verse! Ah! this is all my strain!
Adieu, adieu, poor box of mine;
Adieu; we ne'er shall meet again!"

Arouet was still a child when a friend of his family took him to see
Mdlle. Ninon de l'Enclos, as celebrated for her wit as for the
irregularity of her life. "Abbe Chateauneuf took me to see her in my
very tender youth," says Voltaire; "I had done some verses, which were
worth nothing, but which seemed very good for my age. She was then
eighty-five. She was pleased to put me down in her will; she left me two
thousand francs to buy books; her death followed close upon my visit and
her will."

Young Arouet was finishing brilliantly his last year of rhetoric, when
John Baptist Rousseau, already famous, saw him at the distribution of
prizes at the college. "Later on," wrote Rousseau, in the thick of his
quarrels with Voltaire, "some ladies of my acquaintance had taken me to
see a tragedy at the Jesuits in August, 1710; at the distribution of
prizes which usually took place after those representations, I observed
that the same scholar was called up twice. I asked Father Tarteron, who
did the honors of the room in which we were, who the young man was that
was so distinguished amongst his comrades. He told me that it was a
little lad who had a surprising turn for poetry, and proposed to
introduce him to me; to which I consented. He went to fetch him to me,
and I saw him returning a moment afterwards with a young scholar who
appeared to me to be about sixteen or seventeen, with an ill-favored
countenance, but with a bright and lively expression, and who came and
shook hands with me with very good grace."

Scarcely had Francois Arouet left college when he was called upon to
choose a career. "I do not care for any but that of a literary man,"
exclaimed the young fellow. "That," said his father, "is the condition
of a man who means to be useless to society, to be a charge to his
family, and to die of starvation." The study of the law, to which he was
obliged to devote himself, completely disgusted the poet, already courted
by a few great lords who were amused at his satirical vein; he led an
indolent and disorderly life, which drove his father distracted; the
latter wanted to get him a place. "Tell my father," was the young man's
reply to the relative commissioned to make the proposal, "that I do not
care for a position which can be bought; I shall find a way of getting
myself one that costs not