# Chapter 20: The Garden of Illusion and the Fall of Fouquet
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 20 of "Mistress Of The Sun free digital audiobook". This chapter is a glittering, dangerous turning point: a fete so lavish it feels like a challenge to the crown, a king who smiles while sharpening a hidden blade, a queen fighting for her life, and a cold winter invitation that may pull Petite back toward the one man she cannot safely love.
Come with me now, into the candlelit gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte, where nothing is as it appears.
The chapter opens beneath the dazzling roof of Fouquet’s grand estate. Petite notices an emblem: a squirrel climbing a tree, with the Latin words *Quo non ascendet?* — *To what heights will he not climb?* The question chills her. Does Fouquet seek the crown itself? He has spent a fortune on this single fete, more than the King spends in a year. Where does such wealth come from? Louis suspects the answer is ugly: embezzlement, money stolen from the treasury, from the people, from the King himself. And such open display of luxury can only confirm Louis’s suspicion. Petite senses the danger humming beneath the music and laughter.
Nicole whispers that Ludmilla is watching. Louis stands on the landing, and for a moment his gaze finds Petite. He smiles the slightest smile, then looks away. Fouquet also catches her eye and salutes her with a gloved hand to his green hat. Nicole asks what that meant. Petite hushes her, but inside she is desperate to be somewhere else — a field with silent horses, creatures whose language she understands, far from this court of masks.
After the royal family refreshes, Fouquet proposes a promenade through his gardens. Louis and Philippe help their mother into a light open carriage, while Henriette is carried in an embroidered litter beneath a gold canopy. Petite arranges the scarlet ribbons at Henriette’s thin wrists, and Henriette, flushed with excitement, urges everyone to hurry because she does not want to miss a thing.
Guests arrive in endless waves, hundreds of them, dressed in silk and satin, glittering with diamonds, plumes, and ribbons on hats, canes, sleeves, swords, and shoe buckles. Petite waves her fan at Athénaïs. Then the promenade begins, with Louis and Fouquet leading the way. Fouquet waves his arms, effervescent with excitement, and the courtiers follow like a flock of tropical birds. Fountains suddenly leap to life, water jets shoot into the air, and everyone cries out in delight.
But Petite notices something unsettling: the garden changes as they move through it. What seems rectangular is square. What seems nearby is far away. What seems symmetrical is subtly crooked. It is a garden of illusion — and how apt, she thinks. Fouquet plays the devoted servant while plotting to rule. Louis publicly applauds his finance minister while planning his downfall. At Court, nothing is as it appears. Everyone wears a mask.
Torchbearers appear as the sun sets, thousands of them, leading the guests back to the château. Tables are set with solid gold platters — pheasant, quail, partridge, ragouts, and bisques. Wine flows. Musicians play. The tables are refreshed six times. The abundance is shocking, almost an insult. Could the royal family afford such display? Louis watches everything. Everyone seems to be watching. Petite wonders how many spies Fouquet has among them, and who can truly be trusted.
Trumpets sound. The guests move to an outdoor theater, through fragrant gardens lit by thousands of beeswax candles. Petite and Nicole stand behind Henriette’s litter, near the thrones set for Louis, the Queen Mother — and Fouquet. Petite glances at Louis. He is jovial with his host, playing a part, and playing it chillingly well.
Molière appears on stage in street clothes, apologizing frantically that some actors have fallen ill and he has not had time to prepare a divertissement. Then mechanical sounds grind, and a pastoral landscape magically appears. A rock breaks open, revealing a shell, and from it steps a long-haired nymph. The audience cheers. The nymph proclaims that heaven, earth, and all nature stand ready to bow to the King’s command. Dancing dryads, fauns, and satyrs emerge from the trees.
The play, *The Bores*, soon has everyone howling as courtiers and notorious fools are lampooned. Lauzun’s donkey bray sounds with each roar of recognition. When the joke lands on old Gautier, he stands and makes a dignified bow, and everyone cheers and hoots. Between acts come light ballets. Petite has never seen such a spectacle, such a brilliant blending of theater, dance, music, and song.
Afterward, the guests return to the château for more music and refreshment. In the grand withdrawing room, stalls are set up like a market. Ladies swarm as trinkets are handed out: jeweled pocket mirrors, musk-scented gloves, lace mantillas, carved ivory fans. Saddle horses and diamonds are awarded to the highest nobility.
Petite excuses herself to go to the necessary in Henriette’s suite. Her courses have started at last, and she had been worried. She lingers in the quiet library, taking in the manuscripts, treatises, and rare books, then heads for the stairs.
A voice stops her. Fouquet rushes to catch up. He places a gloved hand lightly on her sleeve and asks if he may help her, if there is anything she desires. He speaks with the gracious manner of a man born to a very old family. Petite answers evenly that it is a marvelous fete. Fouquet presses his hands to his heart and says he is devoted to His Majesty, that he sincerely wishes to please him. His eyes stay on hers. Petite’s voice trembles as she says, “Of course,” then dips her head and hurries up the stairs in a panic of confusion. She knows those words were meant for Louis.
After midnight, everyone returns to the gardens under a weak moon. Louis, the Queen Mother, and Fouquet mount the royal carriage and move to the center of the garden above the cascades. Musketeers sound trumpets. Fire rockets are set. The horses bolt as the night sky lights up like day, the landscape showering blazing images of fleur-de-lis, stars, and the King’s name spelled out in fire. Footmen quickly quiet the panicked horses. Louis jumps from the carriage, followed by Fouquet. The Queen Mother sticks her head out and smiles bravely, and everyone cheers.
Then a mechanical whale-like shape moves slowly down the canal, fireworks exploding from its belly, sending streams of fire across the water. Rockets shoot from the dome of the château. A grotto explodes into light. The garden becomes a vault of fire. Louis watches the sky, his face illuminated. Fouquet comes beside him and puts a hand on Louis’s shoulder, as if he were a familiar — as if he were his superior, Petite thinks.
The two most powerful men in the kingdom are silhouetted against a carriage lantern. Louis, tall and young, towers over the distinguished Fouquet. Slowly, Louis removes the finance minister’s hand and puts his arm around the aristocrat, giving him a familiar shake. Their laughter resounds. The display ends in a shower of ash and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Petite pulls her shawl around her shoulders, chilled despite the heat. Louis once told her she did not understand. But she knows her history well: kings are toppled.
Returning to Fontainebleau the next day, everyone sees the royal château in a new light. The vista feels hemmed in. Many fountains stand dry, and the two with water are stagnant, covered in green scum. Where is the magic? Where is the grandeur? The château now appears shabby, a worn remnant of glory long gone.
That night, in Henriette’s withdrawing room, all anyone can talk about is Fouquet’s marvelous fete — the brilliance, the elegance, the canals, the cascades, the food, the gifts, and the cost. Twenty million livres, someone says. One hundred thousand, another claims. Either way, it is more than most spend in a year. Henriette gloats that the Queen Mother received a purse of gold with the exact same number of coins. When Fouquet is announced, everyone bows with new respect. Even Henriette’s spaniel sniffs at his boots.
Shortly after, Louis appears, and even he shows Fouquet marked esteem. Is it possible he is pleased with him now? Petite wonders. She knows it cannot be. She is beginning to see how skilled Louis is in the theatrical arts. She opens her fan to the side painted with Apollo — their signal. She longs for a private moment with the real Louis. It unnerves her to see him so false.
But Louis is preoccupied, and private moments are difficult. It is not until the end of August that they finally meet. Louis seems distant, tense. He tells Petite he must make a trip west, to Nantes. Petite finds that curious. Fouquet’s island fortress, Belle-Île, is not far from Nantes. Then Louis says the women are not to come.
With foreboding, Petite watches from a window as Louis departs, surrounded by his men and musketeers — his small flying camp. The château is ominously silent. Without the sound of men’s spurs on stone and their boisterous jests, it feels abandoned. “Only us girls,” Henriette says that evening, pouring a glass of her husband’s best brandy.
Nine days later, Henriette announces, pale-faced, that the minister of finance has been arrested. Petite helps her to the daybed as Nicole measures laudanum. Henriette takes the dose and bursts into tears. “Dear Fouquet.”
The news races through the château. Minute by minute, courtiers arrive with questions and a few with answers. Fouquet’s house was ransacked and sealed. A manuscript was found behind a mirror, supposedly plotting an uprising against the King. Some say poisons were found. Others doubt it. Petite listens quietly, her thoughts in turmoil. Louis had said, *I’m not the dupe he imagines.* She understands why Fouquet was arrested. The senior aristocrat assumed he could carry on in the corrupt ways of the past. His arrest is just, Petite believes — yet it is unnerving.
His wife is arrested too, sent to Limoges with only fifteen gold coins in her purse, poor thing. Property is confiscated — Fouquet’s wife’s, his sister-in-law’s, Vaux itself. Even Suzanne du Plessis-Bellièvre is arrested, her correspondence seized. Petite is horrified to imagine Fouquet’s bumbling spy in prison. Henriette weakly says, imagine what His Majesty will do when he reads through Fouquet’s correspondence. At this, many women pale, and in the days that follow, several quietly leave Court, anxious to destroy all traces of an association with the former finance minister.
Louis returns on the ninth of September to a different world. His Court is no longer gay. Everyone courts solitude. Devotional prayers and pilgrimages to shrines replace evenings at the gaming tables. He is a different king now. He has shown his strength and punished corruption — yet peace does not reign. With the confiscation of Fouquet’s correspondence, a truth is revealed that shocks even him. It is as if a rock has been lifted, revealing a teeming underground world of trysts and treasonous dealings.
Turbulent weather ruins crops across the land, and famine is predicted. Fear tightens purses, and money becomes scarce. As the Queen’s belly grows, Petite and Louis lie twined, his cries of release drowned by horrendous storms.
The Queen’s labor begins in the early hours of All Saints’ Day, a good omen. The château comes alive with torchlight as courtiers rush to the Queen’s chamber to witness the birth. Clorine helps Petite dress and pins her braids under her nightcap. Petite rinses her hands and face. She feels sluggish, heavy on her feet. *O Mary, may his baby be well,* she prays.
Eight days earlier, she had persuaded Louis to forsake their clandestine afternoons until after the birthing. He needed to prepare for Confession, take Communion, and commend his soul to God. So much has gone awry. The fall weather has been stormy, ruining harvests. It is only the first of November, and already peasants are starving, swarming at the gates. When had the gods stopped smiling on them? Was it the arrest of Fouquet, the ruin of his wife, brothers, sisters, friends, supporters, and spies? Or earlier, when Petite and Louis became sinners? She remembers a dream of monsters swimming in dark waters. Has a demon put that in her thoughts? Is the Devil following her even now? *O God, I beg you: the Queen is innocent.*
At the door, she asks Clorine to pray. Clorine hands her a simple rosary from the betony statue of the Virgin. “You’ll need this.”
There is a great congestion in the antechamber to the Queen’s rooms. Petite spots Athénaïs leaning against a pillar, pale and wan. The Queen can be heard screaming. Athénaïs says labor is not going well. Petite follows her into the dark, airless birthing chamber, packed with courtiers staggering about in a sleep-deprived state, wigs askew. She scans the crowd for Louis and finds him sitting in an armchair beside the Queen’s bed.
The Queen writhes in agony as a stout, pockmarked midwife applies steaming cloths to her great belly. The baby’s posterior presented first, Athénaïs whispers. Petite’s heart sinks. Women die from such a birthing. The midwife almost had apoplexy. One of the Queen’s maids fainted. Claude-Marie vomited. Everyone is dropping like flies. Henriette has already retired; she could not take it.
Petite holds back, but Athénaïs tells her not to worry — Nicole is with Henriette. Stay, she says. They may need Petite. She has foaled horses, hasn’t she? Athénaïs winks.
Petite follows Athénaïs to the Queen’s bed. Louis looks up, startled to see her. Petite lowers her eyes and makes a deep reverence to the Queen, now silent and panting. She looks like a girl, Petite thinks, like a mere child with a giant belly. Her face is flushed, her eyes bulging. She clutches her amulet, the dried heart of a deer slain on a hunt. The midwife, hands soaked in oil of white lily, strokes, kneads, pushes, and pries, trying to turn the infant.
*O Mary, I implore you.* Petite clasps her rosary. At last the midwife announces that the baby has turned. The welcome news ripples through the crowd. But challenges remain. The Queen is practically a dwarf, and the baby is locked within. An enema fails to widen the birth canal. Eel liver powder fails to ease her pain. Sneezing powder only produces convulsions. Even ergot fungus does not give the exhausted Queen enough strength to push the baby out.
But strength for yelling? Yes, this little Queen has plenty. Petite is in awe of her vocal strength, the violence of her expression. The timid young woman throws herself from side to side with amazing vigor, her screams rattling the window panes. She cries out in Spanish that she does not want to give birth, she wants to die.
The midwife orders Athénaïs to hold her down, but Athénaïs seems senseless with fear. The Queen curses and shakes free. The midwife thrusts a glass of milky substance into Athénaïs’s hands. Athénaïs spoons some into the Queen’s mouth, but the Queen spits it back in her face and cries again that she wants to die.
Petite places her hand on the Queen’s damp, cold forehead and turns to Louis. He looks terrified. Softly, Petite suggests that perhaps it would help if he told her the fluid will ease her pain. Louis stares at Petite, dumbfounded, then repeats the words to his wife. Petite whispers, “Touch her. It will calm her.” The King’s holy touch.
Louis places his hand on the Queen’s shoulder, and she quiets — but dangerously so, her breathing becoming irregular. Priests approach, droning sonorously. Athénaïs spoons the liquid into the Queen’s mouth. She stops breathing. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Everyone stares. Have they lost her? Then the Queen gasps, as if drowning.
The midwife checks the Queen’s pulse when her assistant calls out. There it is — a slippery, bloody infant emerging from between the Queen’s legs. The nobility crane their necks to see the genitals. Louis lowers his head, praying. “A prince, Your Majesty,” the midwife says, deftly cutting the cord. “Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,” Louis prays aloud, taking his naked, squalling son in his hands.
Petite blinks back tears and joins the courtiers as they echo the King: “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.” The courtiers fall to their knees. “Amen. O Lord, let us rejoice.” Athénaïs whispers to the Queen, who lies weeping in a pool of blood: “A healthy prince.” The Queen whispers, “Thank you,” then faints dead away.
The squalling baby is cleaned, wrapped, blessed again, and presented to the King. The great balcony doors open to a riot of cheering, ringing bells, and fire rockets. The courtiers part, heads bowed, hats pressed over their hearts, as Louis steps onto the balcony with the infant in his arms. A prince! *Amen, my love,* Petite prays silently, weak with relief.
The weather that Christmas season in Paris is wet and gray. A chill comes off the dank stone walls of the Tuileries Palace that no amount of burning wood can ease. Petite’s garret room is so cold that the water in the wash basin freezes. Clorine has to jab it with her finger to break the film of ice. She is adding salt rocks to it when there is a familiar tap-tap at the door.
Gautier stands in the dim hallway, a wall sconce candle illuminating his lively eyes. He is wrapped in layers of wool, looking like a swaddled baby. He says he must be quick. Under his arm he carries a cloth-wrapped bundle. He has come to deliver His Majesty’s invitation to Mademoiselle de la Vallière to join a hunting excursion in the country. Clorine frowns. In this weather? When? Petite asks. She has had little chance to see Louis since the birth of the Dauphin and the Court’s return to Paris. Gautier has been assigned a room next to one of the Queen Mother’s valets, so meeting there has not been possible.
First thing in the morning, Gautier says. His Majesty will ride to Val-de-Galie, a village to the southwest. The going is apt to be rough, so only the hardiest riders have been invited. He tips his hat to Petite, as if to congratulate her. There is a château there, a rather primitive hunting box, but sufficient for a stay of two days. Two days with Louis. *Two nights.*
But what about her duties here? Petite asks. Gautier explains that Henriette is to be purged in the morning and will not require attendants for several days. Petite glances at Clorine, then turns away. She does not want her maid to know about her relationship with Louis. She thanks Gautier but says she is afraid she could not consider it. It makes her want to weep. A ride through rough terrain would be too difficult for her maid.
And there the chapter leaves us: Petite refusing the invitation aloud, while everything in her heart pulls her toward Louis, toward danger, toward a secret that could destroy her.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating:
What a chapter. The contrast is almost overwhelming — the dazzling, poisonous beauty of Fouquet’s fete, followed by the cold, frightened stillness of a court that has learned how quickly power can be stripped away. I loved how Petite sees through the masks, even as she is trapped inside the same dangerous game. The birth scene is harrowing and deeply human, and Louis’s tenderness there makes him both more sympathetic and more terrifying, because we know how coldly he can act elsewhere. The final invitation is a perfect cliffhanger: it feels like a romantic escape and a trap all at once.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction:
I predict Petite will be unable to stay away. She may refuse at first because of Clorine, but Louis — or Gautier — will find a way to arrange the journey. Perhaps Clorine will be left behind under some excuse, or Petite will risk the rough ride anyway. At Val-de-Galie, the primitive hunting box will become a space of dangerous intimacy: two stolen days and nights with Louis, far from the watching court. But after Fouquet’s arrest and the exposure of so much correspondence, secrecy is more perilous than ever. I expect the next chapter to bring passion, fear, and the first hint that their hidden love is leaving traces that enemies could use. Maybe Petite will also face a choice between her duty to Henriette and her bond with Louis, and that choice may begin to cost her more than she can imagine.
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