The old woman's story is one of the several examples of digression so characteristic of the romantic tale of adventure, but it provides the author with new opportunity to attack the Leibnitzian optimistic philosophy as well as to shoot his barbs of satire at other targets. The prime evidence of pervading evil in this section of Candide is the carnage of warfare. Voltaire had already established his strong views on war in the account of the Bulgarian-Abarian conflict; now he reinforced them. The conflict depicted here was far more brutal than that of Western Europe. The girl arrived in Morocco to find it swimming in blood as brother fought brother in the worst kind of war, a civil one. The anti-war satire was carried forward in the account of the conflict between the Turks and the Russians with its attendant horrors, especially those visited upon the helpless civilians.
Voltaire did not relent in his running battle against religion and the Church. The old woman, we learn, turned out to be the illegitimate daughter of a pope. Of great interest is a note that first appeared in an 1829 edition of Candide, one that has been attributed to Voltaire himself, despite the late date of publication: "Note the author's extreme discretion! So far there has been no pope named Urban X; he is afraid to ascribe a bastard daughter to a known pope. What circumspection! What delicacy of conscience." If these are not Voltaire's words, they at least are quite Voltarian and provide a good example of his sardonic wit.
