Read Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Online
Authors: Denis Diderot
JACQUES
: His christening bonnet, like they put on new-born babies.
53
MASTER
: I see what you mean. And how did she go about that?
JACQUES
: They all gathered round the fire. The doctor took his pulse, which he found very weak, and went to sit down with the others. The lady in question went over to the bed and asked the deceased several questions in a calm quiet voice without speaking any louder than she needed to in order for him to hear every word she wanted him to. After that the conversation continued between the lady, the doctor and one or two others as follows:
LADY
: Well, Doctor, how is Mme de Parme these days, tell us?
54
DOCTOR
: I’ve just come from a house where I was assured that she is so ill that they think it’s hopeless.
LADY
: But the Princess has always shown herself so devout. As soon as she felt herself in danger she asked to confess and receive the sacraments.
DOCTOR
: The curé of Saint-Roch is bringing a relic to Versailles for her today, but it will arrive too late.
LADY
: The Princess is not the only person to give that example. The Duke of Chevreuse did not wait until the sacraments were suggested to him when he was ill. He asked for them by himself and that gave great solace to his family…
DOCTOR
: He is much better now.
ONE OF THOSE PRESENT
: It is absolutely beyond doubt that the sacraments can’t kill you… on the contrary even.
LADY
: In all honesty one should attend to these things as soon as there is any danger at all… Sick people apparently have no conception of how hard it is for those around them and yet how indispensable it is to suggest these things to them.
DOCTOR
: I have just left a man who asked me two days ago: ‘Doctor, how am I?’
‘Monsieur, the fever is bad and relapses are common.’
‘Do you think that I will have one soon?’
‘No, I am afraid only for tonight.’
‘In that case I had better warn a certain gentleman with whom I have a
little personal business to attend to so I can finish it while I’ve still got my wits about me.’
He confessed and took the sacraments. I returned that evening and there was no relapse. Yesterday he was much better. Today he’s almost completely out of it. And I’ve seen the sacraments have that effect many times in the course of my practice.
SICK MAN
(to his servant)
: Bring me my chicken.
JACQUES
: So they brought him his chicken. He wanted to cut it but didn’t have the strength so they cut up the wing into small pieces. He asked for some bread and threw himself on it, tried to chew a mouthful, which he wasn’t able to swallow and which he threw up in his napkin. He called for some wine and wet his lips with it and said: ‘I feel fine.’
Half an hour after he had eaten his bread and drunk his wine he was no more.
MASTER
: Yet the lady went about the business quite well… What about your love life?
JACQUES
: What about the condition you agreed to?
MASTER
: I understand – you are installed in the château Desglands and the old messenger Jeanne has ordered her young daughter Denise to visit you four times a day and look after you. But before we go any further, tell me, had Denise lost her virginity?
JACQUES
: I don’t believe so.
MASTER
: What about yours?
JACQUES
: Mine had long since vanished.
MASTER
: So the story of your love life is not about your first love.
JACQUES
: No, why should it be?
MASTER
: Because a man loves the girl he loses his virginity to just as he is loved by the one whose virginity he takes away.
JACQUES
: Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
MASTER
: Well, how did you lose it, then?
JACQUES
: I didn’t lose it. I swapped it.
MASTER
: Well, tell me something about this swap.
JACQUES
: That would be like the first chapter of Luke’s gospel – a litany of begats – from the first one up to Denise, the last.
55
MASTER
: Denise who thought she was taking it but wasn’t.
JACQUES
: And before Denise our two neighbours’ wives.
MASTER
: Who thought they were taking it and didn’t get it.
JACQUES
: No.
MASTER
: For both of them to miss your virginity is none too clever.
JACQUES
: Master, I can see from the way the right-hand corner of your mouth is twisting up and the way your left nostril is twitching that I may as well tell the thing with good grace as have you beg me for it. Just as I can sense my sore throat getting worse and know that the story of my loves will be long and I have hardly enough strength to tell one or two little stories.
MASTER
: If Jacques wanted to give me very great pleasure…
JACQUES
: How would he go about that?
MASTER
: He would begin with the loss of his virginity. Do you want me to tell you why? It is because I’ve always been very partial to stories about that great event.
JACQUES
: And why is that, if you please?
MASTER
: That is because out of all the stories of the same type it is the only interesting one. All the other times are nothing more than insipid banal repetition. Out of all the transgressions of a pretty sinner I am sure that her father confessor is only interested in the first time.
JACQUES
: My master, my master, I can see that your mind is corrupted and on your death bed the devil will probably appear to you in the same form as to Ferragus.
56
MASTER
: Well, perhaps he will. But I bet you were deflowered by some dreadful old bag from your village.
JACQUES
: Don’t bet on it – you’d lose.
MASTER
: Was it your parish priest’s housekeeper?
JACQUES
: Don’t bet on it – you’d still lose.
MASTER
: It was his niece then?
JACQUES
: His niece was seething with bad temper and piety, which are two qualities that go very well together but do not suit me.
MASTER
: This time I think I’ve got it.
JACQUES
: I don’t think anything of the sort.
MASTER
: It was one day when the fair was in town – or perhaps it was market day.
JACQUES
: There wasn’t any fair and it wasn’t market day.
MASTER
: You went to town.
JACQUES
: I didn’t go to town.
MASTER
: And it was written up above that in some tavern you would meet one of those obliging young ladies, that you would get drunk and…
JACQUES
: Actually I hadn’t eaten and what has been written up above is that at the present moment you will tire yourself out with false conjecture. And that you will pick up a bad habit which you have corrected me of – a mania for guessing, and always wrongly.
As I stand before you now, Monsieur, I was once baptized…
MASTER
: If you intend to start the loss of your virginity with your emergence from the font we’re not going to get there very quickly.
JACQUES
: But I had a godfather and a godmother just like anyone else. Master Bugger – the most famous cartwright in our village – had a son. Bugger the Father was my godfather and Bugger the Son was my friend. When we were about eighteen or nineteen we both of us at the same time fell for a little seamstress called Justine. She wasn’t supposed to be particularly unyielding but she thought it right to establish her reputation by a first act of rejection and her choice for this fell on me.
MASTER
: That is one of the strange things about women one can never understand.
JACQUES
: The total living arrangements of the cartwright, Master Bugger my godfather, consisted of a workshop and a garret. His bed was at the back of the shop and Bugger the Son, my friend, used to sleep up in the loft which you got up to by a little ladder placed about half-way between his father’s bed and the door of the workshop.
When Bugger my godfather was fast asleep Bugger my friend used to open the door of the shop and Justine would slip up the little ladder into the loft. The following morning at daybreak, before Bugger the Father was awake, Bugger the Son would come down from the loft, open the door again and Justine would slip out the way she had entered.
MASTER
: To go off and visit some other bugger’s loft, yours or another’s.
JACQUES
: Why not? Bugger and Justine got along quite well really, but their relationship had to run into trouble. That was written up above. And so it did.
MASTER
: Because of the father?
JACQUES
: No.
MASTER
: Because of the mother?
JACQUES
: No, she was dead.
MASTER
: A rival, then?
JACQUES
: No! No! And by all the devils that ever were, No! My Master, it is written up above that you will suffer from this for the rest of your days. For the rest of your life, I’m telling you, you’ll try to guess things and guess wrong…
One morning while my friend Bugger – who was more tired than usual, either from the previous day’s work or the previous night’s pleasure – was sleeping softly in Justine’s arms, a loud roar bellowed up from the foot of the little ladder.
‘Bugger? Bugger? You lazy swine! The angelus has sounded. It’s nearly half past five already, and there you are still up in your loft! Have you decided to stay there till noon? Do you want me to come up there and throw you down? Bugger! Bugger!’
‘Yes, father.’
‘And what about the axle that old bear of a farmer is waiting for? Do you want him to come ranting back here again?’
‘His axle is ready and he’ll have it in another fifteen minutes.’
I will leave you to imagine the terror of Justine and my poor friend Bugger the Son.
MASTER
: I am sure that Justine swore never to come back to that loft and that she came back the same night. But how did she manage to get out that morning?
JACQUES
: If you’ve decided that it’s your duty to guess the rest then I’ll stop now… Meanwhile Bugger the Son had leapt out of bed naked, trousers in one hand and jacket in the other. While he was getting dressed Bugger the Father was muttering between his teeth: ‘Ever since he’s been caught up with that little tramp everything’s gone wrong. It’s got to stop. This can’t carry on any longer. I’m getting tired of it. It wouldn’t be so bad if she was worth it, but a creature like that! My God, what a creature! Ah, if only the poor departed wife who was honour down to the tips of her fingers could see him like this, she would have taken the stick to him long ago and then scratched out the girl’s eyes on her way out of High Mass right outside the church in front of everyone. Nothing would have stopped her! But I’ve been too kind up to now, and if they think I’m going to carry on like this they’re making a big mistake.’
MASTER
: And could Justine hear all this in the loft?
JACQUES
: I’m sure that she could. Meanwhile Bugger the Son had gone off to the farmer, axle on his shoulder, and Bugger the Father had set to work. After a few strokes with the adze he was dying for some tobacco. He turned out all his pockets looking for his pouch. Then he searched around the side of his bed and didn’t find it.
‘It’s that brat’, he said, ‘who’s taken it again as usual, I suppose. I wonder if he’s left it upstairs…’
And there he was going up into the loft.
A moment later he noticed that his pipe and his knife were missing and went back up again.
MASTER
: What about Justine?
JACQUES
: She had quickly gathered up all of her clothes and slid underneath the bed where she was lying on her stomach more dead than alive.