Voltaire was at this time fifty years old, famous as the author of the ‘English Letters,’ the ‘Henriade,’ a few brilliant plays, and also as Court wit and versifier. But he was already in mental attitude what he had not yet become in mental output and in active deed. He could recognise in this Vauvenargues not only a friend and a literary critic, but a thinker and a philosopher. Vauvenargues sent him by degrees most of his writings, and Voltaire’s criticisms thereon, as sincere as they were enthusiastic, were in themselves a powerful persuasion to the man of deeds to become man of words; while the Master’s whole-hearted devotion to his own profession--the best and the noblest of all, though it bring no bread but the bread of affliction and of tears--was a further strong inducement to Vauvenargues to join the great brotherhood too. This soldier-thinker can tell men what to do when we have made them free to do what they will! He is, he has confessed it, as ‘follement amoureux de la liberté’ as I myself! To the individual soul he can give the help and the courage I have tried to give to the race, and to the riddle of the painful earth he can bring a wiser, tenderer, and braver solution than mine! Vauvenargues was not, in fact, an intellect a Voltaire would lose. The young soldier decided to adopt literature as a profession, and began the world afresh. Everything, save only Voltaire’s encouragement, was against such a decision. The old Marquis de Vauvenargues--from a very natural but very mistaken and unrobust tenderness--would have kept his son at home to lead a safe, idle, invalid life in Provence, with a stroll on the terrace of the Vauvenargues’ country-house for exercise, a thick-headed provincial neighbour for mental recreation, and his own aches and pains for an interest. His other relations (on the principle of Myrtle in ‘The Conscious Lovers’--‘We never had one of _our_ Family before that descended from Persons that Did anything’) objected to letters for one of Us as a low walk, leading directly to the Bastille. It _was_ true that the moment was an inglorious one for literature. The Encyclopædia was unconceived. Voltaire himself was not yet the mighty influence he was to become. Writing _did_ pay badly, and the young Marquis was deadly poor. Greatest objection of all was his own strong leaning to a life of action, and he himself first wrote of literature as being as ‘repugnant’ to him as to his family. ‘But necessity knows no law.’ That momentary bitterness passed. ‘Despair is the worst of faults,’ said he. It was his part--allotted to him by misfortune, by fate, by God--no longer to act himself, but to teach other men how to act. He thrust aside the objections of his relatives. ‘It is better to derogate from one’s caste than from one’s genius.’ He silenced his own disappointment. ‘A great soul loves to fight against ill fortune ... and the battle pleases him, independently of the victory.’