Page:The Man in the Iron Mask.djvu/105

 for the purpose of keeping the grounds and gardens well watered, M. Fouquet had divided a river into a thousand fountains, and gathered the waters of a thousand fountains into torrents. This same M. de Scudery said a great many other things, in his "Clelie," about this palace of Valterre, the charms of which he describes most minutely. We should be far wiser to send our curious readers to Vaux to judge for themselves than to refer them to "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 sort 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 Icing observed to some one:

"You are far too young to have eaten any of Monsieur 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 cofliers the inheritance of Nicolas 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