y several
priests, and now the Abbe de Chateauneuf was paying his devotions to
her.

Ninon was much interested in the new arrival, and going to the house of
M. Arouet, took to bed, and sent in haste for the Abbe de Chateauneuf,
saying she was in sore trouble. When the good man arrived, he thought it
a matter of extreme unction, and was ushered into the room of the
alleged invalid. Here he was duly presented with the infant that later
was to write the "Philosophical Dictionary." It was as queer a case of
kabojolism as history records.

Doubtless the Abbe was a bit agitated at first, but finally getting his
breath, he managed to say, "As there is a vicarious atonement, there
must also be, on occasion, vicarious births, and this is one--God be
praised."

The child was then baptized, the good Abbe standing as godfather.

There must be something, after all, in prenatal influences, for as the
little Francois grew up he evolved the traits of Ninon de Lenclos and
the Abbe much more than those of his father and mother.

When the boy was a little over six years old the mother died. Of her we
know absolutely nothing. In her son's writings he refers to her but
once, wherein he has her say that "Boileau was a clever book, but a
silly man."

The education of the youngster seemed largely to have been left to the
Abbe, his godfather, who very early taught him to recite the "Mosiad," a
metrical effusion wherein the mistakes of Moses were related in churchly
Latin, done first for the divertisement of sundry pious monks in idle
hours.

At ten years of age Francois was sent to the College of Louis-le-Grand,
a Jesuit school where the minds of youth were molded in things sacred
and secular.

In only one thing did the boy really excel, and that was in the matter
of making rhymes. The Abbe Chateauneuf had taught him the trick before
he could speak plainly, and Ninon had been so pleased with the wee poet
that she left him two thousand francs in her will for the purchase of
books. As Ninon insisted on living to be ninety, Voltaire discounted the
legacy and got it cashed on dedicating a sonnet to the divine Ninon. In
this sonnet Voltaire suggests that a life of virtue conduces largely to
longevity, as witness the incomparable Ninon de Lenclos, to which
sentiment Ninon filed no exceptions.

In one of the school debates young Francois presented his argument in
rhyme, and evidently ran in some choice passages from the "Mosiad," for
Fath