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 hisVie 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 ofLa Charitéwhich has already been mentioned, and aHerculessix feet in height, as well as "thirteen statues, life-size, copied from the most beautiful antiques of Rome, notably theLaocoôn, Hercules, Flora,andJunoandJupiter." 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, thesuisseunceremoniously 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 paisiblementEn ce superbe appartementOu l'on a fait d'étrange terreDepuis peu venir à grand-erre[28](Non sans travail et quelques frais)Des rois Céphrim et KiopèsLe cercueil, la tombe ou la bière:Pour les rois, ils sont en poussière:C'est là que j'en voulais venir.Il me fallut entretenirAvec les monuments antiques,Pendant qu'aux affaires publiquesVous donniez tout votre loisir.(Certes j'y pris un grand plaisirVous semble-t-il pas que l'imageD'un assez galant personnageSert 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 paysOnt, ce me semble, des bavettesQue je trouve plaisamment faites.On m'eut expliqué tout cela,Mais il fallut partir de làSans 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 cheminPour des personnes de leur taille.Et vous, seigneur, pour qui travailleLe temps qui peut tout consumer,Vous, que s'efforce de charmerL'Antiquité qu'on idolâtre,Pour qui le dieu de CléopâtreSous nos murs enfin abordé,Vient de Memphis à Saint-Mandé:Puissiez vous voir ces belles-chosesPendant 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 entitledLingua 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 hisŒdipus 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 theConseils 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 hisPertharite.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 avenirQue tes regards bénins ont su me rajeunir.. . . . . . . . . .Je sens le même feu, je sens la même audaceQui lit plaindre le Cid, qui fit combattre Horace,Et je me trouve encor la main qui crayonnaL'âme du grand Pompée et l'esprit de Cinna.Choisis-moi seulement quelque nom dans l'histoirePour qui tu veuilles place au Temple de la Gloire,Quelque nom favori qu'il te plaise arracherA la nuit de la tombe, aux cendres du bûcher.Soit qu'il faille ternir ceux d'Énée et d'AchillePar un noble attentat sur Homère et Virgile,Soit qu'il faille obscurcir par un dernier effortCeux 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 vueJamais vu de ton cœur la plus vaste étendue,Qu'un moment suffrait à mes débiles yeuxPour 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.Œdipewas 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 thatŒdipewas 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 donnéA ceux de l'hôtel de Bourgogne[42]Son dernier ouvrage ou besogne,Ouvrage grand et signalé,Quil'Œdipeest 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 sorteN'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 ofŒdipe,suggested two other subjects, one of which wasCamma.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 onCammato 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 tragedyLa 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 publishingCléliein 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 aRemerciement du siècle à M. le surintendant Foucquet,and presently on his own account he fabricated a secondRemerciement,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 thePharsale,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 collectedÉpîtres 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 hisDanaidesto 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 personnageLes éloges ne plaisent pas;Les siens sont pour lui sans appas.Il aime peu qu'on le loue,Et touchant ce sujet, j'avoueQue l'excellent sieur PellissonM'a fait plusieurs fois la leçon;Mais, comme son rare mériteTout 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 méritéLa pension qu'il veut que je lui donne.En bonne foi je ne sache personneA qui Phébus s'engageât aujourd'huiDe 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 remiseStances, rondeaux et vers de toute guise.Ce sont nos biens: les doctes nourrissonsN'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 lieuxNommés 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 soleilsJ'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 fournirDe 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'arrêterN'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 demoiselleEst charmante, brillante et belle,Ayant pour escorte l'Amour,A fait son entrée à la CourEt 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 plairePlaît pourtant infinimentPar un air libre et charmant.C'est un dessein téméraireQue d'attaquer sa rigueur.Si j'eusse été sans affairesLa belle aurait eu mon cœur.[59]
Other verses celebrate Menneville:
Toute la Cour est épriseDe ces attraits glorieuxDont vous enchantez les yeux,Menneville; ma franchiseS'y devrait bien engager;Mais mon cœur est place priseEt 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 hisMémoires."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 achevalier 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 renomméQui par ses bontés m'a charmé,Ce judicieux, ce grand hommeQue 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 démissionMaintenant 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]