I have told those gentlemen who are here with me that I would have no more superintendents, but myself take the work of finance in conjunction with faithful persons who will do nothing without me, knowing that this is the true way to place myself in affluence and relieve my people.

During the little attention I have as yet given thereto, I observed some important matters which I did not at all understand.

You will have no difficulty in believing that there have been many people placed in a great fix; but I am very glad for them to see that I am not such a dupe as they supposed, and that the best plan is to hold to me." Three years were to roll by before the end of Fouquet's trial.

In vain had one of the superintendent's valets, getting the start of all the king's couriers, shown sense enough to give timely warning to his distracted friends; Fouquet's papers were seized, and very compromising they were for him as well as for a great number of court-personages, of both sexes.

Colbert prosecuted the matter with a rigorous justice that looked very like hate; the king's self-esteem was personally involved in procuring the condemnation of a minister guilty of great extravagances and much irregularity rather than of intentional want of integrity.
Public feeling was at first so greatly against the superintendent that the peasants shouted to the musketeers told off to escort him from Angers to the Bastille, "No fear of his escaping; we would hang him with our own hands." But the length and the harshness of the proceedings, the efforts of Fouquet's family and friends, the wrath of the Parliament, out of whose hands the case had been taken in favor of carefully chosen commissioners, brought about a great change; of the two prosecuting counsel (_conseillers rapporteurs_), one, M.de Sainte-Helene, was inclined towards severity; the other, Oliver d'Ormesson, a man of integrity and courage, thought of nothing but justice, and treated with contempt the hints that reached him from the court.