The day after Mazarin's death the King of twenty-three summoned Foucquet, with the Chancellor, Séguier, the Ministers and Secretaries of State, and addressed them in these words: "Hitherto I have been content to leave my affairs in the hands of the late Cardinal. It is time for me to control them myself. You will help me with your counsels when I ask you for them. Gentlemen, I forbid you to sign anything, not even a safe conduct, or a passport, without my command. I request you to give me personally an account of everything every day, to favour no one in your lists of the month. And you, Monsieur le Surintendant, I have explained to you my wishes; I request you to employ M. Colbert, whom the late Cardinal has recommended to me." Foucquet thought that the King was not speaking seriously. That error ruined him.
He believed that it would be easy to amuse and deceive the youthful mind of the King, and he set to work to do so with all the ardour, all the grace and all the frivolity of his nature. He determined to govern the kingdom and the King. Foucquet did not know Louis XIV, and Louis XVI did know Foucquet. Warned by Mazarin, the King knew that Foucquet was engaged in dubious proceedings, and was ready to resort to any expedient. He knew, also, that he was a man of resource and of talent. He took him apart and told him that he was determined to be King, and to have a precise and complete knowledge of State affairs; that he would begin with finance; it was the most important part of his administration, and that he was determined to restore order and regularity to that department. He asked the Superintendent to instruct him minutely in every detail, and he bade him conceal nothing, declaring that he would always employ him, provided that he found him sincere. As for the past, he was prepared to forget that, but he wished that in future the Superintendent would let him know the true state of the finances.[64]
In speaking thus, Louis XIV told the truth. He has explained himself in his Mémoires. "It may be a cause of astonishment," he says, "that I was willing to employ him at a time when his peculations were known to me, but I knew that he was intelligent and thoroughly acquainted with all the most intimate affairs of State, and this made me think that, provided he would confess his past faults and promise to correct them, he might render me good service."
No one could speak more wisely, more kindly; but the audacious Foucquet did not realize that there was something menacing in this wisdom and this kindness. He was possessed of a spirit of imprudence and error. He was labouring blindly to bring about his own fall. Day by day, despite the advice of his best friends, he presented the King with false accounts of his expenditure and revenue. For five months he believed that he was deceiving Louis XIV, but every evening the King placed his accounts in the hands of Colbert, whom he had nominated Intendant of Finance, with the special duty of watching Foucquet. Colbert showed the King the falsifications in these accounts. On the following day the King would patiently seek to draw some confession from the guilty Minister, who, with false security, persisted in his lies.
Henceforth Foucquet was a ruined man. From the month of April, 1661, Colbert's clerks did not hesitate to announce his fall. He began to be afraid, but it was too late. He went and threw himself at the King's feet—it was at Fontainebleau—he reminded him that Cardinal Mazarin had regulated finance with absolute authority, without observing any formality, and had constrained him, the Superintendent, to do many things which might expose him to prosecution. He did not deny his own personal faults, and admitted that his expenditure had been excessive. He entreated the King to pardon him for the past, and promised to serve him faithfully in the future. The King listened to his Minister with apparent goodwill; his lips murmured words of pardon, but in his heart he had already passed sentence on Foucquet.
Is it true that some private jealousy inspired the King's vengeance? Foucquet, according to the Abbé de Choisy,[65] had sent Madame de Plessis-Bellière to tell Mademoiselle de Lavallière that the Superintendent had twenty thousand pistoles at her service. The lady had replied that twenty million would not induce her to take a false step. "Which astonished the worthy intermediary, who was little used to such replies," adds the Abbé. However this may be, Foucquet soon perceived that the fortress was taken, and that it was dangerous to tread upon the heels of the royal occupant. But in order to repair his fault he committed a second, worse than the first. Again it is Choisy who tells us. "Wishing to justify himself to her, and to her secret lover, he himself undertook the mission of go-between, and, taking her apart in Madame's antechamber, he sought to tell her that the King was the greatest prince in the world, the best looking, and other little matters. But the lady, proud of her heart's secret, cut him short, and that very evening complained of him to the King."[66]
Such a piece of audacity, and one so clumsy, could only irritate the young and royal lover. Nevertheless it was not to a secret jealousy, but to State interest, that Louis XIV sacrificed his prevaricating Minister.
His intentions are above suspicion. It was in the interest of the Crown and of the State alone that he acted. Yet we can but feel surprised to find so young a man employing so much strategy and so much dissimulation in order to ruin one whom he had appeared to pardon. In this piece of diplomacy Louis XIV and Colbert both displayed an excess of skill. With perfidious adroitness they manœuvred to deprive Foucquet of his office of Attorney-General, which was an obstacle in their way, for an officer of the Parliament could be tried only by that body, and Foucquet had so many partisans in Parliament that there was no hope that it would ever condemn him.
Louis XIV displayed an apparent confidence in Foucquet and redoubled his favours; Colbert, acting with the King, was constantly praising his generosity. He was, at the same time, inducing him to testify his gratitude by filling the treasury without having recourse to bargains with supporters, which were so burdensome to the State. Foucquet replied: "I would willingly sell all that I have in the world in order to procure money for the King."
Colbert refrained from pressing him further, but he contrived to lead the conversation to the office of Attorney-General. Foucquet told him one day that he had been offered fifteen hundred thousand livres for it.