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]