The Surintendant had no previsions of danger.  With his usual boldness, he laid the financial “situation” of the kingdom before his new master, confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and economy for the future.  The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full pardon.  Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he was soon to fall.  Colbert was reinforced by Seguier, the Chancellor, and by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, in the War Department.  All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped to succeed him.  Fouquet’s ostentation and haughtiness had made him enemies among the old nobility.  Many of them were eager to see the proud and prosperous man humiliated,—­merely to gratify that wretched feeling of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the strongest proofs of that corruption “which standeth in the following of Adam.”

Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the Surintendant.  First of all, he was afraid of him.  The Fronde was fresh in the royal memory.  Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleile, which he had fortified and garrisoned.  Why might he not, if his ambition were thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France?  The personal reminiscences of the King’s whole life must have made him feel keenly the force of this apprehension.  He was ten years old, when, to escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life.  After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and penetrated to the royal bedchamber.  He could not well forget the night when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the attempt to arrest Conde, who thought himself the master.  He was twelve when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green scarfs, the Cardinal’s colors, and in the Cardinal’s pay.  After the young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty thousand crowns for the Cardinal’s head.  He was thirteen when Conde, in command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bleneau, and would have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne.  A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish flag.  The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,—­had seen the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, Mademoiselle, the grand-daughter of Henry IV.  He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an Anti-Parliament at Pontoise.  In 1651, Conde, De Retz, and La Rochefoucauld fought