Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master (40 page)

62
. Bacbuc is the name given to the ‘sacred bottle’ in Rabelais. The following pages are very much a celebration of the Rabelaisian tradition as Diderot seems to have understood it. The consultation of the bottle is to be found in the
Cinquième livre
, chapter XLV.

63
. The same as ventriloquist, i.e. stomach-speaker.

64
. The authors that Diderot lists here share – by reputation, at least – a more or less philosophical tendency to epicureanism.

65
. The Pomme de Pin was a well-known meeting-place of poets in the seventeenth century, frequented in particular by Chapelle, Molière and La Fontaine. The Temple was the meeting-place of poets such as La Fare and Chaulieu, who established a prevailing tone of easy hedonism.

66
. Editors and annotators of classical authors.

67
. The clearest indication that Jacques’ master is a nobleman. With a few local exceptions, the nobility could not engage in work or trade personally.

68
. In contrast to the simple promissory note, the bill of exchange was a commercial transaction, and therefore made one liable to more stringent prosecution and penalties if one failed to honour it on the due date.

69
. Madame Riccoboni was particularly noted for her success with the epistolary novel, which was very popular in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

70
. Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (1579–1644), historian and papal nuncio in France.

71
. That is,
in vino veritas
– ‘in the wine is truth’. Charles Collé was a successful song-writer and comic author. This play was first staged in 1747.

72
. La Fontaine,
Fables
, book IX, 4. Garo asks why God didn’t give the mighty oak a fruit of appropriate size, such as the pumpkin. While he takes a nap under an oak, an acorn falls on his nose, prompting Garo to the conclusion that, after all, God organizes things for the best.

73
. The reference is to Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, in his
Emile
(book II), condemns La Fontaine’s fables as unsuitable for children.

74
. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, book I, ll. 85–6. The quotation should read
Os homini sublime dedit caelumque videre/lussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus
(‘He placed man’s countenance on top of his body, and enjoined him to look at the sky and to raise his face to the stars’).

75
. Carmelite who published a series of letters during the 1730s in which
he sought to prove that the miracles that the Jansenists claimed were occurring in their community might be of diabolical inspiration.

76
. It is not clear why Jacques’ master should be taken to what was primarily a debtors’ prison.

77
.
Le Compère Mathieu
(1766–73) was a bawdy and picaresque novel by an ex-priest called Dulaurens.

78
. Brigand who developed an almost legendary reputation. He died in 1755.