The Miser (L'Avare) Part 10

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, entrees ...

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. Entremets ...

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_ VALeRE) 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_ VALeRE). 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 pate 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 compa.s.sion 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 b.u.t.t and jest and byword of everybody; and never does anyone mention you but under the names of miser, stingy, mean, n.i.g.g.ardly 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.

SCENE VI.--VALeRE, MASTER JACQUES.

VAL. (_laughing_). Well, Master Jacques, your frankness is badly rewarded, I fear.

JAC. S'death! Mr. Upstart, you who a.s.sume the man of consequence, it is no business of yours as far as I can see. Laugh at your own cudgelling when you get it, and don't come here and laugh at mine.

VAL. Ah! Master Jacques, don't get into a pa.s.sion, I beg of you.