Free Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master by Denis Diderot Page A

two important things? You are scolding me when you should thank me.
    JACQUES : My brother went to Lisbon in search of peace. Jean, my brother, was a smart lad – it was that which brought him misfortune. It would have been better for him if he had been an idiot like me – but then that was written up above. It was also written that the friar almoner from the Carmelites who used to come to our village to ask for eggs, wool, straw, fruit and wine all the year round would stay at my father’s house, and would corrupt Jean, my brother, and that Jean, my brother, would take a monk’s habit.
    MASTER : Jean, your brother, was a Carmelite?
    JACQUES : Yes, Monsieur, and a barefoot Carmelite at that. 13 He was active, intelligent, a haggler, he was the village lawyer. He knew how to read and write, and even as a young man he used to spend his time deciphering and copying out old manuscripts. He worked his way through all the jobs in the order one after the other – porter, bellringer, gardener, assistant to the procurator and treasurer. At the rate he was going he would have made all of us our fortunes. He married off two of our sisters, and a few other girls in the village, and married them off well at that. He couldn’t walk down the streets without fathers, mothers and children all running up to him and shouting out: ‘Good day, Friar Jean! How are you, Friar Jean?’
    It is certain that whenever he went into a house God’s blessing went with him and wherever there was a girl she’d be married two months after his visit! Poor Friar Jean. Ambition was his downfall.
    The Procurator of the House where Jean was assistant was old. The monks said that it was Jean’s plan to succeed him after his death, and that, to this end, he turned the deed room upside down, burnt all the old registers and made up new ones in such a way that on the death of the old Procurator the devil himself would have been unable to make head or tail of the community’s papers. If ever anyone needed a document he’d have to spend amonth looking for it and then often it couldn’t be found at all. The monks worked out what Friar Jean was up to and what his aim was. They took the thing very seriously and Friar Jean, instead of being procurator, as he flattered himself he would be, was reduced to bread and water and disciplined to the point where he eventually gave up the secret of his registers to someone else. Monks are merciless. When they had got all the enlightenment they needed from Friar Jean they made him the coal carrier for the laboratory where they made Carmelite liqueur. Friar Jean, former treasurer of the order and deputy procurator, now a coal carrier! Friar Jean had a stout heart but he could not tolerate his fall from importance and splendour and he was only waiting for the opportunity to escape from this humiliation.
    Now at about this time there arrived at the monastery a young monk who was accepted as the wonder of the order in the confessional and the pulpit. He was called Friar Angel. He had beautiful eyes, a handsome face, and the arms and hands of a sculptor’s model. There he was preaching sermons and more sermons, hearing confessions and more confessions and the old spiritual directors were abandoned by their female congregation who flocked to the young Friar Angel. The eve of every Sunday and feast day, Friar Angel’s confessional was surrounded by more and more penitents while the old fathers waited fruitlessly for business in their deserted confessionals which upset them a great deal… But, Monsieur, if perhaps I left the story of Friar Jean and carried on with the story of my loves, it might be more cheerful.
    MASTER : No, no. Let’s take a pinch of snuff, see what time it is and carry on.
    JACQUES : All right, if that’s what you want…
    But Jacques’ horse was of another opinion. All of a sudden it took the bit between its teeth and charged into a ditch. Jacques dug his knees into the beast’s side and pulled back hard