"
"I told you, master," cried Cacambo, mournfully, "that these two
wenches would play us some scurvy trick."
Candide, seeing the cauldron and the spits, cried out, "I suppose
they are going either to boil or roast us. Ah! what would Pangloss say
if he were to see how pure nature is formed? Everything is right; it
may be so; but I must confess it is something hard to be bereft of
dear Miss Cunegund, and to be spitted like a rabbit by these barbarous
Oreillons."
Cacambo, who never lost his presence of mind in distress, said to
the disconsolate Candide, "Do not despair; I understand a little of
the jargon of these people; I will speak to them."
"Ay, pray do," said Candide, "and be sure you make them sensible
of the horrid barbarity of boiling and roasting human creatures, and
how little of Christianity there is in such practices."
"Gentlemen," said Cacambo, "you think perhaps you are going to feast
upon a Jesuit; if so, it is mighty well; nothing can be more agreeable
to justice than thus to treat your enemies. Indeed the law of nature
teaches us to kill our neighbor, and accordingly we find this
practiced all over the world; and if we do not indulge ourselves in
eating human flesh, it is because we have much better fare; but for
your parts, who have not such resources as we, it is certainly much
better judged to feast upon your enemies than to throw their bodies to
the fowls of the air; and thus lose all the fruits of your victory.
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