Read Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Online
Authors: Denis Diderot
JACQUES
: Perhaps some good, perhaps some bad, who can tell?
MASTER
: And exactly what good or bad were you doing down there?
JACQUES
: I was stopping that woman from getting herself beaten up by two men who are down there and who have at the very least broken her servant’s arm.
MASTER
: Perhaps it would have done her some good to get beaten up.
JACQUES
: For ten reasons, each of them better than the previous, one of the best things that has ever happened to me in my life – to me who speaks to you now…
MASTER
: Is to have been beaten up?… Give me something to drink.
JACQUES
: Yes, master, beaten up. Beaten up on the high road at night on my way back from the village as I have told you after having committed what was in my opinion the folly or in your opinion the good deed of giving away my money.
MASTER
: I remember… Give me something to drink. What was the cause of the quarrel you were pacifying downstairs that the innkeeper’s wife’s servant or daughter should be so badly treated?
JACQUES
: For the life of me, I don’t know.
MASTER
: You don’t know what it was about and you interfere! Jacques,
that’s not prudent, it’s not just, it’s against the principles of… Give me something to drink.
JACQUES
: Principles are only rules which some people lay down for other people to observe. I think in one way but I am unable to stop myself acting in another. All sermons are like the preamble to the king’s edicts. All preachers want people to practise what they preach because we might find ourselves better off and they certainly will be. Virtue…
MASTER
: Virtue, Jacques, is a good thing. Both the good and the bad speak well of it… Give me something to drink.
JACQUES
: Because they both profit from it.
MASTER
: And how was it such good fortune for you to be beaten up?
JACQUES
: It is late. You’ve eaten well and so have I. We are both tired. It would be better for us, believe me, if we went to bed.
MASTER
: We can’t do that. The innkeeper’s wife still has something to bring us. While we’re waiting let’s go back to the story of your loves.
JACQUES
: Where was I? I beg you, Master, on this occasion and on all future ones put me back on the right track.
MASTER
: I’ll see to that. And to begin my duties as prompter, you are in your bed, with no money, at a loss to know what to do while the surgeon’s wife and her children are eating your sugared toast.
JACQUES
: At that moment a carriage drew up outside the door of the house and a valet came in and asked: ‘Does a poor man lodge here, a soldier who walks with a crutch and who came back last night from the next village?’
‘Yes,’ replied the surgeon’s wife, ‘what do you want him for?’
‘To put him in this carriage and take him away with us.’
‘He’s in that bed. Draw back the curtains and speak to him.’
Jacques had got to this point when their hostess came in and asked: ‘What do you want for dessert?’
MASTER
: Whatever you’ve got.
Without giving herself the trouble of going downstairs their hostess shouted from their room: ‘Nanon, bring some fruit, biscuits, jams.’
On hearing the name Nanon, Jacques said to himself: ‘Ah! It was her
daughter who was maltreated. One could get angry for less than that.’
And his master said to their hostess: ‘You were very angry just now.’
HOSTESS
: And who wouldn’t get angry? The poor creature hadn’t done anything to them. She’d hardly gone into their room when I heard her start crying – such cries… Thank God I’m a little reassured now. The surgeon says it’s nothing but she’s got two huge bruises, one on her head, the other on her shoulder.
MASTER
: Have you had her long?
HOSTESS
: A fortnight at the most. She was abandoned at the nearby staging-post.
MASTER
: What, abandoned!
HOSTESS
: Alas, yes. There are some people whose hearts are harder than stone. She almost drowned trying to cross the river which runs near here. She arrived here by a miracle and I took her in out of charity.
MASTER
: How old is she?
HOSTESS
: I think a little more than a year and a half.
At this point Jacques burst out laughing and exclaimed: ‘Is it a dog?’
HOSTESS
: The prettiest animal in the world. I wouldn’t give my poor Nicole away for ten louis. Poor Nicole!
MASTER
: Madame has a kind heart.
HOSTESS
: I have indeed. I look after my animals and my people.
MASTER
: Good for you. But who are these people who treated your Nicole so badly?
HOSTESS
: Two bourgeois from the next town. They’re whispering to each other non-stop and they think that people don’t know what they’re saying, and nobody knows what they’re doing. They haven’t been here for more than three hours and there’s not a single bit of their business that I don’t know about. It’s an amusing story and if you’re in as little hurry to go to bed as I am I’ll tell you everything exactly as their servant told my servant, who, by coincidence, comes from the same province and who told my husband who told me. The mother-in-law of the younger one passed through here not more than three months ago. She was going, against her will, to a convent in
the provinces where she didn’t last long. She’s dead and that’s why our two young men are in mourning…
But look at me, I’m telling their story already. Good-night, Messieurs, and sleep well… Was the wine to your liking?
MASTER
: Very good.
HOSTESS
: And were you happy with your supper?
MASTER
: Very happy. Your spinach was a bit salty.
HOSTESS
: I’m sometimes a little heavy-handed.
27
You’ll be well put up here, and in clean sheets. We never use them twice here.
Having said this, the innkeeper’s wife withdrew, and Jacques and his master went to bed, laughing at the misunderstanding which had made them take a dog for the daughter or servant of the house and at their hostess’s passion for a stray dog which she had only had for a fortnight. As Jacques tied up the head-band of his master’s nightcap, he reflected on this: ‘I bet you that out of all the things living in this inn that woman only loves her Nicole.’
His master replied: ‘That’s as may be, Jacques, but let’s go to sleep.’
While Jacques and his master are sleeping I shall fulfil my promise by telling you, or rather by having M. Gousse tell you,. the story of the man in prison scraping away at the double-bass.
‘The third man’, he said to me…
… is the steward of an important house. He fell in love with the wife of a pastry-cook in the rue de l’Université. The pastry-cook was a decent sort of fellow who watched more carefully over his oven than his wife’s conduct. It wasn’t so much his jealousy as his zeal which hindered our two lovers. And how did they go about removing this restriction? The steward showed his master a petition where the pastry-cook was represented as a man of low morals, a drunkard who never left the tavern, a brute who beat his wife who was the best and most unfortunate of wives. On the strength of this petition he managed to obtain an order under the King’s private seal which forfeited the husband’s freedom and this was put in the hands of a bailiff for execution without delay.
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It happened by chance that this bailiff was the pastry-cook’s friend – they used occasionally to go to the tavern together. The pastry-cook would provide some of his pastries and the bailiff would buy the wine. This time the bailiff, carrying the sealed order of the King, went to his friend’s door and signalled to him in the usual way. When they were both eating their pastries
and washing them down with wine the bailiff asked his friend how business was.
‘Very good.’
‘No trouble at all?’
‘None.’
Had he any enemies?
Not that he knew of.
How were things with his relations? His neighbours? His wife?
‘Very friendly. Peaceful.’
‘Well, how does it happen that I’ve got an order to arrest you? If I did my duty I’d put my hand on your collar, there would be a carriage ready and waiting and I would take you to the place specified in the sealed order of the King? Here, read it.’
The pastry-cook read it and turned white.
The bailiff said to him: ‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s just work out together the best thing we can do for my safety and for yours. Is there anyone who goes to your shop frequently?’
‘No one.’
‘Your wife is pretty and a flirt.’
‘I let her do what she wants.’
‘Nobody’s after her?’
‘My God, no, unless it’s a certain steward who comes sometimes and holds her hands and speaks nonsense in her ear. But it’s in my shop, in front of me, in the presence of my lads, and I don’t think anything’s going on between them which is not decent and above board.’
‘You’re a good man.’
‘Maybe I am but it’s always the best course to believe one’s wife to be honest, and that’s what I do.’
‘And this steward? Whose is he?’
‘He’s M. de Saint-Florentin’s.’
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‘And from whose offices do you think the sealed order of the King came?’
‘From M. de Saint-Florentin’s perhaps?’
‘You said it.’
‘Oh… eat my pastries, make love to my wife, and have me locked up, that’s too evil, and I can’t believe it.’
‘You’re a trusting sort. How’s your wife been over the last few days?’
‘More sad than happy.’
‘And the steward, is it long since you’ve seen him?’
‘Yesterday, I think… yes, it was yesterday.’
‘Did you notice anything?’
‘I notice very little. But it seemed to me that when they said goodbye they were making signs with their heads as if one were saying yes and the other no.’
‘Whose head was saying yes?’
‘The steward’s.’
‘Either they’re both innocent or they’re both accomplices. Listen, my friend, don’t go back to your house. Escape to some safe place, to the temple or the abbey, wherever you want. In the meantime let me take care of it. Above all remember…’
‘Not to show myself and to keep quiet.’
‘That’s right.’
At this very moment the pastry-cook’s house was surrounded by spies, and police informers under all sorts of disguises went up to the pastry-cook’s wife to ask for her husband. To the first she said he was ill, to the second that he had left for a celebration and to a third for a wedding. When would he be back? She didn’t know.
On the third day at two o’clock in the morning, the bailiff was warned that a man whose face was hidden by his cloak had been seen quietly opening the street door and slipping quietly inside the pastry-cook’s house. Immediately the bailiff, accompanied by a commissioner of police, a locksmith, a hackney carriage, and a few constables, went to the scene. They picked the lock, and the bailiff and the commissioner went quietly upstairs. They knocked on the door of the pastry-cook’s wife’s bedroom: no reply. They knocked again: still no reply. They knocked a third time and a voice from inside asked who was there.
‘Open up.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Open up in the name of the King.’
‘Good,’ said the steward to the pastry-cook’s wife with whom he was sleeping, ‘there’s nothing to worry about. It’s the bailiff come to execute his order. Open up and I’ll identify myself, he’ll go away and that’ll be the end of that.’
The pastry-cook’s wife, in her nightshirt, opened up and got back into bed. The bailiff asked: ‘Where is your husband?’
‘He’s not here,’ the pastry-cook’s wife replied.
The bailiff pulled back the curtains and asked: ‘Who’s that there, then?’
The steward replied: ‘It’s me. I’m M. de Saint-Florentin’s steward.’
‘You’re lying. You’re the pastry-cook, because the pastry-cook is the
person who sleeps with the pastry-cook’s wife. Get up, put your clothes on and follow me.’
He had to obey and so they brought him here. When the Minister had been told of his steward’s villainy he approved of the bailiff’s conduct. And the bailiff will be returning here at nightfall to take him away and transfer him to Bicêtre where, thanks to the economy of the prison governors, he will eat his quarter pound of stale bread, his scrap of meat and scrape away on his double-bass from morning to night.
If I were also to rest my head on the pillow while waiting for Jacques and his master to wake up, what would you think?
The next day Jacques got up early, put his nose to the window to see what the weather was like, saw it was abominable and went back to bed again leaving his master and me to sleep for as long as we wanted.
Jacques, his master and the other travellers who had stopped at the same resting-place thought that the sky would clear at noon. It did nothing of the sort, and since the rain from the storm had swelled the stream which separated the suburb from the town to such an extent that it would have been dangerous to cross it, everyone travelling in that direction decided to lose a day and wait. Some struck up conversations, others went back and forth, putting their noses outside to look at the sky and then coming back in swearing and stamping. Several set to drinking and talking about politics. Many gambled. The rest occupied themselves in smoking, sleeping and doing nothing.
The master said to Jacques: ‘I hope that Jacques will carry on the story of his loves and that Heaven which wants me to have the satisfaction of hearing the end will detain us here with this bad weather.’