Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master (24 page)

JACQUES
: Made or not, that’s how it has been for all time, is now, and ever shall be. Do you imagine that other men have not looked for a way to escape from this decree or that you are cleverer than them? Rid yourself of that idea and submit yourself to the rule of a necessity from which you cannot escape.

Whereas it is agreed: Secondly, considering that it is just as impossible for Jacques not to know his ascendancy over his master as it is for his master to be unaware of his own weakness and divest himself of his indulgence, it is therefore necessary that Jacques be insolent, and that for the sake of peace his master not notice. All of this was arranged without our knowledge, all of this was sealed by Fate at the moment when nature created Jacques and his master. It was ordained that you would have the title to the thing and I would have the thing itself. If you wish to oppose yourself to the will of nature you will only make a fool of yourself.

JACQUES
: In the great book. Ah! Master, no matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book.

After lunch the sun came out. A few travellers assured them that the stream could now be crossed. Jacques went downstairs. His master paid their hostess very generously. At the door of the inn quite a large number of travellers who had been held back by the bad weather were getting ready to continue on their way. Among these travellers were Jacques and his master, the man who had made the ridiculous marriage and his friend. Those travellers who were on foot had taken their sticks and their bundles, others had got into their wagons or coaches and those with horses were mounted up drinking stirrup cups. Their gracious hostess had a bottle in one hand and was giving out glasses and filling them, not forgetting her own. They all made obliging remarks to her which she replied to with politeness and gaiety. Then they spurred their horses, waved goodbye and went off into the distance.

It so happened that Jacques, his master, the Marquis des Arcis and his young travelling companion were going the same way. Out of these four characters only the last one is unknown to you. He was barely twenty-two or twenty-three. His face showed that he was a person of great timidity. He carried his head a little inclined towards his left shoulder. He was quiet and showed hardly any knowledge of worldly ways. If he bowed he lowered the upper part of his body without moving his legs. When seated he had the peculiar habit of taking the tails of his coat and crossing them on his thighs, keeping his hands in the pockets, and also the peculiar habit of listening to whoever was speaking with his eyes almost shut. From this extraordinary bearing of his, Jacques figured him out, and moving close to his master’s ear he said: ‘I bet you that young man was a monk.’

‘Why is that, Jacques?’

‘You’ll see.’

Our four travellers carried on together, talking about the rain, good weather, their hostess, their host and about the argument the Marquis des
Arcis had had about Nicole. This starved and filthy bitch kept wiping herself on his stockings and, after he had chased her away several times with his napkin to no avail, out of impatience he let fly a rather violent kick… And then all of a sudden the conversation turned to this singular attachment women have for animals. Everyone said what they thought. Jacques’ master turned towards Jacques and said: ‘And you, Jacques, what do you think?’

Jacques asked his master if he had ever noticed that no matter what poverty people lived in, even if they hadn’t got enough bread for themselves, they always kept dogs. If he hadn’t noticed that these dogs were always trained to turn circles, walk on their hind legs, dance, retrieve, jump into the air at the name of the king or the queen or play dead, and this training had made them the most unfortunate beasts in the world. From this he concluded that every man wants to command another and that since animals are immediately below the lowest classes of society which are ordered around by all the other classes, these get hold of animals so that they too can order someone around…

‘And so,’ said Jacques, ‘everyone has his dog. The Minister is the King’s dog, the First Secretary is the Minister’s dog, the wife is the husband’s dog, or the husband the wife’s dog. Favori is so-and-so’s dog and Thibault is the man on the corner’s dog.

‘When my master makes me speak when I want to be silent, which in all honesty happens rarely,’ continued Jacques, ‘or when he makes me silent when I want to speak, which is very difficult, or when he asks me to tell the story of my loves when I want to talk about something else, or when I have started the story of my loves and he interrupts me, am I anything other than his dog? Weak men are the dogs of the strong.’

MASTER
: No.

The Marquis des Arcis turned his eyes on Jacques, smiled at his ideas, and then, speaking to his master, he said: ‘That is a most extraordinary servant you have there.’

MASTER
: A servant. You are too kind. It is I who am his. And he almost proved it to me this morning in due and established form.

While they were talking they arrived at the place where they were to spend the night, and took rooms together. Jacques’ master and the Marquis des Arcis had supper together. Jacques and the young man were served separately. The master explained to the Marquis in four words the story of Jacques and his fatalistic turn of mind. The Marquis spoke of the young man who was with him. He had been a Premonstratensian and had left his abbey through a bizarre incident.
⁴⁶
Some friends of the Marquis had recommended him to the Marquis who had made him his secretary while waiting for better things.

‘That’s funny.’

‘What do you find funny about that?’

‘I was speaking of Jacques. Hardly had we gone into the inn we have just left when Jacques whispered to me: “Monsieur, take a good look at that young man. I bet that he was a monk.” ’

‘He guessed correctly, but I don’t know how. Do you normally go to bed early?’

‘Not usually, and this evening I am in even less of a hurry since we have only made half a day’s travel.’

‘If you have nothing more useful or agreeable to do I will tell you the story of my secretary. It’s rather unusual.’

‘I’ll be glad to hear it.’

I can hear you, Reader, you are asking me: ‘What about the story of Jacques’ loves?…’

Do you think that I am not as curious as you? Have you forgotten that Jacques loved to speak, and especially about himself, which is the normal obsession of people of his condition, an obsession which raises them from their debasement, which puts them on a pedestal and suddenly transforms them into interesting people? What do you think is the reason that the populace is attracted to public executions? Inhumanity? Well, you are wrong. The populace is not inhuman but if it could it would tear from the hands of justice the unfortunate man around whose gallows it gathers.

The man in the street goes to the Place de Grève so that he can see something which he can in his turn tell to others in his suburb. Whatever the scene it doesn’t matter, just so long as it gives him a role to play, makes his neighbours gather round him, and makes them listen to him. Put on some exciting festival on the boulevard and you will see that the place of execution will be empty. The populace is hungry for something to look at and goes there because it enjoys seeing it and even more enjoys telling others about it afterwards. The populace is terrible in its fury but that does not last long. Its own poverty has made it compassionate and it turns its eyes away from the spectacle of horror which it has gone to see, is moved to pity and goes home crying.

Everything which I have just told you, Reader, I was told by Jacques. I admit it to you because I do not like to take the credit for the cleverness of others. Jacques knew neither the word vice nor the word virtue. He claimed that we were all born at a good or an evil hour. When he heard the words reward or punishment he used to shrug his shoulders. According to him reward was the encouragement of the good and punishment the fear of the wicked. How could it be otherwise, he used to ask, if we have no freedom and our destiny is written up above? He believed that a man follows his path towards glory or ignominy as ineluctably as a boulder with consciousness of its self might roll down the side of a mountain, and that if the series of causes and effects which form the life of a man, beginning at the first moment of his birth up to his last breath, were known to us, we would remain convinced that he had only ever done the inevitable.

I have often argued the contrary with him but to no avail and without success. What does one say to somebody who says: ‘Whatever the sum total of the elements I am composed of I am still one entity. Now one cause has only one effect. I have always been one single cause and I have therefore only ever had one effect to produce. My existence in time is therefore nothing more than a series of necessary effects’?

Thus did Jacques reason in the manner of his Captain. The distinction between a physical world and a moral world seemed to him to be devoid of sense. His Captain had crammed into Jacques’ head all these opinions which he had found in his Spinoza, whom he knew by heart. According to this system one might imagine that Jacques neither rejoiced in nor despaired of anything. But that was not, however, quite correct. He acted more or less like you and me. He thanked his benefactor so that he might do him more good and got angry with the unjust man. When people pointed out to him that this was like a dog biting the stone that hurt him, he would say: ‘No, the stone
that the dog bites will not correct itself but the unjust man is often corrected by the stick.’

Like you and me he was often inconsistent, and inclined to forget his principles, except, of course, in the moments when his philosophy dominated him and then he would say: ‘That had to be so because it was written up above.’

He tried to anticipate misfortune and while he showed the greatest disdain for prudence he was always prudent. When misfortune struck he came back to his motto and was always consoled by it. Otherwise he was a good man, frank, honest, courageous, loyal, faithful, very stubborn, even more talkative and as upset as you and me at having started the story of his loves with hardly any hope of finishing it.
⁴⁷

And so I advise you, Reader, to submit yourself to the inevitable and in the absence of the story of Jacques’ loves to make the best of the story of the Marquis des Arcis’ secretary. Besides, I can see him, this poor Jacques, his neck wrapped in a large handkerchief, his gourd, hitherto full of good wine, now holding no more than tisane, coughing and cursing the hostess of the inn they had just left and her champagne, which he would not be doing if he only remembered that everything is written up above, even his cold.

And what is this, Reader? One love story after another! That makes one, two, three, four love stories I’ve told you and three or four more still to come. That is a lot of love stories. It is also a fact that since I am writing for you I must either go without your applause or follow your taste, and you have shown a decided taste for love stories. All of your works, whether in prose or verse, are love stories. Nearly all your poems, elegies, eclogues, idylls, songs, epistles, comedies, tragedies and operas are love stories. Nearly all your paintings and sculptures are no more than love stories. Love stories have been your only food ever since you existed, and you show no sign of ever growing tired of them. You have been kept on this diet and will be kept on it for a very long time to come, all of you, men, women and children, both big and small, and you will never grow tired of it. To be truthful it is really very strange… I wish that the Marquis’ secretary’s story was yet another kind of love story, but I am afraid that it is nothing of the kind, and you will be bored. Well, that is too bad for the Marquis des Arcis, too bad for Jacques’ master, for you, Reader, and for me too.

There comes a moment when nearly all young girls and young boys become melancholic. They are disturbed by a vague uneasiness which extends to everything and can find no consolation. They look for solitude. They weep. The silence of the cloister moves them and the image of peace
which seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first movements of their developing emotions for the voice of God calling them and it is at the precise moment when nature is calling to them that they embrace a life which is contrary to the laws of nature. Their mistake does not last. The voice of nature becomes clearer and is heard and the prisoner falls into regrets, listlessness, swooning, madness or despair.’

That was how the Marquis des Arcis started.

‘At the age of seventeen, disgusted with the world, Richard left his father’s house to take the habit of a Premonstratensian.’