to crush the only man who
seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war.

A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded
enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, _nec pluribus impar_.
He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,--because he was called
the Magnificent,--because his _chateaux_ and gardens were incomparably
finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,--because he was surrounded by
the first wits and artists,--no trifling matter in that bright morning
of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired
to be a _bel-esprit_, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his
employ. "_Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'a se croire humilie par un sujet_." His
"_gloire_" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in
government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture,
dress and dinners, madrigals and _bon-mots_. The monopoly of _gloire_ he
must and would have,--nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every
kind, _gloire_.

And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a
still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Valliere. He
had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental
delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes
of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men
of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in _petits
soins_ and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred
thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the
King, and was the cause of the _acharnement_, the relentless fury, he
showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen
Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred
survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his
affections, and from his palace.

Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to
the King, Court, and _bel-air_ for the seventeenth of August, 1661,--the
_fete de Vaux_, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In
June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made
Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and
old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the
shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a _dejeuner_ of our day.
The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and
Madame, da