On the 2nd of August, 1656, in the presence of Le Vau, his architect, Foucquet signed the plans and estimates for this mansion of Vaux, which was to be built within four years, in a new and noble style. It was to be adorned with magnificent paintings, with statues and tapestries; it was to command a view over gardens, grottoes and bewitching ornamental waters; to abound in gold plate and gems and valuables of every kind. It was destined to receive, with a luxury hitherto unknown, the most powerful and the most beautiful alike, to welcome the Court and the King. Thereafter, when the last lights of a miraculous festival had been extinguished, it was to be the home, for ever, of only solitude and desolation.
Nevertheless, to Nicolas Foucquet remains the honour of having discerned and selected men of superior talent, and of having been the first to employ those great masters of French Art whose works have shed an enduring splendour over the reign of Louis XIV. After he had disgraced his Minister, the King could not do better than take from him his architect Louis Le Vau, his painter Charles Le Brun and his gardener André Le Nostre, and remove to Paris the looms which Foucquet had set up at Maincy and which became the Manufacture des Gobelins. But there was something which the King could not appropriate: the taste, the feeling for art, the delicate yet profound instinct for the beautiful which endeared the Comptroller to all the artists who worked for him. Le Brun, on whom the King showered benefits, regretted notwithstanding his generous host of Vaux.
It is said that during his trial, when in danger of a capital sentence, Foucquet, on leaving the Court, was walking, strongly guarded, past the Arsenal, when seeing some men at work he asked what they were making. Hearing that they were at work on a basin for a fountain, he went to look at the latter and gave his opinion of it. Then, turning to Artagnan, the Musketeer, who was in charge of him, he said, smiling: "You are wondering why I meddle in such a business? It is because I used, to be something of an expert in these matters." And Foucquet spoke the truth. He was surely a sincere lover of the arts whom the sight of men at work upon a fountain could suddenly distract from the thought of dungeons and the imminence of the scaffold.
[PART I]
The Foucquets were citizens of Nantes, and in the sixteenth century they traded with the West Indies. By these maritime expeditions they gained great possessions and a peculiar quality of mind, a crafty and audacious spirit which may be discerned in their descendants. Nicolas Foucquet, with whom alone we are concerned here, was born in 1615. He was the third son of François Foucquet, a King's Councillor, and of Marie Manpeou, who had twelve children, six sons and six daughters. This François Foucquet, originally councillor in the Rennes Parliament, purchased a place in the Paris Parliament, became a Councillor of State, and was for a while Ambassador in Switzerland. He was a collector: he formed a collection of medals and books which Peiresc, when he passed through Paris, visited with great interest, jotting down in his note-book[1] particulars of the more remarkable objects.
In the Councillor's exalted hobbies some have sought to discern the origin of the taste displayed by his son Nicolas in the matter of the ancient sculpture and the pictures which he spent great sums in collecting.
As for Marie Manpeou, she came of an old and honourable legal family. Left a widow in 1640, she sought repose, after her numerous maternal duties, only in the practice of asceticism and in works of Christian charity. She lived, in retreat, a life wholly occupied in the giving of alms, the application of remedies and the recitation of prayers. She was one of those strong-minded women who, like Madame Legras and Madame de Miramion, were moved at once to a courageous pity and angelic melancholy by the spectacle of the miseries and crimes of war. The ordering of her life was in almost all respects comparable to that of a Sister of Mercy. Far from rejoicing at the promotion of her sons, it was with deep anxiety that she beheld them captive to the seductions of a world which she knew to be evil. Nicolas especially and his brother, the Abbé Basile, alarmed her by the extent of their ambition. The Comptroller's fall, which disconcerted all France, left her untroubled. On hearing that her son had been cast down from the heights of pomp and power, she is said to have thrown herself upon her knees, exclaiming: "I thank Thee, O my God! I have always prayed to Thee for his salvation: now the path to it is open."[2] This saintly idea implies a perfection which is alarming because it is utterly inhuman: it is difficult to recognize maternal affection thus transfigured and freed from the weakness of the flesh which naturally accompanies it. Yet even this mother, for twenty years dead to the world, was perturbed when she knew that her son's life was threatened. Every day throughout the Comptroller's long trial she was to be seen at the door of the Arsenal, where the Court was sitting, and she petitioned the judges[3]
MME. FOUCQUET
Que mon fils est heureux, que j'aime sa prison!
Il est guéri du moins de ce mortel poison.
Par ses malheurs son âme à présent éclairée,
Voit comme dans la Cour elle était égarée.
Plût à Dieu que sa grâce ouvre si bien ses yeux
Qu'il ne les tourne plus que du côté des Cieux.