"Clelie" and yet there are as many leagues from Paris
to Vaux as there are volumes of the "Clelie."

This magnificent palace had been got ready for the reception of the
greatest reigning sovereign of the time. M. Fouquet's friends had
transported thither, some their actors and their dresses, others their
troops of sculptors and artists; not forgetting others with their
ready-mended pens--floods of impromptus were contemplated. The cascades,
somewhat rebellious nymphs though they were, poured forth their waters
brighter and clearer than crystal; they scattered over the bronze
tritons and nereids their waves of foam, which glistened like fire in
the rays of the sun. An army of servants were hurrying to and fro in
squadrons in the courtyard and corridors; while Fouquet, who had only
that morning arrived, walked all through the palace with a calm,
observant glance, in order to give his last orders, after his intendants
had inspected everything.

It was, as we have said, the 15th of August. The sun poured down its
burning rays upon the heathen deities of marble and bronze; it raised
the temperature of the water in the conch shells, and ripened, on the
walls, those magnificent peaches, of which the king, fifty years later,
spoke so regretfully, when, at Marly, on an occasion of a scarcity of
the finer sorts of peaches being complained of, in the beautiful gardens
there--gardens which had cost France double the amount that had been
expended on Vaux--the _great king_ observed to some one, "You are far
too young to have eaten any of M. Fouquet's peaches."

Oh! fame! Oh! the blazonry of renown! Oh! the glory of this earth! That
very man whose judgment was so sound and accurate where merit was
concerned--he who had swept into his coffers the inheritance of Nicholas
Fouquet, who had robbed him of Lenotre and Lebrun, and had sent him to
rot for the remainder of his life in one of the state prisons--merely
remembered the peaches of that vanquished, crushed, forgotten enemy! It
was to little purpose that Fouquet had squandered thirty millions of
francs in the fountains of his gardens, in the crucibles of his
sculptors, in the writing-desks of his literary friends, in the
portfolios of his painters; vainly had he fancied that thereby he might
be remembered. A peach--a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the
trellis-work on the garden wall, hidden beneath its long green
leaves--this small vegetable production, that a dormouse w