We now return to St. Mande, where the superintendent was in the habit of receiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the host had been severely tried. Every one in the house was aware of and felt the minister’s distress. No more magnificent and recklessly improvident reunions! Finance had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet; and never was any pretext, as Gourville wittily said, more fallacious, for there was not the slightest appearance of money.
M. Vatel was most resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of the house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of a ruinous delay. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines frequently sent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the superintendent engaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all that was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably for the rest of their lives; fish, which at a later period was to be the cause of Vatel’s death, did not arrive at all. However, on the ordinary day of reception, Fouquet’s friends flocked in more numerously than ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet talked over money matters,- that is to say, the abbe borrowed a few pistoles from Gourville. Pellisson, seated with his legs crossed, was engaged in finishing the peroration of a speech with which Fouquet was to open the parliament; and this speech was a masterpiece, because Pellisson wrote it for his friend,- that is to say, he inserted everything in it which the latter would most certainly never have taken the trouble to say of his own accord. Presently Loret and La Fontaine would enter from the garden, engaged in a dispute upon the facility of making verses. The painters and musicians, in their turn, also were hovering near the dining-room. As soon as eight o’clock struck, the supper would be announced; for the superintendent never kept any one waiting. It was already half-past seven, and the guests were in good appetite.
As soon as all the guests were assembled, Gourville went straight up to Pellisson, awoke him out of his reverie, and led him into the middle of a room the doors of which he had closed.
“Well,” he said, “anything new?”
Pellisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said, “I have borrowed twenty-five thousand livres of my aunt, and I have them here in good money.”
“Good!” replied Gourville; “we want only one hundred and ninety-five thousand livres for the first payment.”
“The payment of what?” asked La Fontaine.
“What! absent-minded as usual? Why, it was you who told us that the small estate at Corbeil was going to be sold by one of M. Fouquet’s creditors; and you, also, who proposed that all his friends should subscribe. More than that, too, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of your house at Chateau-Thierry in order to furnish your own proportion; and now you come and ask, ‘The payment of what?'” This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaine blush. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I had not forgotten it,- oh, no! only-”
“Only you remembered nothing about it,” replied Loret.
“That is the truth; and the fact is, he is quite right. There is a great difference between forgetting and not remembering.”
“Well, then,” added Pellisson, “you bring your mite in the shape of the price of the piece of land you have sold?”
“Sold? no!”
“And have you not sold the field, then?” inquired Gourville, in astonishment, for he knew the poet’s disinterestedness.
“My wife would not let me,” replied the latter, at which there were fresh bursts of laughter.
“And yet you went to Chateau-Thierry for that purpose,” said some one.
“Certainly I did, and on horseback.”
“Poor fellow!”
“I had eight different horses, and I was almost jolted to death.”
“You are an excellent fellow! And you rested yourself when you arrived there!”
“Rested! Oh! of course I did, for I had an immense deal of work to do.”
“How so?”
“My wife had been flirting with the man to whom I wished to sell the land. The fellow drew back from his bargain, and so I challenged him.”