January, 1714, then, beheld Arouet at the bidding of Pimpette, and having made the most abject apologies to his father (François Marie was nothing if not thorough), installed as clerk to a Maître Alain, and living with that dull and worthy solicitor and his wife. He learnt something of law here, no doubt. Nay, he must have learnt a great deal to be hereafter that shrewd and capable man of affairs he proved himself. But it was a dull time and an unfortunate. Maître Arouet kept his prodigal very close in the matter of money; and his prodigal affixed his name to certain bills which gave him trouble hereafter. Pimpette’s letters were getting fewer and fewer. Pimpette was false. Then, in the August of this 1714, young Arouet tried for a prize offered by the French Academy for a poem celebrating the King’s generosity in giving a new choir to Notre Dame; and failed. The failure attacked La Motte, the judge--the unjust judge, Arouet thought him--with epigrams, and then wrote a satire, called “Mud,” on La Motte’s “Fables.” Old Arouet was furious again, and young Arouet’s only consolation in life was the friendship of one Theriot, also clerk to the Alains, an idle, goodnatured, amusing scapegrace, nobody’s enemy but his own, and to be Arouet’s friend, though not always a faithful friend, for sixty years. Caumartin, an old Temple acquaintance, reappeared on young Arouet’s horizon again presently. Caumartin had an uncle, a famous old magistrate, the Marquis de Saint-Ange, living at Saint-Ange, nine miles from Fontainebleau. When young Caumartin conveyed an invitation to old Arouet that his prodigal should go and stay with Saint-Ange and resume his studies there, the notary naturally supposed an acceptance would be the best thing for Arouet’s legal prospects. And not for his legal prospects only. The boy had that satire, couplets, and epigrams running through Paris. He did not yet know what message he had to deliver to the world; did not know perhaps that he had any message. But he was fast learning the language in which it was to be spoken, and speak in that language he must, were the whole earth peopled by angry fathers and conscientious Alains. So it was as well that the autumn of 1714 saw him away from Paris and established in the fine old château of the Saint-Anges. The old magistrate, however, was not magistrate only, or chiefly; he was also a man of the world, and courtier. So it soon came about that, instead of learning maxims of the law, the keen-witted visitor sat and listened, a most eager and intelligent audience, to gossip, scandal, _bons-mots_ of the Court of a bygone day--anecdotes of Henry of Navarre and personal recollections of Louis XIV. The château had a splendid library. But it was hardly needed--“Caumartin carries the living history of his age in his head,” said his courtly young guest in a quatrain.