Read Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Online
Authors: Denis Diderot
JACQUES
: I’m trying to get the flies and the midges. I wish somebody would tell me what’s the use of these irritating creatures.
MASTER
: Just because you don’t know you think they’re useless, do you? Nature made nothing useless or superfluous.
JACQUES
: I can believe that because if something is it has to be.
MASTER
: When you have too much blood or bad blood what do you do? You call a surgeon who relieves you of two or three basins of it. Well then! These gnats which you are complaining about are a cloud of little winged surgeons who come with their little lancets to sting you and draw off your blood drop by drop.
JACQUES
: Yes, but at random, without knowing whether I’ve got too much or too little. Bring some starving wretch here and see if your little winged surgeons don’t sting him. They are concerned with themselves. Everything in nature is concerned with itself, and with itself only. If it is harmful to others, then so what, as long as the thing is all right itself…
Next he beat the air again with both hands and said: ‘The devil with your little winged surgeons!’
MASTER
: Do you know the fable of Garo?
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JACQUES
: Yes.
MASTER
: What do you think of it?
JACQUES
: Bad.
MASTER
: That’s easily said.
JACQUES
: And easily proved. What if oak trees had pumpkins instead of acorns? Would that fool Garo have gone to sleep under an oak tree then? And if he hadn’t fallen asleep under an oak tree, what difference would it have made to the safety of his nose if pumpkins or acorns fell from it? Give that to your children to read.
MASTER
: A philosopher with the same name as you will not have that.
JACQUES
: Well, everyone has his own opinion and Jean-Jacques is not Jacques.
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MASTER
: Well, too bad for Jacques.
JACQUES
: Who can tell unless he has read the last word on the last line on the page which he occupies on the great scroll?
MASTER
: What are you thinking?
JACQUES
: I am thinking that, although you were speaking to me and I was answering you, you were speaking without wanting to and I was answering without wanting to.
MASTER
: And?
JACQUES
: And? That we are nothing but two living and thinking machines.
MASTER
: Well, at this moment what do you want?
JACQUES
: My God, that doesn’t make any difference. That only brings one more function of the two machines into play.
MASTER
: What function is that?
JACQUES
: May the devil take me if I can conceive of any function
operating without a cause. My Captain used to say: ‘Suppose a cause and an effect will follow. From a weak cause, a weak effect. From a momentary cause a momentary effect, from an intermittent cause an intermittent effect, from an impeded cause a reduced effect, from a cause that ceases a nil effect.’
MASTER
: But it seems to me that I can sense within me that I am free in the same way that I sense that I think.
JACQUES
: My Captain used to say: ‘That may be true at this moment when you do not want to do anything, but what if you wanted to throw yourself off your horse?’
MASTER
: I’d throw myself off.
JACQUES
: Happily, without repugnance, without effort, as when you dismount at the door of an inn?
MASTER
: Not exactly, but what does it matter so long as I throw myself off, and prove that I am free?
JACQUES
: My Captain used to say: ‘What! Can you not see that were it not for my contradiction you would never have taken it into your head to break your neck. It is therefore me who takes you by the foot and throws you out of your saddle. If your fall proves something it is not that you are free but that you are mad…’ My Captain also used to say that the enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.
MASTER
: That is all too much for me. But in spite of your Captain and in spite of you, I believe that I want when I want.
JACQUES
: But if you are now and have always been the master of your will, why don’t you want to make love to some old bag at this moment, and why did you not stop loving Agathe all the times that you wanted to? My Master, one spends three quarters of one’s life wanting without doing.
MASTER
: That is true.
JACQUES
: And doing without wanting to.
MASTER
: Will you demonstrate that to me?
JACQUES
: If you consent to it.
MASTER
: I consent.
JACQUES
: Then it will be done, but let us speak of other things…
After this nonsense and a few other words of the same importance they were silent and Jacques pushed up his enormous hat, which was an umbrella in bad weather, a parasol in hot weather and a hat in all weathers, the shadowy sanctuary under which one of the best brains which has ever existed would consult destiny on great occasions… When the edges of his hat were raised up his face was more or less in the middle of his body. When they were turned down he could hardly see ten feet in front of him, which had given him the habit of walking with his nose in the air and it is because of this that one could say of his hat:
Os illi sublime didit, caelumque tueri/Jussit, et erectos ad sidere tollere vultus
…
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And so, as Jacques pushed up his enormous hat, looking far and wide around him, he saw a farmer who was belabouring one of the two horses harnessed to his plough, apparently to no effect. This horse, which was young and vigorous, had lain down in the furrow, and no matter how much the farmer shook his bridle, begged him, caressed him, threatened him, swore at him and beat him, the animal stayed stock still and stubbornly refused to get up.
After Jacques had mused for a while on this scene he turned to his master, whose attention had similarly been attracted.
JACQUES
: Do you know what is happening over there, Monsieur?
MASTER
: What would you wish to be happening over there other than what I already see?
JACQUES
: Can you really not guess?
MASTER
: No, but what’s your guess?
JACQUES
: My guess is, that there stupid proud useless animal is a town-dweller and because he is proud of his first condition as a saddle horse he despises the plough, and, in a word, it is your horse and also the symbol of Jacques here and so many other faint-hearted wretches like him who have left the countryside to go and bear livery in the capital and who would prefer to beg their bread in the streets or die of hunger than to return to agriculture, the most useful and honourable of occupations.
The master started to laugh, and Jacques, speaking to the farmer, who could not hear him, said: ‘Poor devil. Beat him, beat him as much as you want. He’s set in his ways now and you’ll wear out more than one cracker on
your whip before you inspire a little true dignity and some taste for work in that good-for-nothing…’
His master carried on laughing and Jacques, half out of impatience, and half out of pity, got up and walked over toward the farmer. He hadn’t gone two hundred paces when he turned round to his master and started shouting: ‘Monsieur, come here, come here. It’s your horse, it’s your horse!’
And it was indeed. Hardly had the animal recognized Jacques and his master when he got up of his own accord, shook his mane, whinneyed, reared and tenderly nuzzled his companion’s muzzle.
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.
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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.
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