Summer evenings Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte
Two thousand candles twinkle at dusk, their flames growing steadily brighter as darkness descends and shadows lengthen across the walls and balustrades of Vaux le Vicomte, a grand chateau near Melun, on the outskirts of Paris. These pinpricks of light cast reflections in narrow canals, round pools and spurting fountains that form part of 33 acres of landscaped gardens, and multiply under the moonlight. Classical music accompanies the candles on this late summer’s evening, and diners chatter in anticipation of an al fresco feast fit for a king against a backdrop of some of the finest gardens in France, followed by fireworks beneath the stars.
Candlelit dinners are held at Vaux le Vicomte every Saturday from May to October and are an especially good reason to visit this monument historique in the summer. Melun is a short drive from La Vallee Village, 30 kilometres to the north, and a romantic dinner at Les Charmilles restaurant in the chateau’s gardens makes a memorable end to a day spent shopping. The two-course set menu is a reasonable 30 euros, while three courses with a glass of wine of champagne costs 45 euros.
Yet however enchanting the ambience might be nowadays, no evening here will surely ever match the drama and decadence of a fabled summer’s evening at the chateau some 350 years ago. For it was on 17 August 1661 that France’s most talented artists, poets and other luminaries dressed in their finery and gathered at the home of Nicolas Fouquet, a man of immense wealth and equally exuberant tastes, for a grand fête that was, by all accounts, the most magnificent party in the history of France.
Fouquet was the minister of finance for a young Louis XIV and he pulled out all the stops in an attempt to impress his boss. Having employed the very best gardeners, painters and architects in the country to build and decorate his palace in just five years, he made sure that his opening night would live long in the memory of those who attended, not least the Sun King himself. Jewel-clad elephants stood among the orange trees, food was served on gold and silver plates, the Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully wrote music especially for the occasion and a play by Moliere had its debut. Then, as now, fireworks rounded off the evening’s entertainment.
‘Quo non ascendant’ was Fouquet’s family motto, ‘how far could it climb?’ and sadly for him he soon found out. For his attempt to honour the king backfired spectacularly, despite having built a part of his chateau solely for the king’s use. He was subsequently arrested and tried for embezzlement. Louis seems to have disliked being upstaged by his finance minister’s extravagance and style – of which the fête at Vaux le Vicomte was the final straw – and led something of a personal crusade against Fouquet that after a three year trial ended with him sentenced to life imprisonment, left only to reflect on what he’d once had and had now lost completely.
Voltaire later summed up the famous fête, writing that “On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody.” The King, meanwhile, recruited many of the talents who’d created Vaux, including architect Le Vau, painter Le Brun and gardener Le Notre, and tasked them with building an even grander palace in another area outside Paris. This new architectural wonder was Versailles, and with it, Louis XIV style was firmly established.
Although dwarfed by Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte is still tremendously impressive, as befits the largest privately owned estate in all of France today. And as the candles and fireworks light up the chateau again this summer it’s worth sparing a thought for Nicolas Fouquet, without whom none of this wonderful extravagance could be enjoyed. Perhaps he didn’t end up as a nobody after all.
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01-09-2011
