[98] The Comte de Vaux, Foucquet's eldest son, having obtained his father's MSS. from Pignerol, published extracts entitled: Conseils de la Sagesse ou Recueil des Maximes de Salomon. Paris, 1683, 2 vols.
[99] The Duc de Lauzun, said to have married La Grande Mademoiselle, Mlle, de Montpensier, cousin of Louis XIV. (Trans.)
[100] Delort, Détention des Philosophes, Vol. I, p. 53.
[PART II]
THE CHÂTEAU DE VAUX
During his trial Foucquet declared that he had begun the building of his house at Vaux as early as 1640. On this point his memory betrayed him. Reference to the inscription on an engraving by Pérelle, after Israël Silvestre, assigns the commencement of work upon the house to the year 1653, but there is no doubt that Israël Silvestre planned the château on lines which were not absolutely final. Nor was the ne varietur plan, signed in 1666, exactly followed.[1]
It is not until 1657 that the registers of the parish of Maincy attest the presence of foreign workmen who had come to undertake certain building operations on the estate of Vaux.
The architect, Louis Levau, employed by Foucquet, was not a beginner. He had already built "a house at the apex of the island of Notre-Dame,"[2] which is none other than the Hôtel Lambert,[3] the ingenious novelties of which were greatly admired. Especially noteworthy was the chamber of Madame de Torigny, on the second floor, which Le Sueur had decorated with a grace which recalls the mural paintings of Herculaneum. This chamber was called the Italian room, "Because," said Guillet de Saint-Georges, "the beauty of the woodwork and the richness of the panelling took the place of tapestry."
Levau, born in 1612, was forty-three years of age when he signed the ne varietur plan. We know little about the life of this man whose work is so famous. A document of the 23rd March, 1651,[4] describes him as "a man of noble birth, Councillor and Secretary to the King, House and Crown of France." He then lived in Paris, in the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, with his wife and his three young children, Jean, Louis and Nicolas.