— Where? — Where?

Reader, your curiosity is extremely annoying. What the devil does it have to do with you? If I told you that it was Pontoise or Saint-Germain or Loreto or Compostella, would you be any the wiser?

If you insist I will tell you that they made their way towards… yes, why not? …towards a huge château, on whose façade were inscribed the words: ‘I belong to nobody and I belong to everybody. You were here before you entered and you will still be here after you have left.’

— Did they go into this château?

No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were there before they went in.

— Well, did they manage to leave, at least?

No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were still there after they left.

— And what did they do there?

Jacques said whatever it was written up above that he would say and his master whatever he liked. And they were both right.

— What kind of people did they find there?

A mixture.

— What did they say?

A few truths and a lot of lies.

— Were there intelligent men there?

Where are there not some? And damned questioners whom they avoided like the plague.

Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master