Two hundred years ago, on November 21st, 1604, a child emerged on the
world at Paris. The baptismal register on the following day gave the
name Francois Marie Arouet, and the youth afterwards christened himself
Voltaire.(1) The flesh was so weakly that the babe was _ondovc_ (the
term employed for informal sprinkling with water at home), lest there
might be no time for the ecclesiastical rite.
1. He was a younger son. The name Voltaire is, perhaps, an
anagram of the Arouet 1. j. (le jeune) the u being converted
into r, and the j into r. In like manner, an old college- tutor
of his, Pere Thoulie, transformed himself, by a similar
anagrammatic process, into the Abbe Olivet-- omitting the
unnecessary h from his original name. This method of reforming a
plebeian name into one more distinguished-looking seems not to
have been uncommon in those times, as Jean Baptiste Pocquelin
took the name of Moliere, and Charles Secondat that of
Montesquieu.
Something may have been wrong with the performance of the sacred
ceremony, since the child certainly grew up to think more of "the world,
the flesh, and the devil" than of the other trinity of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. His father was a respectable attorney, and his mother came
of noble family. His godfather and early preceptor was the Abbe de
Chateauneuf, who made no pietist of him, but introduced him to his
friend, the famous Ninon l'Enclos, the antiquated Aspasia who is said to
have inspired a passion in the l'Abbe Gedouin at the age of eighty, and
who was sufficiently struck with young Voltaire to leave him a legacy of
two thousand francs, wherewith to provide himself a library.
Voltaire showed when quite a child an unsurpassed facility for
verse-making. He was educated at a Jesuit college, and the followers of
Jesus have ever since reproached him with Jesuitism. Possibly he did
imbibe some of their "policy" in the propaganda of his ideas. Certainly
he saw sufficient of the hypocrisy and immorality of religious
professors to disgust him with the black business, and he said in
after-life that the Jesuits had taught him nothing worth learning.
He learnt a certain amount of Latin and a parcel of stupidities. But,
indifferent as this education was, it served to encourage his already
marked literary tendency. Voltaire is said to have told his father when
he left college, at the age of fifteen, "I wish to be a man of letters,
and nothing else." "That," M. Arouet is reported to have replied, "is
the profession of a man who wishes to be a burden to his family and to
die of starvation." He would have no such nonsense. Francois must study
law; and to Paris he went with that intent. For three years he was
supposed to do so, but he bestowed more attention on the gay society of
the Temple, to which his godfather introduced him, "the most amusing
fellow in the world," and which was presided over by the Abbe de
Chaulieu. The time which he was compelled to spend in law studies, and
at the desk of a _procureur_, was by no means lost to his future
fortunes, whether in the pursuit of fame or wealth. During that hated
apprenticeship he doubtless caught up some knowledge of law and
business, which stood him in good stead in after years. He tells us that
his father thought him lost, because he mixed with good society and
wrote verses. For these he got sufficient reputation to be first exiled
to Tulle, then to Sully, and finally thrown into the Bastille on
suspicion of having written lampoons on the government. The current
story tells how the Regent, walking one day in the Palais Royal, met
Voltaire, and accosted him by offering to bet that he would show him
what he had never seen before. "What is that?" asked Voltaire. "The
Bastille." "Ah, monseigneur! I will take the Bastille as seen." On the
next morning, in May, 1717, Voltaire was arrested in his bedroom and
lodged in the Bastille.
After nearly a year's imprisonment, during which he gave the finishing
touches to his tragedy of _OEdipus_, and sketched the epic _Henriade_,
in which he depicts the massacre of Bartholomew, the horrors of
religious bigotry, and the triumph of toleration under Henry IV., he was
released and conducted to the Regent. While Voltaire awaited audience
there was a thunderstorm. "Things could not go on worse," he said aloud,
"if there was a Regency above." His conductor, introducing him to the
Regent, said, repeating the remark, "I bring you a young man whom your
Highness has just released from the Bastille, and whom you should send
back again." The Regent laughed, and promised, if he behaved well, to
provide for him. "I thank your Highness for taking charge of my board,"
returned Voltaire, "but I beseech you not to trouble yourself any more
about my lodging."
In his first play, _OEdipe_, appeared the celebrated couplet:
_"Nos pretres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense!_
_Notre credulite fait toute leur science." (1)_
1. "Our priests are not what foolish people suppose; all their
science is derived from our credulity."
These lines were afterwards noted by Condorcet as "the first signal of a
war, which not even the death of Voltaire could extinguish." It was at
this period that he first took the name of Arouet de Voltaire. He
produced two more tragedies, _Artemire_ and _Mariamne_; a comedy, _The
Babbler_; and prepared his world-famous _Henriade._ A portrait, painted
by Largilliere at about this period, has often been engraved. It
exhibits a handsome young gentleman, full of grace and spirit, with a
smiling mouth, animated eyes, intellectual forehead, and a fine hand in
a fine ruffle.