Candide Chapter 28

"What Happened to Candide, to Cunégonde, to Pangloss, to Martin, Etc."

Candide apologizes to the Baron's son for stabbing him. The Baron's son admits he had been too hard on Candide. He explains that once he recovered from the injury, he was captured by Spaniards, thrown in jail and then sent to Constantinople to be the almoner to the French Ambassador. One day he bathed with a young boy, the page to a Sultan. The Baron's son was then beaten and forced to work as a galley slave for the crime. He innocently tells Candide he was ignorant of the rule barring Christians from bathing with young naked Muslims.

Topic Tracking: Hypocrisy 15

The Baron quickly demands to know how it is possible that his sister has ended up as the dishwasher of an exiled sovereign.

Pangloss explains that he wasn't burned as was customary at an auto-da-fé because of the rain. He was hung instead. A surgeon started to dissect his body. Though the executioner of the holy Inquisition was good at burning heretics, he was bad at hanging them. Pangloss screamed when the surgeon made a very long incision because he was still alive. After the surgeon--actually a Portuguese barber--got over his shock, he and his wife nursed Pangloss back to health. They sent Pangloss off to be a lackey for a Knight of Malta. Pangloss then became a servant to a Venetian merchant who took Pangloss to Constantinople. There, Pangloss was punished for fondling a devotee's naked breasts (he is able to name precisely the five species of flowers that hung between them). Like the Baron's son, Pangloss received one hundred strokes to the soles of his feet and was sent to be a galley slave. There he rows with the Baron's son, and they argue constantly. The Baron's son insisted he was the victim of a greater injustice. Pangloss disagreed.

Candide asks Pangloss if he still believes in optimism:

"'[W]hen you were hanged, dissected, stunned with blows and made to row in the galleys, did you always think that everything was for the best in this world?'" Chapter 28, pg. 140

Pangloss vainly refuses to recant, stating that optimism is too attractively neat to renounce.

Topic Tracking: Flawed Logic 13
Topic Tracking: Optimism 17
Topic Tracking: Pride 8