Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864», sayfa 10
There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.
But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.
"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? In house-furnishing, nothing is more economical than beauty."
"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."
THE BLACK PREACHER
A BRETON LEGEND
At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay,
They show you a church, or rather the gray
Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach
With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach;
Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone,
'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone,
'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see
That may have their teaching for you and me.
Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,
Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell.
But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,
He talking his patois and I English-French,
I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,
In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.
An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,
Built as a death-bed atonement for crime:
'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose;
But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.
Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat,
'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat,
Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl,
Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.
But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire
Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,
And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,
Where only the wind sings miserere.
Of what the monks came by no legend runs,
At least they were lucky in not being nuns.
No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,
Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,
Nor sound of service is ever heard,
Except from throat of the unclean bird,
Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass
In midnights unholy his witches' mass,
Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high
As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by;
But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls,
Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,
Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work,
The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,
The skeleton windows are traced anew
On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue,
And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith,
To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.
Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair
Hear the dull summons and gather there:
No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail,
Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale;
No knight whispers love in the châtelaine's ear,
His next-door neighbor this five hundred year;
No monk has a sleek benedicite
For the great lord shadowy now as he;
Nor needeth any to hold his breath,
Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.
He chooses his text in the Book Divine,
Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:—
"'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do,
That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue;
For no man is wealthy or wise or brave
In that quencher of might-bes and would-bes, the grave.'
Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said,
And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed;
Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine';
Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!"
But I can't pretend to give you the sermon,
Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German;
Whatever he preached in, I give you my word
The meaning was easy to all that heard;
Famous preachers there have been and be,
But never was one so convincing as he;
So blunt was never a begging friar,
No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire,
Cameronian never, nor Methodist,
Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.
And would you know who his hearers must be?
I tell you just what my guide told me:
Excellent teaching men have, day and night,
From two earnest friars, a black and a white,
The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life;
And between these two there is never strife,
For each has his separate office and station,
And each his own work in the congregation;
Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears,
And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears,
Awake in his coffin must wait and wait,
In that blackness of darkness that means too late,
And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls,
As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls,
To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine
Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.
FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT
Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and refinement. The grande nation, delivered from Ligue and Fronde, took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci to America.
There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with which we are so familiar. Then commenced the grand siècle, the era Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era.
No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and Marquis de Belleîle,—but better known as the Surintendant. In the pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendor, and of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in their Mémoires. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the "Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The pillars are of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. The Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the crowd, who kissed the favorite's slipper yesterday, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, disgraced, stripped, and beaten, Fouquet was of good family, the son of a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the magistracy, he became a Maître des Requétes (say Master in Chancery) at twenty, and at thirty-five Procureur-Général (or Attorney-General) of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur and his brother, the Abbé Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to the throne. The Abbé, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the trusty Procureur Surintendant des Finances, the first position in France after the throne and the prime-ministership.
Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the Surintendant talent, fashion, and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, the Acanthe of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reëxamine the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of Protestantism led to honors and wealth. Change of condition followed change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as Secretary and Historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a receiver-general of taxes. Molière wrote two of his earlier plays for the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables."
"Le Roi, l'État, la Patrie,
Partagent toute votre vie."
That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is a dull piece. Four fairies, Palatiane, Hortésie, Apellanire, and Calliopée, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's alias, in the affected jargon of the period)
"fait bâtir un palais magnifique,
Où règne l'ordre Ionique
Avec beaucoup d'agrément."
Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy.
"Pour lui Melpomène médite,
Thalie en est jalouse,"—
and soon—
Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his treatise, "De Motu Chyli," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were then, and so long after, violently opposed by the Purgons and the Diafoirus of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as punishment for a "Mazarinade," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,—a scanty addition to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome travestissement was the death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z.
The Surintendant's hôtel, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art, his library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the château. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical designs. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,—an aviary of foreign birds,—tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, and everything was new,—so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and no artists so skilful as these pour embellir son règne. He was obliged to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon enrolled in the service of the King.
In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "Il tiempo è un galantuomo," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many desperate disappointments and defeats, Messer Tiempo had made him rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "L'État, c'est moi," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a subject,—by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should take the duty upon himself,—the gentlemen present would aid him with their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The revenue of the nation passed through his hands. Fermiers and traitants, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less education. He could never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want of a more distinctive word we may call character,—that well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,—"There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in him,—a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry might be.
Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid in full,—a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest of republics. All the checks and balances of our enlightened system of administration, whether federal, state, or municipal, do not prevent skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power correspondingly great.
When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that time.
The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud and prosperous man humiliated,—merely to gratify that wretched feeling of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of Adam."
Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The personal reminiscences of the King's whole life must have made him feel keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the attempt to arrest Condé, who thought himself the master. He was twelve when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green scarfs, the Cardinal's colors, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Condé, in command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bléneau, and would have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne. A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,—had seen the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, Mademoiselle, the grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Condé, De Retz, and La Rochefoucauld fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Condé and Don John of Austria, and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himself,—only three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war.
A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, nec pluribus impar. He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,—because he was called the Magnificent,—because his châteaux and gardens were incomparably finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,—because he was surrounded by the first wits and artists,—no trifling matter in that bright morning of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired to be a bel-esprit, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his employ. "Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'à se croire humilié par un sujet." His "gloire" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, dress and dinners, madrigals and bon-mots. The monopoly of gloire he must and would have,—nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every kind, gloire.
And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Vallière. He had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in petits soins and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the King, and was the cause of the acharnement, the relentless fury, he showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his affections, and from his palace.
Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to the King, Court, and bel-air for the seventeenth of August, 1661,—the fête de Vaux, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a déjeuner of our day. The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and Madame, daughter of Charles I. of England, attended by Princes, Dukes, Marquises, and Counts, with their quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and independent spouses. The highest and noblest of France came to stare at Fouquet's magnificence, to wonder at the strange birds and beasts, and to admire the fountains and cascades. After a walk about the grounds, the august company were served with supper in the château. Vatel was the maître d'hôtel. The King could not conceal his astonishment at the taste and luxury of the Surintendant, nor his annoyance when he recognized the portrait of La Vallière in a mythological panel. Over doors and windows were carved and painted Fouquet's arms,—a squirrel, with the motto, "Quò non ascendam?" The King asked a chamberlain for the translation. When the device was interpreted, the measure of his wrath was full. He was on the point of ordering Fouquet's instant arrest; but the Queen-Mother persuaded him to wait until every precaution had been taken.
After supper, the guests were conducted to the play. The theatre was at the end of an alley of pines, almost al fresco. The stage represented a garden decorated with fountains and with statues of Terminus. Scenery by Le Brun; machinery and transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, Molière; the comedy, "Les Fâcheux," "The Bores," composed, written, and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and indispensable. As Molière had only a few good dancers, he placed the scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four different parts. To avoid awkwardness in these transitions, the plot of the comedy was carried over into the pantomime. This arrangement proved so successful that Molière made use of it in many of his later plays.
The curtain rises upon a man in citizen's-dress (Molière). He expresses amazement and dismay at seeing so large and so distinguished an audience, and implores His Majesty to pardon him for being there without actors enough and without time enough to prepare a suitable entertainment. While he is yet speaking, twenty jets of water spring into the air,—a huge rock in the foreground changes into a shell,—the shell opens,—forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Béjart, a well-known actress,—too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than any other man.
"Mortals," said la Béjart, "I come from my grotto to look upon the greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,—to wish; nothing is impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right to demand miracles of Nature? He is young, victorious, wise, valiant, and dignified,—as benevolent and just as he is powerful. He governs his desires as well as his subjects; he unites labor and pleasure; always busy, never at fault, seeing all, hearing all. To such a prince Heaven can refuse nothing. If Louis commands, these Termini shall walk from their places, these trees shall speak better than the oaks of Dodona. Come forth, then, all of you! Louis commands it. Come forth to amuse him, and transform yourselves upon this novel stage!" Trees and Termini fly open. Dryads, Fauns, and Satyrs skip out. Then the Naiad invokes Care, the goddess whose hand rests heavily upon monarchs, and implores her to grant the great King an hour's respite from the business of State and from his anxiety for his people. "Let him give his great heart up to pleasure. To-morrow, with strength renewed, he will take up his burden, sacrifice his own rest to give repose to mankind and maintain peace throughout the universe. But to-night let all fâcheux stand back, except those who can make themselves agreeable to him." The Naiad vanishes. The Fauns dance to the violins and hautboys, until the play begins.
After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the château. A feu d'artifice, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted until the drums of the royal mousquetaires, the King's escort, were heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up.
The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [la Renommée] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once.
'Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels,
Il reçoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'"
A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen days after the fête, the thunderbolt fell upon him.
A Procureur-Général could be tried only by the Parliament to which he belonged. To make Fouquet's destruction more certain, Colbert had induced him, by various misrepresentations, to sell out. He received fourteen hundred thousand livres for the place, and presented the enormous sum to the Treasury. This act of munificence, or of restitution, did not save him. If he had been backed by fifty thousand men, the King could hardly have taken greater precautions. His Majesty's manner was more gracious than ever. To prevent a rising in the West, Louis journeyed to Nantes, which is near Belleîle. Fouquet accompanied the progress with almost equal state. He had his court, his guards, his own barge upon the Loire,—and travelled brilliantly onward to ruin. The palace in Nantes was the scene of the arrest. Fouquet, suspecting nothing, waited upon the King. Louis kept him engaged in conversation, until he saw D'Artagnau, a name famous in storybooks, and the mousquetaires in the courtyard. Then he gave the signal. The Surintendant was seized and taken to Angers, thence to Amboise, Vincennes, and finally to the Bastille. He was confined in a room lighted only from above, and allowed no communication with family or friends. The mask was now thrown off, and the blow followed up with a malignant energy which showed the determination to destroy. The King was very violent, and said openly that he had matter in his possession which would hang the Surintendant. His secretaries and agents were arrested. His friends, not knowing how much they might be implicated, either fled the kingdom, or kept out of the way in the provinces. Pellisson and Dr. Pecquet were sent to the Bastille; Guénégaud lost half his fortune; the Bishop of Avranches had to pay twelve thousand francs; Gourville fled to England; Pomponne was ordered to reside at Verdun. Fouquet's papers were examined in the presence of the King. Letters were there from persons in every class of life,—a very large number from women, for the prisoner had charms which the fair sex have always found it difficult to resist. Madame Scarron had written to thank him for his bounty to the poor cripple whose name and roof protected her. The King had probably never before heard of this lady, who was to be the wife and ruler of his old age. The portfolio contained specimens of the gayest and brightest of letter-writers. In the course of his career, the gallant Surintendant had attempted to add the charming widow Sévigné to his conquests. She refused the temptation, but always remained grateful for the compliment. Le Tellier told her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, that the King liked her letters,—"very different," he said, "from the douceurs fades"—the insipid sweet things—"of the other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A copy of a letter by St. Évremond was found, written three years before from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense of Mazarin and the Paix des Pyrénées, St. Évremond was a soldier, a wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a jeu d'esprit into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds were turned out of their places and thrown penniless upon the world. It was a coup d'état, a revolution, and most people were against Fouquet. It is such a consolation for the little to see the mighty fall!
