THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

VOLTAIRE
almost to eighty-four; but throughout his life his frail body tormented
with illness his unconquerable spirit.
He had for his edification a model elder brother, Armand, a pious
lad who fell in love with the Jansenist heresy, and courted martyrdom
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for his faith. "Well/ said Armand to a friend who advised the better
part of valor, "if you do not want to be hanged, at least do not put off
other people." The father said he had two fools for his sons one in
verse and the other in prose. The fact that Francois made verses almost
as soon as he could write his name, convinced his very practical father
that nothing good would come of him. But the famous hetaira, Ninon
de PEnclos, who lived in the provincial town to which the Arouets had
returned after the birth of Francois, saw in the youth signs of greatness;
and when she died she left him 2000 francs for the purchase of books!
His early education came from these, and from a dissolute abbe (a
Jerome Coignard in the flesh) who taught him scepticism along with his
prayers. His later educators, the Jesuits, gave him the very instrument
of scepticism by teaching him dialectic the art of proving anything,
and therefore at last the habit of believing nothing. Frangois became an
adept at argument: while the boys played games in the fields, he, aged
twelve, stayed behind to discuss theology with the doctors. When the
time came for him to earn his living, he scandalized his father by proposing
to take up literature as profession. "Literature," said M. Arouet, "is
the profession of the man who wishes to be useless to society and a burden
to his relatives, and to die of hunger"; one can see the table trembling
under his emphasis. So Frangois went in for literature.
Not that he was a quiet and merely studious lad; he burnt the mid-
with the wits
night oil of others. He took to staying ouc late, frolicking
and roisterers of the town, and experimenting with the commandments;
until his exasperated father sent him off to a relative at Caen, with
instructions to keep the youth practically in confinement. But his jailer
fell in love with his wit, and soon gave him free rein. After imprisonment,
now as later, came exile: his father sent him to the Hague with the
French ambassador, requesting strict surveillance of the madcap boy; but
Frangois at once fell in love with a little lady, "Pirnpette," held breathless
clandestine interviews with her, and wrote to her passionate letters ending
always with the refrain, "I shall certainly love you forever." The affair
was discovered, and he was sent home. He remembered Pimpette for
several weeks.
In 1715, proud of his twenty-one years, he went to Paris, just in time
to be in at the death of Louis XIV. The succeeding Louis being too young
to govern France, much less Paris, the power fell into the hands of a
regent; and during this quasi-interregnum life ran riot in the capital of
the world, and young Arouet ran with it. He soon achieved a reputation
as a brilliant and reckless lad. When the Regent 3 for economy, sold half
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