Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master (17 page)

HOSTESS
: Willingly. Some of them were worth it, even if I don’t take you into account. Do you know that for ten whole years I was the officers’ financial standby, everything above board. I must have helped scores of them
who would have had an awful job getting themselves kitted out for the year’s campaigning without me. But they were good men and I’ve no cause to complain about any of them, nor them of me. I never asked for pledges, though sometimes they used to make me wait. But at the end of two, three or four years my money was returned…

And of course that set her off on the list of officers who had done her the honour of drawing from her purse, the colonel of the †††† Regiment, Captain so and so of the ****** Regiment, and Jacques cried out: ‘My Captain! My poor Captain! Did you know him then?’

HOSTESS
: Monsieur le Marquis des Arcis and Mme de La Pommeraye embraced, absolutely delighted with each other, and went their ways. But because she had suppressed her feelings so much when he was there, her grief was all the more violent when he had left.

‘It’s only too true…’ she cried out, ‘he doesn’t love me any more.’

I will not describe to you in detail all the wild and foolish things we women do when we are abandoned because that would only flatter your vanity. I have already told you that this woman was proud, but her pride was nothing to her vindictiveness. When her first furies had calmed and her mood turned to cold indignation her thoughts turned to avenging herself, and to avenging
herself in a cruel way, in a way which would frighten all those who in future would be tempted to seduce and deceive honest women. She had her revenge, a cruel revenge, a public revenge, but it turned against her and served as a lesson to no one. Since that time we have not been any the less cruelly seduced or deceived.

HOSTESS
: Yes, well said. But our bottles are empty…

‘Jean!’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Bring up two bottles from the special reserve at the back, behind the firewood.’

‘I understand.’

Eventually, after much thought, this is the idea she had. In earlier times Mme de La Pommeraye had once known a woman from the provinces who had been obliged to come up to Paris with her daughter, who was young and beautiful and well brought up. She had learnt that this woman, ruined by the loss of her case, had been reduced to running a bawdy-house.
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People used to go to her house, gamble, have dinner and generally one or two of her guests would stay and spend the night with either the lady of the house or her daughter, at their choice. She set one of her people on the trail of these creatures. They were tracked down and invited to visit Mme de La Pommeraye, whom, of course, they hardly remembered. These women had taken the names Mme and Mlle d’Aisnon and they did not wait for a second invitation. The very next day the mother arrived to see Mme de La Pommeraye. After paying her compliments Mme de La Pommeraye asked the d’Aisnon woman what she was doing and what she had been doing since the loss of her case.

‘To tell you the truth,’ replied the d’Aisnon woman, ‘I am in a dangerous business which is shameful, hardly lucrative, and which revolts me. But necessity knows no law. I had almost decided to get my daughter taken on at the Opera but she only has a little chamber music voice and has never been more than a mediocre dancer. I took her all round Paris, during and after my
trial, to magistrates, noblemen, priests, speculators, and they all showed interest for a while, but then lost interest. It’s not that she isn’t beautiful, nor that she’s not pretty as an angel, and it’s not because she lacks finesse or grace. It’s just that there’s no devilry in her, none of those talents needed for stirring jaded men from their lethargy. So these days I ask people to gamble and eat, and whoever wants to stay the night stays. But what hindered us the most is that she became infatuated with some aristocratic little abbé who is impious, unbelieving, dissolute, hypocritical, anti-philosophical and whom I won’t name.
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He is only the latest in a long line of them who in order to obtain a bishopric have taken the route which is at the same time the most sure and the one requiring the least talent. I don’t know what he used to say to my daughter, but he used to come every day and read her extracts from his latest compilation or whatever he had scribbled over his lunch or dinner. Would he be bishop, wouldn’t he be bishop? Anyway, thank God they fell out. My daughter asked him one day if he knew the people he was writing against and the little priest told her that he didn’t. She asked him if his views were any different from those of the people he ridiculed and he told her they were not. She allowed herself to lose her temper and told him that what he was doing made him the most wicked and two-faced of men.’

Madame de La Pommeraye asked her if they were both very well known.

‘Far too well, unfortunately.’

‘From what I can see you don’t care for your present condition.’

‘Not at all, and my daughter complains daily that even the most miserable existence would be preferable to hers. She is now so melancholic that she’s putting the men off…’

‘What if I took it into my head to give you both the most brilliant future? Would you agree to it?’

‘I’d agree to a lot less.’

‘But first of all I must know whether you are able to promise me that you will follow to the letter the orders I will give you.’

‘Whatever it is, you can count on it.’

‘And will you be at my disposal whenever I want?’

‘We will await your orders with impatience.’

‘That is enough. You may go now and you will not have long to wait. While you are waiting, get rid of your possessions. Sell everything. Do not keep even your dresses if you have any that are even slightly gaudy. That would not fit in with my plans at all.’

Jacques, who had begun to get interested, said to their hostess: ‘Perhaps if we were to drink to the health of Mme de La Pommeraye?’

HOSTESS
: Go ahead, Monsieur Jacques, the cellar isn’t empty… Here are their rules – or what I remember of them:

‘You will not go near public places because you must not be recognized.

‘You must not receive anyone into your house, not even your neighbours or their wives, because you must affect to lead a very secluded life.

‘From tomorrow you must dress like church-goers because people must take you for such.

‘The only books which you may have in your house are books of devotion because there must be nothing around you which can betray you.

‘You will attend the services of the parish with the greatest assiduity, both on work days and feast days.

‘You will find a way of introducing yourselves into the parlour of some convent, because the chitter-chatter of these recluses will not be without use to us.

‘You will strike up the closest acquaintance with the parish priest and the other priests in the parish because we may need them to act as references for you.

‘You will not allow anyone to visit you regularly.

‘You will go to confession and take communion at least twice a month.

‘You will resume your family name because it is an unsullied name and sooner or later inquiries will be made in your province.

‘From time to time you will make small charitable donations but you will
never accept any alms under any pretext whatsoever. Nobody must think you either rich or poor.

‘You must spin, sew, knit and embroider and give all your work to the sisters of charity to be sold.

‘You will live in the strictest sobriety. Two small portions sent up to you from the inn and that is it.

‘Your daughter will never go out without you, nor you without her.

‘You will neglect no way of offering an edifying spectacle if it is inexpensive.

‘Above all you must never, and I repeat, never, receive into your house either priests, monks or church-goers.

‘In the streets you will go about with your eyes at all times lowered. In the church you will have eyes only for God.

‘I admit that this life is austere but it won’t last for long, and I promise you that you will be well rewarded for it. Now, consider it. If this discipline seems beyond your capabilities, admit it to me and I will be neither offended nor surprised. I forgot to tell you that it would be fitting for you to familiarize yourselves with all the verbiage of mysticism and the story of the Old and New testaments so that you will be taken for church-goers of long standing. Make yourselves Jansenists or Jesuits,
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whichever you want, but it would be best for you to be of the same inclination as your parish priest. And be sure at every opportunity, appropriate or inappropriate, to heap invective on the Philosophers. Cry out that Voltaire is the Antichrist. Learn by heart the writings of your little priest and circulate them if necessary…’

Madame de La Pommeraye added: ‘I will not come to see you at your house. I am not worthy to be the guest of such devout women. But do not worry. You will come here secretly sometimes and we will privately find ways of making up for the austerity of your penitential regime. But, however much you play at devotion, you must not let yourselves become seriously caught up in it. As for the expense of your little household, I will see to all that. If my plan succeeds, you will no longer have need of me. If it goes wrong through no fault of yours, I am rich enough to ensure that you have an honest future, better than the life you have sacrificed for me. But above all I require submission, absolute, unlimited submission, to my will, without which I will guarantee nothing for the moment and make no promises for the future.’