“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.
Arouet had not written them. But that did not matter. He might have written them. They were after his manner. Besides, had he not been in exile and disgrace, and was he not still so wicked that his good old father would not have him in the house, and he was living an outcast in furnished lodgings? These reasonings would have been conclusive alone. Then he was known to be the moving spirit at Sceaux, and Sceaux was but another name for disaffection.
A spy, Beauregard, swore to a conversation he had had with Arouet, in which Arouet, with a most unnatural imprudence, avowed himself the author of both satires with much circumstantial detail; and added “things not mentionable” about the Duchesse du Berri.
He went his way quite gaily for a while, however. His “Œdipe” had been accepted, and was actually in rehearsal at the theatre. Here was a triumph indeed. He was still beloved of all the salons and the women—dear, delightful, dangerous. He had the keenest sense of humour to help him through these little contretemps of existence. He would, now at least, hardly have missed his mot to save his skin—and he held that dear, as the physically weak are apt to do. He was sauntering one day, on May 15, 1717, through the Palais Royal Gardens, runs the story, when he was called into the presence of the Regent, also sauntering there.
“I bet you, M. Arouet,” says Philip, “I will show you something you have never seen before.”
“What is that, Monseigneur?”