Jacques told him it was the two keys to the bedrooms.

MASTER: Why didn’t you give them back?

JACQUES: Because they’ll have to break down two doors – our neighbours’ to release them from captivity, and ours to get back their clothes, and that will give us some time.

MASTER: Very good, Jacques, but why gain time?

JACQUES: Why? My God, I don’t know.

MASTER: And if you want to gain time, why go as slowly as you are going?

JACQUES: Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.

My Captain used to believe that prudence is a supposition in which experience justifies us interpreting the circumstances in which we find ourselves as the cause of certain effects which are to be desired or feared in the future.

MASTER: And did you understand any of that?

JACQUES: Of course. I had little by little grown used to his way of speaking. But who, he used to ask, can ever boast of having enough experience? Has even he who flatters himself on being the most experienced of men never been fooled? And then, what man is there who is capable of correctly assessing the circumstances in which he finds himself? The calculation which we make in our heads and the one recorded on the register up above are two very different calculations. Is it we who control Destiny or Destiny which controls us? How many wisely conceived projects have failed and will fail in the future! How many insane projects have succeeded and will succeed! That is what my Captain kept repeating to me after the capture of Berg-op-Zoom and Port-Mahon.3 And he added that prudence in no way assured us of success but consoled us and excused us in failure. And so on the eve of any action he would sleep as well in his tent as in barracks and he would go into battle as if to a ball. And you might well have said of him: ‘What kind of devil of a man!…’

MASTER: Could you tell me what is a foolish man, and what is a wise man?

JACQUES: Why not?… A foolish man… wait a moment… is an unhappy man. And consequently a happy man is a wise man.

MASTER: And what is a happy man or an unhappy man?

JACQUES: Well, that one’s easy. A happy man is someone whose happiness is written up above, and consequently someone whose unhappiness is written up above is an unhappy man.

MASTER: And who is it up there who wrote out this good and bad fortune up above?

JACQUES: And who created the great scroll on which it is all written? A captain friend of my own Captain would have given a pretty penny to know that. But my Captain wouldn’t have paid an obol, nor would I, for what good would it do me? Would I manage to avoid the hole where I am destined to break my neck?

MASTER: I think so.

JACQUES: Well, I think not because there would have to be an incorrect line on the great scroll which contains the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In that case it would have to be written on the scroll that Jacques would break his neck on such a day and Jacques would not break his neck. Can you imagine for one moment that that could happen, whoever made the great scroll?

MASTER: There are a number of things one could say about that…

At this point they heard a lot of noise and shouting coming from some distance behind them. They looked round and saw a band of men armed with sticks and forks coming towards them as fast as they could run. You are going to believe that it was the people from the inn and their servants and the brigands we have spoken of. You are going to believe that in the morning they broke down their doors since they didn’t have the keys and that these brigands thought that our travellers had decamped with their possessions. That is what Jacques thought and he said between his teeth: ‘Damn the keys and damn the fantasy or reason which made me take them. Damn prudence, etc. etc.!’

You are going to believe that this little army will fall upon Jacques and his master, that there will be a bloody fight, blows with sticks and pistol shots, and if I wanted to I could make all of these things happen, but then it would be goodbye to the truth of the story and goodbye to the story of Jacques’ loves.

Our two travellers were not followed. I do not know what happened in the inn after they left. They carried on their way still going without knowing where they were going although they knew more or less where they wanted to go, relieving their boredom and fatigue by silence and conversation, as is the custom of those who walk, and sometimes of those who are sitting down.

It is quite obvious that I am not writing a novel since I am neglecting those things which a novelist would not fail to use. The person who takes what I write for the truth might perhaps be less wrong than the person who takes it for a fiction.

This time it was the master who spoke first, and he started with the usual refrain: ‘Well now, Jacques, the story of your loves?’

JACQUES: I don’t remember where I had got to. I’ve been interrupted so many times that I would do just as well to start all over again.

MASTER: No, no. When you had come round after fainting at the door of the cottage you found yourself in bed surrounded by the people who lived there.

JACQUES: Very good. The most pressing thing was to get hold of a surgeon and there wasn’t one within less than a league. The peasant put one of his children on a horse and sent him off to the nearest one. Meanwhile the peasant’s wife had heated up some table wine, torn up one of her husband’s old shirts and my knee was cleaned, covered with compresses and wrapped in linen. They put a few pieces of sugar they had saved from the ants into part of the wine which had been used for the bandage and I drank it down. Next they told me to be patient. It was late. The family sat down to table and had supper. Supper was finished and the child had still not come back and there was no surgeon.