Nicolas Foucquet in the Fortress of Pignerol,1666

We all wait for a deliverer,
Some in hope, others in terror...
But what if he should come? My God,what then?
Delusions of power I have made my speciality,
And now when at last I have leisure to record my findings
They deny me even pen and ink!
(So I write on secret,on scraps of paper,
With a pen fashioned from a chicken bone
And ink made from my own sweat mixed with wine)
Well, I dare to call myself a decent man;
Did I not ,amid my earliest ambitions,
Display a compassion not common in these times?
Nonetheless,I became an indispensable man,
Until I was dispensed with.
How often families live up to their emblems,
As I, in my way, do mine.
In politics there is no gratitude
And murder smiles in the sweetest caress.
My mother,now there was a truly good soul:
None more devoted to Christ and man,
Nursing the sick in the Hôtel-Dieu
Side by side with the nuns of the Visitation,
The hellish wards packed with the dead
And dying,pestilence and miasma in the air,
The spastic hand reaching for mercy
And the twisted mouth gasping for life.
She would study their sufferings for instruction
And concoct remedies for their ills.
And so ,before my soul learned compromise and deceit,
She taught me the true perfection to seek
And victories not of this world.
And in my father’s library,among maps
And ancient coins, a restless little Jesuit,
So beguiled by the forbidden fruit,
I dreamed beyond my frail constitution,
A ship’s captain crossing the equator,
Ploughing into undiscovered seas,
My mind a wild Guyana, jaguar-bright.
Harmony,turbulent mistress I have wooed
Amid the disharmony of state!
(At Vaux the chestnut trees’ growth,
According to elegant principles,
Sending forth first a symmetrical splay
Of branches along one axis,then,beneath,
The second at right-angle to the first,
And so on,continuous cross-pattern,
And each leaf-spray a perfect seven.
The geometry of fountains and parterres,
The coherence of house and garden
Into one body,one mind;the colours
Of the artist’s palette,slyly blent....)
Clearly now I see the truth about myself,
That my weaknesses have ever ruled me,
Impetous,naive,extravagant,vain,
Overreaching in ridiculous ambition,
And,not least,besotted with women,
Injured by their beauty from the start.
How much time and energy have I wasted
In dalliances without substance or hope?
Now,the priest of my own solitude,
I inspect the omens and auspices
That happen upon me,from time to time,
And see in the candleflame’s trembling
The overpowering shapes of madness.
No earthly king can rule me now;
Our paltry authorities delude themselves,
Disposing the temporal with such pride,
To no great purpose, with no great style.
Only in prison is there freedom,
The grace to fall into the monstrous deep,
And suffer the true life unlived.
Deceits and vanities of the Court,
Frittered years and stupid possessions,
I weep for the nonsense that owned me
And bent me out of shape!
For that I have deserved this mountain tower,
And a lightning bolt to strike it
And cast me, killed and saved,down...