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  "It was then that the pendulum of fate began to swing back," commented Abbot Melani, "and the reversal was as sudden as it was violent."

  The young King Louis disliked the almost insolent ostentation of the fete. The heat and the flies, which were as anxious as the guests to take part in the celebrations, enervated both the Sovereign and his retinue, who were constrained by the conventions to make a punishing tour of the gardens of Vaux. Roasted by the sun, throats hemmed in by tight lace collars and lawn cravats pulled through the sixth buttonhole of their justaucorps, they were dying to be rid of their breeches and periwigs. It was with infinite relief that they saluted the cool of evening and at last sat down to dine.

  "And how was the dinner?" I asked, my appetite whetted, imagining that the cuisine must have been on the same level as the house and the ceremony.

  "The King did not like it," said the abbot gloomily.

  Above all, the young King did not like the array of thirty-six dozen solid gold dishes and the five hundred dozen silver ones on the tables. He did not like the fact that so very many guests had been invited, hundreds and hundreds of them, or that the file of carriages and pages and little coaches waiting outside the chateau should be so long and so gay, almost a second fete. He did not like the whispered comment of a courtier, uttered as though it were some gossip which he was entitled to share, to the effect that the festivities had cost more than twenty thousand livres.

  The King did not like the music which accompanied the banquet- cymbals and trumpets with the entrees, followed by violins-nor did he like the enormous sugar basin which was placed in front of him, and which hampered his movements.

  He did not like being received by one who, although not a crowned head, was demonstrating that he was more generous, more rich in fantasy, more skilled in astounding his guests and at same time winning them over, uniting hospitality and magnificence; and thus more splendid. In a word: more royal.

  After the miseries of the meal, Louis must needs endure those of the open-air spectacle which followed. While the banquet dragged on, Moliere in his turn, pacing nervously back and forth in the shelter of the great tents, cursed the Superintendent: Les Facheux, the comedy which he had prepared for the occasion, should have begun two hours earlier. Now the daylight was fading. In the end it was under the dark blue and green shield of the setting sun's last rays that he came on stage, while in the east the first stars dotted the heavens. There now followed yet another marvel: on the proscenium, there appeared a great clam, whose valves opened; whence a dancer, the sweetest of naiads, arose; and it was then as though all Nature spoke, and the surrounding trees and statues, moved by the subtlest of divine forces, gathered around the nymph to intone with her the sweetest of hymns: the eulogy of the King with which the comedy opened:

  Pour voir sur ces beaux lieux le plus grand roi du monde Mortels, je viens a vous de ma grotte profonde…*

  At the end of the sublime spectacle came the fireworks prepared by that Italian, Torelli, who, thanks to the magic of those explosions and colours which he alone knew how to stir with such consummate skill in the black, empty cauldron of heaven, was known in Paris as the Great Wizard.

  At two o'clock in the morning, or perhaps even later, the King signalled with a nod that the time had come to take his leave. Fouquet was dumbfounded to see that his visage was dark with anger; perhaps he understood, and he grew pale. He approached and, on bended knee, with a sweeping gesture of the hand, publicly offered him Vaux as a gift. *To behold in this fine place the greatest King in the world, / Mortals, I come to you from my deep cavern…

  Young Louis did not respond. He climbed into his carriage and cast a last glance at the chateau outlined in the dark: it was perhaps then (some swear to this) that there passed before his eyes an image from the Fronde, a troubled afternoon from his childhood, an image of which he no longer knew whether it was his own memory or what others had told him; an uncertain reminiscence of that night when, with the Queen Mother Anne and Cardinal Mazarin, he had escaped from Paris by stealth, his ears deafened by detonations and the clamour of the crowd, and in his nostrils, the sickening scent of blood mingling with the stink of the plebeians, ashamed to be King and despairing of ever returning to the city, his city. Or perhaps the King (some swear this, too) beheld the proud, arrogant jets of the fountains of Vaux, whose plashing he could still hear even as his carriage drove away, and suddenly realised that there was not a drop of water at Versailles.

  "And then what happened?" I asked with a small voice, moved and troubled by the abbot's narration.

  A few weeks passed, and the noose swiftly tightened around the Superintendent's neck. The King feigned the need to visit Nantes in order to make Brittany feel the weight of his authority and to impose those tributes which the Bretons had been slow to pay into the coffers of the realm. The Superintendent followed him without excessive anxiety, since Nantes was his own native city and many of his friends dwelled there.

  Before he left, however, some began to suggest that he should cast an eye over his shoulder; his most faithful friends warned discreetly that a plot was being hatched against him. The Superintendent requested an audience with the King and opened his heart to him: he begged his pardon if the Treasury was in difficulties, but he had until a few months earlier been at Mazarin's orders, as Louis well knew. The King was perfectly understanding and treated him with the utmost consideration, asking his advice on even the most insignificant matters and following his indications without batting an eyelid.

  Fouquet sensed, however, that something was wrong and he fell ill: he again began to suffer from those intermittent fevers which had struck him down following prolonged exposure to damp and cold when supervising the works at Vaux. More and more frequently he lost restoring sleep. He was seen once, weeping silently behind a door.

  At last he left in Louis' retinue and, at the end of August, arrived in Nantes. At once, however, fever forced him again to take to his bed. The King, who had taken up lodgings in a castle at the far end of town, even showed signs of concern and sent visitors to inquire after his health. Fouquet recovered, although with difficulty. At last, on 5th September, the Sovereign's birthday, he was summoned at seven o'clock in the morning. He worked with the King until eleven, after which the Sovereign unexpectedly kept him back to discuss certain matters. When at length Fouquet left the castle, his carriage was stopped by a company of musketeers. A second lieutenant of musketeers, a certain d'Artagnan, read him the arrest warrant. Fouquet was incredulous. "Sir, are you certain that it is I whom you are to arrest?" Without according him one moment more, d'Artagnan confiscated all the papers which he had with him, even those which he carried on his person. All these were sealed and he was placed in a convoy of royal carriages which took him to the Chateau of Angers. There he remained for three months.

  "And then?"

  "That was but the first step on his via dolorosa. A trial was prepared, which lasted three years."

  "Why so long?"

  The Superintendent defended himself with incomparable skill. But in the end he was doomed to succumb. The King had him imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pinerol, beyond the Alps.

  "And did he die there?"

  "From that place, no one leaves save at the King's pleasure."

  "But then it was the King's envy that destroyed Fouquet, because he could not tolerate his magnificence; and the fetes…"

  "I cannot permit you to speak like this," he interrupted. "The young King was, at that time, beginning to cast his eyes over the various aspects of the state, and those eyes were not indifferent: they were those of a master. Only then did he understand that he was King and that he had been born to reign. But it was already too late for him to call to account Mazarin, the now deceased master and godfather of his youthful years, who had refused him everything. There remained, however, Fouquet, the other Sun, whose fate was thus sealed."

  "So the King took his revenge. And what is more, he had not appreciated the solid gold dinne
r service…"

  "No one can speak of the King taking vengeance, for he is the most powerful of all the princes of Europe; and a fortiori no one can say that His Most Christian Majesty was envious of the Superintendent of the Royal Finances, when those finances belonged to the Sovereign and to no one else."

  He again fell silent, but he himself understood that his reply was not sufficient to satisfy my curiosity.

  "It is true," he added at last, staring at the last rays of daylight as they entered the chamber, "you would not know the truth unless I told you of the Serpent who caught the Squirrel in his coils."

  If the Superintendent was the Squirrel, in his footsteps there followed insidiously the Serpent. This slimy creature is known in Latin as coluber, and, strangely enough, that appellation pleased Monsieur de Colbert, who was convinced that the similarity with a reptile could (an idea as erroneous as it was revealing) best lend lustre and magnificence to his name.

  "And he truly did know how to conduct himself like a thousand- coiled serpent," said the abbot. "For it was the Serpent, whom the Squirrel so trusted, that was to thrust him into the abyss."

  In the beginning, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the son of a rich textile merchant, was lord of absolutely nothing.

  "Even if," sneered Atto, "he did lay claim to august forebears by having himself made a false tombstone which he claimed to be that of an ancestor from the thirteenth century, and before which he was even so mendacious as to kneel."

  "Poorly educated, fortune smiled on him early in the guise of a cousin of his father, with whose help he acquired a post at the Ministry of War. There, his talent for toadying enabled him to make the acquaintance of Richelieu and to tie himself to his chariot; then, after the Cardinal's death, to become secretary to Michel le Tellier, the powerful Secretary for War. In the meanwhile, Richelieu's place had been taken by an Italian Cardinal, Jules Mazarin, who was very close to the Queen Mother.

  "During that time, thanks to the money accruing to him through trade, he had succeeded in purchasing himself a minor title. And if he needed more money, the matter was resolved by his marriage to Marie Charron and above all by her dowry of one hundred thousand livres," added Abbot Melani with a further touch of spite. "But what made his true fortune," he resumed, "was the King's misfortune."

  In 1650 the Fronde, which had begun some two years earlier, reached its climax, and the Sovereign, the Queen and Cardinal Mazarin had to flee Paris.

  "The main problem for the state was certainly not the absence of the King, who was still a boy of twelve, nor that of the Queen Mother, who was above all the Cardinal's mistress, but that of the Cardinal himself."

  To whom were the affairs and secrets of state, which the Cardinal handled so skilfully, now to be entrusted? Colbert drew on all his qualities as a zealous functionary: he was to be found in the office at five o'clock in the morning, he kept the most absolute order and never undertook anything of importance on his own initiative. All that, while Fouquet worked at home, forging ideas in the white heat of his furnace-like mind, amidst the uttermost chaos of papers and documents.

  Thus the Cardinal, who in 1651 was beginning to feel threatened by Fouquet's enterprising ways, chose Colbert to look after his affairs. The more so, as the latter had shown himself to be highly proficient in the art of coded correspondence. Colbert served Mazarin not only until his triumphal re-entry to Paris with Louis and Anne of Austria at the end of the Fronde, but until the Cardinal's death.

  "He entrusted to him even the administration of his own property," said the abbot with a sigh which expressed all the bitterness of one who has seen so much trust placed in the wrong hands. "He taught him all that art which the Serpent would never have been able to cultivate on his own. The Serpent, instead of manifesting gratitude, ensured that he was well paid. And he obtained favours for himself and for his family," said he, rubbing his thumb against his index as a vulgar indication that he was speaking of money. "He succeeded in obtaining audiences with the Queen Mother almost every day. To look at, he was almost the exact opposite of Nicolas: squat and stocky, with a wide, marked face, a livid, yellowish complexion, long, sparse crow-black hair under his skull-cap, an avid expression, hooded eyelids, moustaches as fine as whiplashes over thin, unsmiling lips. His glacial, prickly and recondite character would have made him a man to be dreaded, were it not for his ridiculous ignorance, ill-camouflaged by those misplaced Latin quotations which he was wont to parrot, after learning them from young assistants especially appointed for the purpose. He became a figure of fun but was even less liked for it, so much so that Madame de Sevigne nicknamed him 'the North', the iciest and most disagreeable of the cardinal points."

  I did not ask Melani why there transpired from his tale such aversion for Colbert but not for Mazarin, to whom Colbert seemed so closely tied. I already knew the answer: had I not heard Devize, Cristofano and Stilone Priaso say that the castrato Atto Melani had, from his earliest youth, been helped and protected by the Cardinal?

  "Were Colbert and Superintendent Fouquet friends?" I hazarded instead.

  He hesitated an instant before replying.

  "They met at the time of the Fronde and at first they quite liked one another. During the troubles, Fouquet's behaviour was that of the best of subjects, and Colbert revered him, rendering him services when he became Procurator-General of Paris, an office which he combined with that of Superintendent of Finances. But this did not last: Colbert could not bear that Fouquet's star should shine so high and so bright. How could he forgive the Squirrel his celebrity, his fortune, his charm, his agility at work and his promptitude of mind, (while he, Colbert, must sweat so hard to bring forth good ideas), and finally, for his sumptuous library which he, being uneducated, would not even have known how to use? So the Serpent played Spider, and set his hand to the web."

  The fruits of Colbert's cunning were not long in coming. First, he instilled the poison of mistrust in Mazarin, then in the King. The realm was then emerging from decades of war and poverty and it was not difficult to falsify papers so as to accuse the Superintendent of accumulating wealth at the Sovereign's expense.

  "Was Fouquet very rich?"

  "He was not rich at all, but for reasons of state he needed to appear so: only thus could he continue to obtain more and more credit and thus satisfy Mazarin's pressing demands for money. He, the Cardinal, was exceedingly wealthy. Yet, when the King read his will a short time before he died, he found nothing to comment on therein."

  This was, however, not the real question for Colbert. When the Cardinal died, a decision had to be made as to who was to take his place. Fouquet had adorned the realm, had endowed it with glory, had given of himself day and night to satisfy the demands for more revenue: he rightly thought that the honour should be his.

  "But when the young King was asked who was to succeed Mazarin, he replied: "C'est moi. " There was no room for another prime actor alongside the Sovereign, and Fouquet was of too refined a material to play the subordinate. Colbert, on the other hand, was perfect in the part of bootlicker: he was consumed by the thirst for power, and even resembled the King too much in his manner of taking himself seriously; and that is precisely why he made not a single false move. Louis XIV fell headlong into the trap."

  "So it was Colbert's envy that led to the persecution of Fouquet."

  "That is quite clear. During the trial, the Serpent covered himself in infamy: he suborned the judges, he falsified documents, he threatened and extorted. To Fouquet there remained only La Fontaine's heroic defence, the peroration of Corneille, the courageous letters which his friends wrote to the King, the wholehearted support and friendship of noble ladies and, among the people, a hero's fame. Only Moliere kept cowardly silence."

  "And you?"

  "Well, I was not in Paris and there was little that I could do. Now, however, it would be better if you left me. I can hear the other guests making their way downstairs for dinner and I do not wish to catch our thief's attention: he must think that no one
is on guard."

  In the kitchen, seeing the late hour and the fact that the other guests had already been waiting for a long time, the best I could do was to serve up the remains of luncheon, with the addition of a few eggs and white endives. Truly, I was a mere prentice with no experience at the cooking stove: I could not compete with my master, and the guests were beginning to become aware of the fact.

  During the meal, I noticed nothing unusual. Brenozzi, with his rosy cherub's face, continued to pluck at the parsnip between his thighs, gravely observed by the physician, who with one hand tugged at the black goatee on his chin. Stilone Priaso, with his bristling black owl-like frown, was more than ever given over to nervous fidgeting: rubbing the bridge of his nose, cleaning his fingertips, shaking an arm as though he wanted to bring his sleeve down, pulling his shirt away from his collar and smoothing his temples with the palms of his hands. Devize meanwhile ate as he was wont to: so noisily as almost to drown out the unstoppable loquacity which Bedfordi directed in vain at Dulcibeni, who grew ever more impenetrable, and at Padre Robleda, who nodded vacantly in the Englishman's direction. Abbot Melani consumed his meal in almost complete silence, only rarely looking up. He rose twice, seized by a great fit of sneezing, and brought a lace handkerchief to his nose.

  When the meal was almost over and everyone was on the point of returning to their apartments, Stilone Priaso reminded the physician of his promise to enlighten us as to what hope we might entertain of escaping from the quarantine with our lives.

  Cristofano needed no asking: "You must, before all else, know that the prime cause of the pestilence's coming into the world is the divine will, and there exists no better remedy for it than prayer. For the rest, no one knows with any certainty how the distemper is propagated. I can affirm that many visitations certainly began with a sick man bringing the disease from an infected zone," he answered. "Here in Rome, for instance, during the last visitation, the infection was said to have arrived from Naples, borne by an unsuspecting fishmonger. But my father, who was Proveditor for Public Health in the great Plague of Prato in 1630 and who cared for many struck down by the pestilence, confided in me many years later that the nature of the disease is mysterious, nor had any of the ancient authors been able to penetrate its secret."