He had friends among the boys too, as well as the masters. It was at school he met the d’Argensons--afterwards powers to help him in the French Government--Cideville and d’Argental, his lifelong friend, whom he called his guardian angel. In 1705, those fluent verses he had written came to the notice of Godpapa Châteauneuf. As a reward the abbé took him to see Ninon de l’Enclos, that marvellous woman who was as charming at eighty as at eighteen, who “looked on love as a pleasure which bound her to no duties and on friendship as something sacred,” and was in some sort an answer to her own prayer, “God make me an honest man but never an honest woman!” She received the child in the midst of her brilliant circle with that infinite tact and kindness which have made her as immortal as her frailties. His bright, quick answers, his self-confidence, his childish store of information delighted her. Châteauneuf said that she saw in him “the germ of a great man.” Perhaps she did. When she died a few months later, she left him two thousand francs in her will, with which to buy books. And the “great man,” many years after, wrote an account of the interview as if it had happened yesterday. He went back to school after that episode and learnt, and knew he was learning, though he was only twelve years old, “a prodigious number of things” for which he had no talent. Porée taught him a good deal of Latin, and the primers a very little Greek. He learnt no history, no science, and no modern languages. That he acquired a knowledge of the history and government of France is as undoubted as that he was never formally taught it. Young Abbé d’Olivet inspired him with his own love of Cicero. Châteauneuf had taught his godson to worship Corneille; and young Arouet championed him valiantly against Father Tournemine’s dear hero, Racine. Other seeds which Châteauneuf had sown in a childish heart were growing and ripening fast. His one enemy among the masters, Father Lejay, answered a too brilliant and too daring retort with the words, “Wretch! you will one day be the standard-bearer of Deism in France!” The enterprising Deist was still only twelve when, encouraged by Ninon’s pension perhaps and the success of some impromptu verses made in class, he attempted a tragedy called “Amulius and Numitor.” He burnt it thereafter--very wisely no doubt. But verse-making was in his blood, though his blood was Maître Arouet’s and the noble, dull Aumards’ of Poitou. Play-acting at the school prize-givings encouraged a love of the drama, also inborn. François Marie Arouet was not yet thirteen when he wrote a versified petition to Louis XIV. to grant an old soldier a pension, wherein the compliments were so delicately turned as to attract the momentary attention of the best flattered monarch who ever sat upon a throne. The old soldier obtained his pension, and François Marie enough fame and flattery to turn a youthful head.