8

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

daughters. She resided at the Hague , where she sub-sisted on a sort of traffic of libels. Fear of the Bastille ,and the laws against the freedom of the press, restrainedthe busy Parisians from publishing the vast quantity oflibels, epigrams, and satires, which were continually beingmanufactured in that metropolis: these made their wayto Holland ; and the collecting of such, and publishingthem, became a sort of trade,— infamous indeed, butlucrative. Madame du Noyer was at once notoriousand enriched, by being pre-eminent in the traffic. Oneof her daughters was married; with the other — a gentle,amiable girl—Voltaire fell in love. He wished to saveher out of the hands of such a mother. Madame duNoyer discovered the intercourse, and complained to theambassador, who put his page under arrest, and sentan account of his son’s attachment to the father.Young Arouet meanwhile carried on his intercoursewith the young lady by stealth, and was again de-nounced to the marquis by madame du Noyer ; he,seeing himself in danger of being compromised by themalice of a woman whose great desire was to createscandal, and by the perseverance of his page, sent himback to Paris . His father, knowing the vehement andresolute disposition of his son, was prepared to preventthe continuance of his love affair by the severest mea-sures : he obtained an order that permitted him eitherto imprison or to transport him to the isles. The poorlawyer, whose career had been one of routine and re-spectability, was rendered equally miserable by both hissons ; the elder having immersed himself in the Jan-senist quarrels : and the old man declared that he hadtwo fools for children, one in prose, and the other inverse.

On his return to Paris the young Arouet had twoobjects chiefly at his heart; — to take his mistress outof the hands of her infamous mother, and to reconcilehimself to his father. For the sake of the first, he didnot scruple to apply to the Jesuits , and to employ re-ligion as the pretext. He applied also to M. du Noyer :