Madame de Sévigné was wooed by Foucquet, and yet she had no difficulty
in escaping from him. She made him understand that she would give
nothing and accept nothing. She was reasonable; he became so. "Reduced
to friendship, he transformed his love," says Bussy, "into an esteem
for a virtue hitherto unknown to him."[54] Madame de Sévigné was not
alone obdurate.
Madame Scarron, beautiful and prudish, found a way to obtain great
benefits from Foucquet without involving her reputation. When the
Superintendent granted her a favour, it was Madame Foucquet whom she
thanked. Thus, for the privilege which we have mentioned: "Madame,"
she writes to Madame la Surintendante, "I will not trouble you further
about the matter of the unloaders. It is happily terminated through the
intervention of that hero to whom we all owe everything, and whom you
have the pleasure of loving. The provost of the merchants listened to
reason as soon as he heard the great name of M. Foucquet. I entreat of
you, Madame, to allow me to come and thank you at Vaux. Madame de Vassé
has assured me that you continue to regard me kindly, and that you
will not consider me an intruder in those alleys where one may reflect
with so much reason, and jest with so much grace."[55]
Madame Foucquet, who was a kind woman, wished to keep Madame Scarron
about her; but the cunning fly would not allow itself to be caught. She
wrote to her indiscreet benefactress: "Madame, my obligation towards
you did not permit me to hesitate concerning the proposition which
Madame Bonneau made me on your behalf. It was so flattering to me,
I am so disgusted with my present circumstances, and I have so much
respect for you, that I should not have wavered for a moment, even
if the gratitude which I owe you had not influenced me; but, Madame,
M. Scarron, although your indebted and very humble servant, cannot
give his consent. My entreaties have failed to move him, my reasons
to persuade him. He implores you to love me less, or at any rate to
display your affection in a way which would be less costly to him.
Read his request, Madame, and pardon the ardour of a husband who has
no other resource against tedium, no other consolation in all his
misfortunes than the wife whom he loves. I told Madame Bonneau that
if you shorten the term I might, perhaps, obtain his consent, but I
see that it is useless thus to flatter myself, and that I had too far
presumed upon my power. I entreat of you, Madame, to continue your
kindness towards me. No one is more attached to you than I am, and my
gratitude will cease only with my life."[56]
Mademoiselle du Fouilloux was no prude; quite the contrary. She
appeared at Court in 1652; she showed herself and she pleased.
Une fleur fraîche et printanière,
Un nouvel astre, une lumière,
Savoir l'aimable du Fouilloux,
Dont plusieurs beaux yeux sont jaloux,
D'autant que cette demoiselle
Est charmante, brillante et belle,
Ayant pour escorte l'Amour,
A fait son entrée à la Cour
Et pris le nom, cette semaine,
De fille d'honneur de la reine.[57]
She figured in all the ballets in which the King danced, and Loret
sings that in 1658:
Fouilloux, l'une des trois pucelles,
Comme elle est belle entre les belles,
Par ses attraits toujours vainqueurs,
Y faisait des rafles de cœurs.
Foucquet lost his heart to her. He spoke; he gained a hearing.
Mademoiselle du Fouilloux, frivolous and calculating, was doubly made
for him. Their liaison was intimate and political. Fouilloux was
absolutely self-interested; she did not ask for what was her due, being
too great a lady for that, but she demanded it by means of a third
person, and even insisted upon advances. "I will tell you," wrote this
go-between,[58] "that I have seen Fouilloux prepared to entreat me to
find a way to inform you, as if on my own account, that I knew you
would please her if you would advance one hundred pistoles on this
year's pension."
We know also, from the same source, that the beauty asked for money
to pay her debts, and did not pay them. Here is the end of the note:
"Mademoiselle du Fouilloux has assured me that, of all the money that
you have given her, she has not paid a halfpenny. She has gambled
it all away." We must do justice to Foucquet, and to Fouilloux;
they were very reasonable. Fouilloux's one thought was to have her
own establishment, and she had her eye on an honest man, something
of a simpleton, but of good family, whom she had watched by the
Superintendent's police.
In those days the Queen's ladies-in-waiting were flattered in song.
Fouilloux had verses addressed to her:
Foilloux sans songer à plaire
Plaît pourtant infiniment
Par un air libre et charmant.
C'est un dessein téméraire
Que d'attaquer sa rigueur.
Si j'eusse été sans affaires
La belle aurait eu mon cœur.[59]
Other verses celebrate Menneville:
Toute la Cour est éprise
De ces attraits glorieux
Dont vous enchantez les yeux,
Menneville; ma franchise
S'y devrait bien engager;
Mais mon cœur est place prise
Et vous n'y sauriez loger.
This Menneville, celebrated in such bad verse, was, with Fouilloux,
the prettiest woman at Court. On this matter we have the testimony of
Jean Racine, who, banished to the depths of the provinces, wrote to
his friend La Fontaine, citing Fouilloux and Menneville as examples of
beauty. "I cannot refrain from saying a word as to the beauties of this
province.... There is not a village maiden, nor a cobbler's wife, who
might not vie in beauty with the Fouilloux and the Mennevilles.... All
the women here are dazzling, and they deck themselves out in a manner
which is to them the most natural fashion in the world, and as for the
attractions of their person,
_Colors vents, corpus solidum et sued plenum._"[60]
Of the two, Menneville is thought to have been the more beautiful. A
song says of her:
Cachez-vous, filles de la reine,
Petites,
Car Menneville est de retour,
M'amour.
She sold herself to the Superintendent. As she did not equal Fouilloux
in her genius for intrigue, Foucquet used her more kindly. While this
lady-in-waiting was yielding to the suit of the seigneur of Vaux,
she was trying to force the Duc de Damville to marry her, as he had
promised. Like Fouilloux, she begged the Superintendent to help her
to get settled. He did so with a good grace, and sent the fair lady
fifteen thousand crowns, which ought to have decided Damville. The
latter hesitated. An accident decided for him: he died.
There were no pleasures, no distractions--if we employ the word in
the strict sense which Pascal then gave it--there were no means of
enjoyment and oblivion for which Foucquet had not the most tremendous
capacity. Business and building were not enough to absorb his vast
energies. He was a gambler. The stakes at his tables were terribly
high. So they were at Madame Foucquet's. In one day Gourville won
eighteen thousand livres from the Comte d'Avaux. No money was laid
on the table, but at the end of the game the players settled their
accounts. They played not only for money, but for gems, ornaments,
lace, collars, valued at seventy to eighty pistoles each.
Foucquet, playing against Gourville, in one day lost sixty thousand
livres. "He played," said Gourville, "with cut cards which were worth
ten or twenty pistoles each. I put one thousand pistoles before me
almost desiring that he should win back something, which did happen.
Nevertheless, he was not pleased to see I was leaving the game."[61]
This wild play was not altogether to the Superintendent's disadvantage.
In the end his intimate friends, who were great personages, were
ruined, and came to him for mercy. Thus, for instance, he held in his
power Hugues de Lyonne--the great Lyonne. But he himself was at his
last gasp, and overwhelmed with anxiety.
Sole Superintendent of Finance since Servien's death, on the 17th
February, 1659, Foucquet had filled Mazarin's crop without having won
him, for Mazarin loved and served only himself, his own people and
the State. As a private individual he was self-interested, covetous
and miserly. As a public man he desired the good of the kingdom, the
greatness of France. He was never grateful to his public servants for
anything they did for his own person. Foucquet felt this; he perceived
that he had no hold over this man, and that Mazarin, when dying, might
ruin him, having no further need of him.
For Mazarin was dying; he was dying with all the heartrending regret
of a Magnifico who feels that he is being torn from his jewels, his
tapestries and his books--beautifully bound in morocco, delicately
tooled--and also, by a curious inconsistency, with the serenity of a
great statesman, of another Richelieu, full of a generous grief that he
could no longer play his part in those great affairs which had rendered
his life illustrious. He was anxious to assure the prosperity of the
kingdom after his death. "Sire," he said to the young Louis XIV, "I
owe you everything, but I think I can in a manner discharge my debt by
giving you Colbert."[62]
At the very point of death he was conferring with the King in secret
conversations, which caused Foucquet great anxiety, precisely because
they were concealed from him. Then, at length, the light of eyes which
had so long sought for gold and sumptuous draperies, and pierced the
hearts of men, was finally extinguished.
On the 9th March, 1661, as Foucquet, leaving his house of Saint-Mandé,
was crossing the Gardens on foot to go to Vincennes, he met young
Brienne, who was getting out of his couch, and learned from him the
great news.
"He is dead, then!" murmured Foucquet. "Henceforth I shall not know in
whom to confide. People always do things by halves. Oh, how distressing
I The King is waiting for me, and I ought to be there among the first!
My God! Monsieur de Brienne, tell me what is happening, so that I may
not commit any indiscretion through ignorance."[63]
The day after Mazarin's death the King of twenty-three summoned
Foucquet, with the Chancellor, Séguier, the Ministers and Secretaries
of State, and addressed them in these words: "Hitherto I have been
content to leave my affairs in the hands of the late Cardinal. It is
time for me to control them myself. You will help me with your counsels
when I ask you for them. Gentlemen, I forbid you to sign anything, not
even a safe conduct, or a passport, without my command. I request you
to give me personally an account of everything every day, to favour no
one in your lists of the month. And you, Monsieur le Surintendant, I
have explained to you my wishes; I request you to employ M. Colbert,
whom the late Cardinal has recommended to me." Foucquet thought that
the King was not speaking seriously. That error ruined him.
He believed that it would be easy to amuse and deceive the youthful
mind of the King, and he set to work to do so with all the ardour,
all the grace and all the frivolity of his nature. He determined to
govern the kingdom and the King. Foucquet did not know Louis XIV, and
Louis XVI did know Foucquet. Warned by Mazarin, the King knew that
Foucquet was engaged in dubious proceedings, and was ready to resort
to any expedient. He knew, also, that he was a man of resource and of
talent. He took him apart and told him that he was determined to be
King, and to have a precise and complete knowledge of State affairs;
that he would begin with finance; it was the most important part
of his administration, and that he was determined to restore order
and regularity to that department. He asked the Superintendent to
instruct him minutely in every detail, and he bade him conceal nothing,
declaring that he would always employ him, provided that he found him
sincere. As for the past, he was prepared to forget that, but he wished
that in future the Superintendent would let him know the true state of
the finances.[64]
In speaking thus, Louis XIV told the truth. He has explained himself in
his _Mémoires._ "It may be a cause of astonishment," he says, "that I
was willing to employ him at a time when his peculations were known to
me, but I knew that he was intelligent and thoroughly acquainted with
all the most intimate affairs of State, and this made me think that,
provided he would confess his past faults and promise to correct them,
he might render me good service."
No one could speak more wisely, more kindly; but the audacious Foucquet
did not realize that there was something menacing in this wisdom and
this kindness. He was possessed of a spirit of imprudence and error. He
was labouring blindly to bring about his own fall. Day by day, despite
the advice of his best friends, he presented the King with false
accounts of his expenditure and revenue. For five months he believed
that he was deceiving Louis XIV, but every evening the King placed his
accounts in the hands of Colbert, whom he had nominated Intendant of
Finance, with the special duty of watching Foucquet. Colbert showed
the King the falsifications in these accounts. On the following day
the King would patiently seek to draw some confession from the guilty
Minister, who, with false security, persisted in his lies.
Henceforth Foucquet was a ruined man. From the month of April, 1661,
Colbert's clerks did not hesitate to announce his fall. He began to be
afraid, but it was too late. He went and threw himself at the King's
feet--it was at Fontainebleau--he reminded him that Cardinal Mazarin
had regulated finance with absolute authority, without observing any
formality, and had constrained him, the Superintendent, to do many
things which might expose him to prosecution. He did not deny his own
personal faults, and admitted that his expenditure had been excessive.
He entreated the King to pardon him for the past, and promised to serve
him faithfully in the future. The King listened to his Minister with
apparent goodwill; his lips murmured words of pardon, but in his heart
he had already passed sentence on Foucquet.
Is it true that some private jealousy inspired the King's vengeance?
Foucquet, according to the Abbé de Choisy,[65] had sent Madame
de Plessis-Bellière to tell Mademoiselle de Lavallière that the
Superintendent had twenty thousand pistoles at her service. The lady
had replied that twenty million would not induce her to take a false
step. "Which astonished the worthy intermediary, who was little used
to such replies," adds the Abbé. However this may be, Foucquet soon
perceived that the fortress was taken, and that it was dangerous to
tread upon the heels of the royal occupant. But in order to repair his
fault he committed a second, worse than the first. Again it is Choisy
who tells us. "Wishing to justify himself to her, and to her secret
lover, he himself undertook the mission of go-between, and, taking her
apart in Madame's antechamber, he sought to tell her that the King was
the greatest prince in the world, the best looking, and other little
matters. But the lady, proud of her heart's secret, cut him short, and
that very evening complained of him to the King."[66]
Such a piece of audacity, and one so clumsy, could only irritate the
young and royal lover. Nevertheless it was not to a secret jealousy,
but to State interest, that Louis XIV sacrificed his prevaricating
Minister.
His intentions are above suspicion. It was in the interest of the
Crown and of the State alone that he acted. Yet we can but feel
surprised to find so young a man employing so much strategy and so much
dissimulation in order to ruin one whom he had appeared to pardon. In
this piece of diplomacy Louis XIV and Colbert both displayed an excess
of skill. With perfidious adroitness they manœuvred to deprive Foucquet
of his office of Attorney-General, which was an obstacle in their way,
for an officer of the Parliament could be tried only by that body, and
Foucquet had so many partisans in Parliament that there was no hope
that it would ever condemn him.
Louis XIV displayed an apparent confidence in Foucquet and redoubled
his favours; Colbert, acting with the King, was constantly praising
his generosity. He was, at the same time, inducing him to testify his
gratitude by filling the treasury without having recourse to bargains
with supporters, which were so burdensome to the State. Foucquet
replied: "I would willingly sell all that I have in the world in order
to procure money for the King."
Colbert refrained from pressing him further, but he contrived to lead
the conversation to the office of Attorney-General. Foucquet told him
one day that he had been offered fifteen hundred thousand livres for it.
"But, sir," answered Colbert, "do you wish to sell it? It is true that
it is of no great use to you. A Minister who is Superintendent has no
time to watch lawsuits." The matter did not go any farther at that
time; but they returned to it later, and Foucquet, thinking himself
established in his sovereign's favour, said one day to Colbert that he
was inclined to sell his office in order to give its price to the King.
Colbert applauded this resolution, and Foucquet went immediately to
tell Louis XIV, who thanked him and accepted the offer immediately. The
trick was played.[67]
The King had done his part to bring about this excellent result
by making Foucquet think that he would create him a _chevalier
de l'Ordre,_ and first Minister, as soon as he was no longer
Attorney-General. Here is a deal of duplicity to prepare the way for an
act of justice! Foucquet sold his office for fourteen hundred thousand
livres to Achille de Harlay, who paid for it partly in cash. A million
was taken to Vincennes, "where the King wished to keep it for secret
expenditure."[68]
Loret announced this fact in his letter of the 14th August:
Ce politique renommé
Qui par ses bontés m'a charmé,
Ce judicieux, ce grand homme
Que Monseigneur Foucquet on nomme,
Si généreux, si libéral,
N'est plus procureur général.
Une autre prudente cervelle,
Que Monsieur Harlay on appelle,
En a par sa démission
Maintenant la possession.
As a further act of prudence, and in order completely to lay Foucquet's
suspicions to rest, Louis XIV accepted the entertainment which Foucquet
offered him in the Château de Vaux. "For a long time," said Madame
de Lafayette, "the King had said that he wanted to go to Vaux, the
Superintendent's magnificent house, and although Foucquet ought to have
been too wary to show the King the very thing that proved so plainly
what bad use he had made of the public finances, and though the King's
natural kindliness ought to have prevented him from visiting a man whom
he was about to ruin, neither of them considered this aspect of the
affair."[69]