HAR. Valère, you will have to give me your help in this business. Now,
Master Jacques, I kept you for the last.
JAC. Is it to your coachman, Sir, or to your cook you want to speak,
for I am both the one and the other?
HAR. To both.
JAC. But to which of the two first?
HAR. To the cook.
JAC. Then wait a minute, if you please.
(JACQUES _takes off his stable-coat and appears dressed as a cook._)
HAR. What the deuce is the meaning of this ceremony?
JAC. Now I am at your service.
HAR. I have engaged myself, Master Jacques, to give a supper to-night.
JAC. (_aside_). Wonderful!
HAR. Tell me, can you give us a good supper?
JAC. Yes, if you give me plenty of money.
HAR. The deuce! Always money! I think they have nothing else to say
except money, money, money! Always that same word in their mouth,
money! They always speak of money! It's their pillow companion, money!
VAL. Never did I hear such an impertinent answer! Would you call it
wonderful to provide good cheer with plenty of money? Is it not the
easiest thing in the world? The most stupid could do as much. But a
clever man should talk of a good supper with little money.
JAC. A good supper with little money?
VAL. Yes.
JAC. (_to_ VALÈRE). Indeed, Mr. Steward, you will oblige me greatly by
telling me your secret, and also, if you like, by filling my place as
cook; for you keep on meddling here, and want to be everything.
HAR. Hold your tongue. What shall we want?
JAC. Ask that of Mr. Steward, who will give you good cheer with little
money.
HAR. Do you hear? I am speaking to you, and expect you to answer me.
JAC. How many will there be at your table?
HAR. Eight or ten; but you must only reckon for eight. When there is
enough for eight, there is enough for ten.
VAL. That is evident.
JAC. Very well, then; you must have four tureens of soup and five side
dishes; soups, entrées ...
HAR. What! do you mean to feed a whole town?
JAC. Roast ...
HAR. (_clapping his hand on_ MASTER JACQUES' _mouth_). Ah! Wretch! you
are eating up all my substance.
JAC. Entremêts ...
HAR. (_again putting his hand on_ JACQUES' _mouth_). More still?
VAL. (_to_ JACQUES). Do you mean to kill everybody? And has your
master invited people in order to destroy them with over-feeding? Go
and read a little the precepts of health, and ask the doctors if there
is anything so hurtful to man as excess in eating.
HAR. He is perfectly right.
VAL. Know, Master Jacques, you and people like you, that a table
overloaded with eatables is a real cut-throat; that, to be the true
friends of those we invite, frugality should reign throughout the
repast we give, and that according to the saying of one of the
ancients, "We must eat to live, and not live to eat."
HAR. Ah! How well the man speaks! Come near, let me embrace you for
this last saying. It is the finest sentence that I have ever heard in
my life: "We must live to eat, and not eat to live." No; that isn't
it. How do you say it?
VAL. That we must eat to live, and not live to eat.
HAR. (_to_ MASTER JACQUES). Yes. Do you hear that? (_To_ VALÈRE) Who
is the great man who said that?
VAL. I do not exactly recollect his name just now.
HAR. Remember to write down those words for me. I will have them
engraved in letters of gold over the mantel-piece of my dining-room.
VAL. I will not fail. As for your supper, you had better let me manage
it. I will see that it is all as it should be.
HAR. Do so.
JAC. So much the better; all the less work for me.
HAR. (_to_ VALÈRE). We must have some of those things of which it is
not possible to eat much, and that satisfy directly. Some good fat
beans, and a pâté well stuffed with chestnuts.
VAL. Trust to me.
HAR. Now, Master Jacques, you must clean my carriage.
JAC. Wait a moment; this is to the coachman. (JACQUES _puts on his
coat._) You say ...
HAR. That you must clean my carriage, and have my horses ready to
drive to the fair.
JAC. Your horses! Upon my word, Sir, they are not at all in a
condition to stir. I won't tell you that they are laid up, for the
poor things have got nothing to lie upon, and it would not be telling
the truth. But you make them keep such rigid fasts that they are
nothing but phantoms, ideas, and mere shadows of horses.
HAR. They are much to be pitied. They have nothing to do.
JAC. And because they have nothing to do, must they have nothing to
eat? It would be much better for them, poor things, to work much and
eat to correspond. It breaks my heart to see them so reduced; for, in
short, I love my horses; and when I see them suffer, it seems as if it
were myself. Every day I take the bread out of my own mouth to feed
them; and it is being too hard-hearted, Sir, to have no compassion
upon one's neighbour.
HAR. It won't be very hard work to go to the fair.
JAC. No, Sir. I haven't the heart to drive them; it would go too much
against my conscience to use the whip to them in the state they are
in. How could you expect them to drag a carriage? They have not even
strength enough to drag themselves along.
VAL. Sir, I will ask our neighbour, Picard, to drive them;
particularly as we shall want his help to get the supper ready.
JAC. Be it so. I had much rather they should die under another's hand
than under mine.
VAL. Master Jacques is mightily considerate.
JAC. Mr. Steward is mightily indispensable.
HAR. Peace.
JAC. Sir, I can't bear these flatteries, and I can see that, whatever
this man does, his continual watching after the bread, wine, wood,
salt, and candles, is done but to curry favour and to make his court
to you. I am indignant to see it all; and I am sorry to hear every day
what is said of you; for, after all, I have a certain tenderness for
you; and, except my horses, you are the person I like most in the
world.
HAR. And I would know from you, Master Jacques, what it is that is
said of me.
JAC. Yes, certainly, Sir, if I were sure you would not get angry with
me.
HAR. No, no; never fear.
JAC. Excuse me, but I am sure you will be angry.
HAR. No, on the contrary, you will oblige me. I should be glad to know
what people say of me.
JAC. Since you wish it, Sir, I will tell you frankly that you are the
laughing-stock of everybody; that they taunt us everywhere by a
thousand jokes on your account, and that nothing delights people more
than to make sport of you, and to tell stories without end about your
stinginess. One says that you have special almanacks printed, where
you double the ember days and vigils, so that you may profit by the
fasts to which you bind all your house; another, that you always have
a ready-made quarrel for your servants at Christmas time or when they
leave you, so that you may give them nothing. One tells a story how
not long since you prosecuted a neighbour's cat because it had eaten
up the remainder of a leg of mutton; another says that one night you
were caught stealing your horses' oats, and that your coachman,--that
is the man who was before me,--gave you, in the dark, a good sound
drubbing, of which you said nothing. In short, what is the use of
going on? We can go nowhere but we are sure to hear you pulled to
pieces. You are the butt and jest and byword of everybody; and never
does anyone mention you but under the names of miser, stingy, mean,
niggardly fellow and usurer.
HAR. (_beating_ JACQUES). You are a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and
an impertinent wretch.
JAC. There, there! Did not I know how it would be? You would not
believe me. I told you I should make you angry if I spoke the truth?
HAR. Learn how to speak.