Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master

by Denis Diderot

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There’s never a moment’s rest in this house… even on days when there’s hardly anyone here and you would think there was nothing to do. Oh, a woman in my position is not to be envied, especially with a fool of a husband like that…’

  When she had finished Mme de La Pommeraye threw herself into her armchair and started crying. The Marquis rushed to her knees.

  ‘You are a charming woman, an adorable woman, a woman unlike any other. Your candour and your honesty confound me and ought to make me die of shame. Ah, how vastly superior you are to me at this moment. How noble I find you and how mean I perceive myself. You have spoken first and yet it is I who was guilty first. My friend, your sincerity inspires me, and I would be a monster if it did not, and I admit that what you have said of your feelings applies word for word to mine. Everything that you have said to yourself I have said to myself, but I have kept quiet and suffered in silence. I don’t know when I would have had the courage to speak.’

  ‘Is that true, my friend?’

  ‘Nothing is truer. It only remains for us to congratulate ourselves on having both at the same time lost that fragile illusory emotion which united us.’

  ‘Indeed. What misfortune if my love had lasted when yours was dead.’

  ‘Or if it were in me that it died first.’

  ‘You are right, I can feel it.’

  ‘Never have you seemed to me so kind, so beautiful, as in this moment, and if past experience did not make me more cautious I would believe I loved you more than ever.’

  As he spoke the Marquis took her hands and kissed them.

  ‘Wife!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The straw chandler.’

  ‘Look in the register.’

  ‘Where is it?… It’s all right, I’ve got it.’

  Madame de La Pommeraye concealed the fierce displeasure which burned inside her, spoke again and said to the Marquis: ‘Marquis, what is to become of us?’

  ‘We haven’t deluded ourselves. You deserve the right to all my esteem and I do not think that I have lost every right to yours. We shall continue to see each other and enjoy the intimacy of the most tender friendship. We will have spared ourselves all those minor irritations, all those petty betrayals, all those reproaches, all that bad temper, all those things that normally mark a dying love affair and we would be quite unique. You will recover all your freedom and give me back mine. We will go out in society. You will tell me all about your conquests, and I will hide nothing of mine from you – if I make any, which I doubt very much, because you have made me difficult to please. It will be delightful! You will help me with your advice, and I will not refuse you mine in difficult circumstances, or when you believe you need it. Who knows what might happen?’

  JACQUES: Nobody.

  ‘It is even possible, Marquise, that the longer I am away, the more you will gain by comparison and I will return to you more passionate, more tender, more than ever convinced that Mme de La Pommeraye is the only woman with whom I could be happy. After my return it is almost certain that I would stay with you until the end of my life.’

  ‘What if you did not find me on your return? After all, Marquis, life is not always fair and it is not impossible that I might develop a taste, a fancy or even a passion for someone who is not your equal.’

  ‘I certainly would be very unhappy, but I couldn’t complain except that Fate should have separated us when we were united and brought us back together when we could no longer be together…’

  After this conversation they started to moralize on the inconstancy of the human heart, the frivolity of oaths, of marriage vows…

  ‘Madame!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The coach!’

  ‘Messieurs,’ said the hostess, ‘I must leave you. This evening after I’ve finished my work I’ll come back and finish the story if you’re interested.’

  ‘Madame!’

  ‘Wife!’

  ‘Hostess!’

  ‘Coming, coming.’

  When the hostess had gone the master said to his valet: ‘Did you notice anything, Jacques?’

  JACQUES: What?

  MASTER: This woman tells a story much better than an innkeeper’s wife ought to.

  JACQUES: That is true. The constant interruptions from the people of the house annoyed me several times.

  MASTER: And me too.

  And you, Reader, speak without dissimulation, because, as you can see, we have struck a rich vein of honesty. Would you like us to leave our elegant and prolix gossip of a hostess here and come back to Jacques’ loves? I don’t mind which. When this woman comes back up again, that chatterbox Jacques couldn’t ask for better than to take over her part and shut the door in her face. All he would have to do would be to shout through the keyhole: ‘Good night, Madame. My master is sleeping and I’m going to bed. The rest will have to wait until we come back.’

  The first oath sworn by two creatures of flesh and blood was at the foot of a rock that was turning into dust. They called upon the heavens (which are never the same from one instant to the next) to witness their constancy. Although everything inside them and outside of them was changing, they believed their hearts to be immune to change. Oh children! You are still children…

  I don’t know whether these reflections were made by Jacques, his master, or by me. What is certain, however, is that they were made by one of the three of us, and that they were preceded and followed by a great many others which would have taken Jacques, his master and me up till we had finished supper, and until the return of the innkeeper’s wife, if Jacques had not said to his master: ‘Listen, Monsieur, all those grand phrases you’ve just rattled off without rhyme or reason are not worth half as much as an old fable told at harvest gatherings in my village.’

  MASTER: And what fable is this?

  JACQUES: It is the fable of the Knife and the Sheath.

  One day the Knife and the Sheath started quarrelling. Knife said to Sheath: ‘My dear, you are a hussy, because every day you allow a new knife to enter you.’

  Sheath replied: ‘Friend Knife, you are a rogue, because every day you put your blade into another sheath.’

  ‘That is not what you promised me, Sheath.’

  ‘You were unfaithful to me first, Knife.’

  The discussion had started at table and he that was seated between them spake thus: ‘You, Knife, and you, Sheath, did well to change, since to change gave you pleasure, but you did wrong to promise each other that you would not change.

  ‘Do you not see that God made you to fit into several sheaths, Knife?

  ‘And you to take more than one knife, Sheath?

  ‘You thought that those knives who swear that they will always do without sheaths are mad, as are those sheaths who swear that they will never allow any knife to enter into them.

  ‘And yet you did not consider that you were almost as mad as them when you swore to allow only one knife to enter you, Sheath, and you, Knife, to confine yourself to only one sheath.’

  And the master said to Jacques: ‘I do not find your fable very moral, but it’s certainly a merry one. You’ll never guess what strange idea has just come to me. I see you married to the innkeeper’s wife and wonder what a husband who loves to speak would do with a wife who won’t stop talking.’

  JACQUES: What I did for the first twelve years of my life, which I spent with my grandparents.

  MASTER: What were their names? What did they do?

  JACQUES: They dealt in second-hand clothes. My grandfather Jason32 had several children. All the family was serious. They would get up, get dressed, go about their business, come back, have lunch and then go off again without saying a word. At night they would sit down. The mother and the girls would spin, sew or knit in silence. The boys would rest and the father would read the Old Testament.

  MASTER: And what would you do?

  JAC
QUES: I would run around the room with a gag on.

  MASTER: With a gag!

  JACQUES: Yes, with a gag, and it’s because of that damned gag that I’ve got a mania for talking. A whole week would go by sometimes without anyone in the Jason household opening their mouth. During her entire life, which was long, the only thing my grandmother ever said was ‘Hats for sale’, and my grandfather, who would always be amongst his ledgers, upright, his hands under his frock-coat, had only ever said ‘One sou.’ There were days when he was tempted not to believe in the Bible.

  MASTER: Why was that?

  JACQUES: Because of the repetitions in it which he regarded as idle chatter unworthy of the Holy Spirit. He used to say that people who repeated themselves were idiots who took those who listened to them for idiots.

  MASTER: Jacques, to compensate for the long silence you kept during the twelve years you were gagged at your grandfather’s and also while our hostess was speaking, perhaps you could…

  JACQUES: Come back to the story of my loves?

  MASTER: No, not that one, but another story on which you’ve left me in suspense – the story of your Captain’s friend.

  JACQUES: Oh, Master, what a cruel memory you have!

  MASTER: Jacques, my dear Jacques!

  JACQUES: What are you laughing at?

  MASTER: At something which will make me laugh more than once. I’m picturing you at your grandfather’s in your youth, with your gag.

  JACQUES: My grandmother used to take it off me when there was nobody about but my grandfather was not very happy if he saw that and he’d say: ‘Carry on and that child will become the most frantic chatterbox who’s ever existed.’

  His prediction has been fulfilled.

  MASTER: Come on, Jacques, my dear Jacques, the story of your Captain’s friend.

  JACQUES: I’ll tell it if you want, but you’re not going to believe it.

  MASTER: Is it that incredible?

  JACQUES: No, but it has happened to someone else already, a French soldier, I believe, called M. de Guerchy.33

  MASTER: Well, I shall reply in the words of a French poet who had written quite a witty epigram and who said to someone else who claimed to have written it: ‘Why shouldn’t Monsieur have written it? I managed to write it…’

  Why shouldn’t Jacques’ story have happened to his Captain’s friend since it certainly happened to the French soldier de Guerchy? If you tell it to me you’ll kill two birds with one stone, since you’ll tell the story of two people which I don’t know.

  JACQUES: So much the better, but will you swear you don’t know it?

  MASTER: I swear it.

  Reader, I’m terribly tempted to insist on the same oath from you, but I will simply point out to you a strange aspect of Jacques’ character which he inherited, apparently, from his grandfather Jason, the silent second-hand clothes dealer. It is that Jacques, contrary to most chatterers, although he loved talking, had a profound dislike of repetition. That is why he would sometimes say to his master: ‘Monsieur is preparing the saddest future for me. What will become of me when I have nothing left to say?’

  ‘You will begin again.’

  ‘Jacques! Begin again! The opposite is written up above, and if I should ever begin again I would not be able to prevent myself from crying out: “Ah! If only your grandfather could hear you now!” – and I would miss the gag.’

  ‘You mean the gag he used to make you wear?’

  JACQUES: In the days when one played games of chance in the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent…

  MASTER: But they’re in Paris and your Captain’s friend was commanding officer of a border post.

  JACQUES: For the love of God, master, let me speak…

  Several officers went into a shop and found another officer there talking to the lady of the shop. One of them suggested a game of dice to him, because you should know that after my Captain’s death his friend, having become rich, took to gambling as well. So, he, or, if you prefer, M. de Guerchy, accepted. Fortune gave his opponent the dice box and he won and won and won and it seemed that it would never end. The game became heated, and they had played for simple stakes and double stakes, high and low, played finally for quadruple stakes and then all or nothing, when one of the spectators took it into his head to say to M. de Guerchy, or my Captain’s friend, that he’d do better to call it a day and stop playing because there was more to it than he could see. On hearing this, which was only a joke, my Captain’s friend, or M. de Guerchy, thought he was dealing with a cheat. He discreetly put his hand in his pocket and brought out a sharp knife. As soon as his opponent stretched out his hand to gather up the dice and put them in the dice box he stuck his knife in his hand, pinning it to the table, and said: ‘If the dice are loaded, you are a cheat. If they are good, I am wrong.’

  The dice were good. M. de Guerchy said: ‘I am very sorry and I will give you whatever compensation you want.’

  That was not what my Captain’s friend said. He said: ‘I have lost all my money and wounded a good man’s hand. But, in return, I have rediscovered the pleasure of being able to fight for as long as I want.’

  The wounded officer withdrew to have himself bandaged. When he had recovered, he went to see the officer who had knifed him to demand satisfaction. Monsieur de Guerchy found this request quite reasonable. My Captain’s friend threw his arms round his neck and said: ‘I have been so impatient for you to come. I can’t tell you how…’

  They went off and fought. The knifeman, M. de Guerchy or my Captain’s friend, received a sword thrust to the body. The knifed officer picked him up, had him carried home and said: ‘Monsieur, we will see each other again.’

  Monsieur de Guerchy didn’t say anything, but my Captain’s friend replied: ‘I am counting on it.’

  They fought a second and third time, then eight or ten times, and it was always the knifeman who was wounded. However, they were both officers of distinction and merit. Their story was much talked of and the Minister intervened. One was kept in Paris and the other confined to his post. Monsieur de Guerchy obeyed the orders of the Court whereas my Captain’s friend was very unhappy about it, and such is the difference between two men of brave character, one of whom is wise and the other slightly mad.

  Up to this point the stories of M. de Guerchy and my Captain’s friend are identical. They are one and the same story and that is why I have named them both, do you understand, Master? Here I shall separate them, and from now on speak only of my Captain’s friend, because the rest of the story concerns him alone. Ah! Monsieur, this will show you how little we are masters of our destinies, and how many strange things there are inscribed on the great scroll.

  My Captain’s friend, or the knifeman, requested leave to return to his birthplace and obtained it. His route was via Paris. He took a seat in a public carriage. At three o’clock in the morning the carriage passed in front of the Opera, just as all the people were coming out of a ball. Three or four young scatterbrains, all wearing masks, decided to join the coach and go off for breakfast. The coach reached the scheduled breakfast stop just as day was breaking. And what a surprise it was for the knifed officer to recognize the man who had knifed him. The latter offered his hand, embraced him and told him how pleased he was at such a fortuitous meeting. Straight away they went behind a barn and drew their swords, the one in his frock-coat, the other in his ballroom mask. The knifeman, or my Captain’s friend, ended up wounded on the ground once again. His adversary sent help to him and then sat down to table with his friends and the other people in the carriage and ate and drank a hearty meal.

  The travellers were about to continue on their journey and the others to go back into town in their masks on their hired horses when their hostess reappeared and put an end to Jacques’ story.

  Here she is, come back again, and I warn you, Reader, that it is no longer in my power to send her away again.

  – Why not?

  Because she has presented herself carrying two bottles
of champagne, one in each hand, and it is written up above that any orator who addresses Jacques with an introduction such as that will inevitably be listened to. She came in, put her two bottles on to the table and said: ‘Come along, Monsieur Jacques, let’s bury the hatchet.’

  Their hostess was not in the first flush of youth. She was a tall sturdy lady, nimble, good looking, with a very generous figure. Her mouth was a little on the large side, but she had nice teeth, large cheeks, protuberant eyes, a square forehead, the nicest skin, a lively, cheerful and open face, and breasts large enough to roll around in for two whole days. Her arms were a bit brawny, but her hands superb, the kind of hands one would want to paint or sculpt.

  Jacques took her around the waist and embraced her warmly. His bitterness had never held out against a good wine or a handsome woman. That was written up above about him, about you, Reader, about me and about a good many others.

  ‘Monsieur!’ she said to the master, ‘you aren’t going to let us drink alone, are you? I tell you, even if you’ve got another hundred leagues to go, you won’t find a better bottle of champagne on the way,’ and speaking thus she placed one of the bottles between her legs, pulled the cork, and covered the neck of the bottle with such dexterity that not a drop of the wine was spilt.