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| 1 | LAW 1' NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER JUDGMENT Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them , do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite — inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power. TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's finance minister in the first years of his reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and poetry. |
| 2 | He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle. Fouquet was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime minis- ter, Jules Mazarin, died, in 1661, the finance minister expected to be named the successor. Instead, the king decided to abolish the position. This and other signs made Fouquet suspect that he was falling out of favor, and so he decided to ingratiate himself with the king by staging the most spec- tacular party the world had ever seen. |
| 3 | The party's ostensible purpose would be to commemorate the completion of Fouquet' s chateau, Vaux-le- Vicomte, but its real function was to pay tribute to the king, the guest of honor. The most brilliant nobility of Europe and some of the greatest minds of the time — La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sevigne — attended the party. Moliere wrote a play for the occasion, in which he himself was to perform at the evening's conclusion. |
| 4 | The party began with a lavish seven-course dinner, featuring foods from the Orient never be- fore tasted in France, as well as new dishes created especially for the night. The meal was accompanied with music commissioned by Fouquet to honor the king. After dinner there was a promenade through the chateau's gardens. The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration for Versailles. |
| 5 | Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the geomet- rically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds. Arriving at the gardens' canals, they witnessed a fireworks display, which was followed by the performance of Moliere' s play. The party ran well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most amazing affair they had ever attended. The next day, Fouquet was arrested by the king's head musketeer, D'Artagnan. |
| 6 | Three months later he went on trial for stealing from the country's treasury. (Actually, most of the stealing he was accused of he had done on the king's behalf and with the king's permission.) Fouquet was found guilty and sent to the most isolated prison in France, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in soli- tary confinement. Interpretation Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being out- done in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister. |
| 7 | To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a man famous for his parsimony and for giving the dullest parties in Paris. Colbert made sure that any money liberated from the treasury went straight into Louis's hands. With the money, Louis built a palace even more magnificent than Fouquet' s — the glorious palace of Versailles. He used the same architects, decorators, and garden designer. And at Versailles, Louis hosted parties even more extravagant than the one that cost Fouquet his freedom. |
| 8 | Let us examine the situation. The evening of the party, as Fouquet pre- sented spectacle on spectacle to Louis, each more magnificent than the one before, he imagined the affair as demonstrating his loyalty and devotion to the king. Not only did he think the party would put him back in the king's favor, he thought it would show his good taste, his connections, and his popularity, making him indispensable to the king and demonstrating that he would make an excellent prime minister. |
| 9 | Instead, however, each new spectacle, each appreciative smile bestowed by the guests on Fouquet, made it seem to Louis that his own friends and subjects were more charmed by the finance minister than by the king himself, and that Fouquet was actually flaunting his wealth and power. Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet's elaborate party offended the king's vanity. Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course — instead, he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had inadvertently made him feel insecure. |
| 10 | Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master's sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre- eminence. When the evening began , Fouquet was at the top of the world. By the time it had ended , he was at the bottom. Voltaire, 1 694- 1 778 OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW In the early 1600s, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo found himself in a precarious position. |
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