A candlelit evening on castle grounds

Vaux le Vicomte

Vaux-le-Vicomte once hosted a spectacular party, one that has lived on in memory over centuries, not so much for the great wine or rocking string quartets as the fate the host suffered shortly thereafter at the hands of his distinguished guest. The host was a M. Nicolas Fouquet, financial secretary, and this guest, his boss, none other than Louis XIV. The party was held on an August night not unlike the one when we visited, 350 years ago in 1661.

Even the ornate ironwork of the front gate was stunning.

Backtrack a few years: It was 1648 and, not terribly unlike today, the state treasury of France collapsed and the crown defaulted on its debt. In response, in 1653 the Cardinal Mazarin appointed Nicolas Fouquet as financial secretary to solve the debt crisis. This suited Fouquet well, coming from a wealthy family of political advisors and he himself both extremely ambitious and intelligent, as the stories say. Unfortunately, Cardinal Mazarin, once an intimate friend of Louis XIV's mother and both First Minister and godfather to the king, was a very greedy man in a powerful position who made Fouquet's work much more difficult.

Upon Cardinal Mazarin's death in 1661, the year of the aforementioned party, the crown was still in financial disorder. Mazarin's private secretary Colbert, himself seeking personal glory and jealous of Fouquet's lavish lifestyle, began planting and sowing seeds of suspicion with the king. By May, the king was determined to be rid of Fouquet. Friends hearing of the plot tried warning Fouquet to scale back on his personal luxuries, but warnings were not heeded. Slyly, the king decided to first throw Fouquet off by announcing a visit to his chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte.

I positively loved the moat. Not even Versailles has one.

Here's where the party comes in: it was complete with theatrics and an evening fireworks show, not unlike the one lit off twice monthly in summers to this day. Sadly, the last bus left the castle before the show began, so we didn't get to enjoy this part of the visit, but over this backdrop, it would be little less than spectacular.

Voltaire famously wrote of the party, "On August 17 at 6 in the evening, Fouquet was king of France; at 2 in the morning, he was nobody." In fact, Fouquet's arrest came three weeks later as the buzz about his party was likely just dulling down. His trial for embezzlement lasted three years but, despite Colbert's scheming, he could not be proven guilty. The judges ruled for Fouquet to be banished, effectively an acquittal.

The gardens were perfectly sculpted. It definitely rivaled and in ways outdid Versailles.

In the only instance in French history, the king stepped in to harshen a punishment-- he having personally tried pushing the judges for the death penalty-- and sentenced Fouquet to life in prison under close surveillance. Prison for the rich in those days was a somewhat different deal than today, each wealthy prisoner getting to have his own manservant. Fun fact: as Fouquet's manservant was often falling ill (in case life for the servants in the old days wasn't a tough deal, imagine having to be a servant in jail), he received special permission to have an additional prisoner serve him: the legendary man in the iron mask, who was housed in the same prison at the time. (The identity of the man in the iron mask is still unknown, but it's worth a google search to read some of the theories, including his possible identity as the true father of Louis XIV.) Fouquet remained in prison until his death in 1680.

His castle stands to this day as a monument to his short-lived glory. It once served as the inspiration for Versailles. These days, Vaux-le-Vicomte is open to the public (with an entrance fee for all visitors, something to which those of us spoiled to be under 26 in Paris might take offense!). Twice a month on Saturday evening, the castle re-opens at 8pm, lit by thousands of candles for an evening visit that concludes in a fireworks show. One word: enchanting.

Speakers set up discreetly in various regions of the castle grounds flooded isolated corners with baroque music, a sound which, as mysteriously as it could envelope a visitor turning a corner, could as quickly disappear as one continued wandering. Mr. Vivaldi provided the soundtrack to our picnic here, despite the restrictions against such behavior on castle grounds.

As the sun set, the castle really began to glow.

At sundown, from the far stretches of the castle grounds, the reflection of the candles on the pools lured the imagination to a time before electricity could power the expansive French chateau. The experience was simply magical.