Chapter 13

The Surintendant's _hôtel_, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art, his library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the _château_. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical designs. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,--an aviary of foreign birds,--tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, and everything was new,--so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and no artists so skilful as these _pour embellir son règne_. He was obliged to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon enrolled in the service of the King.

In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "_Il tiempo è un galantuomo_," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many desperate disappointments and defeats, _Messer Tiempo_ had made him rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "_L'État, c'est moi_," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a subject,--by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should take the duty upon himself,--the gentlemen present would aid him with their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The revenue of the nation passed through his hands. _Fermiers_ and _traitants_, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less education. He could never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want of a more distinctive word we may call character,--that well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,--"There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in him,--a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry might be.

Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid in full,--a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest of republics. All the checks and balances of our enlightened system of administration, whether federal, state, or municipal, do not prevent skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power correspondingly great.

When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that time.

The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud and prosperous man humiliated,--merely to gratify that wretched feeling of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of Adam."

Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The personal reminiscences of the King's whole life must have made him feel keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the attempt to arrest Condé, who thought himself the master. He was twelve when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green scarfs, the Cardinal's colors, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Condé, in command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bléneau, and would have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne. A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,--had seen the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, _Mademoiselle_, the grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Condé, De Retz, and La Rochefoucauld fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Condé and Don John of Austria, and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himself,--only three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war.

A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, _nec pluribus impar_. He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,--because he was called the Magnificent,--because his _châteaux_ and gardens were incomparably finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,--because he was surrounded by the first wits and artists,--no trifling matter in that bright morning of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired to be a _bel-esprit_, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his employ. "_Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'à se croire humilié par un sujet_." His "_gloire_" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, dress and dinners, madrigals and _bon-mots_. The monopoly of _gloire_ he must and would have,--nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every kind, _gloire_.

And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Vallière. He had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in _petits soins_ and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the King, and was the cause of the _acharnement_, the relentless fury, he showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his affections, and from his palace.

Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to the King, Court, and _bel-air_ for the seventeenth of August, 1661,--the _fête de Vaux_, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a _déjeuner_ of our day. The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and Madame, daughter of Charles I. of England, attended by Princes, Dukes, Marquises, and Counts, with their quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and independent spouses. The highest and noblest of France came to stare at Fouquet's magnificence, to wonder at the strange birds and beasts, and to admire the fountains and cascades. After a walk about the grounds, the august company were served with supper in the _château_. Vatel was the _maître d'hôtel_. The King could not conceal his astonishment at the taste and luxury of the Surintendant, nor his annoyance when he recognized the portrait of La Vallière in a mythological panel. Over doors and windows were carved and painted Fouquet's arms,--a squirrel, with the motto, "_Quò non ascendam_?" The King asked a chamberlain for the translation. When the device was interpreted, the measure of his wrath was full. He was on the point of ordering Fouquet's instant arrest; but the Queen-Mother persuaded him to wait until every precaution had been taken.

After supper, the guests were conducted to the play. The theatre was at the end of an alley of pines, almost _al fresco_. The stage represented a garden decorated with fountains and with statues of Terminus. Scenery by Le Brun; machinery and transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, Molière; the comedy, "_Les Fâcheux_," "The Bores," composed, written, and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and indispensable. As Molière had only a few good dancers, he placed the scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four different parts. To avoid awkwardness in these transitions, the plot of the comedy was carried over into the pantomime. This arrangement proved so successful that Molière made use of it in many of his later plays.

The curtain rises upon a man in citizen's-dress (Molière). He expresses amazement and dismay at seeing so large and so distinguished an audience, and implores His Majesty to pardon him for being there without actors enough and without time enough to prepare a suitable entertainment. While he is yet speaking, twenty jets of water spring into the air,--a huge rock in the foreground changes into a shell,--the shell opens,--forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Béjart, a well-known actress,--too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than any other man.

"Mortals," said _la Béjart_, "I come from my grotto to look upon the greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,--to wish; nothing is impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right to demand miracles of Nature? He is young, victorious, wise, valiant, and dignified,--as benevolent and just as he is powerful. He governs his desires as well as his subjects; he unites labor and pleasure; always busy, never at fault, seeing all, hearing all. To such a prince Heaven can refuse nothing. If Louis commands, these Termini shall walk from their places, these trees shall speak better than the oaks of Dodona. Come forth, then, all of you! Louis commands it. Come forth to amuse him, and transform yourselves upon this novel stage!" Trees and Termini fly open. Dryads, Fauns, and Satyrs skip out. Then the Naiad invokes Care, the goddess whose hand rests heavily upon monarchs, and implores her to grant the great King an hour's respite from the business of State and from his anxiety for his people. "Let him give his great heart up to pleasure. To-morrow, with strength renewed, he will take up his burden, sacrifice his own rest to give repose to mankind and maintain peace throughout the universe. But to-night let all _fâcheux_ stand back, except those who can make themselves agreeable to him." The Naiad vanishes. The Fauns dance to the violins and hautboys, until the play begins.

After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the _château_. A _feu d'artifice_, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted until the drums of the royal _mousquetaires_, the King's escort, were heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up.

The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [_la Renommée_] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once.

'Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels, Il reçoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'"

A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen days after the _fête_, the thunderbolt fell upon him.

A _Procureur-Général_ could be tried only by the Parliament to which he belonged. To make Fouquet's destruction more certain, Colbert had induced him, by various misrepresentations, to sell out. He received fourteen hundred thousand livres for the place, and presented the enormous sum to the Treasury. This act of munificence, or of restitution, did not save him. If he had been backed by fifty thousand men, the King could hardly have taken greater precautions. His Majesty's manner was more gracious than ever. To prevent a rising in the West, Louis journeyed to Nantes, which is near Belleîle. Fouquet accompanied the progress with almost equal state. He had his court, his guards, his own barge upon the Loire,--and travelled brilliantly onward to ruin. The palace in Nantes was the scene of the arrest. Fouquet, suspecting nothing, waited upon the King. Louis kept him engaged in conversation, until he saw D'Artagnau, a name famous in storybooks, and the _mousquetaires_ in the courtyard. Then he gave the signal. The Surintendant was seized and taken to Angers, thence to Amboise, Vincennes, and finally to the Bastille. He was confined in a room lighted only from above, and allowed no communication with family or friends. The mask was now thrown off, and the blow followed up with a malignant energy which showed the determination to destroy. The King was very violent, and said openly that he had matter in his possession which would hang the Surintendant. His secretaries and agents were arrested. His friends, not knowing how much they might be implicated, either fled the kingdom, or kept out of the way in the provinces. Pellisson and Dr. Pecquet were sent to the Bastille; Guénégaud lost half his fortune; the Bishop of Avranches had to pay twelve thousand francs; Gourville fled to England; Pomponne was ordered to reside at Verdun. Fouquet's papers were examined in the presence of the King. Letters were there from persons in every class of life,--a very large number from women, for the prisoner had charms which the fair sex have always found it difficult to resist. Madame Scarron had written to thank him for his bounty to the poor cripple whose name and roof protected her. The King had probably never before heard of this lady, who was to be the wife and ruler of his old age. The portfolio contained specimens of the gayest and brightest of letter-writers. In the course of his career, the gallant Surintendant had attempted to add the charming widow Sévigné to his conquests. She refused the temptation, but always remained grateful for the compliment. Le Tellier told her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, that the King liked her letters,--"very different," he said, "from the _douceurs fades_"--the insipid sweet things--"of the other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A copy of a letter by St. Évremond was found, written three years before from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense of Mazarin and the _Paix des Pyrénées_, St. Évremond was a soldier, a wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a _jeu d'esprit_ into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds were turned out of their places and thrown penniless upon the world. It was a _coup d'état_, a revolution, and most people were against Fouquet. It is such a consolation for the little to see the mighty fall!

The instinct which impels friends and servants to fly from sinking fortunes is a well-established fact in human natural history; but Fouquet's hold upon his followers was extraordinary: it resisted the shock of ruin. They risked court-favor, purse, and person, to help him. Gourville, before he thought of his own safety, carried a hundred thousand livres to Madame Fouquet, to be used in defending the Surintendant, or in bribing a judge or a jailer. The rest of his property he divided, intrusting one half to a devout friend, the other to a sinful beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, and fled the country. The "professor" absorbed all that was left in his hands; Ninon returned her trust intact. This little incident was made much use of at a later day by the _Philosophes_, and Voltaire worked it up into "Le Dépositaire." From the Bastille, Pellisson addressed to the King three papers in defence of his chief: "masterpieces of prose, worthy of Cicero," Voltaire says,--"_ce que l'éloquence a produit de plus beau_." And Sainte-Beuve thinks that Louis must have yielded to them, if he had heard them spoken, instead of reading them in his closet. The faithful La Fontaine fearlessly sang the sorrows of his patron, and accustomed "_chacun à plaindre ses malheurs_." He begged to the King for mercy, in an ode full of feeling, if not of poetry. "Has not Oronte been sufficiently punished by the withdrawal of thy favor? Attack Rome, Vienna, but be merciful to us. _La Clémence est fille des Dieux_." A copy of this ode found its way to the prisoner. He protested against these lines:--

"Mais, si tu crois qu'il est coupable, Il ne veut point être innocent."

Two years of prison had not broken him down to this point of self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Scudéry, Le Fèvre, talked, wrote, and spared no expense for their dear friend. Brébeuf, the poet, who had neither influence nor money, took to his bed and died of grief. Hesnault, author of the "Avorton," a sonnet much admired in those days, and translated with approval into English verse, as,

"Frail spawn of nought and of existence mixed,"

eased his feelings by insulting Colbert in another sonnet, beginning thus:--

"Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux."

The poet escaped unpunished. His affront gave Colbert the chance for a _mot_,--an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away. When the injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,--"Is there anything in them offensive to the King?" "No." "Then there can be nothing in them offensive to me." Loret, of the Gazette, was not so lucky. A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by striking the editor from the pension-list,--a fine of fifteen hundred livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the hands of Madame Scudéry, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman.