Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  The office of Superintendent, which the worthy La Vieuville had held since 1649, was disputed after his death by the Marshals de ï’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 he 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 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 most 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, 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. 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 wh
ich reigned in this family.”

  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 carefuly 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.”

  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, who built it when she at length had a King. 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. 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. 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.”

  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 downy 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.” 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.

  ( It is the portrait which is reproduced at the beginning of the French edition, because it seems to us at once both the truest and the happiest picture of the extraordinary man who, both in letters and in art, inaugurated the century of Louis XIV. The head, three-quarter profile, is turned to the left. It is a medallion inscribed with the words: “Messire Nicolas Foucquet, chevalier, vicomte de Melun et de Vaux, Conseiller du Roy, Ministre d’État, Surintendant des Finances et Procureur général
de Sa Majesté.” Signed “R. Nanteuil ad vivum ping, et sculpebat, 1661.” The style is at once soft and firm, the workmanship pure and finished, the rendering of the colours excellent. This engraving was executed after a drawing or a pastel which Nanteuil had done from life, and which is lost. This work, and the engraving which perpetuates it, seem to me to form the origin of a whole family of portraits, of which we will mention several.

  (1) — A shaded bust, on a piedouche, bearing Foucquet’s arms. The arrangement is bad, the inscription; Ne faut-il que l’on avoue Qu’on trouve en luytous ce qu’on espéroit.

  C’est un surintendant tel que l’on désiroit.

  Personne ne s’en plaint, tout le monde s’en loue.

  Signed: “Van Schupper faciebat. P. de la Serre.”

  (2) — The head in an oval border. Raised hangings which 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 reveal a country scene, with dogs coursing. The inscription:

  “Messire Nicolas Foucquet, chevalier, vicomte de Melun et de Vaux, Ministre d’État, Surintendant des finances de Sa Majesté et son procureur général au Parlement de Paris.”