Blood Work (10 page)

The young Huygens had first been introduced to the Parisian scientific community in the halls of Montmor's home and quickly became a regular at the academy's weekly meetings. Montmor's efforts to gain Huygens's trust and friendship—no doubt through the promise of social connections and monetary resources—had paid off handsomely. And thanks to Montmor's generous support, Huygens would soon solve a riddle that had dogged even Galileo.

As Galileo had noted with surprise nearly four decades earlier, Saturn underwent an odd metamorphosis from a three-bodied form to a single, elliptical form. The Italian astronomer pondered in disbelief Saturn's baffling change in appearance: “Now what
is to be said about this strange metamorphosis? Perhaps the two smaller stars have been consumed in the manner of sunspots? Perhaps they have vanished and fled suddenly? Perhaps Saturn has devoured his own children?”
¹⁹
Saturn continued to haunt Galileo for over thirty years. In the summer of 1616 he wrote a letter to the prince of Tuscany. It contained an important correction to his original three-body assertion: Saturn's two “companions” were not small, perfectly round globes. They were much larger bodies in the form of half “eclipses” or
anses
(ears) that sat alongside the perfectly round shape of Saturn.
²⁰
Instead of rings Galileo had seen ears, and this description held fast for the nearly forty years that followed.
²¹

Huygens speculated instead that something was fluttering around Saturn. “The ears of Saturn,” he wrote in 1658 in an encrypted letter intended for the Montmor Academy, “can be nothing other than what I put forth in my anagram”:

 

a c d e g h i l m n o p q r s t u

6 5 1 5 1 1 7 4 2 9 4 2 1 2 1 5 5

 

The numbers indicated how many times each letter appeared in the enigma, which when rearranged formed the words
Annulo cingitur tenui, plano, nusquam cohaerente ad eclipticam inclinato
: “Saturn is encircled by a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, inclined to the ecliptic.”
²²

Montmor sent Huygens an effusive personal note expressing his gratitude for the astronomer's decision to share the news in the academy first, and indicating his great hope that he would continue to see the assembly as the best place to break the news of other discoveries.
²³
Seemingly overnight Huygens had trans
formed from a starry-eyed young university student to the darling of the Paris scientific community. Where he aligned himself, success was sure to follow.

Montmor was deeply pleased with his own success in recruiting Huygens to his academy. The nobleman often admired a telescope that sat proudly on a gilded stand in front of the room's central window. Galileo's own,
²⁴
the telescope was just over four feet long and was covered in red morocco leather. It had been in Montmor's academy that Huygens had topped Galileo. And now Montmor was more certain than ever that the scientific glory of France—and his own reputation as ultimate patron of knowledge—would continue to be made within the walls of his palatial home.

I
n her late-seventeenth-century novel
La Princesse de Clèves,
Madame de La Fayette offers a stark portrait of court life in France. “The Court gravitated,” she wrote, “around ambition. Nobody was tranquil or indifferent—everybody was busily trying to better their position by pleasing, helping, or hindering someone else.”
¹
Social and financial success had long been contingent on variables such as rank, title, marriage, physical attractiveness, and personal ties—both visible and secret. Yet it was now the handsome young king, Louis XIV himself, who served as the ultimate arbiter. He could, at a whim, swiftly alter one's place in the hierarchy—for better or, often, for much worse.

A young man with keen eyes and a strong, square jaw, Louis XIV bore the angular nose that marked him unquestionably as a member of the illustrious Bourbon royal family. His every movement exuded an easy confidence, proof that he trusted fully in the legends that encircled him since birth. He had been named Louis the God Given (
Louis-Dieudonné
) in recognition of his miraculous birth—which took place following two decades of
infertility for his parents, Anne of Austria and Louis XIII. It was a birth that had assured the continuation of a fragile monarchy, and Louis XIV joined the populace in believing wholly that he was indeed God given.

As a boy the Sun King had actually shown very few signs of regal behavior. He was socially awkward, tongue-tied, and bashful. Hushed whispers ran through the court that he was “dimwitted” and unfit to lead.
²
But the years that followed were turbulent and forced the young king to grow up quickly. A civil war threatened the authority of the monarchy and had pitted his mother, Anne of Austria, now queen regent, and Prime Minister Mazarin against the troublesome nobles. In the dark of night in 1648, the golden-curled and doe-eyed Louis was shaken awake from his bed in the Louvre by frenzied members of the royal family. They told him little, but their hushed and panicked voices made it clear to the ten-year-old that something was very wrong. Louis, his mother, and the nurse holding Louis' young brother were shuttled into a carriage. He heard frightening words like “plot,” “kidnap,” and “murder.” It was much more than he could take in fully, but the net effect was sheer terror.

The carriage and its precious royal cargo made it safely to the city's outskirts in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where Louis and his displaced entourage slept uncomfortably on beds of hay and worried about how long they could make the food rations last.
³
There was talk of riots in the city and barricades that stretched as far as the eye could see. For nine months Louis listened as countless tales of unrest in Paris were exchanged in the darkened rooms of their uncomfortable exile. A Paris judge christened the uprising the Fronde (the French term means “slingshot”). Like David the nobles had dared to rise up against the Goliaths of the monarchy. And it looked at times as if the giant—represented by the body of a young child—would be felled.
⁴

Louis learned quickly that he was central to French life and, for this reason, extraordinarily vulnerable. By 1653 Paris had grown weary of nearly a half decade of fighting, and yet another war with Spain loomed. France reunited once again around its king. The new king had no patience for nobles who did not understand his divine right to power. But the young monarch vowed never to allow the graying, privileged nobles another chance to bring the crown to its knees. He would have them on theirs first. And those men who did not understand—or refused to recognize—these sea changes on the horizon would soon be swept up into the waves and left to drown.

Montmor would have done well to heed the signals; the fate of Nicolas Fouquet should have been warning enough. For more than a half century, France had been ruled through a de facto partnership between the monarch and his ultrapowerful prime minister. So when Prime Minister Mazarin died in March 1661 after months of suffering, one question and one question alone preoccupied Parisian nobles: Who would succeed Mazarin? Near the top of the list was Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet had been the superintendent of finances for nearly eight years. His unquestioned loyalty to the throne during the tumultuous years of the Fronde had earned him the coveted treasury post in 1653. In this role he moved money in and out of the royal coffers and negotiated advances and loans in order to secure whatever sums Mazarin and the king needed. When times were tight Fouquet borrowed handsomely on behalf of the state and secured the debts against his own personal property—charging high interest for his services.
⁵
To be sure, Fouquet came from a respected and reasonably well-off family. But there was no way family fortune alone could explain the magnificent material goods with which he surrounded himself, nor was there a clear financial explanation for the expensive and
sumptuous residence that he was building in the countryside just south of Paris.

Vaux-le-Vicomte sat on a property that extended thousands of acres; three entire villages had been torn down and assimilated into the sprawling estate.
⁶
In his quest to build a home that would surpass anything seen in Europe, Fouquet commanded an army of more than eighteen thousand craftsmen over a four-year period. He recruited the very best masons, painters, sculptors, gardeners, tapestry weavers, bricklayers, and hydraulic engineers. Each worked under the careful eyes of the brilliant artists Le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre. The trio would later gain fame for their work on the king's even-larger palace at Versailles—but for now, these masters belonged to Fouquet.

A literary patron as well as a shrewd financier, Fouquet opened his estate to a handpicked coterie of the period's most famous artists and writers. Strategic and ambitious to a fault, Fouquet understood well the power of art and literature. He invested in writers much as he handled his financial transactions. He lent his support to artists with the clear expectation that their debt would be paid back in full, accompanied by a hefty profit. To show their gratitude authors offered flattery in print that would have made any other man blush—flattery that would be distributed far and wide, sealing the superintendent's reputation. Fouquet paid the long-silent playwright Pierre Corneille to write again. He paid Molière to stage plays in the gardens of his estate and hired the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully to create music for the performances. Fouquet paid the poet Jean de La Fontaine to pen detailed accounts of the elaborate parties that took place at Vaux-le-Vicomte.
⁷

There was no doubt that Vaux-le-Vicomte had been built on Fouquet's skill at embezzlement. Certainly Fouquet was not the first, nor the last, state official to skim funds; prime ministers—
including the celebrated Richelieu and Mazarin—and other members of government had lined their own pockets for years. Yet the coat of arms Fouquet put on display throughout the estate celebrated perhaps too openly his ill-gotten gains. In the Anjou dialect of his home region,
fouquet
meant “squirrel.” Throughout Vaux painted squirrels sat proudly in the center of laurel wreaths—the symbol for glory and victory. The wreaths themselves were held up by two lions—no doubt a peremptory reference to the support he anticipated from the lionlike Louis. And woven among the squirrels were scrolls carrying Fouquet's personal motto:
Quo non ascendat?
“How high will he not climb?”

For nearly six months Fouquet steadied his focus on preparations for a singular event: a feast to end all feasts, a celebration of his glory alongside the king. On the evening of August 17, 1661, Fouquet led the king and his court on a tour of his majestic estate. Ladies in silk-layered gowns and gentlemen in knee pants and brightly colored topcoats strolled from room to room. Elegance marked every inch of the château, resplendent with hundreds of tapestries, hand-painted wallpaper, gilded ceilings and chandeliers, richly carved furniture, and sculptures that rivaled those in Rome. Fouquet ushered Louis to the even more elaborately decorated king's chambers. By the time the monarch emerged from a brief rest, the skies had darkened and the stars had just begun to make their appearance. The court reunited in the oval-shaped central salon, which Le Brun had designed to be a “palace of the sun.” Statues representing the seasons and the constellations circled the upper walls. In the center of the cupola, where Apollo held court, there was also a squirrel.

In the wee hours of the night, after the second dinner of the evening, Louis bade his host good-bye. Given the hours-long journey ahead of him, the king could have chosen to settle into his
comfortable rooms at Fouquet's estate. But he had seen enough, his patience had been tested, it was time to leave. Without warning the sky exploded in light and was just as quickly shrouded in smoke. Amid shrieks of fear that Vaux had been hit by comets or cannons, two horses leaped up, dragging the queen's carriage on its side behind them. Trying desperately to escape the fracas, the horses plunged headlong into the watery moat to their deaths. Once the smoke cleared and the safety of the king and queen had been assured, the source of the explosions was uncovered. To bid the king farewell, Fouquet had launched enough fireworks from the cupola of his château to vanquish a small army.
⁸

In the days and weeks that followed the party, Fouquet waited nervously for news from the monarch, remaining hopeful that his show of respect and celebration would net the appointment of prime minister that he so desperately wanted. By early September he could wait no longer. He summoned his household staff and had them pack his bags in haste; he was headed to Nantes where the king was now in residence. We cannot know if Fouquet turned around to admire his castle-like home as his carriage pulled away. If he did not, he should have: It was the last time he would see it.

So sure was Fouquet that he would gain the king's favor, he had overlooked the venomous Jean-Baptiste Colbert in his calculations. An aloof man with thinning brown hair that framed his dimpled round face, Colbert had little patience for social games. In fact his coldness had earned him the nickname
le Nord
(the North) from the most influential social brokers.
⁹
He had long been aligned with Mazarin, who held him in the highest regard. Colbert's raison d'être was his work for the glory of the king. Somber and brusque, Colbert worked upwards of sixteen hours a day at the king's behest. The monarchy lay at the heart of his every passion; it was his identity, his nourishment.
And like Louis XIV, he loathed the very thought of scheming nobles.

Just a day before his death Mazarin had warned Louis in a fading voice about Fouquet, and confirmed his trust in Colbert.
¹⁰
Taking heed of Mazarin's recommendations, the king quietly assigned Colbert the task of investigating the minister of finance. And what Louis saw at Vaux-le-Vicomte more than confirmed the results of Colbert's investigations: Fouquet needed to be stopped. But the investigation had a secondary, and very welcome, effect for the hardworking Colbert: It eliminated a rival for the king's attention. On September 5—the king's birthday—Louis convened a council meeting in Nantes with his ministers, including the two vying for the king's favors: Fouquet and Colbert.
¹¹
When the meeting was adjourned, the king asked Fouquet to stay behind. Fouquet's heart leaped with joy; the moment had arrived. He had been chosen, or so he believed. Engaging the minister in small talk, the king then nodded to a man standing in the doorway behind Fouquet. The king's chief of security, the real musketeer D'Artagnan, stepped forward. Hardly the boisterous character painted by Dumas two centuries later, D'Artagnan was polite and respectful. With the decorum reserved for the highest members of court, the musketeer escorted Fouquet out of the building and into the hands of the fifty guards waiting in the courtyard.
¹²

After a court trial that lasted three years, Fouquet was sentenced to life in solitary confinement—first at the Bastille, and later at the squalid prison of Pignerol, near Turin (then under French rule). And by the order of the king, Colbert stripped Vaux-le-Vicomte of its riches, recruited its primary architects, and coordinated the construction of an even larger, more sumptuous château: Versailles. Fouquet's coat of arms—the ubiquitous squirrel—was left intact. Colbert would later have his own family
symbol, a grass snake, drawn in. With the squirrel now pursued on both sides by snakes, the animal's motto was also changed to
Quo me vertam nescio
: “I do not know who[m] to turn to.”
¹³
Disgraced, Fouquet died alone in his prison cell in 1680, seventeen years later.

 

W
hile the young king was working to demonstrate his power in the most visible of ways, meetings at the Montmor estate had become increasingly contentious. The astronomer Ismael Boulliau described with his usual candor the philosophical standoff taking placing at the Montmor Academy:

The permanent secretary of the Montmor Academy, Samuel de Sorbière, had made no secret of his belief in centralized power structures. A devotee of Thomas Hobbes, Sorbière had written essays in which he argued vehemently that “men live more happily under a despotic government than one that is less absolute”—an argument Hobbes had laid out in his
Leviathan
.
¹⁵
During the English civil war (1642–51), Hobbes urged citizens to yield their rights to their leaders in order to ensure peace. Without a totali
tarian government, conflict reigns and humans are consigned to lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
¹⁶
Better to have an effective leader who occasionally abuses the power with which he is entrusted than to endure such a miserable fate.