Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master (21 page)

MME DE LA POMMERAYE
: From what has happened I did well not to. The wife you are going to have suits you in every way better than I would.

Madame de La Pommeraye made her inquiries with all the precision and rapidity she wanted. She produced for the Marquis the most glowing of testimonials, both from Paris and the country. She made the Marquis wait another fortnight so that he might take stock of himself once more. This fortnight seemed an eternity to him. At last the Marquise was obliged to give in to his impatience and his entreaties. The first meeting took place at the house of her friends. Everything was agreed. The banns were published. The Marquis gave Mme de La Pommeraye a superb diamond, and the marriage was consummated.

HOSTESS
: Don’t think. Just remember what your master told you…

And as she said that she smiled and as she smiled she passed her hand over Jacques’ face and pinched his nose: ‘It was the next day.’

HOSTESS
: Not exactly. The next day Mme de La Pommeraye sent the Marquis a note inviting him to go to her house as soon as he could on an important matter. The Marquis did not keep her waiting. When she received him her face expressed her indignation in all its violence. Her speech was not lengthy.

‘Marquis,’ she said to him, ‘learn to know me. If other women valued themselves enough to show the resentment I feel, men like you would be less common. You acquired an honest woman whom you could not keep. That woman was me. She has avenged herself on you by making you marry someone who is worthy of you. Leave my house and go to the Hôtel de Hambourg in the rue Traversière where you will learn the filthy trade your wife and mother-in-law carried on for ten years under the name of d’Aisnon.’

It would be impossible to describe the surprise and consternation of the poor Marquis. He did not know what to think, but his uncertainty lasted only the time it took to go from one end of town to the other. For the rest of the day he did not return home but wandered the streets. His mother-in-law and his wife had some suspicion of what had happened. At the first knock on the door his mother-in-law fled to her apartment and locked herself in. His wife waited for him alone. As her husband approached she could read on his face the fury which possessed him. She threw herself at his feet, her face pressed against the parquet, silent.

‘Get out, you unspeakable creature. Get away from me.’

She wanted to get up but she fell back down on her face again, her hands stretched out on the floor between the Marquis’ feet.

‘Monsieur,’ she said to him, ‘trample me underfoot, crush me, for I have deserved it. Do with me whatever you will, but spare my mother.’

‘Get away from me!’ repeated the Marquis. ‘Get away from me! It is enough that you have covered me with shame. Spare me a crime.’

The poor creature stayed in the same position and did not reply. The Marquis was sitting in an armchair, his head cradled in his arms, half leaning forward against the foot of his bed and shouting at her from time to time without looking at her: ‘Get away from me!’

The silence and immobility of the girl took him by surprise and he shouted at her even more loudly: ‘Get out, do you hear me!’

Next he bent down and pushed her away heavily. Realizing that she was unconscious and almost dead, he took her round the waist and laid her down on a sofa. For a short while he stood looking at her with an expression which alternated between commiseration and anger. He rang and his valets came. Her maids were summoned and he told them: ‘Take your mistress. She is ill. Carry her into her apartment and look after her.’

A few moments afterwards he secretly sent for news of her. They told him that she had come round from her first faint but that her swoons were following in rapid succession. They were so frequent and so long that it was impossible to say whether she would recover. One or two hours afterwards he again sent secretly to find out about her condition. He was told that she was suffocating and that there had come over her a kind of repeated choking which could be heard as far away as the courtyard. The third time, towards daybreak, they told him that she had cried a lot, that her gasping had calmed and that she appeared to be dozing.

The following day the Marquis gave orders for his horses to be harnessed to his carriage and disappeared for a fortnight without anybody knowing where he had gone. However, before going, he had made all the necessary arrangements for the mother and the daughter, and had given orders that Madame’s commands were to be obeyed as if they were his own.

During this time the two women remained in each other’s company hardly speaking, the daughter sobbing and occasionally crying out, tearing her hair and wringing her hands, the mother not daring to go near her or console her. One was the picture of despair, the other the picture of stubborn endurance. The daughter said to her mother twenty times: ‘Mother, let us leave here, let us escape,’ and as many times the mother rejected the idea, replying: ‘No, my daughter, we must stay. We must see what happens. This man is not going to kill us.’

‘I wish to God he had already done so,’ said her daughter.

Her mother replied: ‘You would do better to keep quiet than to speak like a fool.’

On his return the Marquis shut himself in his study and wrote two letters, one to his wife, one to his mother-in-law. The latter left the same day and went to a Carmelite convent in the next town, where she died a few days ago. Her daughter got dressed and dragged herself to her husband’s apartment, to which he had apparently summoned her. At the door she threw herself to her knees.

‘Get up,’ the Marquis told her…

Instead of getting up she went forward to him on her knees. Her whole body was shaking. Her hair was dishevelled. She was bending forward, her hands by her side, her head raised up, her gaze fixed on his eyes and her face flooded with tears.

‘I think I perceive’, she said to him, a sob separating her every word, ‘that your justly outraged heart has softened and that perhaps with time I will obtain mercy from you. Monsieur, I beg you, do not hasten to forgive me. So many honest girls have become dishonest wives that perhaps I will provide an example to the contrary. I am not yet worthy enough for you to come near me, but wait and only leave me with the hope of forgiveness. Keep me far away from you. You will see my conduct. You will judge it. I will be a thousand times too happy, a thousand times, if you deign occasionally to summon me! Mark out for me an obscure corner of your house where you will allow me to live. I will stay there without complaint. Ah! If only I could tear away from me the name and the title which I have been made to usurp, and then die afterwards. I would instantly give you such satisfaction. I have allowed myself through weakness, seduction, domination and threats to be led to an infamous action. But do not believe, Monsieur, that I am wicked. I am not since I did not hesitate to appear before you when you summoned me and I now dare to set eyes on you and speak to you. Ah! If you could only read the bottom of my heart and see how far away from me are my past faults, how the morals of those others of my kind are alien to me. Corruption alighted on me but did not gain hold. I know myself and will do myself justice on this point, which is that by my tastes, my emotions and my character I was born worthy of the honour of belonging to you. Ah! If I had only been free to see you. I would only have needed to speak one word and I believe that I would have had the courage. Monsieur, do with me what you want. Summon your people. Let them strip me naked and throw me into the street at night. I will consent to everything. Whatever destiny you are preparing for me, I will submit to it. Some remote part of the country, the
obscurity of some cloister, would remove me forever from your eyes. Just speak and I will go there. Your happiness is not lost without hope and you will be able to forget me.’

‘Get up,’ the Marquis said softly, ‘I have forgiven you. Even as I received the offence. I respected my wife in you. Not one word has left my lips which has humiliated her or at least of which I do not repent and I promise that she will not hear one more word to humiliate her, if she only remembers that one cannot make one’s spouse unhappy without becoming unhappy oneself. Be honest, be happy, and make me the same. Get up, I beg you, my wife, get up and embrace me. Madame la Marquise, get up! You are not in your proper place! Madame des Arcis, get up!’

While he was speaking she had stayed where she was, her face in her hands and her head pressed between the knees of the Marquis, but at the words ‘My wife’, at the words ‘Madame des Arcis’, she got up sharply and threw herself on to the Marquis. She held him in her arms, half suffocated by sorrow and joy. Then she pulled away from him, threw herself to the floor and kissed his feet.

‘Ah!’ the Marquis said to her, ‘I have told you that I have forgiven you and I can see that you do not believe a word of it.’

‘It is necessary’, she replied, ‘that it be so and that I never believe it.’

The Marquis added: ‘In all honesty I believe that I regret nothing and that this Pommeraye woman, instead of avenging herself, has done me a great service. My wife, go and get dressed while our luggage is being packed. We are leaving for my estates where we will stay until we can show ourselves here again without consequence for either of us.’

They spent nearly three years away from the capital.

MASTER
: I’d go along with you, but to be honest I do not know why because I was not at all happy with this girl during the course of the schemings between Mme de La Pommeraye and the girl’s mother. Not one moment’s fear, not the slightest sign of uncertainty, not the slightest remorse. I saw her lend herself to this long and horrible scheme without any repugnance. Whatever was wanted of her, she never hesitated to do it. She went to confession and went to communion, she played at religion and played along with its ministers. She seemed to me to be as false, as despicable and as wicked as the two others.

Madame, you tell a story quite well, but you are not yet skilled enough in dramatic art. If you had wanted us to feel for this young woman, you should have made her honest and shown her to us as an innocent victim forced to her actions by her mother and de La Pommeraye. She should have been forced, against her will, by the cruellest treatment, to participate in a series of hideous and continual crimes lasting a year. That was how the reconciliation of this woman with her husband should have been prepared. When one introduces a character on the stage the role of that character must be consistent. Now, I ask you, dear lady, is the girl who plots with our two scoundrels the same imploring wife we have seen at her husband’s feet? You have sinned against the rules of Aristotle, Horace, de Vida and Le Bossu.
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