Chapter V: Part I (1)

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.