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.