When Push Comes to Shove — Candide

Issachar is the most choleric Hebrew seen in Israel since the Captivity. He calls Cunegonde a bitch of a Galilean, asks if the Inquisitor was not enough, and draws the long poniard he always carries. He does not imagine his adversary is armed. Candide has the old woman's sword with the suit of clothes. Despite his gentleness he lays the Israelite stone dead on the cushions at Cunegonde's feet. Holy Virgin, she cries: a man killed in my apartment; if the officers come we are lost. Had Pangloss not been hanged, Candide says, he would advise them; failing him, consult the old woman. She begins to speak when another little door opens. It is an hour after midnight, the start of Sunday, the Inquisitor's day. He sees the whipped Candide with a sword, a dead man on the floor, Cunegonde aghast, and the old woman giving counsel.

Candide's mind runs clear and fast. If this holy man calls for help he will be burnt, and perhaps Cunegonde too. The man caused the whipping. He is a rival. As I have now begun to kill, I will kill away. He pierces the Inquisitor through and casts him beside the Jew. Cunegonde says there is no mercy now: a Jew and a prelate in two minutes, and he so gentle. When one is a lover, jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, he answers, one stops at nothing. The old woman points to three Andalusian horses already bridled. Madame has money and jewels. Ride for Cadiz in the cool of the night, though she can sit only on one buttock. They travel thirty miles at a stretch. The Holy Brotherhood enter the house. The Inquisitor is buried in a handsome church. Issachar is thrown on a dunghill. In an inn at Avacena, in the Sierra Morena, the three begin to speak.