In the spring of 1716 he stayed with Saint-Ange again. In May he was back in the capital. He did say, no doubt, when the Regent put down half the horses in the royal stables, that he would have done better to have dismissed half the asses who had surrounded the late King. Then a shameful epigram on the shameful du Berri came to the ears of the persons chiefly concerned. Young Arouet was exiled to Tulle--Tulle being changed pretty easily, at his father’s request, to Sully. No reason was assigned by the Government for this order of exile. The Duke of Sully readily became a most hospitable host. The Duchess had a most charming poor companion, Mademoiselle de Livri. It was but an exile _pour rire_, after all--a warning fatherly rap from that paternal Government on the knuckles of an impertinent child. It is strange to see how the boy chafed under that agreeable courtly life of hunting and conversation. “It would be delightful to stay at Sully,” he wrote, “If I were only allowed to go away from it.” The Duke was the most delightful of hosts, and his estate most charmingly situated. The young people of the château, in pairs, sonneted the midsummer moon in the gardens; and wrote each other dainty little quatrains and flatteries. Arouet loved verses and the society of charming and vivacious young women in general, and, here, of one charming and vivacious young woman in particular; and he was two-and-twenty. But he wrote himself back to Paris by poetic compliments to the Regent so finely turned that the author must have had some unusual spur on his imagination. He was, in fact, beginning to wonder if there was not a work waiting for him in the world. If it was not his fault, it was the fault of the reputation he had made, that when there appeared in Paris, immediately he returned to it in the spring of 1717, two stinging satires on the state of France and the Regent’s manner of life called respectively “J’ai Vu” and “Puero Regnante,” they should at once be assigned to him. “Puero Regnante” is a dog-Latin inscription. A boy reigning; A poisoner Administering; Councils ignorant and unstable; Religion more unstable; An exhausted treasury; Public faith violated; Injustice triumphant; Sedition imminent; The country sacrificed To the hope of a Crown; The inheritance anticipated; France perishing. The “J’ai Vu” is a short poem. I have seen ... the prisons full; I have seen ... the people groaning; I have seen ... Port Royal demolished-- “I have seen,” in short, everything to which a prudent person with a proper regard to his safety would have been conveniently blind.