to be whipped six-and-thirty times through
all the regiment, or to receive at once twelve balls of lead in his
brain. He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither
the one nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet
six-and-thirty times. He bore this twice. The regiment was composed of
two thousand men; that composed for him four thousand strokes, which
laid bare all his muscles and nerves, from the nape of his neck quite
down to his rump. As they were going to proceed to a third whipping,
Candide, able to bear no more, begged as a favour that they would be so
good as to shoot him. He obtained this favour; they bandaged his eyes,
and bade him kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians passed at this
moment and ascertained the nature of the crime. As he had great talent,
he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young
metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he
accorded him his pardon with a clemency which will bring him praise in
all the journals, and throughout all ages.

An able surgeon cured Candide in three weeks by means of emollients
taught by Dioscorides. He had already a little skin, and was able to
march when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the
Abares.[2]

III

HOW CANDIDE MADE HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BULGARIANS, AND WHAT AFTERWARDS
BECAME OF HIM.

There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so
well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and
cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first
of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept
away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested
its surface. The bayonet was also a _sufficient reason_ for the death of
several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he
could during this heroic butchery.

At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in
his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and
causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a
neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which
the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men
covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging th