Chapter VII (1)

Reign of Louis XIV.—Regency of Anne of Austria—Inauspicious
circumstances under which she assumed the regency—George
de Casselny—The count de Montresor—The marquis de
Fontrailles—Marshal de Rantzau—The count de Rieux—Bernard
Guyard—Broussel, governor of the Bastile—The duchess of
Montpensier orders the cannon of the Bastile to be fired on
the king’s army—Conclusion of the war of the Fronde—Surrender
of the Bastile—Despotism of Louis XIV.—Slavishness of the
nobles—John Herauld Gourville—The count de Guiche—Nicholas
Fouquet—Paul Pellisson-Fontainier—Charles St. Evremond—Simon
Morin—The Marquis de Vardes—Count Bussy Rabutin—Saci le
Maistre—The duke of Lauzun—Marquis of Cavoie—The chevalier
de Rohan—A nameless prisoner—Charles D’Assoucy—Miscellaneous
prisoners.

The regency of Anne of Austria commenced under auspices which were not of the most favourable kind. For a long series of years she had been persecuted by a tyrant minister, and discredited and humiliated, in every possible manner, by an unfeeling husband. It would be a tedious task to enumerate all the slights and injuries to which she was exposed; a specimen may suffice. To avoid the disgrace of being sent back to Spain, she had been compelled to confess before the Council a fault which she everywhere else disavowed, and of which it is improbable that she was guilty; on her bringing Louis XIV. into the world, she had suffered a stinging insult from her consort, who had pertinaciously refused to give her the embrace which was customary on such occasions—an insult which affected her so deeply that her life was endangered; when he was on the brink of the grave, and she earnestly sought to remove his prejudices against her, he coldly replied to Chavigni, who was pleading her cause, “In my situation I must forgive, but I am not obliged to believe her;” and, in settling the regency, he would fain have excluded from it the object of his hatred, but, that being impracticable, he took care to shackle her authority in such a way as would have left her scarcely more than the mere title of regent. Her having been childless for twenty-two years, and been treated in child-bed with such marked aversion by him, were also circumstances which were well calculated to throw dangerous doubts on the legitimacy of the infant sovereign. Yet Anne of Austria triumphed over all this, procured the setting aside of her deceased husband’s arrangements, obtained unlimited power, and for five years governed France without opposition, and with a considerable enhancement of its military fame. It was not till the troubles of the Fronde broke out that she encountered unpopularity and resistance.

During the peaceable period of the queen mother’s government, the Bastile seems to have had but few inmates, at least few whom history has deemed worthy of being recorded; and during the war of the Fronde, and even before, the castle of Vincennes was the prison which received the captives of the highest class, such as the duke of Beaufort, the prince of Condé, and cardinal de Retz.

The first prisoner in the Bastile, of whom any notice occurs during the regency, was a Spanish agent, named George de Casselny. Philip IV. of Spain had recently lost his consort Elizabeth, and it appears that Casselny was commissioned to make overtures for the monarch’s marriage with that singular female the duchess of Montpensier, a woman who had more manly qualities than her vacillating father, the duke of Orleans. “There was a certain Spaniard, named George de Casselny (says the duchess, in her memoirs), who had been made prisoner in Catalonia, and was on his parole, he went to M. de Surgis, at Orleans, to request that he would procure for him an interview with Monsieur (the duke of Orleans), who put him off till he could see him at Paris. In consequence of this delay, the Spaniard’s intention got wind, and he was put into the Bastile, and the cardinal (Mazarin), told Monsieur that it was a man who wanted to divert him from the service of the king by this proposal of marriage; which Monsieur believed and still believes. Many persons, however, affirm, that it was not a pretext, and that this gentleman had orders to make solid and sincere propositions for the marriage of his king with me, which he had thought it proper to communicate to Monsieur, before he made them known to the court. Nevertheless, this poor creature was kept a prisoner for several years, and when he was set at liberty, he was sent out of the kingdom under a guard.”

The next prisoner was one who, for a long period, was closely connected with Monsieur, the father of the duchess. Claude de Bourdeille, count de Montresor, was born about 1608, and was a grand-nephew of that pleasant but unscrupulous writer Brantome, who bequeathed to him his mansion of Richemont. Montresor was early admitted into the train of the duke of Orleans, and at length became his confidential friend, whom he consulted on all occasions. He availed himself of his influence to keep at a distance from the duke all the friends of Richelieu, to incite him still more against that minister, and to link him in confederacy with the count of Soissons. In 1636, he went much further. In conjunction with Saint Ibal and others, he formed a plan for assassinating the cardinal, and to this plan the duke and the count gave their assent. The murder was to be perpetrated as the minister was leaving the council chamber; Saint Ibal was behind him, ready to strike the blow, and waited only for an affirmative sign from the duke; but at this critical moment, either the courage of Orleans gave way, or his conscience smote him, for he turned away his head, and hurried from the spot. The cardinal consequently escaped.

While Montresor was subsequently busy in Guyenne, labouring to induce the duke of Epernon and his son to take up arms for Monsieur, he was suddenly abandoned by his employer, who made his own peace with Richelieu. Montresor now retired to his estate, where, for more than five years, he lived in the utmost privacy. He had, however, secret interviews with Monsieur, and, at his solicitation, he engaged in the conspiracy of Cinq Mars. Again he was deserted by him, and more disgracefully than in the first instance; for the dishonourable prince did not scruple to disavow the proceedings of his agent, and to aver that Cinq Mars and Montresor were the persons who had misled him. Montresor would have ascended the scaffold with Cinq Mars and de Thou, had he not prudently taken refuge in England, whence he did not return till the cardinal was no more.

When the government devolved on Anne of Austria, the enemies of Richelieu had reason to hope that they would become the dominant party. The haughty bearing which this hope led them to assume, obtained for them the appellation of “The Cabal of the Importants.” They soon, however, contrived to disgust the queen-regent; and before twelve months had elapsed, Montresor, Chateauneuf, the duchess of Chevreuse, and several others of the faction, were ordered to quit the court. Montresor retired for a while to Holland. Late in 1645, he visited Paris, and, soon after, two letters to him, from the exiled duchess de Chevreuse, having been intercepted, Mazarin sent him to the Bastile. The prisoner was removed to Vincennes, where he was rigorously treated for fourteen months. At length, moved by the solicitations of Montresor’s relatives, the cardinal set him at liberty, and even offered him his friendship. Montresor, however, chose rather to league himself with Mazarin’s bitterest foe, the celebrated Coadjutor, afterwards the cardinal de Retz, and he took an active part in the war of the Fronde. In 1653 he was reconciled to the court, and from that time till his decease, which occurred in 1663, he led a peaceable life. Though ambition and a propensity to political intrigue could lead him to dip his hands in blood, Montresor is said to have had many social qualities, to have been generous, sincere, and a firm and ardent friend. His “Memoirs” form a valuable contribution to the history of his times.

Among the agents of the duke of Orleans was Louis d’Astarac, marquis of Fontrailles, a descendant from an ancient Armagnac family. When the conspiracy of Cinq Mars was formed, Fontrailles was dispatched to Spain, to negociate with the Spanish cabinet a treaty, for assistance to the conspirators. By this treaty, Spain engaged to furnish the duke of Orleans with 12,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, 400,000 crowns to raise levies in France; and a monthly allowance of 12,000 crowns for his private expenses. But, before any step could be taken to carry the treaty into effect, the conspiracy was rendered abortive. Fontrailles, against whom an order of arrest had been issued, was fortunate enough to escape to England. The death of the cardinal and of his vassal sovereign, which took place soon after, enabled the proscribed fugitive to return to France. He became one of the Cabal of the Importants, and shared in the downfall of that faction. In the summer of 1647, he was sent to the Bastile; for what fault he was imprisoned I know not, or when he was released. Guy Patin intimates that the charge was not of a capital nature. Fontrailles died in 1677.

The next who passes before us is a brave and injured soldier. Count Josias de Rantzau was descended from an ancient family of Holstein, thirty-two members of which are said to have greatly distinguished themselves. The fidelity of this family to its sovereigns was so remarkable, that the expression “As faithful as a Rantzau to his king,” passed into a proverb. Josias was born in 1610, and seems first to have borne arms in the Swedish service; he commanded a body of Swedes at the siege of Andernach, headed the Swedish left wing at the combat of Pakenau, and was present at the siege of Brisac. In 1635, he accompanied the celebrated Oxenstiern into France, where Louis XIII. appointed him a major-general, and colonel of two regiments. The subsequent career of Rantzau was often successful, and was never stained with disgrace. He effectually covered the retreat of the French after the raising of the siege of Dole, victoriously defended St. Jean de Lône against Galas, bore a conspicuous part in the subsequent campaigns in Flanders and Germany, and was twice maimed at the siege of Arras, and displayed signal valour at the siege of Aire. Fortune deserted him at the combat of Honnecourt and the battle of Dutlingen, in 1642 and 1643, and in both instances he was taken prisoner. She, however, soon became favourable to him. Between 1645 and 1649, he made himself master of Gravelines, Dixmude, Lens, and all the maritime towns of Flanders. To reward his services he received the government of Gravelines and Dunkirk, and was raised to the rank of marshal. Mazarin, nevertheless, suspected him of being connected with his enemies, and in February, 1649, the marshal was conveyed to the Bastile, where he remained for eleven months. His innocence being at length ascertained, he was set at liberty; but a dropsy, which he had contracted in his confinement, proved fatal to him in the course of a few months. He died in September 1650. Rantzau was possessed of brilliant valour, much talent and military skill, and spoke all the principal languages of Europe; his only defect was an inordinate love of wine. Like our Nelson, but even in a greater degree, his person had been severely mutilated; he had lost an ear, an eye, a leg, and an arm. To this fact the following epitaph alludes:

“But half of great Rantzau this tomb contains,
The other half in battle fields remains;
His limbs and fame he widely spread around,
And still, though mangled, conqueror was he found:
His blood a hundred victories did acquire,
And nothing but his heart by Mars was left entire!”

A brawl brought to the Bastile, in 1652, the count de Rieux, a son of the duke of Elbœuf. A dispute with the prince of Tarentum, as to precedence, gave rise to it. The prince of Condé, the great Condé, was the other actor. “The prince of Condé,” says the duchess of Montpensier, “took the part of the prince of Tarentum, who is nearly related to him, against the count de Rieux, and one day he got heated in the dispute; he imagined that the count de Rieux had pushed him, which obliged him to return it by a box on the ear; the count de Rieux then gave him a blow. The prince, who had no sword, made a dart at that of the baron de Migenne, who was present. M. de Rohan, who was also there, put himself between them, and got out the count de Rieux, whom his royal highness (the duke of Orleans) sent to the Bastile, for having dared to fail in respect. Many persons say, that the prince struck first; if he did so, he must have taken some gesture of the count for an insult, for though he is very passionate, he is not so much so as to do an action of this kind. I saw him after dinner, and he said, ‘You see a man who has been beaten for the first time in his life.’ The count de Rieux remained in the Bastile till the arrival of M. de Lorraine, who set him free, and blamed him very much.” It must have been a ludicrous sight, to see a prince of the blood, the victor of Rocroi, Fribourg, Nordlingen, and Lens, at fisticuffs amidst a ring of courtiers, in the palace of the duke of Orleans! “This was not the way,” remarks Voltaire, “to regain the hearts of the Parisians.”

The leaders of the Frondeur faction were by no means tolerant of censure, even when it came from clerical lips. Bernard Guyard, a dominican, had reason to repent his having too honestly indulged in it. Guyard, who was born in 1601, at Craon, in Anjou, took the religious habit, and was admitted, in 1645, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and became popular for his pulpit eloquence, so much so that Anne of Austria appointed him her preacher, and the duchess of Orleans chose him as her confessor. While the war of the Fronde was being carried on—a war of which it has wittily and truly been said, that it ought to be recorded in burlesque verse—Guyard ventured to reprobate, in the pulpit, the conduct of those ambitious and unprincipled personages by whom its flames had been lighted up. The punishment of his offence followed close upon the commission of it. As he was leaving the church, he was arrested, and conveyed to the Bastile, where he continued for some months. He died in 1674, at which period he was theological professor in the convent of St. James. All his works have long since ceased to attract notice, with the exception, perhaps, of “The Fatality of St. Cloud,” which is a paradoxical attempt to prove that not Clement, nor a Dominican, but a leaguer, disguised as a monk, was the murderer of Henry III.

During the war of the Fronde, the Bastile, for a short time, and for the last, was again a fortress as well as a prison; but in the latter character its services were only once required. When, in 1649, the queen-regent suddenly quitted Paris with the young king, she imprudently neglected to throw into the Bastile a garrison. It was guarded by only twenty-two soldiers, who had neither ammunition nor provisions. Du Tremblai, the governor, was therefore obliged to yield. The custody of the fortress was committed to Peter Broussel, for whose deliverance the Parisians had risen in arms on the day of the Barricades, and from whom he had received the flattering appellations of the father and the protector of the people. As Broussel was an aged man, his son, La Louvière, was joined with him in the government. In 1652, Broussel was appointed provost of the merchants, and the keeping of the Bastile remained with La Louvière alone.

The two pieces of cannon which, in 1649, the Parisians fired at the Bastile to hasten its submission, would have been the only artillery employed, either against it or by it, had not the daring of a woman brought its guns into action. The duchess of Montpensier, who was called Mademoiselle, had recently distinguished herself by her spirited conduct at Orleans. Being sent by her father to that city, to encourage his partisans, she was at first refused admittance, but she forced her way in, through a hole in a gate, roused the people in her favour, and succeeded in preventing the king’s troops from occupying that important post. She was now at Paris, and soon found a fresh opportunity to display her courage and presence of mind. On the second of July, 1652, the sanguinary battle of the suburb of St. Anthony was raging; the army of the prince of Condé, overborne by the far superior numbers which Turenne led against him, could barely hold its ground; the prince had in vain entreated for its admission at various gates; the enemy, reinforced, was preparing for a new attack on its front and flanks; and, pent in between the king’s troops and the city walls, its destruction seemed to be inevitable. At this perilous moment it was saved by the duchess of Montpensier. First from her father, and next from the municipal authorities sitting at the Town Hall, she in a manner extorted an order for opening the gate of St. Anthony to the nearly overwhelmed battalions of Condé. She then ascended to the summit of the Bastile, and directed the cannon to be charged, removed from the city side, and pointed to the opposite quarter. They were opened upon the royalists, who pressed on the retreating Condéans, and their commanding fire compelled the pursuers to fall back beyond their range. Mademoiselle was at that time cherishing a hope that she should be united to her cousin the king, or at least to some crowned head; and it was with allusion to this circumstance that, when he heard she had ordered the firing, Mazarin coolly remarked, “Those cannon shots have killed her husband.”

Four months did not pass away before, tired of wasting their lives and properties in a contest which could benefit only the privileged classes, the Parisians invited the king to return to his capital. The monarch entered it on the 21st of October, 1652. The faction of the Fronde was annihilated, and its leaders were scattered in all directions; their vanity, selfishness, and utter want of principle and patriotism, deserved such a fate. Had they been animated by noble motives, had they possessed even a moderate share of wisdom and virtue, they might have laid the groundwork of a stable and beneficent government, and thereby saved their country from innumerable immediate and remote evils. But

“The sensual and the base rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion!”

As soon as the king had entered Paris, the Bastile was summoned, and La Louvière was informed that, if he were rash enough to stand a siege, the gibbet would be his portion. Too prudent to run so useless and formidable a risk, he readily gave up his charge. From the moment when Mademoiselle directed its fire upon the king’s troops, a hundred and thirty-seven years elapsed before the Bastile again heard the roar of artillery fired in anger.

One of the first acts of Louis XIV. was to hold a bed of justice, in which he ordered the registration of an edict to abridge the power of the parliament. By this edict, the parliament was strictly prohibited from deliberating on state and financial affairs, and instituting any proceedings whatever against the ministers whom he might be pleased to employ. Louis was then only a boy of fourteen, and this act was of course the work of Mazarin; but, young as he was, the monarch was already thoroughly imbued with the principles on which it was framed. Three years afterwards he gave a striking proof of this. The parliament having ventured to manifest a faint opposition to some of his many oppressive fiscal edicts, he took a step which showed how deeply despotism was ingrained into his character. He was engaged in the chase, at Vincennes, when information was brought to him that his will was disputed. Hurrying back to Paris, he entered the parliament chamber, the sanctuary of justice, booted, spurred, whip in hand, and thus addressed the assembly of venerable magistrates: “Sirs, everybody knows the calamities which the meetings of the parliament have produced. I will henceforth prevent those meetings. I order you, therefore, to desist from those which you have begun, with respect to the edicts which, in my late bed of justice, I directed to be registered. You, Mr. First President, I forbid to allow of these assemblies; and I forbid every one of you to demand them.” Having thus spoken he departed, leaving his hearers in astonishment. He was then a beardless youth, who had not reached his seventeenth year. The members of the parliament might well have called to mind the words of Scripture—“If these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in a dry?” Six years afterwards Mazarin died, and thenceforth Louis had no prime minister; he became, in every sense of the word, the head of the government, the autocrat of France.

A new era, that of abject submission to the monarch, and almost idolatrous worship of his person and greatness, commenced when the war of the Fronde was over. The slaves had had their Saturnalia, and they sank back—we may almost say rushed back—into a slavery more degrading than that from which they had for a moment emerged. There were no longer any Epernons, ruling their provinces as they pleased, and bearding the sovereign; the feudal pride was extinct. This would have been a happy circumstance for France, had the nobles, in losing their pride, preserved their dignity. But from one extreme they passed to the other. The power which they had lost, which was, in fact, but the power of doing mischief, they might have replaced by a power more honourable and durable, that which would have arisen from promoting the welfare and happiness of those whom they called their vassals. But their extensive domains were looked on only as mines, from which the last grain of gold was to be extracted, that they might squander it in the capital. It seemed as though it were impossible for them to exist out of the king’s presence; and when they were excluded from it, they lamented and whined in a manner which excites at once wonder and contempt. The consequences of this general prostration were slowly, but surely and fatally, unfolded.

Let us revert to the captives of the Bastile. The destiny of John Herauld Gourville, who was born in 1625, was a singular one; he not only raised himself from a humble state to be the companion and friend of princes, but was appointed to be one of the representatives of his sovereign while in exile, and while a Parisian court of justice was hanging him in effigy as a convicted runaway peculator. After having received a scanty education, he was placed in an attorney’s office by his widowed mother. Having by his cleverness fortunately attracted the notice of the duke de la Rochefaucault, the author of the “Maxims,” that nobleman made him his secretary. During the war of the Fronde, Gourville displayed such talent and activity, that he acquired the warm friendship of his employer and the prince of Condé. His gratitude engaged him in many desperate adventures for their service, and the mode in which he raised the supplies for them was sometimes not much unlike that of a bandit; the moral code of the Frondeurs was not remarkable for its strictness. When Rochefaucault became weary of the inglorious contest in which he was an actor, Gourville negotiated the duke’s peace with the court; and in doing this he manifested so much ability and prudence, that Mazarin despatched him to Bordeaux, to treat with the prince of Conti. In this mission he was successful; and he was rewarded by being appointed commissary-general of the French army in Catalonia. At the close of the campaign of 1655, he returned to Paris, and Mazarin, who suspected that he came to intrigue for the prince of Conti, shut him up in the Bastile. In his Memoirs, Gourville candidly confesses that his six months’ imprisonment was insufferably wearisome, and that he could think of little else than how he should put an end to it. He was maturing a plan of escape, in concert with six other prisoners, when the cardinal relented, took him again into favour, and even prevailed on Fouquet to give him the lucrative place of receiver-general of the province of Guienne. In this office Gourville amassed an immense fortune, which he increased by his extraordinary good luck at play. When Fouquet fell, the whole of his subalterns were involved in his fall; but, far from deserting him in his calamity, Gourville nobly furnished 100,000 livres to assist in gaining over some of his enemies, and a still larger sum for the establishment of his son, the count de Vaux. He soon, however, became himself an object of impeachment, on a charge of peculation, and he deemed it prudent to quit France. At that moment there was certainly no chance of his obtaining a fair trial. After having visited England and Holland, he settled at Brussels. Though he was compelled to live in a foreign country, Gourville still preserved a strong affection for his native land, and he proved it, by influencing the princes of Brunswick and Hanover in favour of France. For this patriotic conduct Louis XIV. nominated him his plenipotentiary at the court of Brunswick; while at the same moment his enemies at Paris obtained against him a degrading sentence from his judges! That not a love of justice, but a desire to extort money from him, gave rise to his being prosecuted, is made evident by Colbert having offered a pardon, at the price of 800,000 livres, which he afterwards reduced to 600,000. Gourville, however, either could not or would not purchase this costly commodity. He was subsequently employed as a diplomatist in Spain, and again in Germany; and at length in 1681, a free pardon was granted to him. From that time he led a tranquil life in the French capital, in habits of friendship with, and much beloved by, the most eminent men of genius and rank. At one period there was an intention of making him the successor of Colbert, as comptroller-general of the finances, an office for which he was well qualified; but he had ceased to be ambitious of dangerous honours, and was happy to avoid them. The length of time which his servants continued in his service, and the cordial manner in which he speaks of them, afford strong proofs of his kind-heartedness: never did a selfish or harsh master long retain a domestic. Haughtiness to inferiors is the miserable make-shift of a man who has no true dignity to support his pretensions. Gourville mentions four persons who had been with him for fifteen, seventeen, twenty-five, and thirty-two years. He died in 1703, at the age of seventy-eight. His Memoirs, which he composed in four months, to amuse himself while he was confined by a disease in the leg, are deservedly praised by Madame de Sévigné and Voltaire.

The next who appears on the scene was a noble, whom Madame de Sévigné characterizes as “a hero of romance, who does not resemble the rest of mankind.” This is somewhat exaggerated, but not wholly untrue. Armand de Grammont, Count de Guiche, who was born in 1638, was a proficient in all manly exercises, splendid in dress and equipage, spirited, witty, well educated, handsome in person, and cultivated in mind. His valour was early proved, at the sieges of Landrecy, Valenciennes, and Dunkirk. In a voluptuous court, and with his attractive qualities, it is not wonderful that Guiche was engaged in amorous intrigues. His desire of conquest aimed so high—Henrietta Stuart, Duchess of Orleans, was its great object—that Louis XIV. thrice exiled him; and it was probably on this account that he became an inmate of the Bastile, from which prison he was released in the autumn of 1660. Having a third time offended, he was sent to Poland, where he distinguished himself in the war against the Turks. At the end of two years, he was recalled; but it was not long before he again fell into disgrace, by participating in the despicable conduct of the Marquis de Vardes, which will be described in the sketch of that courtier’s career. Guiche was banished to Holland. Too active to remain unemployed, he served in the campaign against the Bishop of Munster, and on board the Dutch squadron, in the sea-fight with the English, off the Texel. He was allowed to return to France in 1669, but was not re-admitted at court till two years afterwards. It was he who, in 1672, led the way at the celebrated passage of the Rhine, near Tollhuis; an exploit which is extravagantly lauded by Boileau. He died at Creutznach, in Germany, in 1673; excessive chagrin, occasioned by Montecuculi having defeated him, was the cause of his death. Guiche is the author of a volume of Memoirs concerning the United Provinces.

The first important act of Louis XIV., after his taking the administration of public affairs into his own hands, was the disgracing and ruining Fouquet, the superintendant of the finances. Nicholas Fouquet, a son of Viscount de Vaux, was born at Paris, in 1615, and was educated for the legal profession. At twenty he was master of requests, and at thirty-five he filled the very considerable office of attorney-general to the parliament of Paris. It would have been happy for him had he steadily pursued his career in the magistracy, instead of deviating into a path that was beset with dangers. During the troubles of the Fronde he was unalterably faithful to the queen-mother, and in gratitude for this she raised him, in 1652, to the post of superintendant. It was a fatal boon.

By all who were connected with it, the French treasury seems, in those days, to have been considered as a mine which they were privileged to work for their own benefit. Mazarin had recently been a wholesale plunderer of it; and there can be little doubt that Fouquet was a peculator to a vast extent. Yet the superintendant had one merit, which was wanting in other depredators—though he took, he likewise gave; for at one period, when money ran short, he mortgaged his property and his wife’s, and borrowed on his own bills, to supply the necessities of the state.

The fatal failing of Fouquet was his magnificent extravagance. He had a taste for splendour and lavish expenditure, which might have qualified him for an oriental sovereign. On his estate at Vaux he built a mansion, or rather a palace, which threw into the shade the country residences of the French monarch—for Versailles was not then in existence. Whole hamlets were levelled to the ground to afford space for its gardens. The building was sumptuously decorated, and in every part of it was painted his device, a squirrel, with the ambitious motto “_Quo non ascendam?_” Whither shall I not rise? It is a curious circumstance, that the squirrel was represented as being pursued by a snake, which was the arms of Colbert, the bitter enemy of Fouquet. The edifice cost eighteen millions of livres; a sum equivalent to three times as much at the present day.

The largesses of the superintendant, which in many cases deserve the name of bribes, were immense. Great numbers of the courtiers did not blush to become his pensioners. On extraordinary occasions they also received presents from him. Each of the nobles, who was invited with Louis XIV. to the grand entertainment at Vaux, found in his bed-chamber a purse filled with gold; which, says a sarcastic writer, “the nobles did not forget to take away.” There was another abundant source of expense, which arose out of his licentious passions; he lavished immense sums in purchasing the venal charms of the French ladies of distinction, and was eminently successful in finding sellers. “There were few at court,” says Madame de Motteville, “who did not sacrifice to the golden calf.” Policy, no doubt, had a share in prompting his liberality to the courtiers; and, perhaps, it sometimes was mingled with lust and vanity in his gifts to frail females of rank; but we may attribute to a purer motive the kindness and courtesy which he manifested to persons of talent. The result was quite natural; the great deserted him in his hour of danger and disgrace, the people of talent clung with more tenacity than ever to their fallen benefactor and friend.

Mazarin, when on his death-bed, is said to have awakened the fears and suspicions of Louis against Fouquet; and, to deepen the impression which he had made, he left behind him two deadly foes of the superintendant. These foes were Le Tellier and Colbert, of whom the latter was the most inveterate and the most dangerous. When Louis formed the resolution of being his own prime minister, Fouquet, who evidently wished to succeed to the power of Richelieu and Mazarin, essayed to turn the monarch from his purpose, by daily heaping on him a mass of dry, intricate, and erroneous financial statements. He failed in his attempt. These papers the king every evening examined, with the secret assistance of Colbert, whose acuteness and practised skill instantly unravelled their artful tangles, and exposed their errors.

It was not alone the squandering of the royal treasure that irritated Louis; though that would have been a sufficiently exciting cause to a man whose own lavish habits required large supplies. He asserted, and might perhaps believe, that the offender aspired to sovereignty. In a long conversation with the president Lamoignon, he said, “Fouquet wished to make himself duke of Britanny, and king of the neighbouring isles; he won over every body by his profusion: there was not a single soul in whom I could put confidence.” So much was he impressed with this idea, that he repeated it over and over to the president. For this absurd fear there was no other ground than that the superintendant had purchased and fortified Belleisle; a measure which was prompted by patriotic motives, it being his design to make that island an emporium of commerce. There is said to have been another and a not less powerful cause for the monarch’s hatred of Fouquet; the superintendant had been imprudent enough to attempt to include La Vallière in the long catalogue of his mistresses, and this was an offence not to be pardoned by the proudest and vainest of kings.

As soon as the ruin of Fouquet was determined upon, the most profound dissimulation was used by the king and Colbert, to prevent him from suspecting their purpose. All his measures seemed to give perfect satisfaction; unlimited trust was apparently placed in him; and hints were thrown out, that the coveted post of prime minister was within his reach. The hints had a further purpose than that of blinding him to the peril in which he stood; they were meant to rob him of a shield against injustice. By virtue of his office, as attorney-general to the parliament, he had the privilege of being tried only by the assembled chambers; but, as it was intended that his trial should take place before a packed tribunal, it was necessary to divest him of the privilege. For this reason it was insinuated, that the post of attorney-general stood in the way of his being raised to the premiership, and also of his obtaining the blue riband. Fouquet fell into the snare, and sold his office for 1,400,000 livres, which sum, with a blind generosity, he instantly lent to the Exchequer. To confirm Fouquet’s delusion, Louis graced with his presence a gorgeous festival which was held at Vaux. But the splendour of the place, the excessive magnificence of the entertainment, and the presumptuousness of the superintendant’s motto, roused his anger to such a pitch, that, had not the queen-mother remonstrated, he would have committed the unkingly act of arresting Fouquet on the spot.

When the courage inspired by passion had evaporated, Louis delayed yet awhile to effect his purpose, till he had guarded in all possible ways against the danger which was to be apprehended from the formidable conspirator. Had Fouquet been capable of calling up legions from the earth by the stamp of his foot, more precautions could not have been taken. The blow was struck at last. Louis was at Nantes, to which city he had removed under the idea that it would be easier to accomplish the arrest there than at Paris. Thither he was followed by Fouquet. Some of the superintendant’s friends warned him of the peril which hung over him, but he gave no credence to their tidings. On the 5th of September, 1661, as he was leaving the council, he was arrested, and was conveyed without delay to the castle of Angers. Messengers were immediately despatched to Paris, to seize his papers, and to order the arrest of many of his partisans.

Fouquet was bandied about from prison to prison, from Angers to Amboise, Moret, and Vincennes, till he was finally lodged in the Bastile. He bore his misfortune with an unshaken mind. His enemies, meanwhile, were proceeding with the most malignant activity, and with a perfect contempt of justice and decorum. It was the common talk of Paris, that Colbert would be satisfied with nothing less than the execution of the superintendant. He was even plainly charged by Fouquet with having fraudulently made in his papers a multitude of alterations. Le Tellier, though less openly violent than Colbert, was equally hostile. For the trial of the prisoner twenty-two commissioners were picked out from the French parliaments; nearly all—if not all—of them were notoriously inimical to him, or connected with persons who were known to be so, and at their head was the chancellor Seguier, one of his most deadly enemies.

One benefit the fallen minister derived from this injustice, and from the protracted trial which ensued; public opinion, which at first had been adverse to him, gradually grew more and more favourable. Fouquet the peculator, brought to judgment before an honest and impartial tribunal, would have excited no sympathy; Fouquet, persecuted by his rivals for power, and destined to be legally assassinated, could not fail to excite a warm interest in the mind of every one who was not destitute of honourable feelings.

Those who were in habits of intimacy with Fouquet needed no other stimulus than the benefits or the winning courtesies, which they had experienced from him. He had on his side all who loved or practised literature, all who could be captivated by prepossessing manners and boundless generosity. “Never,” says Voltaire, “did a placeman have more personal friends, never was a persecuted man better served in his misfortunes.” Many men of letters wielded the pen in his behalf, with a courage which deserves no small praise, when we consider that the Bastile was staring them in the face. Pelisson in his dungeon tasked all his powers to defend his ruined master; La Fontaine, in a touching elegy, vainly strove to awake the clemency of Louis; Loret eulogized Fouquet in his “Mercure Burlesque,” and was punished by the loss of his pension; Hesnault, the translator of Lucretius, attacked Colbert in the bitterest and boldest of sonnets; and a crowd of other assailants showered epigrams and lampoons on the vindictive minister. The authors were, in general, lucky enough to find impunity; but numbers of newswriters, printers, and hawkers, were seized, all of whom were imprisoned, and some were sent from prison to the galleys.

Fouquet began by denying the competency of the tribunal before which he was summoned. He was, however, compelled to appear; but, though he answered interrogatories, he persisted in protesting against the authority of his judges. He defended himself with admirable skill, eloquence, and moderation. There were, indeed, moments when he was roused to retaliate. A single example of the pungency with which he could reply, will show that his persecutors were not wise in provoking him. Behind a mirror, at his country house of St. Mandé, was found a sketch of a paper, drawn up by him fifteen years before, and evidently long forgotten by him. It contained instructions to his friends how they were to proceed, in case of an attempt being made to subvert his power. This was construed into a proof of conspiracy. Seguier having pertinaciously called on him to own that the drawing up of such a paper was a crime against the state, Fouquet said, “I confess that it is a foolish and wild act, but not a state crime. A crime against the state is when, holding a principal office, and being entrusted with the secrets of the prince, the individual all at once deserts to the enemy, engages the whole of his family in the same interest, causes governors to open the gates of cities to the enemy’s army, and to close them against their rightful master, and betrays to the hostile party the secrets of the government—this, sir, is what is called a crime against the state.” This was a stunning blow to the chancellor, for it was the past conduct of that magistrate himself that was thus forcibly described by the prisoner.

The trial lasted three years. It was not the fault of some of his judges that it was not brought to a speedier issue. They listened with reluctance to his eloquent defence, and would fain have cut it short. Possort, one of them, who was an uncle of Colbert, once exclaimed, on Fouquet closing his speech, “Thank Heaven! he cannot complain that he has been prevented from talking his fill!” Others, still more insensible to shame, made a motion, that he should be restricted to the mere answering of questions; they were, however, overruled. It was not till the middle of December, 1664, that Talon, the advocate-general, summed up the evidence, and demanded that the culprit should be hanged on a gallows, purposely erected in the Palace Court. But the time for this excessive severity was gone by. Some of the judges had become accessible to feelings of pity; others had been won over by the potent influence of gold, of which the superintendant’s friends undoubtedly availed themselves to a considerable extent. Among the most conspicuous of those who leaned to the side of mercy were MM. d’Ormesson and Roquesante, men of unquestionable integrity. Only nine voted for death; a majority of the commissioners, thirteen in number, gave their suffrage for confiscation of property and perpetual banishment.

The king is said to have been grievously disappointed by this sentence. Colbert was furious. In one of her letters, written at the moment, Madame de Sévigné, who had a warm esteem for Fouquet, says, “Colbert is so exceedingly enraged, that we may expect from him something unjust and atrocious enough to drive us all to despair again.” In another letter, she hints her fears that poison may be employed; Guy Patin was also of the same opinion. Neither poison nor steel was, however, resorted to; it was probably thought that to render the life of Fouquet a burthen to him, would be a more exquisite gratification than taking of it away. To grant mercy has always been regarded as the noblest prerogative of a monarch; to refuse it was more to the taste of Louis. He altered the sentence of Fouquet from banishment to endless imprisonment in a remote fortress, and this was in mockery called a commutation of the penalty. Fouquet was immediately sent off to Pignerol, and the members of his family, who were doomed to suffer for his errors, were scattered in various directions. His judges did not wholly escape without marks of the king’s anger. M. de Roquesante, a native of the sunny Provence, who had spoken in favour of the prisoner, was banished, in the depth of winter, to the distant and imperfectly civilised province of Lower Britanny.

On his way to Pignerol, and during his captivity there, Fouquet was treated with great harshness. About six months after his arrival, he was placed in imminent danger. The lightning fell on the citadel where he was confined, and blew up the powder magazine. Numbers of persons were buried under the ruins, but he stood in the recess of a window and remained unhurt. There is a singular veil of mystery hanging over his last days. He is generally said to have died at Pignerol, in 1680; yet Gourville, his friend, positively states him to have been set at liberty before his decease, and he adds, that he received a letter from him. Voltaire, too, declares that the fact of the liberation was confirmed to him by the Countess de Vaux, the daughter-in-law of Fouquet; but here all clue to the subject is lost. It has recently been suggested that Fouquet may have again been arrested, and that he was the individual who is known by the appellation of the Man in the Iron Mask.

While fidelity in friendship, inviolably preserved under the most trying circumstances, shall continue to be admired by mankind, the name of Paul Pelisson will always be mentioned with respect. He had talents, too, which were of no mean order. Pelisson, who from affection to his mother assumed also her maiden name of Fontanier, was born in 1624, at Bezières, and was brought up in the Protestant faith. He attained an early and rapid proficiency in literature and languages; nor were severer studies neglected—for at the age of only nineteen he produced an excellent Latin paraphrase of the first book of Justinian’s Institutes. He was beginning to shine at the bar when he was attacked by small-pox. The disease so excessively disfigured his countenance, and impaired his constitution, that he was under the necessity of relinquishing his profession, and retiring into the country to recruit his health.

As soon as Pelisson was again able to take a part in active life, he settled in Paris. It was not long before he acquired a multitude of friends; and the French Academy, in return for a history which he wrote of its early labours, made him a supernumerary member, and destined for him the first vacancy which should occur. Fouquet, who knew his abilities, appointed him his chief clerk, and reposed in him an implicit confidence, which was well deserved. Had Fouquet followed the advice of his assistant, who counselled him never to part with his office of attorney-general, he would have done wisely. When this advice came to the knowledge of Louis, he said “the clerk is more sharp-sighted than the master.”

Pelisson shared the fate of Fouquet; he was sent to the Concièrgerie, whence he was removed to the Bastile. All attempts to elicit from him the secrets of the superintendant were made in vain. Once only, to answer a purpose, he seemed to make a disclosure. Fearing that, from not knowing whether the documents were in existence, Fouquet might commit himself in his answers to certain questions, Pelisson feigned to divulge some unimportant particulars which related to the subject. Fouquet, who was astonished at this seeming defection of his friend, was confronted with him, and denied the correctness of what had been stated: “Sir,” said Pelisson, in an emphatic tone, “You would not deny so boldly if you did not know that all the papers concerning that affair are destroyed.” Fouquet instantly comprehended the stratagem, and acted accordingly.

In the early part of his confinement, Pelisson found means to compose three memorials in defence of Fouquet. For eloquence and argument they may be considered as his masterpieces; they were published, and produced a strong impression. As a punishment, he was still more closely immured, and pen and paper were withheld from him; but he contrived to foil his persecutors, by writing, with ink made of burnt crust and wine, on the blank leaves and margins of the religious works which he was allowed to read. They were equally unsuccessful when, hoping that he might drop some unguarded words, they gave him, as an attendant, a spy, who concealed cunning under the mask of coarse simplicity. Pelisson saw through the deception, and adroitly converted the spy into an instrument of his own.

The imprisonment of Pelisson lasted four years and a half. Among the means which he employed to beguile his lonely hours is said to have been that of taming a spider; a task which he effected so completely, that at a signal, it would fetch its prey from the further end of the room, or even take it out of his hand. It is, however, doubtful whether Pelisson was the person who performed this. De Renneville, who is good authority on this subject, ascribes the taming of the spider to the Count de Lauzun, and adds, that the jailer, St. Mars, brutally crushed the insect, and exclaimed that criminals like Lauzun did not deserve to enjoy the slightest amusement.

The solicitations of Pelisson’s friends at length procured his release; in memory of which he ever after yearly liberated some unfortunate prisoner. After some lapse of time, he was even received into the good graces of Louis, who probably thought that the man who had been faithful to a ruined minister would not be wanting in fidelity to his sovereign. It was, besides, no small merit in the king’s eyes, that Pelisson had become a Catholic. Louis first appointed him his historiographer, with a pension; then gave him several valuable benefices; and, lastly, entrusted him with the management of the fund which was employed in purchasing proselytes. Pelisson died in 1693.