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.
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 the _Conseils 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 his _Pertharite._ 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 avenir
Que tes regards bénins ont su me rajeunir.
. . . . . . . . . .
Je sens le même feu, je sens la même audace
Qui lit plaindre le Cid, qui fit combattre Horace,
Et je me trouve encor la main qui crayonna
L'âme du grand Pompée et l'esprit de Cinna.
Choisis-moi seulement quelque nom dans l'histoire
Pour qui tu veuilles place au Temple de la Gloire,
Quelque nom favori qu'il te plaise arracher
A la nuit de la tombe, aux cendres du bûcher.
Soit qu'il faille ternir ceux d'Énée et d'Achille
Par un noble attentat sur Homère et Virgile,
Soit qu'il faille obscurcir par un dernier effort
Ceux 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 vue
Jamais vu de ton cœur la plus vaste étendue,
Qu'un moment suffrait à mes débiles yeux
Pour 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. _Œdipe_ was 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 that _Œdipe_ was 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 donné
A ceux de l'hôtel de Bourgogne[42]
Son dernier ouvrage ou besogne,
Ouvrage grand et signalé,
Qui _l'Œdipe_ est 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 sorte
N'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 of
_Œdipe,_ suggested two other subjects, one of which was _Camma._ 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 on _Camma_ to 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 tragedy _La 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
publishing _Clélie_ in 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 a
_Remerciement du siècle à M. le surintendant Foucquet,_ and presently
on his own account he fabricated a second _Remerciement,_ 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 the _Pharsale,_ 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 collected
_Épîtres 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
his _Danaides_ to 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 personnage
Les éloges ne plaisent pas;
Les siens sont pour lui sans appas.
Il aime peu qu'on le loue,
Et touchant ce sujet, j'avoue
Que l'excellent sieur Pellisson
M'a fait plusieurs fois la leçon;
Mais, comme son rare mérite
Tout 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 mérité
La pension qu'il veut que je lui donne.
En bonne foi je ne sache personne
A qui Phébus s'engageât aujourd'hui
De 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 remise
Stances, rondeaux et vers de toute guise.
Ce sont nos biens: les doctes nourrissons
N'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 lieux
Nommés 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 soleils
J'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 fournir
De 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: