'Epic Poem,' no less; LA LIGUE, as he then called it; which it was his hope the whole world would one day fall in love with;--as it did.

Nay, in two years more, he had done a Play, OEDIPE the renowned name of it; which ran for forty-eight nights' (18th November, 1718, the first of them); and was enough to turn any head of such age.

Law may be considered hopeless, even by M.Arouet Senior.
"Try him in the Diplomatic line; break these bad habits and connections, thought M.Arouet, at one time; and sent him to the French Ambassador in Holland,--on good behavior, as it were, and by way of temporary banishment.

But neither did this answer.

On the contrary, the young fellow got into scrapes again; got into amatory intrigues,--young lady visiting you in men's clothes, young lady's mother inveigling, and I know not what;--so that the Ambassador was glad to send him home again unmarried; marked, as it were, 'Glass, with care!' And the young lady's mother printed his Letters, not the least worth reading:--and the old M.
Arouet seems now to have flung up his head; to have settled some small allowance on him, with peremptory no hope of more, and said, 'Go your own way, then, foolish junior: the elder shall be my son.' M.Arouet disappears at this point, or nearly so, from the history of his son Francois; and I think must have died in not many years.