This Menneville, celebrated in such bad verse, was, with Fouilloux, the prettiest woman at Court. On this matter we have the testimony of Jean Racine, who, banished to the depths of the provinces, wrote to his friend La Fontaine, citing Fouilloux and Menneville as examples of beauty. "I cannot refrain from saying a word as to the beauties of this province.... There is not a village maiden, nor a cobbler's wife, who might not vie in beauty with the Fouilloux and the Mennevilles.... All the women here are dazzling, and they deck themselves out in a manner which is to them the most natural fashion in the world, and as for the attractions of their person, _Colors vents, corpus solidum et sued plenum._"[60] Of the two, Menneville is thought to have been the more beautiful. A song says of her: Cachez-vous, filles de la reine, Petites, Car Menneville est de retour, M'amour. She sold herself to the Superintendent. As she did not equal Fouilloux in her genius for intrigue, Foucquet used her more kindly. While this lady-in-waiting was yielding to the suit of the seigneur of Vaux, she was trying to force the Duc de Damville to marry her, as he had promised. Like Fouilloux, she begged the Superintendent to help her to get settled. He did so with a good grace, and sent the fair lady fifteen thousand crowns, which ought to have decided Damville. The latter hesitated. An accident decided for him: he died. There were no pleasures, no distractions--if we employ the word in the strict sense which Pascal then gave it--there were no means of enjoyment and oblivion for which Foucquet had not the most tremendous capacity. Business and building were not enough to absorb his vast energies. He was a gambler. The stakes at his tables were terribly high. So they were at Madame Foucquet's. In one day Gourville won eighteen thousand livres from the Comte d'Avaux. No money was laid on the table, but at the end of the game the players settled their accounts. They played not only for money, but for gems, ornaments, lace, collars, valued at seventy to eighty pistoles each. Foucquet, playing against Gourville, in one day lost sixty thousand livres. "He played," said Gourville, "with cut cards which were worth ten or twenty pistoles each. I put one thousand pistoles before me almost desiring that he should win back something, which did happen. Nevertheless, he was not pleased to see I was leaving the game."[61] This wild play was not altogether to the Superintendent's disadvantage. In the end his intimate friends, who were great personages, were ruined, and came to him for mercy. Thus, for instance, he held in his power Hugues de Lyonne--the great Lyonne. But he himself was at his last gasp, and overwhelmed with anxiety.