hing." "Having but little property when I began
life," he wrote to M. d'Argenson, his sometime fellow-pupil, "I had the
insolence to think that I should have got a place as well as another,
if it were to be obtained by hard work and good will. I threw myself
into the ranks of the fine arts, which always carry with them a certain
air of vilification, seeing that they do not make a man king's counsellor
in his councils. You may become a master of requests with money; but you
can't make a poem with money, and I made one."

This independent behavior and the poem on the _Construction du Choeur de
Notre-Dame de Paris,_ the subject submitted for competition by the French
Academy, did not prevent young Arouet from being sent by his father to
Holland in the train of the Marquis of Chateauneuf, then French
ambassador to the States General; he committed so many follies that on
his return to France, M. Arouet forced him to enter a solicitor's office.
It was there that the poet acquired that knowledge of business which was
useful to him during the whole course of his long life; he, however, did
not remain there long: a satire upon the French Academy which had refused
him the prize for poetry, and, later on, some verses as biting as they
were disrespectful against the Duke of Orleans, twice obliged their
author to quit Paris. Sent into banishment at Sully-sur-Loire, he there
found partisans and admirers; the merry life that was led at the
Chevalier Sully's mitigated the hardships of absence from Paris. "Don't
you go publishing abroad, I beg," wrote Arouet, nevertheless, to one of
his friends, "the happiness of which I tell you in confidence: for they
might perhaps leave me here long enough for me to become unhappy; I know
my own capacity; I am not made to live long in the same place."

A beautiful letter addressed to the Regent and disavowing all the
satirical writings which had been attributed to him, brought Arouet back
to Paris at the commencement of the year 1717; he had been enjoying it
for barely a few months when a new satire, entitled _J'ai vu_ (I have
seen), and bitterly criticising the late reign, engaged the attention of
society, and displeased the Regent afresh. Arouet defended himself with
just cause and with all his might against the charge of having written
it. The Duke of Orleans one day met him in the garden of the
Palais-Royal. "Monsieur Arouet," said he, "I bet that I will make you
see a thing you have neve