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Updated: May 25, 2025
Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which he had fortified and garrisoned.
Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped to succeed him.
As Fouquet was alighting from his carriage, to enter the castle of Nantes, a man of mean appearance went up to him with marks of the greatest respect, and gave him a letter. D'Artagnan endeavored to prevent this man from speaking to Fouquet, and pushed him away, but the message had been given to the surintendant.
Suppose your friends saw you?" "Monsieur d'Artagnan," returned the surintendant, with a smile full of gentleness, "you do not understand me; it is precisely because my friends are not looking on, that I am as you see me now. I do not live, exist even, isolated from others; I am nothing when left to myself.
"Quick, somebody," cried Planchet, "to look after Monsieur d'Artagnan's horse, somebody to get ready his room, somebody to prepare his supper." "Thanks, Planchet. Good-day, my children!" said D'Artagnan to the eager boys. "Allow me to send off this coffee, this treacle, and these raisins," said Planchet; "they are for the store-room of monsieur le surintendant." "Send them off, send them off!"
"I have fifteen hundred thousand francs here, Monsieur Gourville," he replied, striking himself on the chest. "The deuce take this Gascon from Chateau-Thierry!" cried Loret. "It is not the pocket you must tap but the brain," said Fouquet. "Stay a moment, monsieur le surintendant," added La Fontaine; "you are not procureur-general you are a poet."
"Messieurs," said he, "in truth we are abusing a man whom no one knows: it is neither charitable nor reasonable; and here is monsieur le surintendant, who, I am sure, agrees with me." "Entirely," replied Fouquet. "Let the fat fowls of M. Colbert alone; our business to-day is with the faisans truffes of M. Vatel."
"Remember, likewise, that the ancient philosopher was rather a bad friend of the gods and the magistrates." "Oh! that is what I will not admit," replied La Fontaine. "Epicurus was like M. Fouquet." "Do not compare him to monsieur le surintendant," said Conrart, in an agitated voice, "or you would accredit the reports which are circulating concerning him and us." "What reports?"
A white horse is in waiting for you behind the esplanade!" Fouquet recognized the writing and zeal of Gourville. Not being willing that, if any evil happened to himself, this paper should compromise a faithful friend, the surintendant was busy tearing it into a thousand morsels, spread about by the wind from the balustrade of the terrace.
He gazed upon it long and fixedly, estimated the prodigious labor that had been bestowed upon it, and, not being able to find any recompense sufficiently great for this Herculean effort, he passed his arm round the painter's neck and embraced him. The surintendant, by this action, had utterly ruined a suit of clothes worth a thousand pistoles, but he had satisfied, more than satisfied, Lebrun.
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