The book is a fascinating story of the rise and fall of the head of the financial department of the court of Louis XIV - Nicolas Fouquet. A thorough and fascinating biographical account of one of the court's most successful ministers, student and right-hand man of Cardinal Mazarin, draws on numerous historical sources. The book tells about the corruption mechanisms that existed in France with the connivance of the state; about how the creation of a state can become larger than the state itself, and about the formation of an independent judicial system in pre-revolutionary France. The book is addressed to historians, lawyers, political scientists, as well as all lovers of French history.