the Abbe Gaultier and the Cure of Saint Sulpice. These good
men arrived with a written retraction, which they desired Voltaire to
sign. Waiting in the anteroom of the sick-chamber they sent in word that
they wished to enter. "Assure them of my respect," said the stricken
man. But the holy men were not to be thus turned away, so they entered.
They approached the bedside, and the Cure of Saint Sulpice said: "M. de
Voltaire, your life is about to end. Do you acknowledge the divinity of
Jesus Christ?"

And the dying man stretched out a bony hand, making a gesture that they
should depart, and murmured, "Let me die in peace."

"You see," said the Cure to the Abbe, as they withdrew, "you see that he
is out of his head!"

* * * * *

The father of Voltaire, Francois Arouet, was a notary who looked after
various family estates and waxed prosperous on the crumbs that fell from
the rich man's table.

He was solicitor to the Duc de Richelieu, the Sullys, and also the
Duchesse de Saint-Simon, mother of the philosopher, Saint-Simon, who
made the mistake of helping Auguste Comte, thus getting himself hotly
and positively denounced by the man who formulated the "Positive
Philosophy."

Arouet belonged to the middle class and never knew that he sprang from a
noble line until his son announced the fact. It was then too late to
deny it.

He was a devout Churchman, upright in all his affairs, respectable, took
snuff, walked with a waddle and cultivated a double chin. M. Arouet
pater did not marry until his mind was mature, so that he might avoid
the danger of a mismating. He was forty, past. The second son, Francois
fils, was ten years younger than his brother Armand, so the father was
over fifty when our hero was born. Francois fils used to speak of
himself as an afterthought--a sort of domestic postscript--"but," added
he musingly, "our afterthoughts are often best."

One of the most distinguished clients of M. Arouet was Ninon de Lenclos,
who had the felicity to be made love to by three generations of
Frenchmen. Ninon has been likened for her vivacious ways, her flashing
intellect, and her perennial youth, to the divine Sara, who at sixty
plays the part of Juliet with a woman of thirty for the old nurse. Ninon
had turned her three-score and ten, and swung gracefully into the
home-stretch, when the second son was born to M. Arouet. She was of a
deeply religious turn of mind, for she had been loved b