Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master

by Denis Diderot

  JACQUES: I feel sorry for this poor Marquis.

  MASTER: I don’t.

  HOSTESS: On the way back he stopped at the door of Mme de La Pommeraye. She had gone out. On her return she found the Marquis stretched out in a large armchair, his eyes shut, deeply lost in thought.

  ‘Ah, it is you, Marquis! The charms of the country did not detain you very long!’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I am happy nowhere and I have come back resolved to commit the greatest stupidity which a man of my rank, my age and my character could do. But it is better to get married than to suffer. I am getting married.’

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: This is a serious business and requires reflection.

  MARQUIS: I have made only one reflection but it is a sound one. That is that I could never be more unhappy than I am.

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: You could be wrong there.

  JACQUES: What treachery!

  MARQUIS: Here at last, my friend, is a negotiation which, it seems to me, I can decently entrust to you. See the mother and the daughter. Question the mother, sound out the feelings of the daughter and tell them of my plan.

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: Gently, Marquis. I believed I knew them well enough for the dealings I had with them but since I am now concerned with your happiness, my friend, you must allow me to investigate further. I will make inquiries in their province of origin, and I promise you I will follow every step they take during the rest of their stay in Paris.

  MARQUIS: Such precautions seem quite superfluous to me. Women who live in poverty and who are able to resist the bait I have held out to them can only be exceptional beings. With the offers I have made them I could have overcome a duchess, and anyway, did you not tell me yourself…

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: Yes, I said whatever you like, but, in spite of that, allow me to satisfy myself.

  JACQUES: What a bitch, what a wicked, mad bitch! Why did he take up with such a woman?

  MASTER: Why did he seduce her and then abandon her?

  HOSTESS: Why did he stop loving her without rhyme or reason?

  JACQUES (pointing to the heavens): Ah! Master!…

  MARQUIS: Why do you not get married too, Marquise?

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: To whom, if you please?

  MARQUIS: To the little Count. He is witty, of good family and has a large fortune.

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: And who will answer to me for his fidelity? You, perhaps?

  MARQUIS: No, but it seems to me that one can easily do without a husband’s fidelity.

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: I agree, but if my husband were unfaithful to me I might perhaps be eccentric enough to take offence and I am vindictive.

  MARQUIS: Well then, you would avenge yourself, obviously. We would take a town house together and we’d make the most delightful foursome.

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: That is all very nice, but I am not going to get married. The only man whom I might perhaps have been tempted to marry…

  MARQUIS: Was me?

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: I can admit it to you now without consequence.

  MARQUIS: Why did you not tell me sooner?

  MME DE LA POMMERAYE: From what has happened I did well not to. The wife you are going to have suits you in every way better than I would.

  Madame de La Pommeraye made her inquiries with all the precision and rapidity she wanted. She produced for the Marquis the most glowing of testimonials, both from Paris and the country. She made the Marquis wait another fortnight so that he might take stock of himself once more. This fortnight seemed an eternity to him. At last the Marquise was obliged to give in to his impatience and his entreaties. The first meeting took place at the house of her friends. Everything was agreed. The banns were published. The Marquis gave Mme de La Pommeraye a superb diamond, and the marriage was consummated.

  JACQUES: What a conspiracy! What a revenge!

  MASTER: She is incomprehensible.

  JACQUES: Deliver me from my worries about the wedding night, but up to this moment I do not see any great harm in it.

  MASTER: Shut up, you fool.

  HOSTESS: The wedding night went very well.

  JACQUES: But I thought…

  HOSTESS: Don’t think. Just remember what your master told you…

  And as she said that she smiled and as she smiled she passed her hand over Jacques’ face and pinched his nose: ‘It was the next day.’

  JACQUES: The next day wasn’t like the day before?

  HOSTESS: Not exactly. The next day Mme de La Pommeraye sent the Marquis a note inviting him to go to her house as soon as he could on an important matter. The Marquis did not keep her waiting. When she received him her face expressed her indignation in all its violence. Her speech was not lengthy.

  ‘Marquis,’ she said to him, ‘learn to know me. If other women valued themselves enough to show the resentment I feel, men like you would be less common. You acquired an honest woman whom you could not keep. That woman was me. She has avenged herself on you by making you marry someone who is worthy of you. Leave my house and go to the Hôtel de Hambourg in the rue Traversière where you will learn the filthy trade your wife and mother-in-law carried on for ten years under the name of d’Aisnon.’

  It would be impossible to describe the surprise and consternation of the poor Marquis. He did not know what to think, but his uncertainty lasted only the time it took to go from one end of town to the other. For the rest of the day he did not return home but wandered the streets. His mother-in-law and his wife had some suspicion of what had happened. At the first knock on the door his mother-in-law fled to her apartment and locked herself in. His wife waited for him alone. As her husband approached she could read on his face the fury which possessed him. She threw herself at his feet, her face pressed against the parquet, silent.

  ‘Get out, you unspeakable creature. Get away from me.’

  She wanted to get up but she fell back down on her face again, her hands stretched out on the floor between the Marquis’ feet.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she said to him, ‘trample me underfoot, crush me, for I have deserved it. Do with me whatever you will, but spare my mother.’

  ‘Get away from me!’ repeated the Marquis. ‘Get away from me! It is enough that you have covered me with shame. Spare me a crime.’

  The poor creature stayed in the same position and did not reply. The Marquis was sitting in an armchair, his head cradled in his arms, half leaning forward against the foot of his bed and shouting at her from time to time without looking at her: ‘Get away from me!’

  The silence and immobility of the girl took him by surprise and he shouted at her even more loudly: ‘Get out, do you hear me!’

  Next he bent down and pushed her away heavily. Realizing that she was unconscious and almost dead, he took her round the waist and laid her down on a sofa. For a short while he stood looking at her with an expression which alternated between commiseration and anger. He rang and his valets came. Her maids were summoned and he told them: ‘Take your mistress. She is ill. Carry her into her apartment and look after her.’

  A few moments afterwards he secretly sent for news of her. They told him that she had come round from her first faint but that her swoons were following in rapid succession. They were so frequent and so long that it was impossible to say whether she would recover. One or two hours afterwards he again sent secretly to find out about her condition. He was told that she was suffocating and that there had come over her a kind of repeated choking which could be heard as far away as the courtyard. The third time, towards daybreak, they told him that she had cried a lot, that her gasping had calmed and that she appeared to be dozing.

  The following day the Marquis gave orders for his horses to be harnessed to his carriage and disappeared for a fortnight without anybody knowing where he had gone. However, before going, he had made all the necessary arrangements for the mother and the daughter, and had given orders that Madame’s commands were to be obeyed as if they were his own.

  During this time the two women
remained in each other’s company hardly speaking, the daughter sobbing and occasionally crying out, tearing her hair and wringing her hands, the mother not daring to go near her or console her. One was the picture of despair, the other the picture of stubborn endurance. The daughter said to her mother twenty times: ‘Mother, let us leave here, let us escape,’ and as many times the mother rejected the idea, replying: ‘No, my daughter, we must stay. We must see what happens. This man is not going to kill us.’

  ‘I wish to God he had already done so,’ said her daughter.

  Her mother replied: ‘You would do better to keep quiet than to speak like a fool.’

  On his return the Marquis shut himself in his study and wrote two letters, one to his wife, one to his mother-in-law. The latter left the same day and went to a Carmelite convent in the next town, where she died a few days ago. Her daughter got dressed and dragged herself to her husband’s apartment, to which he had apparently summoned her. At the door she threw herself to her knees.

  ‘Get up,’ the Marquis told her…

  Instead of getting up she went forward to him on her knees. Her whole body was shaking. Her hair was dishevelled. She was bending forward, her hands by her side, her head raised up, her gaze fixed on his eyes and her face flooded with tears.

  ‘I think I perceive’, she said to him, a sob separating her every word, ‘that your justly outraged heart has softened and that perhaps with time I will obtain mercy from you. Monsieur, I beg you, do not hasten to forgive me. So many honest girls have become dishonest wives that perhaps I will provide an example to the contrary. I am not yet worthy enough for you to come near me, but wait and only leave me with the hope of forgiveness. Keep me far away from you. You will see my conduct. You will judge it. I will be a thousand times too happy, a thousand times, if you deign occasionally to summon me! Mark out for me an obscure corner of your house where you will allow me to live. I will stay there without complaint. Ah! If only I could tear away from me the name and the title which I have been made to usurp, and then die afterwards. I would instantly give you such satisfaction. I have allowed myself through weakness, seduction, domination and threats to be led to an infamous action. But do not believe, Monsieur, that I am wicked. I am not since I did not hesitate to appear before you when you summoned me and I now dare to set eyes on you and speak to you. Ah! If you could only read the bottom of my heart and see how far away from me are my past faults, how the morals of those others of my kind are alien to me. Corruption alighted on me but did not gain hold. I know myself and will do myself justice on this point, which is that by my tastes, my emotions and my character I was born worthy of the honour of belonging to you. Ah! If I had only been free to see you. I would only have needed to speak one word and I believe that I would have had the courage. Monsieur, do with me what you want. Summon your people. Let them strip me naked and throw me into the street at night. I will consent to everything. Whatever destiny you are preparing for me, I will submit to it. Some remote part of the country, the obscurity of some cloister, would remove me forever from your eyes. Just speak and I will go there. Your happiness is not lost without hope and you will be able to forget me.’

  ‘Get up,’ the Marquis said softly, ‘I have forgiven you. Even as I received the offence. I respected my wife in you. Not one word has left my lips which has humiliated her or at least of which I do not repent and I promise that she will not hear one more word to humiliate her, if she only remembers that one cannot make one’s spouse unhappy without becoming unhappy oneself. Be honest, be happy, and make me the same. Get up, I beg you, my wife, get up and embrace me. Madame la Marquise, get up! You are not in your proper place! Madame des Arcis, get up!’

  While he was speaking she had stayed where she was, her face in her hands and her head pressed between the knees of the Marquis, but at the words ‘My wife’, at the words ‘Madame des Arcis’, she got up sharply and threw herself on to the Marquis. She held him in her arms, half suffocated by sorrow and joy. Then she pulled away from him, threw herself to the floor and kissed his feet.

  ‘Ah!’ the Marquis said to her, ‘I have told you that I have forgiven you and I can see that you do not believe a word of it.’

  ‘It is necessary’, she replied, ‘that it be so and that I never believe it.’

  The Marquis added: ‘In all honesty I believe that I regret nothing and that this Pommeraye woman, instead of avenging herself, has done me a great service. My wife, go and get dressed while our luggage is being packed. We are leaving for my estates where we will stay until we can show ourselves here again without consequence for either of us.’

  They spent nearly three years away from the capital.

  JACQUES: And I bet that those three years went as quickly as a day and that the Marquis des Arcis was one of the best husbands and had one of the best wives in the world.

  MASTER: I’d go along with you, but to be honest I do not know why because I was not at all happy with this girl during the course of the schemings between Mme de La Pommeraye and the girl’s mother. Not one moment’s fear, not the slightest sign of uncertainty, not the slightest remorse. I saw her lend herself to this long and horrible scheme without any repugnance. Whatever was wanted of her, she never hesitated to do it. She went to confession and went to communion, she played at religion and played along with its ministers. She seemed to me to be as false, as despicable and as wicked as the two others.

  Madame, you tell a story quite well, but you are not yet skilled enough in dramatic art. If you had wanted us to feel for this young woman, you should have made her honest and shown her to us as an innocent victim forced to her actions by her mother and de La Pommeraye. She should have been forced, against her will, by the cruellest treatment, to participate in a series of hideous and continual crimes lasting a year. That was how the reconciliation of this woman with her husband should have been prepared. When one introduces a character on the stage the role of that character must be consistent. Now, I ask you, dear lady, is the girl who plots with our two scoundrels the same imploring wife we have seen at her husband’s feet? You have sinned against the rules of Aristotle, Horace, de Vida and Le Bossu.41

  HOSTESS: I don’t follow any rules. I told you the story as it happened, without leaving anything out and without adding anything. Who knows what was going on at the bottom of this young girl’s heart, and whether perhaps in the moments when she appeared to us to be acting in the most carefree manner she was not secretly consumed with sorrow.

  JACQUES: Madame, this time I must agree with my Master, who will forgive me for it since it happens to me so rarely. I don’t know about his Bossu or those other gentlemen he mentioned either. If Mlle Duquênoi, formerly d’Aisnon, had been a nice child it would have shown through.

  HOSTESS: Nice child or not, she’s still an excellent wife and her husband is pleased as a lord with her and wouldn’t swap her for any other.

  MASTER: I congratulate him for it. He has had more luck than wisdom.

  HOSTESS: And as for me, I wish you a good night. It is late and I am always the last to bed and the first to get up. What a wretched trade. Bonsoir, messieurs, bonsoir. I promised, I can’t remember why, that I would tell you the story of a preposterous marriage and I believe that I have kept my word. Monsieur Jacques, I don’t think you will have any trouble sleeping – your eyes are more than half shut already. Bonsoir, Monsieur Jacques.

  MASTER: Madame, is there no way we will hear of your adventures?

  HOSTESS: No.

  JACQUES: You have a terrible appetite for stories.

  MASTER: That is true. They instruct me and amuse me. A good raconteur is a rare man.

  JACQUES: And that is exactly why I don’t like stories – unless I am telling them.

  MASTER: You prefer speaking badly to keeping quiet.

  JACQUES: That is true.

  MASTER: And I prefer to listen to someone speaking badly than to nothing at all.

  JACQUES: And that suits us both perfectly.

&n
bsp; I don’t know where Jacques, his master and their hostess had left their wits for them not to have been able to find even one of the many things which could be said in favour of Mlle Duquênoi.

  Did this girl understand anything of the schemings of Mme de La Pommeraye before they reached their end? Would she not have preferred to accept the offers of the Marquis rather than his hand and have him as her lover rather than her husband? Was she not under the continual despotism and threats of the Marquise? Can one blame her horrible aversion for an unspeakable condition? And if one gives her credit for these feelings, could one expect very much more delicacy and scruple in the choice of means to extricate herself?

  And, do you think, Reader, that it is any the more difficult to offer a defence of Mme de La Pommeraye? Perhaps you would prefer to hear Jacques and his master on that subject, but they had so many more interesting things to talk about that it is probable they would have neglected to talk about this one. Allow me therefore to discuss it for a moment.

  You are furious at the mention of the name Mme de La Pommeraye; you are crying out: ‘Ah! What a horrible woman! Ah! What a hypocrite! Ah! What a scoundrel!’

  Do not exclaim, do not get angry, do not take sides. Let us reason. Every day blacker crimes than hers are committed but without any genius. You may hate Mme de La Pommeraye, you may fear her, but you will not despise her. Her vengeance is abominable but it is unsullied by any mercenary motive.