Page:Candide Smollett E. P. Dutton.djvu/32

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Candide Chapter 8
Candide Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII

The History of Cunegund

“I was in bed and fast asleep, when it pleased heaven to send the Bulgarians to our delightful castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh, where they murdered my father and brother, and cut my mother in pieces. A tall Bulgarian soldier, six feet high, perceiving that I had fainted away at this sight, attempted to ravish me; the operation brought me to my senses. I cried, I struggled, I bit, I scratched, I would have torn the tall Bulgarian’s eyes out, not knowing that what had happened at my father’s castle was a customary thing. The brutal soldier gave me a cut in the left groin with his hanger, the mark of which I still carry.”

“I hope I shall see it,” said Candide, with all imaginable simplicity.

"You shall,” said Cunegund; "but let me proceed.”

"Pray do,” replied Candide.

She continued. “A Bulgarian captain came in and saw me weltering in my blood, and the soldier still as busy as if no one had been present. The officer, enraged at the fellow’s want of respect to him, killed him with one stroke of his sabre as he lay upon me. This captain took care of me, had me cured, and carried me prisoner of war to his quarters. I washed what little linen he was

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