The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful guide for Gibbon in the matter of religion than in his intellectual training. Through his efforts and Gibbon's "private reflections," Christmas Day, 1754, one year and a half after his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to his reconversion, as he then received the sacrament in the Calvinistic Church. "The articles of the Romish creed," he said, had "disappeared like a dream"; and he wrote home to his aunt, "I am now a good Protestant and am extremely glad of it."[90] An intellectual and social experience of value was his meeting with Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the neighborhood of Lausanne for the performance mainly of his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure a ticket to these representations. Voltaire played the parts suited to his years; his declamation, Gibbon thought, was old-fashioned, and "he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature." "The parts of the young and fair," he said, "were distorted by Voltaire's fat and ugly niece." Despite this criticism, these performances fostered a taste for the French theater, to the abatement of his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed to him to be "inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman."[91] Personally, Voltaire and Gibbon did not get on well together. Dr. Hill suggests that Voltaire may have slighted the "English youth," and if this is correct, Gibbon was somewhat spiteful to carry the feeling more than thirty years. Besides the criticism of the acting, he called Voltaire "the envious bard" because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine. Nevertheless, Gibbon is impressed with the social influence of the great Frenchman. "The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote, "refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society. After the theatrical representations, I sometimes supped with the actors: I was now familiar in some, and acquainted in many, houses; and my evenings were generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in private parties or numerous assemblies."[92]