Crebillon and his wife accompanied the old greffier back from Paris to Dijon, where, to the great surprise of the inhabitants, the father presented his son as "M. Jolyot de Crebillon, who has succeeded Messieurs Corneille and Racine in the honors of the French stage." Crebillon had the greatest possible difficulty in restraining the enthusiasm of his sire. He succeeded, however, at length, not through remonstrance, but by the insatiable ardor he displayed in diving into the paternal money-bags. After a sojourn of three months at Dijon, Crebillon returned to Paris; and well for him it was that he did so; a month longer, and the father would indubitably have quarrelled with him again, and would have remade his will, disinheriting this time, not the rebellious child, but the prodigal son. Crebillon, in fact, never possessed the art of keeping his money; and in this respect he but followed the example of all those who, in imagination, remove mountains of gold. Scarcely had he arrived in Paris when he was obliged to return to Dijon. The old greffier had died suddenly. The inheritance was a most difficult one to unravel. "I have come here," writes Crebillon to the elder of the brothers Pâris, "only to inherit law-suits." And, true enough, he allowed himself to be drawn blindly into the various suits which arose in consequence of certain informalities in the old man's will, and which eventually caused almost the entire property to drop, bit by bit, into the pockets of the lawyers. "I was a great blockhead," wrote Crebillon later; "I went about reciting passages from my tragedies to these lawyers, who feigned to pale with admiration; and this manoeuvre of theirs blinded me; I perceived not that all the while these cunning foxes were devouring my substance; but it is the fate of poets to be ever like La Fontaine's crow." Out of this property he succeeded only in preserving the little fief of Crebillon, the income derived from which he gave up to his sisters. On his return to Paris, however, he changed altogether his style of living; he removed his penates to the neighborhood of the Luxembourg, and placed his establishment on quite a seignorial footing, as if he had become heir to a considerable property. This act of folly can scarcely be explained. The report, of course, was spread, that he had inherited property to a large amount. Most probably he wished, by acting thus, to save the family honor, or, to speak more correctly, the family vanity, by seeking to deceive the world as to the precise amount of the Jolyot estate. True wisdom inhabits not the world in which we dwell. Crebillon sought all the superfluities of luxury. In vain did his wife endeavor to restrain him in his extravagances; in vain did she recal to his mind their frugal but happy meals, and the homely furniture of their little dwelling in the Place Maubert; "_so gay for all that on sunny days_."