We do not intend to describe the grand banquet, at which all the royal guests were present, nor the concerts, nor the fairy-like and magical transformations and metamorphoses. It will be enough for our purpose to depict the countenance which the King assumed, and which, from being gay, soon wore a gloomy, constrained, and irritated expression. He remembered his own residence, and the mean style of luxury which prevailed there,- which comprised only that which was merely useful for the royal wants, without being his own personal property. The large vases of the Louvre, the old furniture and plate of Henry II, of Francis I, of Louis XI, were merely historical monuments,- they were nothing but specimens of art, relics left by his predecessors; while with Fouquet the value of the article was as much in the workmanship as in the article itself. Fouquet ate from a gold service, which artists in his own employ had modelled and cast for him. Fouquet drank wines of which the King of France did not even know the name, and drank them out of goblets each more precious than the whole royal cellar.
What, too, could be said of the apartments, the hangings, the pictures, the servants and officers of every description, in Fouquet’s household? What could be said of the mode of service in which etiquette was replaced by order, stiff formality by personal unrestrained comfort, and the happiness and contentment of the guest became the supreme law of all who obeyed the host? The swarm of busily engaged persons moving about noiselessly; the multitude of guests, who were, however, even less numerous than the servants who waited on them; the myriads of exquisitely prepared dishes, of gold and silver vases; the floods of dazzling light; the masses of unknown flowers, of which the hothouses had been despoiled, redundant with the luxuriance of unequalled beauty,- the harmony of all, which indeed was no more than the prelude of the promised fete, charmed all the guests, who testified their admiration over and over again, not by voice or gesture, but by deep silence and rapt attention,- those two languages of the courtier which acknowledge the hand of no master powerful enough to restrain them.
As for the King, his eyes filled with tears; he dared not look at the Queen. Anne of Austria, whose pride, as it ever had been, was superior to that of any creature breathing, overwhelmed her host by the contempt with which she treated everything handed to her. The young Queen, kind-hearted by nature and curious by disposition, praised Fouquet, ate with an exceedingly good appetite, and asked the names of the different fruits which were placed upon the table. Fouquet replied that he did not know their names. The fruits came from his own stores; he had often cultivated them himself, having an intimate acquaintance with the cultivation of exotic fruits and plants. The King felt and appreciated the delicacy of the reply, but was only more humiliated at it; he thought that the Queen was a little too familiar in her manners, and that Anne of Austria resembled Juno a little too much; his chief anxiety, however, was that he might remain cold and distant in his behavior, bordering slightly on the limits of extreme disdain or of simple admiration.
Fouquet had foreseen all that; he was, in fact, one of those men who foresee everything. The King had expressly declared that so long as he remained under Fouquet’s roof he did not wish his own different repasts to be served in accordance with the usual etiquette, and that he would consequently dine with the rest of the company; but by the thoughtful attention of the superintendent the King’s dinner was served up separately, if one may so express it, in the middle of the general table. The dinner, wonderful in every respect, from the dishes of which it was composed, comprised everything the King liked, and which he generally preferred to anything else. Louis had no excuse- he, indeed, who had the keenest appetite in his kingdom- for saying that he was not hungry. Fouquet even did better still: he indeed, in obedience to the King’s expressed desire, seated himself at the table, but as soon as the soups were served, he rose and personally waited on the King, while Madame Fouquet stood behind the Queen-Mother’s arm-chair. The disdain of Juno and the sulky fits of temper of Jupiter could not resist this exhibition of kindly feeling and polite attention. The Queen ate a biscuit dipped in a glass of San-Lucar wine; and the King ate of everything, saying to Fouquet, “It is impossible, Monsieur the Superintendent, to dine better anywhere.” Whereupon the whole court began, on all sides, to devour the dishes spread before them, with such enthusiasm that it looked like a cloud of Egyptian locusts settling down upon the uncut crops.