ghost
          Might well have chosen for his vacant post,
          O Marc Rene! through whom ’tis brought about
          That so much people murmur here below,
          To your kind word my durance vile I owe;
          May the good God some fine day pay you out!

Young Arouet passed eleven months in the Bastille; he there wrote the first part of the poem called La Henriade, under the title of La Ligue; when he at last obtained his release in April, 1718, he at the same time received orders to reside at Chatenay, where his father had a country house.  It was on coming out of the Bastille that the poet took, from a small family-estate, that name of Voltaire which he was to render so famous.  “I have been too unfortunate under my former name,” he wrote to Mdlle. du Noy er; “I mean to see whether this will suit me better.”

The players were at that time rehearsing the tragedy of OEdipe, which was played on the 18th of November, 1718, with great success.  The daring flights of philosophy introduced by the poet into this profoundly and terribly religious subject excited the enthusiasm of the roues; Voltaire was well received by the Regent, who granted him an honorarium.  “Monseigneur,” said Voltaire, “I should consider it very kind if his Majesty would be pleased to provide henceforth for my board, but I beseech your Highness to provide no more for my lodging.”  Voltaire’s acts of imprudence were destined more than once to force him into leaving Paris; he all his life preserved such a horror of prison, that it made him commit more than one platitude.  “I have a mortal aversion for prison,” he wrote in 1734; once more, however, he was to be an inmate of the Bastille.

Launched upon the most brilliant society, everywhere courted and flattered, Voltaire was constantly at work, displaying the marvellous suppleness of his mind by shifting from the tragedies of Artemise and Marianne, which failed, to the comedy of L’Indiscret, to numerous charming epistles, and lastly to the poem of La Henriade, which he went on carefully revising, reading fragments of it as he changed his quarters from castle to castle.  One day, however, some criticisms to which he was not accustomed angered him so much, that he threw into the fire the manuscript he held in his hand.  “It is only worth burning, then,” he exclaimed in a rage.  President Henault dashed at the papers.  “I ran up and drew it out of the flames, saying that I had done more than they who did not burn the AEneid as Virgil had recommended; I had drawn out of the fire La Henriade, which Voltaire was going to burn with his own hands.

[Illustration:  The Rescue of “La Henriade.”——­283]