When he was fifteen, in 1709, Châteauneuf died, Malplaquet was lost, and France starving to pay for her defeats. In the midst of that bitter winter of famine, when young Arouet’s high place in class always kept him away from the comforting stove, he called out to the lucky dullard who was always near it, “Get out, or I’ll send you to warm with Pluto!” “Why don’t you say hell?” asked the other. “Bah!” replied Arouet; “the one is no more a certainty than the other.” Here spoke the religious influence of the priestly godfather, [Illustration: NINON DE L’ENCLOS] who, before he died, had tried to form the godson’s mind by recounting to him some of Ninon de l’Enclos’ most marvellous adventures. In 1710, at the midsummer prize-giving, Arouet, runs the story, took so many prizes as to attract the notice of the famous J. B. Rousseau, the author of the “Moïsade,” the first poet in France, and once shoemaker to the Arouet family. The great man congratulated and encouraged the boy who was to be so much greater. To be sure he was an ugly boy for all that keen look of his! Ugly boy and mediocre poet were to fight each other tooth and nail hereafter, with the ugly boy the winner for ever. If young Arouet was anything like an older Voltaire, he knew how to play as well as how to work, and how to work gaily with a jest always ready to relieve the tedium. The defeat of Blenheim had shadowed the year 1704 when he went to school. In 1711, when he left it, three heirs to the throne died one after the other as if the judgment of God had already fallen upon their wicked house. Abroad, were Marlborough and defeat; at home, death, hunger, and religious persecution. Arouet had a heart always sensitive to misfortune, but he was gay, seventeen, and fresh from drudgery. When he came home from St. Louis-le-Grand in that August of 1711 it was with every intention on his father’s part, and no kind of intention on his own, that he should become _avocat_. Was it the passing success of that poetical petition to the king which had put the idea of literature as a profession into his head? Was it Ninon’s pension? or the approval of poet Rousseau? The love of letters had been in this boy always, a dominant taste, a ruling passion, which he could no more help than he could help the feebleness of his body or the astounding vigour of his mind. He took the earliest opportunity of announcing to his father that he intended to devote himself to writing.