Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his treatise, "_De Motu Chyli_," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were then, and so long after, violently opposed by the _Purgons_ and the _Diafoirus_ of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as punishment for a "_Mazarinade_," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,--a scanty addition to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome _travestissement_ was the death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z. The Surintendant's _hotel_, at St. Mande, was a marvel of art, his library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the _chateau_. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical designs. Le Notre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,--an aviary of foreign birds,--tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, and everything was new,--so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and no artists so skilful as these _pour embellir son regne_. He was obliged to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon enrolled in the service of the King.