Her next misfortune was the fall and banishment of Fouquet. It speaks highly for madame de Sévigné's good sense and superior qualities that, while refusing a man who, in other instances, showed himself presuming from success with other women, she should secure him as a friend. The secret lay in her own feelings of friendship, which being sincere, and yet strictly limited, she acquired his esteem as well as affection. Fouquet was a munificent and generous man, of a superior understanding and unbounded ambition. He dissipated the finances of the state as he spent his own; but he could bestow as well as take, as he proved when, on getting his place of procureur-general to the parliament, he sent in the price (14,000 francs) to the public treasury. The entertainment he gave Louis XIV. at Vaux, which cost 18,000,000 of francs, was the seal of his ruin, already suggested to the king by Colbert. He had made the monarch, already all powerful, fear his victim. Louis fancied that Fouquet had fortified Belle Isle, and that he had a strong party within and without the kingdom. This was a mere mistake, inspired by the superintendent's enemies, to ensure his fall. Madame de Sévigné, Pelisson, Gourville, and mademoiselle Scuderi were his chief friends: joined to these was Pelisson, his confidential clerk. He shared the fall of his master, and was imprisoned in the Bastille; but, undeterred by fear from this, defended him with great eloquence. The simple-minded, true-hearted La Fontaine was another of his firm friends in adversity. The suit against him was carried on for three years. He was pursued with the utmost acrimony and violence by Colbert, Le Tellier, secretary of state, and his rival in credit, and Séguier, the chancellor. During his trial, madame de Sévigné wrote daily to M. de Pomponne, afterwards minister, relating its progress. These letters are very interesting, both from the anecdotes they contain, and the warmth of feeling the writer displays. Fouquet was treated with the utmost harshness by the chancellor Séguier, whom he answered with spirit, preserving through all a presence of mind, a composure, a dignity, and resolution, which is the more admirable, since, in those days, there was no humiliation of language to which the subjects of Louis XIV. did not descend, and think becoming, as addressed to the absolute arbiter of their destiny.