Candide following the advice of his friend Martin, and burning
with impatience to see the real Miss Cunegund, rather than be
obliged to appear at a court of justice, proposed to the officer to
make him a present of three small diamonds, each of them worth three
thousand pistoles.
"Ah, sir," said the understrapper of justice, "had you commited ever
so much villainy, this would render you the honestest man living, in
my eyes. Three diamonds worth three thousand pistoles! Why, my dear
sir, so far from carrying you to jail, I would lose my life to serve
you. There are orders for stopping all strangers; but leave it to
me, I have a brother at Dieppe, in Normandy. I myself will conduct you
thither, and if you have a diamond left to give him he will take as
much care of you as I myself should."
"But why," said Candide, "do they stop all strangers?"
The abbe of Perigord made answer that it was because a poor devil of
the country of Atrebata heard somebody tell foolish stories, and
this induced him to commit a parricide; not such a one as that in
the month of May, 1610, but such as that in the month of December in
the year 1594, and such as many that have been perpetrated in other
months and years, by other poor devils who had heard foolish stories.
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