Candide kills Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor

Candide kills Don Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor during a reunion with Cunegonde, transforming a private meeting into a hurried escape. The episode turns on a stark reversal: Candide, formed by Pangloss’s confidence that events fit an ordered and best possible world, acts twice in immediate response to perceived danger, then leaves the scene with Cunegonde and the Old Woman before the authorities can arrest them.

The reunion and its precarious setting

Candide and Cunegonde have just found one another after a succession of violent separations. Cunegonde recalls the massacre of her family, her own injuries and servitude, the conduct of the Bulgarian soldier, her later captivity under Don Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor, and the report that Pangloss had been executed. She also remembers the kiss she gave Candide the last time they met. The reunion is therefore not a return to the sheltered life they once knew: each carries the knowledge of what has happened during their separation, and the household’s safety depends on keeping their meeting hidden.

After supper, Candide and Cunegonde sit together when Don Issachar arrives. It is the Jewish Sabbath, and he has come to claim what he regards as his rights and to express his love. His arrival makes clear that Cunegonde’s reunion with Candide has not ended the claims others make upon her. The scene’s immediate conflict is domestic in scale, but it is shaped by the competing authority and possessiveness of the men who arrive at her apartment.

Don Issachar’s death

Don Issachar reacts angrily to finding Candide with Cunegonde. He draws a dagger that he routinely carries and attacks, apparently not expecting Candide to be armed. Candide has, however, received a sword from the Old Woman along with a change of clothes. Although characterized as gentle, he uses it to kill Don Issachar. The weapon’s presence gives the Old Woman’s earlier assistance an immediate practical consequence: the clothes help Candide pass through a dangerous situation, while the sword enables him to survive the confrontation.

Cunegonde’s first response is fear of what will follow. She sees the death in her apartment as a danger to all three of them if officers of justice arrive. Candide, in turn, invokes Pangloss as someone who might have advised them, but recognizes that he is not available to counsel them. The appeal to the absent teacher links the crisis to Candide’s earlier dependence on philosophical instruction, while its urgency contrasts with the abstract reasoning that had once given him confidence.

The Grand Inquisitor and Candide’s decision

Before the Old Woman can finish advising them, another door opens. It is an hour after midnight and Sunday has begun, the day assigned to the Grand Inquisitor. He enters to find Candide holding a sword, Don Issachar dead, Cunegonde alarmed, and the Old Woman present. The abrupt arrival gives Candide little time to deliberate.

Candide reasons that the Grand Inquisitor may summon assistance and have him burned, and that Cunegonde may face the same punishment. He also remembers that the Grand Inquisitor caused him to be whipped and sees him as a rival. Concluding that hesitation is dangerous, Candide kills him before he can recover from the surprise. The second killing is thus connected both to an immediate fear of capture and punishment and to the conflict over Cunegonde. Candide himself explains his conduct through the combination of love, jealousy, and his experience of punishment by the Inquisition; the action is a sharp departure from the gentleness that had previously defined him.

Cunegonde responds with alarm at the consequences, including their danger of excommunication and the prospect that their last hour has come. Her reaction keeps the deaths from appearing as a simple victory: eliminating the two men leaves the survivors exposed to legal and religious repercussions. Candide’s rapid action solves the immediate confrontation, but it also makes flight essential.

Escape and narrative significance

The Old Woman supplies the escape plan. She identifies three Andalusian horses in the stable, notes that Cunegonde has money and jewels, and proposes that they leave for Cadiz at once. Her practical counsel replaces the unavailable philosophical advice Candide had just remembered. Candide saddles the horses, and he, Cunegonde, and the Old Woman ride thirty miles without stopping.

Their departure precedes the arrival of the Holy Brotherhood. Afterwards, the Grand Inquisitor is buried in a church, while Don Issachar’s body is discarded on a dunghill. The contrasting treatment of the two dead men marks the difference in their public standing even as both deaths have arisen from the same concealed meeting. It also shows that the escape does not erase the consequences: the authorities enter the house, and the bodies are absorbed into sharply unequal forms of public disposal.

As an episode in the fast-moving journey of Candide, the double killing compresses encounter, decision, and consequence into a brief chain: a Sabbath visit, an unexpected second arrival after midnight, two deaths, and a nighttime departure. The sequence tests Pangloss’s claim that events belong to the best possible order not through another debate but through the danger of a particular room and the need to act. Candide’s actions do not establish a general answer to violence or justice; they expose how quickly inherited explanations give way when his own survival and Cunegonde’s safety seem at stake. The escape carries the story forward, while the episode’s reversal—from reunion to flight—makes the optimism Candide learned from Pangloss increasingly difficult to sustain.