Ninon employed Poquelin, upholsterer to the king, in the furnishing of her elegant suite of apartments. His shop was in the rue St Honoré, and there was born his son, Jean Baptiste, an intelligent, rather delicate-looking little boy, whom he duly educated and trained for his own trade. Young Jean Baptiste, however, fairly submissive and obedient, was also very fond of reading and writing, the only two acquirements his father thought necessary for assisting the chair and table-making the boy’s future was destined for. Fortunately he had a very kind grandfather who loved the drama, and sometimes he would take little Jean Baptiste with him to see the performances at The Hôtel Bourgogne. Poquelin père looked with distrust on these excursions, thinking that he saw in the lad, as undoubtedly he did, growing aversion to the upholstery vocation, and a fast developing passion for tragedy and comedy—comedy very markedly—and the boy’s delight in study and books generally, created a disturbance in the good upholsterer’s mind, which culminated in distress, when it became certain beyond all question, that young Jean’s liking was as small for cabinet-making as it was unconquerable for literature. He was at that time about fourteen years old, and he carried about with him a small comedy he had composed called _l’Amour Médecin_, which Ninon one day, when he came to assist his father at her house, detected, rolled up under his arm. Won by her kind smiles, young Poquelin was induced to allow her to look at it, and she, no mean critic, saw such promise in it, that she showed it to Corneille—who was then staying with her, pending the representation of _The Cid_. Corneille warmly seconded her estimate of the boy’s promise of unusual dramatic gifts; and after great demur, Poquelin yielded to the good grandfather’s persuasions to send him to college. Several helping hands, Ninon among them, contributed to the necessary funds for this new career, and Jean Baptiste became a pupil of the Jesuits at Clermont. There he studied for five years, in the same class with Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, the youngest brother of Madame de Longueville, who promised Ninon the special protection and friendship of Armand, and of the college preceptors, a promise that was ever faithfully held by; and the celebrated teacher Gassendi took him under his special care, with two other gifted lads confided to him.