Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master

by Denis Diderot

  Meanwhile Jacques, who was indignant, said from between clenched teeth: ‘Scoundrel, wastrel, good for nothing. Is there even one good reason why I shouldn’t give you twenty good kicks?’

  His master, by way of contrast, was kissing him and had put one hand on his side and was softly patting his rump with the other, almost crying with joy, and he was saying: ‘My horse, my poor horse, so I’ve found you once again!’

  The farmer understood nothing of all this: ‘I can see, Messieurs, that this horse used to belong to you but I do not own him any the less legitimately for that. I bought him at the last fair. If you want to take him for two thirds of what he cost me, you’ll be doing me a great service because I can do nothing with him. When he has to be taken out of the stable he’s the devil incarnate. When he has to be harnessed he’s even worse, and when we arrive in the fields he lies down. He’d rather be beaten to death than pull anything or put up with a sack on his back. Messieurs, would you be so charitable as to relieve me of this accursed animal. He’s a fine animal, but he’s good for nothing other than prancing under a gentleman, and that’s no use to me…’

  They suggested a swap with whichever of the two others suited him best. He agreed and our two travellers came slowly back towards the place where they had rested, from where they watched with great satisfaction as the horse they had given the farmer acquiesced without repugnance in his new condition.

  JACQUES: Well, Monsieur?

  MASTER: Well! Nothing can be surer than that you’re inspired. But is it by God or by the devil? I don’t know which. Jacques, my dear friend, 1 am afraid you’ve got the devil in you.

  JACQUES: And why the devil?

  MASTER: Because you work wonders and your doctrine is extremely suspect.

  JACQUES: And what connection is there between the doctrine one possesses and the wonders one works?

  MASTER: I can see that you have not read Dom La Taste.75

  JACQUES: And this Dom La Taste whom I haven’t read, what does he say?

  MASTER: He says that God and the devil both work miracles.

  JACQUES: And how does one distinguish God’s miracles from the miracles of the devil?

  MASTER: By doctrine. If the doctrine is good the miracles are God’s, if it is bad they are the devil’s.

  Here Jacques started whistling, then he added: ‘And who will teach me, poor ignorant fellow that I am, if the doctrine of any particular miracle-worker is good or bad? Come along, Monsieur, let us mount up again. What does it matter to you whether your horse has been recovered by the work of God or Beelzebub? Will he go any the less well for it?’

  MASTER: No. If, however, Jacques, you were possessed…

  JACQUES: What cure would there be for that?

  MASTER: The cure! That would be, until you were exorcized, to put you on holy water for your only drink.

  JACQUES: Me, Monsieur, on water! Jacques on holy water! I would rather have a thousand legions of devils stay in my body than drink one drop, holy or unholy. Have you never noticed that I’m hydrophobic?…

  – Ah, hydrophobic? Did Jacques say ‘hydrophobic’?

  No, Reader, no, I confess that the word isn’t his own, but with such a severe critical attitude, I defy you to read a scene of any comedy or tragedy, a single dialogue, no matter how well it is written, without surprising the words of its author in the mouth of his character.

  What Jacques said was: ‘Master, have you never noticed that at the sight of water I turn rabid?’

  Well, in speaking differently from him I have been less truthful but more brief. They got back on their horses and Jacques said to his master: ‘You had got up to the point in the story of your loves where after you had been made happy twice you were getting ready perhaps to be made happy for a third time.’

  MASTER: And all of a sudden the door from the corridor opened. The bedroom was invaded by a tumult of people. I saw lights and heard the voices of men and women all speaking at the same time. The curtains were pulled back violently and I saw the mother, the father, the aunts, the cousins and a Commissioner of Police, who said to them in a serious voice: ‘Messieurs, mesdames, no noise. He has been caught red-handed. Monsieur is a gallant man. There is only one way to make good the wrong, and Monsieur will surely prefer to do it voluntarily than be forced to do it by the law…’

  At every word he was interrupted by the father and the mother, who were heaping reproaches on me, by the aunts and the female cousins, who were berating in the most unrestrained terms Agathe, who had buried her head in the covers. I was stupefied and I didn’t know what to say. The Commissioner turned to me and said in an ironic tone of voice: ‘Monsieur, I can see that you are comfortable there but please be so good as to get up and get dressed…’

  Which, of course, I did, with my own clothes, which had been substituted for those of the Chevalier. A table was pulled out and the Commissioner started to draw up the charge. Meanwhile it was taking four people to keep the mother held down and stop her from beating her daughter, and the father was saying to her: ‘Gently, wife, gently, when you’ve finished beating your daughter it won’t change things one bit. Everything will turn out all right.’

  The other people were spread around the room on chairs in varying attitudes of sorrow, indignation and anger. The father was scolding his wife at intervals, saying: ‘That’s what happens when one doesn’t watch over one’s daughter’s conduct.’

  The mother replied: ‘With such a good and honest appearance, who would have thought it of Monsieur?…’

  The others were silent. When the police report had been prepared it was read out to me and since it contained nothing but the truth I signed it and went downstairs with the Commissioner, who asked me most politely to get into the carriage which was at the door, and from there I was led away in quite a large convoy straight to Fort-l’Evêque.76

  JACQUES: Fort-l’Evêque! To prison!

  MASTER: To prison. And then what an abominable court case. It was nothing less than a question of marrying Mlle Agathe. Her parents didn’t want to listen to any arrangement. At daybreak the Chevalier appeared in my retreat. He knew everything. Agathe was devastated. Her parents were enraged. He had been subjected to the most cruel reproaches because of the perfidious acquaintance he had introduced to them. It was he who was the primary cause of their unhappiness and their daughter’s dishonour. The poor parents were a pitiful sight. He had asked to speak to Agathe alone, which he eventually – though not without difficulty – succeeded in doing. Agathe had almost torn his eyes out. She had called him the most odious names. He had been prepared for it and he waited for her fury to subside, after which he tried to bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind.

  ‘But this girl said one thing,’ added the Chevalier, ‘to which I do not know the answer: “My father and my mother surprised me with your friend. Should I tell them that when I was sleeping with him I thought I was sleeping with you?” ’

  He replied: ‘In all honesty, do you think that my friend could marry you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it is you, you unworthy wretch, who ought to be condemned to do so.’

  ‘But,’ I said to the Chevalier, ‘it only needs you to get me out of the mess I am in.’

  ‘And how could I do that?’

  ‘How? By explaining things as they are.’

  ‘I have threatened Agathe I would do so, but I certainly will not. It is by no means certain whether it would be of any use to us, but it is absolutely certain that we’d be completely dishonoured. And anyway it’s your fault.’

  ‘My fault?’

  ‘Yes, your fault. If you had approved the trick I suggested to you, Agathe would have been caught between two men and the whole thing would have finished in derision. But things didn’t work out like that and now it’s a question of getting out of this mess.’

  ‘But, Chevalier, could you explain to me one small thing. That is how my clothes were returned to me and yours put in the dressing-room. My God, I’ve thought about i
t a lot but it is a mystery which totally baffles me. It made me suspect Agathe a little because it occurred to me that she might have discovered the ruse and there was some kind of connivance between her and her parents.’

  ‘Perhaps you were seen going up. What is certain is that you were hardly undressed when my clothes were sent to me and yours asked for.’

  ‘It will all come clear in time…’

  While we were busy, the Chevalier and I, grieving, consoling ourselves, accusing ourselves, insulting ourselves and begging each other’s pardon, the Commissioner came in. The Chevalier turned pale and left abruptly. This Commissioner was a good man, as some of them are, and reading over the police report at his home remembered that in earlier times he had studied with a young man who had my name. It occurred to him that I might perhaps be a relation or even the son of this old college friend, as was in fact the case. His first question was to ask me who was the man who had run away as he came in.

  ‘He didn’t run away,’ I told him, ‘he went out. He’s my close friend, the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin.’

  ‘Your friend! You have a nice friend there! Do you know, Monsieur, that he is the man who came to warn me? He was accompanied by the father and another relation.’

  ‘Him!’

  ‘Himself!’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure of this?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. What did you call him again?’

  ‘The Chevalier de Saint-Ouin.’

  ‘Ah! The Chevalier de Saint-Ouin, that’s it. And do you know what your friend, your intimate friend the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin, is? A crook. A man on record for a hundred dirty tricks. The police only leave that type of man free to walk the streets because he can sometimes be useful to them. They are rogues and informers on rogues and are apparently more useful in the harm they forestall or reveal than dangerous by that which they do…’

  I told the Commissioner my sad story exactly as it had happened. He didn’t see it in any the more favourable light because nothing that could exculpate me could be adduced or proved in any court of law. However, he undertook to call the girl’s father and mother and grill her, to inform the magistrate and to neglect nothing which might help to justify me. But he warned me all the same that if these people were well counselled the authorities could do little.

  ‘What! Monsieur le Commissaire, do you mean I will be forced to marry her?’

  ‘Marry her! That would be very harsh, and that wasn’t what I was concerned about, but there will be damages, in this case, considerable…’

  But Jacques, I think there is something you want to say to me…

  JACQUES: Yes. I wanted to say to you that you were actually more unfortunate than me who paid for it but didn’t get my night’s worth. All the same I think I’ll have heard it all if she turns out to be pregnant.

  MASTER: Don’t drop the idea yet. The Commissioner told me that a short while after my arrest she had come to see him and made a declaration of pregnancy.

  JACQUES: And there you were, the father of a child.

  MASTER: Whom I haven’t done badly by.

  JACQUES: And whom you didn’t spawn.

  MASTER: Neither the protection of the magistrate nor all the steps taken by the Commissioner could prevent this affair from following the course of justice. But, as the girl and her parents were of bad repute I didn’t end up marrying in prison. I was sentenced to a large fine to pay the costs of the childbirth and also to provide for the maintenance and education of a child which issued from the actions and deeds of my friend the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin, of whom he was the portrait in miniature. It was a bonny boy to whom Mlle Agathe gave birth without any problems between the seventh and eighth month and who was given over to a good nurse whom I have paid every month until this day.

  JACQUES: And what age is Monsieur your son now?

  MASTER: He will soon be ten. I have left him in the country all this time and the schoolmaster there has taught him to read and write and count. It is not far from where we are going and I am taking the opportunity to pay these people what is owing to them and to take him away and put him to a trade.

  Jacques and his master spent yet another night on the road. They were too close to the end of their journey for Jacques to take up the story of his loves again, and anyway his sore throat was far from better. The following day they arrived.

  – Where?

  On my word of honour, I don’t know.

  – And what did they have to do at wherever they were going to?

  Whatever you like. Do you think that Jacques’ master told everyone his business? Whatever it was, they did not need to stay for more than two weeks.

  – Did it end well or did it end badly?

  That is what I still don’t know. Jacques’ sore throat cleared up because of two cures which he had an aversion to: diet and rest.

  One morning the master said to his valet: ‘Jacques, saddle up and bridle the horses and fill up your gourd because we have to go you know where.’

  It was no sooner said than done and there they were on their way towards the place where for the last ten years the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin’s son had been looked after at the expense of Jacques’ master. Some distance from the resting-place they had just left the master addressed the following words to Jacques: ‘Jacques, what do you think of the story of my loves?’

  JACQUES: There are strange things written up above. There’s one more child made, God knows how. Who knows what role the little bastard will play in the world? Who knows if he wasn’t born for the happiness or the destruction of an empire?

  MASTER: I say no. I will make a good turner or a good clock-maker out of him. He will get married and have children who will turn the chair legs of this world in perpetuity.

  JACQUES: Yes, if that is what is written up above. But why shouldn’t another Cromwell come out of a turner’s shop? Didn’t the man who had his King’s head cut off come out of a brewer’s shop? And aren’t people saying today…

  MASTER: Let’s leave all that. You are better now. You know the story of my loves. In all conscience you cannot get out of carrying on the story of your own.

  JACQUES: Everything is against it. Firstly the short distance we’ve got left to travel. Secondly I’ve forgotten where I was. Thirdly I have the devil of a premonition… that this story will not be finished, that this story must bring us bad luck, and that I will have no sooner started when it will be interrupted by a favourable or an unfavourable event.

  MASTER: If it is favourable, so much the better.

  JACQUES: I agree, but something tells me that it will be unfavourable.

  MASTER: Unfavourable! So be it, but whether you speak or not, will it happen any the less?

  JACQUES: Who knows?

  MASTER: You were born two or three centuries too late.

  JACQUES: No, Monsieur, I was born at the right time like everyone else.

  MASTER: You would have been a great augur.

  JACQUES: I do not know precisely what an augur is, nor do I particularly want to.

  MASTER: It is one of the important chapters in your Treatise of Divination.

  JACQUES: That’s true but it is so long since I wrote it that I can’t remember a word. Monsieur, listen. This is what knows more than any augurs, prophetic geese or sacred hens of the Republic of Rome. It is the gourd. Let us consult the gourd.

  Jacques took his gourd and consulted it at length. His master took out his watch and snuff-box, saw what time it was, took his pinch of snuff, and then Jacques spoke.

  JACQUES: It seems to me at present that I see Destiny less darkly. Tell me where I was up to.

  MASTER: The château of Desglands. Your knee was a little better and Denise had been ordered by her mother to look after you.

  JACQUES: Denise was obedient. The wound in my knee had almost closed up. I had even been able to dance on the night of the child. However, every now and then I would suffer the most unheard-of pain. It occurred to the surgeon in the château, who knew a little
more than his colleague, that these attacks, which returned so suddenly, could only have as their cause the fact that a foreign body had stayed in the flesh after the extraction of the bullet. Consequently he came into my bedroom early one morning, brought a table over to my bed and when my bed curtains were opened I saw that this table was covered in surgical instruments… Denise was sitting at the head of my bed, crying hot tears. Her mother was standing up with her arms crossed and looking sad. The surgeon took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and took a lancet in his right hand.

  MASTER: You are frightening me.

  JACQUES: I was frightened too.

  ‘Friend,’ the surgeon asked me, ‘are you tired of being in pain?’

  ‘Very tired.’

  ‘Do you want it to finish and keep your leg?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then put it outside the bed so that I can work on it more easily…’

  I held out my leg. The surgeon put the handle of his lancet between his teeth, took my leg under his left arm, held it firmly in place, took his lancet again and put the point into the opening of my wound, making a wide deep incision. I didn’t turn a hair, but Jeanne turned her head away and Denise screamed and felt ill…

  At this point Jacques stopped his story and took another pull at his gourd. His halts became more frequent as the distances became shorter, or, as the geometricians say, they were in inverse proportion to the distances. He was so precise in his measurements that although the gourd was full on leaving it was always exactly empty on arrival. The Department of Bridges and Highways would have made an excellent odometer of him, and each pull he took from the gourd usually had its own sufficient reason. This time it was to bring Denise back from her faint and to recover from the pain of the incision the surgeon had made in his knee. When Denise had recovered and he was comforted he continued.