The fête he gave to the King and court at his newly constructed palace at Vaux was brilliant beyond measure. The mansion far outshone any royal residence in beauty and splendor. Three entire villages had been demolished in its construction so that water might be brought to the grounds to fill the reservoirs and serve the fountains and cascades that freshened the lawns and shady alleys and gladdened the eye with smiling landscapes. The fête he now gave was of oriental magnificence. Enchantment followed enchantment. Tables laden with luscious viands came down from the ceiling. Mysterious subterranean music was heard on every side. The most striking feature was an ambulant mountain of confectionery which moved amongst the guests with hidden springs. Molière was there and at the King’s suggestion wrote a play on the spot, “Les Facheux,” which caricatured some of the most amusing guests. The King was a prey to jealous amazement. He saw pictures by the most celebrated painters, grounds laid out by the most talented landscape gardeners, buildings of the most noble dimensions erected by the most famous architects. After the theatre there were fireworks, after the pyrotechnics a ball at which the King danced with Mademoiselle de la Vallière; after the ball, supper; and after supper, the King bade Fouquet good night with the words, “I shall never dare ask you to my house; I could not receive you properly.”
More than once that night the King, sore at heart and humiliated at the gorgeous show made by a subject and servant of the State, would have arrested Fouquet then and there. The Queen Mother strongly dissuaded him from too hasty action and he saw that it would be necessary to proceed with caution lest he find serious, and possibly successful, resistance. Fouquet did not waste all his wealth in ostentation. He had purchased the island of Belle Ile from the Duc de Retz and fortified it with the idea, it was thought, to withdraw there if he failed to secure the first place in the kingdom, raise the standard of revolt against the King and seek aid from England. It was time to pull down so powerful a subject.
The measures taken for the arrest of Fouquet may be recounted here at some length. They well illustrate the young King’s powers of dissimulation and the extreme caution that backed his resolute will. He first assumed a friendly attitude and led Fouquet to believe that he meant to bestow on him the valued decoration of Saint d’Esprit. But he had already given it to another member of the Paris Parliament and a rule had been made that only one of that body should enjoy the honor. Fouquet was Procureur General of the Parliament and voluntarily sold the place so that he might become eligible for the cross, at the same time paying the price into the Treasury. Louis was by no means softened and still determined to abase Fouquet. Yet he shrank from making the arrest in Paris and invented a pretext for visiting the west coast of France for the purpose of choosing a site for a great naval depot. He was to be accompanied by his council, Fouquet among the rest. Although the Superintendent was suffering from fever, he proceeded to Nantes by the river Loire, where the King, travelling by the road, soon afterwards arrived. Some delay occurred through the illness of d’Artagnan, lieutenant of musketeers, who was to be charged with the arrest. The reader will recognise d’Artagnan, the famous fourth of the still more famous “Three Musketeers” of Alexandre Dumas. The instructions issued to d’Artagnan are preserved in the memorandum written by Le Tellier’s clerk and may be summarised as follows:—
“It is the King’s intention to arrest the Sieur Fouquet on his leaving the castle (Nantes) when he has passed beyond the last sentinel. Forty musketeers will be employed, twenty to remain within the court of the castle, the other twenty to patrol outside. The arrest will be made when Sieur Fouquet comes down from the King’s chamber, and he will be carried, surrounded by the musketeers, to the Chamberlain’s room, there to await the King’s carriage which is to take him further on. Monsieur d’Artagnan will offer Monsieur Fouquet a basin of soup if he should care to take it. Meanwhile the musketeers will form a cordon round the lodging in which the Chamberlain’s room is situated. Monsieur d’Artagnan will not take his eyes off the prisoner for a single moment nor will he permit him to put his hand into his pocket so as to remove any papers, telling him that the King demands the delivery of all documents; and those he gets Monsieur d’Artagnan will at once pass on to the authority indicated. In entering the royal carriage Monsieur Fouquet will be accompanied by Monsieur d’Artagnan with five of his most trustworthy officers and musketeers. The road taken will be: the first day, to Oudon, the second day, to Ingrandes, and the third, to the castle of Angers. Extreme care will be observed that Monsieur Fouquet has no communication by word or writing or in any other possible way with any one on the road. At Oudon, Monsieur Fouquet will be summoned to deliver an order in his own hand to the Commandant of Belle Ile to hand it over to an officer of the King. In order that every precaution may be taken at Angers, its governor, the Count d’Harcourt, will receive orders to surrender the place to Monsieur d’Artagnan and expel the garrison. This letter will be forwarded express to Angers so that all may be ready on the arrival. At the same time a public notice shall be issued to the inhabitants of Angers requiring them to give every assistance in food and lodging to the King’s musketeers. Monsieur Fouquet will be lodged in the most suitable rooms which will be furnished with goods purchased in the town. The King will himself nominate the valet de chambre and decide upon the prisoner’s rations and the supply of his table. Monsieur d’Artagnan will receive 1,000 louis for all expenses.”
The arrest was not limited to the Superintendent himself. His chief clerk Pellisson, who afterwards became famous in literature, was also taken to Saint Mandé. Fouquet’s house and his papers were seized; which his brother would have forestalled by burning the house but was too late. A mass of damaging papers fell into the hands of the King. One of these was an elaborate manuscript with the project of a general rising, treasonable in the highest degree. The scheme was too wild and visionary for accomplishment and Fouquet himself swore positively that it was a forgery. Fouquet did not remain long at Angers. He was carried to Amboise and afterwards to Vincennes, always under the strictest surveillance, being suffered to speak to no one en route but his guards and denied the use of writing materials. He left Amboise in December, 1661, for Vincennes, under the escort of eighty musketeers, and from time to time passed to and fro between the “Wood” and the Bastile as his interminable trial dragged along. He was first interrogated at Vincennes by an informal tribunal, the commission previously constituted to inquire into the malversation of finances, but he steadily refused to answer except in free and open court. After much persecution by his enemies with the King himself at their head, and the violation of all forms of law, he was taken again to the Bastile and arraigned before the so-called Chamber of Justice at the Arsenal, a tribunal made up mainly of unjust and prejudiced judges, some of whom hated the prisoner bitterly. The process was delayed by Fouquet’s dexterity in raising objections and involving others in the indictment. Louis XIV ardently desired the end. “My reputation is at stake,” he wrote. “The matter is not serious, really, but in foreign countries it will be thought so if I cannot secure the conviction of a thief.” The King’s long standing animosity was undying, as the sequel showed. Throughout, the public sympathy was with Fouquet. He had troops of friends; he had been a liberal patron of art and letters and all the best brains of Paris were on his side. Madame de Sévigné filled several of her matchless letters with news of the case. La Fontaine bemoaned his patron’s fate in elegant verse. Mademoiselle Scuderi, the first French novelist, wrote of him eloquently. Henault attacked Colbert in terms that might well have landed him in the Bastile, and Pellisson, his former clerk, from the depths of that prison made public his eloquent and impassioned justifications of his old master. At last, when hope was almost dead, the relief was great at hearing that there would be no sentence of death as was greatly feared. By thirteen votes against nine, a sentence of banishment was decreed and the result was made public amid general rejoicing. The sentence was deemed light, although Fouquet had already endured three years’ imprisonment and he must have suffered much in the protracted trial. Louis XIV, still bearing malice, would not allow Fouquet to escape so easily and changed banishment abroad into perpetual imprisonment at home. The case is quoted as one of the rare instances in which a despotic sovereign ruler over-rode the judgment of a court by ordering a more severe sentence and personally ensuring its harsh infliction.
He was forthwith transferred to Pignerol, escorted again by d’Artagnan and a hundred musketeers. Special instructions for his treatment, contained in letters from the King in person, were handed over to Saint Mars. By express royal order he was forbidden to communicate in speech or writing with anyone but his gaolers. He might not leave the room he occupied for a single moment or for any reason. He could not use a slate to note down his thoughts, that common boon extended to all modern prisoners. These restrictions were imposed with the most watchful precautions and, as we may well believe, were inspired with the wish to cut him off absolutely from friends outside. He was supposed to have some valuable information to communicate and the King was determined it should not pass through. Fouquet’s efforts and devices were most persistent and ingenious. He utilised all manner of material; writing on the ribbons that ornamented his clothes and the linen that lined them. When the ribbons were tabooed and removed and the linings were all in black he abstracted pieces of his table cloth and manufactured it into paper. He made pens out of fowl bones and ink from soot. He wrote on the inside of his books and on his pocket handkerchiefs. Once he begged to be allowed a telescope and it was discovered that some of his former attendants had arrived in Pignerol and were in communication with him by signal. They were forthwith commanded to leave the neighborhood. He was very attentive to his religious duties at one time, and constantly asked for the ministrations of a priest. From this some clandestine work was suspected and the visits of the confessor were strictly limited to four a year. A servant was, however, permitted to wait on him but was presently replaced by two others, who were intended to act as spies on each other; although on joining Fouquet these were plainly warned that they would never be allowed to leave Pignerol alive.
After eight years the severity of his incarceration appreciably relaxed. The incriminated financiers outside were by this time disposed of or dead. He was given leave to write a letter to his wife and receive one in reply, on condition that they were previously read by the authorities. His personal comfort was improved and he was allowed tea, at that time a most expensive luxury. He had many more books to read, the daily gazettes and current news reached him, and when presently the Comte de Lauzun was brought a prisoner to Pignerol, the two were permitted to take exercise together upon the ramparts. By degrees greater favor was shown. Fouquet was permitted to play outdoor games and the privilege of unlimited correspondence was conceded, both with relations and friends. Fouquet’s wife and children were suffered to reside in the town of Pignerol and were constant visitors, permitted to remain with him alone, without witnesses. As the prisoner, who was failing in health, grew worse and worse, his wife was permitted to occupy the same room with him and his daughter lodged alongside. When he died in 1680, all his near relations were present. The fact has been questioned; and a tradition exists that Fouquet, still no older than sixty-six, was released and lived on in extreme privacy for twenty-three years. The point is of interest as illustrating the veil of secrecy so often thrown over events in that age and so often impenetrable.
This seems a fitting opportunity to refer to a prison mystery belonging to this period, and originating in Pignerol, which has exercised the whole world for many generations. The fascinating story of the “Man with the Iron Mask,” as presented by writers enamored of romantic sensation, has attracted universal attention for nearly two centuries. A fruitful field for investigation and conjecture was opened up by the strange circumstances of the case. Voltaire with his keen love of dramatic effect was the first to awaken the widespread interest in an historic enigma for which there was no plausible solution. Who was this unknown person held captive for five and twenty unbroken years with his identity so studiously and strictly hidden that it has never yet been authoritatively revealed? The mystery deepened with the details (mostly imaginery) of the exceptional treatment accorded him. Year after year he wore a mask, really made of black velvet on a whalebone frame, not a steel machine, with a chin-piece closing with a spring and looking much like an instrument of mediæval torture. He was said to have been treated with extreme deference. His gaoler stood, bareheaded, in his presence. He led a luxurious life; he wore purple and fine linen and costly lace; his diet was rich and plentiful and served on silver plate; he was granted the solace of music; every wish was gratified, save in the one cardinal point of freedom. The plausible theory deduced from all this was that he was a personage of great consequence,—of high, possibly royal birth, who was imprisoned and segregated for important reasons of State.
Such conditions, quite unsubstantiated by later knowledge, fired the imagination of inquirers, and a clue to the mystery has been sought in some exalted victim whom Louis XIV had the strongest reason to keep out of sight. Many suggested explanations were offered, all more or less far fetched even to absurdity. The first was put forward by at least two respectable writers, who affirmed that a twin son was born to Anne of Austria, some hours later than the birth of the Dauphin, and that Louis XIII, fearing there might be a disputed succession, was resolved to conceal the fact. It was held by certain legal authorities in France that the first born of twins had no positive and exclusive claim to the inheritance. Accordingly, the second child was conveyed away secretly and confided first to a nurse and then to the governor of Burgundy who kept him close. But the lad, growing to manhood, found out who he was and was forthwith placed in confinement, with a mask to conceal his features which were exactly like those of his brother, the King. Yet this view was held by many people of credit in France and it was that to which the great Napoleon inclined, for he was keenly interested in the question and when in power had diligent search made in the National archives, quite without result, which greatly chafed his imperious mind. A similar theory of the birth of this second child was found very attractive; the paternity of it was given, not to Louis XIII, but to various lovers: the Duke of Buckingham, Cardinal Mazarin and a gentleman of the court whose name never transpired. This is the wildest and most extravagant of surmises, for which there is not one vestige of authority. The first suggestion is altogether upset by the formalities and precautions observed at the birth of “a child of France,” and it would have been absolutely impossible to perpetrate the fraud.