After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the _château_. A _feu d'artifice_, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted until the drums of the royal _mousquetaires_, the King's escort, were heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up.
The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [_la Renommée_] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once.
'Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels, Il reçoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'"
A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen days after the _fête_, the thunderbolt fell upon him.