Up to a point, Fouquet was the best courtier in France. The King's passion was for pomp and glitter; the minister cultivated a taste for the dazzling. Louis was prodigal to extravagance; Fouquet became lavish _jusqu'à la folie_. The King dipped both hands into the public moneys; the minister plunged elbow-deep into the coffers of the State. The King offered to his servitors fêtes the most sumptuous; the minister regaled his friends with spectacles beyond compare. Then Louis wearied of this too splendid emulation, and Fouquet the magnificent was attached. He all but sacrificed his head to his lust of rivalry; but Louis relented, and took from him only his goods and his freedom. Despoiled and dishonoured, the ex-minister fared from prison to prison,—Vincennes, Angers, Amboise, Moret, the Bastille, and Pignerol. _Quò non ascendam?_—_Whither may I not mount?_ The unfortunate minister, who had thought to climb to the sun of Louis XIV., sank to his death in a _cachot_. ------- The contrasts presented by the diverse fates of certain prisoners are sufficiently striking. Fouquet was preceded at Vincennes by Cardinal de Retz, the last prisoner of distinction whom Anne of Austria sent to the dungeon. The Cardinal's was a gilt-edged captivity. He lived _en prince_ at Vincennes; he had valets, money, and a good table; great ladies came to distract him, friends to flatter him, and players to divert him. Literature, politics, gallantry, and the theatre—the Cardinal found all of these at Vincennes. When he chanced to remember his priestly quality, he obtained leave to say mass in the chapel of the château, "carefully concealing the end of his chain under the richest of vestments." But the chain was there, and the lightest of fetters grows heavy in prison;—the Cardinal resolved on flight.