Fortunate Bigboss explained to his companions: " They are primarily inhabitants of country or areas which are likely to be able to achieve political and social considerable progresses. In these regions reigns the vast market of the humanitarian, goodwill of the N.G. O. (Non Governmental Organizations). Quantity of organizations dispute there, savagely, the manna of the compassion to redistribute it in the innumerable theaters of the human miseries ".

Martin added : " The wars, simply civil or ethnic, or other, inter-national, much more effective, the seisms of a sizeable amplitude on the scale of Richter, the sufficiently invasive floods, the periodic cyclones, all natural cataclysms, all the madnesses of the human primates feed with abundance the devotion or the cupidity of the speakers.

Skilful politicians, experts in confused situations, excel diverting to their profit the international assistances and preventing that they do not fall between awkward hands, completely inapt to use them discerningly, i.e. to constitute comfortable fortunes ".

Candide: "It is quite simply immoral! "

Martin: " Completely immoral, that is to say. But, economically, so beneficial for so many actors! To the airline companies which transport freight and personnel, to the manufacturers of medical or survival material, to the large pharmaceutical laboratories, to the multiple employments caused by the needs for the rebuildings, and I pass from there! "

Pangloss, enthusiastic: " In short, in the final analysis, these catastrophes have an extremely positive side! "

Candide: " I can only approve the optimistic analysis of my good Master ".

Pangloss, learnedly: " It is enough to extract, of each situation, its Positive Quintessence".

Our travellers decided to accompany the members of a N.G. O., famous for its integrity and its transparency, in a small state of Western Africa, Bileria. Pangloss was flattered to prove to his companions, skeptic, the Positive Quintessence of the explosive situation which reigned in this region torn by recurring ethno-civil wars.

While going down from the plane which had transported them in the bilerian capital, they all were immediately put under arrest by a brigade of children of ten years, provided with kalachnikovs and bazookas. Their chief, a thirteen years " adult ", drew in the air a salvo from his machine gun, for sitting his authority near the newcomers. Without being concerned with their naive protests, one carried out them in a gaol of a score of square meters where they joined about thirty other prisoners, culprits like them, since they were in prison.

They remained locked up ten days in this cell, without being able to see anyone, except a guard who served, once per day, a soup bowl and a chunk of bread to each prisoner. They could not complain, he repeated to them, since they were nourished and placed free, without undergoing the least ill treatment. They would quickly pass in judgement and would be probably condemned, like the majority of them, with punishment without reprieve, but really very light, hardly one or two years of penal servitude in the close jungle.

The optimism of Pangloss did not weaken. Candide, which felt reluctant to oppose his good Master, his attitude adopted. Fortunate Bigboss, Martin and the members of the N.G.O. were furious of this arbitrary detention.

The chief of mission N.G.O. explained to his companions of captivity: " We are here in a mode of alternation where peace alternates unceasingly with the civil war. When a faction seizes the power, another rebels to tear off the power to him. When the latter succeeded, that which was beaten rebels. And vice versa. Alternation continues thus, without stopping, since decades ".

Fortunate Bigboss: "Each faction puts the hand on the children in age to fight, i.e. from 7 - 8 years, and enrols them ".

The chief of mission N.G.O.: " This country lives, permanently, under the perfusion of the international assistance. The populations suffer naturally from the competition of the politicians. Those are unanimous to find that all that is certainly very regrettable. However, they are not inconsolable because, for them, essence, it is that ultimately, they can take advantage of this situation ".

Pangloss: " It is like a species of democratic alternation but adapted to the african context ! "

Martin: " Alternation, certainly. Democratic ? I am in true admiration in front of your unwavering optimism ! We will see, when we are judged (for which offence ? ) if the democratic rules are well observed ".

They were quickly fixed.

They were led, a beautiful morning, to the court where several tens of accused were to be judged. African rules were democratically observed there. They had as a principal objective an effective, fast and not very expensive popular justice.

1°) The accused ones were gathered by criminal charge and were collectively condemned. No procedure of appeal, scandalously dilatory, was allowed.

2°) The presence of lawyers, unnecessarily expensive, because it considerably slowed down the debates, was regarded as superfluous and thus prohibited.

3°) Like had indicated it their guard, even the fact of remaining in prison was an irrefutable proof of culpability.

In accordance with these three principles, the given popular judgement was effective, fast and not very expensive. All our travellers were condemned to two years of prison, without reprieve. But with extenuating circumstances.

These extenuating circumstances were a demonstration of goodwill on behalf of our justly condemned travellers. All the judges had, indeed, received a comfortable bribe which had reached them thanks to the relations and the usual skilfulness of Fortunate Bigboss which had succeeded in contacting an african friend. Our travellers thus were immediately liberated and expelled by the first plane. They embarked all, relieved, in spite of their sadness to have lost the trace, in their precipitation, of their companion Martin.

Philosopher, Pangloss drew the conclusion from their expeditious voyage: " We must recognize that apart from the regrettable disappearance of our skeptic Martin, the Positive Quintessence of this adventure is that all is well which finished well in the best of the possible worlds ".