The only thing that
give him concern was being obliged to leave his sheep behind him,
which he intrusted to the care of the Academy of Sciences at Bordeaux,
who proposed, as a prize subject for the year, to prove why the wool
of this sheep was red; and the prize was adjudged to a northern
sage, who demonstrated by A plus B, minus C, divided by Z, that the
sheep must necessarily be red, and die of the mange.
In the meantime, all travelers whom Candide met with in the inns, or
on the road, told him to a man, that they were going to Paris. This
general eagerness gave him likewise a great desire to see this
capital; and it was not much out of his way to Venice.
He entered the city by the suburbs of Saint-Marceau, and thought
himself in one of the vilest hamlets in all Westphalia.
Candide had not been long at his inn, before he was seized with a
slight disorder, owing to the fatigue he had undergone. As he wore a
diamond of an enormous size on his finger and had among the rest of
his equipage a strong box that seemed very weighty, he soon found
himself between two physicians, whom he had not sent for, a number
of intimate friends whom he had never seen, and who would not quit his
bedside, and two women devotees, who were very careful in providing
him hot broths.
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