By all who were connected with it, the French treasury seems, in those days, to have been considered as a mine which they were privileged to work for their own benefit. Mazarin had recently been a wholesale plunderer of it; and there can be little doubt that Fouquet was a peculator to a vast extent. Yet the superintendant had one merit, which was wanting in other depredators—though he took, he likewise gave; for at one period, when money ran short, he mortgaged his property and his wife’s, and borrowed on his own bills, to supply the necessities of the state. The fatal failing of Fouquet was his magnificent extravagance. He had a taste for splendour and lavish expenditure, which might have qualified him for an oriental sovereign. On his estate at Vaux he built a mansion, or rather a palace, which threw into the shade the country residences of the French monarch—for Versailles was not then in existence. Whole hamlets were levelled to the ground to afford space for its gardens. The building was sumptuously decorated, and in every part of it was painted his device, a squirrel, with the ambitious motto “_Quo non ascendam?_” Whither shall I not rise? It is a curious circumstance, that the squirrel was represented as being pursued by a snake, which was the arms of Colbert, the bitter enemy of Fouquet. The edifice cost eighteen millions of livres; a sum equivalent to three times as much at the present day. The largesses of the superintendant, which in many cases deserve the name of bribes, were immense. Great numbers of the courtiers did not blush to become his pensioners. On extraordinary occasions they also received presents from him. Each of the nobles, who was invited with Louis XIV. to the grand entertainment at Vaux, found in his bed-chamber a purse filled with gold; which, says a sarcastic writer, “the nobles did not forget to take away.” There was another abundant source of expense, which arose out of his licentious passions; he lavished immense sums in purchasing the venal charms of the French ladies of distinction, and was eminently successful in finding sellers. “There were few at court,” says Madame de Motteville, “who did not sacrifice to the golden calf.” Policy, no doubt, had a share in prompting his liberality to the courtiers; and, perhaps, it sometimes was mingled with lust and vanity in his gifts to frail females of rank; but we may attribute to a purer motive the kindness and courtesy which he manifested to persons of talent. The result was quite natural; the great deserted him in his hour of danger and disgrace, the people of talent clung with more tenacity than ever to their fallen benefactor and friend.