rried respectfully to his lips. The king wished to wait in the first
courtyard for the arrival of the carriages, nor had he long to wait, for
the roads had been put into excellent order by the superintendent, and
a stone would hardly have been found of the size of an egg the whole way
from Melun to Vaux; so that the carriages, rolling along as though on a
carpet, brought the ladies to Vaux, without jolting or fatigue, by eight
o'clock. They were received by Madame Fouquet, and at the moment they
made their appearance, a light as bright as day burst forth from every
quarter, trees, vases, and marble statues. This species of enchantment
lasted until their majesties had retired into the palace. All these
wonders and magical effects which the chronicler has heaped up, or
rather embalmed, in his recital, at the risk of rivaling the brain-born
scenes of romancers; these splendors whereby night seemed vanquished and
nature corrected, together with every delight and luxury combined for
the satisfaction of all the senses, as well as the imagination, Fouquet
did in real truth offer to his sovereign in that enchanting retreat of
which no monarch could at that time boast of possessing an equal. We do
not intend to describe the grand banquet, at which the royal guests
were present, nor the concerts, nor the fairy-like and more than magic
transformations and metamorphoses; it will be enough for our purpose
to depict the countenance the king assumed, which, from being gay, soon
wore a very gloomy, constrained, and irritated expression. He remembered
his own residence, royal though it was, and the mean and indifferent
style of luxury that prevailed there, which comprised but little more
than what was merely useful for the royal wants, without being his own
personal property. The large vases of the Louvre, the older furniture
and plate of Henry II., of Francis I., and of Louis XI., were but
historic monuments of earlier days; nothing but specimens of art, the
relics of his predecessors; while with Fouquet, the value of the article
was as much in the workmanship as in the article itself. Fouquet ate
from a gold service, which artists in his own employ had modeled and
cast for him alone. Fouquet drank wines of which the king of France did
not even know the name, and drank them out of goblets each more valuable
than the entire royal cellar.

What, too, was to be said of the apartments, the hangings, the pictures,
the servants and officers,