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Voltaire

"Candide"

A
Franciscan, who was my confessor, easily seduced me; the
consequences proved terrible. I was obliged to leave the castle some
time after the Baron kicked you out by the backside from there; and if
a famous surgeon had not taken compassion on me, I had been a dead
woman. Gratitude obliged me to live with him some time as his
mistress; his wife, who was a very devil for jealousy, beat me
unmercifully every day. Oh! she was a perfect fury. The doctor himself
was the most ugly of all mortals, and I the most wretched creature
existing, to be continually beaten for a man whom I did not love.
You are sensible, sir, how dangerous it was for an ill-natured woman
to be married to a physician. Incensed at the behavior of his wife, he
one day gave her so affectionate a remedy for a slight cold she had
caught that she died in less than two hours in most dreadful
convulsions. Her relations prosecuted the husband, who was obliged
to fly, and I was sent to prison. My innocence would not have saved
me, if I had not been tolerably handsome. The judge gave me my liberty
on condition he should succeed the doctor. However, I was soon
supplanted by a rival, turned off without a farthing, and obliged to
continue the abominable trade which you men think so pleasing, but
which to us unhappy creatures is the most dreadful of all
sufferings.


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