women of the world, and
yet when his last hour came there was no wife to close his eyelids, there
were no children to follow him to the tomb.

A weakling from birth, he was not baptized until he was nine months old.
The Abbe de Chateauneuf, a cynical relative, gave him his first lessons
in atheism and introduced him to Ninon de l'Enclos, the famous beauty.
Ninon was so charmed with the boy that she left him a considerable sum of
money in her will, with instructions that it be spent in furnishing his
library.

The youth soon made his debut as a poet and wit, but his father, who
abhorred verses, was vexed at his notoriety and sent him to Holland. There
the lad got entangled in a love affair and was promptly summoned home
again. His father's next move was to banish him to the country, but he was
again disappointed in thinking that his son would reform. Voltaire began
to write an epic poem on Henry IV, and, his talents as a satirist being
known, was suddenly arrested on the charge of lampooning Louis XIV, and
imprisoned in the Bastile.

When he came out he began to write for the theaters, and as a playwright
and a merciless critic of creeds and other cherished beliefs his life was
spent. He was a favorite in society, and the fair sex petted him to his
heart's content, yet he never married.

Mme. Denis, his niece, for whom he had a great affection, looked after his
house at Ferney, near Geneva, and with her he spent his last days. It was
she, too, who accompanied him to Paris in 1778 and who watched by his
bedside when, overcome by the fatigues of his reception in the French
capital--the greatest triumph of his life--he lay calmly, waiting for the
angel of death to call him.

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD (England--1717-1797).

Another distinguished man of letters who never entered the bonds of
matrimony was Horace Walpole. Born in 1717, he entered Cambridge
University, and there became intimately acquainted with the poet Gray. In
1741 he became a member of the House of Commons, but won little
distinction there, his time and thoughts being almost wholly devoted to
the study of art and literature. In 1765 he took a trip to Paris, and at
this period the romance of his life began. He became attached to Mme. du
Deffand, and in her society passed the pleasantest hours of his life.

Walpole was a polished gentleman, a charming conversationalist, and a
letter-writer of the first rank. He wrote French as well as English,