CHAPTER II.
HE STARTS IN LIFE.
His father destined him for the bar, and with that prospect he was set for three years to study law. He found the subject, or the mode of teaching it, entirely distasteful. "What most strengthened his inclination for poetry was his disgust at the mode in which jurisprudence was taught in the law schools, to which, on leaving college, he was sent by his father, then treasurer of the Chamber of Accounts. This alone sufficed to turn him aside to the study of the belles lettres. Young as he was, he was admitted into the society of the Marquis de la Fare, the Duc de Sully, the Abbé Courtin,… and his father thought him lost because he mixed with good society and wrote verses." So he says in the 'Commentaire Historique,' an autobiographical production of his old age. He certainly possessed the most remarkable qualifications for social success. His readiness in the use of his singular mental endowments, his wit, aptitude of expression, confidence, animation, and good-humoured malice, were all prefaced for success by the charm of his manner. Madame de Genlis (no friendly critic) allows that he alone of the men of his century possessed the lost art of talking to women as women love to be talked to. A portrait painted by Largillière when Voltaire was about twenty-four, shows him, says his eulogist Houssaye, "full of grace and spirit, with a mocking mouth, refined profile, the air of a gentleman, a luminous forehead, a fine hand in a fine ruffle." The print in the quarto edition of his works, from a later portrait, confirms this description: there is extraordinary spirit and animation in the eyes and semi-cynical yet bright and good-humoured smile. His rather tall figure was uncommonly thin. The Duchess of Berry called him "that wicked mummy;" but then the Duchess had reasons for taking an unfriendly view of him. But despite his meagreness, no young man of that day was so qualified to give what was specially demanded by the society of the salons. The social success of the notary's son was remarkable. "We are all princes and poets here," he observed one day at table; yet amid such enjoyments and distractions he found time for the acquisition of uncommonly varied knowledge, and for planning works which made him famous.
The pieces of verse which he wrote at this time are all distinguished by his peculiar grace, and are still read with pleasure. He addresses one of these epistles to the Comtesse de Fontaine; another to Madame de Montbrun-Villefranche; another to the Duc de la Feuillade, so dreadfully caustic that he can hardly be supposed to have confided it to that nobleman, especially as we afterwards find the satirist a visitor at his chateau. Prince Eugene, George I., and Cardinal Dubois are all, at this time, the objects of his poetical addresses. What is very notable is the number and the character of the clergymen with whom he associated while almost a boy. The Abbé Servien, uncle of the Duke of Sully, is described by St Simon as one of the most agreeable of men, but so dissolute that nobody of repute would have anything to do with him, which did not prevent Voltaire from being a great friend of his. The Abbé was imprisoned in Vincennes in 1714 for some disrespectful pleasantry about the king; and Voltaire, one of whose conspicuous virtues was constancy to friends in distress, addressed to him a long poem, complimenting him as an eminent man of pleasure, and exhorting him to keep up his spirits. Unfortunately the Abbé had not much time in which to profit by his young friend's counsels, for he died the following year. A still more singular epistle to be addressed to a divine is that "To M. l'Abbé de—, who bewailed the Death of his Mistress." It begins thus:—
"You who in Pleasure’s courts did once preside,
- Dear Abbé, languish now in sore distress;
That jolly threefold chin, your chapter's pride,
- Will soon be two folds less.
O slave! to earth by sorrow bent,
- You spurn the feast before you placed,
You fast like any penitent;—
- Was ever canon so disgraced?"
and after much remonstrance on the inutility and folly of his grief, and a glance at the "constancy of a churchman's love," ends by advising him to take refuge from sadness in the arms of pleasure. The Abbé Chaulieu, another friend, nearly eighty, was a poet, a voluptuary, and a sceptic. The Abbé Desfontaines, a later acquaintance, befriended by Voltaire, was much worse than any of them. The society and example of these ecclesiastics must have had more influence than the companionship of a thousand fashionable young scoffers. Another of his youthful epistles is "To a Lady, a little Worldly and too Devout." It begins by telling her that when she had left the arms of sleep and the eye of day had looked on her charms, soft-hearted Love appeared, who, kissing her hands and bathing them with tears, remonstrated with her, in the prettiest terms, on the ingratitude with which, after all his gifts to her, she was in the habit of turning from him with disdain to read the sermons of Massillon and Bourdaloue. He (Love) exhorts her to give youth to pleasure, to keep wisdom for age, and the piece ends thus:—
"So spake the god; and even while he wooed,
Perchance thy softening heart had owned his sway,
But at thy bedside on a sudden stood
- The reverend Père Quinquet.
- That holy rival’s threatening air
- Told Love he must not hope to gain
- Thee, cold, incorrigible fair;
- And, weary of remonstrance vain,
He dried the pleading tears, so useless now,
And flew to Paris, where his power's assured,
- To seek for beauties easier lured,
- Though far less loveable than thou."