Page:Voltaire (Hamley).djvu/31

 of them. The society and example of these ecclesiastics must have had more influence than the companionship of a thousand fashionable young scoffers. Another of his youthful epistles is "To a Lady, a little Worldly and too Devout." It begins by telling her that when she had left the arms of sleep and the eye of day had looked on her charms, soft-hearted Love appeared, who, kissing her hands and bathing them with tears, remonstrated with her, in the prettiest terms, on the ingratitude with which, after all his gifts to her, she was in the habit of turning from him with disdain to read the sermons of Massillon and Bourdaloue. He (Love) exhorts her to give youth to pleasure, to keep wisdom for age, and the piece ends thus:—