Clio

In the city of Troyes, in the year of grace, 1428, Canon Guillaume Chappedelaine was elected by the Chapter to be King of the Epiphany, in accordance with the custom which then prevailed throughout Christian France. For the canons were wont to choose one of their number and to designate him as king because he was to take the place of the King of kings and to gather them all round his table, until such time as Jesus Christ Himself should gather them, as they all hoped, into His holy paradise.

Sieur Guillaume Chappedelaine owed his election to his virtuous life and his generosity. He was a rich man. Both the Burgundian and the Armagnac captains, when ravaging Champagne, had spared his vineyards. For this good fortune he was indebted first to God and then to himself, to the kindness he had shown to the two factions which were at that time rending asunder the kingdom of the lilies. His wealth had contributed not a little to his election; for in that year a setier[1] of corn fetched eight francs, five-and-twenty eggs six sous, a young pig seven francs, while throughout the winter Churchmen had been reduced to eat cabbages like villeins.

Wherefore on the Feast of the Epiphany, Sieur Guillaume Chappedelaine, clothed in his dalmatica, holding in his hand a palm-branch in lieu of a sceptre, took his place in the cathedral choir, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold. Meanwhile, out in the sacristy, there came forth three canons, wearing crowns upon their heads. One was robed in white, another in red, the third in black. They stood for the three kings of the East, the Magi, and, going down to that part of the church which represents the foot of the cross, they chanted the Gospel of St. Matthew. A deacon, bearing at the end of a pole five lighted candles, to symbolize the miraculous star which led the Magi to Bethlehem, ascended the great nave and entered the choir. The three canons followed him singing, and, when they reached this passage in the gospel, Et intrantes domum, invenerunt puerum cum Maria, matre ejus, et procidentes adoraverunt eum, they stopped in front of Sieur Guillaume Chappedelaine and bowed low before him. Then came three children, bearing salt and spices, which Sieur Guillaume graciously received after the manner of the Infant King who had accepted the myrrh, the gold and the frankincense of the kings of this world. After this divine service was celebrated with due devoutness.

In the evening the canons were invited to sup with the King of the Epiphany. Sieur Guillaume's house was close against the apse of the cathedral. It was recognizable by the golden hood on a shield of stone which adorned its low door. That night the great hall was strewn with foliage and lit by twelve torches of fir-wood. The whole Chapter sat down to the table, groaning beneath a lamb cooked whole. There were present Sieurs Jean Bruant, Thomas Alépée, Simon Thibouville, Jean Coquemard, Denys Petit, Pierre Corneille, Barnabe Videloup and François Pigouchel, canons of Saint-Pierre, Sieur Thibault de Saugles, knight and hereditary lay canon, and, at the bottom of the table, Pierrolet, the little clerk, who, although he could not write, was Sieur Guillaume's secretary and served him at Mass. He looked like a girl dressed up as a boy. He it was who on Candlemas Day appeared as an angel. It was also the custom on Ember Wednesday in December, when the coming of the Angel Gabriel to announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation was read at Mass, for a young girl to be placed on a platform and for a child with wings to tell her that she was about to become the mother of the Son of God. A stuffed dove was suspended over the girl's head. For two years Pierrolet had represented the angel of the Annunciation.

But his soul was far from being as sweet as his countenance. He was violent, foolhardy and quarrelsome, and he often provoked boys older than himself. He was suspected of being immoral; and in truth the soldiers garrisoned in the towns set no good example. Little notice, however, was taken of his bad habits. That which most vexed Sieur Guillaume was that Pierrolet was an Armagnac and for ever quarrelling with the Burgundians. The canon repeatedly told him that such a state of mind was not only wicked but absolutely devilish in that good town of Troyes, where the late Henry V of England had celebrated his marriage with Madame Catherine of France and where the English were the rightful masters, for all power is of God. Omnis potestas a Deo.

The guests having taken their places, Sieur Guillaume recited the Benedicite and every one began to eat in silence. Sieur Jean Coquemard was the first to speak. Turning to Sieur Jean Bruant, his neighbour, he said:

"You are wise and learned. Did you fast yesterday?"

"It was seemly so to do," replied Sieur Jean Bruant. "In the rubric, the eve of the Epiphany is described as a vigil and a vigil is a fast."

"Pardon me," retorted Sieur Jean Coquemard. "But I, together with notable doctors of divinity, hold that an austere fast accords ill with the joy of the faithful as they recall the birth of our Saviour which the Church continues to celebrate until the Epiphany."

"In my opinion," replied Sieur Jean Bruant, "those who do not fast on these vigils have fallen away from our ancient piety."

"And in mine," cried Sieur Jean Coquemard, "those who by fasting prepare for the most joyful of festivals are guilty of following customs censored by the majority of our bishops."

The dispute between the two canons began to wax bitter.

"Not to fasti What lack of zeal!" exclaimed Sieur Jean Bruant.

"To fast! How obstinate!" said Sieur Jean Coquemard. "You are one of those proud, reckless men who love to stand alone."

"You are one of the weak who meekly follow the corrupt herd. But even in these wicked times of ours I have my authorities. Quidam asserunt in vigilia Epiphaniæ jejunandum."

"That settles the question. Non jejunetur!"

"Peace! Peace!" cried Sieur Guillaume from the depths of his great raised seat. "You are both right: it is praiseworthy of you, Jean Coquemard, to partake of food on the eve of the Epiphany, as a sign of rejoicing, and of you, Jean Bruant, to fast on the same vigil, since you fast with seemly gladness."

This utterance was approved by the whole Chapter.

"Not Solomon himself could have pronounced a wiser judgment," cried Sieur Pierre Corneille.

And Sieur Guillaume, having put to his lips his goblet of silver gilt, Sieurs Jean Bruant, Jean Coquemard, Thomas Alépée, Simon Thibouville, Denys Petit, Pierre Corneille, Barnabé Videloup and François Pigouchel all cried with one voice:

"The King drinks! the King drinks!"

The uttering of this cry was part of the festival, and the guest who failed to join in it risked a severe penalty.

Sieur Guillaume, seeing that the flagons were empty, ordered more wine to be brought, and the servants grated the horse-radish which should stimulate the thirst of the guests.

"To the health of Monsignor, Bishop of Troyes and of the Regent of France," said Sieur Guillaume, rising from his canonical seat.

"Right willingly, sieur," said Thibault of Saulges, knight. "But it is an open secret that our Bishop is disputing with the Regent touching the double tithe which Monsignor of Bedford is exacting from Churchmen, under the pretext of financing the Crusade against the Hussites. Thus we are about to mingle in one toast the healths of two enemies."

"Ha ha!" replied Sieur Guillaume. "But healths are proposed for peace and not for war. I drink to King Henry VI's Regent of France and to the health of Monsignor, Bishop of Troyes, whom we all elected two years ago."

The canons, raising their goblets, drank to the health of the Bishop and of the Regent Bedford.

Meanwhile there was raised at the bottom of the table a young and as yet piping voice, which cried:

"To the health of the Dauphin Louis, the true King of France!"

It was the little Pierrolet, whose Armagnac sympathies, heated by the canon's wine, were finding expression.

No one took any notice, and Sieur Guillaume having drunk again they all cried in chorus:

"The King drinks! The King drinks!"

The guests, all speaking at once, were noisily discussing matters both sacred and profane.

"Have you heard," said Thibault de Saulges, "that the Regent has sent ten thousand English to take Orleans?"

"In that case," said Sieur Guillaume, "the town will fall into their hands, as have already Jargeau and Beaugency, and so many good cities of the kingdom."

"That remains to be seen!" said the little Pierrolet, growing red.

But, he being at the far end of the table, once again no one heard him.

"Let us drink, monsignors," said Sieur Guillaume, who was doing the honours of his table lavishly.

And he set the example by raising his great cup of silver gilt.

More loudly than ever the cry resounded:

"The King drinks! The King drinks!"

But after the thunder of the toast had rolled away, Sieur Pierre Corneille, who was seated rather low down at the table, said bitterly:

"Monsignors, I denounce the little Pierrolet. He did not cry 'The King drinks!' Thereby he has transgressed our rights and customs, and he must be punished."

"He must be punished!" repeated in chorus Sieurs Denys Petit and Barnabe Videloup.

"Let chastisement be meted out to him," said, in his turn, Sieur Guillaume. "His hands and face must be smeared with soot, for such is the custom."

"It is the custom!" cried all the canons together.

And Sieur Pierre Corneille went to fetch soot from the chimney, while Sieurs Thomas Alépée and Simon Thibouville, laughing unrestrainedly, threw themselves upon the child and held his arms and legs.

But Pierrolet escaped out of their hands, then, standing with his back to the wall, he drew a little dagger from his belt and swore that he would plunge it into the throat of anyone who came near him.

Such violence highly amused the canons, and especially Sieur Guillaume. Rising from his seat, he went up to his little secretary, followed by Pierre Corneille, who held in his hand a shovelful of soot.

"It is I," he said in unctuous tones, "who for his punishment will make of this naughty child a negro, a servant of that black King Balthazar who came to the manger. Pierre Corneille, hold out the shovel."

And, with a gesture as deliberate as that with which he would have sprinkled holy water upon the faithful, he threw a pinch of soot into the face of the child who, rushing upon him, plunged his dagger into Sieur Guillaume's stomach.

The canon uttered a long sigh and fell with his face to the ground. His guests crowded round him. They saw that he was dead.

Pierrolet had disappeared. A search was made for him all over the town, but he could not be found. Later it became known that he had enlisted in Captain La Hire's company. At the Battle of Patay, under the Maid's eyes, he took prisoner an English captain and was dubbed a knight.

"LA MUIRON"

"And sometimes, during our long evenings, the Commander-in-Chief would tell us ghost stories, a species of story in the telling of which he excelled."—Mémoires du Comte Lavallette.

For more than three months Bonaparte had been without news from Europe, when on his return from Saint-Jean-d'Acre he sent an envoy to the Turkish admiral under the pretext of negotiating an exchange of prisoners, but in reality in the hope that Sir Sidney Smith would stop this officer on the way and enlighten him as to recent events; whether, as might be expected, these had been unfavourable to the Republic. The General calculated rightly. Sir Sidney had the envoy brought to his ship and received him there with honour. Having entered into conversation, the English commander soon learnt that the Syrian army was totally without despatches or information of any kind. He showed the Frenchman the newspapers lying open on the table and, with perfidious courtesy, invited him to take them away with him.

Bonaparte spent the night in his tent reading them. In the morning he had resolved to return to France in order to assume the government in the place of those who were on the point of being overthrown. Once he had set foot on the soil of the Republic, he would crush the weak and violent government which was rendering the country a prey to fools and rogues, and he alone would occupy the vacant place. Before he could carry out his plan, however, he must cross the Mediterranean in defiance of adverse winds and British squadrons. But Bonaparte could see nothing save his purpose and his star. By an extraordinary stroke of good luck he had received the Directory's permission to leave the Egyptian army and to appoint his own successor.

He summoned Admiral Gantheaume, who had been at head-quarters since the destruction of the fleet, and instructed him quickly and secretly to arm two Venetian frigates, which were at Alexandria, and to direct them to a certain lonely point upon the coast. In a sealed document he appointed General Kléber Commander-in-Chief. Then, under the pretext of making a tour of inspection, taking with him a squadron of guides, he went to the Marabou inlet. On the evening of the 7th of Fructidor in the year VII, at the junction of two roads, whence the sea was visible, he came face to face with General Menou, who was returning with his escort to Alexandria. Finding it impossible and unnecessary to keep his secret any longer, he took a brusque farewell of these soldiers, urged them to acquit themselves well in Egypt and said:

"If I have the good luck to set foot in France, the reign of the chatterboxes will be over!"

He seemed to say this spontaneously and, so to speak, in spite of himself. Yet such an announcement was well calculated to justify his flight and to suggest future power.

He jumped into the boat, which at nightfall drew alongside of the frigate, La Muiron. Admiral Gantheaume welcomed him beneath his flag with these words:

"I command under your star."

And he set sail immediately. With the General were Lavallette, his aide-de-camp, Monge and Berthollet. The frigate, La Carrère, which served as a convoy, had on board the' wounded generals, Lannes and Murat, and Messieurs Denon, Costaz and Parseval-Grandmaison.

Hardly had they started when the wind dropped. The Admiral proposed to return to Alexandria lest dawn should find them in sight of Aboukir, where the enemy's fleet lay at anchor. The faithful Lavallette entreated the General to agree. But Bonaparte pointed seawards.

"Have no fear. We shall get through."

After midnight a fair breeze began to blow. By dawn the flotilla was out of sight of land. As Bonaparte was walking alone on deck, Berthollet came up to him.

"General, you were well advised to tell Lavallette not to be afraid and that we should be able to continue on our course."

Bonaparte smiled.

"I reassured one who is weak but devoted. Your character, Berthollet, is different, and to you I shall speak differently. The future must not be counted upon. The present alone matters. One must dare and calculate, and leave the rest to luck."

And, quickening his steps, he muttered:

"Dare ... calculate ... avoid any cast-iron plan ... conform to circumstances, follow where they lead. Take advantage of the slightest as well as of the greatest opportunities. Attempt only the possible, and all that is possible."

At dinner that day, when the General reproached Lavallette with his timidity on the previous evening, the aide-de-camp replied that at present his fears were different but not less, and that he was not ashamed to confess them, because they concerned the fate of Bonaparte, consequently the fate of France and of the world.

"I learned from Sir Sidney's secretary," he said, "that the commodore believes in keeping out of sight during a blockade. So, knowing his strategy and his character, we must expect to find him in our way. And in that case...."

Bonaparte interrupted him.

"In that case you cannot doubt that our intuition and our skill would rise superior to our danger. But you flatter that young madman when you regard him as capable of any consecutive and methodical action. Smith ought to be captain of a fire-ship."

Bonaparte was not fair to the formidable commander who had been the cause of his misfortune at Saint-Jean-d'Acre; and his injustice arose doubtless from a wish to attribute his failure to a turn of fortune rather than to his adversary's skill.

The Admiral raised his hand as if to emphasize the resolve which he was about to express.

"If we meet the English cruisers, I will go on board La Carrère, and, you may depend upon it, I will keep them so well occupied that they will give La Muiron time to escape."

Lavallette opened his mouth. He was about to observe that La Muiron was not a fast sailer and that consequently such an opportunity would be lost upon her. But he feared to displease the General, and swallowed his words. Bonaparte, however, read his thoughts; and, taking him by the coat button, said:

"Lavallette, you are a good fellow, but you will never be a good soldier. You never think enough of your advantages, and you are for ever concerned with irreparable disadvantages. We cannot make this frigate a fast sailer. But you must think of the crew, animated with the brightest enthusiasm and capable of working miracles, if need be. You forget that our boat is La Muiron. I myself gave her that name. I was at Venice. Invited to christen the frigate which had just been armed, I seized the opportunity of honouring the memory of one who was dear to me, of my aide-de-camp, who fell on the bridge of Areola while protecting his General with his own body under a hail of shot and shell. In this ship we sail to-day. Can you doubt that its name augurs well for us?"

For a while longer he continued to hearten them with his glowing words. He then remarked that he would retire to rest. It was known on the morrow that he had decided to endeavour to avoid the British squadrons by some four or five weeks' sailing along the African coast.

Henceforth day followed day in uneventful monotony. La Muiron kept in sight of the low, unfrequented coast, which was not likely to be reconnoitred by the enemy's ships, and every half league she tacked without venturing out to sea. Bonaparte passed his days in conversation and in reverie. Sometimes he was heard to murmur the names of Ossian and Fingal. Sometimes he asked his aide-de-camp to read aloud Vertot's Revolutions[1] or Plutarch's Lives. He appeared neither anxious nor impatient, nor preoccupied, more, probably, through a natural disposition to live in the present than as the result of self-control. He seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating that sea which, whether angry or serene, threatened his destiny and divided him from his object. On rising from table, when the weather was fine, he would go on deck and half recline on a gun-carriage in the same somewhat unsociable and forlorn attitude that was his when, as a child, he would lie propped up by his elbows on the rocks of his native isle. The two scientists, the Admiral, the Captain of the frigate and the aide-de-camp, Lavallette, would stand round him. And the conversation, which he carried on by fits and starts, most frequently turned on some new scientific discovery. Monge was not a brilliant talker; but his conversation revealed him as a clear, logical thinker. Inclined to consider utility even in physics, he was always a patriot and a good citizen. Berthollet was a better philosopher and more given to evolving general theories.

"It will not do," he said, "to represent chemistry as the mysterious science of metamorphoses, a new Circe, waving her magic wand over nature. Such ideas may flatter vivid imaginations; but they will not satisfy thoughtful minds, who are striving to prove that the transformations of bodies are subject to the general laws of physics."

He had a presentiment that the reactions, which the chemist provokes and observes, occur under precise mechanical conditions which some day may be the subject of exact calculation. And, constantly recurring to this idea, he would apply it to a variety of data, known or surmised. One evening Bonaparte, who had no sympathy with pure speculation, brusquely interrupted him:

"Your theories...! Mere soap-bubbles born of a breath and dissipated by a breath. Chemistry, Berthollet, is no more than a game when not applied to the requirements of war or industry. In all his researches the man of science should set before him some definite great and useful object, like Monge, who, in order to manufacture gunpowder, sought nitre in cellars and stables."

But Monge himself, as well as Berthollet, insisted on representing to the General the necessity of understanding phenomena and submitting them to general laws, before attempting practical applications, and they argued that any other procedure would lead to the dangerous obscurity of empiricism.

Bonaparte agreed. But he feared empiricism more than ideology. And suddenly he inquired of Berthollet:

"Do you, with your explanations, hope to penetrate into the infinite mystery of nature, to enter on the unknown?"

Berthollet replied that, without pretending to explain the universe, the scientist rendered humanity the greatest service by substituting a rational view of natural phenomena for the terrors of ignorance and superstition.

"Is he not man's true benefactor," added Berthollet, "who delivers him from the phantoms introduced into the soul by the fear of an imaginary hell, who rescues him from the yoke imposed by priests and soothsayers, who expels from his mind the terrors of dreams and omens?"

Night rested like a vast shadow on the great expanse of sea. In a moonless and cloudless sky, multitudes of stars glittered like a suspended shower. For a moment the General remained lost in meditation. Then, lifting up his head and half rising, he pointed to the dome of heaven, and with the uncultured voice of the young herdsman and the hero of antiquity he pierced the silence:

"Mine is a soul of marble which nothing can perturb, a heart inaccessible to common weaknesses. But you, Berthollet, do you understand sufficiently what life and death are? Have you explored their confines so far as to be able to affirm that they are without mystery? Are you sure that all apparitions are no more than the phantoms of a diseased brain? Can you explain all presentiments? General La Harpe had the stature and the heart of a Grenadier. His intelligence was in its element in battle. There it shone. At Fombio, for the first time, on the evening before his death, he was struck dumb, as one who is stunned, frozen by a strange and sudden fear. You deny apparitions. Monge, did you not meet Captain Aubelet in Italy?"

At this question, Monge tried to remember, then shook his head. No, he did not recollect Captain Aubelet.

Bonaparte resumed:

"I had observed him at Toulon, where he won his epaulettes, like a hero of ancient Greece. He was as young, as handsome, as courageous as a soldier from Platea. Struck by his serious air, his clear-cut features and the look of wisdom on his young countenance, his superior officers had nicknamed him Minerva, and the Grenadiers also called him by that name, though they were ignorant of its significance.

"Captain Minerva!" cried Monge. "Why did you not call him that at first? Captain Minerva was killed beneath the walls of Mantua a few weeks before I arrived in that city. His death had made a great impression, because it was associated with marvellous happenings which were related to me, though I do not remember them exactly. All I recollect is that General Miollis ordered Captain Minerva's sword and gorget, crowned with laurels, to be carried at the head of the column which one feast day defiled in front of Virgil's grotto, as a tribute to the memory of the poet of heroes."

"Aubelet's," resumed Bonaparte, "was that perfectly calm courage which I have never observed in anyone save Bessières. His passions were of the noblest. And in everything he sacrificed himself. He had a brother in arms, Captain Demarteau, a few years his senior, whom he loved with all the affection of a great heart. Demarteau did not resemble his friend. Impulsive, passionate, equally eager for pleasure and for danger, he was always the life and soul of the camp. Aubelet was the proud devotee of duty, Demarteau the joyous lover of glory. The latter returned his comrade's affection. In those two friends the story of Nisus and Euryalus was re-enacted beneath our flag. The end, both of one and the other, was surrounded with extraordinary circumstances. They were told to me, Monge, as to you, but I paid better heed, although at that time my mind was occupied with greater affairs. I desired to take Mantua without delay and before a new Austrian army had time to enter Italy. Nevertheless I found time to read a report of the incidents which had preceded and followed Captain Aubelet's death. Certain of these incidents border on the miraculous. Their cause must either be assigned to unknown faculties, which man may acquire in unique moments, or to the intervention of an intelligence superior to ours."

"General, you must exclude the second hypothesis," said Berthollet. "An observer of nature never perceives the intervention of a superior intelligence."

"I know that you deny the existence of Providence," replied Bonaparte. "That may be permissible for a scientist shut tip in his study, but not for a leader of peoples who can only control the ordinary mind through a community of ideas. If you would govern men, you must think with them on all great subjects. You must move with public opinion."

And, raising his eyes to the light flaming in the darkness on the pinnacle of the mainmast, he said, with hardly a pause:

"The wind blows from the north."

He had changed the subject with the suddenness which was his wont and which had caused some one to say to M. Denon:

"The General shuts the drawer."

Admiral Gantheaume observed that they could not expect the wind to change before the first days of autumn.

The light was flaring towards Egypt. Bonaparte looked in that direction. His gaze plunged into space; and, speaking in staccato tones, he let fall these words:

"If only they can hold out yonder! The evacuation of Egypt would be a commercial and military disaster. Alexandria is the capital of the controllers of Europe. Thence, I shall destroy England's commerce and I shall change the destiny of India.... For me, as for Alexander, Alexandria is the fortress, the port, the arsenal whence I start to conquer the world and whither I cause the wealth of Africa and Asia to flow. England can only be conquered in Egypt. If she were to take possession of Egypt, she instead of us would be the mistress of the world. Turkey is on her death-bed. Egypt assures me the possession of Greece. For immortality my name shall be inscribed by that of Epaminondas. The fate of the world hangs upon my intelligence and Kléber's firmness."

For some days afterwards the General remained silent. He had read to him the Révolutions de la République romaine, the story of which seemed to him to drag unbearably. The aide-de-camp, Lavallette, had to gallop through the Abbé Vertot's pages. And even then Bonaparte's patience would be exhausted, and, snatching the book from his hands, he would ask for Plutarch's Lives, of which he never tired. He considered that, though lacking broad and clear vision, they were permeated with an overpowering sense of destiny.

So one day, after his siesta, he summoned his reader and bade him resume the Life of Brutus, where he had left off on the previous evening. Lavallette opened the book at the page marked, and read:

"Then, as he and Cassius were preparing to leave Asia with the whole of their army (the night was very dark, and but a feeble light burned in his tent; a profound silence reigned throughout the whole camp and he himself was wrapt in thought), it seemed to him that he saw some one enter his tent. He looked towards the door and he perceived a horrible spectre, whose countenance was strange and terrifying, who approached him and stood there in silence. He had the courage to address it. 'Who art thou,' he asked, 'a man or a god? What comest thou to do here and what desirest thou of me?' 'Brutus,' replied the phantom, 'I am thy evil genius, and thou shalt see me at Philippi.' Then Brutus, unperturbed, said: 'I will see thee there.' Straightway the phantom disappeared, and Brutus, to whom the servants, whom he summoned, said that they had seen and heard nothing, continued to busy himself with his affairs."

"It is here," cried Bonaparte, "in this watery solitude, that such a scene has its most gruesome effect. Plutarch narrates well. He knows how to give animation to his story, how to make his characters stand out. But the relation between events escapes him. One cannot escape one's fate. Brutus, who had a commonplace mind, believed in strength of will. A really superior man would not labour under that delusion. He sees how necessity limits him. He does not dash himself against it. To be great is to depend on everything. I depend on events which a mere nothing determines. Wretched creatures that we are, we are powerless to change the nature of things. Children are self-willed. A great man is not. What is a human life? The curve described by a projectile."

The Admiral came to tell Bonaparte that the wind had at length changed. The passage must be attempted. The danger was urgent. Vessels detached from the English fleet, anchored off Syracuse, commanded by Nelson, were guarding the sea which they were about to traverse between Tunis and Sicily. Once the flotilla had been sighted the terrible Admiral would be down upon them in a few hours.

Gantheaume doubled Cape Bon by night with all lights out. The night was clear. The watch sighted a ship's lights to the north-east. The anxiety which consumed Lavallette had attacked even Monge. Bonaparte, seated, as usual, on his gun-carriage, displayed a tranquillity which might be deemed real or simulated according to the view taken of his fatalism! whether it arose merely from a sanguine temper and the capacity for self-deception or was simply one of his numerous poses. After discussing with Monge and Berthollet various matters of physics, mathematics and military science, he went on to speak of certain superstitions from which perhaps his mind was not completely emancipated.

"You deny the miraculous," he said to Monge. "But we live and die in the midst of the miraculous. You told me the other day that you had scornfully put out of your mind the extraordinary happenings associated with Captain Aubelet's death. Perhaps Italian credulity had embroidered them too elaborately. And that may excuse you. Listen to me. On the 9th of September, at midnight, Captain Aubelet was in bivouac before Mantua. The overpowering heat of the day had been followed by a night freshened by the mists rising from the marshy plain. Aubelet, feeling his cloak, became aware that it was wet. And, as he was shivering slightly, he went near to a fire which the Grenadiers had lit in order to heat their soup, and he warmed his feet, seated on a pack-saddle. Gradually the night and the mist enveloped him. In the distance he heard the neighing of horses and the regular cries of the sentinels. The captain had been there for some time, anxious, sad, his eyes fixed on the ashes in the brazier, when a tall form rose noiselessly at his side. He felt it near him and dared not turn his head. Nevertheless, he did turn, and recognized his friend, Captain Demarteau, in his usual attitude, his left hand on his hip and swaying slightly to and fro. At this sight Captain Aubelet felt his hair stand on end. He could not doubt the presence of his brother-in-arms, and yet he could not believe it, for he knew that Captain Demarteau was on the Maine with Jourdan, who was threatening the Archduke Charles. But his friend's aspect increased Aubelet's alarm, for though Demarteau's appearance was perfectly natural there was in it notwithstanding something unfamiliar. It was Demarteau, and yet there was something in him which could not fail to inspire fear. Aubelet opened his mouth. But his tongue froze, he could utter no sound. It was the other who spoke: 'Farewell! I go where I must. We shall meet to-morrow!' He departed with a noiseless step.

"On the morrow, Aubelet was sent to reconnoitre at San Giorgio. Before going, he summoned his first lieutenant and gave him such instructions as would enable him to replace his captain. 'I shall be killed to-day,' he added, 'as surely as Demarteau was killed yesterday.'

"And he described to several officers what he had seen in the night. They believed him to be suffering from an attack of the fever which had begun to declare itself among the troops encamped in the Mantuan marshes.

"Aubelet's company completed its reconnaissance of the San Giorgio Fort without hindrance. Having achieved its object, it fell back on our positions. It was marching under the cover of an olive wood. The first lieutenant, approaching the captain, said to him: 'Now, Captain Minerva, you no longer doubt that we shall bring you back alive?'

"Aubelet was about to reply, when a bullet whistled through the leaves and struck him on the forehead.

"A fortnight later a letter from General Joubert, which the Directory communicated to the Italian army, announced the death of the brave Captain Demarteau, who fell on the field of honour on the 9th of September."

As soon as he had finished his story the General left the group of silent listeners, to pace the deck with long strides and in silence.

"General," said Gantheaume, "we have passed the most dangerous part of our course."

The next day he bore towards the north, intending to sail along the Sardinian coast as far as Corsica and thence to make for the coast of Provence; but Bonaparte wished to land at a headland in Languedoc, fearing that Toulon might be occupied by the enemy.

La Muiron was making for Port-Vendres when a squall threw her back on Corsica and compelled her to put into Ajaccio. The whole population of the Island flocked thither to greet their compatriot and crowned the heights dominating the gulf. After a few hours' rest, hearing that the whole French coast was clear of the enemy, they set sail for Toulon. The wind was fair, but not strong.

Now, amidst the tranquillity which he had communicated to all, Bonaparte alone appeared agitated, impatient to land, now and again clapping his small hand suddenly to his sword. The ardent desire to reign which had been fermenting within him for three years, the spark of Lodi, had set him in a blaze. One evening, while the indented coast-line of his native island was fading away into the distance, he suddenly began to talk with a rapidity which confused the syllables of the words he spoke:

"If a atop is not put to it, chatterers and fools will complete the downfall of France. Germany lost at Stockach, Italy lost at the Trebbia; our armies beaten, our Ministers assassinated, contractors gorged with gold, our stores empty and deserted, invasion imminent, to this a weak and dishonest government has brought us.

"Upright men are authority's only support. The corrupt fill me with an invincible loathing. There is no governing with them."

Monge, who was a patriot, said firmly:

"Probity is as necessary to liberty as corruption to tyranny."

"Probity," replied the General, "is a natural and profitable quality in men born to govern."

The sun was dipping its reddened and magnified disc beneath the misty circle of the horizon. Eastward the sky was sown with light clouds like the petals of a falling rose. On the surface of the sea the blue and rosy waves rolled softly. A ship's sail appeared on the horizon, and the telescope of the officer on duty showed her to be flying the British flag.

"Have we escaped countless dangers only to perish so near our desired haven!" exclaimed La Valette.

Bonaparte shrugged his shoulders.

"Is it still possible to doubt my good luck and my destiny?"

And he continued his train of thought:

"A clean sweep must be made of these rogues and fools. They must be replaced by a compact government, swift and sure in action, like the lion. There must be order. Without order, there can be no administration, without administration, no credit, no money, but the ruin of the State and of individuals. A stop must be put to brigandage, to speculation, to social dissolution. What is France without a government? Thirty millions of grains of sand. Power is everything. The rest is nothing. In the wars of Vendée forty men made themselves the masters of a department. The whole mass of the people desire peace at any price, order and an end of quarrelling. Fear of Jacobins, Émigrés, Chouans will throw them into the arms of a master." "And this master?" inquired Berthollet. "He will doubtless be a military leader?"

"Not at all," replied Bonaparte swiftly. "Not at all I A soldier never will be the master of this nation, a nation illuminated by philosophy and science. If any General were to attempt the assumption of power, his audacity would soon be punished. Hoche thought of doing so. I know not whether it was love of pleasure or a true appreciation of the situation that restrained him; but the blow will assuredly recoil on any soldier who attempts it. For my part, I admire that French impatience of the military yoke, and I have no hesitation in admitting that the civil power should be pre-eminent in the State."

On hearing such a declaration, Monge and Berthollet looked at one another in amazement. They knew that Bonaparte, in spite of the perils, known and unknown, was about to grasp at power; and they failed to comprehend words which would seem to deny him that which he so ardently coveted. Monge, who, at the bottom of his heart, was a lover of liberty, began to rejoice. But the General, who divined their thoughts, replied to them immediately: "Of course, if the nation were to discover in a soldier such civil qualities as would render him an efficient administrator and ruler, it would place him at the head of affairs; but it would have to be as a civil not as a military leader. Such must needs be the feeling of any civilized, intelligent and educated nation."

After a moment's silence, Bonaparte added:

"I am a member of the Institute."

For a few moments longer the English ship was visible on the purpling belt of the horizon; then it disappeared.

On the morning of the next day, the watch sighted the coast of France. Yonder was Port-Vendres. Bonaparte fixed his gaze on the low, faint streak of land. A tumult of thoughts was surging in his mind. He had a striking and confused impression of arms and togas; in the silence of the sea an immense clamour filled his ears. And amidst visions of Grenadiers, magistrates, legislators and human crowds, he saw smiling and languishing, her handkerchief to her lips, her throat bare, Josephine, the remembrance of whom burned in his blood.

"General," said Gantheaume, pointing to the coast, which was growing bright in the morning sunshine, "I have brought you whither destiny called you. You, like Æneas, reach a shore promised you by the gods."

Bonaparte landed at Fréjus on the 17th of Vendémiaire in the year VIII.

THE CHÂTEAU DE VAUX-LE-VICOMTE

PREFACE

In 1656, Foucquet was forty-one years of age. For five years he had been Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament, and for three Comptroller of Finance, having been the control of the Treasury at the troubles which had afflicted France during the minority of Louis XIV. He had successfully weathered a difficult period, and had acquired no little confidence in his genius and his guiding star. Now, in the prime of life, feeling securely established in office, he proceeded to order his life in accordance with the magnificence of his tastes. Ambitious, pleasure-loving, adoring all that was great and beautiful, sensitive to all that exalts or caresses the soul, he called upon the Arts to surround him with the symbols of glory and of pleasure. The miracles of Vaux were the outcome of this demand, which was first satisfied, then cruelly punished.

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.

LA REINE MÈRE

Il peut, quoique Colbert lui déclare la guerre,
Ouvrir encor les yeux du côté de la terre.

MME. FOUCQUET

Si la terre, Madame, a du péril pour lui,
J'aime mieux à mes yeux le voir mort aujourd'hui.

(Le livre abominable de 1665 qui courait en manuscript parmi le monde, sous le nom de Molière (comédie en vers sur le procès de Foucquet), découvert et publié sur une copie du temps par Louis-Auguste Ménard. Paris, Firmin Didot et Cie. 1883, 2 vols. Vol. II, p. 116.)

The book is neither abominable nor a comedy of any kind. It consists of five Dansenist dialogues in the most insipid style. M. Louis-Auguste Ménard, who attributes this rhymed play to Molière, cannot expect many to share his extraordinary opinion.

The young Queen was ill at the time. Foucquet's mother sent her one of the plasters she was in the habit of making for the poor, and she was so fortunate as to save the wife of him who was seeking to ruin her son. At least, the Queen's recovery is generally attributed to Madame Foucquet's remedy.

We shall see later that the cure did not produce any change of heart in the King.

This incident, however, refers to the downfall of a fortune of which we must first explain the beginnings, and the progressive stages. This I shall do without entering into details of administration or business. I am not writing an essay on the politics or finances of the days of Mazarin. My sole endeavour will be to depict the tastes, the manners and the mind of the creator and the host of Vaux. Vaux is the centre of my design.

In 1635, Nicolas Foucquet, at the age of twenty, entered the magistry as Master of Requests. The Masters of Requests were regarded as forming part of the Parliament, where they sat above the Councillors. From among those officers the Kings had long been accustomed to choose the commissaries whom they despatched into the provinces, to superintend the administration of justice and finance, or to the armies, when they were charged with all that concerned the policing and the maintenance of the troops.

Their journeys were known as the circuits of the Masters of Requests. They gave rise, at a date unknown, to a new office, that of Intendant, which grew in importance with the increase of the royal power. The young Foucquet, in 1636, was sent as Intendant of justice to the district of Grenoble. The difficulties attending such a mission were great; and Richelieu could not have been ignorant of them. He had, however, diminished them somewhat by suspending the sittings of the provincial parliament which was the Intendant's natural enemy. But Foucquet found the people of Le Dauphiné agitated by the memory of the religious wars and ardently engaging in new disputes in respect of certain taxes levied on the goods of the third estate from which the nobility and the clergy were exempt. The decree of the Royal Council which abolished the citizens' grievances remained a dead letter.[4] Feeling ran high. Foucquet did not succeed in alleviating it. After a revolt which he had been unable either to prevent or to repress he was recalled to Paris. From an inexperienced youth of twenty-one Richelieu could not have expected services which could only have been rendered by an old hand, experienced in negotiation, such, for example, as the Intendant of Guyenne, the skilful and resolute Servien. The opinion is seldom held to-day that the great Minister employed the system of Intendants[5] as a regular instrument of his policy; which may explain how he came to confide to an apprentice a mission which is regarded as of secondary importance. The office of Intendant was not a permanent one, so that Foucquet's recall was doubtless not regarded as an absolute disgrace. Nevertheless, during the five years of life and power which yet remained to him, Richelieu, as far as we know, never again employed the young Master of Requests.

But Mazarin, having become first Minister, sent him, in 1647, to the Army of the North, which was under the command of Gassion and Rantzau. The leaders' disagreements were arresting the army's progress. Rantzau was a drunkard whom Gassion could not tolerate. Gassion, sober, energetic and fearless, displayed a brutality insufferable even in a soldier of fortune. He forgot himself so far as to strike in the face a captain of Condé's regiment who had misunderstood his orders. The whole regiment determined to withdraw and the officers struck their tents. Only with great difficulty were they persuaded to remain. Touching this incident, Foucquet wrote to Mazarin: "All are agreed that M. le Maréchal de Gassion committed a serious abuse in striking the captain of His Royal Highness's regiment. Every one condemned such an action, considering that M. le Maréchal should have sent him to prison, or should even have struck him with his sword, or fired his pistol at him, if he thought it necessary; but that it would have been better not to have resorted to such an extreme measure."

We ought not, I think, to pass over a fact which permitted Foucquet to display, for the first time, as far as we are aware, that spirit of moderation which, until his reason became clouded, enabled him for a time to serve the State so well.

Mazarin was not slow to discern the Intendant's merits. In 1648, at the time of the first disturbances,[6] thinking to quit Paris and withdraw with the Court to Saint-Germain, he sent Foucquet to Brie "with orders there to collect large stores of grain for the maintenance of the army."[7] The Intendant established himself at Lagny and commandeered supplies from the peasants of Brie and Ile-de-France. He was then instructed to compile a list of those Parisians who possessed châteaux or country-houses in the suburbs of the city. Promising to preserve these properties from fire and pillage during the war, Mazarin taxed the owners. In reality he mulcted the rich of the money which he needed. When the Fronde was a thing of the past, Foucquet, as procurator of Ile-de-France, accompanied the King into Normandy, Burgundy, Poitou and Guyenne.

On his return from this royal progress, he bought, with the Cardinal's approval, the post of Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament. From this office a certain Sieur Méliand retired in Foucquet's favour, "receiving in return Foucquet's office of Master of Requests, estimated by the son of the said Sieur Méliand as being worth more than fifty thousand crowns, plus a sum of one hundred thousand crowns in money."[8]

If Foucquet obtained preferment, it was not without the aid of a young clerk at the War Office, who at that time displayed a great deal of friendliness towards him, but was destined, eleven years later, to bring about his downfall, take his office and endeavour to procure his death. Colbert, who was then on terms of friendship with Foucquet, employed his interest with Le Tellier to recommend the ambitious Intendant. In August, 1650, he wrote to the Secretary of State for War:

"M. Foucquet, who has come here by order of His Eminence, has already on three several occasions assured me that he is possessed of an ardent desire to become one of your particular servants and friends because of the peculiar estimation in which he holds your attainments, and that he has no particular connections with any other person which would prevent his receiving this honour.... I thought it would be very suitable, he being a man of birth and merit and even capable, one day, of holding high office, if you in return were to offer him some friendly advances, since it is not a question of entering into an engagement which might be burdensome to you, but merely of receiving him favourably and of making him some show of friendship when you meet. If you are of my opinion in this matter, I beg you to let me know as much in the first letter with which you honour me; nor can I refrain from assuring you, with all the respect which is your due, that I do not think I could possibly repay you a part of all that I owe you in better coin than by acquiring for you a hundred such friends, were I only sufficiently worthy to do so."[9]

This is a warm recommendation. We have quoted it in order that the reader may see with what confidence Foucquet inspired his friends, even in those early days, and how highly they thought of him. Moreover, it is interesting to find Colbert praising Foucquet. The latter was installed in his new appointment on the 10th of October, 1650. He was thenceforth the first of the King's servants at the head of that bar which the two Advocates General Omer Talon and Jérôme Bignon had caused to be renowned for its eloquence. An instrument of that great body which dealt with the administration of justice, controlled political affairs, exercised an influence over finance, whose jurisdiction extended over Ile-de-France, Picardy, Orléanais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, Angoumois, Champagne, Bourbonnais, Berry, Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais and Auvergne, the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, subdued the fleurs-de-lys to the policy of the Cardinal. Between such virtuous fools as the worthy Broussel, who, through very honesty, would have surrendered his disarmed country to the foreigner, and the Minister who had humiliated the house of Austria, threatened the Emperor even in his hereditary dominions, conquered Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, and who now sought to assure France of her natural boundaries, Foucquet's genius was too lucid and his views too far-reaching to permit him to hesitate for a moment.

He remained attached to Mazarin's fortunes when the Minister's downfall seemed permanent. In 1651, that inauspicious year, he never ceased his endeavours to win supporters in the bourgeoisie and in the army, for the exiled Minister on whose head a price had been set. And when the Prince de Condé, in his manifesto of the 12th of April, 1652, confessed that he had formed ties, both within and without the kingdom, with the object of its preservation, it was the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, who uttered a protest which compelled the Prince to strike out of his manifesto the shameful avowal of his alliance with Spain, the enemy of France. He contributed not a little to ruin the cause of the Princes in Paris. When Turenne had defeated their army near Étampes (5th May, 1652), the Parliament wished to open negotiations for peace. The Attorney-General repaired to Saint-Germain, bearing to the King the complaints of his good city of Paris. The speech which he delivered on this occasion has been preserved. Its general tone is resolute; its language, sober and concise, contrasting with the obscure and unintelligible style affected by the judicial eloquence of the period. This address is the only example which we possess of Nicolas Foucquet's oratorical talent. It will be found in M. Chéruel's Mémoires.[10] Here are a few passages from it:

" ... Sire, I have been commissioned to inform Your Majesty of the destitution to which the majority of your subjects have been reduced. There is no limit to the crimes and excesses committed by the military. Murders, violations, burnings and sacrileges are now regarded merely as ordinary actions; far from committing them in secret, the perpetrators boast of them openly. To-day, Sire, Your Majesty's troops are living in such licence and such disorder that they are by no means ashamed to abandon their posts in order to despoil those of your subjects who have no means of resistance. In broad daylight, in the sight of their officers, without fear of recognition or apprehension of punishment, soldiers break into the houses of ecclesiastics, noblemen and your highest officials....

"I will not attempt, Sire, to represent to Your Majesty the greatness of the injury done to your cause by such public depredations, and the advantage which your enemies will derive therefrom, beholding the most sacred laws publicly violated, the impunity of crime firmly established, the source of your revenues exhausted, the affections of the people alienated and your authority derided. I shall only entreat Your Majesty, in the name of your Parliament and all your subjects, to be moved to pity by the cries of your poor people, to give ear to the groans and supplications of the widows and orphans, and to endeavour to preserve whatever remains, whatever has escaped the fury of those barbarians whose sole desire is for blood and the slaughter of the innocents....

"Make manifest, Sire, O make manifest at the outset of your reign, your natural kindness of heart, and may the compassion which you will feel for so many sufferers call down the blessings of heaven upon the first years of your majority, which will doubtless be followed by many and far happier years, if the desires and prayers of your Parliament and of all your good subjects be granted."

These words had little effect. The war continued; the people's sufferings increased; in the city the disturbances became more violent; several councillors were killed, and the hôtel de ville was invaded and pillaged by the populace and by the troops of the princes. In the face of such disorders, which the magistrates could neither tolerate nor repress, the Attorney-General, accompanied by several notables, members of the Parliament, went to the King, who listened to his counsel. To the Cardinal he demonstrated the necessity of holding the Parliament and the Court in the same place, in order to display to the kingdom the spectacle of the King and his senate on the one hand and the rebel Princes on the other; and it was by his advice that a decree was issued on the 31st of July which ordered the removal of the Parliament from Paris to Pontoise, where the Court then was. Foucquet with the utmost energy devoted himself to the execution of this politic measure.

On the 7th of August, the first President, Mathieu Molé, presided at Pontoise over a solemn session in which the members present constituted themselves into the one and only Parliament of Paris. This assembly requested the King to dismiss Mazarin, and this they did in concert with Mazarin himself, who rightly believed his departure to be necessary. But he counted on speedily resuming his place beside the King. In the meanwhile he corresponded with Foucquet, in whom he placed the utmost confidence, "without reservation of any kind," and whom he consulted on matters of State. Still, there was one point on which they did not think alike. Mazarin eagerly desired to return to Paris with the King, and, as it seemed, for the time being, that this desire could not be gratified, His Eminence was not displeased that the state entry into the capital should be delayed. Foucquet, on the other hand, was in favour of an immediate return to the Louvre. On this subject he wrote to the Cardinal:

"There is not one of the King's servants, in Paris or out of it, who is not convinced that in order to make himself master of the city the King has only to desire as much, and that if the King sends to the inhabitants asking that two of the city gates shall be held by a regiment of his guards, and then proceeds directly to the Louvre, all Paris will approve such a masterful action and the Princes will be compelled to take flight. There is no doubt that on the very first day the King's orders will be obeyed by all. The legitimate officers will be restored to the exercise of their function, the gates will be closed to enemies; such an amnesty as Your Eminence would wish will be published, and our friends will be reunited in the Louvre in the King's presence. So universal will be the rejoicing and so loud the public acclamations that no one will be found so bold as to dissent."[11]

A few days later, on the 21st of October, amid popular acclamation, Louis XIV entered Paris. The stripling monarch brought with him peace, that beneficent peace which had been prepared by the tactful firmness of the Attorney-General.

Now, Mazarin's friends had only to hasten his recall. This the Attorney-General and his brother, the Abbé Basile, succeeded in obtaining, and the Cardinal entered Paris on the 3rd of February, 1652. The office of Superintendent of the Finances had then been vacant for a month owing to the death, on the 2nd of January, of the holder, the Duc de La Vieuville. Despite the unfavourable condition of the kingdom's finances this office was most eagerly coveted. And the very disorder and obscurity which enveloped all the Superintendent's operations excited the hopes of those men whom the Marquis d'Effiat compared with "the cuttle-fish which possesses the art of clouding the water to deceive the eyes of the fisher who espies it."[12] Then the Superintendent had not the actual handling of the public moneys. Income and expenditure were in the hands of the Treasurers. But he ordered all State expenditure, charging it without appeal to the various resources of the Kingdom. He was answerable to the King alone. If, apparently, all his actions were subject to a strict control, in reality he worked in absolute secrecy. In the year we have now reached, 1653, the Treasury's poverty and the Cardinal's laxity permitted every abuse. Money must be found at any cost; all expedients were good and all rules might be infringed.

Things had been going badly for a long while. Since the Regent, Marie de Médicis, had madly dissipated the savings amassed by the prudent Sully, the State has subsisted upon detestable expedients, such as the creation of offices, the issue of Government Stocks, the sale of charters of pardon, the alienation of rights and domains. The Treasury was in the hands of plunderers, no accounts were kept. In 1626, Superintendent d'Effiat found it impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge of the resources at the State's disposal or at the amount of expenditure incurred by the military and naval services. Richelieu, when he came into power, began by condemning to death a few of the tax farmers-general. Had it not been for "these necessities which do not admit of the delay of formalities," he might perhaps have restored the finances to order. But these necessities overwhelmed him and compelled him to resort to fresh expedients. He was driven to court the tax-farmers, whom he would rather have hanged, and to borrow from them at a high rate of interest the King's money which they were detaining in their coffers. Exports, imposts and the salt tax were all controlled by the tax-farmers. An Italian adventurer, Signor Particelli d'Hémery, whom Mazarin appointed Superintendent in 1646, created one hundred and sixty-seven offices and alienated the revenue of 87,600,000 livres of capital. In 1648 the State suffered a shameful bankruptcy and the troubles of the Fronde supervened, aggravating yet further a situation which would have been desperate in any country other than inventive and fertile France.

The office of Superintendent, which the worthy La Vieuville had held since 1649, was disputed after his death by the Marshals de l'Hôpital and de Villeroy, by the President de Maisons, who had held it already during the civil war, by Abel Servien, who during his already long life had proved himself a harsh and precise administrator, a skilful man of business and a thoroughly honest man, and, finally, by Nicolas Foucquet, who in public opinion was unlikely to be appointed.

Foucquet, on the very day of La Vieuville's death, had written the Cardinal a letter, partly in cipher, of which the following is the text:—

"I was impatiently awaiting the return of Your Eminence in order to inform you in detail of all that I have learned of the cause of past disorders and their remedies; but as the bad administration of public finance is one of the chief causes of the discreditable condition of public affairs, the death of the Superintendent and the necessity of appointing his successor compel me to explain to Your Eminence in this letter what I had determined to communicate to you by word of mouth on your arrival, and to impress upon you the importance of choosing some one of acknowledged probity who will be trusted by the public and who will keep inviolate faith with Your Eminence. I will venture to say that in the inquiries which I have made into the means of ending the present evils and avoiding still greater ones in future, I have found that everything depended upon the will of the Superintendent. Perhaps I should be able to make myself useful to His Majesty and Your Eminence were you to think fit to employ me in this office. I have studied the means of filling it successfully. I know that there would be nothing inconsistent in my employment, and several of my friends to whom I owe this idea have promised me in this connection to make efforts to be of service to the King of a nature too considerable to be ignored. It therefore remains for Your Eminence to judge of the capacity with which eighteen years' service in the Council as Master of Requests and in various other offices may have endowed me; and as for my affection for you and my fidelity in your service, I flatter myself that Your Eminence is persuaded that I am inferior to no one in the Kingdom. My brother will be my surety; and I am certain that he would never pledge his word to Your Eminence whatever interest he may feel in that which concerns me, were he not fully satisfied with my intentions and my conduct hitherto and had we not thoroughly discussed Your Eminence's interests in this connection. Once again let me protest that you may rely upon us absolutely, and that you will never be disappointed, since no one in the world has more at heart the advantage and the glory of Your Eminence. I entreat you to let no one hear of this affair until it is settled."

Recalled by his adherents, Mazarin returned to Paris, very discreetly, on the 3rd of February. One of his first acts was to appoint a Superintendent. He divided the office between Nicolas Foucquet, his own supporter, and Abel Servien, who was singled out for this employment by his own character and by public opinion. To act in conjunction with the two Superintendents he appointed three Directors of Finance, one Comptroller-General and eight Intendants. Such an arrangement served to please two people; but it had the disadvantage of costing the Treasury a million livres a year. As a matter of fact, it was, as we shall see, to cost much more. According to the terms of his commission, Foucquet was in no way subordinate to his colleague, but age, experience, vigilant industry and a tried and distinguished probity gave Servien the chief authority. Foucquet was young; he might wait. He held the office which he had so greatly desired. Alas, in desiring it he had desired what was to be his ruin! Henceforth his pious mother might apply to him the words of Scripture: Et tribuit eis petitionem eorum.

If he speedily entered upon the path of the merely expedient, can we be surprised? Both necessity and the Cardinal's wishes drove him to it. In 1654, he found money necessary to oppose an army led by the rebel, Condé. How? By creating new offices and selling them to the highest bidder. A detestable method; but it is questionable whether, considering the state of the Treasury, it would have been possible to devise any better. At all events, at this cost the Spaniards were defeated. Unhappily there is no doubt whatever that Foucquet had to provide not only for the expenses of the war, but for the exigencies of Mazarin, who, through the medium of Colbert, obtained from the Treasury the millions with which he enriched his family. Mazarin himself became a farmer of the revenue and derived enormous profits from the bread of the wretched soldiers. "By appearing under the name of Albert, or another," he concealed his part in these transactions. The letter is extant in which he himself suggests this broker's trick. He also made use of what were called ordonnances de Comptant. The term was applied to decrees authorizing the payment of money, the employment of which was not specified. To-day we should describe it as dipping into the secret funds; and the Cardinal did dip into them with both hands. Sometimes Foucquet endeavoured to resist these criminal demands, but in the end he always gave way. Mazarin must have known that he was not intractable since he always appealed to him rather than to Servien even in matters like orders for the payment of officials which were the special function of the senior Superintendent. Foucquet deducted certain payments; from the proceeds of tax-farming; from the farmers of the salt-tax he received one hundred and twenty thousand livres a year; from the farmers of the Bordeaux convey fifty thousand livres; from the farmers of the customs one hundred and forty thousand livres. The clerks who handled this last contribution added for themselves a sum of twenty thousand livres. It is probable that the bargain was not concluded without the distribution of a few "bonuses" in the offices. And when we recollect that these customs were duties imposed on wine and on food and drink in general, on the very life, therefore, of the poor, one cannot forbear from cursing Mazarin's murderous and impious cupidity, for it was for the Cardinal that Foucquet deducted these payments. He remitted these sums without receiving any formal receipt, and there is reason to believe that he himself kept some part of them.