Part 36

— Gourville, I shall not move from this spot where the crime must be accomplished, where my shame must be accomplished; I shall not move, I say, until I have found a means to combat my enemies.

— My lord, replied Gourville, you would move me to pity if I did not know that you are one of the sound minds of this world. You possess a hundred and fifty million, you are the equal of the king by your position, a hundred and fifty times more so by your money.

“M. Colbert did not even have the wit to have Mazarin’s will accepted. Now, when one is the richest man in a kingdom and is willing to take the trouble to spend money, if one does not do as one pleases, it is because one is a poor creature. Let us return, I tell you, to Saint-Mandé.”

— To consult Pellisson? Yes.

— No, my lord, to count your money.

— Come! said Fouquet, his eyes aflame; yes! yes! to Saint-Mandé!

He got back into his carriage, and Gourville with him. On the road, at the end of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, they met the little equipage of Vatel, who was tranquilly conveying his wine from Joigny. The black horses, galloping at full speed, frightened as they passed the timid horse of the majordomo, who, putting his head out the window, cried in alarm:

— Mind my bottles!

Chapter LVII — The Gallery of Saint-Mandé

Fifty persons were awaiting the superintendent. He did not even take the time to confide himself for a moment to his valet de chambre, and from the steps passed into the first salon. There his friends were assembled and conversing.

The intendant was preparing to have supper served; but, above all, the Abbé Fouquet was watching for his brother’s return and endeavoring to do the honors of the house in his absence.

At the superintendent’s arrival there was a murmur of joy and tenderness: Fouquet, full of affability and good humor, of munificence, was loved by his poets, his artists, and his men of business. His brow, upon which his little court read, as upon that of a god, every movement of his soul, to make thereof rules of conduct, his brow which affairs never wrinkled, was that evening paler than usual, and more than one friendly eye remarked this pallor.

Fouquet placed himself at the center of the table and gaily presided over the supper. He told La Fontaine of Vatel’s expedition.

He told Pellisson the story of Menneville and the lean chicken, in such a way that the whole table heard it.

Then there was a tempest of laughter and raillery which ceased only at a grave and sad gesture from Pellisson. The Abbé Fouquet, not knowing why his brother had engaged the conversation on this subject, listened with all his ears and sought upon the face of Gourville or upon that of the superintendent an explanation which nothing gave him.

Pellisson took the floor.

— So we are speaking of M. Colbert? said he.

— Why not, replied Fouquet, if it is true, as is said, that the king has made him his intendant?

Scarcely had Fouquet let escape these words, pronounced with marked intention, than the explosion was heard among the guests.

— A miser! said one.

— A clown! said another.

— A hypocrite! said a third.

Pellisson exchanged a profound glance with Fouquet.

— Gentlemen, said he, truly, we are ill-treating a man whom no one knows: that is neither charitable nor reasonable, and here is M. the superintendent who, I am sure, is of this opinion.

— Entirely, replied Fouquet. Let us leave M. Colbert’s fat chickens; today it is only a question of M. Vatel’s truffled pheasants.

These words arrested the dark cloud that was precipitating its course above the guests.

Gourville animated the poets so well with the wine of Joigny; the abbé, intelligent as a man who has need of others’ crowns, animated the financiers and the men of the sword so well, that, in the mists of this joy and the rumblings of conversation, the object of anxieties disappeared completely.

The will of Cardinal Mazarin was the text of the conversation at the second service and at dessert; then Fouquet ordered that the basins of preserves and the fountains of liqueurs be carried into the salon adjoining the gallery. He went there, leading by the hand a woman, a queen that evening by his preference.

Then the violins supped, and the promenades in the gallery, in the garden began, beneath a soft and perfumed spring sky. Pellisson then came near the superintendent and said to him:

— My lord has a sorrow?

— A great one, answered the minister; have Gourville tell you of it.

Pellisson, turning round, found La Fontaine trampling on both his feet. He had to listen to a Latin verse that the poet had composed upon Vatel.

La Fontaine, for an hour past, had been scanning this verse in every corner and seeking for it an advantageous placement. He thought he had caught Pellisson, but the latter escaped him. He turned toward Loret, who had just composed a quatrain in honor of the supper and the host. La Fontaine wished in vain to place his verse; Loret wished to place his quatrain.

He was obliged to retreat before M. the Count de Chanost, whose arm Fouquet had just taken.

The Abbé Fouquet felt that the poet, distracted as always, was about to follow the two talkers: he intervened.

La Fontaine immediately clutched hold and recited his verse.

The abbé, who did not know Latin, balanced his head in cadence, at each rolling motion that La Fontaine imparted to his body, according to the undulations of dactyls or spondees. During this time, behind the basins of preserves, Fouquet was relating the event to M. de Chanost, his son-in-law.

— We must send the useless ones to the fireworks, said Pellisson to Gourville, while we talk here.

— Very well, replied Gourville, who said four words to Vatel.

Then they saw the latter lead toward the gardens the greater part of the lily-of-the-valley youths, the ladies, and the chatterers, while the men promenaded in the gallery, lit by three hundred wax candles, in view of all the lovers of fireworks, occupied in running about the garden.

Gourville approached Fouquet. Then he said to him:

— Monsieur, we are all here.

— All? said Fouquet.

— Yes, count.

The superintendent turned and counted. There were eight persons.

Pellisson and Gourville walked arm in arm, as if conversing of vague and light subjects.

Loret and two officers imitated them in the opposite direction. The Abbé Fouquet walked alone.

Fouquet, with M. de Chanost, also walked as if absorbed by his son-in-law’s conversation.

— Gentlemen, said he, let none of you raise his head while walking nor seem to pay attention to me; continue to walk, we are alone, listen to me.

A great silence fell, troubled only by the distant cries of the joyous guests who were taking their places in the bowers to better see the rockets.

It was a bizarre spectacle, that of these men walking as if in groups, as if each occupied with something, and yet attentive to the words of one among them, who himself seemed to speak only to his neighbor.

— Gentlemen, said Fouquet, you have remarked, no doubt, that two of our friends were missing this evening at the Wednesday gathering... For God’s sake! abbé, do not stop, that is not necessary to listen; walk, I beg you, with your most natural airs of the head, and since you have keen sight, place yourself at the open window, and if anyone returns toward the gallery, warn us by coughing.

The abbé obeyed.

— I had not remarked the absentees, said Pellisson, who at that moment had his back absolutely turned to Fouquet and was walking in the opposite direction.

— I, said Loret, do not see M. Lyodot, who makes my pension.

— And I, said the abbé, at the window, do not see my dear d’Eymeris, who owes me eleven hundred livres from our last game of brelan.

— Loret, continued Fouquet, walking somber and bent, you will touch Lyodot’s pension no more; and you, abbé, you will never touch your eleven hundred livres from d’Eymeris, for the one and the other are about to die.

— Die? cried the assembly, arrested in spite of itself in its play of scene by the terrible word.

— Compose yourselves, gentlemen, said Fouquet, for we are perhaps being spied upon... I said: die.

— Die! repeated Pellisson, those men whom I saw, not six days ago, full of health, of gaiety, of future. What then is man, good God! that a sickness should cast him down all at once?

— It is not sickness, said Fouquet.

— Then there is a remedy, said Loret.

— No remedy. MM. de Lyodot and d’Eymeris are on the eve of their last day.

— Of what then do these gentlemen die? cried an officer.

— Ask him who kills them, replied Fouquet.

— Who kills them! They are killed? cried the terrified chorus.

— They do better still. They are hanged! murmured Fouquet in a sinister voice which resounded like a funeral knell in that rich gallery, all sparkling with paintings, flowers, velvet, and gold.

Involuntarily each stopped; the abbé left his window; the first rockets of the fireworks were beginning to rise above the tree-tops.

A long cry, issuing from the gardens, called the superintendent to enjoy the sight.

He approached a window, and behind him placed his friends, attentive to his slightest desires.

— Gentlemen, said he, M. Colbert has had my two friends arrested, judged, and will have them executed: what is it fitting that I do?

— God’s death! said the abbé first, we must have M. Colbert disemboweled.

— My lord, said Pellisson, we must speak to His Majesty.

— The king, my dear Pellisson, has signed the order of execution.

— Well then! said the Count de Chanost, the execution must not take place, that is all.

— Impossible, said Gourville, unless one corrupts the jailers.

— Or the governor, said Fouquet.

— Tonight, one might have the prisoners escape.

— Which of you undertakes the transaction?

— I, said the abbé, I will carry the money.

— I, said Pellisson, I will carry the word.

— The word and the money, said Fouquet, five hundred thousand livres to the governor of the Conciergerie, that is enough; however, one will put a million if need be.

— A million! cried the abbé; but for half less I would have half of Paris sacked.

— No disorder, said Pellisson; the governor being won, the two prisoners escape; once out of danger, they rally the enemies of Colbert and prove to the king that his young justice is not infallible, like all exaggerations.

— Go then to Paris, Pellisson, said Fouquet, and bring back the two victims; tomorrow we shall see. Gourville, give the five hundred thousand livres to Pellisson.

— Take care that the wind does not carry you off, said the abbé; what a responsibility, plague! Let me help you a little.

— Silence! said Fouquet; someone approaches. Ah! the fireworks are of a magical effect!

At that moment, a rain of sparks fell, streaming, into the branches of the neighboring wood.

Pellisson and Gourville went out together by the gallery door; Fouquet descended to the garden with the five last conspirators.

Chapter LVIII — The Epicureans

As Fouquet gave or appeared to give all his attention to the brilliant illuminations, to the languorous music of the violins and oboes, to the sparkling sheaves of the fireworks which, setting the sky aflame with tawny reflections, accentuated, behind the trees, the somber silhouette of the donjon of Vincennes; as, we say, the superintendent smiled upon the ladies and the poets, the feast was no less gay than usual, and Vatel, whose anxious look, even jealous, insistently questioned Fouquet’s glance, did not show himself discontent with the reception given to the ordering of the evening.

The firing over, the company dispersed in the gardens and beneath the marble porticoes, with that soft liberty which betrays, in the master of the house, so much forgetting of greatness, so much courteous hospitality, so much magnificent unconcern.

The poets wandered, arm in arm, in the bowers; some stretched themselves upon beds of moss, to the great disaster of the velvet habits and the curled wigs, into which crept the little dry leaves and the blades of green. The ladies, few in number, listened to the songs of the artists and the verses of the poets; others listened to the prose that men who were neither actors nor poets said, with much art, but to whom youth and solitude gave an unaccustomed eloquence which seemed to them the most preferable of all.

— Why, said La Fontaine, does our master Epicurus not descend to the garden? Never did Epicurus abandon his disciples; the master is wrong.

— Monsieur, said Conrart to him, you are quite wrong to persist in decorating yourself with the name of epicurean; truly, nothing here recalls the doctrine of the philosopher of Gargette.

— Bah! replied La Fontaine, is it not written that Epicurus bought a great garden and lived there tranquilly with his friends?

— That is true.

— Well! has not M. Fouquet bought a great garden at Saint-Mandé, and do we not live there, quite tranquilly, with him and our friends?

— Yes, no doubt; unfortunately it is neither the garden nor the friends that can make the resemblance. Now, where is the resemblance of M. Fouquet’s doctrine to that of Epicurus?

— Here it is: “Pleasure gives happiness.”

— After?

— Well?

— I do not believe we find ourselves unhappy, I, at least. A good meal, the wine of Joigny which one has the delicacy to go fetch for me at my favorite tavern; not one absurdity in a whole hour’s supper, despite ten millionaires and twenty poets.

— I stop you there. You have spoken of wine of Joigny and a good meal; do you persist?

— I persist, antecho, as one says at Port-Royal.

— Then, remember that the great Epicurus lived and made his disciples live on bread, vegetables, and clear water.

— That is not certain, said La Fontaine, and you might well be confounding Epicurus with Pythagoras, my dear Conrart.

— Remember also that the ancient philosopher was a rather bad friend to the gods and the magistrates.

— Oh! that is what I cannot suffer, replied La Fontaine, Epicurus like M. Fouquet.

— Do not compare him to M. the superintendent, said Conrart, in an moved voice, or you would give credit to the rumors already circulating about him and about us.

— What rumors?

— That we are bad Frenchmen, tepid toward the monarch, deaf to the law.

— I return then to my text, said La Fontaine. Listen, Conrart, here is the morality of Epicurus... who, moreover, I consider, if I must tell you, as a myth. All that is a little cut-and-dried in Antiquity is myth. Jupiter, if one will but pay attention, that is life; Alcides, that is force. The words are there to give me right: Zeus, that is zèn, to live; Alcides, that is alcé, vigor. Well! Epicurus, that is gentle oversight, that is protection; now, who oversees the State better and who protects individuals better than M. Fouquet?

— You speak to me etymology, but not morality: I say that we, modern epicureans, are vexatious citizens.

— Oh! cried La Fontaine, if we become vexatious citizens, it will not be by following the maxims of the master. Listen to one of his principal aphorisms.

— I listen.

— “Wish for good chiefs.”

— Well?

— Well! what does M. Fouquet tell us every day? “When then shall we be governed?” Does he say it? Come, Conrart, be frank!

— He says it, that is true.

— Well! doctrine of Epicurus.

— Yes, but that is a little seditious, that.

— How! it is seditious to wish to be governed by good chiefs?

— Certainly, when those who govern are bad.

— Patience! I have answer to all.

— Even to what I have just told you?

— Listen: “Submit yourselves to those who govern badly...” Oh! it is written: Cacos politeuousi... Do you grant me the text?

— Pardieu! I should think so. Do you know that you speak Greek like Aesop, my dear La Fontaine?

— Is that a spite, my dear Conrart?

— God forbid!

— Then, let us return to M. Fouquet. What did he repeat to us all day long? Was it not this: “What a clown that Mazarin! what an ass! what a leech! Yet one must obey that rogue!...” Come, Conrart, did he say it or did he not say it?

— I admit he said it, and even perhaps a little too much.

— Like Epicurus, my friend, always like Epicurus; I repeat, we are epicureans, and it is vastly amusing.

— Yes, but I fear there will arise, beside us, a sect like that of Epictetus; you know well, the philosopher of Hierapolis, he who called bread luxury, vegetables prodigality, and clear water drunkenness; he who, beaten by his master, said to him grumbling a little, it is true, but without otherwise growing angry: “Let us wager that you have broken my leg?” and who won his wager.

— That Epictetus was a goose.

— Be it so; but he might well come back into fashion by only changing his name to that of Colbert.

— Bah! replied La Fontaine, that is impossible; never will you find Colbert in Epictetus.

— You are right, I shall find there... Coluber, at most.

— Ah! you are beaten, Conrart; you take refuge in wordplay. M. Arnault claims I have no logic... I have more than M. Nicole.

— Yes, retorted Conrart, you have logic, but you are a Jansenist.

This peroration was received with an immense burst of laughter. Little by little, the walkers had been attracted by the exclamations of the two wranglers around the bower beneath which they were holding forth. The whole discussion had been religiously listened to, and Fouquet himself, scarce containing himself, had given the example of moderation.

But the outcome of the scene threw him out of all measure; he exploded. Everyone exploded like him, and the two philosophers were saluted with unanimous congratulations.

However, La Fontaine was declared victor, by reason of his deep erudition and his irrefragable logic.

Conrart obtained the compensations due to an unhappy combatant; he was praised for the loyalty of his intentions and the purity of his conscience.

At the moment when this joy manifested itself by the liveliest demonstrations; at the moment when the ladies reproached the two adversaries for not having brought women into the system of epicurean happiness, Gourville was seen to come from the other end of the garden, approach Fouquet, who was devouring him with his eyes, and, by his mere presence, detach him from the group.

The superintendent kept upon his face the laugh and all the characters of unconcern; but scarcely out of sight, he quit the mask.

— Well! said he quickly, where is Pellisson? what is Pellisson doing?

— Pellisson is returning from Paris.

— Has he brought back the prisoners?

— He has not even been able to see the jailer of the prison.

— What! did he not say he came from me?

— He said it; but the jailer had this answer made: “If one comes from M. Fouquet’s part, one must have a letter from M. Fouquet.”

— Oh! cried the latter, if it is only a matter of giving him a letter...

— Never, replied Pellisson, who showed himself at the corner of the little wood, never, my lord... Go yourself and speak in your own name.

— Yes, you are right; I return home as if to work; leave the horses harnessed, Pellisson. Detain my friends, Gourville.

— One last counsel, my lord, answered the latter.

— Speak, Gourville.

— Go to the jailer only at the last moment; it is brave, but it is not adroit. Excuse me, M. Pellisson, if I am of a different opinion than you; but believe me, my lord, send words again to this jailer, he is a gentleman; but do not carry them yourself.

— I shall see, said Fouquet; besides, we have the whole night.

— Do not count too much on time, were that time double what we have, replied Pellisson; it is never a fault to arrive too early.

— Farewell, said the superintendent; come with me, Pellisson. Gourville, I commend my guests to you.

And he departed.

The epicureans did not perceive that the head of the school had disappeared; the violins played all night.

Chapter LIX — A Quarter of an Hour’s Delay

Fouquet, out of his house for the second time that day, felt less heavy and less troubled than one might have thought.

He turned toward Pellisson, who gravely meditated in his corner of the carriage some good argumentation against the outbursts of Colbert.

— My dear Pellisson, said Fouquet then, it is a great pity you are not a woman.

— I believe it is very fortunate, on the contrary, replied Pellisson; for, after all, my lord, I am excessively ugly.

— Pellisson! Pellisson! said the superintendent laughing, you repeat too often that you are ugly not to leave it believed that it gives you much pain.

— Much, indeed, my lord; there is no man more unhappy than I; I was handsome, the small pox has made me hideous; I am deprived of a great means of seduction; now, I am your first clerk or thereabouts; I have to do with your interests, and if, at this moment, I were a pretty woman, I would render you an important service.

— Which?

— I would go find the jailer of the palace, I would seduce him, for he is a gentleman and a gallant; then I would lead away our two prisoners.

— I still hope to be able to do it myself, though I am not a pretty woman, replied Fouquet.

— Granted, my lord; but you compromise yourself greatly.

— Oh! suddenly cried Fouquet, with one of those secret transports as the generous blood of youth or the memory of some sweet emotion possesses in the heart; oh! I know a woman who will play toward the lieutenant governor of the Conciergerie the part of which we have need.

— I, I know fifty, my lord, fifty trumpets who would instruct the universe in your generosity, your devotion to your friends, and consequently would ruin you sooner or later in ruining themselves.

— I do not speak of those women, Pellisson; I speak of a noble and beautiful creature who joins to the wit of her sex the valor and the coolness of ours; I speak of a woman beautiful enough that the walls of the prison should incline to salute her, of a woman discreet enough that none should suspect by whom she will have been sent.

— A treasure, said Pellisson; you would make there a famous gift to M. the governor of the Conciergerie. Plague! my lord, one would cut off his head, that may happen, but he would have had before dying a good fortune such as never man had encountered before him.

— And I add, said Fouquet, that the jailer of the palace would not have his head cut off, for he would receive from me my horses to flee, and five hundred thousand livres to live honorably in England; I add that the woman, my friend, would give him only the horses and the money. Let us go find this woman, Pellisson.

The superintendent extended his hand toward the cord of silk and gold placed inside his carriage. Pellisson stopped him.

— My lord, said he, you are going to lose in seeking this woman as much time as Columbus took to find the New World. Now, we have scarcely two hours to succeed; the jailer once abed, how penetrate to him without great outcries? the day once come, how hide our steps? Go, go, my lord, go yourself, and seek neither angel nor woman for this night.

— But, dear Pellisson, here we are before her door.

— Before the door of the angel.

— Eh yes!

— That is the hôtel of Mme de Bellière, that.

— Hush!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”