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Curate, more than any, because it removed what had seemed an ugly obstacle to their marriage; for when the old squire heard of the life that Grantley was leading, and-though the true and leal wife told him nothing-still conjectured that it was a miserable thing for her, he had sent for the Curate, and taken him into his study-or what was called by courtesy a study on the "lucus a non lucendo" principle, from the absence of books, save only such imposing volumes as "Burns's Justice of the Peace," and "The Magistrate's Guide," which guided him along the tortuous and difficult path of the law, and told him the exact punishment to award to the trembling poacher or turnip-stealer before him. Into this sanctum then had the Curate been taken, culprit-like, and the squire had remarked, with his most judicial air

"Smyly, my boy, I want to talk to you about my daughter. She tells me that you have been making love to her, and wants to know if she may marry you. Well now, look here, man; I haven't the slightest objection to this. I think you a gentleman and a man of honour. Or at least I had no objection till the last few days. You remember the man who married my daughter Ella? Wouldn't you have sworn, sir, that that man worshipped the very bit of ground

she set her foot on? And still I find that even

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now he is leading the devil's own life (excuse that, 'twas a mere slip), neglecting her, and worrying her to death by his love of play. This has frightened me, Smyly-it has, indeed; and I must think twice before I let Katie, my only remaining darling, go." And here something very like a tear glistened on the honest old gentleman's eyelash, and the Curate felt any thing but Christianlike when he thought of Grantley. "How am I to know, my dear fellow, that Katie will be safe with you? declare to goodness I am quite distracted with all this business. Supposing you were to become poor, or some mishap overtook you, how do I know that you mightn't change to your wife, and become sullen and morose, which would kill her quite as soon as downright cruelty? Yet I don't want to make a brute of myself after consenting, and I suppose neither of you would mind in the least what I said, and -and-in fact I don't know what on earth to do." And here old Stewart had fairly broken down, bringing a very brilliant and well-put speech to a "most lame and impotent conclusion," and had laid himself open to an attack from his would-be son-in-law.

"I should be sorry, Mr. Stewart, to praise myself in any way; but I shou'd be much more Sorry to compare myself with Captain Grantley. It is not for me to promise and vow, and all that sort of thing; you must take my word for it that I will be a true husband to your daughter. As for even the passing thought of losing her, that has never crossed my mind; and what is more, it never shall till the grave makes it unavoidable. You have my word, sir; I can say no more."

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"And of course I'll believe you with all my heart," broke out the impulsive squire. "You are made of different stuff to Grantley, though, God knows, I thought I could trust that man. Still the very thought of my own priceless Ella enduring a moment's grief, or suffering the slightest neglect,-why the very idea makes me wild: it does indeed, Smyly. Advise me what to do, that's a dear fellow."

Certainly the awful sanctum was the scene of a change now, and the bust of Eldon looked down upon the justice of the peace asking for advice instead of giving it, and with the magisterial tones very tremulous and husky indeed.

"It is difficult for me to give advice, much as I feel for you. I can only say that perhaps Grantley will reform if you write and reason

with him."

noble fellow I have seen so brought down and The squire shook his head. "Many's the changed by the mania for play, that the most cringing beggar in the street might be sorry to change places with him. Many's the noble brought down to the dirt by the loo-table and estate mortgaged; many the honourable name the roulette-board. They say no gambler ever reforms, and Grantley's name is already all what's worse, he is, on the whole, lucky, which over town as a most reckless player. And blot to have my name linked with his. I am encourages him, and makes it a disgrace and a afraid-I am afraid it is too late."

The Curate had said all he could. It is difficult to arbitrate in these matters, even for the closest friend; and there the matter had dropped. But now this letter of Ella's had infused new life into the people at Oaklands Hall. Katie cried with joy when she heard its encouraging news; and you may be sure that there was somebody who benefited by the information quite as soon as any one. There was still one point, which in the record of the squire's conversation with Smyly I had almost forgotten, and concerning which the Curate was to the full as ignorant as the reader. An open Times lay before the squire, and the paragraph in the

Sporting Intelligence" which he showed the Curate, informed the public that it was generally rumoured that Captain Grantley, a gentleman well known in betting circles, stood to win a large sum of money, provided that Viscount Curbiton's horse, "Peep o' Day," won the Derby.

and rouge et noir, and other trifling amuse"Not only content, you, see, with loo, écarté, ments, he has become a regular turfite, and may lose his all by the chance of a race."

Of these matters the man he addressed was as ignorant as the child in its cradle; but he felt it was something very hazardous and terrible, and consequently all the more to be dreaded. However, as "Peep o' Day" was confidently mentioned as first favourite, there was still a chance that Grantley's luck might stand by him here. All the innocent ecclesiastic knew of a race was that it often depended on chance, and he recollected having read of a

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FOUQUET.

Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and refinement. The grande nation, delivered from Ligue and Fronde, took her position with England at the head of civilised Europe. This great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci to America. There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with which we are so familiar. Then commenced the grand siècle, the era Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh fields, and society seems to be entering on a new era.

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Abbé, in the ardour of his zeal, once offered the Queen his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the trusty Procureur Surintendant des Finances, the first position in France after the throne and the prime-ministership.

Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the Surintendant talent, fashion and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, the Acanthe of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pelisson was then a Protestant; but Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reexamine the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of Protestantism led to honours and wealth. Change of condition followed change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as secretary and historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a receiver-general of taxes. Molière wrote two of his earlier plays for the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favourite. He bound himself to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables."

"Le Roi, l'Etat, la Patrie,

Partagent toute votre vie."

That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the

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No man more fully recognised the great change that was going on, or did more to help it forward, than Nicholas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and Marquis de Belleîle; but better known as the Surintendant. In the pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendour, and of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in their Mémoires. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the "Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its Songe de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron magical beauty to the Genies. The pillars are caused him to lay it aside. It is a dull piece. of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. Four fairies, Palatiane, Hortésie, Apellanire, and The Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the Calliopée, make long speeches about their specicrowd, who kissed the favourite's slipper yester-alty in Art, as seen at Vaux. day, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, disgraced, stripped, and beaten. Fouquet was of good family, the son of a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the magistracy, he became a Maitre des Requétes (say Master in Chancery) at twenty, and at thirty-five Procureur Général (or Attorney-General) of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur and his brother, the Abbé Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to the throne.

The

Their names

sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's alias in the affected jargon of the period)

"fait bâtir un palais magnifique,
Où règne l'ordre Ionique
Avec beaucoup d'agrément."

the live-stock and of the picture-gallery. The
Apollo comes, and promises to take charge of
Muses, too, are busy.

"Pour lui Melpomène médite,
Thalie en est jalouse,"-

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.

In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honour. His favourite saying, “Il tiempo è un galantuomo," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many desperate disappointments and defeats, Messer Tiempo had made him rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "L'Etat, c'est moi," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have said) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a subject-by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came together, the King told them that hitherto he had permitted the late Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should take the duty upon himself

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 hun--the gentlemen present would aid him with dred 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 hótel, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art; his library the best in France. The number and value of his books were 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 Nôtre 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 règne. He was obliged to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon enrolled in the service of the King.

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their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it.
It was a "neat little speech," and very much to
the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of mak-
ing neat little speeches. But the Surintendant,
who presided in the Council, did not believe
him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty
years of age, fond of show and of pleasure, of
moderate capacity, and with no education, might
undertake for a while the cares of government,
but, when the novelty wore off, would tire of
the labour. And then, whose pretensions to
shoulder the burden were so well founded as
Fouquet's? He was almost a king, and had
the political patronage of a president. The
revenue of the nation passed through his hands.
Fermiers and traitants, those who farmed the
taxes and those who gathered them for a con-
sideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offer-
ings at his feet. A judicious mixture of pre-
sents and promises had given him the control
of judges enough in the different parliaments to
fortify his views of the public business by legal
decisions. In his own parliament he was su
preme. Clever agents, stationed in important
places both at home and abroad, watched over
his interests, and kept him informed of all that
transpired, by faithful couriers. But he mis-
understood his position, and was mistaken in
his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little
talent and less education. He could never learn
Latin, at that time as much a part of a gentle-
man's training as French is now with us; but
he had what, for want of a more distinctive
word, we may call character that well pro-
portioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-
reliance which obtains for its possessor more
success in life, and more respect from those
about him, than brilliant mental endowments.
It was the moral side of his nature which was
deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel;
and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked,
the mean, and the dishonourable which becomes
a gentleman. Mazarin once said: "There is
stuff enough in him to make four kings and
one worthy man." Divide this favourable
opinion by four, and the result will be an ap-
proximation to the value of Louis XIV. as a
monarch and a man.
There was a king in him
-a determination to be master, and to bear no

rival near the throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry might be. Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid in full-a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest of republics. All the checks and balances of the most enlightened systems of administration, do. not prevent skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power correspondingly great.

When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that time.

The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud and prosperous man humiliated-merely to gratify that wretched feeling of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of Adam."

Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The personal reminis

cences of the King's whole life must have made him feel keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the attempt to arrest Condé, who thought himself the master. He was twelve when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green scarfs, the Cardinal's colours, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Condé, in command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bléneau, and would have captured King and Court had it not been for the skill of Turenne. A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine-had seen the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, Mademoiselle, the grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Condé, De Retz, and La Rochefoucauld, fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Condé and Don John of Austria, and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himselfonly three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war.

A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, nec pluribus impar. He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,-because he was called the Magnificent-because his chateaux and gardens were incomparably finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau-because he was surrounded by the first wits and artists-no trifling matter in that bright morning of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired to be a bel-esprit, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his employ. "Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'à se croire humilié par un sujet.” His "gloire," as he called it, was his passionnot only in war and in government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, dress and dinners, madrigals and bon-mots. The monopoly of gloire he must and would have-nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every kind, gloire.

And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned

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