y and pyrotechnics, what were
they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure
to His Majesty, the King.

There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his
ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts,
to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for
his own palace and for gifts. This grand fete in the lovely month of
June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the
eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming
men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an
incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.

Among the observant guests at this wondrous fete champetre was
Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in
Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by
ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches
their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to
count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to
ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate
stretching to the vision's limit, the money that built the chateau of
regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of
that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence
and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, "We
shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior
luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw
to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of
Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and
then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with
the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigne saw him in the beginning,
wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his
weary years.

[Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING

After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
Quatre, Pau]

[Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]

With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Chateau of Vaux
near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine
results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not
in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the
school where certai