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Updated: May 29, 2025
Colbert's hatred, says he, was the immediate cause of Fouquet's fall; but even if this hatred hastened the catastrophe, are we to suppose that it pursued the delinquent beyond the sentence, through the long years of captivity, and, renewing its energy, infected the minds of the king and his councillors? If that were so, how shall we explain the respect shown by Louvois?
Thence to Lord Brouncker and sat and talked with him, who thinks the Parliament will, by their violence and delay in money matters, force the King to run any hazard, and dissolve them. Fouquet died at Pignerol in 1680, after nineteen years' incarceration; and whilst Pepys was buying his books in London, Colbert had become prime minister in France, and Colbert's brother ambassador in England.
He employed a carefully reorganized army and the skill of his generals in a series of inexcusable attacks on his neighbors, in which he finally squandered all that Colbert's economies had accumulated and led France to the edge of financial ruin. Louis XIV's predecessors had had, on the whole, little time to think of conquest.
But scarcely had the abbe uttered this imprudent speech, when the partly open door was thrown back, and D'Artagnan appeared. "Eh! Monsieur Fouquet," said he, "I was well aware there was no money for musketeers here. Therefore I did not come to obtain any, but to have it refused. That being done, receive my thanks. I give you good-day, and will go and seek it at M. Colbert's."
"I hardly know; but wait a moment idiot, I think it was no, no, it was fool or dolt. Yes; his majesty said that the man who had thought of the vin de Melun was something of the sort." D'Artagnan, after this broadside, quietly caressed his mustache; M. Colbert's large head seemed to become larger and larger than ever. D'Artagnan, seeing how ugly anger made him, did not stop half-way.
At court Talon took the side of Perrot, as did the Abbé d'Urfé, whose cousin, the Marquise d'Allègre, was about to marry Colbert's son. Nevertheless the king declined to uphold Frontenac's enemies. Perrot was given three weeks in the Bastille, not so much for personal chastisement as to show that the governor's authority must be respected.
Colbert's plan of going about with your capital pinned to your pockets. It might do while we were travelling, but I would rather have had it in drafts or something else not easily lost. We had a good many discussions about our grapnel.
It seems, indeed, probable that the almost magical rapidity and effect of Colbert's early reforms turned Louis XIV's head, and that he was convinced that it only depended on his good pleasure to renew them to obtain the same result. He never found, as he never deserved to find, another Colbert; and he stumbled onward in ever deeper ruin to his disastrous end.
The King raised his hand, as though to impose silence. Madame bowed in apologetic submission, M. de Perrencourt took no heed of the gesture, although he did not speak again. A moment later he laid his hand on Colbert's shoulder and whispered to him. I thought I heard just a word it was "Fontelles." Colbert looked up and nodded.
On the swift current the lighter sped, carried along by it and the eight rowers toward Nantes and Fouquet's own fortress of Belle Isle, only to be overtaken by Colbert's boat with its twelve sturdy oarsmen.
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