Charles II., an excellent
judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a
receiver-general of taxes. Moliere wrote two of his earlier plays for
the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself
to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or
sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas.
He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have
not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables."

"Le Roi, l'Etat, la Patrie,
Partagent toute votre vie."

That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well.
He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe
de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is
a dull piece. Four fairies, _Palatiane, Hortesie, Apellanire, and
Calliopee_, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at
Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador
from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's
_alias_, in the affected jargon of the period)

"fait batir un palais magnifique,
Ou regne l'ordre Ionique
Avec beaucoup d'agrement."

Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the
picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy.

"Pour lui Melpomene medite,
Thalie en est jalouse,"--

and soon--

Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his
treatise, "_De Motu Chyli_," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron
was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were
then, and so long after, violently opposed by the _Purgons_ and the
_Diafoirus_ of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally
good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave
him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each
of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly
gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de
Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the
editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred
livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as
punishment for a "_Mazarinade_," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal
had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden.
He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated