The Sun King Conspiracy (11 page)

T
HROUGH the window of his carriage, Nicolas Fouquet gazed idly at the banks of the Seine and the complex manoeuvring of ferries and boats as they narrowly avoided colliding with each other. The Superintendent was so lost in thought that he did not even notice the crowd outside the Église Saint-Germain, gathered round another copy of that curious anti-Mazarin lampoon which was the talk of all Paris. Protected by its escort, the carriage prudently gave the throng a wide berth and headed down Rue Saint-Merry, coming to a halt outside the majestic entrance of a private residence on the corner of Rue Saint-Martin. The massive double gates swung open to let the carriage through, and a manservant hurried forward. Fouquet allowed his mind to wander for a moment longer, then rather regretfully dragged himself away from his reverie.

‘Monsieur Superintendent, it is a great honour to receive you!’

The short, thin man who had just spoken came forward to greet his guest, with his hands almost clasped and bowing profusely.

‘I am as overwhelmed as I am happy to welcome you,’ he added.

His brown, lined skin and hollow cheeks, thin hands and the simplicity of his dark clothing lent him a curiously oriental air softened a little by his deep voice.

Fouquet bowed too and walked a little ahead of his host, who seemed to hover around him as they moved towards the front steps.

‘Come, come, Monsieur Jabach, you know how much I have wanted to view your collections so that I can judge if they really are more beautiful than those of the Cardinal …’

The little man exclaimed in surprise, his hands flying to his face:

‘Are you mocking me, Monsieur Superintendent? It’s unkind to make fun of an old man! Rival His Eminence? Me?’

Fouquet appeared not to hear his host’s outpouring of excessive modesty.

‘If it were not for work, Monsieur, I would have accepted your invitation months ago.’

Jabach swelled with pride.

‘Come,’ he said, pointing to a stone staircase in the corner of the vestibule, which was tiled in white marble accented with black cabochons.

Nicolas Fouquet pondered the course of the little man’s life as he climbed the stairs behind his host, whose short legs obliged him to hasten, making him breathless. Since he had arrived from Naples twenty years earlier, Jabach had amassed a colossal fortune through his unequalled talent for backing the victors in wars and shipping companies whose boats neither sank nor fell victim to piracy. Whereas many like him had allowed themselves to be compromised in causes which had failed because they were championed by losers, Everhard Jabach had never been mistaken, and had never sought to emerge from the shadows where he prospered. Twenty years after he had opened his first business, and ten years after he had received naturalisation papers in return for services rendered, he was now Paris’s foremost art collector.
And the most secretive
, thought Fouquet as he crossed the immense ballroom whose walls were hung with dozens of canvases.

‘Superb,’ he commented simply.

With an enigmatic smile, Jabach indicated that these were not his most impressive paintings and that this was not the place to linger. Then, darting little glances behind him, he led the disconcerted Fouquet towards a door which was concealed in the wall next to a monumental fireplace supported by two black stone colossi.

Opening the door a little way by tripping an invisible mechanism, the man stopped and swung round with his feet together, his smile suddenly fixed.

‘Monsieur Superintendent, I am ashamed to speak to you in this way, but for the sake of my family’s wellbeing I must ask you, as you enter this place, to promise absolute discretion, which is the only guarantee of my safety. You know how wicked men can be, what people say, the thousand villainies that are perpetrated for no reason, or out of envy,’ he went on, inviting his guest to enter the hidden room.

Fouquet’s response was amiable but cold.

‘Fear not, Monsieur, I do not spread gossip. I have neither the time nor the desire, and even if one day I did display either of those faults, the years I have lived through as a victim of slander would dissuade me forev …’

He paused suddenly, rooted to the spot. The most wondrous gallery of paintings and sculpture imaginable stretched out before him, illuminated only by the indirect light from gigantic bronze candelabra.

‘God in Heaven …’

The man let out a chuckle of pleasure. Titian, Giorgione, Corregio, Raphael, Bellini, Leonardo … As the Superintendent walked past the canvases, he felt as if his head were spinning.

‘Now you understand the meaning of my words, Monsieur Superintendent. You see also how much I trust you: few men have come in here, entered my paradise. Many see my collection, but hardly anyone sees my treasures. Before your eyes you have my whole life, the quintessence of what pleasure is to me. For the past twenty-five years, ever since the day Van Dyck ushered me through the doors of a similar room in London, my sole ambition has been to acquire one by one the paintings which I consider to be the most beautiful. You see
The Entombment of Christ
and the
Emmaus Pilgrims
by Titian?’ He led the Superintendent towards two canvases which gleamed in the half-light. ‘I spent years trying to track them down. They belonged to the unfortunate King of England, Charles I. I purchased them before he died upon the scaffold. Can you imagine a beauty more pure?’

Fouquet was speechless for a moment, and moved from one canvas to the next, unable to take his eyes off them.

‘Thank you, Monsieur Jabach,’ he said at last, turning to his host. ‘There is a feeling of energy in this accumulation of beauty, a feeling which warms the heart. Your private gallery is a place of hope for those who have faith in man and in his ability not to yield continually to his baser instincts.’

In a single sweeping movement he gestured to the canvases.

‘How can anyone not believe in Truth and its strength when witnessing such a sight? What mind can resist the conviction instilled by such absolute balance and harmony? It may well be that you have chosen the wise path by shunning the madness of public life, and tending your secret garden here.’

There was a glint in Jabach’s dark eyes which was at variance with his smile.

‘I see that you are a true art lover, and I am persuaded that I have done the right thing in bringing you here. Blessed are those places where the great of this world speak like philosophers! I have a rule, Monsieur Superintendent, which applies only to this room. Since I am invariably alone in this room, it is my custom to be totally frank.’

He looked straight into the Superintendent’s questioning eyes.

‘Will you consent to play according to this rule, until we leave through that door?’ asked the banker, pointing to the heavy wooden door he had pulled shut behind them.

Fouquet nodded his agreement.

‘Excellent. So, Monsieur, do you think that I chose this policy of discretion? Not at all. It was imposed on me by my will to survive. I am not well liked, Monsieur Superintendent. People have need of me, my money and my
savoir-faire
. But I do not receive invitations. People may see me in the evening or at a meeting. But they do not “know” me. Who is aware that I knew Rubens as a friend, in Antwerp? Nobody. What can I say? One does not dine with Jabach …’

Fouquet made an effort to conceal his unease. Was this the mysterious Jabach’s flaw? Did he dream of entering Court society, encouraged by the influence his discretion had earned him?

‘You have shown me your secret garden; I shall be happy to show you my own. Would you like to come to Vaux? I am planning a reception there as soon as the works are sufficiently well advanced – I shall let you know the date.’

Jabach bowed and smiled as Fouquet continued.

‘I too like the rule you have established for the use of this room. Shall we try to talk for a while about the other subjects that bring me here?’

Jabach’s expression took on an element of greed.

‘As you wish, Monsieur Superintendent, but is it really advisable to talk openly about business?’

‘This deal is so simple that the risk is not great: I need one million livres for my account within eight days.’

Jabach clasped his hands beneath his chin and sighed.

‘For your account?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Openness demands clarity, Monsieur Superintendent: for your account or for the King’s account? For one is good but the other – openness demands this,’ he added, indicating the walls and the door ‘– is less so … Having seen loans not repaid, securities guaranteed by Treasury receipts suddenly transformed at a stroke into ordinary securities, that is to say into thin air …’

Fouquet felt irritation overtaking him.
He really intends to stick to the rule and he is adept at using it to his advantage
, he thought.

‘The money is for my account, Monsieur, and both the guarantee and the repayments will come from my own pocket. But the service for which this money will be used is indeed the King’s.’

Jabach looked doubtful.

‘You are taking terrible risks, Monsieur Superintendent. A crown is a heavy burden to wear when one is not its owner … And as for the gratitude of Kings …’

Fouquet cut him short with a wave of the hand.

‘Let us leave it there, Monsieur. It is all very well to be frank, but there are some areas which are best left unexplored. Suffice it to say that faithfulness and devotion to a cause do not necessarily render one blind. Besides, I am an old hand at these exercises. Twenty years of practice in financing war have taught me everything I need to know.’

Jabach opened his arms wide and smiled as a sign of acceptance.

‘Then so be it, Monsieur Superintendent, you are in command, and God preserve me from knowing any more. You shall have your money. That is to say, the money,’ he corrected himself, indicating the door.

As if by magic, the door had just swung open on its hinges.

Fouquet was first to emerge. As he crossed the threshold of the room, he turned back to take one last look at Raphael’s
Madonna
.

T
OUSSAINT Roze dipped his quill pen into the inkwell, carefully wiped away the excess ink, and turned to look at the Cardinal, his arm suspended above a sheet already covered with his small, precise handwriting. Jules Mazarin was sitting in his comfortable armchair, which was upholstered in red and green stripes and embossed with his coat of arms. As he dictated, he frantically juggled the few sheets of paper that littered his desk:

‘“And we give to the community of the Brothers of the Humility of Christ …” Ah, but where are they?’ he grumbled.

Colbert, who was standing behind his master, swiftly extracted a sheet buried under a pile and calmly indicated a line which had been crossed out several times.

‘Yes, yes.’ Mazarin seized the document. ‘Note this down, Roze: “we give the sum of one thousand livres, and the enjoyment by full ownership of the benefice attached to the parish of Saint-Fiacre de …” Oh, a plague upon the village!’ he raged.

Closing his eyes, he let himself fall back, struggling for breath.

‘Rabastens,’ whispered Colbert, who nodded to Roze’s questioning look that he should note down this name.

‘Rabastens, that’s the one. And now we have finished with the abbeys, have we not?’

Colbert nodded and was about to take away the pile of jumbled
papers corresponding to each chapter when Mazarin’s hand suddenly stopped him, as though it had received a jolt of energy. His voice grew harder:

‘But we have not seen the Châtellerault living, which I have promised to Abbé Soulet, have we?’

Colbert looked sour but did not reply.

‘Write, Roze,’ said Mazarin icily: ‘“and as a sign of the friendship, yes, yes, of the friendship we bear towards Abbé Soulet, we give the benefice of the living of the Église Saint-Roch in Châtellerault and the surrounding land, which amounts to …” You will have to ask Monsieur Colbert for the overall surface area; he must know it, since he crossed it off the list.’

Without looking at Colbert, Mazarin allowed a second to elapse before he continued frostily:

‘I do not know what grievances you hold against him, Colbert, but now is not the time to settle the score. And never forget that no score is settled in this house without my being informed.’

‘I thought it pointless to trouble Your Eminence …’ exclaimed Colbert.

‘That is enough,’ cut in Mazarin, ‘I am not yet in my senile death-throes. And it never wearies me to hear talk of rewards and punishments. In fact, organising their distribution has been one of my life’s rare entertainments,’ he added, his voice benevolent once again. ‘Come, Messieurs, let us move on to the officers of the King.’

The morning dragged on. Roze voiced his concern several times at the growing fatigue of the Cardinal, who was visibly exhausted after drafting text for four hours without a break.

‘All that remains is for me to sign?’ asked the Cardinal, his voice
barely audible. ‘I shall do so later; my trembling hand would leave a signature unworthy of the archives of France. What is the total?’ he asked Roze.

The secretary’s tongue protruded as, one last time, he mechanically added up in the margin of the drafted will the figures accumulated during the morning and over the past few days.

‘Forty-two, three, seven and five make twelve, add … Forty-seven million, six hundred and ninety-four thousand two hundred and thirty-three livres, not including the books that have not been valued, and pending a further valuation of the works of art personally owned by Your Eminence and the most valuable gemstones, which are to be bequeathed to the royal family. The “English Rose”, a fourteen-carat diamond, for the Queen Mother, a cluster of fifty diamonds for the Queen, thirty-one emeralds for Monsieur …’

Mazarin interrupted the tally with a wave of his hand.

‘There is no need to go back over it in detail. Simply read me the codicil for the Queen Mother which follows the insertion concerning the diamond. I want to be sure I have worded it correctly …’

Roze leafed through the bundle of papers beside him.

‘“We give to the Queen …”’, his slow voice was still searching, ‘“everything she would like from our palace in Paris.” That’s it, Eminence.’

‘Yes, that is right,’ commented Mazarin.

In the ensuing silence, Colbert narrowed his eyes. His two thumbs linked on his belt toyed mechanically with each other. Mazarin sat motionless, apparently lost in thought.

‘All that,’ he murmured, ‘to be leaving all that …’

Then, emerging from his dream with some regret, he turned to Colbert.

‘Is the clause regarding secrecy adequate? Is it precise enough?’

‘It is, Eminence: no viewing by anyone save the executors, no publication, and no records open to anyone except the King.’

‘Good,’ commented Mazarin. ‘Monsieur Roze,’ he said, turning towards his secretary, who was rolling sand across the last page to help it dry more quickly, ‘we have worked hard. I shall give you your freedom for the rest of today. Kindly reread what has been written with great care, and remember that this copy must be seen by no one, nor altered in the future by anyone but me.’

Roze bowed, closed up his writing case, carefully fastened the portfolio containing the documents and left without further ado.

Mazarin got to his feet and approached Colbert.

‘What about my business associates? Can you be sure of their silence too?’

‘I would swear to it, Eminence, all the more so since these transactions have proved extremely lucrative for them as well.’

‘And the total?’ he murmured, ‘the total figure, Colbert? Is it credible?’

Colbert sighed.

‘We have already made a great many adjustments, Eminence … And you cannot make gifts without these signs of your generosity being reflected in your assets. But as it stands, yes, I think our inventory is well supported and plausible.’

His pursed his lips, reflecting.

‘Unless, of course, the thieves carried off secret papers which might be incriminating,’ he remarked. ‘The rubbish posted on church doors over the past few days is sufficiently worrying. The source of it is crystal clear: these same burglars have now turned to journalism. Fortunately the unrest has not spread and seems to be dying down … for the moment. The people who read the posters were not able to follow the gibberish written on them; Maximilien
Piton, who is mentioned in the lampoons, is in Holland on business for several weeks – I shall see him on his return – and your guards have taken down the majority of the notices. They continue to do so, as more appeared in certain districts of the city this very morning …’

Mazarin shuddered, then pulled himself together:
Colbert could not know and must not yet know.

‘Of course, of course,’ he said evasively. ‘But I must have results. Is the investigation progressing?’

‘It is making progress, Eminence. But it would help if we knew what we were looking for.’

Mazarin looked annoyed.

‘That is not important. It is the thieves who must be found. You said it yourself just now: they are the same people. Wherever they are, there too will be the documents! But to return to our subject: the total sum. It is still a problem.’

‘Not if no one is allowed to examine the accounts or transactions of exchange.’

‘No one must examine them,’ thundered Mazarin. ‘No one.’

‘Nor will they, Excellency.’

‘But what if my enemies should get it into their heads to contest the will? A will can be nullified: I know that, for I myself nullified the will of the late King Louis XIII! And what if they take their opposition to the Parlement? Not everyone there is a friend of mine!’

The Cardinal paced around the room in silence.

‘In fact, they are all my enemies.’

‘Monsieur Fouquet is the Procureur General,’ said Colbert treacherously.

Mazarin did not respond, but shot him a look of exasperation.

Colbert smiled unpleasantly:

‘Eminence, I may perhaps have a way of ridding you of this unbearable doubt, a way which would guarantee the soundness of your will, render it unassailable, prevent any investigation into the origin of the possessions bequeathed, and thus ensure the continuance of your arrangements and, above all, your lineage.’

Mazarin shivered:

‘Then speak, Colbert!’

‘All you need to do is to make a gift of all your possessions, Eminence. In that way, you will no longer own anything, nobody can take anything away from you, and if someone wishes to initiate a court case, they will have to initiate it against someone else.’

Mazarin, his face ashen, seemed almost to suffocate.

‘But … you have lost your mind!’

Tottering, he caught hold of the back of his armchair. Colbert offered him an arm and helped him sit down again. Then he brought his large, round head close to the Cardinal’s. The cleric’s breath was coming in short, wheezing gasps, and there were drops of sweat on his brow; he made a Herculean effort to compose himself.

‘Fear not, Eminence, I am never more in control of my mind than when I am thinking of your affairs,’ he said unctuously. ‘You shall see that this horrible prospect can be changed into a radiant vista, as one might change the scenery at the Théâtre des Italiens!’

Colbert drew even closer.

‘The first stage of my proposal does however suffer from two disadvantages: you lose your possessions, and the court case – admittedly against someone else – may still come to pass. What can we do, then, to circumvent these problems? First of all, your recipient must be beyond the reach of a court case, and second, he must be obliged to cede your possessions back to you. Is that not brilliant?’

Colbert’s eyes now shone with a strange light.

‘Against whom may one not take out legal action? Why, the King, by Jove! And who is not able to accept a legacy from one of his subjects, even if that subject is his godfather and his Chief Minister?’

Straightening up, Colbert walked behind the desk and, placing both fists onto the leather inlay, looked straight into the Cardinal’s eyes.

‘So, you give all your possessions to the King. As he is unable to accept, he will restore them to you. But the fortune will no longer be yours: it will have passed through his hands and, in so doing, will have become inviolable.’

Only the Cardinal’s gasps for breath disturbed the silence. Triumphantly, Colbert saw that his ingenious idea was taking hold in the old man’s mind.

The Cardinal sighed; he laid a hand over one of Colbert’s as it rested on the desk.

‘Dear Colbert …’ was all he said.

Then, opening his eyes and fixing Colbert with his piercing gaze:

‘But are you certain that he will refuse? The coffers are empty …’

‘I heard that Monsieur Fouquet arranged for a new loan two days ago to cover his immediate needs. And anyway … Does the King’s pride not outweigh his greed? Louis XIV wants to rule, Eminence: that comes with a price.’

Surprised by the audacity of these words, Mazarin frowned.

‘Well then, let us do it, Monsieur Colbert,’ he said, resigned. ‘I place myself in your hands. Confer with Roze to arrange for a codicil to this effect. I shall sign as soon as my hand has rested.’

Colbert bowed and was about to leave when the Cardinal called him back.

‘No, you shall write it yourself, Colbert, no one must know. Only the Queen; she will talk to her son.’

Beaming, Colbert bowed once again.

‘As you command, Eminence,’ he said with immense gravity. ‘Next we shall speak of Hortense’s marriage contract, and of Marie’s. My God,’ he added as if to himself, ‘what a burden this is, my God …’

The sound of the door closing informed him that Colbert had left.