faithfully
served Cardinal Mazarin through the troubles of the Fronde. The latter
had kept him in power in spite of numerous accusations of malversation
and extravagance. Fouquet, however, was not certain of the cardinal's
good faith; he bought Belle-Ile to secure for himself a retreat, and
prepared, for his personal defence, a mad project which was destined
subsequently to be his ruin. From the commencement of his reign, the
counsels of Mazarin on his death-bed, the suggestions of Colbert, the
first observations made by the king himself, irrevocably ruined Fouquet
in the mind of the young monarch. Whilst the superintendent was dreaming
of the ministry and his friends calling him _the Future,_ when he was
preparing, in his castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte, an entertainment in the
king's honor at a cost of forty thousand crowns, Louis XIV., in concert
with Colbert, had resolved upon his ruin. The form of trial was decided
upon. The king did not want to have any trouble with the Parliament; and
Colbert suggested to Fouquet the idea of ridding himself of his office of
attorney-general. Achille de Harlay bought it for fourteen hundred
thousand livres; a million in ready money was remitted to the king for
his Majesty's urgent necessities; the superintendent was buying up
everybody, even the king.

[Illustration: Colbert----405]

On the 17th of August, 1661, the whole court thronged the gardens of
Vaux, designed by Le Netre; the king, whilst admiring the pictures of Le
Brun, the _Facheux_ of Moliere represented that day for the first time,
and the gold and silver plate which encumbered the tables, felt his
inward wrath redoubled. "Ah! Madame," he said to the queen his mother,
"shall not we make all these fellows disgorge?" He would have had the
superintendent arrested in the very midst of those festivities, the very
splendor of which was an accusation against him. Anne of Austria,
inclined in her heart to be indulgent towards Fouquet, restrained him.
"Such a deed would scarcely be to your honor, my son," she said;
"everybody can see that this poor man is ruining himself to give you good
cheer, and you would have him arrested in his own house!"

[Illustration: Vaux le Vicomte----405a]

"I put off the execution of my design," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires,
"which caused me incredible pain, for I saw that during that time he was
practising new devices to rob me. You can imagine that at the age I then
was it required