Youthful passion intruded to disturb his residence in Holland. Madame du Noyer was born a Protestant; she abjured her religion when she married; and then, desirous of separating from her husband, she made religion the pretext, and fled to Holland with her two daughters. She resided at the Hague, where she subsisted on a sort of traffic of libels. Fear of the Bastille, and the laws against the freedom of the press, restrained the busy Parisians from publishing the vast quantity of libels, epigrams, and satires, which were continually being manufactured in that metropolis: these made their way to Holland; and the collecting of such, and publishing them, became a sort of trade,--infamous indeed, but lucrative. Madame du Noyer was at once notorious and enriched, by being pre-eminent in the traffic. One of her daughters was married; with the other--a gentle, amiable girl--Voltaire fell in love. He wished to save her out of the hands of such a mother. Madame du Noyer discovered the intercourse, and complained to the ambassador, who put his page under arrest, and sent an account of his son's attachment to the father. Young Arouet meanwhile carried on his intercourse with the young lady by stealth, and was again denounced to the marquis by madame du Noyer; he, seeing himself in danger of being compromised by the malice of a woman whose great desire was to create scandal, and by the perseverance of his page, sent him back to Paris. His father, knowing the vehement and resolute disposition of his son, was prepared to prevent the continuance of his love affair by the severest measures: he obtained an order that permitted him either to imprison or to transport him to the isles. The poor lawyer, whose career had been one of routine and respectability, was rendered equally miserable by both his sons; the elder having immersed himself in the Jansenist quarrels: and the old man declared that he had two fools for children, one in prose, and the other in verse. On his return to Paris the young Arouet had two objects chiefly at his heart;--to take his mistress out of the hands of her infamous mother, and to reconcile himself to his father. For the sake of the first, he did not scruple to apply to the Jesuits, and to employ religion as the pretext. He applied also to M. du Noyer: he interested the court in the conversion. It was agreed that mademoiselle du Noyer should be carried off, and brought to the convent of New Converts in Paris; but the marquis de Chateauneuf opposed himself to so violent a proceeding, and the plan fell to the ground. In the sequel, the young lady married the baron de Winterfeld, and always preserved a great esteem and friendship for her early friend.