These festivities exasperated Louis XIV. "Ah, Madame," he said to his
mother, "shall we not make all these people disgorge?" Infallible
signs announced the approaching catastrophe. In his Council, the King
proposed to suppress those very orders to pay cash which served, as we
have said, to cover the secret expenditure of the Superintendents. The
Chancellor strongly supported the proposal. "Do I count for nothing,
then?" cried Foucquet indiscreetly. Then he suddenly corrected himself
and said that other ways would be found to provide for the secret
expenses of the State. "I myself will provide for them," said Louis
XIV. Nevertheless, Foucquet, though deprived of the gown, was still a
formidable enemy. Before he could be reduced his Breton strongholds
must be captured. The prudent King had thought of this, and presently
conceived a clever scheme. As there was need of money, it was resolved
to increase the taxation of the State domains. This impost, described
euphemistically as a gratuitous gift, was voted by the Provincial
Assemblies. The presence of the King seemed necessary in order to
determine the Breton Estates to make a great financial sacrifice, and
Foucquet himself advised the King to go to Nantes, where the Provincial
Assembly was to be held.[71] Foucquet himself helped to bring about
his own ruin. At Nantes he had a sorrowful presentiment of this. He
was suffering from an intermittent fever, the attacks of which were
very weakening. "Why," he said, in a low voice to Brienne, "is the
King going to Brittany, and to Nantes in particular? Is it not in order
to make sure of Belle-Isle?" And several times in his weakness he
murmured: "Nantes, Belle-Isle!" When Brienne went out, he embraced him
with tears in his eyes.[72]
The King arrived at Nantes on the ist of September, and took up his
abode at the Château. Foucquet had his lodging at the other end of
the town, in a house which communicated with the Loire by means of a
subterranean passage. In that way he could reach the river, where a
boat was waiting for him, and escape to Belle-Isle.
Summoned by the King, on the 5th September, at seven o'clock in the
morning, he went to the Council Meeting, which was prolonged until
eleven o'clock. During this time meticulous measures were taken for
his arrest, and for the seizure of his papers. The Council over, the
King detained Foucquet to discuss various matters with him. Finally,
he dismissed him, and Foucquet entered his chair. Having passed
through the gate of the Château, he had entered a little square near
the Cathedral, when D'Artagnan, 2nd Lieutenant of the Company of
Musketeers, signed to him to get out. Foucquet obeyed, and D'Artagnan
read him the warrant for his arrest. The Superintendent expressed
great surprise at this misfortune, and asked the officer to avoid
attracting public attention. The latter took him into a house which was
near at hand; it was that of the Archdeacon of Nantes, whose niece had
been Foucquet's first wife. A cup of broth was given to the prisoner;
the papers he had on him were taken and sealed. In one of the King's
coaches he was conveyed to the Château d'Angers. There he remained for
three months, from the 7th of September to the 1st of December.
Meanwhile his prosecution was being prepared. Certain letters from
women, found in a casket at Saint-Mandé, were taken to Fontainebleau,
and given to the King. They combined a great deal of gallantry with a
great deal of politics. Many women's names were to be read in them,
or guessed at. Madame Scarron's was mentioned and even Madame de
Sévigné's, but in an innocent connection. On the whole, only one woman,
Menneville, was shown to be guilty.
Foucquet was removed from Angers to Saumur. Taken on the 2nd of
December to La Chapelle-Blanche, he lodged on the 3rd in a suburb of
Tours, and from the 4th to the 25th of December remained in the Château
d'Amboise. Shortly after Foucquet's departure, La Fontaine, in company
with his uncle, Jannart, who had been exiled to Limousin, halted below
the Château and swept his eyes over the fair and smiling valley.
"All this," he said, "poor Monsieur Foucquet could never, during his
imprisonment here, enjoy for a single moment. All the windows of his
room had been blocked up, leaving only a little gap at the top. I asked
to see him; a melancholy pleasure, I admit, but I did ask. The soldier
who escorted us had no key, so that I was left for a long time gazing
at the door, and I got them to tell me how the prisoner was guarded. I
should like to describe it to you, but the recollection is too painful.
Qu'est-il besoin que je retrace
Une garde au soin non pareil,
Chambre murée, étroite place,
Quelque peu d'air pour toute grâce;
Jours sans soleil,
Nuits sans sommeil;
Trois portes en six pieds d'espace!
Vous peindre un tel appartement,
Ce serait attirer vos larmes;
Je l'ai fait insensiblement,
Cette plainte a pour moi des charmes.
Nothing but the approach of night could have dragged me from the
spot."[73]
On the 31st December, Foucquet reached Vincennes. As he passed he
caught sight of his house at Saint-Mandé, in which he had collected
all that can flatter and adorn life, and which he was never again to
inhabit. He was, indeed, to remain in the Bastille until after his
condemnation; that is to say, for more than three years; and he left
that fortress only to suffer an imprisonment of which the protracted
severity has become a legend.
The public anger was now loosed upon the stricken financier. The people
whose poverty had been insulted by his ostentatious display wished
to snatch him from his guards and tear him to pieces in the streets.
Several times during the journey from Nantes, D'Artagnan had been
obliged to protect his prisoner from riotous mobs of peasants. In the
higher classes of society the indignation was fully as bitter, although
it was only expressed in words.
Society never forgave Foucquet for having allowed his love-letters to
be seized. It was considered that to keep and classify women's letters
in this manner was not the act of a gallant gentleman. Such was the
opinion of Chapelain, who wrote to Madame de Sévigné:
"Was it not enough to ruin the State, and to render the King odious
to his people by the enormous burdens which he imposed upon them, and
to employ the public finances in impudent expenditure and insolent
acquisitions, which were compatible neither with his honour nor with
his office, and which, on the other hand, rather tended to turn his
subjects and his servants against him, and to corrupt them? Was it
necessary to crown his irregularities and his crimes, by erecting in
his own honour a trophy of favours, either real or apparent, of the
modesty of so many ladies of rank, and by keeping a shameful record
of his commerce with them in order that the shipwreck of his fortunes
should also be that of their reputations?
"Is this consistent with being, I do not say an upright man, in which
capacity, his flatterers, the Scarrons, Pellissons and Sapphos, and
the whole of that self-interested scum have so greatly extolled him,
but a man merely, a man with a spark of enlightenment, who professes
to be something better than a brute? I cannot excuse such scandalous,
dastardly behaviour, and I should be hardly less enraged with this
wretch if your name had not been found among his papers."[74]
We can admire such generous indignation, but it is hard to be called
"self-interested scum" when one is merely faithful in misfortune.
The truth is that Foucquet still had friends; the women and the poets
did not abandon him. Hesnault, to whom he had given a pension, was
not a favourite of the Muses, but he showed himself a man of feeling,
and his courageous fidelity did him credit. He attacked Colbert in an
eloquent sonnet, which was circulated everywhere by the prisoner's
friends:
Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux,
Qui gémis sous le poids des affaires publiques,
Victime dévouée aux chagrins politiques,
Fantôme révéré sous un titre onéreux:
Vois combien des grandeurs le comble est dangereux;
Contemple de Foucquet les funestes reliques,
Et tandis qu'à sa perte en secret tu t'appliques,
Crains qu'on ne te prépare un destin plus affreux!
Sa chute, quelque jour, te peut être commune;
Crains ton poste, ton rang, la cour et la fortune;
Nul ne tombe innocent d'où l'on te voit monté.
Cesse donc d'animer ton prince à son supplice,
Et près d'avoir besoin de toute sa bonté,
Ne le fais pas user de toute sa justice.
This sonnet was circulated privately. It was generally read with
pleasure, for Colbert was not liked, and it will not be inappropriate
to cite here an anecdote for which Bayle is responsible.[75]
When the sonnet was mentioned to the Minister, he asked: "Is the King
offended by it?" And when he was told that he was not, "Then neither
am I," he said, "nor do I bear the author any ill will."
If Molière kept silence, Corneille, on the contrary, now gave proof of
his greatness of soul; by praising Pellisson's fidelity, he showed that
he shared it:
En vain pour ébranler ta fidèle constance,
On vit fondre sur toi la force et lat puissance;
En vain dans la Bastille, on t'accabla de fers,
En vain on te flatta sur mille appas divers;
Ton grand cœur, inflexible aux rigueurs, aux caresses,
Triompha de la force et se rit des promesses;
Et comme un grand rocher par l'orage insulté
Des flots audacieux méprise la fierté,
Et, sans craindre le bruit qui gronde sur sa tête,
Voit briser à ses pieds l'effort de la tempête,
C'est ainsi, Pellisson, que dans l'adversité,
Ton intrépide cœur garde sa fermeté,
Et que ton amitié, constante et généreuse,
Du milieu des dangers sortit victorieuse.
Poor Loret found it difficult at first to collect his bewildered wits
and relate the catastrophe. It was a terrible affair; he didn't know
much about it, and he says still less. But, far from accusing the
fallen Minister, he was inclined to pity and esteem him. This was
courageous; and his bad verses were a kind action:
Notre Roi, qui par politique
Se transportait vers l'Amorique,
Pour raisons qu'on ne savait pas,
S'en revient, dit-on, à grands pas.
Je n'ai su par aucun message
Les circonstances du voyage:
Mais j'ai du bruit commun appris,
C'est-à-dire de tout Paris,
Que par une expresse ordonnance,
Le sieur surintendant de France
Je ne sais pourquoi ni comment,
Est arrêté présentement
(Nouvelles des plus surprenantes)
Dans la ville et château de Nantes,
Certes, j'ai toujours respecté
Les ordres de Sa Majesté
Et crû que ce monarque auguste
Ne commandait rien que de juste;
Mais étant rémemoratif
Que cet infortuné captif
M'a toujours semblé bon et sage
Et que d'un obligeant langage
Il m'a quelquefois honoré,
J'avoue en avoir soupiré,
Ne pouvant, sans trop me contraindre,
Empêcher mon cœur de le plaindre.
Si, sans préjudice du Roi
(Et je le dis de bonne foi)
Je pouvais lui rendre service
Et rendre son sort plus propice
En adoucissant sa rigueur,
Je le ferais de tout mon cœur;
Mais ce seul désir est frivole,
Et prions Dieu qu'il le console.
En l'état qu'il est aujourd'hui,
C'est tout ce que je puis pour lui.[76]
In time poor Loret did more; he tried to deny his benefactor's crimes.
"I doubt half of them," he said in the execrable style of the rhyming
Gazetteer:[77]
Et par raison et par pitié,
Et même pour la conséquence
Je passe le tout sous silence.
Pellisson was admirable. He wrote from the Bastille, where he was
imprisoned, eloquent defences in which, neglecting his own cause, he
sought only to justify Foucquet. His defence followed the same lines
as that of Foucquet himself. He pleaded the necessities of France,
the need of provisioning and equipping her armies and of fortifying
her strongholds. He imagined a case in which Mazarin himself might
have been criticized for the means by which he had procured money for
the war and ensured victory. "In all conscience," he said, "what man
of good sense could have advised him to reply in other than Scipio's
words: 'Here are my accounts: I present them but only to tear them
up. On this day a year ago I signed a general peace, and the contract
of the King's marriage, which gave peace to Europe. Let us go and
celebrate this anniversary at the foot of the altar.'"[78]
Mademoiselle de Scudéry distinguished herself by her zeal on behalf of
her friend, formerly so powerful, and now so unfortunate. Pecquet, whom
the Superintendent had chosen as his doctor, in order that he might
discourse with him on physics and philosophy, the learned Jean Pecquet,
was inconsolable at having lost so good a master. He used to say that
Pecquet had always rhymed, and always would rhyme with Foucquet.[79]
As for La Fontaine, all know how his fidelity, rendered still more
touching by his ingenuous emotions and the spell of his poetry, adorns
and defends the memory of Nicolas Foucquet to this very day. Nothing
can equal the divine complaint in which the truest of poets grieved
over the disgrace of his magnificent patron.