Cacambo expressed his curiosity to the landlord, who made answer:
"I am very ignorant, but not the worse on that account. However, we have
in this neighbourhood an old man retired from Court who is the most
learned and most communicative person in the kingdom."
At once he took Cacambo to the old man. Candide acted now only a second
character, and accompanied his valet. They entered a very plain house,
for the door was only of silver, and the ceilings were only of gold, but
wrought in so elegant a taste as to vie with the richest. The
antechamber, indeed, was only encrusted with rubies and emeralds, but
the order in which everything was arranged made amends for this great
simplicity.
The old man received the strangers on his sofa, which was stuffed with
humming-birds' feathers, and ordered his servants to present them with
liqueurs in diamond goblets; after which he satisfied their curiosity
in the following terms:
"I am now one hundred and seventy-two years old, and I learnt of my late
father, Master of the Horse to the King, the amazing revolutions of
Peru, of which he had been an eyewitness. The kingdom we now inhabit is
the ancient country of the Incas, who quitted it very imprudently to
conquer another part of the world, and were at length destroyed by the
Spaniards.
"More wise by far were the princes of their family, who remained in
their native country; and they ordained, with the consent of the whole
nation, that none of the inhabitants should ever be permitted to quit
this little kingdom; and this has preserved our innocence and happiness.
The Spaniards have had a confused notion of this country, and have
called it _El Dorado_; and an Englishman, whose name was Sir Walter
Raleigh, came very near it about a hundred years ago; but being
surrounded by inaccessible rocks and precipices, we have hitherto been
sheltered from the rapaciousness of European nations, who have an
inconceivable passion for the pebbles and dirt of our land, for the sake
of which they would murder us to the last man."
The conversation was long: it turned chiefly on their form of
government, their manners, their women, their public entertainments,
and the arts. At length Candide, having always had a taste for
metaphysics, made Cacambo ask whether there was any religion in that
country.
The old man reddened a little.
"How then," said he, "can you doubt it? Do you take us for ungrateful
wretches?"