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'And then?'

'That was but the first step on his via dolorosa. A trial was prepared, which lasted three years.'

'Why so long?'

The Superintendent defended himself with incomparable skill. But in the end he was doomed to succumb. The King had him imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pinerol, beyond the Alps.

'And did he die there?'

'From that place, no one leaves save at the King's pleasure.'

'But then it was the King's envy that destroyed Fouquet, because he could not tolerate his magnificence; and the fetes…'

'I cannot permit you to speak like this,' he interrupted. 'The young King was, at that time, beginning to cast his eyes over the various aspects of the state, and those eyes were not indifferent: they were those of a master. Only then did he understand that he was King and that he had been born to reign. But it was already too late for him to call to account Mazarin, the now deceased master and godfather of his youthful years, who had refused him everything. There remained, however, Fouquet, the other Sun, whose fate was thus sealed.'

'So the King took his revenge. And what is more, he had not appreciated the solid gold dinner service…'

'No one can speak of the King taking vengeance, for he is the most powerful of all the princes of Europe; and a fortiori no one can say that His Most Christian Majesty was envious of the Superintendent of the Royal Finances, when those finances belonged to the Sovereign and to no one else.'

He again fell silent, but he himself understood that his reply was not sufficient to satisfy my curiosity.

'It is true,' he added at last, staring at the last rays of daylight as they entered the chamber, 'you would not know the truth unless I told you of the Serpent who caught the Squirrel in his coils.'

If the Superintendent was the Squirrel, in his footsteps there followed insidiously the Serpent. This slimy creature is known in Latin as coluber, and, strangely enough, that appellation pleased Monsieur de Colbert, who was convinced that the similarity with a reptile could (an idea as erroneous as it was revealing) best lend lustre and magnificence to his name.

'And he truly did know how to conduct himself like a thousand- coiled serpent,' said the abbot. 'For it was the Serpent, whom the Squirrel so trusted, that was to thrust him into the abyss.'

In the beginning, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the son of a rich textile merchant, was lord of absolutely nothing.

'Even if,' sneered Atto, 'he did lay claim to august forebears by having himself made a false tombstone which he claimed to be that of an ancestor from the thirteenth century, and before which he was even so mendacious as to kneel.'

'Poorly educated, fortune smiled on him early in the guise of a cousin of his father, with whose help he acquired a post at the Ministry of War. There, his talent for toadying enabled him to make the acquaintance of Richelieu and to tie himself to his chariot; then, after the Cardinal's death, to become secretary to Michel le Tellier, the powerful Secretary for War. In the meanwhile, Richelieu's place had been taken by an Italian Cardinal, Jules Mazarin, who was very close to the Queen Mother.

'During that time, thanks to the money accruing to him through trade, he had succeeded in purchasing himself a minor title. And if he needed more money, the matter was resolved by his marriage to Marie Charron and above all by her dowry of one hundred thousand livres,' added Abbot Melani with a further touch of spite. 'But what made his true fortune,' he resumed, 'was the King's misfortune.'

In 1650 the Fronde, which had begun some two years earlier, reached its climax, and the Sovereign, the Queen and Cardinal Mazarin had to flee Paris.

'The main problem for the state was certainly not the absence of the King, who was still a boy of twelve, nor that of the Queen Mother, who was above all the Cardinal's mistress, but that of the Cardinal himself.'

To whom were the affairs and secrets of state, which the Cardinal handled so skilfully, now to be entrusted? Colbert drew on all his qualities as a zealous functionary: he was to be found in the office at five o'clock in the morning, he kept the most absolute order and never undertook anything of importance on his own initiative. All that, while Fouquet worked at home, forging ideas in the white heat of his furnace-like mind, amidst the uttermost chaos of papers and documents.

Thus the Cardinal, who in 1651 was beginning to feel threatened by Fouquet's enterprising ways, chose Colbert to look after his affairs. The more so, as the latter had shown himself to be highly proficient in the art of coded correspondence. Colbert served Mazarin not only until his triumphal re-entry to Paris with Louis and Anne of Austria at the end of the Fronde, but until the Cardinal's death.

'He entrusted to him even the administration of his own property,' said the abbot with a sigh which expressed all the bitterness of one who has seen so much trust placed in the wrong hands. 'He taught him all that art which the Serpent would never have been able to cultivate on his own. The Serpent, instead of manifesting gratitude, ensured that he was well paid. And he obtained favours for himself and for his family,' said he, rubbing his thumb against his index as a vulgar indication that he was speaking of money. 'He succeeded in obtaining audiences with the Queen Mother almost every day. To look at, he was almost the exact opposite of Nicolas: squat and stocky, with a wide, marked face, a livid, yellowish complexion, long, sparse crow-black hair under his skull-cap, an avid expression, hooded eyelids, moustaches as fine as whiplashes over thin, unsmiling lips. His glacial, prickly and recondite character would have made him a man to be dreaded, were it not for his ridiculous ignorance, ill- camouflaged by those misplaced Latin quotations which he was wont to parrot, after learning them from young assistants especially appointed for the purpose. He became a figure of fun but was even less liked for it, so much so that Madame de Sevigne nicknamed him 'the North', the iciest and most disagreeable of the cardinal points.'

I did not ask Melani why there transpired from his tale such aversion for Colbert but not for Mazarin, to whom Colbert seemed so closely tied. I already knew the answer: had I not heard Devize, Cristofano and Stilone Priaso say that the castrato Atto Melani had, from his earliest youth, been helped and protected by the Cardinal?

'Were Colbert and Superintendent Fouquet friends?' I hazarded instead.

He hesitated an instant before replying.

'They met at the time of the Fronde and at first they quite liked one another. During the troubles, Fouquet's behaviour was that of the best of subjects, and Colbert revered him, rendering him services when he became Procurator-General of Paris, an office which he combined with that of Superintendent of Finances. But this did not last: Colbert could not bear that Fouquet's star should shine so high and so bright. How could he forgive the Squirrel his celebrity, his fortune, his charm, his agility at work and his promptitude of mind, (while he, Colbert, must sweat so hard to bring forth good ideas), and finally, for his sumptuous library which he, being uneducated, would not even have known how to use? So the Serpent played Spider, and set his hand to the web.'

The fruits of Colbert's cunning were not long in coming. First, he instilled the poison of mistrust in Mazarin, then in the King. The realm was then emerging from decades of war and poverty and it was not difficult to falsify papers so as to accuse the Superintendent of accumulating wealth at the Sovereign's expense.

'Was Fouquet very rich?'

'He was not rich at all, but for reasons of state he needed to appear so: only thus could he continue to obtain more and more credit and thus satisfy Mazarin's pressing demands for money. He, the Cardinal, was exceedingly wealthy. Yet, when the King read his will a short time before he died, he found nothing to comment on therein.'

This was, however, not the real question for Colbert. When the Cardinal died, a decision had to be made as to who was to take his place. Fouquet had adorned the realm, had endowed it with glory, had given of himself day and night to satisfy the demands for more revenue: he rightly thought that the honour should be his.

'But when the young King was asked who was to succeed Mazarin, he replied: 'C'est moi. ' There was no room for another prime actor alongside the Sovereign, and Fouquet was of too refined a material to play the subordinate. Colbert, on the other hand, was perfect in the part of bootlicker: he was consumed by the thirst for power, and even resembled the King too much in his manner of taking himself seriously; and that is precisely why he made not a single false move. Louis XIV fell headlong into the trap.'

'So it was Colbert's envy that led to the persecution of Fouquet.'

'That is quite clear. During the trial, the Serpent covered himself in infamy: he suborned the judges, he falsified documents, he threatened and extorted. To Fouquet there remained only La Fontaine's heroic defence, the peroration of Corneille, the courageous letters which his friends wrote to the King, the wholehearted support and friendship of noble ladies and, among the people, a hero's fame. Only Moliere kept cowardly silence.'