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Candide and Martin went in a gondola on the Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Signor Pococurante. The gardens, laid out with taste, were adorned with fine marble statues. The palace was beautifully built. The master of the house was a man of sixty, and very rich.
I am myself a sort of Signor Pococurante, and should like to know if there be any thing better or pleasanter, than the state of existing and doing nothing? I have made many voyages, Mr Listless, to remote and barren shores: I have travelled over desert and inhospitable lands: I have defied danger I have endured fatigue I have submitted to privation.
"People talk," said Candide, "of the Senator Pococurante, who lives in that fine palace on the Brenta, where he entertains foreigners in the politest manner. They pretend that this man has never felt any uneasiness." "I should be glad to see such a rarity," said Martin. Candide immediately sent to ask the Lord Pococurante permission to wait upon him the next day.
'The contrast between us two is the very strangest in the world. For me, as you may have found out, I am the pococurante senator, and above all things very free in saying what I think. She, on the contrary, will take care that it is noon before allowing that the sun has risen, for fear of committing herself.
Martin was entirely of the Senator's opinion. They sat down to table, and after an excellent dinner they went into the library. Candide, seeing a Homer magnificently bound, commended the virtuoso on his good taste. "There," said he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany." "It is not mine," answered Pococurante coolly.
There, too, was Pococurante, the epicurean and triple millionaire, who in a political country dared to despise politics, in the most aristocratic of kingdoms had refused nobility, and in a land which showers all its honours upon its cultivators invested his whole fortune in the funds.
While they were waiting for dinner Pococurante ordered a concert. Candide found the music delicious. "This noise," said the Senator, "may amuse one for half an hour; but if it were to last longer it would grow tiresome to everybody, though they durst not own it. Music, to-day, is only the art of executing difficult things, and that which is only difficult cannot please long.
Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not affected; the dairy-maid blubbered; and Jeanie felt the tears rise spontaneously to her eyes. Even the nurse, accustomed to all modes in which the spirit can pass, seemed considerably moved.
Rake stared, and looked at him blankly; in this man who spoke to him with so subdued but so irresistible a power of command, he could scarcely recognize the gay, indolent, indulgent, pococurante Guardsman, whose most serious anxiety had been the set of a lace tie, the fashion of his hunting dress, or the choice of the gold arabesques for his smoking-slippers.
"Qui sibi fidit, dux regit examen," is a maxim of universal truth. Pococurante, in Candide, was admired for despising Homer and Michel Angelo; he would have gained little distinction by praising them. The judicious application of this rule to society, is the origin of fashion. In despair of attaining greatness of quality, it founds its distinction only on peculiarity.
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