appearance of beauty or stature
had been taken up by its roots and transplanted to the park. Fouquet
could well afford to purchase trees to ornament his park, since he had
bought up three villages and their appurtenances (to use a legal word)
to increase its extent. M. de Scudery said of this palace, that, for the
purpose of keeping the grounds and gardens well watered, M. Fouquet had
divided a river into a thousand fountains, and gathered the waters of a
thousand fountains into torrents. This same Monsieur de Scudery said a
great many other things in his "Clelie," about this palace of Valterre,
the charms of which he describes most minutely. We should be far wiser
to send our curious readers to Vaux to judge for themselves, than to
refer them to "Clelie;" and yet there are as many leagues from Paris to
Vaux, as there are volumes of the "Clelie."

This magnificent palace had been got ready for the reception of the
greatest reigning sovereign of the time. M. Fouquet's friends had
transported thither, some their actors and their dresses, others their
troops of sculptors and artists; not forgetting others with their
ready-mended pens,--floods of impromptus were contemplated. The
cascades, somewhat rebellious nymphs though they were, poured forth
their waters brighter and clearer than crystal: they scattered over the
bronze triton and nereids their waves of foam, which glistened like fire
in the rays of the sun. An army of servants were hurrying to and fro in
squadrons in the courtyard and corridors; while Fouquet, who had
only that morning arrived, walked all through the palace with a calm,
observant glance, in order to give his last orders, after his intendants
had inspected everything.

It was, as we have said, the 15th of August. The sun poured down its
burning rays upon the heathen deities of marble and bronze: it raised
the temperature of the water in the conch shells, and ripened, on the
walls, those magnificent peaches, of which the king, fifty years later,
spoke so regretfully, when, at Marly, on an occasion of a scarcity of
the finer sorts of peaches being complained of, in the beautiful gardens
there--gardens which had cost France double the amount that had been
expended on Vaux--the _great king_ observed to some one: "You are far
too young to have eaten any of M. Fouquet's peaches."

Oh, fame! Oh, blazon of renown! Oh, glory of this earth! That very man
whose judgment was so sound and accurate where merit was