Poets he succoured with a noble delicacy. Since it is true that he usurped the rights which were then attributed to the Sovereign, his master, by disposing of the public revenue as though it were his own, at least he made a royal use of the King's treasure by dispensing some of it to Corneille, to La Fontaine and to Molière. The rest was spent on buildings, furniture, tapestries and so forth; and this, again, when all is said, was a royal habit, if regarded, as it should be, in the light of ancient institutions. If Foucquet cannot be justified--and how can he be, since there were poor in France in those days?--at least his conduct is explained, in some degree excused, by the institutions, and, above all, by the public morality of his period. While his Château de Vaux was building, Foucquet lived at Saint-Mandé, in a house sumptuously surrounded by beautiful gardens. These gardens adjoined the park where Mazarin used to spend the summer. The financier had only to pass through a door when he wished to visit the Minister. The estate of Saint-Mandé was formed by the union of two estates bought from Mme. de Beauvais, Anne of Austria's first lady-in-waiting. Gradually, Foucquet acquired more land and added wings to the main building, so that the whole construction cost at least 1,100,000 livres; and yet the finest part of it remained unexecuted.[23] We may form some idea of the beautiful things which Foucquet had collected in this house by consulting the inventory preserved in the Archives, and published by M. Bonnaffé,[24] "of the statues, busts, scabella, columns, tables and other works in marble and stone at Saint-Mandé." Among these things there are many antiques. Most of the modern pieces of sculpture are by Michel Anguier, who passed three years, 1655-58, at Saint-Mandé. There he executed the group of _La Charité_ which has already been mentioned, and a _Hercules_ six feet in height, as well as "thirteen statues, life-size, copied from the most beautiful antiques of Rome, notably the _Laocoôn, Hercules, Flora,_ and _Juno_ and _Jupiter._" This we are told by Germain Brice.[25] He had seen them in a garden in the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, where they were in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Germain Brice also tells us that in those days eight other statues, by the same sculptor, and also coming from Saint-Mandé, adorned the house of the Marquise de Louvois at Choisy. We learn also, from other sources, that one of the ceilings of Saint-Mandé was painted by Lebrun.[26]