Page:Biographical and critical miscellanies (IA biographicalcrit00presrich).pdf/402

month, that of the Fachewx, in three acts—composed, learned, and performed within the brief space of a fortnight; an expedition evincing the dexterity of the manager no less than that of the author. This piece was written at the request of Fouquet, superintendent of finances to Lonis the Fourteenth, for the magnificent fete at Vaux, given by him to that monarch, and lavishly celebrated in the memoirs of the period, and with yet more elegance in a poetical epistle of La Fontaine to his friend De Maueroix. 'This minister had been intrusted with the principal care of the finances under Cardinal Mazarine, and had been continued in the same oftice hy Louis the Fourteenth, on his own assumption of the government. The monarch, however, alarmed at the growing dilapidations of the revenue, requested from the superintendent an exposé of its actual condition, which, on receiving, he privately communicated to Colbert, the rival and successor of Fouquet, The latter, whose ordinary expenditure far exceeded that of any other subject in the kingdom, and who, in addition to immense sums oceastonally lost at play and daily squandered on his debaucheries, is said to have distributed in pensions more than four millions of livres annually, thought it would be an easy matter to impose on a young and inexperienced prince, who had hitherto shown himself nore devoted to pleasure than business, and accordingly gave in false returns, exaggerating the expenses, and diminishing the actual receipts of the treasury. The detection of this peculation deter-