When Voltaire was set at liberty, the Regent, whom, as we have just said, he had reviled, made him a very handsome offer of his protection. The poet's reply is well known: "My lord, I thank your royal highness for being so good as to continue to charge yourself with my board, but I beseech you no longer to charge yourself with my lodging." The young writer thus obtained from the Regent a pension of 400 crowns, which later on the latter augmented to 2000 livres. Voltaire was sent to the Bastille a second time in April, 1726. For this new detention there was no justification whatever. He had had a violent quarrel, one evening at the Opera, with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. On another occasion, at the Comédie Française, the poet and the nobleman had a warm altercation in the box of Mdlle. Lecouvreur. Rohan raised his stick, Voltaire put his hand on his sword, and the actress fainted. Some days later "the gallant chevalier, assisted by half a dozen ruffians, behind whom he courageously posted himself," gave our poet a thrashing in broad daylight. When relating the adventure later, the Chevalier said pleasantly: "I commanded the squad." From that moment Voltaire sought his revenge. "The police reports reveal curious details of the loose, erratic, and feverish life he lived between the insult and his arrest," writes the careful biographer of Voltaire, Desnoiresterres. From one of these police reports we see that the young writer established relations with soldiers of the guard: several notorious bullies were constantly about him. A relative who attempted to calm him found him more irritated and violent in his language than ever. It appears certain that he was meditating some act of violence, which indeed would not have been without justification. But the Cardinal de Rohan contrived that he should be arrested on the night of April 17, 1726, and placed in the Bastille. Speaking of this new imprisonment Marshal de Villars writes: "The public, disposed to find fault all round, came to the conclusion on this occasion that everybody was in the wrong: Voltaire for having offended the Chevalier de Rohan, the latter for having dared to commit a capital offence in causing a citizen to be beaten, the government for not having punished a notorious crime, and for having sent the injured party to the Bastille to pacify the injurer." Nevertheless, we read in the report of Hérault, the lieutenant of police: "The Sieur de Voltaire was found armed with pocket pistols, and his family, when informed of the matter, unanimously and universally applauded the wisdom of an order which saves this young man the ill effects of some new piece of folly and the worthy people who compose his family the vexation of sharing his shame."