the ranks of the courtiers you are in those of the enemy, and you will be crushed." Something of the kind happened to Voltaire. Among the country houses at which he often visited was that of the Duke of Maine, at Sceaux, near M. Arouet's country house of Chatenay. The Duke was the eldest legitimised son of Louis XIV. by Madame de Montespan, and important enough therefore, as a possible successor to the throne, to be a rival of the Duke of Orleans; his wife was active and ambitious, and hence Sceaux became a focus of intrigue, and the Duchess's friends objects of suspicion to the Government. From her party issued many satirical attacks upon the Regent, and it was natural that some of these should be attributed to Voltaire; among others, one that has survived on account of the vogue it had, known as "Things that I have seen," in which the writer enumerates some of the chief evils of the late reign: "I have seen a thousand prisons full of brave citizens and faithful subjects; I have seen the people groaning in slavery, the soldiers famishing," &c., &c.—"and yet I am not twenty." Voltaire always strenuously denied all knowledge of the composition, the most unfortunate passage in which was that where D'Argenson, the Minister of Police, was called "an enemy of the human race." He was placed under observation by the official thus unpleasantly designated; and when, a few months later, some squibs against not only the Regent, but his daughter, the Duchess of Berry, came out, he was exiled from Paris, being allowed the indulgence of choosing his place of abode. The Duke of Sully's chateau, on the Loire, had been the home of Henry IV.'s famous minister, and was full of recollections of both him and his master, and
