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 manoeuvred 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.
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.”
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.”
The whole Court went to Vaux on the 17th August, 1661.
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. 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.
The King arrived at Nantes on the 1st 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 5 th 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 sur prise 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 t
oute 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.”
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.”
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’ou 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.
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.
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:
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 hi
m 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.’”
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. 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.
ÉLÉGIE
Remplissez l’air de cris en vos grottes profondes,
Pleurez, nymphes de Vaux, faites croître vos ondes;
Et que l’Anqueil enflé ravage les trésors
Dont les regards de Flore ont embelli vos bords.
On ne blâmera point vos larmes innocentes,
Vous pourrez donner cours à vos douleurs pressantes;
Chacun attend de vous ce devoir généreux:
Les destins sont contents, Oronte est malheureux
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 352