I have had the title of Majesty, and am now hardly treated
with common civility. I have coined money, and am not now worth a
single ducat. I have had two secretaries, and am now without a
valet. I was once seated on a throne, and since that have lain upon
a truss of straw, in a common jail in London, and I very much fear I
shall meet with the same fate here in Venice, where I came, like
Your Majesties, to divert myself at the Carnival."
The other five Kings listened to this speech with great attention;
it excited their compassion; each of them made the unhappy Theodore
a present of twenty sequins, and Candide gave him a diamond, worth
just a hundred times that sum.
"Who can this private person be," said the five Kings to one
another, "who is able to give, and has actually given, a hundred times
as much as any of us?"
Just as they rose from table, in came four Serene Highnesses, who
had also been stripped of their territories by the fortune of war, and
had come to spend the remainder of the Carnival at Venice. Candide
took no manner of notice of them; for his thoughts were wholly
employed on his voyage to Constantinople, where he intended to go in
search of his lovely Miss Cunegund.
CHAPTER 27
Candide's Voyage to Constantinople
The trusty Cacambo had already engaged the captain of the Turkish
ship that was to carry Sultan Achmet back to Constantinople to take
Candide and Martin on board.
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