Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master

by Denis Diderot

  ‘If you’d gone to the mill like I told you to…’, and he finished the sentence shaking his head in the direction of my bed.

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s today that you should have gone like I told you to… And what about those bits of straw left on the floor of the barn? What are you waiting for to pick them up?’

  ‘It will be done tomorrow.’

  ‘But what we’ve got left is almost finished and you’d have done much better to pick them up today like I told you to… And that heap of barley that’s rotting in the loft? I’ll wager you didn’t think to turn it?’

  ‘The children did it.’

  ‘You should have done it yourself. If you had been up in your loft you wouldn’t have been at the door…’

  At that moment a surgeon arrived, and then a second surgeon and then a third with the little boy from the cottage.

  MASTER: And there you were with as many surgeons as there are hats on Saint Roch.4

  JACQUES: The first was away when the little boy arrived at his house, but his wife had passed word to the second and the third had come back with the little boy.

  ‘Good evening, friends, what are you doing here?’ said the first to the others.

  They had come as quickly as they could and were hot and thirsty. They sat down around the table which still had the table-cloth on it. The wife went down to the cellar and came up again with a bottle. The husband was muttering under his breath: ‘What the devil was she doing at the door?’

  They drank, chatted about the illnesses of the neighbourhood, and started listing all the people they were treating. I started complaining. They said: ‘We’ll be with you in a moment.’

  After the first bottle they asked for a second, on account, for my treatment, then a third, then a fourth, still on account, for my treatment. And with every bottle, the husband came back to his first cry: ‘What the devil was she doing at the door?’

  What a scene anybody else would have made of these three surgeons, of their conversation on the fourth bottle, of the multitude of their marvellous cures, of the impatience of Jacques and the bad temper of their host, of what our country Aesculapiuses had to say as they clustered round Jacques’ knee, of their different opinions, one claiming that Jacques would be dead unless they made haste and amputated the leg, the other that they should remove the bullet and the piece of cloth that went in with it to save the poor devil’s leg. In the meantime, you might have seen Jacques sitting up in bed and looking at his leg pitifully, bidding it a last farewell like one of our generals being treated by Dufouart and Louis was recently seen doing.5 The third surgeon would have sat around gawping up to the point where a quarrel broke out between them and words then led to blows.

  I will spare you all of these things which you can find in novels, the comedies of antiquity and in society. When I heard the host exclaim about his wife, ‘What the devil was she doing at the door?’ I was reminded of Molière’s Harpagon when he says, referring to his son: ‘What was he doing in that galley?’6 And I admit that it is not enough for a thing simply to be true, it must be amusing as well. And that is why people will always say: ‘What was he doing in that galley?’ while my peasant’s phrase, ‘What was she doing at the door?’, will never pass into proverb.

  Jacques did not show the same reserve towards his master as I am showing to you. He did not omit the smallest detail even though he risked sending him to sleep for a second time. If it was not the cleverest it was at least the most sturdy of the three surgeons who remained in control of the patient.

  Are you not going to take out lancets in front of our eyes, I hear you ask me, start cutting his flesh, make his blood run and show us a surgical operation? Would that be in good taste in your opinion?…

  Come, let us pass over the operation. But you must at least allow Jacques to say to his master, as he did: ‘Ah, Monsieur, it’s a terrible job to put a shattered knee back together again.’

  And allow his master to reply as before: ‘Come, come, Jacques, you’re joking.’

  But the one thing I would not keep from you for all the gold in the world is that hardly had Jacques’ master made this impertinent reply when his horse stumbled and fell and his knee came into violent contact with a pointed stone and there he was shouting at the top of his voice: ‘I’m dying! My knee is shattered!’

  Although Jacques, who was the nicest chap you could imagine, was very fond of his master, I would very much like to know what was going on at the bottom of his heart, if not in the first moment, at least when he had assured himself that his master’s fall would not have any serious consequences, and whether he was able to resist a slight feeling of secret joy at an accident that would teach his master what it was to have an injury to the knee. And, Reader, there is another thing which I would like you to tell me. That is whether his master would not have preferred to have been injured even a little more seriously any place other than the knee or in other words whether he was not more sensitive to shame than to pain?

  When the master had recovered a little from his fall and his pain he got back into his saddle and spurred his horse five or six times, which made him go off like greased lightning. Jacques’ mount followed suit because there existed between the two animals the same intimacy as between their riders. They were two pairs of friends.

  When the two panting horses had gone back to their normal pace Jacques said to his master: ‘Well, Monsieur, what do you think, then?’

  MASTER: About what?

  JACQUES: An injury to the knee.

  MASTER: I agree with you. It is one of the most painful injuries.

  JACQUES: When it’s your knee?

  MASTER: No, no, yours, mine, all the knees in the world.

  JACQUES: Master, master, you obviously haven’t thought about this at all. We only ever feel sorry for ourselves, believe me.

  MASTER: What nonsense.

  JACQUES: Ah, if only I knew how to speak the way I think, but it was written up above that I would have things in my head and the words wouldn’t come to me.

  Here Jacques threw himself into some very subtle philosophical ideas which might also be very true. He was trying to make his master conceive that the word pain does not refer to any real idea and only begins to signify anything at all at the moment when it recalls in our memory a sensation which we have already experienced. His master asked him if he had ever given birth.

  ‘No,’ replied Jacques.

  ‘Do you think that giving birth is a painful experience?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Do you feel sorry for women in childbirth?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘So you sometimes feel sorry for people other than yourself?’

  ‘I feel sorry for anyone who wrings their hands, tears out their hair and screams because I know from experience that one does not do that unless one is suffering. But as for the particular pain of a woman giving birth, I cannot sympathize with that because I don’t know what it is, thank God. But to come back to a pain with which we are both more familiar. The story of my knee which has now become yours as well because of your fall…’

  MASTER: No, Jacques, the story of your loves which have become mine as well through my own past sorrows.

  JACQUES: So there I was, bandaged up and feeling a little better. The surgeon had gone and my hosts had retired and gone to bed. All that separated their room from mine was a lattice-work partition covered with grey paper on which they had stuck a few coloured pictures. I couldn’t sleep and I could hear the wife saying to her husband: ‘Leave me alone, I don’t feel like it. That poor wretch dying at our door…’

  ‘Woman, you can tell me all that afterwards.’

  ‘No, I’m not going to. If you don’t stop it I’m getting up. Do you think I can enjoy that the way I’m feeling?’

  ‘Oh, if you’re making yourself hard to get, the more fool you.’

  ‘I’m not making myself hard to get, it’s just that you’re sometimes
so hard… it’s just… it’s just…’

  After quite a short pause the husband began to speak and said: ‘Wife, admit that at the moment, owing to your misplaced compassion, you have put us in an embarrassing situation which is almost impossible to get out of. It’s a bad year and we’ve only just got enough for ourselves and the children. Grain is so dear! There’s no wine! Even that wouldn’t be so bad if there were work to be found. But the rich are cutting back and the poor are idling. For every day’s work there are four without. Nobody pays what they owe. Creditors are so rapacious it makes one despair and this is the moment you choose to give shelter to someone we’ve never set eyes on before, a stranger who will stay here as long as it pleases God and the surgeon who will be in no hurry to cure him because these surgeons make illnesses last as long as they can. And a man who hasn’t got even a sou and who will double, triple our expenses. Now, woman, how are you going to get rid of this man? Well, speak, woman, give me an explanation.’

  ‘How can anyone talk to you?’

  ‘You say that I’m bad-tempered, that I scold you? Well, who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t scold? There was still a little wine left in the cellar. God knows the rate it’s going! Those surgeons drank more this evening than ourselves and the children would have done in a week. And who will pay the surgeon, who isn’t going to come for nothing as you might think?’

  ‘Oh, that is all nicely put. And because we’re in extreme poverty, you’re going to give me another child, as if we don’t have enough already.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not.’

  ‘Oh yes, you are. I’m sure I’m going to become pregnant.’

  ‘That’s what you say every time.’

  ‘And I’ve never been wrong yet when my ear plays me up afterwards and I can feel it itching worse than ever.’

  ‘Your ear doesn’t know what it’s talking about.’

  ‘Don’t touch me! Leave my ear alone! Leave it, man, have you gone mad? You’ll regret it.’

  ‘No, no. I haven’t done it with you since midsummer day.’

  ‘And you’ll do it and the result will be that… and then in a month’s time you’ll be cross with me as if it were all my fault.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘And in nine months from now it’ll be even worse.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Well you’ve asked for it.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘And you’ll remember this time. You won’t say the things you said all the other times.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  And so he changed from ‘No, no’ to ‘Yes, yes’, this man furious with his wife for having given way to a feeling of humanity.

  MASTER: That’s what I was thinking.

  JACQUES: It is certain that the husband wasn’t very logical but he was young and his wife was pretty. People never make so many children as when times are hard.

  MASTER: Nothing breeds like paupers.

  JACQUES: One child more is nothing to them. It’s charity that feeds them. What’s more it’s the only pleasure which doesn’t cost anything. At night they console themselves without expense for the troubles of the day…

  However, the man’s reflections were none the less true. While I was thinking this to myself I felt a violent pain in my knee and I cried out: ‘Ah! My knee!’

  And the husband cried out: ‘Ah! My wife!’

  And the wife cried out: ‘Ah! My husband! But what about that man who is here?’

  ‘Well? What about him?’

  ‘Perhaps he heard us.’

  ‘What if he has?’

  ‘Tomorrow I won’t be able to look at him.’

  ‘Well, why not? Aren’t you my wife? Am I not your husband? Does a husband have a wife or a wife have a husband for nothing?’

  ‘Ah! Ah!’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘My ear…’

  ‘What’s wrong with your ear?’

  ‘It’s worse than ever.’

  ‘Go to sleep. It’ll wear off.’

  ‘I can’t. Ah! My ear! Ah! My ear!’

  ‘Your ear, your ear, that’s easily said…’

  I won’t tell you what happened between them next, but after the wife had repeated the words ‘My ear, my ear’ several times in a low hushed voice she finished up babbling in interrupted syllables ‘ee… ee… aaah’ and after ‘ee… ee… aah’, I don’t know what, which together with the silence which followed led me to believe that her earache had got better one way or another, it doesn’t matter how, and that gave me pleasure, and her too.

  MASTER: Jacques, put your hand on your conscience and swear to me that it wasn’t this woman you fell in love with.

  JACQUES: I swear it.

  MASTER: So much the worse for you.

  JACQUES: So much the worse or so much the better. Could it be that you believe that women with ears like hers are willing listeners?

  MASTER: I think that is written up above.

  JACQUES: I think that it is written lower down that they never listen for long to one man and that they are all more or less inclined occasionally to lend an ear to someone else.

  MASTER: It could well be.

  And there they were started off on an interminable quarrel about women. One claimed they were good, the other wicked, and they were both right; one said they were stupid, the other clever, and they were both right; one that they were unfaithful, the other faithful, and they were both right; one that they were mean, the other generous, and they were both right; one that they were beautiful, the other ugly, and they were both right; one talkative, the other discreet; one open, the other deceitful; one ignorant, the other enlightened; one moral, the other immoral; one foolish, the other wise; one big, the other small. And they were both right.

  While engaged in this discussion – and they could have travelled around the entire world without either pausing or agreeing – they were caught up in a storm which forced them to seek shelter.

  – Where? – Where?

  Reader, your curiosity is extremely annoying. What the devil does it have to do with you? If I told you it was Pontoise or Saint-Germain or Loreto or Compostella, would you be any the wiser?7

  If you insist I will tell you that they made their way towards… yes, why not?… towards a huge château, on whose façade were inscribed the words: ‘I belong to nobody and I belong to everybody. You were here before you entered and you will still be here after you have left.’

  – Did they go into this château?

  No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were there before they went in.

  – Well, did they manage to leave, at least?

  No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were still there after they left.

  – And what did they do there?

  Jacques said whatever it was written up above that he would say and his master whatever he liked. And they were both right.

  – What kind of people did they find there?

  A mixture.

  – What did they say?

  A few truths and a lot of lies.

  – Were there intelligent men there?

  Where are there not some? And damned questioners whom they avoided like the plague. The thing that most shocked Jacques and his master while they were walking about…

  – So they were walking, were they?

  They did nothing but that except when they were sitting down or sleeping. The thing which shocked Jacques and his master most was to find about twenty scoundrels there who had taken over all the most luxurious rooms, where, it appears, they stayed almost all the time crowded together and pretended, in defiance of customary right and the true meaning of the château’s inscription, that the château had been bequeathed to them lock, stock and barrel, and with the help of a certain number of pricks in their pay they had brought round to this view a great number of other pricks, also in their pay, who were quite prepared for the smallest sum of money to hang or kill the first man who dared contradict them. Neverthel
ess, in the days of Jacques and his master people sometimes dared.

  – With impunity?

  That depended.

  You are going to say that I am amusing myself and that because I do not know what to do with my two travellers any more, I am throwing myself into allegory, which is the usual recourse of sterile minds. For you I will sacrifice my allegory and all the riches I could draw from it and I will agree with whatever you want, but on condition that you don’t bother me any more about where Jacques and his master spent last night. They may have reached a big town and spent the night with whores, or they may have stayed the night with an old friend who gave them the best he could, or they may have taken refuge in a Franciscan monastery where they were badly lodged and badly fed all for the love of God. They may have been welcomed into the house of a great man where they lacked everything that was necessary to them and were surrounded by everything that was superfluous, or the next morning they may have left a large inn where they paid dearly for a bad supper served on silver platters and a bad night spent in beds with damask curtains and damp creased sheets, or they may have received hospitality from some village priest on a meagre stipend who ran round his parishioners’ poultry yards requisitioning the wherewithal to make an omelette and a chicken fricassee, or they may have got drunk on excellent wine, eaten far too much and got the appropriate bout of indigestion in a rich Benedictine abbey. Although all of these might appear equally feasible to you, Jacques was not of this opinion. The only possibility was the one that was written up above. What is, however, true, is that when they had started out from whatever location you would have them start out from they had gone no further than twenty paces when the master said to Jacques, after, of course, having first, as was his habit, taken his pinch of snuff: ‘Well then, Jacques, the story of your loves?’