England. He had even thought of building a city in that place with its excellent natural harbour and particularly favourable position, so as to divert from Amsterdam all the commercial traffic of the North, thus rendering a great service to the King of France.'
Thus, Fouquet, who had been arrested for embezzlement, found himself tried for fomenting sedition. Nor was that all. At Saint-Mande, a padlocked wooden box had been found containing the secret correspondence of the Superintendent. The King's representatives found therein the names of all the accused's most faithful friends, and many trembled at this. Most of the letters were sent to the King and in the end they were all entrusted to Colbert's care. He kept many of them, being well aware of their potential usefulness as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon those involved. Only a few letters, which Colbert was able to select in his own good time, were burned so as not to compromise some illustrious personage.
'Do you then think,' I interrupted, 'that the letters from Kircher which you discovered in Colbert's study were found in that box?'
'Perhaps.'
'And how did the trial end?'
Fouquet had requested that several judges should be challenged on grounds of partiality: for instance, Pussort, Colbert's uncle, who persistently referred to the Serpent his nephew as 'my party'. Pussort attacked Fouquet so coarsely as even to prevent him from responding, thus upsetting all the other judges.
Chancellor Seguier also sat in the court, yet during the Fronde he had been among the insurgents against the Crown. Fouquet observed: how could Seguier judge a state crime? The next day, all Paris applauded the brilliant counter-attack of the accused, but the challenge was rejected.
The public began to murmur: not a day passed without some new accusation being levelled against Fouquet. His accusers had made the rope so thick that it was becoming too unwieldy to strangle him with.
So, the decisive moment drew nigh. Some judges were requested by the King in person no longer to take an interest in the trial. Talon himself, who in his speeches for the prosecution had showed great zeal without obtaining much success, had to make way for another Procurator-General, Chamillart. It was he who, on 14th November, 1664, set out his own conclusions before the Chamber of Justice. Chamillart called for Fouquet to be condemned to death, and for the restitution of all sums illicitly taken from the state. It then fell to the rapporteurs of the trial to make their concluding speeches. Judge Olivier d'Ormesson, vainly subjected to Colbert's attempts at intimidation, spoke passionately for five whole days, unleashing his fury against Berryer and his men. He concluded by calling for a sentence of exile: the best possible solution for Fouquet.
The second rapporteur, Sainte-Helene, spoke in more languid and tranquil tones, but called for the death sentence. Then each judge had to utter his own verdict.
The ceremony was long-drawn-out, agonising and ruinous for some. Judge Massenau had himself carried into court, despite a grave indisposition, murmuring: 'Better to die here.' He voted for exile. Pontchartrain had resisted Colbert's allurements and his threats: he too voted for exile, thus ruining his own career and that of his son. As for judge Roquesante, he ended his own career in exile, for not having voted in favour of a death sentence.
In the end, only nine out of the twenty-six commissaries opted for the death sentence. Fouquet's head was saved.
As soon as it became known, the verdict which saved Fouquet's life and gave him back his freedom-albeit outside France-met with great relief and was greeted by much rejoicing.
It was here that Louis XIV entered the scene. Overcome by wrath, he resolutely opposed exile. He annulled the sentence of the Chamber of Justice, thus rendering utterly pointless the three long years of the trial. In a decision unique in the annals of the Kingdom of France, the Most Christian King reversed the royal right to commute sentences, hitherto used only to pardon, and condemned Fouquet to life imprisonment, in solitary confinement, in the distant fortress of Pinerol.
'Paris was utterly shocked. None could comprehend the reasons behind that gesture. It was as though he nurtured a secret and implacable hatred for Fouquet,' said Abbot Melani.
It was not enough that Louis XIV should dismiss him, humiliate him, despoil him of all his property and have him imprisoned on the faraway borders of France. The King himself sacked the Chateau de Vaux and his residence at Saint-Mande, decorating his own palace with Fouquet's furniture, his collections, carpets, gold services and tapestries and incorporating into the Royal Library the thirteen thousand precious volumes lovingly chosen by the Superintendent in the course of years of study and research. The whole was valued at no less than forty thousand livres.
To Fouquet's creditors, who suddenly emerged on all sides, there remained: the crumbs. One of them, an ironmonger named Jolly, forced his way into Vaux and the other residences, furiously tearing off with his bare hands all the padding and wall-coverings of precious leather; he then dug up and carried off the exceedingly modern lead pipes and hydraulic conduits, thus almost reducing to nothing the value of the parks and gardens of Vaux. Stucco decorations, ornaments and lamps were hurriedly stripped away by a hundred angry hands. When the pillage came to an end, the glorious residences of Nicolas Fouquet resembled nothing so much as two empty shells: the proof of the wonders which they contained rests only in the inventories of his persecutors. Fouquet's possessions in the Antilles were meanwhile plundered by the Superintendent's overseas dependents.
'Was the Chateau de Vaux as fine as the Palace of Versailles?' I stupidly asked Atto Melani.
'Vaux anticipated Versailles by a good five years,' said Atto with calculated bombast, 'and in many ways it was the inspiration behind it. If only you knew how heart-rending it is for those who frequented Fouquet, when moving through the Palace of Versailles, to recognise the paintings, the statues and the other marvels that belonged to the Superintendent and which still have the savour of his refined and sure taste…'
I said nothing and even wondered whether he was about to give way to tears.
'A few years ago, Madame de Sevigne made a pilgrimage to the Chateau de Vaux,' Atto resumed. 'And there she was seen to weep for a long time at the ruin of all those treasures and their great patron.'
The torment was compounded by the system of incarceration. The King gave orders that at Pinerol Nicolas Fouquet was to be forbidden to write or to speak with anyone, apart from his gaolers.
Whatever the prisoner had in his head or on his tongue was to remain his and his alone. The only one entitled to hear his voice, through the ears of his keepers, was the King. And if Fouquet did not desire to speak with his tormentor, he had but to keep silence.
Many in Paris began to guess at an explanation. If Louis XIV wished to silence his prisoner for all eternity, he had only to arrange for him to be served a soup with suitable condiments…
But time passed, and Fouquet was still living. Perhaps the question was more complicated. Perhaps the King wanted to know something which the prisoner, in the cold silence of his cell, was keeping to himself. One day, they imagined, the rigours of prison would convince him to talk.
Ugonio called for our attention. Distracted by our conversation, we had forgotten that, while we were in the house of Tiracorda, Ciacconio had smelled a foreign presence. Now the corpisantaro' s nose had again scented something.
'Gfrrrlubh.'
'Presence, perspiraceous, antiquated, scarified,' explained Ugonio.
'Can you perhaps tell us what he ate for luncheon?' asked Atto Melani derisively.
I feared that the corpisantaro might take this amiss, for his exceedingly fine sense of smell had been useful to us and would probably continue to be so.
'Gfrrrlubh,' came Ciacconio's calm response, after he had again sampled the air with his deformed and carbuncle-encrusted nose.
'Ciacconio has scented cow's udderlings,' translated his companion, 'with a probability of hen-fruit, hamon and white vino, mayhap with broth and saccar.'
Atto and I exchanged astonished glances. This was exactly the dish which I had taken such great pains to prepare for the guests at the Donzello. Ciacconio could know nothing about that; yet he was able to discern from the odorous traces left by the stranger not only the smell of cows' teats but even the aroma of a number of the ingredients which I had added to the dish. If the corpisantaro'' s sense of smell was accurate, we concluded incredulously, we must be following a lodger at the Donzello.
The narration of Fouquet's trial had lasted quite a while and during that time we had explored a fairly lengthy portion of gallery C. It was hard to say how far we had come from beneath the Piazza Navona and where we now were; but, apart from some very slight bends, our trajectory had involved no deviation whatever: we had therefore
