Candide was now reduced to a state of misery as, in the freezing cold, he dragged himself toward the neighboring town, nearly dying from hunger and fatigue. At the door of an inn two uniformed men addressed him. Strangely enough, they offered to buy him food and to give him money simply because he was five feet five in height. "Men are made to help each other," explained one, and Candide was moved and delighted to hear this confirmation of Doctor Pangloss' teaching. They induced the youth to drink to the health of the Bulgarian king and then announced that he was a soldier in the King's army—a hero whose glory and fortune were assured.
For one so honored, the treatment Candide received was rather startling. He was placed in irons and taken to the regiment, where he was put through endless drills and nearly beaten to death. One day, he ran away, but before he had covered many miles four of his "fellow heroes" overtook him, bound him, and put him in a dungeon. Offered a choice, he understandably chose to be beaten unmercifully thirty-six times by the whole regiment rather than to be shot. As Voltaire described the punishment, the callow youth might have been wiser to have accepted death. But, just at the time when it seemed that he could not survive, the king of the Bulgarians appeared, made inquiries, and granted Candide a pardon. Three weeks later, the youth, restored to good health, was able to join his fellow soldiers in the war against the Abarians.
In the third chapter, Voltaire described the "glories" of war—the well-drilled troops, the martial music, and the "heroic" butchery, from which Candide hid himself as best he could. And while both kings were having their Te Deums sung, he decided the time was ripe for him to reason elsewhere about the cause and effect. He made his way over heaps of dead and dying men before reaching an Abarian village. It was in ashes, having been burned in accordance with the rules of international law. Candide saw firsthand how the horrors of war could be visited on the innocent civilians. Women, children, old men—none had escaped.
Candide fled to another village, which proved to be a Bulgarian one, and found that it and the inhabitants had received the same treatment. At last he escaped from the theater of war. Never did he forget Mademoiselle Cunégonde. When he reached Holland, he optimistically believed that he would be as well treated as he once had been in Westphalia, for were not the Hollanders Christian? But the starving youth found little charity. One native threatened him with prison when he asked for alms; another, a militant Protestant, excoriated him when he did not provide the expected answer as regards the Pope. It remained for an Anabaptist—a man who had not even been baptized—to play the role of the Good Samaritan. His generosity and kindness reaffirmed in Candide faith in the wisdom of Doctor Pangloss: all must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
At this point in the action, Candide met a beggar covered with sores. The beggar's eyes were lifeless and the tip of his nose had been eaten away by disease. His mouth was twisted and he was racked by a violent cough. He spat out a tooth with every spasm.
