Nothing was so gorgeous, so sprightly, so brilliant, and so finely disposed as the two armies. The trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made a harmony such as never was heard in hell. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; then the musketry swept away from the best of worlds some nine or ten thousand scoundrels who infected its surface. The bayonet was likewise a sufficient reason for the death of several thousand men. The whole might amount to some thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. Finally, while the two kings were having Te Deums sung each in his camp, he took the resolution to go and reason elsewhere on effects and causes. He stepped over heaps of dead and dying, and first made his way to a neighboring village; it was in ashes; it was an Abarian village that the Bulgarians had burned according to the laws of public law. Here old men riddled with blows watched their slaughtered wives die, who held their children to their bloody breasts; there disemboweled girls, after having satisfied the natural needs of some heroes, breathed their last sighs; others, half-burned, cried out for an end to their death. Brains were scattered on the ground next to severed arms and legs. Candide fled as fast as he could to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians, and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same manner. Candide, still walking over throbbing limbs, or through ruins, finally arrived outside the theater of war, carrying some provisions in his knapsack, and never forgetting Mlle Cunégonde. His provisions failed him in Holland; but having heard that everyone was rich in that country, and that they were Christians, he did not doubt that he would be treated as well as he had been in the castle of Baron before he had been driven out on account of the beauty of Mlle Cunégonde. He begged alms of several grave personages, who all replied that if he continued to ply that trade, he would be locked up in a house of correction to teach him how to behave. He then addressed himself to a man who had just been speaking all alone for a full hour on charity in a large assembly. This orator, looking askance at him, said: "What are you doing here? Are you for the good cause? - There is no effect without a cause, Candide answered modestly; everything is necessarily chained together and arranged for the best. It was necessary that I should be driven from Mlle Cunégonde's presence, that I should run the gauntlet, and that I must ask for bread until I can earn it; all this could not be otherwise. - My friend, the orator said to him, do you believe the pope is the Antichrist? - I had not heard it said yet, Candide replied; but whether he is or is not, I lack bread. - You do not deserve to eat any, said the other; go, scoundrel, go, wretch, do not come near me for the rest of your life." The orator's wife, putting her head out of the window, and catching sight of a man who doubted that the pope was the Antichrist, poured full upon his head a... O heavens! to what excess does religious zeal drive ladies! A man who had not been baptized, a good Anabaptist named James, saw the cruel and ignominious manner in which they thus treated one of his brothers, a featherless biped who had a soul; he brought him to his home, cleaned him, gave him bread and beer, made him a present of two florins, and even wanted to teach him to work in his manufactories where Persian stuffs are made. Candide, almost prostrating himself before him, cried out: "Pangloss was quite right to tell me that everything is for the best in this world, for I am infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than by the hardness of that gentleman in the black cloak and madam his wife." The next day, while taking a walk, he met a beggar covered with pustules, his eyes dead, the tip of his nose eaten away, his mouth awry, his teeth black, speaking from his throat, tormented by a violent cough, and spitting out a tooth at every heave.