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### Book:degree of control over your immediate affairs. A thorough reading of the |
### Book:book will inspire thinking and reevaluation long after you finish it. |
### Book:The book has also been designed for browsing and for examining the |
### Book:law that seems at that particular moment most pertinent to you. Say youare experiencing problems with a superior and cannot understand why |
### Book:your efforts have not lead to more gratitude or a promotion. Several laws |
### Book:specifically address the master-underling relationship, and you are |
### Book:almost certainly transgressing one of them. By browsing the initial |
### Book:paragraphs for the 48 laws in the table of contents, you can identify the |
### Book:pertinent law. |
### Book:Finally, the book can be browsed through and picked apart for |
### Book:entertainment, for an enjoyable ride through the foibles and great deeds |
### Book:of our predecessors in power. A warning, however, to those who use the |
### Book:book for this purpose: It might be better to turn back. Power is endlessly |
### Book:seductive and deceptive in its own way. It is a labyrinth—your mind |
### Book:becomes consumed with solving its infinite problems, and you soon |
### Book:realize how pleasantly lost you have become. In other words, it becomes |
### Book:most amusing by taking it seriously. Do not be frivolous with such a |
### Book:critical matter. The gods of power frown on the frivolous; they give |
### Book:ultimate satisfaction only to those who study and reflect, and punish |
### Book:those who skim the surfaces looking for a good time. |
### Book:Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin |
### Book:among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to |
### Book:keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that |
### Book:knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires. |
### Book:THE PRINCE, Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527LAW 1 |
### Book:NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER |
### Book:JUDGMENT |
### Book:Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire |
### Book:to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents |
### Book:or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear and insecurity. Make |
### Book:your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the |
### Book:heights of power. |
### Book:TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW |
### Book:Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister in the first years of his |
### Book:reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and |
### Book:poetry. He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle. Fouquet |
### Book:was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime |
### Book:minister, Jules Mazarin, died, in 1661, the finance minister expected to |
### Book:be named the successor. Instead, the king decided to abolish the position. |
### Book:This and other signs made Fouquet suspect that he was falling out of |
### Book:favor, and so he decided to ingratiate himself with the king by staging |
### Book:the most spectacular party the world had ever seen. The party’s |
### Book:ostensible purpose would be to commemorate the completion of |
### Book:Fouquet’s château, Vaux-le-Vicomte, but its real function was to pay |
### Book:tribute to the king, the guest of honor. |
### Book:The most brilliant nobility of Europe and some of the greatest minds |
### Book:of the time—La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sévigné |
### Book:attended the party. Molière wrote a play for the occasion, in which he |
### Book:himself was to perform at the evening’s conclusion. The party began |
### Book:with a lavish seven-course dinner, featuring foods from the Orient never |
### Book:before tasted in France, as well as new dishes created especially for thenight. The meal was accompanied with music commissioned by Fouquet |
### Book:to honor the king. |
### Book:After dinner there was a promenade through the château’s gardens. |
### Book:The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration |
### Book:for Versailles. |
### Book:Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the |
### Book:geometrically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds. |
### Book:Arriving at the gardens’ canals, they witnessed a fireworks display, |
### Book:which was followed by the performance of Molière’s play. The party ran |
### Book:well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most amazing affair |
### Book:they had ever attended. |
### Book:The next day, Fouquet was arrested by the king’s head musketeer, |
### Book:D’Artagnan. Three months later he went on trial for stealing from the |
### Book:country’s treasury. (Actually, most of the stealing he was accused of he |
### Book:had done on the king’s behalf and with the king’s permission.) Fouquet |
### Book:was found guilty and sent to the most isolated prison in France, high in |
### Book:the Pyrenees Mountains, where he spent the last twenty years of his life |
### Book:in solitary confinement. |
### Book:Interpretation |
### Book:Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to |
### Book:be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being |
### Book:outdone in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister. |
### Book:To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a man famous |
### Book:for his parsimony and for giving the dullest parties in Paris. Colbert |
### Book:made sure that any money liberated from the treasury went straight into |
### Book:Louis’s hands. With the money, Louis built a palace even more |
### Book:magnificent than Fouquet’s—the glorious palace of Versailles. He used |
### Book:the same architects, decorators, and garden designer. And at Versailles, |
### Book:Louis hosted parties even more extravagant than the one that cost |
### Book:Fouquet his freedom. |
### Book:Let us examine the situation. The evening of the party, as Fouquet |
### Book:presented spectacle on spectacle to Louis, each more magnificent than |
### Book:the one before, he imagined the affair as demonstrating his loyalty and |
### Book:devotion to the king. Not only did he think the party would put him back |
### Book:in the king’s favor, he thought it would show his good taste, his |
### Book:connections, and his popularity, making him indispensable to the king |
### Book:and demonstrating that he would make an excellent prime minister.Instead, however, each new spectacle, each appreciative smile bestowed |
### Book:by the guests on Fouquet, made it seem to Louis that his own friends and |
### Book:subjects were more charmed by the finance minister than by the king |
### Book:himself, and that Fouquet was actually flaunting his wealth and power. |
### Book:Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet’s elaborate party offended the |
### Book:king’s vanity. Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course—instead, |
### Book:he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had |
### Book:inadvertently made him feel insecure. |
### Book:Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the |
### Book:master’s sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his |
### Book:pre-eminence. |
### Book:When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world. |
### Book:By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom. |
### Book:Voltaire, 1694-1778 |