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 He was the youngest of the five children of a well-to-do solicitor, and was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. He had to be hurriedly baptized, as no one expected that the puny little infant would live. His first teacher was his godfather, a rather disreputable priest, called Châteauneuf, and he was taught at an early age that religion, as it existed in France at that time, was mere superstition and pretense. His mother died when he was seven, and at the age of ten he was sent off to a large Jesuit college, where, as he afterwards tells us, he learned "Latin and nonsense." His quick wits, however, made him absorb an immense quantity of information; and instead of playing with the other boys, he would walk and talk with the masters. One of them said at the time, "That boy wants to weigh the great questions of Europe in his little scales." The verses he wrote brought him into prominence, and his godfather introduced him to Ninon de l'Enclos, a famous old lady of nearly eighty, who was still the center of the most brilliant society in Paris. When she died, a few months later, she left him two thousand francs with which to buy books.

Acting at school encouraged in him a love of drama, and he soon began to try his hand at writing plays. He was only twelve when he wrote a petition in verse to the King, asking for a pension for an old soldier. Louis XIV read it, and the old soldier got his pension. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, and