Read Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Online
Authors: Denis Diderot
MASTER
: Don’t you want me to know about them any more?
JACQUES
: Of course I still want you to, but Destiny doesn’t. Can’t you see that as soon as I open my mouth on the subject the devil interferes and something always happens which cuts me off? I’ll never finish it, I tell you. That is written up above.
MASTER
: Try, my friend.
JACQUES
: Perhaps if you were to tell me the story of your love life, that would break the spell and mine would go better afterwards. There’s something in the back of my mind that tells me that’s what we need to do. Monsieur, I tell you, it seems to me sometimes that Destiny speaks to me.
MASTER
: And do you always find it to your advantage to listen?
JACQUES
: Of course. Witness the day when it told me the pedlar had your watch…
The master started to yawn and as he was yawning he tapped his snuff-box with his hand and as he tapped on his snuff-box he looked into the distance, and as he looked into the distance he said to Jacques: ‘Can you see something over there on your left?’
JACQUES
: Yes, and I bet it’s something else which doesn’t want me to continue the story, or you to start yours for that matter…
Jacques was right. Since the thing they could see was coming towards them and they were going towards it, this convergence quickly shortened the distance between them and before long they could see a carriage draped in black, drawn by four black horses, in black drapes which covered their heads and hung down to their hooves. Behind them were two servants dressed in black and after them were two more servants dressed in black riding two black horses which were caparisoned in black. On the driving-seat of the carriage sat a coachman in black wearing a floppy brimmed hat with a long black ribbon which hung down his left shoulder. This coachman had his head bent forward and was letting the reins hang loose so that the horses appeared to be driving him rather than him driving them. Before long our two travellers found themselves alongside the funeral carriage. At that moment Jacques cried out and fell rather than got off his horse, tore out his hair and started rolling around on the ground, shouting: ‘My Captain! My poor Captain! It is him, there’s no mistaking it. Those are his arms…’
In the carriage there was, indeed, a long coffin under a funeral shroud. On top of this shroud was a sword with a cordon. Next to the coffin sat a priest intoning the office from an open breviary in his hand. Jacques followed behind, still lamenting. His master followed Jacques, swearing, and the servants assured Jacques that the cortège was that of his Captain, who had died in a neighbouring town whence he was being transported to the tomb of his ancestors. Ever since he had, by the death of his friend, a captain in the same regiment, been deprived of the satisfaction of fighting at least once a week, he had fallen into a profound melancholy which, after a few months, had eventually killed him.
Jacques, having paid his Captain the tribute of praise, regret and tears which he owed him, begged his master’s forgiveness, got back on his horse and then they carried on their way in silence.
But you are asking me, Reader, where in God’s name were they going?
And I reply, Reader, in God’s name, does anybody ever really know where they are going? What about you? Where are you going? Do I have to remind you of the story of Aesop?
His master, Xanthippus,
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said to him one summer’s evening, or it may have been a winter’s evening for that matter because the Greeks used to have baths whatever the season: ‘Aesop, go to the baths. If there are not too many people there we’ll take a bath.’
Aesop set off. On the way he met the town guard of Athens.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Where am I going?’ replied Aesop. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? Then you’re coming with us to prison.’
‘There you are,’ said Aesop, ‘Didn’t I tell you I didn’t know where I was going? I wanted to go to the baths, and here I am going to prison.’
Jacques followed his master like you follow yours. His master followed his as Jacques followed him.
– But who was the master of Jacques’ master?
All right. Is anyone ever short of a master in this world? Jacques’ master, like you, had a hundred masters if he had one. But among all the many masters of Jacques’ master, it seems that there wasn’t one satisfactory one since from one day to the next he used to change master.
– He was a man.
A passionate man like you, Reader. A curious man like you, Reader. A questioning man like you, Reader. A nuisance like you, Reader.
– And why did he ask questions?
What a question! He asked questions so that he could learn and quibble like you, Reader. The master said to Jacques: ‘You don’t seem to be in the mood to carry on with the story of your loves.’
JACQUES
: My poor Captain! He’s going where we are all going, and the only extraordinary thing is that he hasn’t gone there sooner. Ahi!… Ahi!…
MASTER
: But Jacques! I do believe you’re crying!
Cry without restraint because you may cry without shame. His death has set you free from the scrupulous propriety which oppressed you during his life. You no longer have the same reasons to hide your grief as you had to hide your happiness. The same conclusion will not be drawn from your tears as from your joy. People forgive misfortune. And then in this moment one must show either feeling or ingratitude, and all things considered it is better to reveal a weakness than to allow oneself to be suspected of a vice. I would
wish your grief to be unrestrained so that it might be less painful. I would wish it to be violent so that it might be less long. Remember him as he was and exaggerate even. Remember his acuity in getting to the bottom of the most profound matters, his subtlety in speaking of the most delicate, his sound good taste which made him value the most important, the fertility which he would bring to the most sterile matters. Remember the skill with which he would defend the accused. His indulgence gave him one thousand times more intelligence than interest or egoism gave to the guilty. He was severe only when it came to himself. Far from looking for excuses for the inconsequential faults which he might inadvertently commit he used to exaggerate them with all the hostility of an enemy, and he would debase the value of his virtues with all the venom of one who was envious of them by rigorous examination of the motives which had perhaps inspired them unbeknownst to him. Do not limit your grief to any period except the time it will take to heal. When we lose our friends let us submit ourselves to the order of the universe as we ourselves will submit to it when it sees fit to dispose of us. Let us accept without despair the decree of Fate which condemns them in the same way that we ourselves will accept it without resistance when it is pronounced against us. The duties of burial are not the final duties of friends. The earth that has been disturbed will settle over your lover’s ashes but your soul will retain all his sensibility.
JACQUES
: Master, that’s all very nice, but what the devil do you mean by it? I have lost my Captain and I am grief-stricken. And you rattle off to me like a parrot a fragment of a speech made by a man or a woman to another woman who has lost her lover.
MASTER
: I think it’s a woman’s speech.
JACQUES
: I think it’s a man’s. But whether it’s a man’s or a woman’s I ask you again, what the devil do you mean by it? Do you take me for my Captain’s mistress? My Captain, Monsieur, was a worthy man, and I’ve always been a decent lad.
MASTER
: Is anyone disputing that, Jacques?
JACQUES
: What the devil does your speech from a man or a woman to a woman who’s lost her lover mean, then? Perhaps if I ask you enough times, you’ll tell me?
MASTER
: No, Jacques, you must find that out all by yourself.
JACQUES
: I’ll spend the rest of my life pondering on that and I still won’t find out. It’s enough to keep me wondering till Judgement Day.
MASTER
: Jacques, it seemed to me that you were paying great attention when I was speaking.
JACQUES
: How could I not pay attention to such absurdities?
MASTER
: Well done, Jacques!
JACQUES
: I almost exploded at the bit about rigorous propriety which restrained me during my Captain’s life and from which I was freed by his death.
MASTER
: Well done, Jacques. Then I have done what I set out to do. Tell me if it was possible to find a better way of consoling you? You were crying, and if I had talked about the object of your sorrow, what would have happened? You would have cried even more and I would have only added to your grief. But I fooled you by the absurdity of my funeral speech and by the little quarrel which followed it. Admit that at this moment your thoughts about your Captain are as remote as the funeral cortège which is taking him to his last resting-place. Consequently I think that you can come back to the story of your loves.
JACQUES
: I think so too.
‘Doctor,’ I said to the surgeon, ‘do you live far from here?’
‘A good quarter of a mile at least.’
‘Are you comfortably lodged?’
‘Reasonably comfortably.’
‘Do you think you could make a bed available?’
‘No.’
‘What? Even if I pay you, and pay well?’
‘Oh, if you pay, and pay well, that’s a different matter… But, my friend, you don’t seem to be in any position to pay, let alone pay well.’
‘That’s my business. Would I be cared for a little at your house?’
‘Very well. My wife has been looking after sick people all her life, and my eldest daughter’s prepared to shave all comers, and is as handy with dressings as I am.’
‘How much would you charge for accommodation, food and being looked after?’
The surgeon said, scratching his ear: ‘Accommodation… food… attention… But who will be responsible for paying?’
‘I’ll pay every day.’
‘Now that’s what I call talking, that.’
But Monsieur, I don’t think you’re listening to me.
MASTER
: No, Jacques. It was written up above that you would speak this time and perhaps not for the last time wouldn’t be listened to.
JACQUES
: When a person doesn’t listen to someone who is speaking it’s either because they are thinking about nothing or thinking about something else other than what the speaker is saying. Which were you doing?
MASTER
: The latter. I was thinking about what one of those servants following the cortège said to you about your Captain having been deprived through the death of his friend of the pleasure of fighting at least once a week. Did that make any sense to you?
JACQUES
: Certainly.
MASTER
: Well, it’s an enigma to me and I’d be obliged if you would explain it to me.
JACQUES
: What the devil has it got to do with you?
MASTER
: Not much, but when you speak you apparently like to be listened to, don’t you?
JACQUES
: Of course.
MASTER
: Then in all conscience, I don’t think I’ll be able to satisfy your requirements for as long as that inexplicable remark continues to vex my brain. Don’t leave me in this state, I beg you.
JACQUES
: Willingly. But swear to me at least that you won’t interrupt me any more.
MASTER
: Come what may, I swear it.
JACQUES
: It is simply that my Captain, a good man, a gallant man, a very worthy man, and one of the best officers in the corps, was something of an eccentric. He had met and made friends with another officer in the same regiment, who was also a good man, a gallant man, a very worthy man, just as good an officer as my Captain, and also just as much of an eccentric.
Jacques was on the point of beginning his Captain’s story when they heard a large number of men and horses coming up behind them. It was the same lugubrious carriage coming back, surrounded by…
– The excise men?
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No.
– The mounted constabulary?
Perhaps…
Whatever they were, the cortège was preceded by the priest in surplice and cassock, hands tied behind his back and the coachman in black, his hands tied behind his back and the two valets in black whose hands were also tied behind their backs. And who was in for a surprise? Why, Jacques, of course, who cried out: ‘My Captain, my poor Captain isn’t dead! God be praised!’
Jacques turned his horse around, spurred him and went as fast as he could towards the supposed cortège. He was not quite thirty feet from it when the excise men or the mounted constabulary took aim at him and shouted: ‘Stop! Go back or you’re a dead man!’
Jacques stopped, quite dead, and consulted for a moment with the voice of Destiny in his head. It seemed to him that Destiny was telling him: ‘Go back…’, so he did.
His master asked him: ‘Well then, Jacques, what’s it all about?’
JACQUES
: My God, I don’t know.
MASTER
: Why not?