| Childhood
 At
the time of Francois’ birth, the condition of the French people
was pitiful. Misery, poverty, ignorance and tyranny held the people
under a vice-like grip. This condition was prevalent for many generations.
No ray of light penetrated their dark gloomy existence. They were
doomed to perpetual slavery. They resigned themselves to the will
of God. Any rebellion was put down by instruments of torture as
the state and the church plundered the poor.
Robert G Ingersoll, an orator and a political analyst,
considers the birth of Voltaire as one of the most important day
in the history of mankind. Born Francois Marie Arouet, Voltaire
was born on November 21, 1694 in Paris. He was puny, sickly and
ugly child of a humble parentage. According to Ingersoll –
“This anemic and cynically faced individual made the time in
which he lived, momentous.” The period might well be called
the ‘Age of Voltaire’. He received an excellent education
at a Jesuit School. He attended the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand
in Paris. Here, he learned to love literature, theatre and social
life. The college instilled in him religious instruction, which
aroused his skepticism and mockery.
Francois Marie Arouet’s birth-date is shrouded in mystery. He was born in a middle class family in Paris. According to his birth certificate he was born on November 21, 1694, a general opinion prevails that his birth-date has been kept a secret. Voltaire himself stated on several occasions that his birth took place on February 20. He believed that he was the son of an officer named Rochebrume, who was also a songwriter. Voltaire had no love for either of his parents. Francois Arouet from whom he got his name was a notary. Nothing is known about his mother, except that she died when he was seven years old.
Francois did not have a loving family. He attached himself to his godfather, a freethinker who presented him to the famous, 84-year-old courtesan Nino de Leuclos. Francois owed his positive outlook and sense of reality to his bourgeois origin. |
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At a very tender age, he lisped in verse. His eyes
possessed a peculiar brilliance and his father winced under the
piercing look of his strangely smiling son, whose questions penetrated
with the sharpness of steel. As a child he was very frail, so his
father tried to apprentice him in a proper occupation, so that he
might grow to be respectable and dutiful. |
