Candide ou l'Optimisme

Young Candide grows up in a castle in Westphalia, where the philosopher Pangloss teaches him that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Thrown out for kissing the baron's daughter, Cunégonde, he travels through war, the Inquisition, the Lisbon earthquake, the colonies of South America and the fabled land of Eldorado. Each disaster makes the lesson harder to believe, until the famous conclusion: we must cultivate our garden. Voltaire's short, fast and ironic tale, in the French of the eighteenth century.