Cachez-vous, filles de la reine,
Petites,
Car Menneville est de retour,
M'amour.
She sold herself to the Superintendent. As she did not equal Fouilloux in her genius for intrigue, Foucquet used her more kindly. While this lady-in-waiting was yielding to the suit of the seigneur of Vaux, she was trying to force the Duc de Damville to marry her, as he had promised. Like Fouilloux, she begged the Superintendent to help her to get settled. He did so with a good grace, and sent the fair lady fifteen thousand crowns, which ought to have decided Damville. The latter hesitated. An accident decided for him: he died.
There were no pleasures, no distractions—if we employ the word in the strict sense which Pascal then gave it—there were no means of enjoyment and oblivion for which Foucquet had not the most tremendous capacity. Business and building were not enough to absorb his vast energies. He was a gambler. The stakes at his tables were terribly high. So they were at Madame Foucquet's. In one day Gourville won eighteen thousand livres from the Comte d'Avaux. No money was laid on the table, but at the end of the game the players settled their accounts. They played not only for money, but for gems, ornaments, lace, collars, valued at seventy to eighty pistoles each.
Foucquet, playing against Gourville, in one day lost sixty thousand livres. "He played," said Gourville, "with cut cards which were worth ten or twenty pistoles each. I put one thousand pistoles before me almost desiring that he should win back something, which did happen. Nevertheless, he was not pleased to see I was leaving the game."[61]
This wild play was not altogether to the Superintendent's disadvantage. In the end his intimate friends, who were great personages, were ruined, and came to him for mercy. Thus, for instance, he held in his power Hugues de Lyonne—the great Lyonne. But he himself was at his last gasp, and overwhelmed with anxiety.
Sole Superintendent of Finance since Servien's death, on the 17th February, 1659, Foucquet had filled Mazarin's crop without having won him, for Mazarin loved and served only himself, his own people and the State. As a private individual he was self-interested, covetous and miserly. As a public man he desired the good of the kingdom, the greatness of France. He was never grateful to his public servants for anything they did for his own person. Foucquet felt this; he perceived that he had no hold over this man, and that Mazarin, when dying, might ruin him, having no further need of him.
For Mazarin was dying; he was dying with all the heartrending regret of a Magnifico who feels that he is being torn from his jewels, his tapestries and his books—beautifully bound in morocco, delicately tooled—and also, by a curious inconsistency, with the serenity of a great statesman, of another Richelieu, full of a generous grief that he could no longer play his part in those great affairs which had rendered his life illustrious. He was anxious to assure the prosperity of the kingdom after his death. "Sire," he said to the young Louis XIV, "I owe you everything, but I think I can in a manner discharge my debt by giving you Colbert."[62]
At the very point of death he was conferring with the King in secret conversations, which caused Foucquet great anxiety, precisely because they were concealed from him. Then, at length, the light of eyes which had so long sought for gold and sumptuous draperies, and pierced the hearts of men, was finally extinguished.
On the 9th March, 1661, as Foucquet, leaving his house of Saint-Mandé, was crossing the Gardens on foot to go to Vincennes, he met young Brienne, who was getting out of his couch, and learned from him the great news.
"He is dead, then!" murmured Foucquet. "Henceforth I shall not know in whom to confide. People always do things by halves. Oh, how distressing I The King is waiting for me, and I ought to be there among the first! My God! Monsieur de Brienne, tell me what is happening, so that I may not commit any indiscretion through ignorance."[63]