THE MAN IlsT THE IR02T MASK. 101
overwhelmed her host hy the contempt with which she treated everything handed to her. The young queen, kind- hearted by nature and curious by disposition, praised Fou- quet, eat with an exceedingly good appetite, and asked the names of the different fruits which were placed upon the table. Fouquet replied that he was not aware of 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 the 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, in being too proud and haughty; his chief anxiety, however, was himself, that he might remain cold and distant in his behavior, bordering slightly on the limits of extreme disdain or of simple ad- miration.
But Fouquet had foreseen all that; he was, in fact, one of those men who foresee everything. The king had ex- pressly declared that so long as he remained under M. Fou- quet's roof he did not wish his own different repast to be served in accordance with the usual etiquette, and that he would, consequently, dine with the rest of the society; but by the thoughtful attention of the surintendant, 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. Nay, M. Fouquet even did better still; he certainly, 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 Mme. Fouquet stood behind the queen-mother's armchair. The disdain of Juno and the sulky fits of temper of Jupiter could not resist this excess of kindly feeling and polite attention. The queen eat a biscuit dipped in a glass of San Lucar wine; and the king eat of everything, saying to M. Fouquet:
'*It is impossible. Monsieur le Surintendant, to dine bet- ter anywhere. '^
Whereupon, the whole court began, on all sides, to de-. vour the dishes spread before them, with such enthusiasm that it looked like a cloud of Egyptian locusts settling down upon the uncut crops.
