poor man of letters who worked ten years for the booksellers of Amsterdam, robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, abandoned by his daughter, stripped of a small employment, and taken for a Socinian by the preachers of Surinam. The others complain of injustice. He gives each a hundred piastres.
