In 1656, Foucquet was forty-one years of age. For five years he
had been Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament, and for three
Comptroller of Finance, having been the control of the Treasury at the
troubles which had afflicted France during the minority of Louis XIV.
He had successfully weathered a difficult period, and had acquired no
little confidence in his genius and his guiding star. Now, in the prime
of life, feeling securely established in office, he proceeded to order
his life in accordance with the magnificence of his tastes. Ambitious,
pleasure-loving, adoring all that was great and beautiful, sensitive
to all that exalts or caresses the soul, he called upon the Arts to
surround him with the symbols of glory and of pleasure. The miracles of
Vaux were the outcome of this demand, which was first satisfied, then
cruelly punished.
On the 2nd of August, 1656, in the presence of Le Vau, his architect,
Foucquet signed the plans and estimates for this mansion of Vaux, which
was to be built within four years, in a new and noble style. It was to
be adorned with magnificent paintings, with statues and tapestries; it
was to command a view over gardens, grottoes and bewitching ornamental
waters; to abound in gold plate and gems and valuables of every kind.
It was destined to receive, with a luxury hitherto unknown, the most
powerful and the most beautiful alike, to welcome the Court and the
King. Thereafter, when the last lights of a miraculous festival had
been extinguished, it was to be the home, for ever, of only solitude
and desolation.
Nevertheless, to Nicolas Foucquet remains the honour of having
discerned and selected men of superior talent, and of having been the
first to employ those great masters of French Art whose works have
shed an enduring splendour over the reign of Louis XIV. After he had
disgraced his Minister, the King could not do better than take from
him his architect Louis Le Vau, his painter Charles Le Brun and his
gardener André Le Nostre, and remove to Paris the looms which Foucquet
had set up at Maincy and which became the Manufacture des Gobelins.
But there was something which the King could not appropriate: the
taste, the feeling for art, the delicate yet profound instinct for
the beautiful which endeared the Comptroller to all the artists who
worked for him. Le Brun, on whom the King showered benefits, regretted
notwithstanding his generous host of Vaux.
It is said that during his trial, when in danger of a capital sentence,
Foucquet, on leaving the Court, was walking, strongly guarded, past
the Arsenal, when seeing some men at work he asked what they were
making. Hearing that they were at work on a basin for a fountain, he
went to look at the latter and gave his opinion of it. Then, turning to
Artagnan, the Musketeer, who was in charge of him, he said, smiling:
"You are wondering why I meddle in such a business? It is because I
used, to be something of an expert in these matters." And Foucquet
spoke the truth. He was surely a sincere lover of the arts whom the
sight of men at work upon a fountain could suddenly distract from the
thought of dungeons and the imminence of the scaffold.