PART I

The Foucquets were citizens of Nantes, and in the sixteenth century they traded with the West Indies. By these maritime expeditions they gained great possessions and a peculiar quality of mind, a crafty and audacious spirit which may be discerned in their descendants. Nicolas Foucquet, with whom alone we are concerned here, was born in 1615. He was the third son of François Foucquet, a King's Councillor, and of Marie Manpeou, who had twelve children, six sons and six daughters. This François Foucquet, originally councillor in the Rennes Parliament, purchased a place in the Paris Parliament, became a Councillor of State, and was for a while Ambassador in Switzerland. He was a collector: he formed a collection of medals and books which Peiresc, when he passed through Paris, visited with great interest, jotting down in his note-book[1] particulars of the more remarkable objects.

In the Councillor's exalted hobbies some have sought to discern the origin of the taste displayed by his son Nicolas in the matter of the ancient sculpture and the pictures which he spent great sums in collecting.

As for Marie Manpeou, she came of an old and honourable legal family. Left a widow in 1640, she sought repose, after her numerous maternal duties, only in the practice of asceticism and in works of Christian charity. She lived, in retreat, a life wholly occupied in the giving of alms, the application of remedies and the recitation of prayers. She was one of those strong-minded women who, like Madame Legras and Madame de Miramion, were moved at once to a courageous pity and angelic melancholy by the spectacle of the miseries and crimes of war. The ordering of her life was in almost all respects comparable to that of a Sister of Mercy. Far from rejoicing at the promotion of her sons, it was with deep anxiety that she beheld them captive to the seductions of a world which she knew to be evil. Nicolas especially and his brother, the Abbé Basile, alarmed her by the extent of their ambition. The Comptroller's fall, which disconcerted all France, left her untroubled. On hearing that her son had been cast down from the heights of pomp and power, she is said to have thrown herself upon her knees, exclaiming: "I thank Thee, O my God! I have always prayed to Thee for his salvation: now the path to it is open."[2] This saintly idea implies a perfection which is alarming because it is utterly inhuman: it is difficult to recognize maternal affection thus transfigured and freed from the weakness of the flesh which naturally accompanies it. Yet even this mother, for twenty years dead to the world, was perturbed when she knew that her son's life was threatened. Every day throughout the Comptroller's long trial she was to be seen at the door of the Arsenal, where the Court was sitting, and she petitioned the judges[3]

MME. FOUCQUET

Que mon fils est heureux, que j'aime sa prison! Il est guéri du moins de ce mortel poison.

Par ses malheurs son âme à présent éclairée, Voit comme dans la Cour elle était égarée. Plût à Dieu que sa grâce ouvre si bien ses yeux Qu'il ne les tourne plus que du côté des Cieux.

LA REINE MÈRE

Il peut, quoique Colbert lui déclare la guerre, Ouvrir encor les yeux du côté de la terre.

MME. FOUCQUET

Si la terre, Madame, a du péril pour lui, J'aime mieux à mes yeux le voir mort aujourd'hui.

(Le livre abominable de 1665 qui courait en manuscript parmi le monde, sous le nom de Molière (comédie en vers sur le procès de Foucquet), découvert et publié sur une copie du temps par Louis-Auguste Ménard. Paris, Firmin Didot et Cie. 1883, 2 vols. Vol. II, p. 116.)

The book is neither abominable nor a comedy of any kind. It consists of five Dansenist dialogues in the most insipid style. M. Louis-Auguste Ménard, who attributes this rhymed play to Molière, cannot expect many to share his extraordinary opinion.

The young Queen was ill at the time. Foucquet's mother sent her one of the plasters she was in the habit of making for the poor, and she was so fortunate as to save the wife of him who was seeking to ruin her son. At least, the Queen's recovery is generally attributed to Madame Foucquet's remedy.

We shall see later that the cure did not produce any change of heart in the King.

This incident, however, refers to the downfall of a fortune of which we must first explain the beginnings, and the progressive stages. This I shall do without entering into details of administration or business. I am not writing an essay on the politics or finances of the days of Mazarin. My sole endeavour will be to depict the tastes, the manners and the mind of the creator and the host of Vaux. Vaux is the centre of my design.

In 1635, Nicolas Foucquet, at the age of twenty, entered the magistry as Master of Requests. The Masters of Requests were regarded as forming part of the Parliament, where they sat above the Councillors. From among those officers the Kings had long been accustomed to choose the commissaries whom they despatched into the provinces, to superintend the administration of justice and finance, or to the armies, when they were charged with all that concerned the policing and the maintenance of the troops.

Their journeys were known as the circuits of the Masters of Requests. They gave rise, at a date unknown, to a new office, that of Intendant, which grew in importance with the increase of the royal power. The young Foucquet, in 1636, was sent as Intendant of justice to the district of Grenoble. The difficulties attending such a mission were great; and Richelieu could not have been ignorant of them. He had, however, diminished them somewhat by suspending the sittings of the provincial parliament which was the Intendant's natural enemy. But Foucquet found the people of Le Dauphiné agitated by the memory of the religious wars and ardently engaging in new disputes in respect of certain taxes levied on the goods of the third estate from which the nobility and the clergy were exempt. The decree of the Royal Council which abolished the citizens' grievances remained a dead letter.[4] Feeling ran high. Foucquet did not succeed in alleviating it. After a revolt which he had been unable either to prevent or to repress he was recalled to Paris. From an inexperienced youth of twenty-one Richelieu could not have expected services which could only have been rendered by an old hand, experienced in negotiation, such, for example, as the Intendant of Guyenne, the skilful and resolute Servien. The opinion is seldom held to-day that the great Minister employed the system of Intendants[5] as a regular instrument of his policy; which may explain how he came to confide to an apprentice a mission which is regarded as of secondary importance. The office of Intendant was not a permanent one, so that Foucquet's recall was doubtless not regarded as an absolute disgrace. Nevertheless, during the five years of life and power which yet remained to him, Richelieu, as far as we know, never again employed the young Master of Requests.

But Mazarin, having become first Minister, sent him, in 1647, to the Army of the North, which was under the command of Gassion and Rantzau. The leaders' disagreements were arresting the army's progress. Rantzau was a drunkard whom Gassion could not tolerate. Gassion, sober, energetic and fearless, displayed a brutality insufferable even in a soldier of fortune. He forgot himself so far as to strike in the face a captain of Condé's regiment who had misunderstood his orders. The whole regiment determined to withdraw and the officers struck their tents. Only with great difficulty were they persuaded to remain. Touching this incident, Foucquet wrote to Mazarin: "All are agreed that M. le Maréchal de Gassion committed a serious abuse in striking the captain of His Royal Highness's regiment. Every one condemned such an action, considering that M. le Maréchal should have sent him to prison, or should even have struck him with his sword, or fired his pistol at him, if he thought it necessary; but that it would have been better not to have resorted to such an extreme measure."

We ought not, I think, to pass over a fact which permitted Foucquet to display, for the first time, as far as we are aware, that spirit of moderation which, until his reason became clouded, enabled him for a time to serve the State so well.

Mazarin was not slow to discern the Intendant's merits. In 1648, at the time of the first disturbances,[6] thinking to quit Paris and withdraw with the Court to Saint-Germain, he sent Foucquet to Brie "with orders there to collect large stores of grain for the maintenance of the army."[7] The Intendant established himself at Lagny and commandeered supplies from the peasants of Brie and Ile-de-France. He was then instructed to compile a list of those Parisians who possessed châteaux or country-houses in the suburbs of the city. Promising to preserve these properties from fire and pillage during the war, Mazarin taxed the owners. In reality he mulcted the rich of the money which he needed. When the Fronde was a thing of the past, Foucquet, as procurator of Ile-de-France, accompanied the King into Normandy, Burgundy, Poitou and Guyenne.

On his return from this royal progress, he bought, with the Cardinal's approval, the post of Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament. From this office a certain Sieur Méliand retired in Foucquet's favour, "receiving in return Foucquet's office of Master of Requests, estimated by the son of the said Sieur Méliand as being worth more than fifty thousand crowns, plus a sum of one hundred thousand crowns in money."[8]

If Foucquet obtained preferment, it was not without the aid of a young clerk at the War Office, who at that time displayed a great deal of friendliness towards him, but was destined, eleven years later, to bring about his downfall, take his office and endeavour to procure his death. Colbert, who was then on terms of friendship with Foucquet, employed his interest with Le Tellier to recommend the ambitious Intendant. In August, 1650, he wrote to the Secretary of State for War:

"M. Foucquet, who has come here by order of His Eminence, has already on three several occasions assured me that he is possessed of an ardent desire to become one of your particular servants and friends because of the peculiar estimation in which he holds your attainments, and that he has no particular connections with any other person which would prevent his receiving this honour.... I thought it would be very suitable, he being a man of birth and merit and even capable, one day, of holding high office, if you in return were to offer him some friendly advances, since it is not a question of entering into an engagement which might be burdensome to you, but merely of receiving him favourably and of making him some show of friendship when you meet. If you are of my opinion in this matter, I beg you to let me know as much in the first letter with which you honour me; nor can I refrain from assuring you, with all the respect which is your due, that I do not think I could possibly repay you a part of all that I owe you in better coin than by acquiring for you a hundred such friends, were I only sufficiently worthy to do so."[9]

This is a warm recommendation. We have quoted it in order that the reader may see with what confidence Foucquet inspired his friends, even in those early days, and how highly they thought of him. Moreover, it is interesting to find Colbert praising Foucquet. The latter was installed in his new appointment on the 10th of October, 1650. He was thenceforth the first of the King's servants at the head of that bar which the two Advocates General Omer Talon and Jérôme Bignon had caused to be renowned for its eloquence. An instrument of that great body which dealt with the administration of justice, controlled political affairs, exercised an influence over finance, whose jurisdiction extended over Ile-de-France, Picardy, Orléanais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, Angoumois, Champagne, Bourbonnais, Berry, Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais and Auvergne, the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, subdued the fleurs-de-lys to the policy of the Cardinal. Between such virtuous fools as the worthy Broussel, who, through very honesty, would have surrendered his disarmed country to the foreigner, and the Minister who had humiliated the house of Austria, threatened the Emperor even in his hereditary dominions, conquered Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, and who now sought to assure France of her natural boundaries, Foucquet's genius was too lucid and his views too far-reaching to permit him to hesitate for a moment.

He remained attached to Mazarin's fortunes when the Minister's downfall seemed permanent. In 1651, that inauspicious year, he never ceased his endeavours to win supporters in the _bourgeoisie_ and in the army, for the exiled Minister on whose head a price had been set. And when the Prince de Condé, in his manifesto of the 12th of April, 1652, confessed that he had formed ties, both within and without the kingdom, with the object of its preservation, it was the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, who uttered a protest which compelled the Prince to strike out of his manifesto the shameful avowal of his alliance with Spain, the enemy of France. He contributed not a little to ruin the cause of the Princes in Paris. When Turenne had defeated their army near Étampes (5th May, 1652), the Parliament wished to open negotiations for peace. The Attorney-General repaired to Saint-Germain, bearing to the King the complaints of his good city of Paris. The speech which he delivered on this occasion has been preserved. Its general tone is resolute; its language, sober and concise, contrasting with the obscure and unintelligible style affected by the judicial eloquence of the period. This address is the only example which we possess of Nicolas Foucquet's oratorical talent. It will be found in M. Chéruel's _Mémoires_.[10] Here are a few passages from it:

" ... Sire, I have been commissioned to inform Your Majesty of the destitution to which the majority of your subjects have been reduced. There is no limit to the crimes and excesses committed by the military. Murders, violations, burnings and sacrileges are now regarded merely as ordinary actions; far from committing them in secret, the perpetrators boast of them openly. To-day, Sire, Your Majesty's troops are living in such licence and such disorder that they are by no means ashamed to abandon their posts in order to despoil those of your subjects who have no means of resistance. In broad daylight, in the sight of their officers, without fear of recognition or apprehension of punishment, soldiers break into the houses of ecclesiastics, noblemen and your highest officials....

"I will not attempt, Sire, to represent to Your Majesty the greatness of the injury done to your cause by such public depredations, and the advantage which your enemies will derive therefrom, beholding the most sacred laws publicly violated, the impunity of crime firmly established, the source of your revenues exhausted, the affections of the people alienated and your authority derided. I shall only entreat Your Majesty, in the name of your Parliament and all your subjects, to be moved to pity by the cries of your poor people, to give ear to the groans and supplications of the widows and orphans, and to endeavour to preserve whatever remains, whatever has escaped the fury of those barbarians whose sole desire is for blood and the slaughter of the innocents....

"Make manifest, Sire, O make manifest at the outset of your reign, your natural kindness of heart, and may the compassion which you will feel for so many sufferers call down the blessings of heaven upon the first years of your majority, which will doubtless be followed by many and far happier years, if the desires and prayers of your Parliament and of all your good subjects be granted."

These words had little effect. The war continued; the people's sufferings increased; in the city the disturbances became more violent; several councillors were killed, and the _hôtel de ville_ was invaded and pillaged by the populace and by the troops of the princes. In the face of such disorders, which the magistrates could neither tolerate nor repress, the Attorney-General, accompanied by several notables, members of the Parliament, went to the King, who listened to his counsel. To the Cardinal he demonstrated the necessity of holding the Parliament and the Court in the same place, in order to display to the kingdom the spectacle of the King and his senate on the one hand and the rebel Princes on the other; and it was by his advice that a decree was issued on the 31st of July which ordered the removal of the Parliament from Paris to Pontoise, where the Court then was. Foucquet with the utmost energy devoted himself to the execution of this politic measure.

On the 7th of August, the first President, Mathieu Molé, presided at Pontoise over a solemn session in which the members present constituted themselves into the one and only Parliament of Paris. This assembly requested the King to dismiss Mazarin, and this they did in concert with Mazarin himself, who rightly believed his departure to be necessary. But he counted on speedily resuming his place beside the King. In the meanwhile he corresponded with Foucquet, in whom he placed the utmost confidence, "without reservation of any kind," and whom he consulted on matters of State. Still, there was one point on which they did not think alike. Mazarin eagerly desired to return to Paris with the King, and, as it seemed, for the time being, that this desire could not be gratified, His Eminence was not displeased that the state entry into the capital should be delayed. Foucquet, on the other hand, was in favour of an immediate return to the Louvre. On this subject he wrote to the Cardinal:

"There is not one of the King's servants, in Paris or out of it, who is not convinced that in order to make himself master of the city the King has only to desire as much, and that if the King sends to the inhabitants asking that two of the city gates shall be held by a regiment of his guards, and then proceeds directly to the Louvre, all Paris will approve such a masterful action and the Princes will be compelled to take flight. There is no doubt that on the very first day the King's orders will be obeyed by all. The legitimate officers will be restored to the exercise of their function, the gates will be closed to enemies; such an amnesty as Your Eminence would wish will be published, and our friends will be reunited in the Louvre in the King's presence. So universal will be the rejoicing and so loud the public acclamations that no one will be found so bold as to dissent."[11]

A few days later, on the 21st of October, amid popular acclamation, Louis XIV entered Paris. The stripling monarch brought with him peace, that beneficent peace which had been prepared by the tactful firmness of the Attorney-General.

Now, Mazarin's friends had only to hasten his recall. This the Attorney-General and his brother, the Abbé Basile, succeeded in obtaining, and the Cardinal entered Paris on the 3rd of February, 1652. The office of Superintendent of the Finances had then been vacant for a month owing to the death, on the 2nd of January, of the holder, the Duc de La Vieuville. Despite the unfavourable condition of the kingdom's finances this office was most eagerly coveted. And the very disorder and obscurity which enveloped all the Superintendent's operations excited the hopes of those men whom the Marquis d'Effiat compared with "the cuttle-fish which possesses the art of clouding the water to deceive the eyes of the fisher who espies it."[12] Then the Superintendent had not the actual handling of the public moneys. Income and expenditure were in the hands of the Treasurers. But he ordered all State expenditure, charging it without appeal to the various resources of the Kingdom. He was answerable to the King alone. If, apparently, all his actions were subject to a strict control, in reality he worked in absolute secrecy. In the year we have now reached, 1653, the Treasury's poverty and the Cardinal's laxity permitted every abuse. Money must be found at any cost; all expedients were good and all rules might be infringed.

Things had been going badly for a long while. Since the Regent, Marie de Médicis, had madly dissipated the savings amassed by the prudent Sully, the State has subsisted upon detestable expedients, such as the creation of offices, the issue of Government Stocks, the sale of charters of pardon, the alienation of rights and domains. The Treasury was in the hands of plunderers, no accounts were kept. In 1626, Superintendent d'Effiat found it impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge of the resources at the State's disposal or at the amount of expenditure incurred by the military and naval services. Richelieu, when he came into power, began by condemning to death a few of the tax farmers-general. Had it not been for "these necessities which do not admit of the delay of formalities," he might perhaps have restored the finances to order. But these necessities overwhelmed him and compelled him to resort to fresh expedients. He was driven to court the tax-farmers, whom he would rather have hanged, and to borrow from them at a high rate of interest the King's money which they were detaining in their coffers. Exports, imposts and the salt tax were all controlled by the tax-farmers. An Italian adventurer, Signor Particelli d'Hémery, whom Mazarin appointed Superintendent in 1646, created one hundred and sixty-seven offices and alienated the revenue of 87,600,000 livres of capital. In 1648 the State suffered a shameful bankruptcy and the troubles of the Fronde supervened, aggravating yet further a situation which would have been desperate in any country other than inventive and fertile France.

The office of Superintendent, which the worthy La Vieuville had held since 1649, was disputed after his death by the Marshals de l'Hôpital and de Villeroy, by the President de Maisons, who had held it already during the civil war, by Abel Servien, who during his already long life had proved himself a harsh and precise administrator, a skilful man of business and a thoroughly honest man, and, finally, by Nicolas Foucquet, who in public opinion was unlikely to be appointed.

Foucquet, on the very day of La Vieuville's death, had written the Cardinal a letter, partly in cipher, of which the following is the text:--

"I was impatiently awaiting the return of Your Eminence in order to inform you in detail of all that I have learned of the cause of past disorders and their remedies; but as the bad administration of public finance is one of the chief causes of the discreditable condition of public affairs, the death of the Superintendent and the necessity of appointing his successor compel me to explain to Your Eminence in this letter what I had determined to communicate to you by word of mouth on your arrival, and to impress upon you the importance of choosing some one of acknowledged probity who will be trusted by the public and who will keep inviolate faith with Your Eminence. I will venture to say that in the inquiries which I have made into the means of ending the present evils and avoiding still greater ones in future, I have found that everything depended upon the will of the Superintendent. Perhaps I should be able to make myself useful to His Majesty and Your Eminence were you to think fit to employ me in this office. I have studied the means of filling it successfully. I know that there would be nothing inconsistent in my employment, and several of my friends to whom I owe this idea have promised me in this connection to make efforts to be of service to the King of a nature too considerable to be ignored. It therefore remains for Your Eminence to judge of the capacity with which eighteen years' service in the Council as Master of Requests and in various other offices may have endowed me; and as for my affection for you and my fidelity in your service, I flatter myself that Your Eminence is persuaded that I am inferior to no one in the Kingdom. My brother will be my surety; and I am certain that he would never pledge his word to Your Eminence whatever interest he may feel in that which concerns me, were he not fully satisfied with my intentions and my conduct hitherto and had we not thoroughly discussed Your Eminence's interests in this connection. Once again let me protest that you may rely upon us absolutely, and that you will never be disappointed, since no one in the world has more at heart the advantage and the glory of Your Eminence. I entreat you to let no one hear of this affair until it is settled."

Recalled by his adherents, Mazarin returned to Paris, very discreetly, on the 3rd of February. One of his first acts was to appoint a Superintendent. He divided the office between Nicolas Foucquet, his own supporter, and Abel Servien, who was singled out for this employment by his own character and by public opinion. To act in conjunction with the two Superintendents he appointed three Directors of Finance, one Comptroller-General and eight Intendants. Such an arrangement served to please two people; but it had the disadvantage of costing the Treasury a million livres a year. As a matter of fact, it was, as we shall see, to cost much more. According to the terms of his commission, Foucquet was in no way subordinate to his colleague, but age, experience, vigilant industry and a tried and distinguished probity gave Servien the chief authority. Foucquet was young; he might wait. He held the office which he had so greatly desired. Alas, in desiring it he had desired what was to be his ruin! Henceforth his pious mother might apply to him the words of Scripture: _Et tribuit eis petitionem eorum._

If he speedily entered upon the path of the merely expedient, can we be surprised? Both necessity and the Cardinal's wishes drove him to it. In 1654, he found money necessary to oppose an army led by the rebel, Condé. How? By creating new offices and selling them to the highest bidder. A detestable method; but it is questionable whether, considering the state of the Treasury, it would have been possible to devise any better. At all events, at this cost the Spaniards were defeated. Unhappily there is no doubt whatever that Foucquet had to provide not only for the expenses of the war, but for the exigencies of Mazarin, who, through the medium of Colbert, obtained from the Treasury the millions with which he enriched his family. Mazarin himself became a farmer of the revenue and derived enormous profits from the bread of the wretched soldiers. "By appearing under the name of Albert, or another," he concealed his part in these transactions. The letter is extant in which he himself suggests this broker's trick. He also made use of what were called _ordonnances de Comptant._ The term was applied to decrees authorizing the payment of money, the employment of which was not specified. To-day we should describe it as dipping into the secret funds; and the Cardinal did dip into them with both hands. Sometimes Foucquet endeavoured to resist these criminal demands, but in the end he always gave way. Mazarin must have known that he was not intractable since he always appealed to him rather than to Servien even in matters like orders for the payment of officials which were the special function of the senior Superintendent. Foucquet deducted certain payments; from the proceeds of tax-farming; from the farmers of the salt-tax he received one hundred and twenty thousand livres a year; from the farmers of the Bordeaux convey fifty thousand livres; from the farmers of the customs one hundred and forty thousand livres. The clerks who handled this last contribution added for themselves a sum of twenty thousand livres. It is probable that the bargain was not concluded without the distribution of a few "bonuses" in the offices. And when we recollect that these customs were duties imposed on wine and on food and drink in general, on the very life, therefore, of the poor, one cannot forbear from cursing Mazarin's murderous and impious cupidity, for it was for the Cardinal that Foucquet deducted these payments. He remitted these sums without receiving any formal receipt, and there is reason to believe that he himself kept some part of them.

Following Mazarin's example, Foucquet himself became a tax-farmer under a false name; moreover, he lent the State's money to the State itself, and was repaid with heavy interest. Again, following Mazarin's example, he made the public Treasury pay the cost of the promotion and the alliances of his family. On the 12th of February, 1657, his only daughter by his marriage with Marie Fourché, lady of the manor of Quehillac, married the eldest son of the Comte de Charost, Governor of Calais and Captain of the King's Guard. She brought her husband five hundred thousand livres. When this alliance was contracted, the first Madame Foucquet was dead and the Superintendent had married as his second wife Marie-Madeleine de Castille-Villemareuil, the only daughter of François de Castille, President of one of the Chambers of the Paris Parliament.[13] The Castilles were merchants, reputed to be very wealthy, who had certainly made rich marriages. Marie-Madeleine provided no matter for gossip so long as the union was happy. She doubtless played but an insignificant part in entertainments which offended her modesty and the brilliance of which was intended rather to please her rivals than herself. Her husband, it would seem, at all events, always esteemed her as she deserved and, where she was concerned, never wholly departed from that urbanity which was natural to him. He was one of those men who understand how to please a woman while they are deceiving her. In the Superintendent's house a work of art or a statue celebrated the apparent union of husband and wife. In France it was then becoming the fashion to represent as allegorical figures the lives of great men whom earlier painters had portrayed in the costume and with the attributes of their patron Saints. Conforming to the new custom, the Superintendent ordered from his favourite sculptor, the skilful Michel Anguier, a group of Madame Foucquet and her four children. She appeared as Charity. The group was said to be one of the master's finest works. Guillet de Saint-Georges, in his _Vie de Michel Anguier,_ expressly says that Foucquet ordered from this artist "a Charity, bearing in her arms a sleeping child, with another at her feet and two close at hand, to represent Madame Foucquet and her children and to testify the affection and unity which reigned in this family."[14]

An act of homage at once commonplace and ostentatious, yet just and prophetic, rendered to a wife whose lovely nobility of heart was to be revealed only by misfortune. Somewhat withdrawn in the season of prosperity, it was only when those whom she loved were unhappy that Madame Foucquet revealed herself. During the slow investigation of the accusers, Madame Foucquet saw that her husband's furniture, which had been placed under a seal, was carefully guarded; and this vigilance was inspired by the noblest of motives. "Any loss or injury," she said, "would tend to involve the creditors in absolute ruin, and among them are an incredible number of poor families of all sorts of artisans."[15]

She was seen, during her husband's trial, with her mother-in-law at the Arsenal gates, presenting petitions to the judges. When he was condemned she asked permission to rejoin in prison the husband who had betrayed and forsaken her in his hours of happiness. No sooner was this sad favour granted than she hastened to avail herself of it. Having consoled him in captivity, she closed his eyes in death. Left a widow, she followed the example set by many lonely ladies of rank in those days: she withdrew to a convent. For her retreat she chose the royal Abbey of Val-de-Grâce of Notre-Dame de la Crèche, which was on the left bank of the Seine, in the Rue Saint-Jacques. This Benedictine convent, as we know, owed its origin to a vow of Queen Anne,[16] who built it when she at length had a King.[17] Thus the walls within which this lady retired to shelter her widowhood were a hymn of thanksgiving in stone, a monument of gratitude to God for His gift to France of the persecutor of Nicolas Foucquet. Did she not realize this? Or did her piety forbid her to nourish any bitterness toward the enemies of her house? There were, no doubt, old ties between her and the nuns of Val-de-Grâce. It must not be supposed that she lived in a cell the life of a recluse. To do so would be to show little knowledge of convents as they were in those days.[18] The nuns were the innkeepers of the period. Sumptuously lodged in buildings dependent on the community, the ladies lived a quiet but still worldly life, keeping their own servants, paying and receiving visits. Such was Madame Foucquet's position at Val-de-Grâce. She devoted herself, it is true, to the practices of religion; and we know, for example, that, having obtained the body of St. Liberatus, a martyr of the African Church, she had it borne in a procession, on the 27th of August, 1690, to the parish church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas.[19]

She occupied a pavilion in the convent garden, where, in default of gold and silver plate, she kept a few pieces of furniture worthy of her rank. In the month of March, 1700, a royal edict ordered private persons to declare and to take to the Mint all furniture in which there was any gold or silver; and Madame Foucquet, widow, declared to the commissioner of her district that she possessed "a camp bed adorned with cloth of gold and silver, with chairs to match, hangings of gold damask, single width, twenty chairs and a bedstead in wood inlaid with gold, a sofa in the same with six places, a tapestry bed and chairs trimmed with gold fringe, six small consoles, twelve little gilt stands, two small round tables, two other tables and a bureau partly gilt, and a small bed upholstered with gold and silver lace."

Madame Foucquet survived her husband thirty-six years. She died in Paris in 1716 "in great piety," says Saint-Simon, "having withdrawn from the world, and having, during the whole of her life, constantly engaged in good works."[20]

Foucquet had an exalted soul. He was born to tempt fortune and to take Fate by storm. As early as 1655 he was cherishing the boldest designs.

Realizing that in proportion as he obliged the Cardinal the latter grew suspicious of him, since each service that he rendered was a secret of which he became the inconvenient guardian, the Superintendent resolved to assure himself by his power against the chance of disgrace. With this object he began to think of converting the port of Concarneau and the fortress of Ham, which belonged to his brother, into strongholds, where his adherents might assemble in arms in case the Cardinal were to attempt to lay hands on him. He therefore drew up a detailed programme of the project, recommending his supporters to go for orders to the house of Madame de Plessis-Bellière. "She knows my true friends," he said, "and among them there may be those who would be ashamed not to take part in anything proposed by her on my behalf."

This lady, who was so much in Foucquet's confidence, was the widow of a lieutenant-general in the King's army. She had never refused Foucquet anything: but gallantry was by no means her first concern. It was even said that she saved herself the trouble of contributing in person to the Superintendent's pleasures and that she preferred providing for them to satisfying them herself. She was a strong-minded woman, and a great politician, even in that age of intrigue, ambitious and proud enough to do herself credit, as we shall see later, by her display of loyalty and devotion. In Foucquet's project, should occasion arise, she, in conjunction with the Governors of Ham and Concarneau, was to provide those two fortresses with men and with victuals. The Marquis de Charost, Foucquet's son-in-law, was to defend himself in Calais, of which town he was the governor. The Governors of Amiens, Havre and Arras were to assume an equally threatening attitude. As allies at Court the rebel Minister counted on M. de la Rochefoucauld, Marsillac, his son, and Bournonville; in Parliament on MM. de Harlay, Manpeou, Miron and Chenut; at sea, on Admiral de Neuchèse et Guinan. We may note, in passing, that in the matter of his friends he was mistaken in fully half of them. He gave it to be understood that Spain might be appealed to. If his arrest were sustained and his trial instituted, there would be civil war. A monstrous project, a chimerical conception which it was childish to write down, and which served only to make doubly sure the ruin of its mad inventor.

It was during this period of folly and of splendour that Foucquet, with a magnificence hitherto unequalled, created the estate and château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, near Melun.

We shall treat separately, in a special chapter, of all that concerns this subject.

At the same time he continued to provide for his safety. In order to assure it with greater certainty he bought, on the 5th September, 1658, the island and fortress of Belle-Isle for a sum of 1,300,000 livres, of which 400,000 were paid in cash.

Once the possessor of this fortress, Foucquet applied himself to placing it in a state of defence. He despatched engineers thither to fortify the citadel; from Holland he brought ships and cannon. Modifying his plan of defence, he substituted Belle-Isle for Ham and Concarneau.

Belle-Isle was to him what her milk-pail was to Perrette. He dreamed of deriving more wealth from it than the whole of Holland from her ports. Madame de Motteville got wind of these chimerical hopes. "The friends of Foucquet," wrote this lady, "have said--and apparently they have told the truth--that the Superintendent, who was indeed capable, by virtue of his courage and his genius, of many great projects, had conceived that of building a town the excellent harbour of which was to attract all the trade of the North, thereby depriving Amsterdam of these advantages, and rendering a great service to the King and the State."[21] Foucquet was at this time at the height of his power. In spite of his motto, he will not rise any higher, unless his constancy in misfortune may be taken to have raised him above himself, in which case he may be said to have grown greater in prison by the knowledge of the vanity of all that had previously attracted him.

But it is the man in his prosperous days, the friend of art and of literature, Foucquet the magnificent, and Foucquet the voluptuous, whom we are describing here. No better description can be given of him than to reproduce the portrait which Nanteuil executed from life.[22]

What do we see there? Large features, eager, charming eyes, in roomy orbits, the shining pupils of which gleam beneath their lids with an expression at once of shrewdness and of pleasure. A long, straight nose, rather thick, a full-lipped mouth beneath a fine moustache; finally, that smiling expression which he retained even during his trial. The face is pleasing, but there is something disquieting about it. The costume is rich; not that of a gallant knight, or of a great noble, but of a magistrate. A little cap, a broad collar, a dark robe; the dress of a lawyer, but of a magnificent lawyer; for over the robe is thrown a sort of dalmatic of Genoa velvet, with a large flowered pattern. What this portrait does not reproduce is the charm of the original. Foucquet possessed a sovereign grace; he knew how to please, to inspire affection. It is true that he possessed a key to all hearts--access to an inexhaustible treasury. He gave much, but it is true also that he gave wisely, and he was naturally the most generous of men.

Poets he succoured with a noble delicacy. Since it is true that he usurped the rights which were then attributed to the Sovereign, his master, by disposing of the public revenue as though it were his own, at least he made a royal use of the King's treasure by dispensing some of it to Corneille, to La Fontaine and to Molière. The rest was spent on buildings, furniture, tapestries and so forth; and this, again, when all is said, was a royal habit, if regarded, as it should be, in the light of ancient institutions. If Foucquet cannot be justified--and how can he be, since there were poor in France in those days?--at least his conduct is explained, in some degree excused, by the institutions, and, above all, by the public morality of his period.

While his Château de Vaux was building, Foucquet lived at Saint-Mandé, in a house sumptuously surrounded by beautiful gardens. These gardens adjoined the park where Mazarin used to spend the summer. The financier had only to pass through a door when he wished to visit the Minister. The estate of Saint-Mandé was formed by the union of two estates bought from Mme. de Beauvais, Anne of Austria's first lady-in-waiting. Gradually, Foucquet acquired more land and added wings to the main building, so that the whole construction cost at least 1,100,000 livres; and yet the finest part of it remained unexecuted.[23]

We may form some idea of the beautiful things which Foucquet had collected in this house by consulting the inventory preserved in the Archives, and published by M. Bonnaffé,[24] "of the statues, busts, scabella, columns, tables and other works in marble and stone at Saint-Mandé."

Among these things there are many antiques. Most of the modern pieces of sculpture are by Michel Anguier, who passed three years, 1655-58, at Saint-Mandé. There he executed the group of _La Charité_ which has already been mentioned, and a _Hercules_ six feet in height, as well as "thirteen statues, life-size, copied from the most beautiful antiques of Rome, notably the _Laocoôn, Hercules, Flora,_ and _Juno_ and _Jupiter._" This we are told by Germain Brice.[25] He had seen them in a garden in the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, where they were in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Germain Brice also tells us that in those days eight other statues, by the same sculptor, and also coming from Saint-Mandé, adorned the house of the Marquise de Louvois at Choisy. We learn also, from other sources, that one of the ceilings of Saint-Mandé was painted by Lebrun.[26]

Finally, the Abbé de Marolles speaks of the beautiful things which Foucquet had painted at Saint-Mandé, and the Latin inscriptions which were entrusted to Nicolas Gervaise, his physician. We may remark in this connection that Louis XIV, who in art did little more than continue Foucquet's undertakings, derived from the functions which the Superintendent conferred upon this Nicolas Gervaise the ideas of that little Academy, the Academy of Inscriptions and Medals, which he founded five or six years later.

But the most famous room in the house of which we are now speaking was the library, because the noblest room in any house is that in which books are lodged, and because La Fontaine and Corneille used to linger in the library of Saint-Mandé. It was there that the poets used to wait for the Superintendent. "Every one knows," said Corneille, "that this great Minister was no less the Superintendent of belles-lettres than of finance; that his house was as open to men of intellect as to men of affairs, and that, whether in Paris or in the country, it is always in his library that one waits for those precious moments which he steals from his overwhelming occupations, in order to gratify those who possess some degree of talent for successful writing."[27]

It was in this gallery that La Fontaine, as well as Corneille, used to sit waiting until the master of the house had leisure to receive the poet and his verses. One day he waited a whole hour. Monsieur le Surintendant was occupied; whether with finance or with love posterity cannot hope to know. Nevertheless, the good man found the time short: he passed it in his own company. Unfortunately, the _suisse_ unceremoniously dismissed "the lover of the Muses," who, having returned home, wrote an epistle which should assure his being received the next time. "I will not be importunate," he said:

Je prendrai votre heure et la mienne. Si je vois qu'on vous entretienne, J'attendrai fort paisiblement En ce superbe appartement Ou l'on a fait d'étrange terre Depuis peu venir à grand-erre[28] (Non sans travail et quelques frais) Des rois Céphrim et Kiopès Le cercueil, la tombe ou la bière: Pour les rois, ils sont en poussière: C'est là que j'en voulais venir. Il me fallut entretenir Avec les monuments antiques, Pendant qu'aux affaires publiques Vous donniez tout votre loisir. (Certes j'y pris un grand plaisir Vous semble-t-il pas que l'image D'un assez galant personnage Sert à ces tombeaux d'ornement). Pour vous en parler franchement, Je ne puis m'empêcher d'en rire. Messire Orus, me mis-je à dire, Vous nous rendez tous ébahis: Les enfants de votre pays Ont, ce me semble, des bavettes Que je trouve plaisamment faites. On m'eut expliqué tout cela, Mais il fallut partir de là Sans entendre l'allégorie. Je quittai donc la galerie, Fort content parmi mon chagrin, De Kiopès et de Céphrim, D'Orus et de tout son lignage, Et de maint autre personnage. Puissent ceux d'Egypte en ces lieux, Fussent-ils rois, fussent-ils dieux. Sans violence et sans contrainte, Se reposer dessus leur plinthe[29] Jusques au brut du genre humain! Ils ont fait assez de chemin Pour des personnes de leur taille. Et vous, seigneur, pour qui travaille Le temps qui peut tout consumer, Vous, que s'efforce de charmer L'Antiquité qu'on idolâtre, Pour qui le dieu de Cléopâtre Sous nos murs enfin abordé, Vient de Memphis à Saint-Mandé: Puissiez vous voir ces belles-choses Pendant mille moissons de roses....[30]

At once absurd and charming is this song which the Gallic lark composed to the sarcophagi of Africa. It is hardly necessary to say that the coffins, at the strange shape of which La Fontaine wondered, had never enclosed the bodies of "Kiopès and of Céphrim." Messire Orus had not told his secrets to the most lovable of our poets. We must not forget that the scholars of that time were as ignorant on this point as our friend.

These two mummy-cases were the first which had been brought to Paris from the banks of the Nile. They bore their history written upon them, but no one knew how to read it. The chance guess of some admirer had attributed to them a royal origin.[31]

The truth is that they had been discovered twenty-five years earlier in a pyramid by the inhabitants of the province of Saïd; transported to Cairo, then to Alexandria, they were bought by a French trader, who landed them at Marseilles on the 4th September, 1632, where they were acquired, it is believed, by a collector of that town, M. Chemblon.[32]

There was then at Rome a German Jesuit, by name Athanasius Kircher, a man of vivid imagination, very learned, who, having dabbled in physics, chemistry, natural history, theology, antiquities, music, ancient and modern languages, invented the magic lantern. This reverend Father really knew Coptic, and thought he knew something of the language of the ancient Egyptians. To prove this he wrote a large quarto volume entitled _Lingua Ægyptiaca restituta,_ which proves quite the contrary. But it is very easy to deceive oneself, especially when one is a scholar. A brother of his in Jesus, Father Brusset, told him of the arrival of the two ancient coffins, and Father Kircher went to Marseilles to see them. Later he treated of them in his _Œdipus Ægyptiacus,_ a pleasant day-dream in four folio volumes; La Fontaine's, in the Saint-Mandé library, was at all events shorter.

About the year 1659 the sarcophagi were bought for Foucquet, and taken to the Superintendent's house. When La Fontaine saw them they no longer contained the bodies which Egyptian piety had destined them to preserve. The two mummies had been unceremoniously relegated to an outhouse.

As for the sarcophagi themselves, Foucquet had intended to send them to his house at Vaux. He had conceived the charming idea of restoring them from the land of exile to the pyramid from which they had been taken.[33] But his days of prosperity were numbered. This project was to be swept away like a drop of water in the great shipwreck. The two sarcophagi, seized at Saint-Mandé, where they had remained, were valued on the 26th of February, 1656, at 800 livres, and were classified as "two ancient mausoleums, representing a king and queen."[34]

A sculptor, whose name remains unknown, bought them at the public sale which followed Foucquet's condemnation. He then gave them to Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre, having passed from the service of Foucquet into that of the King, was then living in a little pavilion at the Tuileries, into which the two mausoleums, as the inventory calls them, could not enter. They were therefore highly inconvenient guests. They were placed "in a little garden of the Tuileries, where these rare curiosities remained for a long time exposed to the injurious effect of the atmosphere and greatly neglected."[35]

Finding that he had no use for them, Le Nôtre presented them to a neighbour and friend, M. d'Ussé, Comptroller of the King's Household, whose garden adjoined that of the Tuileries. M. d'Ussé had them placed "at the end of a bowered alley." According to the virtuoso, Germain Brice, the Comptroller, did not realize their value and their rarity. A Flora or a Pomona, smiling on her marble pedestal, would have been more to his liking. Nevertheless he had them taken to his estate of Ussé, in Touraine, which shows that he did not disdain them. Thus the repose which La Fontaine desired for these worshippers of Messire Orus was denied them. Even yet they had not made their last journey. M. d'Ussé had married a child of twelve, who was the daughter of a great man. Her name was Jeanne-Françoise de Vauban. Her father, then Commissary-General of Fortifications, paid a visit of some length to his son-in-law. He could not resist the temptation of shifting the soil, and he made a terrace; at the foot of this terrace he constructed a niche for the two "mausoleums." Now, half a century later there lived at a distance of five miles from Ussé an antiquarian called La Sauvagère, who went up and down the country examining ancient stones, for stones had voices before to-day. He did not fail to go to Ussé. He saw the sarcophagi, and marvelled at them. He wrote about them to Court de Géblin, who replied to his letter. Court de Géblin was investigating the origin of the world. This time he thought he had found it.

La Sauvagère published plates of the sarcophagi and of the hieroglyphics which covered them.[36] Here was a fine subject for conjecture. After thirty years, La Sauvagère's enthusiasm had not cooled. To the Prince de Montbazon, who had just bought the château, and the Egyptians with it, he ordained fervently: "Prince, there you have something which is by itself worth the whole of your estate."

In 1807 the Egyptians were still in the niche where Vauban had installed them. The Marquis de Chalabre then sold the estate of Ussé, which he had inherited from his father, but he kept the sarcophagi and took them to Paris th his apartment.

Then they disappeared, and, in 1843, no one knew what had become of them. M. Bonardot, the archaeologist, who displayed so much care in the preservation of old engravings, visited that year the cemetery of the old Abbey of Longchamps. By the edge of a path he discovered two stones sticking out of the ground. Having poked about with his stick, he saw that these stones were in the form of heads, and by the hair-dressing he recognized two Egyptians. He made inquiries, and learned that they were the two sarcophagi, sent there by M. de Chalabre's son, and forgotten. M. de Chalabre was then dying; his heirs had the Egyptians disinterred and gave them to the Louvre Museum, and there they are to-day.[37] Their names have been deciphered. They are not royal names. One is called Hor-Kheb, the other Ank-Mer.[38]

They wear their beards in beard-cases, according to the custom of their time and country, and it was these beard-cases that La Fontaine took for bibs.

The gallery of Saint-Mandé, which contained these two monuments that we have followed so far afield, was magnificently decorated with thirteen ancient gods in marble, life-size, and thirty-three busts in bronze or marble, placed on pedestals. Among these busts were those of Socrates and Seneca. Imagine these faces, brown or luminous, ranged about the chamber, where the books displayed the sombre resplendence of their brown and gilt backs. Imagine the pictures, the cabinets of medals, the tables of porphyry, the mosaics; imagine a thousand precious curiosities, and you will have some idea of this gallery, the rich treasures of which were to be dispersed almost as soon as they had been collected.

The Superintendent had little time for reading, but he loved to turn over the pages of his books, for he was a well-read man. He promised himself the pleasures of learned, leisurely study in his old age, when he would no longer read a welcome in ladies' eyes. Meanwhile, he had had twenty-seven thousand volumes arranged on the shelves of his gallery, around those two sarcophagi the story of which had carried us so far afield from Saint-Mandé and the last days of Mazarin. These twenty-seven thousand volumes comprised seven thousand in folio, twelve thousand in quarto and eight thousand in octavo. They were not all in the gallery. There was, in particular, a room for the "Alcorans, the Talmuds and some old Bible commentaries."[39]

The rich collection of printed books which he had gathered together embraced universal history, medicine, law, natural history, mathematics, oratory, theology and philosophy, as well as the fine arts, represented by illustrated volumes.

These books, of which it would not be possible to compile a catalogue to-day, were not, it would seem, contained in beautiful morocco bindings, finely gilt and richly adorned with coats of arms, like those which honoured Mazarin's library. The financier had bought hastily, in a wholesale fashion, books already bound, so that we cannot rank him among the great bibliophiles, although he may be numbered among the lovers of books.

That Foucquet loved books, as he loved gardens, as he loved everything flattering to the taste of a well-bred man, that he even preferred books to anything else, there is no doubt, for we have irrefutable testimony of the fact. In the _Conseils de la Sagesse,_ which he wrote in prison, may be found this beautiful phrase: "You know that formerly I used to find convention in my books."[40]

Alas, why did he not oftener listen to those consolers which speak so gently and so softly, and which can bestow every blessing upon the heart that is innocent of desire? _In angello cum libello._ Therein, perhaps, resides all wisdom. But, if every one sat in his corner and read, what would books be about? They are filled with the sorrows and the errors of men, and it is by saddening us that they give us consolation. Yes, there was in Foucquet the stuff of a librarian in the great style of a Peiresc or a Naudé. But this stuff was but a fragment of the whole piece. Cæsar, also, would have been the first book-lover of his day if he had not been eager to conquer and to reign, if he had not possessed a genius for organizing Rome and the world. One needs a childlike candour and a pious zeal if one would shut oneself up with the dust of old books, with the souls of the dead. The humble book-lover who holds this pen, for his own part, savours with delight that reposeful charm, but he knows well that the purity of this charm can only be bought at the price of renunciation and resignation.

A word as to what became of Foucquet's library. But let the reader not be alarmed; the fate of the twenty-seven thousand volumes which composed it will not occupy us so long as that of the two Egyptian sarcophagi. This library was sold by auction, like the rest of the Superintendent's movables. Guy Patin wrote from Paris on the 25th February, 1665: "M. Foucquet's effects are about to be sold. There is a fine library. It is said that M. Colbert wants it." Perhaps Colbert did want it, but for the King. Colbert was not a second Foucquet.

Carcasi, the keeper of the Royal Library, bought for the King about thirteen thousand volumes. The accounts of the King's buildings mention, under the date of January, 1667, the payment of six thousand livres "to the Sieur Mandat, liquidator of the assets of M. Foucquet, for the price of the books which the King has had bought from the Library of Saint-Mandé." And another payment of fourteen thousand livres "to the Sieur Arnoul for books on the History of Italy, which His Majesty has also bought."

As for the manuscripts, they were bought by various libraries and scattered. The catalogue which the purchasers compiled of these manuscripts forms a small duodecimo volume of sixty-two pages, entitled: _Mémoires des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de M. Foucquet, qui se vendent à Paris, chez Denis Thierry, Frédéric Léonard, Jean Dupuis, rue Saint-Jacques, et Claude Barbin, au Palais. M. D. C. LXVII._

So much for the house; now for the guests. We have already met La Fontaine and Corneille in the gallery. We shall see them there again; they are assiduous visitors. Old Corneille brings his grievances thither. Poor, half forgotten, he was then labouring under the blow of the failure of his _Pertharite._ His great genius was wearing out, was becoming harsh and uncouth, and poor Pertharite, King of the Lombards, who was too fond of his wife Rodelinde, had met with a bad reception in the theatre. Corneille, who was slow to take a hint, for acuteness is not a characteristic of men of his temperament, nevertheless understood that the hour of retreat had sounded. With a vestige of pride, which became his genius, he pretended to take initiation in the retirement which was forced upon him. "It is better," he said, "that I should withdraw on my own account rather than wait until I am flatly told to do so; and it is just that after twenty years' work I should begin to see that I am growing too old to be still fashionable. At any rate, I have this satisfaction: that I leave the French stage better than I found it, with regard both to art and to morals."

A touching and a noble farewell, but a painful one. Foucquet recalled him; a kind word and a small pension sufficed to cheer the old man's heart, to console him for long neglect, and for the languishing of his fame. He presented his new benefactor with an epistle full of gratitude:

Oui, généreux appui de tout notre Parnasse, Tu me rends ma vigeur lorsque tu me fais grâce, Ec je veux bien apprendre à tout notre avenir Que tes regards bénins ont su me rajeunir. . . . . . . . . . . Je sens le même feu, je sens la même audace Qui lit plaindre le Cid, qui fit combattre Horace, Et je me trouve encor la main qui crayonna L'âme du grand Pompée et l'esprit de Cinna. Choisis-moi seulement quelque nom dans l'histoire Pour qui tu veuilles place au Temple de la Gloire, Quelque nom favori qu'il te plaise arracher A la nuit de la tombe, aux cendres du bûcher. Soit qu'il faille ternir ceux d'Énée et d'Achille Par un noble attentat sur Homère et Virgile, Soit qu'il faille obscurcir par un dernier effort Ceux que j'ai sur la scène affranchis de la mort; Tu me verras le même, et je te ferai dire, Si jamais pleinement ta grande âme m'inspire, Que dix lustres et plus n'ont pas tout emporté, Cet assemblage heureux de force et de clarté, Ces prestiges secrets de l'aimable imposture, Qu'à l'envie m'ont prêtés et l'art et la nature. N'attends pas toutefois que j'ose m'enhardir, Ou jusqu' à te dépeindre ou jusqu' à t'applaudir, Ce serait présumer que d'une seule vue Jamais vu de ton cœur la plus vaste étendue, Qu'un moment suffrait à mes débiles yeux Pour démêler en toi ces dons brillants des deux, De qui l'inépuisable et per çante lumière. Sitôt que tu parais, fait baisser la paupière. J'ai déjà vu beaucoup en ce moment heureux, Je t'ai vu magnanime, affable, généreux, Et ce qu'on voit à peine après dix ans d'excuses, Je t'ai vu tout à coup libéral pour les Muses.[41]

This, after all, is little more than a receipt expressed in Spanish style. None the less, the poet promises the financier that he will treat the subject which the latter indicates. Foucquet gave him three subjects to choose from. _Œdipe_ was one of the three; it was the one which Corneille chose. He treated it, and we may say that he treated it gallantly. He endowed his heroes with wonderfully polite manners. It is charming to hear Theseus, Prince of Athens, saying to the beautiful Dirce:

Quelque ravage affreux qu'étale ici la peste, L'absence aux vrais amants est encor plus funeste.

Old Corneille, delighted with himself for having conceived such beautiful things, flattered himself that _Œdipe_ was his masterpiece, although it had taken him only two months to write it; he had made haste in order to please the Superintendent. This work, which was in the fashion and was, after all, from the pen of the great Corneille, was received with favour. The gazeteer, Loret, bears witness to this in the execrable verses of a poet who has to write so much a week:

Monsieur de Corneille l'aîné, Depuis peu de temps a donné A ceux de l'hôtel de Bourgogne[42] Son dernier ouvrage ou besogne, Ouvrage grand et signalé, Qui _l'Œdipe_ est intitulé, Ouvrage, dis-je, dramatique, Mais si tendre et si pathétique, Que, sans se sentir émouvoir, On ne peut l'entendre ou le voir. Jamais pièce de cette sorte N'eut l'élocution si forte; Jamais, dit-on, dans l'univers, On n'entendit de si beaux vers.

We mentioned that Foucquet, when proposing to Corneille the subject of _Œdipe,_ suggested two other subjects, one of which was _Camma._ The third we do not know.[43] Camma, who slays her husband's murderer upon the altar to which he has led her, is no commonplace heroine. Corneille was a good kinsman; he passed on _Camma_ to his brother Thomas, who made a pretty dull tragedy out of it; such was the custom of this excellent person. Thomas also participated in the Superintendent's generosity. He dedicated to Foucquet his tragedy _La Mort de Commode,_ in return for the "generous marks of esteem" and benefits which he had received. He said, with charming politeness, "I wished to offer myself, and you have singled me out."

Pellisson, a brilliant wit and a capable man, became, after 1656, one of Foucquet's principal clerks. He had for Mademoiselle de Scudéry a beautiful affection which he loaded with so many adornments that it seems to-day to have been a miraculous work of artifice. It was marvellously decked out and embellished; an exquisite work of art. Had they both been handsome, they would not have introduced into their liaison so many complications; they would have loved each other naturally. But he was ugly, so was she, and as one must love in this world--everybody says so--they loved each other with what they had, with their pretty wit and their subtlety. Being able to do no better, they created a masterpiece.

Pellisson was an assiduous guest at the Saturdays of this learned and "precious" spinster. There he met Madame du Plessis-Bellière, whose friendship for Foucquet is well known to us. Witty herself, she was naturally inclined to favour wit in the new Sappho, who was then publishing _Clélie_ in ten volumes, and in Pellisson, her relations with whom were as pleasant as they were discreet. She introduced them both to the Superintendent, who lost no time in attaching them both to himself in order not to separate these two incomparable lovers. Pellisson paid Mademoiselle de Scudéry's debt by writing a _Remerciement du siècle à M. le surintendant Foucquet,_ and presently on his own account he fabricated a second _Remerciement,_ full of those elaborate allegories which people revelled in at that period, but which to-day would send us to sleep, standing.

Pellisson, having become the Superintendent's steward, bargained with his tax-farmers and corrected his master's love-letters, for he was a resourceful person; and, as he piqued himself especially on his wit, he obligingly served as Foucquet's intermediary with men of letters. On his recommendation the Superintendent gave a receipt for the taxes of Forez to the poet Jean Hesnault, who thus found at Saint-Mandé an end of the poverty which he had so long paraded up and down the world, in the Low Countries, in England and in Sicily. Jean Hesnault was an intelligent person, but untrustworthy: "Loving pleasure with refinement," says Bayle, "delicately and artistically debauched."

A pupil of Gassendi, like Molière, Bernir and Cyrano, he was an atheist, and did not conceal the fact. For the rest, he was a good poet, and he had a great spirit. Was it his audacious, profound and melancholy philosophy which recommended him to the Superintendent's favour? Hardly. Foucquet in his times of good fortune was far too much occupied with the affairs of this world to be greatly interested in those of another. And when misfortune brought him leisure, he is said to have sought consolation in piety. However that may be, the kindness which he showed to Jean Hesnault was not bestowed upon an ungrateful recipient. Hesnault, as we shall see, appeared among the most ardent defenders of the Superintendent in the days of his misfortune. Foucquet also counted among his pensioners a man as pious as Hesnault was the reverse. I refer to Guillaume de Brébeuf, a Norman nobleman, who translated the _Pharsale,_ who was extremely zealous in converting the Calvinists of his province. He was always shivering with fever; but his greatest misfortune was his poverty. Cardinal Mazarin had made him many promises; it was Foucquet who kept them.

He also helped Boisrobert, who was growing old. Now, old age, which is never welcome to anybody, is most unwelcome to buffoons. This poetical Abbé, whom Richelieu described as "the ardent solicitor of the unwilling Muses," had long been accustomed to ask, to receive and to thank. Compliments cost him nothing, and he stuffed his collected _Épîtres en vers,_ published in 1658, with eulogies, in which Foucquet is compared to the heroes, the gods and the stars. Gombault, who wrote in a more concise style, and was a shepherd on Parnassus, dedicated his _Danaides_ to him, by way of expressing his thanks. Before 1658 this poet of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had experienced the financier's generosity. As for poor Scarron, he was in an unfortunate position. He, unhappy man, had taken part in the Fronde. He had decried Jules, and Jules, not generally vindictive, was not forgiving in this case, where to forgive was to pay. Foucquet treated the Frondeur as a beggar, and then, repenting, gave him a pension of 1600 livres. Nevertheless, he remained indigent and needy. His creditors often hammered violently at the knocker of his iron-clamped door, making a terrible noise in the street. Once the poet was blockaded by certain nasty-looking fellows. Three thousand francs, which Foucquet sent through the excellent Pellisson, came just in the nick of time to deliver him from prison. Madame Scarron was in the good books of Madame la Surintendante. From Foucquet she obtained for her husband the right to organize a company of unloaders at the city gates. The waggoners, doubtless, would have been just as well pleased to do without these unloaders, who made them pay through the nose, but the crippled poet who directed them received by this means a revenue of between two and three thousand livres.

I forgot Loret; the worst of men, because the worst of rhymers, and there is nothing in the world worse than a bad poet. Yet every one must live--at least, so it is said--and Loret lived, thanks to Foucquet. He received his pittance on condition that he would moderate his praises. Foucquet was a man of taste; he feared tactless praises, a fear which we can hardly appreciate to-day. Nevertheless, in spite of these remonstrances, Loret did not cease to be eulogistic. It was after having celebrated in very bad verses Foucquet as a demigod that he added:

J'en pourrais dire d'avantage, Mais à ce charmant personnage Les éloges ne plaisent pas; Les siens sont pour lui sans appas. Il aime peu qu'on le loue, Et touchant ce sujet, j'avoue Que l'excellent sieur Pellisson M'a fait plusieurs fois la leçon; Mais, comme son rare mérite Tout mon cœur puissamment excite, Et que ce sujet m'est très cher. J'aurais peine à m'en empêcher.

But enough about this gazetteer, who, after all, was not a bad fellow, although he never wrote anything but foolishness, and let us come to the poet whose delightful genius even to-day sheds a glory over the memory of Nicolas Foucquet.

La Fontaine was presented to Foucquet by his uncle, Jannart, in the course of the year 1654. He was then absolutely unknown outside his town of Château-Thierry, where he was said to have courted a certain Abbess, and to have been seen at night hastening over a frosty road, with a dark lantern in his hand and white stockings on his feet. That was his only fame. If he was then occupied with poetry, it was for himself alone, and to the knowledge, perhaps, of only a few friends.

Jacques Jannart, his uncle, or, to be more precise, the husband of the aunt of La Fontaine's wife, was King's Counsellor and Deputy Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament. He was a great personage and a good man. He was not displeased that his nephew should be a poet, should commit follies and should borrow money. He himself was not innocent of gallantry, and was inclined to interpret the law in favour of fair ladies. He thought that La Fontaine's poetry would please the Superintendent and that the Superintendent's patronage would please the poet.

Foucquet had good taste; La Fontaine pleased him; indeed, he has the merit of having been the first to appreciate the poet. He gave him a pension of one thousand francs on condition that he should produce a poem once a quarter. What is the date of this gift I do not know; the poet's receipts do not go further back than 1659, if Mathieu Marais[44] was correct in attributing to this same year a poem which precedes the receipts, and which the poet published in 1675[45] with this description:

_M._ [_Foucquet_] _having said that I ought to give him something for his endeavour to make my verses known, I sent, shortly after, this letter to_ [_Madame Foucquet._][46]

In this poem he jokes about the engagement which he had entered into with the Superintendent for the receipt of his pension:

Je vous l'avoue, et c'est la vérité, Que Monseigneur n'a que trop mérité La pension qu'il veut que je lui donne. En bonne foi je ne sache personne A qui Phébus s'engageât aujourd'hui De la donner plus volontiers qu'à lui. . . . . . . . . . Pour acquitter celle-ci chaque année, Il me faudra quatre termes égaux; A la Saint-Jean je promets madrigaux, Courts et troussés et de taille mignonne; Longue lecture en été n'est pas bonne. Le chef d'octobre aura son tour après, Ma Muse alors prétend se mettre en frais. Notre héros, si le beau temps ne change, De menus vers aura pleine vendange. Ne dites point que c'est menu présent, Car menus vers sont en vogue à présent. Vienne l'an neuf, ballade est destinée; Qui rit ce jour, il rit toute l'année. . . . . . . . . . Pâques, jour saint, veut autre poésie; J'envoyerais lors, si Dieu me prête vie, Pour achever toute la pension, Quelque sonnet plein de dévotion. Ce terme-là pourrait être le pire. On me voit peu sur tels sujets écrire, Mais tout au moins je serai diligent, Et, si j'y manque, envoyez un sergent, Faites saisir sans aucune remise Stances, rondeaux et vers de toute guise. Ce sont nos biens: les doctes nourrissons N'amassent rien, si ce n'est des chansons.[47]

This engagement was kept, with certain modifications, for a year at least. The poet's acknowledgments were in a graceful and natural style, unequalled since the time of Marot. The ballad for the midsummer quarter was sent to Madame la Surintendante:

Reine des cœurs, objet délicieux, Que suit l'enfant qu'on adore en des lieux Nommés Paphos, Amathonte et Cythère, Vous qui charmez les hommes et les dieux, En puissiez-vous dans cent ans autant faire.

We have seen Madame Foucquet as Charity; now we see her as Venus. But it was only to poets that she was a goddess; in reality she was a good woman whose mental qualities were lacking in charm; she was sympathetic only in misfortune.

La Fontaine, in this poem, asks Madame Foucquet whether "one of the Smiles" whom she "has for secretary" will send him a glorious acquittal. Now, the Smile who was Madame la Surintendante's secretary was Pellisson. As we have said, he was a wit. It delighted him to think himself a Smile hovering round the Venus of Vaux. As for the acknowledgment he was asked for, he composed two, one in his own name, and the other in that of his divine Surintendante. Here is the first, which is called the Public Acknowledgment:

Par devant moi sur Parnasse notaire, Se présenta la reine des beautés, Et des vertus le parfait exemplaire, Qui lut ces vers, puis les ayant comptés, Pesés, revus, approuvés et vantés, Pour le passé voulut s'en satisfaire, Se réservant le tribut ordinaire, Pour l'avenir aux termes arrêtés. Muses de Vaux et vous, leur secrétaire, Voilà l'acquit tel que vous souhaitez. En puissiez-vous dans cent ans autant faire.

Here is the second, under private seal, in the name of the Surintendante:

De mes deux yeux, ou de mes deux soleils J'ai lu vos vers qu'on trouve sans pareils, Et qui n'ont rien qui ne me doive plaire. Je vous tiens quitte et promets vous fournir De quoi par tout vous le faire tenir, Pour le passé, mais non pour l'avenir. En puissiez-vous dans cent ans autant faire.[48]

But Jean could not lay restraint upon himself. As he himself ingenuously admits, he divided his life into two parts: one he passed in sleeping, the other in doing nothing. For writing verse was doing nothing for him, it came to him so naturally. But he could not do it if he were obliged. In October, the second quarter, when his second receipt fell due, we find the poet very much embarrassed. He sends a poem, the refrain of which betrays this embarrassment:

To promise is one thing, to keep one's promise is another.[49]

In the first quarter of 1660, all he produced was a dizaine for Madame Foucquet. Foucquet, not unnaturally, mildly objected; and the poet replied:

Bien vous dirai qu'au nombre s'arrêter N'est pas le mieux, seigneur....

Foucquet was content and did not trouble his poetic debtor any further. The latter thought that he would pay his debt by a descriptive poem of some length, but this poem, _Le Songe de Vaux,_ was never finished. The terrible awakening was near at hand.

We have already seen La Fontaine in the gallery at Saint-Mandé. Whilst he was waiting Foucquet was busy, whether with an affair of State or of the heart is doubtful, for he burnt the candle at both ends. "He took everything upon himself," says the Abbé de Choisy, "he aspired to be the first Minister, without losing a single moment of his pleasures. He would pretend to be working alone in his study at Saint-Mandé; and the whole Court, anticipating his future greatness, would wait in his antechamber, loudly praising the indefatigable industry of this great man, while he himself would go down the private staircase into a garden, where his nymphs, whose names I might mention if I chose, and they were not among the least distinguished, awaited him, and for no small reward."[50] He would send sometimes three, sometimes four thousand pistoles to the ladies of his heart,[51] and some of the most charming sought to please him.[52]

Would it be true, however, to say with Nicolas:

Never did a Superintendent meet with a cruel lady.[53]

Madame de Sévigné was wooed by Foucquet, and yet she had no difficulty in escaping from him. She made him understand that she would give nothing and accept nothing. She was reasonable; he became so. "Reduced to friendship, he transformed his love," says Bussy, "into an esteem for a virtue hitherto unknown to him."[54] Madame de Sévigné was not alone obdurate.

Madame Scarron, beautiful and prudish, found a way to obtain great benefits from Foucquet without involving her reputation. When the Superintendent granted her a favour, it was Madame Foucquet whom she thanked. Thus, for the privilege which we have mentioned: "Madame," she writes to Madame la Surintendante, "I will not trouble you further about the matter of the unloaders. It is happily terminated through the intervention of that hero to whom we all owe everything, and whom you have the pleasure of loving. The provost of the merchants listened to reason as soon as he heard the great name of M. Foucquet. I entreat of you, Madame, to allow me to come and thank you at Vaux. Madame de Vassé has assured me that you continue to regard me kindly, and that you will not consider me an intruder in those alleys where one may reflect with so much reason, and jest with so much grace."[55]

Madame Foucquet, who was a kind woman, wished to keep Madame Scarron about her; but the cunning fly would not allow itself to be caught. She wrote to her indiscreet benefactress: "Madame, my obligation towards you did not permit me to hesitate concerning the proposition which Madame Bonneau made me on your behalf. It was so flattering to me, I am so disgusted with my present circumstances, and I have so much respect for you, that I should not have wavered for a moment, even if the gratitude which I owe you had not influenced me; but, Madame, M. Scarron, although your indebted and very humble servant, cannot give his consent. My entreaties have failed to move him, my reasons to persuade him. He implores you to love me less, or at any rate to display your affection in a way which would be less costly to him. Read his request, Madame, and pardon the ardour of a husband who has no other resource against tedium, no other consolation in all his misfortunes than the wife whom he loves. I told Madame Bonneau that if you shorten the term I might, perhaps, obtain his consent, but I see that it is useless thus to flatter myself, and that I had too far presumed upon my power. I entreat of you, Madame, to continue your kindness towards me. No one is more attached to you than I am, and my gratitude will cease only with my life."[56]

Mademoiselle du Fouilloux was no prude; quite the contrary. She appeared at Court in 1652; she showed herself and she pleased.

Une fleur fraîche et printanière, Un nouvel astre, une lumière, Savoir l'aimable du Fouilloux, Dont plusieurs beaux yeux sont jaloux, D'autant que cette demoiselle Est charmante, brillante et belle, Ayant pour escorte l'Amour, A fait son entrée à la Cour Et pris le nom, cette semaine, De fille d'honneur de la reine.[57]

She figured in all the ballets in which the King danced, and Loret sings that in 1658:

Fouilloux, l'une des trois pucelles, Comme elle est belle entre les belles, Par ses attraits toujours vainqueurs, Y faisait des rafles de cœurs.

Foucquet lost his heart to her. He spoke; he gained a hearing. Mademoiselle du Fouilloux, frivolous and calculating, was doubly made for him. Their liaison was intimate and political. Fouilloux was absolutely self-interested; she did not ask for what was her due, being too great a lady for that, but she demanded it by means of a third person, and even insisted upon advances. "I will tell you," wrote this go-between,[58] "that I have seen Fouilloux prepared to entreat me to find a way to inform you, as if on my own account, that I knew you would please her if you would advance one hundred pistoles on this year's pension."

We know also, from the same source, that the beauty asked for money to pay her debts, and did not pay them. Here is the end of the note: "Mademoiselle du Fouilloux has assured me that, of all the money that you have given her, she has not paid a halfpenny. She has gambled it all away." We must do justice to Foucquet, and to Fouilloux; they were very reasonable. Fouilloux's one thought was to have her own establishment, and she had her eye on an honest man, something of a simpleton, but of good family, whom she had watched by the Superintendent's police.

In those days the Queen's ladies-in-waiting were flattered in song. Fouilloux had verses addressed to her:

Foilloux sans songer à plaire Plaît pourtant infiniment Par un air libre et charmant. C'est un dessein téméraire Que d'attaquer sa rigueur. Si j'eusse été sans affaires La belle aurait eu mon cœur.[59]

Other verses celebrate Menneville:

Toute la Cour est éprise De ces attraits glorieux Dont vous enchantez les yeux, Menneville; ma franchise S'y devrait bien engager; Mais mon cœur est place prise Et vous n'y sauriez loger.

This Menneville, celebrated in such bad verse, was, with Fouilloux, the prettiest woman at Court. On this matter we have the testimony of Jean Racine, who, banished to the depths of the provinces, wrote to his friend La Fontaine, citing Fouilloux and Menneville as examples of beauty. "I cannot refrain from saying a word as to the beauties of this province.... There is not a village maiden, nor a cobbler's wife, who might not vie in beauty with the Fouilloux and the Mennevilles.... All the women here are dazzling, and they deck themselves out in a manner which is to them the most natural fashion in the world, and as for the attractions of their person,

_Colors vents, corpus solidum et sued plenum._"[60]

Of the two, Menneville is thought to have been the more beautiful. A song says of her:

Cachez-vous, filles de la reine, Petites, Car Menneville est de retour, M'amour.

She sold herself to the Superintendent. As she did not equal Fouilloux in her genius for intrigue, Foucquet used her more kindly. While this lady-in-waiting was yielding to the suit of the seigneur of Vaux, she was trying to force the Duc de Damville to marry her, as he had promised. Like Fouilloux, she begged the Superintendent to help her to get settled. He did so with a good grace, and sent the fair lady fifteen thousand crowns, which ought to have decided Damville. The latter hesitated. An accident decided for him: he died.

There were no pleasures, no distractions--if we employ the word in the strict sense which Pascal then gave it--there were no means of enjoyment and oblivion for which Foucquet had not the most tremendous capacity. Business and building were not enough to absorb his vast energies. He was a gambler. The stakes at his tables were terribly high. So they were at Madame Foucquet's. In one day Gourville won eighteen thousand livres from the Comte d'Avaux. No money was laid on the table, but at the end of the game the players settled their accounts. They played not only for money, but for gems, ornaments, lace, collars, valued at seventy to eighty pistoles each.

Foucquet, playing against Gourville, in one day lost sixty thousand livres. "He played," said Gourville, "with cut cards which were worth ten or twenty pistoles each. I put one thousand pistoles before me almost desiring that he should win back something, which did happen. Nevertheless, he was not pleased to see I was leaving the game."[61]

This wild play was not altogether to the Superintendent's disadvantage. In the end his intimate friends, who were great personages, were ruined, and came to him for mercy. Thus, for instance, he held in his power Hugues de Lyonne--the great Lyonne. But he himself was at his last gasp, and overwhelmed with anxiety.

Sole Superintendent of Finance since Servien's death, on the 17th February, 1659, Foucquet had filled Mazarin's crop without having won him, for Mazarin loved and served only himself, his own people and the State. As a private individual he was self-interested, covetous and miserly. As a public man he desired the good of the kingdom, the greatness of France. He was never grateful to his public servants for anything they did for his own person. Foucquet felt this; he perceived that he had no hold over this man, and that Mazarin, when dying, might ruin him, having no further need of him.

For Mazarin was dying; he was dying with all the heartrending regret of a Magnifico who feels that he is being torn from his jewels, his tapestries and his books--beautifully bound in morocco, delicately tooled--and also, by a curious inconsistency, with the serenity of a great statesman, of another Richelieu, full of a generous grief that he could no longer play his part in those great affairs which had rendered his life illustrious. He was anxious to assure the prosperity of the kingdom after his death. "Sire," he said to the young Louis XIV, "I owe you everything, but I think I can in a manner discharge my debt by giving you Colbert."[62]

At the very point of death he was conferring with the King in secret conversations, which caused Foucquet great anxiety, precisely because they were concealed from him. Then, at length, the light of eyes which had so long sought for gold and sumptuous draperies, and pierced the hearts of men, was finally extinguished.

On the 9th March, 1661, as Foucquet, leaving his house of Saint-Mandé, was crossing the Gardens on foot to go to Vincennes, he met young Brienne, who was getting out of his couch, and learned from him the great news.

"He is dead, then!" murmured Foucquet. "Henceforth I shall not know in whom to confide. People always do things by halves. Oh, how distressing I The King is waiting for me, and I ought to be there among the first! My God! Monsieur de Brienne, tell me what is happening, so that I may not commit any indiscretion through ignorance."[63]

The day after Mazarin's death the King of twenty-three summoned Foucquet, with the Chancellor, Séguier, the Ministers and Secretaries of State, and addressed them in these words: "Hitherto I have been content to leave my affairs in the hands of the late Cardinal. It is time for me to control them myself. You will help me with your counsels when I ask you for them. Gentlemen, I forbid you to sign anything, not even a safe conduct, or a passport, without my command. I request you to give me personally an account of everything every day, to favour no one in your lists of the month. And you, Monsieur le Surintendant, I have explained to you my wishes; I request you to employ M. Colbert, whom the late Cardinal has recommended to me." Foucquet thought that the King was not speaking seriously. That error ruined him.

He believed that it would be easy to amuse and deceive the youthful mind of the King, and he set to work to do so with all the ardour, all the grace and all the frivolity of his nature. He determined to govern the kingdom and the King. Foucquet did not know Louis XIV, and Louis XVI did know Foucquet. Warned by Mazarin, the King knew that Foucquet was engaged in dubious proceedings, and was ready to resort to any expedient. He knew, also, that he was a man of resource and of talent. He took him apart and told him that he was determined to be King, and to have a precise and complete knowledge of State affairs; that he would begin with finance; it was the most important part of his administration, and that he was determined to restore order and regularity to that department. He asked the Superintendent to instruct him minutely in every detail, and he bade him conceal nothing, declaring that he would always employ him, provided that he found him sincere. As for the past, he was prepared to forget that, but he wished that in future the Superintendent would let him know the true state of the finances.[64]

In speaking thus, Louis XIV told the truth. He has explained himself in his _Mémoires._ "It may be a cause of astonishment," he says, "that I was willing to employ him at a time when his peculations were known to me, but I knew that he was intelligent and thoroughly acquainted with all the most intimate affairs of State, and this made me think that, provided he would confess his past faults and promise to correct them, he might render me good service."

No one could speak more wisely, more kindly; but the audacious Foucquet did not realize that there was something menacing in this wisdom and this kindness. He was possessed of a spirit of imprudence and error. He was labouring blindly to bring about his own fall. Day by day, despite the advice of his best friends, he presented the King with false accounts of his expenditure and revenue. For five months he believed that he was deceiving Louis XIV, but every evening the King placed his accounts in the hands of Colbert, whom he had nominated Intendant of Finance, with the special duty of watching Foucquet. Colbert showed the King the falsifications in these accounts. On the following day the King would patiently seek to draw some confession from the guilty Minister, who, with false security, persisted in his lies.

Henceforth Foucquet was a ruined man. From the month of April, 1661, Colbert's clerks did not hesitate to announce his fall. He began to be afraid, but it was too late. He went and threw himself at the King's feet--it was at Fontainebleau--he reminded him that Cardinal Mazarin had regulated finance with absolute authority, without observing any formality, and had constrained him, the Superintendent, to do many things which might expose him to prosecution. He did not deny his own personal faults, and admitted that his expenditure had been excessive. He entreated the King to pardon him for the past, and promised to serve him faithfully in the future. The King listened to his Minister with apparent goodwill; his lips murmured words of pardon, but in his heart he had already passed sentence on Foucquet.

Is it true that some private jealousy inspired the King's vengeance? Foucquet, according to the Abbé de Choisy,[65] had sent Madame de Plessis-Bellière to tell Mademoiselle de Lavallière that the Superintendent had twenty thousand pistoles at her service. The lady had replied that twenty million would not induce her to take a false step. "Which astonished the worthy intermediary, who was little used to such replies," adds the Abbé. However this may be, Foucquet soon perceived that the fortress was taken, and that it was dangerous to tread upon the heels of the royal occupant. But in order to repair his fault he committed a second, worse than the first. Again it is Choisy who tells us. "Wishing to justify himself to her, and to her secret lover, he himself undertook the mission of go-between, and, taking her apart in Madame's antechamber, he sought to tell her that the King was the greatest prince in the world, the best looking, and other little matters. But the lady, proud of her heart's secret, cut him short, and that very evening complained of him to the King."[66]

Such a piece of audacity, and one so clumsy, could only irritate the young and royal lover. Nevertheless it was not to a secret jealousy, but to State interest, that Louis XIV sacrificed his prevaricating Minister.

His intentions are above suspicion. It was in the interest of the Crown and of the State alone that he acted. Yet we can but feel surprised to find so young a man employing so much strategy and so much dissimulation in order to ruin one whom he had appeared to pardon. In this piece of diplomacy Louis XIV and Colbert both displayed an excess of skill. With perfidious adroitness they manœuvred to deprive Foucquet of his office of Attorney-General, which was an obstacle in their way, for an officer of the Parliament could be tried only by that body, and Foucquet had so many partisans in Parliament that there was no hope that it would ever condemn him.

Louis XIV displayed an apparent confidence in Foucquet and redoubled his favours; Colbert, acting with the King, was constantly praising his generosity. He was, at the same time, inducing him to testify his gratitude by filling the treasury without having recourse to bargains with supporters, which were so burdensome to the State. Foucquet replied: "I would willingly sell all that I have in the world in order to procure money for the King."

Colbert refrained from pressing him further, but he contrived to lead the conversation to the office of Attorney-General. Foucquet told him one day that he had been offered fifteen hundred thousand livres for it.

"But, sir," answered Colbert, "do you wish to sell it? It is true that it is of no great use to you. A Minister who is Superintendent has no time to watch lawsuits." The matter did not go any farther at that time; but they returned to it later, and Foucquet, thinking himself established in his sovereign's favour, said one day to Colbert that he was inclined to sell his office in order to give its price to the King. Colbert applauded this resolution, and Foucquet went immediately to tell Louis XIV, who thanked him and accepted the offer immediately. The trick was played.[67]

The King had done his part to bring about this excellent result by making Foucquet think that he would create him a _chevalier de l'Ordre,_ and first Minister, as soon as he was no longer Attorney-General. Here is a deal of duplicity to prepare the way for an act of justice! Foucquet sold his office for fourteen hundred thousand livres to Achille de Harlay, who paid for it partly in cash. A million was taken to Vincennes, "where the King wished to keep it for secret expenditure."[68]

Loret announced this fact in his letter of the 14th August:

Ce politique renommé Qui par ses bontés m'a charmé, Ce judicieux, ce grand homme Que Monseigneur Foucquet on nomme, Si généreux, si libéral, N'est plus procureur général. Une autre prudente cervelle, Que Monsieur Harlay on appelle, En a par sa démission Maintenant la possession.

As a further act of prudence, and in order completely to lay Foucquet's suspicions to rest, Louis XIV accepted the entertainment which Foucquet offered him in the Château de Vaux. "For a long time," said Madame de Lafayette, "the King had said that he wanted to go to Vaux, the Superintendent's magnificent house, and although Foucquet ought to have been too wary to show the King the very thing that proved so plainly what bad use he had made of the public finances, and though the King's natural kindliness ought to have prevented him from visiting a man whom he was about to ruin, neither of them considered this aspect of the affair."[69]

The whole Court went to Vaux on the 17th August, 1661.[70]

These festivities exasperated Louis XIV. "Ah, Madame," he said to his mother, "shall we not make all these people disgorge?" Infallible signs announced the approaching catastrophe. In his Council, the King proposed to suppress those very orders to pay cash which served, as we have said, to cover the secret expenditure of the Superintendents. The Chancellor strongly supported the proposal. "Do I count for nothing, then?" cried Foucquet indiscreetly. Then he suddenly corrected himself and said that other ways would be found to provide for the secret expenses of the State. "I myself will provide for them," said Louis XIV. Nevertheless, Foucquet, though deprived of the gown, was still a formidable enemy. Before he could be reduced his Breton strongholds must be captured. The prudent King had thought of this, and presently conceived a clever scheme. As there was need of money, it was resolved to increase the taxation of the State domains. This impost, described euphemistically as a gratuitous gift, was voted by the Provincial Assemblies. The presence of the King seemed necessary in order to determine the Breton Estates to make a great financial sacrifice, and Foucquet himself advised the King to go to Nantes, where the Provincial Assembly was to be held.[71] Foucquet himself helped to bring about his own ruin. At Nantes he had a sorrowful presentiment of this. He was suffering from an intermittent fever, the attacks of which were very weakening. "Why," he said, in a low voice to Brienne, "is the King going to Brittany, and to Nantes in particular? Is it not in order to make sure of Belle-Isle?" And several times in his weakness he murmured: "Nantes, Belle-Isle!" When Brienne went out, he embraced him with tears in his eyes.[72]

The King arrived at Nantes on the ist of September, and took up his abode at the Château. Foucquet had his lodging at the other end of the town, in a house which communicated with the Loire by means of a subterranean passage. In that way he could reach the river, where a boat was waiting for him, and escape to Belle-Isle.

Summoned by the King, on the 5th September, at seven o'clock in the morning, he went to the Council Meeting, which was prolonged until eleven o'clock. During this time meticulous measures were taken for his arrest, and for the seizure of his papers. The Council over, the King detained Foucquet to discuss various matters with him. Finally, he dismissed him, and Foucquet entered his chair. Having passed through the gate of the Château, he had entered a little square near the Cathedral, when D'Artagnan, 2nd Lieutenant of the Company of Musketeers, signed to him to get out. Foucquet obeyed, and D'Artagnan read him the warrant for his arrest. The Superintendent expressed great surprise at this misfortune, and asked the officer to avoid attracting public attention. The latter took him into a house which was near at hand; it was that of the Archdeacon of Nantes, whose niece had been Foucquet's first wife. A cup of broth was given to the prisoner; the papers he had on him were taken and sealed. In one of the King's coaches he was conveyed to the Château d'Angers. There he remained for three months, from the 7th of September to the 1st of December.

Meanwhile his prosecution was being prepared. Certain letters from women, found in a casket at Saint-Mandé, were taken to Fontainebleau, and given to the King. They combined a great deal of gallantry with a great deal of politics. Many women's names were to be read in them, or guessed at. Madame Scarron's was mentioned and even Madame de Sévigné's, but in an innocent connection. On the whole, only one woman, Menneville, was shown to be guilty.

Foucquet was removed from Angers to Saumur. Taken on the 2nd of December to La Chapelle-Blanche, he lodged on the 3rd in a suburb of Tours, and from the 4th to the 25th of December remained in the Château d'Amboise. Shortly after Foucquet's departure, La Fontaine, in company with his uncle, Jannart, who had been exiled to Limousin, halted below the Château and swept his eyes over the fair and smiling valley.

"All this," he said, "poor Monsieur Foucquet could never, during his imprisonment here, enjoy for a single moment. All the windows of his room had been blocked up, leaving only a little gap at the top. I asked to see him; a melancholy pleasure, I admit, but I did ask. The soldier who escorted us had no key, so that I was left for a long time gazing at the door, and I got them to tell me how the prisoner was guarded. I should like to describe it to you, but the recollection is too painful.

Qu'est-il besoin que je retrace Une garde au soin non pareil, Chambre murée, étroite place, Quelque peu d'air pour toute grâce; Jours sans soleil, Nuits sans sommeil; Trois portes en six pieds d'espace! Vous peindre un tel appartement, Ce serait attirer vos larmes; Je l'ai fait insensiblement, Cette plainte a pour moi des charmes.

Nothing but the approach of night could have dragged me from the spot."[73]

On the 31st December, Foucquet reached Vincennes. As he passed he caught sight of his house at Saint-Mandé, in which he had collected all that can flatter and adorn life, and which he was never again to inhabit. He was, indeed, to remain in the Bastille until after his condemnation; that is to say, for more than three years; and he left that fortress only to suffer an imprisonment of which the protracted severity has become a legend.

The public anger was now loosed upon the stricken financier. The people whose poverty had been insulted by his ostentatious display wished to snatch him from his guards and tear him to pieces in the streets. Several times during the journey from Nantes, D'Artagnan had been obliged to protect his prisoner from riotous mobs of peasants. In the higher classes of society the indignation was fully as bitter, although it was only expressed in words.

Society never forgave Foucquet for having allowed his love-letters to be seized. It was considered that to keep and classify women's letters in this manner was not the act of a gallant gentleman. Such was the opinion of Chapelain, who wrote to Madame de Sévigné:

"Was it not enough to ruin the State, and to render the King odious to his people by the enormous burdens which he imposed upon them, and to employ the public finances in impudent expenditure and insolent acquisitions, which were compatible neither with his honour nor with his office, and which, on the other hand, rather tended to turn his subjects and his servants against him, and to corrupt them? Was it necessary to crown his irregularities and his crimes, by erecting in his own honour a trophy of favours, either real or apparent, of the modesty of so many ladies of rank, and by keeping a shameful record of his commerce with them in order that the shipwreck of his fortunes should also be that of their reputations?

"Is this consistent with being, I do not say an upright man, in which capacity, his flatterers, the Scarrons, Pellissons and Sapphos, and the whole of that self-interested scum have so greatly extolled him, but a man merely, a man with a spark of enlightenment, who professes to be something better than a brute? I cannot excuse such scandalous, dastardly behaviour, and I should be hardly less enraged with this wretch if your name had not been found among his papers."[74]

We can admire such generous indignation, but it is hard to be called "self-interested scum" when one is merely faithful in misfortune.

The truth is that Foucquet still had friends; the women and the poets did not abandon him. Hesnault, to whom he had given a pension, was not a favourite of the Muses, but he showed himself a man of feeling, and his courageous fidelity did him credit. He attacked Colbert in an eloquent sonnet, which was circulated everywhere by the prisoner's friends:

Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux, Qui gémis sous le poids des affaires publiques, Victime dévouée aux chagrins politiques, Fantôme révéré sous un titre onéreux:

Vois combien des grandeurs le comble est dangereux; Contemple de Foucquet les funestes reliques, Et tandis qu'à sa perte en secret tu t'appliques, Crains qu'on ne te prépare un destin plus affreux!

Sa chute, quelque jour, te peut être commune; Crains ton poste, ton rang, la cour et la fortune; Nul ne tombe innocent d'où l'on te voit monté.

Cesse donc d'animer ton prince à son supplice, Et près d'avoir besoin de toute sa bonté, Ne le fais pas user de toute sa justice.

This sonnet was circulated privately. It was generally read with pleasure, for Colbert was not liked, and it will not be inappropriate to cite here an anecdote for which Bayle is responsible.[75]

When the sonnet was mentioned to the Minister, he asked: "Is the King offended by it?" And when he was told that he was not, "Then neither am I," he said, "nor do I bear the author any ill will."

If Molière kept silence, Corneille, on the contrary, now gave proof of his greatness of soul; by praising Pellisson's fidelity, he showed that he shared it:

En vain pour ébranler ta fidèle constance, On vit fondre sur toi la force et lat puissance; En vain dans la Bastille, on t'accabla de fers, En vain on te flatta sur mille appas divers; Ton grand cœur, inflexible aux rigueurs, aux caresses, Triompha de la force et se rit des promesses; Et comme un grand rocher par l'orage insulté Des flots audacieux méprise la fierté, Et, sans craindre le bruit qui gronde sur sa tête, Voit briser à ses pieds l'effort de la tempête, C'est ainsi, Pellisson, que dans l'adversité, Ton intrépide cœur garde sa fermeté, Et que ton amitié, constante et généreuse, Du milieu des dangers sortit victorieuse.

Poor Loret found it difficult at first to collect his bewildered wits and relate the catastrophe. It was a terrible affair; he didn't know much about it, and he says still less. But, far from accusing the fallen Minister, he was inclined to pity and esteem him. This was courageous; and his bad verses were a kind action:

Notre Roi, qui par politique Se transportait vers l'Amorique, Pour raisons qu'on ne savait pas, S'en revient, dit-on, à grands pas. Je n'ai su par aucun message Les circonstances du voyage: Mais j'ai du bruit commun appris, C'est-à-dire de tout Paris, Que par une expresse ordonnance, Le sieur surintendant de France Je ne sais pourquoi ni comment, Est arrêté présentement (Nouvelles des plus surprenantes) Dans la ville et château de Nantes, Certes, j'ai toujours respecté Les ordres de Sa Majesté Et crû que ce monarque auguste Ne commandait rien que de juste; Mais étant rémemoratif Que cet infortuné captif M'a toujours semblé bon et sage Et que d'un obligeant langage Il m'a quelquefois honoré, J'avoue en avoir soupiré, Ne pouvant, sans trop me contraindre, Empêcher mon cœur de le plaindre. Si, sans préjudice du Roi (Et je le dis de bonne foi) Je pouvais lui rendre service Et rendre son sort plus propice En adoucissant sa rigueur, Je le ferais de tout mon cœur; Mais ce seul désir est frivole, Et prions Dieu qu'il le console. En l'état qu'il est aujourd'hui, C'est tout ce que je puis pour lui.[76]

In time poor Loret did more; he tried to deny his benefactor's crimes. "I doubt half of them," he said in the execrable style of the rhyming Gazetteer:[77]

Et par raison et par pitié, Et même pour la conséquence Je passe le tout sous silence.

Pellisson was admirable. He wrote from the Bastille, where he was imprisoned, eloquent defences in which, neglecting his own cause, he sought only to justify Foucquet. His defence followed the same lines as that of Foucquet himself. He pleaded the necessities of France, the need of provisioning and equipping her armies and of fortifying her strongholds. He imagined a case in which Mazarin himself might have been criticized for the means by which he had procured money for the war and ensured victory. "In all conscience," he said, "what man of good sense could have advised him to reply in other than Scipio's words: 'Here are my accounts: I present them but only to tear them up. On this day a year ago I signed a general peace, and the contract of the King's marriage, which gave peace to Europe. Let us go and celebrate this anniversary at the foot of the altar.'"[78]

Mademoiselle de Scudéry distinguished herself by her zeal on behalf of her friend, formerly so powerful, and now so unfortunate. Pecquet, whom the Superintendent had chosen as his doctor, in order that he might discourse with him on physics and philosophy, the learned Jean Pecquet, was inconsolable at having lost so good a master. He used to say that Pecquet had always rhymed, and always would rhyme with Foucquet.[79]

As for La Fontaine, all know how his fidelity, rendered still more touching by his ingenuous emotions and the spell of his poetry, adorns and defends the memory of Nicolas Foucquet to this very day. Nothing can equal the divine complaint in which the truest of poets grieved over the disgrace of his magnificent patron.

ÉLÉGIE[80]

Remplissez l'air de cris en vos grottes profondes, Pleurez, nymphes de Vaux, faites croître vos ondes; Et que l'Anqueil[81] enflé ravage les trésors

Dont les regards de Flore ont embelli vos bords. On ne blâmera point vos larmes innocentes, Vous pourrez donner cours à vos douleurs pressantes; Chacun attend de vous ce devoir généreux: Les destins sont contents, Oronte est malheureux[82]

"In a letter written under the name of M. de la Visclède, to the permanent secretary of the Academy of Pau, in 1776, Voltaire," says M. Marty-Laveaux, "quotes these verses, and adds: 'He (La Fontaine) altered the word _Cabale_ when he had been made to realize that the great Colbert was serving the King with great equity, and was not addicted to cabals. But La Fontaine had heard some one make use of the term, and had fully believed that it was the proper word to use.'"

Vous l'avez vu naguère au bord de vos fontaines, Qui sans craindre du sort les faveurs incertaines, Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels, Recevait des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.

Hélas! qu'il est déchu de ce bonheur suprême! Que vous le trouverez différent de lui-même! Pour lui les plus beaux jours sont de secondes nuits, Les soucis dévorans, les regrets, les ennuis, Hôtes infortunés de sa triste demeure, En des gouffres de maux le plongent à toute heure Voilà le précipice où l'ont enfin jeté Les attraits enchanteurs de la prospérité! Dans les palais des Rois cette plainte est commune; On n'y connaît que trop les jeux de la fortune, Ses trompeuses faveurs, ses appas inconstants: Mais on ne les connaît que quand il n'est plus temps, Lorsque sur cette mer on vogue à pleines voiles, Qu'on croit avoir pour soi les vents et les étoiles. Il est bien malaisé de régler ses désirs; Le plus sage s'endort sur la foi des zéphirs. Jamais un favori ne borne sa carrière, Il ne regarde point ce qu'il laisse en arrière; Et tout ce vain amour des grandeurs et du bruit Ne le saurait quitter qu'après l'avoir détruit. Tant d'exemples fameux que l'histoire en raconte Ne suffisaient-ils pas sans la perte d'Oronte? Ah! si ce faux éclat n'eût point fait ses plaisirs, Si le séjour de Vaux eût borné ses désirs Qu'il pouvait doucement laisser couler son âge! Vous n'avez pas chez vous ce brillant équipage, Cette foule de gens qui s'en vont chaque jour Saluer à longs flots le soleil de la cour: Mais la faveur du ciel vous donne en récompense Du repos, du loisir, de l'ombre et du silence, Un tranquille sommeil, d'innocents entretiens, Et jamais à la cour on ne trouve ces biens. Mais quittons ces pensers, Oronte nous appelle. Vous, dont il a rendu la demeure si belle, Nymphes, qui lui devez vos plus charmants appas, Si le long de vos bords Louis porte ses pas, Tâchez de l'adoucir, fléchissez son courage; Il aime ses sujets, il est juste, il est sage; Du titre de clément, rendez-le ambitieux; C'est par là que les Rois sont semblables aux dieux. Du magnanisme Henri[83] qu'il contemple la vie; Dès qu'il put se venger, il en perdit l'envie. Inspirez à Louis cette même douceur: La plus belle victoire est de vaincre son cœur. Oronte est à présent un objet de clémence; S'il a cru les conseils d'une aveugle puissance, Il est assez puni par son sort rigoureux, Et c'est être innocent que d'être malheureux.[84]

La Fontaine, not satisfied with this poem, addressed an ode to the King on Foucquet's behalf. But the ode is far from equalling the elegy.

... Oronte seul, ta creature, Languit dans un profond ennui, Et les bienfaits de la nature Ne se répandent plus sur lui. Tu peux d'un éclat de ta foudre Achever de le mettre en poudre; Mais si les dieux à ton pouvoir Aucunes bornes n'ont prescrites, Moins ta grandeur a de limites, Plus ton courroux en doit avoir. . . . . . . . Va-t-en punir l'orgueil du Tibre; Qu'il se souvienne que ses lois N'ont jadis rien laissé de libre Que le courage des Gaulois. Mais parmi nous sois débonnaire: A cet empire si sévère Tu ne te peux accoutumer; Et ce serait trop te contraindre: Les étrangers te doivent craindre, Tes sujets te veulent aimer.

These verses refer to the attack made by the Corsicans on the Guard of Alexander VII, who, on the 20th August, 1667, fired on the coach of the Due de Créqui, the French Ambassador.

L'amour est fils de la clémence, La clémence est fille des dieux; Sans elle toute leur puissance Ne serait qu'un titre odieux. Parmi les fruits de la victoire, César environné de gloire N'en trouva point dont la douceur A celui-ci pût être égale, Non pas même aux champs où Pharsale L'honora du nom de vainqueur. . . . . . . . Laisse-lui donc pour toute grâce Un bien qui ne lui peut durer, Après avoir perdu la place Que ton cœur lui fit espérer. Accorde-nous les faibles restes De ses jours tristes et funestes, Jours qui se passent en soupirs: Ainsi les tiens filés de soie Puissent se voir comblés de joie, Même au delà de tes désirs.[85]

La Fontaine submitted this ode to Foucquet, who sent it back to him with various suggestions. The prisoner requested that the reference to Rome should be suppressed. Doubtless he did not understand it, not having heard in prison of the attack upon the French Ambassador at the Papal Court.[86] He also disapproved of the allusion to the clemency of the victor of Pharsalia. "Cæsar's example," he said, "being derived from antiquity would not, I think, be well enough known." He also noted a passage--which I do not know--"as being too poetical to please the King." The last suggestion speaks of a true nobility of mind. It refers to the last passage, in which the poet implores the King to grant the life of "Oronte." Foucquet wrote in the margin: "You sue too humbly for a thing that one ought to despise."

La Fontaine did not willingly give in on any of these points; to the last suggestion he replied as follows: "The sentiment is worthy of you, Monsignor, and, in truth, he who regards life with such indifference does not deserve to die. Perhaps you have not considered that it is I who am speaking, I who ask for a favour which is dearer to us than to you. There are no terms too humble, too pathetic and too urgent to be employed in such circumstances. When I bring you on to the stage, I shall give you words which are suitable to the greatness of your soul. Meanwhile permit me to tell you that you have too little affection for a life such as yours is."

It was in the month of November only that a Chamber was instituted by Royal Edict with the object of instituting financial reforms, and of punishing those who had been guilty of maladministration. Foucquet was to appear before this Chamber. It met solemnly in the month of December. The greater part of it was composed of Members of the Parliament, but it also included Members of the Chambre des Comptes, the Cour des Aides, the Grand Council and the Masters of Requests. The magistrates who composed it were, to mention those only who sat in it as finally constituted:

The Chancellor Pierre Séguier, first President of the Parliament of Paris, who presided; Guillaume de Lamoignon, deputy president; the President de Nesmond; the President de Pontchartrain; Poncet, Master of Requests; Olivier d'Ormesson, Master of Requests; Voysin, Master of Requests; Besnard de Réze, Master of Requests; Regnard, Catinat, De Brillac, Fayet, Councillors in the Grand Chamber of the Paris Parliament; Massenau, Councillor in the Toulouse Parliament; De la Baulme, of the Grenoble Parliament; Du Verdier, of the Bordeaux Parliament; De la Toison, of the Dijon Parliament; Lecormier de Sainte-Hélène, of the Rouen Parliament; Raphélis de Roquesante, of the Aix Parliament; Hérault, of the Rennes Parliament; Noguès, of the Pau Parliament; Ferriol, of the Metz Parliament; De Moussy, of the Paris Chambre des Comptes; Le-Bossu-le-Jau, of the Paris Chambre des Comptes; Le Féron, of the Cour des Aides; De Baussan, of the Cour des Aides; Cuissotte de Gisaucourt, of the Grand Council; Pussort, of the Grand Council.

It must be recognized that the creation of such a Chamber of Justice was in conformity with the rules of the public law as it then existed. Had not Chalais and Marillac, Cinq-Mars and Thou, been judged by commissions of Masters of Requests and Councillors of the Parliament? And, if our sense of legality is wounded when we behold the accusing Monarch himself choosing the judges of the accused man, we must remember this maxim was then firmly established: "All justice emanates from the King." By this very circumstance the Chamber of Justice of 1661 was invested with very extensive powers; it became the object of public respect, and of the public hopes, for the poor, deeming it powerful, attributed to it the power of helping the wretched populace, after it had punished those who robbed them.

Such illusions are very natural, and one may wonder whether any government would be possible if unhappy persons did not, from day to day, expect something better on the morrow.

Thus the tribunal constituted by the King was no unrighteous tribunal; yet there was no security in it for the accused. He was apparently ruined. Condemned beforehand by the King and by the people, everything seemed to fail him, but he did not fail himself. After having wrought his own ruin, Foucquet worked out his own salvation, if he may be said to have saved himself when all he saved was his life.

His first act was to protest energetically against the competence of the Chamber; he alleged that, having held office in the Parliament for twenty-five years, he was still entitled to the privileges of its officers, and he recognized no judges except those of that body, of both Chambers united. Having made this reservation, he consented to reply to the questions of the examining magistrates, and his replies bore witness to the scope and vigour of a mind which was always collected. The Chamber, on its side, declared itself competent, and decided that the trial should be conducted as though Foucquet were dumb: that is, that there would be no cross-examination, and no pleading. By this method of procedure the Attorney-General put his questions in writing, and the accused replied in writing. As the documents of the prosecution and of the defence were produced, the recorders prepared summaries for the judges.[87]

It is obvious that in such a case the reporters, who are the necessary intermediaries between the magistrates and the parties to the case, possess considerable influence, and that the issue of the lawsuit depends largely on their intelligence and their morality. Consequently, the King wished to reserve to himself the right of appointing them, although according to tradition, this belonged to the President of the Chamber.

Messieurs Olivier d'Ormesson and Le Cormier de Sainte-Hélène were chosen by the Royal Council, and their names were put before the First President, Guillaume de Lamoignon. This magistrate apologized for being unable to accede to the King's wish, alleging that M. Olivier d'Ormesson and M. de Sainte-Hélène would be suspected by the accused; at least, he feared so. "This fear," replied the King, "is only another reason for appointing them." Lamoignon--and it did him honour--gave way only upon the King's formal command.

That was quite enough to make Lamoignon suspected by Foucquet's enemies. Powerful as they were, he did nothing to reassure them; on the contrary, he saw that the accused was granted the assistance of counsel, and that the forms of procedure were scrupulously observed. When one day Colbert was trying to discover his opinions, Lamoignon made this fine reply: "A judge ought never to declare his opinion save once, and that above the fleurs-de-lys."[88]

The King, growing more and more suspicious, nominated Chancellor Séguier to preside over the Chamber. Lamoignon, thus driven from his seat, withdrew, but unostentatiously, alleging as his reason that Parliamentary affairs occupied the whole of his time.[89]

In vain the King and Colbert, alarmed at having themselves dismissed so upright a magistrate, endeavoured to restore him to a position of diminished authority; he was deaf to entreaties, and was content to say to his friends: _"Lavavi manus meas; quomodo inquinabo eas?"_[90] Old Séguier, who though lacking in nobility of soul possessed brilliant intellectual powers, grew more servile than ever. Feeling that he had not long to live, he prompdy accepted dishonour. In this trial his conduct was execrable and his talents did not, on this occasion, succeed in masking his partiality. Great jurisconsult though he was, he did not understand finance, and this stupendous trial was altogether too much for an old man of seventy-four. He was always impatiently complaining of the length of the trial, which, he declared, would outlast him.

With audacity and skill Foucquet held his own against this violent judge. Brought up in chicanery, the accused was acquainted with all the mysteries of procedure. He made innumerable difficulties; sometimes he accused a judge, sometimes he challenged the accuracy of an inventory, sometimes he demanded documents necessary for the defence. In short, he gained time, and this was to gain much. The more protracted the trial, the less he had to fear that its termination would be a capital sentence.

The King was not at all comfortable as to its issue; his activity was unwearying, and he never hesitated to throw his whole weight into the balance. The public prosecutor, Talon, was not an able person; he allowed himself to be defeated by the accused, and was immediately sacrificed. He was replaced by two Masters of Requests, Hotmann and Chamillart. One of the recorders caused the Court a great deal of anxiety; this was the worthy Olivier d'Ormesson. Efforts were made to intimidate him, but in vain; to win him over, but equally in vain. He was punished. His offices of Intendant of Picardy and Soissonnais were taken away from him. Finally, the idea was conceived of enlisting his father, and of trying to induce the old man to corrupt the honesty of his son. Old André would not lend himself to these attempts at corruption; he replied that he was sorry that the King was not satisfied with his son's behaviour. "My son," he added, "does what I have always recommended him to do: he fears God, serves the King, and he renders justice without distinction of person."

The Court and the Minister were, indeed, exceeding all bounds; Séguier, Pussort, Sainte-Hélène and others displayed the most odious partiality. False inventories were drawn up; the official reports of the proceedings were falsified. The King carried off the Court of Justice with him to Fontainebleau, fearing lest it should become independent in his absence. This was going too far; Foucquet grew interesting.

Public opinion, at first hostile to the accused, had almost completely turned in his favour, when, more than three years after his arrest, on the 14th October, 1664, the Attorney-General, Chamillart, pronounced his conclusions, which were to the effect that Foucquet, "attainted and convicted of the crime of high treason, and other charges mentioned during the trial," should be "hanged and strangled until death should follow, on a gallows erected on the Place de la Rue Sainte-Antoine, near the Bastille."

The trial was generally regarded as being overweighted. Turenne said, in his picturesque manner, that the cord had been made too thick to strangle M. Foucquet. The financiers, always influential, having recovered from their first alarm, tried to save a man who, in his fall, might drag them down with him. For, in so comprehensive an accusation, who was there that was not compromised?

Colbert was now detested; as a result his enemy appeared less black. As for the Chamber itself, it was divided into two parts, almost of equal strength. On the one hand there were those who, like Séguier and Pussort, wished to please the Court by ruining Foucquet, and on the other those who, like Olivier d'Ormesson, favoured the strict administration of justice, exempt from anger and hatred.

It was on the 14th November, 1664, that Nicolas Foucquet appeared for the first time before the Chamber, which sat in the Arsenal. He wore a citizen's costume, a suit of black cloth, with a mantle. He excused himself for appearing before the Court without his magistrate's robe, declaring that he had asked for one in vain. He renewed the protest which he had made previously against the competency of the Chamber, and refused to take the oath. He then took his place on the prisoners' bench and declared himself ready to reply to the questions which might be put to him.

The accusations made against him may be classified under four heads: payment collected from the tax-farmers; farmerships which he had granted under fictitious names; advances made to the Treasury; and the crime of high treason, projected but not executed, proved by the papers discovered at Saint-Mandé.

Foucquet's defenie, which disdained petty expedients, was powerful and adroit. He confessed irregularities, but he held that the disorders of the administration in a time of public disturbance were responsible for them. According to him, the payments levied on the tax-farmers were merely the repayment of his advances, and that the imposts which he had appropriated were the same. As for the loans which he had made to the State, they were an absolute necessity. To the insidious and insulting questions of the Chancellor he replied with the greatest adroitness. He was as bold as he was prudent. Only once he lost patience, and replied with an arrogance likely to do him harm. He certainly interested society. Ladies, in order to watch him as he was being reconducted to the Bastille, used to repair, masked, to a house which looked on to the Arsenal. Madame de Sévigné was there. "When I saw him," she said, "my legs trembled, and my heart beat so loud that I thought I should faint. As he approached us to return to his gaol, M. d'Artagnan nudged him, and called his attention to the fact that we were there. He thereupon saluted us, and assumed that laughing expression which you know so well. I do not think he recognized me, but I confess to you that I felt strangely moved when I saw him enter that little door. If you knew how unhappy one is when one has a heart fashioned as mine is fashioned, I am sure you would take pity on me."[91]

All that was known about his attitude intensified public sympathy. The judges themselves recognized that he was incomparable; that he had never spoken so well in Parliament, and that he had never shown so much self-possession.[92]

The last Interrogatory, that of the 4th December, turned on the scheme found at Saint-Mandé, and was particularly favourable to the accused.

Foucquet replied that it was nothing but an extravagant idea which had remained unfinished, and was repudiated as soon as conceived. It was an absurd document, which could only serve to make him ashamed and confused, but it could not be made the ground of an accusation against him. As the Chancellor pressed him and said, "You cannot deny that it is a crime against the State," he replied, "I confess, sir, that it is an extravagance, but it is not a crime against the State. I entreat these gentlemen," he added, turning towards the judges, "to permit me to explain what is a crime against the State. It is when a man holds a great office; when he is in the secret confidence of his Sovereign, and suddenly takes his place among that Sovereign's enemies; when he engages his whole family in the cause; when he induces his son-in-law[93] to surrender the passes and to open the gates to a foreign army of intruders in order to admit it to the interior of the kingdom. Gentlemen, that is what is called a crime against the State."

The Chancellor, whose conduct during the Fronde every one remembered, did not know where to look, and it was all the judges could do not to laugh.[94] The cross-examination over, the Chamber listened to the opinion of the reporters and pronounced sentence. On the 9th of December, Olivier d'Ormesson began his report. He spoke for five successive days, and his conclusion was perpetual exile, confiscation of goods and a fine of one hundred thousand livres, of which half should be given to the Public Treasury, and the other half employed in works of piety. Le Cormier de Sainte-Hélène spoke after Olivier d'Ormesson. He continued for two days, and concluded with sentence of death. Pussort, whose vehement speech lasted for five hours, came to the same conclusion.

On the 18th December, Hérault, Gisaucourt, Noguès and Ferriol concurred, as did Le Cormier de Sainte-Hélène, and Roquesante after them, in the opinion of Olivier d'Ormesson.

On the following day, the 19th, MM. de La Toison, Du Verdier, de La Baume and de Massenau also expressed the same opinion; but the Master of Requests, Poncet, came to the opposite conclusion. Messieurs Le Féron, de Moussy, Brillac, Regnard and Besnard agreed with the first recorder. Voysin was of the opposite opinion. President de Pontchartrain voted for banishment, and the Chancellor, pronouncing last, voted for death. Thirteen judges had pronounced for banishment, and nine for death. Foucquet's life was saved.

"All Paris," said Olivier d'Ormesson, "awaited the news with impatience. It was spread abroad everywhere, and received with the greatest rejoicing, even by the shopkeepers. Every one blessed my name, even without knowing me. Thus M. Foucquet, who had been regarded with horror at the time of his imprisonment, and whom all Paris would have been immeasurably delighted to see executed directly after the beginning of his trial, had become the subject of public grief and commiseration, owing to the hatred which every one felt for the present Government, and that, I think, was the true cause of the general acclamation."[95]

On the 22d of December, this same Olivier d'Ormesson having gone to the Bastille to give D'Artagnan his discharge for the Treasury registers, the gallant Musketeer embraced him and said: "You are a noble man!"[96]

Foucquet, as a matter of form, protested against the sentence of a tribunal whose competence he did not recognize. And the sentence did not please the King, who commuted banishment into imprisonment for life in the fortress of Pignerol. Such a commutation, which was really an aggravation of the sentence, is cruel and offends our sense of justice. Nevertheless, one must recognize that such a measure was dictated by reasons of State. Foucquet, had he been free, would have been dangerous. He would certainly have intrigued; his plots and strategies would have caused the King much anxiety. The religion of patriotism had not yet taken root in the heart of the great Condé's contemporaries. The strongest bond then uniting citizens was loyalty to the King. Foucquet was liberated from that bond by his master's hatred and anger. It was to be expected that the fallen Minister would probably have conspired against France with foreign aid. These previsions justified the severity of the King, who throughout the whole business appeared hypocritical, violent, pitiless and patriotic.[97]

The wisdom of the King's action is proved by Foucquet's conduct at Pignerol, where he arrived in January, 1665. There, in spite of the most vigilant supervision, he succeeded in carrying on intrigues. He could not communicate with any living soul. He had neither ink nor pens, nor paper at his disposal. This able man, whose genius was quickened by solitude, attempted the impossible in order to enter into communication with his friends. He manufactured ink out of soot, moistened with wine. He made pens out of chicken bones, and wrote on the margin of books which were lent to him, or on handkerchiefs. But his warder, Saint-Mars, detected all these contrivances. The servants whom the prisoner had won over were arrested, and one of them was hanged.

In the end, these futile energies were defeated by captivity and disease. Foucquet became addicted to devotional exercises. Like Mademoiselle de la Vallière, he wrote pious reflections.[98]

It is even thought that he composed religious verses, for it is known that he asked for a dictionary of rhymes, which was given to him.

For seven years he had been cut off from living men. Then a voice called him. It was Lauzun,[99] who was imprisoned at Pignerol, and who had made a hole in the wall. Lauzun told his companion news of the outer world. Foucquet listened eagerly, but when the Cadet de Gascogne told him that he held a general's commission, and that he had married La Grande Mademoiselle, at first with the approval of the King, and then against it, Foucquet considered him mad and ceased to believe anything that he said.

About 1679, Foucquet's captivity at length became less severe; he was permitted to receive his family. But it was too late; those fourteen cruel years had irreparably undermined his strong constitution; his sight had grown weak; he was losing his teeth; he was suffering pain in his whole body, and his piety was increasing with his weakness. He died in March, 1680, just as he had received permission to go and drink the waters of Bourbon. His body, which had been laid in the crypt of Sainte-Claire de Pignerol, Madame Foucquet had transferred the following year to the church of the Convent of the Visitation in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. The register of this church contains the following entry: "On the 28th March, 1681, Messire Nicolas Foucquet was buried in our church, in the Chapel of Saint-François de Sales. He had risen to the highest honours in the magistracy; had been Councillor in Parliament, Master of Requests, Attorney-General, Superintendent of Finance, and Minister of State."[100]

Whatever may be said to the contrary, posterity does not judge with equity, for it is partial; it is indifferent, and makes but hasty work of the trial of the dead who appear before it. And posterity is not a Court of Justice; it is a noisy mob, in which it is impossible to make oneself heard, but which, at rare intervals, is dominated by some great voice. Finally, its judgments are not definitive, since another posterity follows which may cancel the sentence of the first, and pronounce new ones, which again may be revoked by a new posterity. Nevertheless, certain cases seem to have been definitely lost in the court of mankind, and I find myself constrained to rank with these the case of Foucquet. He was an embezzler, and was definitely condemned on this point--condemned without appeal. As for extenuating circumstances, it is not difficult to find them. Illustrious examples, even more, perpetual solicitings and the impossibility of observing any regularity in troubled times, impelled him to steal, both for the State and for certain great men. Of his thefts he kept something; he kept too much. He was guilty, doubtless, but his fault seems greatly mitigated when one remembers the circumstances and the spirit of the time.

I am going to say something which is a kind of redemption of Nicolas Foucquet's memory; I will say it in two charming lines which are attributed to Pellisson, and which appear to have been written by Foucquet's friend, the fabulist. Pellisson, in an epistle to the King, said of Foucquet:

D'un esprit élevé, négligeant l'avenir, Il toucha les trésors, mais sans les retenir.

This it is which redeems and exalts this man. He was liberal, he loved to give, and he knew how to give, and let it not be said in the name of any morbid and morose morality that, even if he had taken the State's money without retaining it, he was only the more guilty, uniting prodigality to unscrupulousness. No, his liberality remains honourable; it showed that the principle which prompted his embezzlements was not a vile one, that, if this man was ruined, the cause of his ruin was not natural baseness, but the blind impulse of a naturally magnificent temperament. Thus Foucquet will live in history as the consoler of the aged Corneille, and the tactful patron of La Fontaine.

No one will deny his faults, the crimes he committed against the State, but for a moment one may forget them, and say that what was truly noble, and even nobly foolish in his temperament, half atones for the evil which has been only too thoroughly proved.

[1] Cf. _Les amateurs de l'ancienne France: Le surintendant Foucquet,_ by Edmond Bonnaffé. _Librairie de l'Art,_ 1882. The book contains particulars drawn from Peiresc's unpublished manuscript. During the course of this work we shall have frequent occasion to quote from this excellent study of an accomplished connoisseur.

[2] _Mémoires de Choisy,_ Ed. Petitot et Monmerqué, p. 262.

[3] _Journal d'Olivier d'Ormesson,_ Vol. II, p. 60. The unknown author of the dialogues attributed to Molière by M. Louis Auguste Ménard brings Mme. Foucquet on to the stage and makes her utter words in keeping with those pious sentiments which were well known to her contemporaries. The fictitious scene which confronts her with Anne of Austria is a paraphrase of the words I have quoted in my text from the _Mémoires de Choisy._

[4] _Histoire du Dauphiné,_ by M. le baron de Chapuys-Montlaville. Paris, Dupont, 1828, 2 vols. Vol. II, pp. 460 _et seq._

[5] Cf. _Les premiers intendants de justice,_ by S. Hanotaux, in _La Revue Historique,_ 1882 and 1883.

[6] Of Fronde.--_Trans._

[7] Mazarin's note-book, XI, fol. 85, Biblioth. Nat.

[8] Unpublished Diary of Dubuisson-Aubenay, cited by M. Chéruel in the _Mémoires sur N. Foucquet,_ Vol. I, p. 7.

[9] _Histoire de Colbert et de son administration,_ by Pierre Clement. Paris, Didier, 1874, Vol. I, p. 15.

[10] _Mémoires sur la vie publique et privée de Foucquet,_ by A. Chéruel, Inspector-General of Education. Paris, Charpentier, 1862, Vol. I, pp. 86-88.

[11] Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS. collection Gaignieres. This letter is quoted by Chéruel, I, p. 183.

[12] _Histoire financière de la France,_ by A. Bailly. Paris, 1830, Vol. I, p. 357.

[13] In 1651, Foucquet received from Marie-Madeleine de Castille, the daughter of François de Castille, his wife, one hundred thousand livres, the house in the Rue du Temple, the abode of the Castille family, as well as the buildings adjoining, which were let at 2200 livres. (Cf. Jal, _Dictionnaire,_ article on Foucquet)

[14] Cf. Eug. Grésy, _Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte._ Melun, 1861.

[15] Archives de la Bastille, Vol. II, p, 171 _et seq._

[16] Anne of Austria (trans.)

[17] Her son, Louis XIV (trans.)

[18] And are now in Austria, Germany and elsewhere.--Editor.

[19] _Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art français,_ note by M. Guiffrey, July, 1876, p. 38.

[20] Saint-Simon adds: "She was the widow of Nicolas Foucquet, famous for his misfortunes, who, after being Superintendent of Finance for eight years, paid for the millions which Cardinal Mazarin had taken, for the jealousy of MM. Le Tellier and Colbert, and for a slightly excessive gallantry and love of splendour, with thirty-four years of imprisonment at Pignerol, because that was the utmost that could be inflicted on him, despite all the influence of Ministers and the authority of the King."--_Mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon,_ éd. Chéruel, Vol. XIV, p. 112.

[21] _Mémoires._ Collection Petitot, Vol. LX, p. 142.

[22] It is the portrait which is reproduced at the beginning of the French edition, because it seems to us at once both the truest and the happiest picture of the extraordinary man who, both in letters and in art, inaugurated the century of Louis XIV. The head, three-quarter profile, is turned to the left. It is a medallion inscribed with the words: "Messire Nicolas Foucquet, chevalier, vicomte de Melun et de Vaux, Conseiller du Roy, Ministre d'État, Surintendant des Finances et Procureur général de Sa Majesté." Signed "R. Nanteuil ad vivum ping. et sculpebat, 1661." The style is at once soft and firm, the workmanship pure and finished, the rendering of the colours excellent. This engraving was executed after a drawing or a pastel which Nanteuil had done from life, and which is lost. This work, and the engraving which perpetuates it, seem to me to form the origin of a whole family of portraits, of which we will mention several.

(1) A shaded bust, on a piedouche, bearing Foucquet's arms. The arrangement is bad, the inscription:

Ne faut-il que l'on avouë Qu'on trouve en luytous ce qu'on espérait. C'est un surintendant tel que l'on désirait. Personne ne s'en plaint, tout le monde s'en louë.

Signed: "Van Schupper faciebat. P. de la Serre."

(2) The head in an oval border. Raised hangings which reveal a country scene, with dogs coursing. The inscription:

"Messire Nicolas Foucquet, chevalier, vicomte de Melun et de Vaux, Ministre d'État, Surintendant des finances de Sa Majesté et son procureur général au Parlement de Paris."

(3) A much damaged copy. The face is pale and elongated, the expression melancholy and sanctimonious. It is an oval medallion, 1654, without signature, Paris, chez Daret.

(4) The same, chez Louis Boissevin, in the Rue Saint-Jacques.

(5) The same, with this quatrain:

Si sa fidélité parut incomparable En conservant l'Estat, Sa prudence aujourd'huy n'est pas moins admirable D'en augmenter l'éclat.

(6) Medallion. The picture is much disfigured; the inscription:

Qu'il a de probité, de sçavoir et de zelle, Qu'il paroit généreux, magnanime et prudent, Que son esprit est fort, que son cœur est fidelle, Toutes ces qualités l'on fait Surintendant.

(7) Medallion, with drapery. Very bad. Signature: "Baltazar Moncornet, excud."

(8) The same, with a frame of foliage, 1658.

(9) A small copy, reversed, executed after Foucquet's death, the date of which is indicated, 23rd March, 1680. It is old, hard, dark and damaged. Signature: "Nanteuil, pinxit, Gaillard, sculpt."

A portrait of Lebrun deserves honourable mention after that of Nanteuil. The features are practically the same as in the engraving by Eugène Reims; but the expression is not so keen, nor so cheerful. The head, three-quarter profile, is turned to the right. This picture is the original of the three following engravings:

(1) A large oval. Signature: "C. Lebrun pinx, F. Poilly sculpt." Inscription:

Illustrissimus vir Nicolaus Foucquet Generalis in Supremo regii Ærarii Præfectus: V. Comes Melodunensis, etc.

In a later copy, Foucquet's arms replace the Latin inscription.

(2) A spoiled and softened copy, very careless workmanship. Signature: "C. Mellan del. et F."

(3) An imitation. Foucquet, seated in a straight-backed armchair, with large wrought nail-heads, with a casket on the table beside him. He holds a pen in his right hand, and paper in his left. Inscription:

Magna videt, majora latent; ecce aspicis artis Clarum opus, et virtus clarior arte latet, Umbra est et fulget, solem miraris in umbra Quid sol ipse micat, cujus et umbra micat.

Signature: "Œgid. Rousselet, sculpt., 1659."

(4) An imitation. Signature: "Larmessin, 1661." Finally, we must mention a full-length portrait, which seems inspired by the foregoing. The Superintendent is standing, wearing a long robe; he holds in his right hand a small bag, in his left a paper. A raised curtain displays, on the right, a country scene, with a torrent, a rock and a fortified château. In the sky, Renown puts a trumpet to her mouth. In her left hand she holds another trumpet with a bannerette on which is written: "Quo non ascendet?" Inscription:

A quel degré d'honneur ne peut-il pas monter S'il s'élève tousjours par son propre courage? Son nom et sa vertu lui donnent l'advantage De pouvoir tout prétendre et de tout mériter.

[23] A summary of the inventory at Saint-Mandé: MS. of the Bibliothèque Nat. Manusc. Suppl, fr. 10958, cited by M. Edm. Bonnaffé, _Les Amateurs de l'ancienne France_.--Le Surintendant Foucquet, librairie de l'Art, 1882.

[24] Loc. cit., pp. 61 _et seq._

[25] Description of the city of Paris, 1713, p. 60.

[26] _Mémoire des Académiciens_, Vol. I, p. 21. Bonnaffé, loc. cit., p. 15.

[27] Preface to _Œdipe, Collect. des grands écrivains,_ Vol. VI, p. 103.

[28] With great pomp.

[29] The original edition has _plainte._

[30] Œuvres complètes de La Fontaine, published by Ch. Marty Laveaux, Vol. III (1866), p. 26 _et seq._

[31] The inventory of the 26th February, 1666 (Bonnaffé, loc. cit., p. 61), classes them as follows: "Two antique mausoleums representing a king and queen of Egypt, 800 livres."

[32] At least, this is the hypothesis propounded by M. Bonnaffe. It is founded on the fact that an anonymous document of 1648, published in _Les Collectionneurs de l'ancienne France_ (Aubry, ed. 1873), mentions le sieur Chamblon, of Marseilles, as a professor "of Egyptian idols to enclose mummies." But it seems as if the anonymous document referred not to sarcophagi of marble or basalt, but rather to those boxes of painted and gilt pasteboard, with human faces, which abound in the necropolises of ancient Egypt. The port of Marseilles must at that time have received a fairly large number of such. We must remember that the mummy was in those days considered as a remedy, and was widely sold by druggists.

[33] Cf. Mlle, de Scudéry, _Clélie._ "Méléandre (Lebrun) had caused to be built, on a small, somewhat uneven plot of ground, two small pyramids in imitation of those which are near Memphis."

[34] See note, p. 10.**

[35] Description of the city of Paris, by Germain Brice, ed. of 1698, Vol. I, p. 124 _et seg._

[36] _Recueil d'antiquités dans les Gaules,_ by La Sauvagère, Paris, 1770, p. 329 _et seq._

[37] D.5.D. 7^8.

[38] In this story, I have followed M. Bonnaffé. Loc. cit., p. 57.

[39] Inventory and valuation of the books found at Saint-Mandé on the 30th July, 1665. Biblio. Nat. MSS., p. 9438. The whole was valued at 38,544 livres.

[40] _Conseils de la Sagesse,_ p. x.

[41] Lines presented to Monseigneur le procureur général Foucquet, Superintendent of Finance, at the opening of the tragedy of _Œdipe,_ 1659.

[42] One of the earliest French theatres. It was founded by the Confrères de la Passion in 1548.

[43] Cf. _La Vie de Corneille,_ by Fontenelle.

[44] _Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de La Fontaine,_ by Mathieu Marais, 1811, p. 125.

[45] _Ouvrages de prose et de poésie des sieurs de Mancroix et La Fontaine,_ Vol. I, p. 99.

[46] There are two blank spaces in the 1685 edition. I have filled them with the two names in brackets. For the first I have put the name of Foucquet, which is given in the _Œuvres diverses_ (Vol. I, p. 19). To fill the second space I have followed the suggestion of Mathieu Marais. Walkenaer puts Pellisson, which is not admissible.

[47] Edit Marty-Laveaux, VOL V, pp. 15-17.

[48] No one can answer for the correctness of the text of these two poems. Chardon de La Rochette published them from memory in 1811 (_Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de La Fontaine,_ by Mathieu Marais, p. 125). He had possessed the receipts for both in Pellisson's own hand-writing, but had not kept it, because, he said, he did not think "that it was worth it." This sagacious Hellenist set little store by a Pellisson autograph, in comparison with the Palatine MS. of the Anthologia. And he was right. But it is odd that he should have known the verses by heart, and that, having neglected to preserve them in his desk, he should have retained them in his memory.

[49] Promettre est un, et tenir promesse est un autre.

[50] _Mémoires de Choisy,_ coll. Petitot, p. 211.

[51] _Ibid.,_ loc. cit., p. 230.

[52] Bussy, II, p. 50.

[53] "Jamais surintendant ne trouva de cruelle."

[54] Bussy, II, p. 50.

[55] Letter of the 25th May, 1658.

[56] Letter of 18th January, 1660.

[57] Loret, Muse historique, letter of the 28th of December, 1652.

[58] In 1661 (?) _Papiers de Foucquet_ (F. Baluze), Vol. I, pp. 31-32.

[59] Maurepas Collection. Vol. II, p. 271.

[60] Letter of the 11th November, 1661.

[61] Gourville, in _Monmerqué,_ Vol. II, p. 342.

[62] _Mémoires de l'abbé de Choisy,_ p. 579.

[63] _Mémoires de Brienne,_ Vol. II, p. 52.

[64] _Mémoires de Choisy,_ p. 581. Chéruel, _Mémoires sur Nicolas Foucquet,_ Vol. II, p. 97.

[65] _Mémoires de Choisy,_ p. 249.

[66] _Mémoires de Choisy,_ p. 249.

[67] _Choisy,_ p. 586. "I learnt these details," said Choisy, "from Perrault, to whom Colbert related them more than once."

[68] _Ibid.,_ p. 586. Cf. also Guy Patin, letter to Falconnet, 2nd September, 1661.

[69] _Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre,_ by Mme de Lafayette. Paris, Charavay frères, 1882, p. 53.

[70] See Part II for the story of this entertainment.

[71] Cf. _Mémoires sur Nicolas Foucquet,_ by Chéruel, Vol. II, pp. 179-180.

[72] _Mémoires de Brienne,_ Vol. II, p. 153.

[73] La Fontaine, letter to his wife, Ed. Marty-Laveaux, Vol. III, p. 311 _et seq._

[74] This letter was published for the first time in _Les Causeries d'un curieux,_ VOL II, p. 518.

[75] _Dictionnaire Antique._ Article on Hesnault.

[76] Letter of the 10th of September, 1661.

[77] Letter of the 2nd October, 1661.

[78] Second Speech to the King, in _Les Œuvres diverses,_ p. 109.

[79] Cf. _Mélanges,_ by Vigneul de Marville.

[80] Such is the title of the original edition, printed in italics, without date or address, on three quarto pages.

[81] "The Anqueil is a little river which flows near Vaux." (Note by La Fontaine.)

[82] Variant:

La Cabale est contente, Oronte est malheureux.

[83] Variant:

Du grand, du grand Henri qu'il contemple la vie. (Original edition.)

[84] Edition quoted, Vol. V, pp. 43-46. One contemporary copy, preserved in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, contains a text altered by one of Foucquet's enemies.

Instead of the two lines:

Voilà le précipice où l'ont enfin jeté Les attraits enchanteurs de la prospérité,

we read in this copy:

Il se hait de tant vivre après un tel malheur, Et, s'il espère encor, ce n'est qu'en sa douleur, C'est là le seul plaisir qui flatte son courage, Car des autres plaisirs on lui défend l'usage. Voilà, voilà l'effet de cette ambition Qui fait de ses pareils l'unique passion.

[85] Edition cited: Vol. V, pp. 46-49. Published for the first time by La Fontaine in his collection _Poésies chrétinnes et diverses,_ 1671, Vol. Ill, p. 34.

[86] La Fontaine, Letter to Monsieur Foucquet. Edition cited: Vol. Ill, pp. 307-308. This letter was published for the first time in 1729.

[87] Cf. Le procès de Foucquet, a speech pronounced at the opening of Conférence des Avocats, Monday, 27th November, 1882, by Léon Deroy, advocate in the Court of Appeal. Paris, Alcan Lévy, 1882.

[88] Recueil des arrêtés de G. de Lamoignon, Paris, 1781. _Vie de M. le premier président,_ by Girard, p. 14. (The fleur-de-Iys was very largely employed in the decoration of the walls, floors, ceiling, etc., of the Parliaments, etc.--Ed.)

[89] Journal d'Olivier d'Ormesson, Vol. II, p. 26.

[90] _Recueil des arrêtés,_ already cited.

[91] Madame de Sévigné, letter of the 27th November, 1664.

[92] _Ibid.,_ letter of the 2nd December.

[93] "The Duc de Sully, the son-in-law of the Chancellor, Séguier, had, in 1652, yielded the crossing of the bridge of Mantes to the Spanish Army." (Note by M. Chéruel.)

[94] _Journal d'Olivier d'Ormesson,_ Vol. II, p. 263. Letter from Mme. de Sévigné, 9th December.

[95] _Journal d'Olivier d'Ormesson,_ VOL II, p. 282. Letter from Mme. de Sévigné, 9th December.

[96] _Ibid.,_ Vol. II, p. 283.

[97] _Ibid.,_ Vol. II, p. 286.

[98] The Comte de Vaux, Foucquet's eldest son, having obtained his father's MSS. from Pignerol, published extracts entitled: _Conseils de la Sagesse_ ou _Recueil des Maximes de Salomon._ Paris, 1683, 2 vols.

[99] The Duc de Lauzun, said to have married La Grande Mademoiselle, Mlle, de Montpensier, cousin of Louis XIV. (Trans.)

[100] Delort, _Détention des Philosophes,_ Vol. I, p. 53.