ame Geoffrin, his
most intimate friend. "I said to him one day, 'Did you ever laugh, M. de
Fontenelle?' 'No,' he answered; 'I never went ha! ha! ha!' That was his
idea of laughing; he just smiled at smart things, but he was a stranger
to any strong feeling. He had never shed tears, he had never been in a
rage, he had never run, and, as he never did anything from sentiment, he
did not catch impressions from others. He had never interrupted anybody,
he listened to the end without losing anything; he was in no hurry to
speak, and, if you had been accusing against him, he would have listened
all day without saying a syllable."

The very courage and trustiness of Fontenelle bore this stamp of discreet
moderation. When Abbe St. Pierre was excluded from the French Academy
under Louis XV. for having dared to criticise the government of Louis
XIV., one single ball in the urn protested against the unjust pressure
exercised by Cardinal Fleury upon the society. They all asked one
another who the rebel was; each defended himself against having voted
against the minister's order; Fontenelle alone kept silent; when
everybody had exculpated himself, "It must be myself, then," said
Fontenelle half aloud.

So much cool serenity and so much taste for noble intellectual works
prolonged the existence of Fontenelle beyond the ordinary limits; he was
ninety-nine and not yet weary of life. "If I might but reach the
strawberry-season once more!" he had said. He died at Paris on the 9th
of January, 1759; with him disappeared what remained of the spirit and
traditions of Louis XIV.'s reign. Montesquieu and Fontenelle were the
last links which united the seventeenth century to the new era. In a
degree as different as the scope of their minds, they both felt respect
for the past, to which they were bound by numerous ties, and the boldness
of their thoughts was frequently tempered by prudence. Though naturally
moderate and prudent, Voltaire was about to be hurried along by the ardor
of strife, by the weaknesses of his character, by his vanity and his
ambition, far beyond his first intentions and his natural instincts. The
flood of free-thinking had spared Montesquieu and Fontenelle; it was
about to carry away Voltaire almost as far as Diderot.

[Illustration: Voltaire----277]

Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire was born at Paris on the 21st of
November, 1694. "My dear father," said a letter from a relative to his
family in Poitou, "