tinsel-robed actor, strutting in the semblance of royalty,
and less the king than many

"A poor player
Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."

Louis XIV. wore all the outward guise of regal office, in his bearing,
politeness, address, magnificence, and high-heeled dignity, but he was
sensual, ferocious, ignorant, profligate, and superstitious. His
greatness was fictitious, his splendor superficial, and his character
false. The king was the state, but his mistresses governed. A court
thus constituted led the fashions and formed the manners of the
people. It stamped the age with that type of character which belongs
to the adventurer and devotee. The splendors of the court were
maintained at the expense of the people. The glory of Versailles rose
above the darkness of the nation. The voluptuous and luxurious
pleasures of the nobility were the measure of the poverty and
suffering of the people. The aristocracy enjoyed life as if it were a
prolonged comedy, while the nation was moving toward the enactment of
its greatest tragedy.

Religion was reduced to superstition, theology was divorced from
ethics, ritual performances were substituted for moral obligations,
and zeal for God manifested by cruelty to man--conditions which are
invariably concomitant in religious history. The Mephistopheles evoked
by the German Reformation was abroad, and had announced himself to
others besides Dr. Faustus, saying, "I am the Spirit who denies."
Freedom of thought involves a liberty to think wrongly as well as
rightly. Technical learning, in possession of the Jesuits, might
content a religious devotee; but philosophy and the new science opened
paths which led away from traditions and authoritative decretals;
paths which neither priest nor king could close, for they followed the
stars in their courses. The waymarks had been blazed by the genius of
Galileo and Copernicus. Those who dared to venture into this new
territory found institutions and systems of theology arrayed against
them, armed with the power of present persecution, more to be feared
than threats of future damnation. Public life was venal, the Church
simoniacal, and society licentious. In such an age Voltaire was born.

The family of Arouet was ancient and respectable, representing the
middle class of society. Voltaire's grandfather settled in early life
in Paris, and retired on a comfortable fortune made by selling