Caumartin, an old Temple acquaintance, reappeared on young Arouet’s horizon again presently. Caumartin had an uncle, a famous old magistrate, the Marquis de Saint-Ange, living at Saint-Ange, nine miles from Fontainebleau. When young Caumartin conveyed an invitation to old Arouet that his prodigal should go and stay with Saint-Ange and resume his studies there, the notary naturally supposed an acceptance would be the best thing for Arouet’s legal prospects.
And not for his legal prospects only. The boy had that satire, couplets, and epigrams running through Paris. He did not yet know what message he had to deliver to the world; did not know perhaps that he had any message. But he was fast learning the language in which it was to be spoken, and speak in that language he must, were the whole earth peopled by angry fathers and conscientious Alains.
So it was as well that the autumn of 1714 saw him away from Paris and established in the fine old château of the Saint-Anges.
The old magistrate, however, was not magistrate only, or chiefly; he was also a man of the world, and courtier. So it soon came about that, instead of learning maxims of the law, the keen-witted visitor sat and listened, a most eager and intelligent audience, to gossip, scandal, bons-mots of the Court of a bygone day—anecdotes of Henry of Navarre and personal recollections of Louis XIV. The château had a splendid library. But it was hardly needed—“Caumartin carries the living history of his age in his head,” said his courtly young guest in a quatrain.
It was while he was at Saint-Ange he dashed on to paper the beginning of what was afterwards the “Henriade”; and started that vast collection of anecdotes which formed the material for the “Century of Louis XIV.”
Arouet stayed several months in the château, occasionally paying a flying visit to the capital. The end of the Sun King’s reign was fast approaching. The famous Bull Unigenitus was the one great topic of all men’s conversation; and no doubt was freely discussed at Saint-Ange. If the young visitor had come there meaning to be author, he left a hundred times more fixed in that idea. In August, 1715, Louis XIV. was dying. Arouet hastened to Paris to see the strange things that death would bring about.
In his pocket he had a play, “Œdipe,” on which he had now been working for two years.
In his soul were the courage, the conscious power, the clear outlook to a future all unwarranted by the present, which are the consolations of genius.
Arouet was beginning the world.