sincerely desired to continue to employ Fouquet. He conferred with him a long time, begged that he might be informed of everything, and that nothing of the true state of the finances might be concealed from him. On these conditions he consented to forget the past, and in future to consider only the services rendered by the Surintendant entering on a legal and regular course of proceeding and foregoing further peculations.[358] But, like many others at the court, Fouquet had deceived himself as to the character of the young King. The latter had announced his resolution to govern by himself, to preside in person over the Council, to sign everything after having seen everything, and to gradually enlighten himself upon the administration of his kingdom, with the view of always being able to direct it properly.[359] Very few had believed in the permanence of this resolution of a young King of two-and-twenty, to which, however, he was faithful till his death, and even Anne of Austria herself had derided it.[360] Conceiving himself master of the King’s mind through those who surrounded him, and imagining that, thanks to his numerous spies, he was acquainted with every one of his plans; convinced, moreover, that his master, occupied with his pleasures, would be quickly repelled by irksome labour, Fouquet had persisted in his criminal conduct, and had remained deaf to the warnings of his friends.[361] But whilst he daily presented Louis XIV. with falsified accounts, in which the expenses were increased and the receipts diminished, Colbert, to whom they were sent every evening, examined them carefully, indicated the embezzlements, and enlightened the King upon the persevering audacity of his Minister. At the same time Fouquet continued to fortify his towns, to extend his influence, to fabricate loans to the King, to secure for himself under other names the farming of several taxes, and to appoint his creatures to the most important offices, which he secretly bought for them in the hope of soon rendering himself the sovereign ruler of the State.[362] This was not all. This individual, who aspired to replace Mazarin, to whom he was so inferior, because, unlike him, he was not prompted by true national interests, possessed moreover only the lofty aims of the ambitious, but neither tact nor clear-sightedness. With a keen mind and quick understanding, he very rapidly discerned the surface of things, but was wanting in the Cardinal’s penetrating sagacity and depth of vision, and whilst the latter, with a less vulgar ambition, occupied himself much more with the reality than with the semblance of power, Fouquet, vain and frivolous, could not resist the puerile satisfaction of making a parade of his authority and wealth. We are acquainted with the scandalous pomp of the fête given in the Château of Vaux, “that anticipated Versailles,”[363] with its magnificent galleries, its splendid gardens, and its shameless luxury. We have this example,