The poet escaped unpunished.  His affront gave Colbert the chance for a mot,—­an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away.  When the injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,—­“Is there anything in them offensive to the King?” “No.”  “Then there can be nothing in them offensive to me.”  Loret, of the Gazette, was not so lucky.  A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by striking the editor from the pension-list,—­a fine of fifteen hundred livres a year.  Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the hands of Madame Scudery, a year’s allowance to the faithful newsman.

The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664.  For three years the sharpest lawyers in France had been working on the Act of Accusation.  It was very large even for its age.  The accompanying Pieces were unusually voluminous.  The accused had not been idle.  His Defenses may be seen in fourteen closely printed Elzevir 18mos.

The unabated rigor of Fouquet’s prison had convinced his friends that it was useless to hope for clemency, and that it might be difficult to save his life.  The King was as malignant as at first; Colbert and Le Tellier as venomous, as if it had been a question of Fouquet’s head or their own.  They talked about justice, affected moderation, and deceived nobody.  Marshal Turenne, speaking of their respective feelings in the matter, said a thing which was considered good by the bel-esprits:—­“I think that Colbert is the more anxious to have him hanged, and Le Tellier the more afraid he will not be.”

But meantime the Parisians had changed their minds about the Surintendant.  Now, they were all for him.  His friends had done much to bring this about; time, and the usual reaction of feeling, had done more.  His haughtiness and his pomp were gone and forgotten; there remained only an unfortunate gentleman, crushed, imprisoned, threatened with death, attacked by his enemies with a bitterness which showed they were seeking to destroy the man rather than to punish the criminal,—­yet bearing up against his unexampled afflictions with unshaken courage.  The great Public has strong levelling propensities, both upward and downward.  If it delights to see the prosperous humbled, it is always ready to pity the unfortunate; and even in 1664 the popular feeling in Paris was powerful enough to check the ministers of an absolute king, and to save Fouquet’s life.  His persecutors were so eager to run down their prey that they overran it “In their anxiety to hang him,” some one said, “they have made their rope so thick that they cannot tighten it about his neck.”