Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master

by Denis Diderot

  JACQUES: This enormous incision revealed the bottom of the wound out of which the surgeon pulled with his tweezers a very small piece of cloth from my breeches which had stayed there and whose presence was causing my pain and preventing the complete healing of the wound. After this operation my health got better and better, thanks to the attentions of Denise. There were no more attacks and no more fever. My appetite returned and I slept and grew stronger. Denise bandaged me with precision and infinite gentleness. You should have seen the cautiousness and dexterity of hand with which she used to undo my bandage, the fear she had of causing me pain, the way she used to bathe my wound. I used to be sitting on the edge of my bed and she would have one knee on the floor. My leg would rest on her thigh which I sometimes used to press a little. I used to have one hand on her shoulder and watch her do all this with a tenderness which I believe she shared. When my bandaging was finished I would take her two hands and thank her. I did not know what to say to her. I did not know how I could express my thanks. She would stand there, her eyes lowered, listening to me without saying anything. Not a single pedlar passed through the château from whom I did not buy something for her. Once a neckerchief, another time a few lengths of calico or muslin, a golden cross, cotton stockings, a ring, a garnet necklace. When my little present had been bought my problem was to offer it and hers to accept it. At first I would show her the thing and if she liked it I would say: ‘Denise, I bought it for you.’ If she accepted it, my hand used to tremble when I gave it to her, as did hers when she took it. One day, no longer knowing what I could give her, I bought her some garters. They were made of silk and brightly figured in red, white and blue. That morning before she arrived I put them on the back of the chair which was next to my bed. As soon as Denise saw them she said: ‘Oh, what pretty garters.’

  ‘They are for my lover,’ I replied.

  ‘So you have a lover, Monsieur Jacques?’

  ‘Of course, haven’t I already told you?’

  ‘No. She’s very attractive, I suppose?’

  ‘Very attractive.’

  ‘And do you love her a lot?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  ‘And does she love you too?’

  ‘I have no idea. These garters are for her and she has promised to grant me a favour which will drive me mad, I think, if she grants it to me.’

  ‘What favour is that?’

  ‘It is that I will put on one of these two garters with my own hands…’

  Denise blushed, misunderstood what I had said and thought the garters were for someone else. She became sad and made blunder after blunder, looked for everything she needed for my bandage without finding it when she had it under her nose the whole time, knocked over the wine which she had warmed, came close to my bed to bandage me, took hold of my leg with a trembling hand, undid my bandage all wrong and then, when she had to bathe my wound, she had forgotten what she needed for the task and had to go and look for it. She bandaged me, and as she was bandaging me I saw she was crying.

  ‘Denise, I do believe that you are crying. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Has somebody hurt you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What nasty man has hurt you?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did that happen?…’

  Instead of answering me she looked at the garters.

  ‘Oh,’ I said to her, ‘is that what made you cry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Denise, don’t cry any more. It is for you that I bought them.’

  ‘Monsieur Jacques, is that true?’

  ‘Very true. So true that here they are.’

  As I said this I gave her both of them but I held one back and as I did so a smile appeared under her tears. I took her by the arm and drew her closer to my bed, took one of her feet which I put on the edge, and raised up her skirts as far as the knee where she held them down with both hands. I kissed her leg and attached the garter which I had held on to, and hardly had I put it on when Jeanne, her mother, came in.

  MASTER: That was an annoying visit.

  JACQUES: Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Instead of noticing our emotion she only saw the garter which her daughter had in her hands.

  ‘That’s a pretty garter,’ she said, ‘but where’s the other one?’

  ‘On my leg. He told me that he’d bought them for his lover and I imagined that they were for me. Now that I’ve put one on I have to keep the other one, isn’t that right, Mother?’

  ‘Ah! Monsieur Jacques, Denise is right. One garter doesn’t go without the other, and you wouldn’t want to take back the one she is wearing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Denise wouldn’t wish it, nor me either.’

  ‘Well, let’s settle it. I’ll put the other one on in your presence.’

  ‘No, no, you can’t do that.’

  ‘Then let her give them both back to me.’

  ‘She can’t do that either.’

  But now Jacques and his master are at the edge of the village where they were going to see the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin’s child and his foster-parents. Jacques fell silent.

  MASTER: Let us sit down and pause a while here.

  JACQUES: Why?

  MASTER: Because, by all appearances, you are nearing the end of the story of your loves.

  JACQUES: Not quite.

  MASTER: When you get as far as the knee there’s not much farther to go.

  JACQUES: Master, Denise’s thigh was longer than many another girl’s.

  MASTER: Well, let’s get down anyway.

  They dismounted. Jacques got down first and attended rapidly to the boot of his master, who had no sooner put his foot on the stirrup when the strap became undone and our horseman was thrown backwards and would have landed heavily on the ground if his valet hadn’t caught him in his arms.

  MASTER: Well, Jacques! So that is how you look after me! It wouldn’t have taken much for me to have broken a rib or an arm or cracked open my head or even been killed.

  JACQUES: What a terrible misfortune that would have been.

  MASTER: What did you say, you scoundrel? Just you wait, I’ll teach you to speak…

  And after he had wound the lash of his whip twice around his wrist, the master set off after Jacques, who ran around the horse bursting with laughter while his master was swearing, cursing, foaming with rage, also running round the horse, vomiting forth a torrent of invective against Jacques. This went on until the two of them, both worn out and dripping with sweat, stopped each on the opposite side of the horse from the other. Jacques was panting and still laughing. His master was also panting and giving him furious looks. They waited to get their breath back, when Jacques said to his master: ‘My Master, will you not admit it now?’

  MASTER: Well, what do you want me to admit, you dog, you wretch, you scoundrel, other than the fact that you are the most wicked of all valets and that I am the most unfortunate of all masters?

  JACQUES: Has it not been clearly demonstrated that most of the time we act without willing to? Come now, put your hand on your conscience and tell me, did you will any of the things you have said and done for the last half hour? Were you not my marionette, and would you not have carried on being my puppet for a month if I’d wanted you to?

  MASTER: What, it was a game?

  JACQUES: A game.

  MASTER: And you were waiting for the straps to come undone?

  JACQUES: I had prepared them.

  MASTER: And your impertinent reply was premeditated?

  JACQUES: Premeditated.

  MASTER: And that was the string you’d tied to my head to throw me around as you wished?

  JACQUES: Just so.

  MASTER: You are a dangerous ruffian.

  JACQUES: Say, rather, that I am a subtle reasoner, thanks to my Captain, who once played the same trick on me.

  MASTER: But what if I had hurt myself?


  JACQUES: It was written up above and in my precautions that such a thing would not happen..

  MASTER: Come, let us sit down. We must rest.

  As they sat down Jacques cried: ‘A plague be on the fool.’

  MASTER: You are speaking of yourself, I presume?

  JACQUES: Yes, for not leaving an extra pull in the gourd.

  MASTER: There’s no point in regretting it. I would have drunk it because I’m dying of thirst.

  JACQUES: A plague again on the fool for not having left two.

  The master begged him to take their minds off their tiredness and their thirst by continuing his story. Jacques refused and his master sulked. Jacques let him sulk, but at length, after he had protested against the misfortunes which would happen to him, Jacques carried on again with the story of his loves.

  JACQUES: One feast day the lord of the château was away hunting.

  After these words he stopped dead and said: ‘I cannot do it. It is impossible for me to continue. It seems to me that yet again the hand of Destiny is on my throat and I can feel it tighten. For God’s sake, Monsieur, allow me to stop.’

  MASTER: Very well, stop, and go and ask at the first cottage over there where the foster-parents live.

  It was the last house. They went there, each of them leading his horse by the reins. At that moment the door opened and a man appeared. Jacques’ master cried out and drew his sword and the other man did the same. The two horses were frightened by the clashing of swords and Jacques’ horse broke away from its reins and ran free. At the same moment the gentleman his master was fighting fell dead on the spot. The peasants from the village rushed up. Jacques’ master jumped nimbly into his saddle and rode away as fast as he could. They grabbed hold of Jacques, tied his hands behind his back, and brought him in front of the local judge, who sent him to prison. The dead man was the Chevalier de Saint-Ouin, whom Fate had led, on that very day, along with Agathe, to their foster-parents. Agathe was tearing her hair out over her lover’s corpse. Jacques’ master was already so far away that he was lost from sight. Jacques mused as he was led from the judge’s house to the prison that it was, it had to be, written up above.

  And as for me, I’m stopping because I’ve told you everything that I know about these two people.

  – What about the story of Jacques’ loves?

  Jacques must have said a hundred times that it was written up above that he would not finish the story and I can see, Reader, that Jacques was right. I can see that this annoys you. Well then, carry on his story where he left off and finish it however you like. Or, if you’d rather, go and see Mlle Agathe. Find out the name of the village where Jacques is in prison, go and see Jacques and question him. He won’t need to be coaxed to satisfy you. It will relieve him of his boredom. Following the written record, which I have good reason to hold suspect, I might perhaps supply what is missing here. But what use would that be? One can only interest oneself in that which one believes to be true. However, since it would be imprudent to make any final decision without a detailed examination of the conversations of Jacques the Fatalist and his master, the most important work which has appeared since Francois Rabelais’ Pantagruel, and the life and times of Compère Mathieu,77 I will re-read these memoirs with all the concentration and impartiality of which I am capable. And after a week I will give you my definitive judgement – definitive, that is, until I retract it because someone more intelligent than me has shown that I’m wrong.

  A week has gone by. I have read the memoirs in question and out of the three additional paragraphs which I find in the manuscript I own, the first and the last appear to me to be original, and the middle one has obviously been interpolated. Here is the first one, which supposes a second gap in the conversation of Jacques and his master.

  One feast day, while the lord of the château was hunting and the other residents had gone to Mass at the parish church, which was a good quarter of a league away, Jacques got up. Denise was sitting beside him and they were both silent and seemed to be sulking. In fact they were sulking. Jacques had done everything he could to persuade Denise to make him happy. And Denise held fast. After this long silence Jacques was crying hot tears and he said to her in a harsh, bitter voice: ‘You don’t love me.’

  Disappointed, Denise got up, took him by the arm, led him to the edge of the bed and said: ‘So, Monsieur Jacques, I don’t love you. Well then, Monsieur Jacques, do with the unfortunate Denise whatever you want.’

  And as she said these words she burst into tears, was choking with sobs.

  Tell me, what would you have done if you were in Jacques’ place?

  – Nothing.

  Well, that is precisely what he did. He brought Denise from the bed to her chair, threw himself at her feet, wiped the tears which were running from her eyes, kissed her hands, consoled her, reassured her, believed that she loved him dearly and left it to her love to choose the moment to reward his own. This behaviour deeply touched Denise. One might perhaps object that if Jacques was at Denise’s feet he could hardly wipe her eyes unless the chair was extremely low. The manuscript doesn’t say, but this seems a plausible assumption.

  Here is the second paragraph, which has been copied from The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, unless the conversation of Jacques the Fatalist and his master predates this work and the good minister Sterne himself is the plagiarist, which is something I do not believe, because of the particular esteem in which I hold Mr Sterne, whom I distinguish from the majority of men of letters of his nation whose quite frequent custom is to steal from us and then insult us.

  Another time it was morning and Denise had come to bandage Jacques. Everyone was still asleep in the château. Denise came near to Jacques, trembling. When she reached Jacques’ door she stopped, uncertain whether to go in or not. She entered, trembling, and stayed for quite a long time beside Jacques’ bed without daring to open the curtains. Still trembling, she opened them quietly, and said good morning to Jacques. She asked about the night he had spent and his health and she was still trembling. Jacques told her that he hadn’t slept a wink and that he had suffered and he was still suffering from a terrible itching on his knee. Denise offered to comfort him and took a little piece of flannel. Jacques put his leg out of the bed and Denise started to rub below the wound with her flannel, first with one finger, then two, then three, then four, then her whole hand. Jacques watched her do this, drunk with love. Then Denise started to rub her flannel on the wound itself, the scar of which was still red, first with one finger, then two, then three, then four, then her whole hand.

  But it wasn’t enough to have cured the itching under the knee and on the knee. It still needed to be cured above the knee where he could feel it all the more sharply. Denise put her flannel above his knee and started rubbing there quite firmly, first with one finger, then two, then three, then four, then her whole hand. Jacques had not stopped looking at her and his passion reached such a point that, no longer being able to resist, he threw himself on Denise’s hand… and then kissed her… hand.

  But what leaves no doubt at all as to the fact that this is a plagiarism is what follows. The plagiarist adds the following exhortaton: If you are not satisfied with what I have revealed to you of Jacques’ loves, Reader, you may go away and do better – I consent to it. But however you go about it I am sure you will conclude as I have.

  – You are wrong, insidious slanderer. I will not conclude as you have. Denise was a good girl.

  But who has told you otherwise? Jacques threw himself on her hand, and then he kissed her – on the hand, that is. You are the one with the corrupted mind who doesn’t understand what he is being told.

  – Well! And he only kissed her hand?

  Of course. Jacques had too much sense to take advantage of the woman he wanted to make his wife and prepare for himself a lifetime of poisonous suspicions.

  – But in the previous paragraph it says that Jacques tried everything to persuade Denise to make him happy.

  Ap
parently that is because at that time he didn’t want to make her his wife.

  The third paragraph shows us Jacques, our poor Fatalist, with his hands and his feet in irons, stretched out on the straw, at the bottom of some dark dungeon, recalling all the principles which he could remember of his Captain’s philosophy, and not very far away from reaching the conclusion that he would perhaps one day regret his humid, foul-smelling dark dwelling, where he was fed on black bread and water and had to defend his feet and hands from the attacks of mice and rats. We are told that, in the middle of these meditations, the doors of his prison and dungeon were broken down and that he was given his liberty along with a dozen brigands and found himself enrolled in the gang of the outlaw Mandrin.78 Meanwhile the mounted constabulary who had been tracking his master found him, arrested him and put him in custody in another prison. He got himself released through the good offices of the Commissioner, who had served him so well in his first adventure, and had been living in retirement in Desglands’ château for two or three months when chance returned to him a servant who was almost as essential to his happiness as his watch and his snuff-box. There was not a single time that he took a pinch of snuff, nor a single time that he looked to see what time it was, that he didn’t say with a sigh: ‘What has become of my poor Jacques?’