After the terrible carnage, Te Deums were sung in each camp: the properties were carefully observed — thus Voltaire's view of "glorious war."
One other quite amusing and effective use of euphemism deserves to be noticed. In the first chapter, the beautiful and innocent Cunégonde observed Pangloss and Paquette in a most compromising situation. Voltaire successfully strove to avoid calling a spade a spade:
"One day as Cunégonde was walking near the castle in the little wood known as "the park", she saw Doctor Pangloss in the bushes, giving a lesson in experimental physics to her mother's chambermaid, a very pretty and docile little brunette. Since Lady Cunégonde was deeply interested in the sciences, she breathlessly observed the repeated experiments that were performed before her eyes. She clearly saw the doctor's sufficient reason, and the operation of cause and effect."
Exaggeration, understatement, and euphemism obviously lend themselves to caricature and parody, of which we now take particular notice. Out-and-out caricature is apparent in the characterizations, however brief, of the baron and baroness in Chapter I. The learned Doctor Pangloss, early and late, is a notable caricature — and so the Jesuit baron, what with his protestations of undying devotion and then his complete volte-face. The governor of Buenos Aires, with his multiple proper names, his insufferable pride, provided another example. The entire deflating effect in Chapter I, with its contrast of naiveté and dogmatism, is sheer parody — especially the mock tragedy of Candide's expulsion from the castle.
