and well beaten. Providence
sends you here to assist us. But is it, indeed, true that my dear sister
Cunegonde is in the neighbourhood, with the Governor of Buenos Ayres?"

Candide assured him on oath that nothing was more true, and their tears
began afresh.

The Baron could not refrain from embracing Candide; he called him his
brother, his saviour.

"Ah! perhaps," said he, "we shall together, my dear Candide, enter the
town as conquerors, and recover my sister Cunegonde."

"That is all I want," said Candide, "for I intended to marry her, and I
still hope to do so."

"You insolent!" replied the Baron, "would you have the impudence to
marry my sister who has seventy-two quarterings! I find thou hast the
most consummate effrontery to dare to mention so presumptuous a design!"

Candide, petrified at this speech, made answer:

"Reverend Father, all the quarterings in the world signify nothing; I
rescued your sister from the arms of a Jew and of an Inquisitor; she has
great obligations to me, she wishes to marry me; Master Pangloss always
told me that all men are equal, and certainly I will marry her."

"We shall see that, thou scoundrel!" said the Jesuit Baron de
Thunder-ten-Tronckh, and that instant struck him across the face with
the flat of his sword. Candide in an instant drew his rapier, and
plunged it up to the hilt in the Jesuit's belly; but in pulling it out
reeking hot, he burst into tears.

"Good God!" said he, "I have killed my old master, my friend, my
brother-in-law! I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I
have already killed three men, and of these three two were priests."

Cacambo, who stood sentry by the door of the arbour, ran to him.

"We have nothing more for it than to sell our lives as dearly as we
can," said his master to him, "without doubt some one will soon enter
the arbour, and we must die sword in hand."

Cacambo, who had been in a great many scrapes in his lifetime, did not
lose his head; he took the Baron's Jesuit habit, put it on Candide, gave
him the square cap, and made him mount on horseback. All this was done
in the twinkling of an eye.

"Let us gallop fast, master, everybody will take you for a Jesuit, going
to give directions to your men, and we shall have passed the frontiers
before they will be able to overtake us."

He flew as he spoke these words, crying out aloud in Spanish:

"Make way, make way, for the reverend Father Colonel."

XVI

ADVEN