Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

return to our two travellers.
    This time it was Jacques who spoke first, and he said to his master:
    That’s the way the world goes… You, a man who has never in his life been wounded and who has no idea what it is like to be shot in the knee, you tell me, a man who has had his knee shattered and has had a limp for the last twenty years…
    MASTER : You may be right. But that impertinent surgeon is to blame for you still being on that cart with your companions, far from the hospital, far from being cured and far from falling in love.
    JACQUES : Whatever you might think, the pain in my knee was extreme. It was becoming more so with the hard ride in the wagon and the bumpy roads, and at every bump I screamed…
    MASTER : Because it was written up above that you’d scream?
    JACQUES : Undoubtedly! I was bleeding to death and I would have been a dead man if our wagon, which was the last in the column, hadn’t stopped in front of a cottage. There I asked to get down and I was helped to the ground. A young woman who was standing at the door of the cottage disappeared inside and came out again almost immediately with a glass and a bottle of wine. I drank one or two glasses quickly. The carts in front of ours moved off. They were getting ready to throw me back into the wagon amongst my companions, when grabbing hold of the woman’s clothes and everything else within reach I protested that I would not get back in and that, if I was going to die anyhow, I preferred to die on the spot rather than two miles further on. As I finished these words I fainted. When I came to I found myself undressed and lying in bed in the corner of the cottage with a peasant – themaster of the house – his wife, the woman who had rescued me, and a few young children gathered around me. The woman had soaked the corner of her apron in vinegar and was rubbing my nose and temples with it.
    MASTER : Ah! You villain! You rogue! You traitor! I can see what’s coming.
    JACQUES : My master, I don’t think you see anything.
    MASTER : Isn’t this the woman you’re going to fall in love with?
    JACQUES : And if I were to have fallen in love with her, what could you say about that? Is one free to fall in love or not to fall in love? And if one is, is one free to act as if one wasn’t? If the thing had been written up above, everything which you are about to say to me now I would already have said to myself. I would have slapped my own face, I would have beaten my head against the wall, I would have torn out my hair, and it would have been no more or less so, and my benefactor would have been cuckolded.
    MASTER : But if one follows your reasoning there can be no remorse for any crime.
    JACQUES : That objection has bothered me more than once, but for all that, however reluctantly, I always come back to what my Captain used to say: ‘Everything which happens to us in this world, good or bad, is written up above…’
    Do you, Monsieur, know any way of erasing this writing?
    Can I be anything other than myself, and being me, can I act otherwise than I do?
    Can I be myself and somebody else?
    And ever since I have been in this world, has there ever been one single moment when it has not been so?
    You may preach as much as you wish. Your reasons may perhaps be good, but if it is written within me or up above that I will find them bad, what can I do about it?
    MASTER : I am wondering about something… that is whether your benefactor would have been cuckolded because it was written up above or whether it was written up above because you cuckolded your benefactor.
    JACQUES : The two were written side by side. Everything was written at the same time. It is like a great scroll which is unrolled little by little.
    You can imagine, Reader, to what lengths I might take this conversation on a subject which has been talked about and written about so much for the last two thousand years without getting one step further forward. If you are not grateful to me for what I am