Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 25, 2025
"Well?" asked Louis XIV., who, on perceiving him, threw on to the table covered with papers a large green cloth. "The order is executed, sire." "And Fouquet?" "Monsieur le surintendant follows me," said D'Artagnan. "In ten minutes let him be introduced," said the king, dismissing D'Artagnan again with a gesture.
But insensibly all fears were dispersed; the surintendant, by hard traveling, placed such a distance between himself and his persecutors, that no one of them could reasonably be expected to overtake him. As to his position, his friends had made it excellent for him. Was he not traveling to join the king at Nantes, and what did the rapidity prove but his zeal to obey?
Il Rosso was first employed to carry out the ideas of Francois I. as to painting, and then Sebastian Serlio was summoned from Bologna in 1541 to fill the place of "surintendant des bastiments et architecte de Fontainebleau." Il Rosso-Giovambattista had been a Florentine pupil of Michelangelo, but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "a certain inkling of his own."
M. d'Artagnan, who was very polite, presented himself, about ten o'clock, at the lodgings of the surintendant to pay his respectful compliments; and although the minister suffered from fever, although he was in such pain as to be bathed in sweat, he would receive M. d'Artagnan, who was delighted with that honor, as will be seen by the conversation they had together.
It appeared strange to Fouquet that MM. Brienne, Rose, and de Saint-Aignan, in general so attentive and obsequious, should scarcely take the least notice, as he, the surintendant, passed. But how could he expect to find it otherwise among courtiers, he whom the king no longer called anything but Fouquet?
Truly, the destinies of some are strange in this world. The chateau appeared to be large, of solid proportions, and built in a grandly simple style, befitting a minister of dignity and position. The governess shed tears of emotion when setting foot there for the first time. The six priests, whom the surintendant had appointed, officiated in the large chapel or little church attached to the castle.
"Well, that tells me of an arrest that will have to be made this very day." "Well," said the surintendant, more astonished than annoyed by this frankness, "if there is nothing disagreeable predicted to you by your sword, I am to conclude that it is not disagreeable for you to arrest me." "You! arrest you!" "Of course. The warning "
"And monseigneur composed his homilies no, I mean his sermons with monsieur le surintendant." "Bah! he preached in verse, then, this worthy bishop?" "Monsieur, for the love of heaven, do not jest with sacred things." "There, Bazin, there! So, then, Aramis is at Vannes?" "At Vannes, in Bretagne." "You are a deceitful old hunks, Bazin; that is not true."
The king had expressly declared that, so long as he remained under Fouquet's roof, he did not wish his own different repasts to be served in accordance with the usual etiquette, and that he would, consequently, dine with the rest of society; but by the thoughtful attention of the surintendant, the king's dinner was served up separately, if one may so express it, in the middle of the general table; the dinner, wonderful in every respect, from the dishes of which was composed, comprised everything the king liked and generally preferred to anything else.
"Well," he said, as he quitted the royal apartment, "I seem now to be mixed up historically with the destinies of the king and of the minister; it will be written, that M. d'Artagnan, a younger son of a Gascon family, placed his hand on the shoulder of M. Nicolas Fouquet, the surintendant of the finances of France.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking