CHAPTER VII

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Reign of Louis XIV.—Regency of Anne of Austria—Inauspicious circumstances under which she assumed the regency—George de Casselny—The count de Montresor—The marquis de Fontrailles—Marshal de Rantzau—The count de Rieux—Bernard Guyard—Broussel, governor of the Bastile—The duchess of Montpensier orders the cannon of the Bastile to be fired on the king’s army—Conclusion of the war of the Fronde—Surrender of the Bastile—Despotism of Louis XIV.—Slavishness of the nobles—John Herauld Gourville—The count de Guiche—Nicholas Fouquet—Paul Pellisson-Fontainier—Charles St. Evremond—Simon Morin—The Marquis de Vardes—Count Bussy Rabutin—Saci le Maistre—The duke of Lauzun—Marquis of Cavoie—The chevalier de Rohan—A nameless prisoner—Charles D’Assoucy—Miscellaneous prisoners.

The regency of Anne of Austria commenced under auspices which were not of the most favourable kind. For a long series of years she had been persecuted by a tyrant minister, and discredited and humiliated, in every possible manner, by an unfeeling husband. It would be a tedious task to enumerate all the slights and injuries to which she was exposed; a specimen may suffice. To avoid the disgrace of being sent back to Spain, she had been compelled to confess before the Council a fault which she everywhere else disavowed, and of which it is improbable that she was guilty; on her bringing Louis XIV. into the world, she had suffered a stinging insult from her consort, who had pertinaciously refused to give her the embrace which was customary on such occasions—an insult which affected her so deeply that her life was endangered; when he was on the brink of the grave, and she earnestly sought to remove his prejudices against her, he coldly replied to Chavigni, who was pleading her cause, “In my situation I must forgive, but I am not obliged to believe her;” and, in settling the regency, he would fain have excluded from it the object of his hatred, but, that being impracticable, he took care to shackle her authority in such a way as would have left her scarcely more than the mere title of regent. Her having been childless for twenty-two years, and been treated in child-bed with such marked aversion by him, were also circumstances which were well calculated to throw dangerous doubts on the legitimacy of the infant sovereign. Yet Anne of Austria triumphed over all this, procured the setting aside of her deceased husband’s arrangements, obtained unlimited power, and for five years governed France without opposition, and with a considerable enhancement of its military fame. It was not till the troubles of the Fronde broke out that she encountered unpopularity and resistance.

During the peaceable period of the queen mother’s government, the Bastile seems to have had but few inmates, at least few whom history has deemed worthy of being recorded; and during the war of the Fronde, and even before, the castle of Vincennes was the prison which received the captives of the highest class, such as the duke of Beaufort, the prince of Condé, and cardinal de Retz.

The first prisoner in the Bastile, of whom any notice occurs during the regency, was a Spanish agent, named George de Casselny. Philip IV. of Spain had recently lost his consort Elizabeth, and it appears that Casselny was commissioned to make overtures for the monarch’s marriage with that singular female the duchess of Montpensier, a woman who had more manly qualities than her vacillating father, the duke of Orleans. “There was a certain Spaniard, named George de Casselny (says the duchess, in her memoirs), who had been made prisoner in Catalonia, and was on his parole, he went to M. de Surgis, at Orleans, to request that he would procure for him an interview with Monsieur (the duke of Orleans), who put him off till he could see him at Paris. In consequence of this delay, the Spaniard’s intention got wind, and he was put into the Bastile, and the cardinal (Mazarin), told Monsieur that it was a man who wanted to divert him from the service of the king by this proposal of marriage; which Monsieur believed and still believes. Many persons, however, affirm, that it was not a pretext, and that this gentleman had orders to make solid and sincere propositions for the marriage of his king with me, which he had thought it proper to communicate to Monsieur, before he made them known to the court. Nevertheless, this poor creature was kept a prisoner for several years, and when he was set at liberty, he was sent out of the kingdom under a guard.”

The next prisoner was one who, for a long period, was closely connected with Monsieur, the father of the duchess. Claude de Bourdeille, count de Montresor, was born about 1608, and was a grand-nephew of that pleasant but unscrupulous writer Brantome, who bequeathed to him his mansion of Richemont. Montresor was early admitted into the train of the duke of Orleans, and at length became his confidential friend, whom he consulted on all occasions. He availed himself of his influence to keep at a distance from the duke all the friends of Richelieu, to incite him still more against that minister, and to link him in confederacy with the count of Soissons. In 1636, he went much further. In conjunction with Saint Ibal and others, he formed a plan for assassinating the cardinal, and to this plan the duke and the count gave their assent. The murder was to be perpetrated as the minister was leaving the council chamber; Saint Ibal was behind him, ready to strike the blow, and waited only for an affirmative sign from the duke; but at this critical moment, either the courage of Orleans gave way, or his conscience smote him, for he turned away his head, and hurried from the spot. The cardinal consequently escaped.

While Montresor was subsequently busy in Guyenne, labouring to induce the duke of Epernon and his son to take up arms for Monsieur, he was suddenly abandoned by his employer, who made his own peace with Richelieu. Montresor now retired to his estate, where, for more than five years, he lived in the utmost privacy. He had, however, secret interviews with Monsieur, and, at his solicitation, he engaged in the conspiracy of Cinq Mars. Again he was deserted by him, and more disgracefully than in the first instance; for the dishonourable prince did not scruple to disavow the proceedings of his agent, and to aver that Cinq Mars and Montresor were the persons who had misled him. Montresor would have ascended the scaffold with Cinq Mars and de Thou, had he not prudently taken refuge in England, whence he did not return till the cardinal was no more.

When the government devolved on Anne of Austria, the enemies of Richelieu had reason to hope that they would become the dominant party. The haughty bearing which this hope led them to assume, obtained for them the appellation of “The Cabal of the Importants.” They soon, however, contrived to disgust the queen-regent; and before twelve months had elapsed, Montresor, Chateauneuf, the duchess of Chevreuse, and several others of the faction, were ordered to quit the court. Montresor retired for a while to Holland. Late in 1645, he visited Paris, and, soon after, two letters to him, from the exiled duchess de Chevreuse, having been intercepted, Mazarin sent him to the Bastile. The prisoner was removed to Vincennes, where he was rigorously treated for fourteen months. At length, moved by the solicitations of Montresor’s relatives, the cardinal set him at liberty, and even offered him his friendship. Montresor, however, chose rather to league himself with Mazarin’s bitterest foe, the celebrated Coadjutor, afterwards the cardinal de Retz, and he took an active part in the war of the Fronde. In 1653 he was reconciled to the court, and from that time till his decease, which occurred in 1663, he led a peaceable life. Though ambition and a propensity to political intrigue could lead him to dip his hands in blood, Montresor is said to have had many social qualities, to have been generous, sincere, and a firm and ardent friend. His “Memoirs” form a valuable contribution to the history of his times.

Among the agents of the duke of Orleans was Louis d’Astarac, marquis of Fontrailles, a descendant from an ancient Armagnac family. When the conspiracy of Cinq Mars was formed, Fontrailles was dispatched to Spain, to negociate with the Spanish cabinet a treaty, for assistance to the conspirators. By this treaty, Spain engaged to furnish the duke of Orleans with 12,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, 400,000 crowns to raise levies in France; and a monthly allowance of 12,000 crowns for his private expenses. But, before any step could be taken to carry the treaty into effect, the conspiracy was rendered abortive. Fontrailles, against whom an order of arrest had been issued, was fortunate enough to escape to England. The death of the cardinal and of his vassal sovereign, which took place soon after, enabled the proscribed fugitive to return to France. He became one of the Cabal of the Importants, and shared in the downfall of that faction. In the summer of 1647, he was sent to the Bastile; for what fault he was imprisoned I know not, or when he was released. Guy Patin intimates that the charge was not of a capital nature. Fontrailles died in 1677.

The next who passes before us is a brave and injured soldier. Count Josias de Rantzau was descended from an ancient family of Holstein, thirty-two members of which are said to have greatly distinguished themselves. The fidelity of this family to its sovereigns was so remarkable, that the expression “As faithful as a Rantzau to his king,” passed into a proverb. Josias was born in 1610, and seems first to have borne arms in the Swedish service; he commanded a body of Swedes at the siege of Andernach, headed the Swedish left wing at the combat of Pakenau, and was present at the siege of Brisac. In 1635, he accompanied the celebrated Oxenstiern into France, where Louis XIII. appointed him a major-general, and colonel of two regiments. The subsequent career of Rantzau was often successful, and was never stained with disgrace. He effectually covered the retreat of the French after the raising of the siege of Dole, victoriously defended St. Jean de Lône against Galas, bore a conspicuous part in the subsequent campaigns in Flanders and Germany, and was twice maimed at the siege of Arras, and displayed signal valour at the siege of Aire. Fortune deserted him at the combat of Honnecourt and the battle of Dutlingen, in 1642 and 1643, and in both instances he was taken prisoner. She, however, soon became favourable to him. Between 1645 and 1649, he made himself master of Gravelines, Dixmude, Lens, and all the maritime towns of Flanders. To reward his services he received the government of Gravelines and Dunkirk, and was raised to the rank of marshal. Mazarin, nevertheless, suspected him of being connected with his enemies, and in February, 1649, the marshal was conveyed to the Bastile, where he remained for eleven months. His innocence being at length ascertained, he was set at liberty; but a dropsy, which he had contracted in his confinement, proved fatal to him in the course of a few months. He died in September 1650. Rantzau was possessed of brilliant valour, much talent and military skill, and spoke all the principal languages of Europe; his only defect was an inordinate love of wine. Like our Nelson, but even in a greater degree, his person had been severely mutilated; he had lost an ear, an eye, a leg, and an arm. To this fact the following epitaph alludes:

“But half of great Rantzau this tomb contains, The other half in battle fields remains; His limbs and fame he widely spread around, And still, though mangled, conqueror was he found: His blood a hundred victories did acquire, And nothing but his heart by Mars was left entire!”

A brawl brought to the Bastile, in 1652, the count de Rieux, a son of the duke of Elbœuf. A dispute with the prince of Tarentum, as to precedence, gave rise to it. The prince of Condé, the great Condé, was the other actor. “The prince of Condé,” says the duchess of Montpensier, “took the part of the prince of Tarentum, who is nearly related to him, against the count de Rieux, and one day he got heated in the dispute; he imagined that the count de Rieux had pushed him, which obliged him to return it by a box on the ear; the count de Rieux then gave him a blow. The prince, who had no sword, made a dart at that of the baron de Migenne, who was present. M. de Rohan, who was also there, put himself between them, and got out the count de Rieux, whom his royal highness (the duke of Orleans) sent to the Bastile, for having dared to fail in respect. Many persons say, that the prince struck first; if he did so, he must have taken some gesture of the count for an insult, for though he is very passionate, he is not so much so as to do an action of this kind. I saw him after dinner, and he said, ‘You see a man who has been beaten for the first time in his life.’ The count de Rieux remained in the Bastile till the arrival of M. de Lorraine, who set him free, and blamed him very much.” It must have been a ludicrous sight, to see a prince of the blood, the victor of Rocroi, Fribourg, Nordlingen, and Lens, at fisticuffs amidst a ring of courtiers, in the palace of the duke of Orleans! “This was not the way,” remarks Voltaire, “to regain the hearts of the Parisians.”

The leaders of the Frondeur faction were by no means tolerant of censure, even when it came from clerical lips. Bernard Guyard, a dominican, had reason to repent his having too honestly indulged in it. Guyard, who was born in 1601, at Craon, in Anjou, took the religious habit, and was admitted, in 1645, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and became popular for his pulpit eloquence, so much so that Anne of Austria appointed him her preacher, and the duchess of Orleans chose him as her confessor. While the war of the Fronde was being carried on—a war of which it has wittily and truly been said, that it ought to be recorded in burlesque verse—Guyard ventured to reprobate, in the pulpit, the conduct of those ambitious and unprincipled personages by whom its flames had been lighted up. The punishment of his offence followed close upon the commission of it. As he was leaving the church, he was arrested, and conveyed to the Bastile, where he continued for some months. He died in 1674, at which period he was theological professor in the convent of St. James. All his works have long since ceased to attract notice, with the exception, perhaps, of “The Fatality of St. Cloud,” which is a paradoxical attempt to prove that not Clement, nor a Dominican, but a leaguer, disguised as a monk, was the murderer of Henry III.

During the war of the Fronde, the Bastile, for a short time, and for the last, was again a fortress as well as a prison; but in the latter character its services were only once required. When, in 1649, the queen-regent suddenly quitted Paris with the young king, she imprudently neglected to throw into the Bastile a garrison. It was guarded by only twenty-two soldiers, who had neither ammunition nor provisions. Du Tremblai, the governor, was therefore obliged to yield. The custody of the fortress was committed to Peter Broussel, for whose deliverance the Parisians had risen in arms on the day of the Barricades, and from whom he had received the flattering appellations of the father and the protector of the people. As Broussel was an aged man, his son, La Louvière, was joined with him in the government. In 1652, Broussel was appointed provost of the merchants, and the keeping of the Bastile remained with La Louvière alone.

The two pieces of cannon which, in 1649, the Parisians fired at the Bastile to hasten its submission, would have been the only artillery employed, either against it or by it, had not the daring of a woman brought its guns into action. The duchess of Montpensier, who was called Mademoiselle, had recently distinguished herself by her spirited conduct at Orleans. Being sent by her father to that city, to encourage his

## partisans, she was at first refused admittance, but she forced her way

in, through a hole in a gate, roused the people in her favour, and succeeded in preventing the king’s troops from occupying that important post. She was now at Paris, and soon found a fresh opportunity to display her courage and presence of mind. On the second of July, 1652, the sanguinary battle of the suburb of St. Anthony was raging; the army of the prince of Condé, overborne by the far superior numbers which Turenne led against him, could barely hold its ground; the prince had in vain entreated for its admission at various gates; the enemy, reinforced, was preparing for a new attack on its front and flanks; and, pent in between the king’s troops and the city walls, its destruction seemed to be inevitable. At this perilous moment it was saved by the duchess of Montpensier. First from her father, and next from the municipal authorities sitting at the Town Hall, she in a manner extorted an order for opening the gate of St. Anthony to the nearly overwhelmed battalions of Condé. She then ascended to the summit of the Bastile, and directed the cannon to be charged, removed from the city side, and pointed to the opposite quarter. They were opened upon the royalists, who pressed on the retreating Condéans, and their commanding fire compelled the pursuers to fall back beyond their range. Mademoiselle was at that time cherishing a hope that she should be united to her cousin the king, or at least to some crowned head; and it was with allusion to this circumstance that, when he heard she had ordered the firing, Mazarin coolly remarked, “Those cannon shots have killed her husband.”

Four months did not pass away before, tired of wasting their lives and properties in a contest which could benefit only the privileged classes, the Parisians invited the king to return to his capital. The monarch entered it on the 21st of October, 1652. The faction of the Fronde was annihilated, and its leaders were scattered in all directions; their vanity, selfishness, and utter want of principle and patriotism, deserved such a fate. Had they been animated by noble motives, had they possessed even a moderate share of wisdom and virtue, they might have laid the groundwork of a stable and beneficent government, and thereby saved their country from innumerable immediate and remote evils. But

“The sensual and the base rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion!”

As soon as the king had entered Paris, the Bastile was summoned, and La Louvière was informed that, if he were rash enough to stand a siege, the gibbet would be his portion. Too prudent to run so useless and formidable a risk, he readily gave up his charge. From the moment when Mademoiselle directed its fire upon the king’s troops, a hundred and thirty-seven years elapsed before the Bastile again heard the roar of artillery fired in anger.

One of the first acts of Louis XIV. was to hold a bed of justice, in which he ordered the registration of an edict to abridge the power of the parliament. By this edict, the parliament was strictly prohibited from deliberating on state and financial affairs, and instituting any proceedings whatever against the ministers whom he might be pleased to employ. Louis was then only a boy of fourteen, and this act was of course the work of Mazarin; but, young as he was, the monarch was already thoroughly imbued with the principles on which it was framed. Three years afterwards he gave a striking proof of this. The parliament having ventured to manifest a faint opposition to some of his many oppressive fiscal edicts, he took a step which showed how deeply despotism was ingrained into his character. He was engaged in the chase, at Vincennes, when information was brought to him that his will was disputed. Hurrying back to Paris, he entered the parliament chamber, the sanctuary of justice, booted, spurred, whip in hand, and thus addressed the assembly of venerable magistrates: “Sirs, everybody knows the calamities which the meetings of the parliament have produced. I will henceforth prevent those meetings. I order you, therefore, to desist from those which you have begun, with respect to the edicts which, in my late bed of justice, I directed to be registered. You, Mr. First President, I forbid to allow of these assemblies; and I forbid every one of you to demand them.” Having thus spoken he departed, leaving his hearers in astonishment. He was then a beardless youth, who had not reached his seventeenth year. The members of the parliament might well have called to mind the words of Scripture—“If these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in a dry?” Six years afterwards Mazarin died, and thenceforth Louis had no prime minister; he became, in every sense of the word, the head of the government, the autocrat of France.

A new era, that of abject submission to the monarch, and almost idolatrous worship of his person and greatness, commenced when the war of the Fronde was over. The slaves had had their Saturnalia, and they sank back—we may almost say rushed back—into a slavery more degrading than that from which they had for a moment emerged. There were no longer any Epernons, ruling their provinces as they pleased, and bearding the sovereign; the feudal pride was extinct. This would have been a happy circumstance for France, had the nobles, in losing their pride, preserved their dignity. But from one extreme they passed to the other. The power which they had lost, which was, in fact, but the power of doing mischief, they might have replaced by a power more honourable and durable, that which would have arisen from promoting the welfare and happiness of those whom they called their vassals. But their extensive domains were looked on only as mines, from which the last grain of gold was to be extracted, that they might squander it in the capital. It seemed as though it were impossible for them to exist out of the king’s presence; and when they were excluded from it, they lamented and whined in a manner which excites at once wonder and contempt. The consequences of this general prostration were slowly, but surely and fatally, unfolded.

Let us revert to the captives of the Bastile. The destiny of John Herauld Gourville, who was born in 1625, was a singular one; he not only raised himself from a humble state to be the companion and friend of princes, but was appointed to be one of the representatives of his sovereign while in exile, and while a Parisian court of justice was hanging him in effigy as a convicted runaway peculator. After having received a scanty education, he was placed in an attorney’s office by his widowed mother. Having by his cleverness fortunately attracted the notice of the duke de la Rochefaucault, the author of the “Maxims,” that nobleman made him his secretary. During the war of the Fronde, Gourville displayed such talent and activity, that he acquired the warm friendship of his employer and the prince of Condé. His gratitude engaged him in many desperate adventures for their service, and the mode in which he raised the supplies for them was sometimes not much unlike that of a bandit; the moral code of the Frondeurs was not remarkable for its strictness. When Rochefaucault became weary of the inglorious contest in which he was an actor, Gourville negotiated the duke’s peace with the court; and in doing this he manifested so much ability and prudence, that Mazarin despatched him to Bordeaux, to treat with the prince of Conti. In this mission he was successful; and he was rewarded by being appointed commissary-general of the French army in Catalonia. At the close of the campaign of 1655, he returned to Paris, and Mazarin, who suspected that he came to intrigue for the prince of Conti, shut him up in the Bastile. In his Memoirs, Gourville candidly confesses that his six months’ imprisonment was insufferably wearisome, and that he could think of little else than how he should put an end to it. He was maturing a plan of escape, in concert with six other prisoners, when the cardinal relented, took him again into favour, and even prevailed on Fouquet to give him the lucrative place of receiver-general of the province of Guienne. In this office Gourville amassed an immense fortune, which he increased by his extraordinary good luck at play. When Fouquet fell, the whole of his subalterns were involved in his fall; but, far from deserting him in his calamity, Gourville nobly furnished 100,000 livres to assist in gaining over some of his enemies, and a still larger sum for the establishment of his son, the count de Vaux. He soon, however, became himself an object of impeachment, on a charge of peculation, and he deemed it prudent to quit France. At that moment there was certainly no chance of his obtaining a fair trial. After having visited England and Holland, he settled at Brussels. Though he was compelled to live in a foreign country, Gourville still preserved a strong affection for his native land, and he proved it, by influencing the princes of Brunswick and Hanover in favour of France. For this patriotic conduct Louis XIV. nominated him his plenipotentiary at the court of Brunswick; while at the same moment his enemies at Paris obtained against him a degrading sentence from his judges! That not a love of justice, but a desire to extort money from him, gave rise to his being prosecuted, is made evident by Colbert having offered a pardon, at the price of 800,000 livres, which he afterwards reduced to 600,000. Gourville, however, either could not or would not purchase this costly commodity. He was subsequently employed as a diplomatist in Spain, and again in Germany; and at length in 1681, a free pardon was granted to him. From that time he led a tranquil life in the French capital, in habits of friendship with, and much beloved by, the most eminent men of genius and rank. At one period there was an intention of making him the successor of Colbert, as comptroller-general of the finances, an office for which he was well qualified; but he had ceased to be ambitious of dangerous honours, and was happy to avoid them. The length of time which his servants continued in his service, and the cordial manner in which he speaks of them, afford strong proofs of his kind-heartedness: never did a selfish or harsh master long retain a domestic. Haughtiness to inferiors is the miserable make-shift of a man who has no true dignity to support his pretensions. Gourville mentions four persons who had been with him for fifteen, seventeen, twenty-five, and thirty-two years. He died in 1703, at the age of seventy-eight. His Memoirs, which he composed in four months, to amuse himself while he was confined by a disease in the leg, are deservedly praised by Madame de Sévigné and Voltaire.

The next who appears on the scene was a noble, whom Madame de Sévigné characterizes as “a hero of romance, who does not resemble the rest of mankind.” This is somewhat exaggerated, but not wholly untrue. Armand de Grammont, Count de Guiche, who was born in 1638, was a proficient in all manly exercises, splendid in dress and equipage, spirited, witty, well educated, handsome in person, and cultivated in mind. His valour was early proved, at the sieges of Landrecy, Valenciennes, and Dunkirk. In a voluptuous court, and with his attractive qualities, it is not wonderful that Guiche was engaged in amorous intrigues. His desire of conquest aimed so high—Henrietta Stuart, Duchess of Orleans, was its great object—that Louis XIV. thrice exiled him; and it was probably on this account that he became an inmate of the Bastile, from which prison he was released in the autumn of 1660. Having a third time offended, he was sent to Poland, where he distinguished himself in the war against the Turks. At the end of two years, he was recalled; but it was not long before he again fell into disgrace, by participating in the despicable conduct of the Marquis de Vardes, which will be described in the sketch of that courtier’s career. Guiche was banished to Holland. Too active to remain unemployed, he served in the campaign against the Bishop of Munster, and on board the Dutch squadron, in the sea-fight with the English, off the Texel. He was allowed to return to France in 1669, but was not re-admitted at court till two years afterwards. It was he who, in 1672, led the way at the celebrated passage of the Rhine, near Tollhuis; an exploit which is extravagantly lauded by Boileau. He died at Creutznach, in Germany, in 1673; excessive chagrin, occasioned by Montecuculi having defeated him, was the cause of his death. Guiche is the author of a volume of Memoirs concerning the United Provinces.

The first important act of Louis XIV., after his taking the administration of public affairs into his own hands, was the disgracing and ruining Fouquet, the superintendant of the finances. Nicholas Fouquet, a son of Viscount de Vaux, was born at Paris, in 1615, and was educated for the legal profession. At twenty he was master of requests, and at thirty-five he filled the very considerable office of attorney-general to the parliament of Paris. It would have been happy for him had he steadily pursued his career in the magistracy, instead of deviating into a path that was beset with dangers. During the troubles of the Fronde he was unalterably faithful to the queen-mother, and in gratitude for this she raised him, in 1652, to the post of superintendant. It was a fatal boon.

By all who were connected with it, the French treasury seems, in those days, to have been considered as a mine which they were privileged to work for their own benefit. Mazarin had recently been a wholesale plunderer of it; and there can be little doubt that Fouquet was a peculator to a vast extent. Yet the superintendant had one merit, which was wanting in other depredators—though he took, he likewise gave; for at one period, when money ran short, he mortgaged his property and his wife’s, and borrowed on his own bills, to supply the necessities of the state.

The fatal failing of Fouquet was his magnificent extravagance. He had a taste for splendour and lavish expenditure, which might have qualified him for an oriental sovereign. On his estate at Vaux he built a mansion, or rather a palace, which threw into the shade the country residences of the French monarch—for Versailles was not then in existence. Whole hamlets were levelled to the ground to afford space for its gardens. The building was sumptuously decorated, and in every part of it was painted his device, a squirrel, with the ambitious motto “_Quo non ascendam?_” Whither shall I not rise? It is a curious circumstance, that the squirrel was represented as being pursued by a snake, which was the arms of Colbert, the bitter enemy of Fouquet. The edifice cost eighteen millions of livres; a sum equivalent to three times as much at the present day.

The largesses of the superintendant, which in many cases deserve the name of bribes, were immense. Great numbers of the courtiers did not blush to become his pensioners. On extraordinary occasions they also received presents from him. Each of the nobles, who was invited with Louis XIV. to the grand entertainment at Vaux, found in his bed-chamber a purse filled with gold; which, says a sarcastic writer, “the nobles did not forget to take away.” There was another abundant source of expense, which arose out of his licentious passions; he lavished immense sums in purchasing the venal charms of the French ladies of distinction, and was eminently successful in finding sellers. “There were few at court,” says Madame de Motteville, “who did not sacrifice to the golden calf.” Policy, no doubt, had a share in prompting his liberality to the courtiers; and, perhaps, it sometimes was mingled with lust and vanity in his gifts to frail females of rank; but we may attribute to a purer motive the kindness and courtesy which he manifested to persons of talent. The result was quite natural; the great deserted him in his hour of danger and disgrace, the people of talent clung with more tenacity than ever to their fallen benefactor and friend.

Mazarin, when on his death-bed, is said to have awakened the fears and suspicions of Louis against Fouquet; and, to deepen the impression which he had made, he left behind him two deadly foes of the superintendant. These foes were Le Tellier and Colbert, of whom the latter was the most inveterate and the most dangerous. When Louis formed the resolution of being his own prime minister, Fouquet, who evidently wished to succeed to the power of Richelieu and Mazarin, essayed to turn the monarch from his purpose, by daily heaping on him a mass of dry, intricate, and erroneous financial statements. He failed in his attempt. These papers the king every evening examined, with the secret assistance of Colbert, whose acuteness and practised skill instantly unravelled their artful tangles, and exposed their errors.

It was not alone the squandering of the royal treasure that irritated Louis; though that would have been a sufficiently exciting cause to a man whose own lavish habits required large supplies. He asserted, and might perhaps believe, that the offender aspired to sovereignty. In a long conversation with the president Lamoignon, he said, “Fouquet wished to make himself duke of Britanny, and king of the neighbouring isles; he won over every body by his profusion: there was not a single soul in whom I could put confidence.” So much was he impressed with this idea, that he repeated it over and over to the president. For this absurd fear there was no other ground than that the superintendant had purchased and fortified Belleisle; a measure which was prompted by patriotic motives, it being his design to make that island an emporium of commerce. There is said to have been another and a not less powerful cause for the monarch’s hatred of Fouquet; the superintendant had been imprudent enough to attempt to include La Vallière in the long catalogue of his mistresses, and this was an offence not to be pardoned by the proudest and vainest of kings.

As soon as the ruin of Fouquet was determined upon, the most profound dissimulation was used by the king and Colbert, to prevent him from suspecting their purpose. All his measures seemed to give perfect satisfaction; unlimited trust was apparently placed in him; and hints were thrown out, that the coveted post of prime minister was within his reach. The hints had a further purpose than that of blinding him to the peril in which he stood; they were meant to rob him of a shield against injustice. By virtue of his office, as attorney-general to the parliament, he had the privilege of being tried only by the assembled chambers; but, as it was intended that his trial should take place before a packed tribunal, it was necessary to divest him of the privilege. For this reason it was insinuated, that the post of attorney-general stood in the way of his being raised to the premiership, and also of his obtaining the blue riband. Fouquet fell into the snare, and sold his office for 1,400,000 livres, which sum, with a blind generosity, he instantly lent to the Exchequer. To confirm Fouquet’s delusion, Louis graced with his presence a gorgeous festival which was held at Vaux. But the splendour of the place, the excessive magnificence of the entertainment, and the presumptuousness of the superintendant’s motto, roused his anger to such a pitch, that, had not the queen-mother remonstrated, he would have committed the unkingly act of arresting Fouquet on the spot.

When the courage inspired by passion had evaporated, Louis delayed yet awhile to effect his purpose, till he had guarded in all possible ways against the danger which was to be apprehended from the formidable conspirator. Had Fouquet been capable of calling up legions from the earth by the stamp of his foot, more precautions could not have been taken. The blow was struck at last. Louis was at Nantes, to which city he had removed under the idea that it would be easier to accomplish the arrest there than at Paris. Thither he was followed by Fouquet. Some of the superintendant’s friends warned him of the peril which hung over him, but he gave no credence to their tidings. On the 5th of September, 1661, as he was leaving the council, he was arrested, and was conveyed without delay to the castle of Angers. Messengers were immediately despatched to Paris, to seize his papers, and to order the arrest of many of his

## partisans.

Fouquet was bandied about from prison to prison, from Angers to Amboise, Moret, and Vincennes, till he was finally lodged in the Bastile. He bore his misfortune with an unshaken mind. His enemies, meanwhile, were proceeding with the most malignant activity, and with a perfect contempt of justice and decorum. It was the common talk of Paris, that Colbert would be satisfied with nothing less than the execution of the superintendant. He was even plainly charged by Fouquet with having fraudulently made in his papers a multitude of alterations. Le Tellier, though less openly violent than Colbert, was equally hostile. For the trial of the prisoner twenty-two commissioners were picked out from the French parliaments; nearly all—if not all—of them were notoriously inimical to him, or connected with persons who were known to be so, and at their head was the chancellor Seguier, one of his most deadly enemies.

One benefit the fallen minister derived from this injustice, and from the protracted trial which ensued; public opinion, which at first had been adverse to him, gradually grew more and more favourable. Fouquet the peculator, brought to judgment before an honest and impartial tribunal, would have excited no sympathy; Fouquet, persecuted by his rivals for power, and destined to be legally assassinated, could not fail to excite a warm interest in the mind of every one who was not destitute of honourable feelings.

Those who were in habits of intimacy with Fouquet needed no other stimulus than the benefits or the winning courtesies, which they had experienced from him. He had on his side all who loved or practised literature, all who could be captivated by prepossessing manners and boundless generosity. “Never,” says Voltaire, “did a placeman have more personal friends, never was a persecuted man better served in his misfortunes.” Many men of letters wielded the pen in his behalf, with a courage which deserves no small praise, when we consider that the Bastile was staring them in the face. Pelisson in his dungeon tasked all his powers to defend his ruined master; La Fontaine, in a touching elegy, vainly strove to awake the clemency of Louis; Loret eulogized Fouquet in his “Mercure Burlesque,” and was punished by the loss of his pension; Hesnault, the translator of Lucretius, attacked Colbert in the bitterest and boldest of sonnets; and a crowd of other assailants showered epigrams and lampoons on the vindictive minister. The authors were, in general, lucky enough to find impunity; but numbers of newswriters, printers, and hawkers, were seized, all of whom were imprisoned, and some were sent from prison to the galleys.

Fouquet began by denying the competency of the tribunal before which he was summoned. He was, however, compelled to appear; but, though he answered interrogatories, he persisted in protesting against the authority of his judges. He defended himself with admirable skill, eloquence, and moderation. There were, indeed, moments when he was roused to retaliate. A single example of the pungency with which he could reply, will show that his persecutors were not wise in provoking him. Behind a mirror, at his country house of St. Mandé, was found a sketch of a paper, drawn up by him fifteen years before, and evidently long forgotten by him. It contained instructions to his friends how they were to proceed, in case of an attempt being made to subvert his power. This was construed into a proof of conspiracy. Seguier having pertinaciously called on him to own that the drawing up of such a paper was a crime against the state, Fouquet said, “I confess that it is a foolish and wild act, but not a state crime. A crime against the state is when, holding a principal office, and being entrusted with the secrets of the prince, the individual all at once deserts to the enemy, engages the whole of his family in the same interest, causes governors to open the gates of cities to the enemy’s army, and to close them against their rightful master, and betrays to the hostile party the secrets of the government—this, sir, is what is called a crime against the state.” This was a stunning blow to the chancellor, for it was the past conduct of that magistrate himself that was thus forcibly described by the prisoner.

The trial lasted three years. It was not the fault of some of his judges that it was not brought to a speedier issue. They listened with reluctance to his eloquent defence, and would fain have cut it short. Possort, one of them, who was an uncle of Colbert, once exclaimed, on Fouquet closing his speech, “Thank Heaven! he cannot complain that he has been prevented from talking his fill!” Others, still more insensible to shame, made a motion, that he should be restricted to the mere answering of questions; they were, however, overruled. It was not till the middle of December, 1664, that Talon, the advocate-general, summed up the evidence, and demanded that the culprit should be hanged on a gallows, purposely erected in the Palace Court. But the time for this excessive severity was gone by. Some of the judges had become accessible to feelings of pity; others had been won over by the potent influence of gold, of which the superintendant’s friends undoubtedly availed themselves to a considerable extent. Among the most conspicuous of those who leaned to the side of mercy were MM. d’Ormesson and Roquesante, men of unquestionable integrity. Only nine voted for death; a majority of the commissioners, thirteen in number, gave their suffrage for confiscation of property and perpetual banishment.

The king is said to have been grievously disappointed by this sentence. Colbert was furious. In one of her letters, written at the moment, Madame de Sévigné, who had a warm esteem for Fouquet, says, “Colbert is so exceedingly enraged, that we may expect from him something unjust and atrocious enough to drive us all to despair again.” In another letter, she hints her fears that poison may be employed; Guy Patin was also of the same opinion. Neither poison nor steel was, however, resorted to; it was probably thought that to render the life of Fouquet a burthen to him, would be a more exquisite gratification than taking of it away. To grant mercy has always been regarded as the noblest prerogative of a monarch; to refuse it was more to the taste of Louis. He altered the sentence of Fouquet from banishment to endless imprisonment in a remote fortress, and this was in mockery called a commutation of the penalty. Fouquet was immediately sent off to Pignerol, and the members of his family, who were doomed to suffer for his errors, were scattered in various directions. His judges did not wholly escape without marks of the king’s anger. M. de Roquesante, a native of the sunny Provence, who had spoken in favour of the prisoner, was banished, in the depth of winter, to the distant and imperfectly civilised province of Lower Britanny.

On his way to Pignerol, and during his captivity there, Fouquet was treated with great harshness. About six months after his arrival, he was placed in imminent danger. The lightning fell on the citadel where he was confined, and blew up the powder magazine. Numbers of persons were buried under the ruins, but he stood in the recess of a window and remained unhurt. There is a singular veil of mystery hanging over his last days. He is generally said to have died at Pignerol, in 1680; yet Gourville, his friend, positively states him to have been set at liberty before his decease, and he adds, that he received a letter from him. Voltaire, too, declares that the fact of the liberation was confirmed to him by the Countess de Vaux, the daughter-in-law of Fouquet; but here all clue to the subject is lost. It has recently been suggested that Fouquet may have again been arrested, and that he was the individual who is known by the appellation of the Man in the Iron Mask.

While fidelity in friendship, inviolably preserved under the most trying circumstances, shall continue to be admired by mankind, the name of Paul Pelisson will always be mentioned with respect. He had talents, too, which were of no mean order. Pelisson, who from affection to his mother assumed also her maiden name of Fontanier, was born in 1624, at Bezières, and was brought up in the Protestant faith. He attained an early and rapid proficiency in literature and languages; nor were severer studies neglected—for at the age of only nineteen he produced an excellent Latin paraphrase of the first book of Justinian’s Institutes. He was beginning to shine at the bar when he was attacked by small-pox. The disease so excessively disfigured his countenance, and impaired his constitution, that he was under the necessity of relinquishing his profession, and retiring into the country to recruit his health.

As soon as Pelisson was again able to take a part in active life, he settled in Paris. It was not long before he acquired a multitude of friends; and the French Academy, in return for a history which he wrote of its early labours, made him a supernumerary member, and destined for him the first vacancy which should occur. Fouquet, who knew his abilities, appointed him his chief clerk, and reposed in him an implicit confidence, which was well deserved. Had Fouquet followed the advice of his assistant, who counselled him never to part with his office of attorney-general, he would have done wisely. When this advice came to the knowledge of Louis, he said “the clerk is more sharp-sighted than the master.”

Pelisson shared the fate of Fouquet; he was sent to the Concièrgerie, whence he was removed to the Bastile. All attempts to elicit from him the secrets of the superintendant were made in vain. Once only, to answer a purpose, he seemed to make a disclosure. Fearing that, from not knowing whether the documents were in existence, Fouquet might commit himself in his answers to certain questions, Pelisson feigned to divulge some unimportant particulars which related to the subject. Fouquet, who was astonished at this seeming defection of his friend, was confronted with him, and denied the correctness of what had been stated: “Sir,” said Pelisson, in an emphatic tone, “You would not deny so boldly if you did not know that all the papers concerning that affair are destroyed.” Fouquet instantly comprehended the stratagem, and acted accordingly.

In the early part of his confinement, Pelisson found means to compose three memorials in defence of Fouquet. For eloquence and argument they may be considered as his masterpieces; they were published, and produced a strong impression. As a punishment, he was still more closely immured, and pen and paper were withheld from him; but he contrived to foil his persecutors, by writing, with ink made of burnt crust and wine, on the blank leaves and margins of the religious works which he was allowed to read. They were equally unsuccessful when, hoping that he might drop some unguarded words, they gave him, as an attendant, a spy, who concealed cunning under the mask of coarse simplicity. Pelisson saw through the deception, and adroitly converted the spy into an instrument of his own.

The imprisonment of Pelisson lasted four years and a half. Among the means which he employed to beguile his lonely hours is said to have been that of taming a spider; a task which he effected so completely, that at a signal, it would fetch its prey from the further end of the room, or even take it out of his hand. It is, however, doubtful whether Pelisson was the person who performed this. De Renneville, who is good authority on this subject, ascribes the taming of the spider to the Count de Lauzun, and adds, that the jailer, St. Mars, brutally crushed the insect, and exclaimed that criminals like Lauzun did not deserve to enjoy the slightest amusement.

The solicitations of Pelisson’s friends at length procured his release; in memory of which he ever after yearly liberated some unfortunate prisoner. After some lapse of time, he was even received into the good graces of Louis, who probably thought that the man who had been faithful to a ruined minister would not be wanting in fidelity to his sovereign. It was, besides, no small merit in the king’s eyes, that Pelisson had become a Catholic. Louis first appointed him his historiographer, with a pension; then gave him several valuable benefices; and, lastly, entrusted him with the management of the fund which was employed in purchasing proselytes. Pelisson died in 1693.

Pelisson was not the only literary character who was drawn into the vortex by the sinking of Fouquet. The gay and witty Epicurean philosopher, St. Evremond, was punished for the crime of being a friend of the fallen superintendant. Charles St. Evremond was born in 1613, at St. Denis le Guast, near Coutances. From the study of the law, and the prospect of a high station in the magistracy, he was seduced by his love of arms, and, at the age of sixteen, he obtained an ensigncy. He still, however, retained his taste for philosophy and literature. By his bravery he acquired the esteem of his superiors; and that esteem was heightened by his varied acquirements and the charm of his conversation. That he might always enjoy the pleasure of his society, the Duke of Enghien appointed him lieutenant of his guards. In this post St. Evremond fought gallantly at Rocroi, Fribourg, and Nordlingen, in the last of which battles he was dangerously wounded. His familiar intercourse with the prince was not of long duration; Enghien delighted to see others exposed to the wit and raillery of his lieutenant, but he could not endure to be himself their object; St. Evremond ventured to aim some pleasantries at his princely protector, and the great Condé had the littleness to take offence, and to insist on the offender resigning his commission in the guards. In the war of the Fronde, St. Evremond served the royal cause with pen and sword, and he was rewarded with a pension and the rank of major-general. Some satirical remarks on Mazarin, which he soon after made at a dinner party, were the cause of his being thrown into the Bastile. Mazarin, however, was not of an implacable nature, like his predecessor Richelieu. At the expiration of three months he set the prisoner free, took him into favour, and afterwards, from among a crowd of rivals, selected him as his companion, when he went to negociate the peace of the Pyrenees. Dissatisfied with the terms of that peace, St. Evremond gave vent to his dissatisfaction, in a private letter to the Marshal de Créqui. In writing it he unconsciously wrote his own sentence of banishment. A copy of it was found among the papers of Fouquet; and Colbert, who rejoiced to have an opportunity of injuring a friend of Fouquet, malignantly represented it in such a light to Louis XIV. that an order was issued to convey the author to the Bastile. St. Evremond was riding in the forest of Orleans when he received intelligence from his friends of the danger that hung over him. As he did not wish to pay a second visit to a state prison, he provided for his safety by an immediate and rapid flight. In England he was welcomed with open arms, and was idolized by the wits and courtiers. In 1664 he visited Holland, where he met with an equally cordial reception, and gained the friendship of the Prince of Orange. Charles II. invited him to return to England, in 1670, and settled on him a pension. Henceforth, till his decease, which took place in 1703, he continued to reside in London. His friends in France made repeated efforts to obtain his recall; but they could not succeed till 1689, when Louis XIV. was pleased to grant their request. St. Evremond refused to accept the tardy boon. Living at his ease in a free country, and in the highest society, and admired and esteemed by the fair, the witty, and the noble, he was too wise to put himself into “circumscription and confine,” and purchase the privilege of bending before a despotic monarch, at the risk of being condemned to solitary meditation in one of the towers of the Bastile. St. Evremond was ninety when he died, but he preserved his faculties to the last. He was interred in Westminster Abbey. His poetry never rises above mediocrity, and does not always reach it; but his prose is often excellent. Justice has scarcely been done to him either by La Harpe or Voltaire.

A harder fate than that of voluntary exile was the lot of Simon Morin, an insane visionary, a man of humble birth, who was born about 1623, at Richemont, in Normandy. His horrible death, which was in fact a judicial murder, perpetrated by a fanaticism far worse than his own, leaves an indelible stain on the character of the judges by whom it was directed. Morin was originally a clerk in the war-office, but lost his situation by neglecting his duties; and he subsequently gained a scanty subsistence as a copyist, for which he was well qualified by the beauty of his handwriting. His reason appears to have been early affected, as he must have been under twenty when he was first put into prison for his extravagant ideas in religious matters. After his release, he seems to have gradually become more and more deranged. Like all madmen of his class, however, he gained numerous proselytes, who listened to his harangues, and read his printed reveries, with implicit belief. His success drew on him the attention of the government, and, in July 1644, he was sent to the Bastile. At the expiration of twenty months he was set at liberty. Imprisonment had only heightened his malady, and he consequently laboured with more vigour than ever to disseminate his opinions. Those opinions he embodied in a work intituled, “Thoughts of Morin, with his Canticles and Spiritual Quatrains,” dedicated to the king. He called himself the Son of Man, and maintained that Christ was incorporated in him; that in his person was to take place the second advent of the Saviour in a state of glory; and that the result would be a general reformation of the Church, and the conversion of all people to the true faith. There was much more of the same kind; he was in France what Brothers, long afterwards, was in England. Of his tenets, several bear a resemblance to those which, later in the 17th century, were held by the Quietists. The publication of this volume again brought the police upon him. For some time he eluded them, but he was at last discovered, and re-committed to the Bastile. In 1649, he retracted his errors, and was released, and he repeated his retractation four months after his being set free. It was not long, however, before he relapsed, and for this he was sent to the Concièrgerie, whence he was transferred to the Petites Maisons, as an incurable lunatic. The last was the only sensible measure which was adopted with respect to him. By another abjuration, he once more recovered his liberty; and, as soon as he was let loose, he once more asserted his claim to be an incarnation of the Deity. There can be little doubt that he had short lucid intervals, and that it was during these intervals that he renounced his errors.

Thus, alternately raving and recanting, Morin went on till 1661, when, in an evil hour, he contracted an intimacy with a man who was no less a visionary than he himself was, and whose nature was deeply tinctured with malignity and deceit. This man, John Desmarets de St. Sorlin, a member of the French Academy, was the author of several works, now sunk into oblivion, among which are a ponderous epic, called Clovis, and several theatrical pieces. From his own showing, he appears to have been in youth a monster of immorality; and though in advanced life he affected piety, his conduct did not prove his heart to be much ameliorated; he became fanatical instead of becoming virtuous. A brief specimen, from some of his rhapsodies, will show how completely his wits were “turned the seamy side without.” He asserted, that God in his infinite goodness had given him the key of the treasure of the Apocalypse; that he was Eliachim Michael, a Prophet; that he had the Divine command to raise an army of 144,000 men, bearing the seal of God on their foreheads, which army was to be headed by the king, to exterminate the impious and the Jansenists; and that Louis XIV. was indicated by the prophets as the person who was destined to drive out the Turks, and extend throughout the whole earth the kingdom of Christ. Had not Desmarets been a hater of the Jansenists, and a flatterer of the monarch, he would undoubtedly have been sent to study the Apocalypse in the solitude of a prison.

The trite proverb, that “two of a trade cannot agree,” was verified by Desmarets; he resolved to destroy the man who dared to make pretensions that eclipsed his own. To effect his purpose, he acted with the cunning of a lunatic, and the dark-heartedness of a fiend. By paying assiduous court to Morin, by pretending to be one of his most submissive disciples, and even by going so far as to write him a letter, unequivocally recognising him as the Son of Man, he contrived to insinuate himself into the confidence of his unfortunate victim, and to draw from him his most secret thoughts. In the course of their conversations, Morin is said to have declared, among other things, that unless the king acknowledged his mission he would die. Having thus furnished himself with evidence against the man whom he had deluded, Desmarets hastened to denounce him as a heretic and traitor. Orders were issued for arresting Morin, who was found engaged in copying out a “Discourse to the King,” which began with “the Son of Man to the King of France.” He was brought to trial, and was sentenced to be burned alive. Some of his followers were condemned to whipping and the galleys. The iniquitous judgment passed on Morin was executed on the 14th of March, 1663. At the stake his reason seems to have returned; he repeatedly called on the Saviour and the Virgin, and humbly prayed for mercy to the Creator of all things.

Little commiseration is due to him whose imprisonment is next recorded; his baseness met with deserved punishment. Francis René Crispin du Bec, Marquis of Vardes, was of a good family, and served with reputation in Flanders, France, Italy, and Spain. During the war of the Fronde, he was constant to the royal party; and it was doubtless his zeal and fidelity on this occasion which acquired for him the friendship of Louis XIV. He rose to high rank in the army; was made captain-colonel of the Hundred Swiss in 1655; and, next year, succeeded the Duke of Orleans in the government of Aigues-Mortes, and was invested with the various orders of knighthood. He was on the point of being created a duke and peer, when the discovery of a dishonourable act of which he had been guilty, stopped his promotion, and deprived him of his liberty. Louis had chosen Vardes as his friend, and had confided to him his passion for the celebrated Mlle. de la Vallière, who was one of the maids of honour to the Duchess of Orleans. It appears that the duchess and her friend, the Countess of Soissons, and their lovers, the Count de Guiche and Vardes, had hoped, by means of La Vallière, to obtain a predominant influence over Louis. But the royal mistress loved Louis with a sincere and disinterested affection, and was not disposed to become the instrument of court intriguers. It was resolved, therefore, to oust her, and substitute in her stead Mlle. de la Mothe Houdancourt, who, it was imagined, would be more subservient. To effect this object, Vardes wrote a letter, purporting to be from the Spanish monarch, to his daughter the French queen, informing her of her consort’s connection with la Vallière; it was translated into Spanish by Guiche. The letter, however, fell into the hands of Louis. While endeavouring to discover the author, the king consulted Vardes, and Vardes was so ineffably base as to lead him to believe that the offender was the Duchess of Noailles. The duchess, a woman of strict virtue, had the superintendence of the queen’s maids of honour, and had already dissatisfied Louis by her vigilant care of her charge. He therefore readily believed the suggestion of Vardes, and, without farther inquiry, deprived the duchess and her husband of all the places which they held, and ordered them to retire to their estate. For three years the perfidy of Vardes remained a secret, and it would perhaps always have remained so, had he not caused a disclosure of it, by conduct which was at once a flagrant breach of confidence to his friend, the Count de Guiche, and a gross insult to the Duchess of Orleans. He obtained possession of the letters written by the count to the duchess, and refused to give them up; and he incited the Chevalier de Lorraine to make offensive advances to her. This proceeding brought on a quarrel, the result of which was that the king became acquainted with the treachery of the man whom he had trusted. Vardes was sent to the Bastile in December, 1664, from whence he was removed to the citadel of Montpellier, where he was closely confined for eighteen months. He was at length allowed to reside in his government of Aigues-Mortes; but eighteen years passed away before he was recalled to the court. He is said to have employed in study the period of his exile, and to have made himself generally esteemed in Languedoc. When, after his long banishment, he was graciously received by the king, Vardes was dressed in the fashion of his early days, and, when Louis laughed at the antique cut of his coat, the supple courtier replied, “Sire, when one is so wretched as to be banished from you, one is not only unfortunate, but ridiculous!” Vardes did not long enjoy his re-establishment in the royal favour; he died in 1688.

To Vardes succeeds another noble, Count Roger Bussy de Rabutin, who, though he is not accused of such baseness as that of which Vardes was guilty, was by no means a model of delicacy and virtue. He seems, indeed, to have been of opinion, that honour and honesty were not necessary qualities in the persons whom he had about him; for, in his Memoirs, he coolly describes one gentleman, who was of his train, as having all his life been a cutpurse; and another, on whom he bestows praise for some things, as being addicted to every vice, and no less familiar with robbery and murder than with eating and drinking. Such being his laxity of principles, it is no wonder that he sometimes participated in disgusting orgies, and was even suspected of feeling a more than parental love for Madame de la Rivière, his daughter. Bussy de Rabutin was born in 1618, entered the army when he was only twelve years of age, served in all the campaigns between 1634 and 1663, and attained the rank of lieutenant-general. His bravery was undoubted, but his vanity, arrogance, and satirical spirit, made him numerous enemies among his brother officers. On one occasion he lampooned Turenne, and that great general, deviating from his usual magnanimity, avenged himself by writing to the king, that “M de Bussy was the best officer in the army—for songs.” In 1641, Bussy was an inmate of the Bastile for five months. The defective discipline of his regiment, and its having engaged in smuggling salt, was the ostensible cause of his imprisonment; he himself assigned as the reason, that his father was hated by Desnoyers the minister. The same faults by which his companions in arms had been converted into foes, proved his ruin at court. He wrote a libellous work, called “The Amorous History of the Gauls,” which was published in 1665, and excited a general outcry among the personages whom it describes. Bussy affirms, that it was sent to the press without his consent, and even with malignant alterations and additions, by an unfaithful mistress, to whom he entrusted the manuscript. This production was made the pretext for committing him to the Bastile; but it is said that his real offence was a song, in which he ridiculed the king’s passion for the Duchess of la Vallière. His imprisonment lasted twenty months, and he candidly owns, in his Memoirs and Letters, that it was not very patiently endured. By dint of importunity, seconded by an illness with which he was attacked, he at length recovered his liberty. During his captivity, he was compelled to resign, for a much less sum than it cost him, the major-generalship of the light cavalry. But though Bussy was released, he was not pardoned; he was banished to his estate. Notwithstanding his abject supplications, which were incessantly renewed, he remained an exile for sixteen years. At last, in 1682, he was graciously permitted to re-appear at court. His happiness was, however, still incomplete; for the courtiers soon began to cabal against him, and the monarch to treat him coldly; and, though he succeeded in procuring a pension for himself, and pensions and preferments for his children, he failed to obtain the blue riband and a marshal’s staff, which were the great objects of his ambition. He died in 1693.

A longer term of imprisonment than was undergone by Bussy Rabutin fell to the lot of the next prisoner. Among the victims of the persecution which was carried on against the Jansenists, was Louis Isaac le Maistre, better known by the name of Saci, which is an anagram formed by him from one of his christian names. He was born in 1613, and was educated at the college of Beauvais, along with his uncle, the celebrated Anthony Arnauld. Though he was early destined to the clerical profession, he did not take orders till he was in his thirty-fifth year; a praiseworthy humility having long induced him to doubt his being competent to fulfill properly the duties of a gospel minister. He was soon after appointed director of the Port Royal nuns, on which occasion he took up his abode in the convent, resigning to it all his property, except a small annuity, and of that he distributed the largest portion to the poor. His time was spent in study, prayer, and pious exercises. But a blameless life was not sufficient to shield him from theological hatred. In 1661, he was compelled to fly from the convent, and he remained in concealment till 1666, when he was discovered and conveyed to the Bastile. In that prison he was immured for three years and a half, and he solaced his lonely hours by undertaking a translation of the Bible, a considerable part of which he accomplished while he was held in durance. He, however, did not live to complete it. In the autumn of 1669 he was set at liberty. The minister, to whom he was presented on leaving the Bastile, seems to have been willing to grant him some favour, as a compensation for his unmerited sufferings; but all that Saci asked was, that the prisoners might be more leniently treated. After the destruction of Port Royal, he found an asylum in the house of his cousin, the Marquis of Pomponne, and there he ended his days, in 1684. Saci was such an enemy to controversy that, though often attacked, he is said never to have replied except in one instance. Voltaire speaks of him as “one of the good writers of Port Royal.” In the poetical compositions of Saci, which were his earliest literary attempts, there are passages that rise above mediocrity. Among his principal works, besides his version of the Bible, are translations of the Psalms, St. Thomas à Kempis, two books of the Eneid, the Fables of Phædrus, and three of the Comedies of Terence.

From the pious and humble pastor we must turn to a very different sort of personage, to one of the courtier species, a man more remarkable for his sudden rise, and for the vicissitudes which he experienced, than for genius or virtue. Three of his eminent contemporaries have left on record their opinion of Antoninus de Caumont, Count, and afterwards, Duke of Lauzun. The witty Bussy Rabutin pithily describes him as being “one of the least men, in mind as well as body, that God ever created.” The more phlegmatic Duke of Berwick says of him, “he had a sort of talent, which, however, consisted only in turning every thing into ridicule, insinuating himself into every body’s confidence, worming out their secrets, and playing upon their foibles. He was noble in his carriage, generous, and lived in a splendid style. He loved high play, and played like a gentleman. His figure was very diminutive, and it is incomprehensible how he could ever have become a favourite with the ladies.” The satirical St. Simon has drawn, in his best manner, a full-length portrait of Lauzun, which has scarcely a single redeeming feature. He does, indeed, allow, that he was a good friend, “when he chanced to be a friend, which was rarely,” and a good relation; that he had noble manners, and was brave to excess. This is the sole speck of light in the picture; the rest is all shade. In the likeness drawn by St. Simon, we see Lauzun, “full of ambition, caprices, and whimsies, jealous of every one, striving always to go beyond the mark, never satisfied, illiterate, unadorned and unattractive in mind, morose, solitary, and unsociable in disposition, mischievous and spiteful by nature, and still more so from ambition and jealousy, prompt to become an enemy, even to those who were not his rivals, cruel in exposing defects, and in finding and making subjects for ridicule, scattering his ill-natured wit about him without sparing any one, and, to crown the whole, a courtier equally insolent, scoffing, and base even to servility, and replete with arts, intrigues, and meannesses, to accomplish his designs.” Such was the man whom the king long delighted to honour.

Lauzun, who at his outset bore the title of Marquis de Puyguilhem, was the youngest son of a noble Gascon family, and was introduced at court by the Marshal de Grammont, his relation. He soon became the favourite of Louis, who heaped riches and places upon him: some of the latter were expressly created for him. When the Duke of Mazarin resigned the mastership of the ordnance, the king promised it to Lauzun, but bound him to keep the matter secret for a short time. The folly and vanity of the favourite, who could not refrain from boasting of his good fortune, were the cause of his disappointment. Louvois thus obtained a knowledge of the nomination, and remonstrated against it so strongly, and with such sound reasons, that it was revoked by the monarch. On this occasion a scene took place such as has seldom occurred between monarch and subject. After having vainly tried to persuade the king to carry into effect his original intention, Lauzun burst into a furious passion, turned his back on him, broke his own sword under his foot, and vowed that he would never again serve a prince who had violated his word so shamefully. Louis acted in this instance with true dignity. Opening the window, he threw out his cane, and, as he was quitting the room, he coolly said, “I should be sorry to have struck a man of rank.” The next morning, however, Lauzun was conveyed to the Bastile. But Louis was soon induced to forgive the offender, and even to offer him, as an indemnity for his loss, the post of captain of the royal guards. It strongly marks the insolence of Lauzun, that he at first refused the proffered grace, and that entreaties were required to induce him to accept it.

Lauzun had scarcely been twelve months out of the Bastile, before he had an opportunity of becoming the richest subject in Europe. A grand-daughter of Henry IV., the celebrated Duchess of Montpensier, usually known by the appellation of Mademoiselle, who had reached her forty-second year, fell violently in love with him. In her Memoirs she gives a curious and amusing account of her wooing, for the courtship was all on the side of the lady. So completely had Lauzun recovered his influence, that the king gave his consent to their union. The marriage contract secured to him three duchies and twenty millions of livres. A second time his fortune was marred by his vanity. His friends urged him to hasten the nuptials, but he delayed, that they might be celebrated with royal splendour. Of this delay his enemies availed themselves to work upon the pride of the monarch, and they succeeded in breaking off the match. The duchess was rendered inconsolable by this event; Lauzun seems to have borne it with sufficient philosophy. A secret marriage between them is believed to have subsequently taken place.

Lauzun was supposed to be now more firmly fixed than ever in the king’s good graces. He was placed at the head of the army which, in 1670, escorted the king and the court to Flanders, and he displayed extraordinary magnificence in this command. But, flattering as appearances were, he was on the eve of his fall. He had two active and powerful enemies; Louvois, whom he constantly thwarted and provoked in various ways, and Madame de Montespan, the king’s mistress, whom he had more than once grossly insulted. Political rivalry and hatred and female revenge were finally triumphant. The minister and the mistress so incessantly laboured to blacken Lauzun, whose private marriage with Mademoiselle is said to have aided their efforts, that, in November 1671, he was sent to the Bastile, whence he was soon after removed to the fortress of Pignerol. In that fortress he was closely confined in a cell for nearly five years. His situation was at length somewhat ameliorated, but his imprisonment was continued for five years more. It is probable that he would have spent the rest of his days at Pignerol, had not the Duchess of Montpensier purchased his freedom, by sacrificing the duchy of Aumale, the earldom of Eu, and the principality of Dombes, to form an appanage for the illegitimate son of Louis by Madame de Montespan. It is an additional stain on the character of Lauzun, that he proved ungrateful to his deliverer.

Though Lauzun was released, he was not suffered to approach the court. Tired of his exile from Versailles, he passed over to England. On the revolution of 1688 breaking out, James placed the queen and the infant prince under his care, to be conveyed to France. This trust opened the way to his re-admission into the royal presence, and to his being created a duke; but he never regained the confidence of the monarch. He led a reinforcement of the French troops to James in Ireland; and displayed, as the Duke of Berwick states, none of the qualities of a general. He died in 1723, at the age of more than ninety. The closing scene of his life was perhaps the only one for which he deserves praise. His disease was cancer in the mouth, the protracted and horrible torture of which he bore with astonishing temper and fortitude.

The severe example which was made of de Bouteville, in the reign of Louis XIII., though it gave a temporary check to the practice of duelling, was far from putting an end to it. Nor did better success attend the ordinances issued in 1634 by Louis XIII., and in 1643, 1651, and 1670, by Louis XIV. The feebleness of the royal authority, during a disturbed regency, and the war of the Fronde, with the quarrels arising out of it, doubtless tended to neutralize the laws. But, even when Louis XIV. was in uncontested possession of despotic power, we find that the murderous custom of fighting in parties was still existing. In 1663, a famous duel took place between the two La Frettes, Saint Aignan, and Argenlieu, on the one side, and Chalais, Noirmoutier, d’Antin, and Flamarens, on the other. The axe was at length laid to the root of the evil, by the edict of August 1679, which constituted the marshals of France, and the governors of provinces, supreme judges in all cases where individuals supposed their honour to have been wounded. This edict prohibited, under the heaviest penalties, all private combats and rencounters, both within and without the kingdom. One clause seems excellently calculated to produce its intended effect, no less by the insinuation with which it opens, than by the denunciations with which it concludes. “Those,” it says, “who, doubting of their own courage, shall have called in the aid of seconds, thirds, or a greater number of persons, shall, besides the punishment of death and confiscation, be degraded from their nobility, and have their coat of arms publicly blackened and broken by the hangman; their successors shall be obliged to adopt new arms; and the seconds, thirds, and other accomplices, shall be punished in the same manner.” This salutary edict appears to have nearly accomplished the purpose for which it was framed. The slavish fear of incurring the displeasure of the sovereign, a feeling which was so prevalent among the courtiers of Louis XIV., perhaps aided materially in producing obedience to the law. It would have been well if a worse effect had never resulted from that kind of fear.

Among the fashionable gladiators of those days was Philip d’Oger, Marquis of Cavoie, a man whom nature had liberally endowed with the means of shining in a nobler sphere. Cavoie, born in 1640, and descended from an ancient Picard family, was the son of a woman of talent, who gained the good graces of Anne of Austria, and availed herself of her influence to forward the fortune of her offspring. His personal appearance was greatly in his favour; he was one of the handsomest and best made men in France, and he dressed with singular elegance. His courage, too, was no less conspicuous than his corporeal qualities. In 1666, he served as a volunteer on board of the Dutch fleet, under De Ruyter; and in the battle with the Duke of Albemarle he distinguished himself by the perilous exploit of proceeding in a boat to cut the cable with which some English sloops were towing down a fire-ship on the Dutch admiral. He succeeded in his daring attempt, and escaped unhurt. By this gallant action he acquired the friendship of the celebrated Turenne. Long before this he had become known as “the brave Cavoie,” in consequence of his gallant bearing in the single combats which were still too common in France.

It was for having acted as second in one of these combats, that he was immured in the Bastile. His imprisonment would, perhaps, have been protracted, but for a curious circumstance, of which a pleasant account is given by the Duke de St. Simon. Mlle. de Coetlogon, one of the maids of honour to the consort of Louis XIV., had fallen madly in love with Cavoie. St. Simon describes her as being “ugly, prudent, naïve, much-liked, and a very good creature.” It is no slight proof of her amiability, that, in a frivolous and satirical court, her sorrows were a subject of pity instead of laughter. Cavoie was anything but delighted with her idolatrous fondness, which she seemed to glory in manifesting; and he strove to rid himself of it by being obdurate, and even downright harsh. In spite of his repulsive conduct, however, she became every day fonder. When he went to the army, her tears and cries were incessant, and during the whole of the campaign she obstinately abstained from adorning her person in the smallest degree. It was not till he came back that she resumed her customary style of dress. His being committed to the Bastile renewed her grief. “She spoke to the king in behalf of Cavoie,” says St. Simon, “and not being able to obtain his deliverance, she scolded his majesty so violently as to abuse him. The king laughed heartily, at which she was so much incensed that she threatened him with her nails, and he thought it prudent not to run the risk of them. He every day dined and supped publicly with the queen; at dinner it was usual for the Duchess of Richelieu and the queen’s maids of honour to wait upon them. On these occasions, Coetlogon never would hand any thing to the king; either she avoided him, or she flatly refused, and told him that he did not deserve to be waited upon by her. Next, she was ill of jaundice, and had violent hysterics, and fits of despair. This went so far, that the king and queen seriously desired the Duchess of Richelieu to accompany her to the Bastile, to see Cavoie; and this was twice or thrice repeated. At last he was released, and Coetlogon, in raptures, again took to dressing; but it was not without much difficulty that she could be reconciled to the king.”

It is delightful to know that the devoted love of this warm-hearted female was rewarded; and it is honourable to Louis XIV. that, instead of meanly resenting her bursts of passion, he kindly and successfully exerted himself to render her happy. In conjunction with the queen, he more than once pleaded for the enamoured lady, but he found Cavoie averse from a marriage. At length, the death of his grand maréchal-de-logis enabled the king to attack Cavoie with advantage. This time, however, he spoke in the tone of an absolute monarch; for he insisted that Cavoie should wed Mlle. de Coetlogon; but, in return, he promised to put him in the road to fortune, and, as a dowry to the portionless maid, he gave him the splendid office which had just become vacant. Despotism thus exercised may be forgiven, if only for its rarity. Cavoie yielded to the command of his sovereign, and the desired union took place. The result was more satisfactory than might have been expected. Cavoie proved to be an indulgent husband, and she, on her part, never ceased to look up to him as a sort of superior being. Neither in her maiden nor in her married state, was her virtue for a moment doubted.

Cavoie accompanied Louis XIV. in all his campaigns. At the passage of the Rhine, his intrepidity called forth praise from the king himself. A report having soon after been spread, that Cavoie was among the slain, Louis exclaimed, “O, how grieved M. de Turenne will be!” The courtiers who surrounded him were joining in a general chorus of eulogium upon the supposed dead man, when a horseman was seen plunging into the river on the opposite side, and swimming over. It was Cavoie, whom the Prince de Condé had sent to the monarch, to announce to him the complete success of his army.

For many years Cavoie was held in high esteem at court, and enjoyed the confidence of his master. A circumstance at length occurred to disturb his peace. He had hoped to be included in the number of those on whom the order of the Holy Ghost was conferred in 1688, but he was disappointed. This disappointment was the work of Louvois, who hated him, because he was the old and firm friend of the Marquis de Seignalai. Wounded by this slight, the grand maréchal wrote a letter to Louis, informing him that he intended to retire. But the vows of chagrined courtiers are as brittle as those of lovers. The king called him into his cabinet, and, with that graciousness which he well knew how to assume, he said to him, “We have lived too long together to part now; I cannot let you quit me; I will see that you shall be satisfied.” Cavoie abandoned his design of withdrawing from court; but the promised blue riband was never bestowed on him.

At a later period, about twenty years before his decease, he resumed and carried into execution his purpose of seceding from public life. He was a patron of literary characters in general, and was in habits of close intimacy with Racine, Boileau, and other eminent authors. Cavoie died in 1716, at the age of 76, leaving behind him the enviable reputation of having been a man on whose sincerity and probity an implicit reliance might with safety be placed.

From Cavoie we pass to an individual of a less estimable character. Louis, Prince of Rohan, commonly known by the title of the Chevalier Rohan, a degenerate descendant from illustrious ancestors, was born about 1635. Rohan was endowed by nature with a handsome and graceful person, and many intellectual qualities; but all these advantages were nullified by his follies and vices. The Marquis de la Fare describes him as being made up of contradictions; sometimes witty, at others the contrary; sometimes dignified and brave, at others mean and dastardly. In the annals of gallantry he seems to have been ambitious of holding a conspicuous place. The most celebrated of his amorous adventures was his carrying off, aided by her brother, the Duke of Nevers, the beautiful and frail Hortensia Mancini, who was united to the contemptible Duke of Mazarin. That he gamed high, and was careless of his gold, we learn from an anecdote which is related of him. He had lost to the king, at the gaming-table, a large sum, which was to be paid in louis-d’or. Rohan counted out seven or eight hundred, but, not having enough of them, he added two hundred Spanish pistoles. Louis objected to the latter, upon which the chevalier snatched them up, and threw them out of the window, saying at the same time, “Since your majesty will not have them, they are good for nothing.” The king complained of this to Cardinal Mazarin, who replied, “Sire, the Chevalier de Rohan played like a king, and you played like a Chevalier de Rohan.” This action of Rohan has been praised as a “piquant lesson” to Louis; it seems, however, to have been rather an absurd mode of rebuking the monarch’s unprincely conduct.

Rohan continued in favour at court for several years, and in 1656 was appointed grand huntsman of France, an office equivalent to our master of the buck-hounds; he was afterwards made colonel of the guards. He served in 1654, 1655, 1672, and 1677, and displayed great valour. The commencement of his decline seems to have been his being obliged to give up the office of grand huntsman, in consequence of his amour with the Duchess of Mazarin. His extravagance and profligacy at length ruined his fortune and reputation. To repair his shattered finances, he engaged in a plot, at once treasonable and absurd, which completed the destruction of his character, and brought him to the scaffold. Into this scheme he was seduced by Latruaumont, a Norman officer, a man as impoverished and licentious as himself. Their accomplices were Preault, a young officer, the Marchioness of Villiers-Bourdeville, his mistress, and a schoolmaster, named Van den Enden; all of whom are said to have disbelieved that the soul is immortal. Their plan was, to put into the hands of the Dutch the town of Quillebœuf, in Normandy, and to excite the province to revolt, for which service they were to be liberally rewarded. The magnitude of their project forms a striking contrast with the scantiness of their means. The conspiracy was discovered by the government, before the conspirators could begin their operations. Rohan was committed to the Bastile, and M. de Brissac was sent into Normandy to arrest Latruaumont. The latter defended himself, was mortally wounded, and died in a few hours. He had at least some honourable feelings, for, in order to save his confederates, he persisted to the last moment that he was the sole criminal. The friends of Rohan nightly made the circuit of the Bastile, and vociferated, through a speaking-trumpet, “Latruaumont is dead, and has confessed nothing.” They were, however, unheard by the chevalier. He, meanwhile, was perseveringly pressed to acknowledge his guilt, but he refused; and, as his participation in the plot was known only to the deceased, and no written proof existed against him, he might have saved his life, had he not been circumvented by one of those stratagems which were employed against prisoners. De Bezons, one of the counsellors of state who interrogated the captive, had the baseness to assure him that the king meant to pardon him if he would declare the truth, although every thing was already known from the dying avowal of Latruaumont. Trusting to the assurances of his treacherous adviser, Rohan acknowledged his treason. He soon learned the deceit which had been practised on him; and he burst into such violent paroxysms of rage, that his keepers were compelled to manacle him that he might not lay violent hands on himself. Rohan and his accomplices were soon after sentenced to death; they were executed in front of the Bastile, on the 27th of November, 1674. In spite of her erroneous principles, the sufferer most worthy of pity was, perhaps, Madame de Villiers, who displayed a noble fortitude and forgiving spirit. The only evidence against her was some of her letters to Preault, which he had unwisely preserved. At first, she uttered a few words of mild reproof for his fatal imprudence; but she quickly changed her tone, and said with a smile, “We must not think on what is passed, but only how to die.”

The same year that consigned Rohan to the scaffold, saw his place in the Bastile filled by a youthful victim, who was doomed to waste a large part of his life in captivity, for having offended a vindictive and powerful religious body. His name is not recorded, but it is evident that he was of a good family.

Louis XIV. was requested, by the Jesuits of Clermont College, to be present at the representation of a tragedy by their pupils. He complied, and was highly gratified by the piece; the more so, perhaps, as it was thickly strewn with passages in praise of him. A nobleman in attendance having spoken to him in terms of admiration, as to the manner in which the drama had been played, the king replied, “Where’s the wonder? is it not my college?” These words were not lost upon the principal of the college, who was standing by. As soon as the king was gone, the old inscription, “_Collegium Claromontanum Societati Jesus_,” which was on the front of the building, was taken down, and workmen were all night employed to inscribe the words, “_Collegium Ludovici Magni_,” in gold letters, on a tablet of black marble.

In the morning the new inscription was seen conspicuously displayed on the edifice. A youth of sixteen, a pupil in the college, had the good sense and the good taste to be disgusted with this worse than indecorous adulation, and he gave vent to his feelings in a Latin distich, which, during the night, he fastened on the gate. The meaning of his lines may be thus given:

“Christ’s name expunged, the king’s now fills the stone! O impious race! by this is plainly shown That Louis is the only god you own!”

The pungent lines excited a violent clamour among the Jesuits, and no pains were spared to trace the writer. The juvenile offender was discovered, and was shut up in the Bastile. After having been confined there for a long while, he was transferred to the citadel of St. Marguerite, on the coast of Provence. There he continued for several years; after which he was taken back to the Bastile. One-and-thirty years he passed in this manner, and the remainder of his life would doubtless have been consumed in the same way, had he not, in 1705, become sole heir to the estates of his family. The confessor of the Bastile, who was a jesuit, now remonstrated with his brethren on the impolicy of keeping in prison an individual from whom, by procuring his release, they might reap such a golden harvest. His advice was taken, and the captive was set free at their intercession. There can be no doubt that their tardy and interested mercy received a liberal reward.

Among the fellow prisoners of the nameless satirist of the jesuits was, for a short time, another writer of verses, but verses of a very different kind. The person in question was Charles Dassouci, who ludicrously designated himself as “Emperor of the Burlesque, the first of that name.” He was born at Paris, about 1604, and was the son of a barrister. His bringing up, and his early habits, were not calculated to make him an estimable member of society. His parents were separated, and the tyranny of a female, who was at once the servant and the concubine of his father, drove him from his home. When he was only nine years old, he wandered to Calais, where he passed himself off as an adept in astrology, the son of Cesar, that dealer in magic whose fate has been narrated in the preceding chapter. The boy having, by the power of imagination, worked a cure upon a hypochondriacal individual, the wise people of Calais considered this fact to be a decisive proof of his intercourse with the devil, and were about to throw him into the sea, but he was saved by some of his friends, who conveyed him privately out of the place. After having led a roving life for some time, he became player on the lute and singer to Christina, Duchess of Savoy, the daughter of Henry IV. In 1640, he was introduced to Louis XIII., who gave him the same situation that he had filled in the household of the duchess, and he was continued in it during the minority of Louis XIV. Resolving to return to Turin, he quitted Paris in 1655; but, before his departure from the kingdom, he visited various parts in the south of France. He was accompanied every where by two handsome youths, called his musical pages; his connexion with whom afforded to his enemies a reason, or a pretext, for fixing a deep stain on his moral character. Failing to obtain patronage at Turin, he went to Rome, and there he was put into the prison of the Inquisition, for having satirized some powerful prelates. On being liberated he went back to Paris, where he was not more fortunate than he had been in Italy, for he was committed to the Bastile, in 1675, whence he was transferred to the Châtelet. To his licentious conduct and writings he is said to have been indebted for his imprisonment, which lasted six months. He died about 1679. His principal works are, “Ovid in good humour,” which is a travestie upon part of the Metamorphoses; Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine burlesqued; and many poems in a similar style. Dassouci, who was sometimes called “the ape of Scarron,” received a lash from the satirical scourge of Boileau, and he complained heavily of the injury. In his Art of Poetry, Boileau thus alludes to the popularity which Dassouci had once enjoyed:

“The scurviest joker charmed some kindred mind, And even Dassouci could readers find.”

It must be owned, however, that in the works of “the emperor of the Burlesque,” there are some passages which prove that, though his taste and his morals were defective, he was not destitute of talent.

The reader has seen that, with very few exceptions, the prisoners who have been mentioned in this chapter belonged to the courtier-class; that they were men who seemed to feel a difficulty of breathing whenever they did not inhale the vapours of a frivolous and voluptuous court. We ought always to abhor injustice, and therefore we must hate the power which was unjust to them; but they have no title to that liberal share of our pity which is the right of humbler victims, for it was an implied condition of their artificial existence that they should bend to a despot’s will; they purchased the smiles of their master, the pleasures, such as they were, of the Louvre and Versailles, and a portion of the public spoils, by the renunciation of their free agency, and by encountering the risk of being capriciously transferred from a palace to a dungeon. If, relying on his good luck, a man will venture to play with a gambler whom he knows to assert the privilege of now and then cogging the dice, his folly perhaps deserves more compassion than his misfortune.

Let us now see in what manner other classes were affected by the working of an arbitrary government; whether its tyranny was impartially distributed among them. A few examples, taken between the years 1660 and 1670, will enable us to form a tolerably correct judgment upon this subject. Before we proceed to give these examples, it may, however, be well to apprise the reader, that committals to the Bastile were not things of rare occurrence, but the contrary. In 1663, fifty-four persons were sent to that dreary pile; in some years the number was fewer; in others it rose to nearly a hundred and fifty. The Bastile was so crowded in 1665, that a part of the prisoners were obliged to be removed to other places of confinement. It must, indeed, have been full to overflowing, before this removal could have been thought necessary. Such being the case with the Bastile, it is probable that Vincennes, and many other state prisons, were in a similar situation.

Though, as far as can be judged from imperfect registers, it appears that a large majority of the persons incarcerated in the Bastile were the victims of caprice, malice, or religious and political persecution, there can be no doubt that many were really criminal. Some instances of the latter class occur in the years between 1660 and 1670. The crime of coining, which we have seen so common at an earlier period, was still prevalent, and was still committed by men who held a respectable rank in society. In 1666 twelve coiners were hanged within a fortnight, and they accused several others, among whom was a M. Delcampe, who is described as “the celebrated master of an academy in the suburb of St. Germain.” He was escorted in a carriage to the Bastile, by three companies of the guards, and little more than a week elapsed before he was beheaded. The crowd to witness his execution was so great, that many persons were killed or wounded by being pressed or trampled on.

The Bastile was often employed as an engine of extortion. To contribute to the wants of the state, or, rather, to the prodigalities of the court, immense sums were levied upon individuals holding offices, and upon contractors, and all who had had any concern with the finances. It must, of course, have been taken for granted that they had robbed the public; and it could hardly have been expected that they would not indemnify themselves, by future peculation, for their present loss. Messat, a registrar of the council, was Bastiled for remonstrating against a demand of six hundred thousand livres from himself and three of his colleagues. Catalan, a contractor, shared the same fate, and was threatened with death to boot; but after a confinement of several months, he ransomed himself for six millions of livres. From another individual nine hundred thousand livres, and from three of the treasurers of the exchequer several millions, were squeezed by this powerful instrument. M. Deschiens, one of M. Colbert’s head clerks, was also frightened into the payment of a good round sum, by a visit to the Bastile.

Other equally honourable means of raising money were resorted to; all of which helped to fill the prisons as well as the coffers of the monarch. Among them were “free gifts,” once known in England under the name of “benevolences.” From the city of Sens, for instance, twelve thousand livres were demanded as a free gift, besides nearly thrice as much for the pay of the gendarmerie. The citizens replied that they had no money, but would give a thousand hogsheads of excellent wine. Whether the wine was accepted, or whether any of the citizens were imprisoned for the misdemeanour of being pennyless, I cannot say.

Immense sums were raised by the sale of offices. For the title of counsellor of the court, 75,000 crowns were paid, and 90,000 for a place at the board of exchequer. Numerous purchasers were found at far higher prices. There is perhaps much truth in Patin’s sarcastic remark on this occasion: “They must have robbed at a great rate,” says he, “or they would not have so much money to squander.” Monopolies likewise lent their aid to replenish the royal store. Niceron, a grocer, who appears to have been an agent, or spokesman, of the Parisian companies of tradesmen, was lodged in the Bastile for having ventured to remonstrate against a projected monopoly of whale oil. Another article of supply was the stopping of the annuities payable at the town hall; a measure for which we have seen a precedent in the reign of Henry IV. Poignant, a respectable citizen of Paris, was sent to the Bastile for having spoken on this subject; and a female, named Madame de la Trousse, was, for the same cause, prohibited from going to the town hall, or to any other meeting, under pain of corporal punishment! On another occasion, the President le Lievre was banished from Paris, for having made some observations which were unfavourable to the taxes.

The money thus obtained was lavishly spent on the pomps and amusements of the court. A part was dissipated at the gaming-table; Louis being then a constant and an unlucky gamester. Theatrical entertainments absorbed another portion. The getting up of a single grand ballet is said to have cost no less than forty thousand pounds. Guy Patin had reason to exclaim, “they talk much at the Louvre of balls, ballets, and rejoicings, but nothing is said of relieving the people, who are dying of such unexampled want, after so great and solemn a general peace has been concluded. O pudor! ô mores! ô tempora!”

But though, in his private letters, Patin could venture to censure profusion and exaction, he would soon have been fitted with what he somewhere calls “a stone doublet,” had he dared to breathe a word against them in public. It was dangerous even for a barrister to perform faithfully his duty to a client. M. Burai, an eminent advocate, was committed to the Bastile, in 1655, for having undertaken the defence of Guenegaut, one of the treasurers, who was prosecuted by the government.

The press was completely muzzled. We find De Prez, a printer, sent to the Bastile, for having printed a letter by the Bishop of Aleth, which displeased the jesuits; a second unlucky typographer, for offending the Archbishop of Paris; and a third, named Coquier, for privately printing an answer to a work of the Chevalier Talon, who had attacked Coquier’s former master, the superintendant Fouquet. It was a perilous task for a man to defend himself against the minions of favour. The Journal des Sçavans having abused Charles Patin, he was about to reply, when it was intimated to him that if he did not desist, the Bastile would receive him: the journal happened to be protected by M. Colbert, the minister. Such protection gave a decisive advantage over a less fortunate rival. The conduct of Renaudot, the printer of the Gazette, affords a strong proof of the tyrannical use which was made of it. There appears to have been at this period a sort of partnership, the members of which gained a livelihood by compiling and vending a manuscript gazette. As the sale of this paper diminished that of his own, Renaudot made a bold attempt to get rid of his competitors. He is said to have been extremely desirous that they should be hanged; but his benevolent wish was not gratified. He had, however, the satisfaction of procuring seven of them to be sent to the Bastile, one of whom was publicly whipped through the streets. Yet these measures, harsh as they were, did not succeed in putting down the manuscript gazetteers; for, five years afterwards, six more of them were committed to prison. From its long continuance, and the risks which the traders were willing to encounter, we may infer that the trade was productive.

To have a different opinion from the sovereign, as to the merit of any one whom he placed in office, was a heavy offence. M. de Montespan expiated, by imprisonment in Fort-l’Evêque, his having doubted the wisdom of choosing M. Montausier as governor to the dauphin. Some were thrown into the Bastile for impossible crimes; such was the case of St. Severin, a priest, who was accused of sorcery. Of others, the fault and the meaning of their punishment are now undiscoverable. With respect to L’Epine, a priest, for example, we are only told that he was discharged from the Bastile, on condition of quitting Paris within twenty-four hours, and going to Egypt. The reason of this singular species of banishment must remain an enigma.

One of the instances in which despair prompted an inmate of the Bastile to commit suicide, occurred in 1669, and is recorded by Patin. “A state prisoner,” says he, “has poisoned himself in the Bastile, terrified by the punishment which could not fail to be inflicted on him, for having spoken very badly _de Domino Priore_.”

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