The life of Voltaire

CHAPTER I

THE BOYHOOD

In 1694, when Louis XIV. was at the height of that military glory which at once dazzled and ruined France, there was born in Paris on November 21st a little, puny, weak, sickly son.

The house into which the infant was born was the ordinary house of a thoroughly comfortable well-to-do _bourgeois_ of the time and place. A notary was M. Arouet _père_. ...