Candide, more moved by compassion than by horror, gives the scabbed beggar the two florins James has just given him. The spectre weeps, falls on his neck, and asks whether he no longer knows his dear Pangloss. Candide recoils, then carries the wreck to James's stable and gives him a crust. The first question after bread is Cunegonde. She is dead, Pangloss says. Candide faints. Vinegar from the stable brings him back. He asks if she died of grief at the Baron's kick. No: Bulgarian soldiers violated her and ripped her open. They broke the Baron's head. They cut the Baroness to pieces. The son was served as the sister was. Of the castle, not one stone stands on another. The Abares have done the same to a neighbouring Bulgarian barony, which Pangloss calls revenge.
Candide then asks the sufficient reason for Pangloss's own plight. Love, says the teacher, tender love, in the arms of Paquette. A Grey Friar gave her the disease, and the chain runs back through a countess, a captain, a marchioness, a page, a Jesuit, and one of Columbus's companions. Pangloss will give it to nobody; he is dying. The disease, he adds, is a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds, because without it Europe would have neither chocolate nor cochineal. Candide tells him to get cured. Pangloss has not a farthing. Candide throws himself at James's feet. James takes the doctor in; the cure costs Pangloss an eye and an ear. James makes the one-eyed bookkeeper his clerk and, two months later, takes both philosophers toward Lisbon. On the ship Pangloss explains that nothing could be better. James says men were not born wolves and have become wolves: they make cannon, bayonets, and a justice that cheats creditors. Private misfortunes make the general good, Pangloss replies. While he reasons, the sky darkens, and a tempest takes the ship within sight of the port of Lisbon.
