Voltaire’s satirical novel “Candide” (1759) tells the story of a naïve young German nobleman who believes with his philosophy teacher Pangloss that we live “in the best of all possible worlds”. As it turns out, however, he suffers one misfortune after another and, after having been separated from Pangloss, he eventually meets him again by accident in a truly pitiful state. Pangloss tells him:

"O my dear Candide, you remember Pacquette, that pretty maid, who waited on our       noble Baroness. In her arms I tasted the pleasures of paradise, and they produced        these torments of hell which are now destroying me. She was infected with a disease     and perhaps has since died of it. She had received this present from a learned              Franciscan, who had derived it from its source: He was indebted for it to an old                countess, who had it from a captain of the cavalry, who had it from a marquise, who        had it from a page. The page had it from a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had              received it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus. For my part I shall give it to no one, because I am dying."