His earliest instruction was from the Abbé de Châteauneuf, who taught him belles lettres and deism. At a very early age the little lad exhibited a precocious talent for versification. When ten years old he was sent to the Collége Louis-le-Grand. Here he remained until he was seventeen, receiving an education which, though always depreciated by him, provided the basis of a wide and varied knowledge. The Jesuits, who were the instructors at this college, retained the methods of the schools of the Renaissance, in which plays in Latin and French were enacted by the scholars. This may explain his life-long devotion to the drama.
His remarkable poetic talent led to an introduction, when he was but eleven years old, to Ninon de l'Enclos, who, in her nineteenth year, was the leader of a brilliant coterie of society. This unaccountable and marvellous woman was so pleased with the lad that she left him a legacy of two thousand livres "to buy books with."
When his college days were ended his troubles began. His father had determined to make him a notary. The youth wanted to follow literature, which the father regarded as equal to no profession at all. The father triumphed in so far as securing the young man's consent to begin the study of law. He began but never proceeded, and gave himself to everything but the pursuit of legal lore. The Abbé de Châteauneuf, the godfather of Voltaire, died before the boy's college days were over, but before his death he introduced his pupil to the celebrated society of the Epicureans of the Temple. Here the youth gathered the vast mass of historical gossip which served him so well in later years. His father was disgusted with his son's pursuits, and, alarmed at his association with princes and philosophers, he sent him away to the ancient Norman city of Caen. This did not effect a cure. The notary sent word to his son that if he would settle down and finish his studies he would purchase for him a commission as counsellor to the Parliament of Paris. "Tell my father," he answered, "that I do not desire any place which can be bought. I shall know how to make one for myself that will cost nothing."
Voltaire had a brother, named Armand, who was a Jansenist and bigot. Their father commented on his two sons by saying, "I have a pair of fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose."
In the year 1713 the Marquis de Châteauneuf, a brother of the Abbé, appointed Voltaire to the office of page in his diplomatic corps. The marquis was Ambassador to The Hague. Here the young man fell desperately in love with Olympe Dunoyer, a young woman about twenty-one years of age, and the daughter of a woman who had separated from her husband, and supported herself by writing disreputable scandal and gossip. This love affair was violently opposed by the mother and resulted in the young man's being sent back to Paris. For a brief time he gladdened the heart of his father by resuming the study of law, but soon manifested his peculiar facility for getting into trouble.
Defeated in securing an award from the French Academy for a poem, he turned his wit against the successful candidate, and also the poet La Motte, who had decided the competition. A large part of his attack was harmless fun, but a short and very savage satire aimed at La Motte was dangerous to its author, so his father was glad of the opportunity to send his scapegrace to the Château de St. Ange, in company with De Camartin, nephew of the Marquis de Saint Ange. The old marquis was a just and brilliant magistrate, a man familiar with the history of France, and who knew the genealogies of the French court, and all the rare anecdotes of the period included by the reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIV. That Voltaire improved these days at St. Ange is undoubted.
He returned to Paris at the time of the death of the king. This time he was admitted to the famous "court of Sceaux," over which reigned the brilliant Duchesse du Maine. It is charged that he assisted the duchess in composing lampoons on the Duke of Orleans, then Prince Regent. Accused of writing two libels, he was arrested, May 16, 1717, and sent to the Bastile, in which prison he spent eleven months. While here he gave himself to serious literary labor. At this time he changed his name, and was henceforth known as Arouet de Voltaire. The origin of the new name is one of the disputed problems of biography.
Released from the Bastile, he was, according to custom, ordered into exile, being permitted to go to a place owned by his father in the village of Châtenay. In October, 1718, he was permitted formally to return to Paris. In the spring of the following year he was suspected of having written the "Philippiques," and was banished informally from Paris. Most of this period he spent with Marshal Villars, and gathered more of those reminiscences, which he used with so much skill later in his career, besides making harmless love to the duchess, the wife of his host. In 1721 his father died, leaving him an income of about four thousand livres a year, and this was further increased by a pension of two thousand livres a year from the Regent in recognition of his ability as a dramatic writer.
Several years were spent in Paris in literary labors and in acquiring powerful friends and more powerful enemies; among the latter was the Chevalier de Rohan, who insulted Voltaire on different occasions, which led to sharp replies from the caustic youth. The chevalier hired some roughs to give him a caning. Voltaire could get no one to take his part, so he challenged the chevalier to a duel. The challenge was accepted, but on the morning of the day appointed for the meeting the Government interfered by kindly arresting Voltaire and putting him again in the Bastile.
After fifteen days of imprisonment he was released on condition that he would go to England. The chief turnkey of the Bastile was instructed to go as far as Calais with the troublesome prisoner, in order to be sure that he was forwarded to his destination. Nothing in Voltaire's history did more to form his career than his visit to England. He made a good deal of money there, and it is said, laid the foundations of his fortune. He formed acquaintances among the foremost literary men of that nation, such as the Walpoles, Bubb Doddington, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Sir Everard Falkener, and the poet Pope. The effect of these associations in the literary career of Voltaire is marked. They deepened and broadened his mind, and reduced the flippancy of method, which is the bane of French literature, to its minimum.