Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  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. Caesar, 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 Poids. 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,

  Ee 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 fit 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 foree 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 suffirait à mes débiles yeux

  Pour démêler en toi ces dons brillants des cieux,

  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.

  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

  Son dernier ouvrage ou besogne,

  Ouvrage grand et signalé,

  Qui VŒdipe 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. 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 c
harming 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 Clelie 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 Epîtres 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 â 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 was correct in attributing to this same year a poem which precedes the receipts, and which the poet published in 1675 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. ]

  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 bonn
e 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.

  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: