Nevertheless, to Nicolas Foucquet remains the honour of having discerned and selected men of superior talent, and of having been the first to employ those great masters of French Art whose works have shed an enduring splendour over the reign of Louis XIV. After he had disgraced his Minister, the King could not do better than take from him his architect Louis Le Vau, his painter Charles Le Brun and his gardener André Le Nostre, and remove to Paris the looms which Foucquet had set up at Maincy and which became the Manufacture des Gobelins. But there was something which the King could not appropriate: the taste, the feeling for art, the delicate yet profound instinct for the beautiful which endeared the Comptroller to all the artists who worked for him. Le Brun, on whom the King showered benefits, regretted notwithstanding his generous host of Vaux. It is said that during his trial, when in danger of a capital sentence, Foucquet, on leaving the Court, was walking, strongly guarded, past the Arsenal, when seeing some men at work he asked what they were making. Hearing that they were at work on a basin for a fountain, he went to look at the latter and gave his opinion of it. Then, turning to Artagnan, the Musketeer, who was in charge of him, he said, smiling: "You are wondering why I meddle in such a business? It is because I used, to be something of an expert in these matters." And Foucquet spoke the truth. He was surely a sincere lover of the arts whom the sight of men at work upon a fountain could suddenly distract from the thought of dungeons and the imminence of the scaffold. PART I The Foucquets were citizens of Nantes, and in the sixteenth century they traded with the West Indies. By these maritime expeditions they gained great possessions and a peculiar quality of mind, a crafty and audacious spirit which may be discerned in their descendants. Nicolas Foucquet, with whom alone we are concerned here, was born in 1615. He was the third son of François Foucquet, a King's Councillor, and of Marie Manpeou, who had twelve children, six sons and six daughters. This François Foucquet, originally councillor in the Rennes Parliament, purchased a place in the Paris Parliament, became a Councillor of State, and was for a while Ambassador in Switzerland. He was a collector: he formed a collection of medals and books which Peiresc, when he passed through Paris, visited with great interest, jotting down in his note-book[1] particulars of the more remarkable objects. In the Councillor's exalted hobbies some have sought to discern the origin of the taste displayed by his son Nicolas in the matter of the ancient sculpture and the pictures which he spent great sums in collecting.