It was in this last named little château that was born and educated the celebrated abbé, the friend of Voltaire, of Madame Favart, and of the Duc de la Valliére; and here it was, also, that in manhood its possessor would occasionally resort, though not the least in the world a man who could appreciate rural enjoyments, for the purpose of reposing from the fatigues of some of his epicurean pilgrimages to his friends at Paris or Montrouge, and which was his final sojourn when age and infirmities rendered it imperatively necessary for him to breathe the pure air of his native place, far away from the heating _petits soupers_ of the capital, and the various other dearly cherished scenes of his earlier years.
Claude Henri Fusée de Voisenon, Abbé of Jard, and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Prince-Bishop of Spire, was born at Voisenon on the 8th of June, 1708. Biographers have, perhaps, laid too much stress on the debility of constitution which he brought with him into the world, inherited, they say, from his mother, an exceedingly delicate woman. Since the examples of longevity given by Fontenelle and Voltaire, of whom the first lived to the use of a hundred, and the second to upwards of four-score years, and yet both of whom came into the world with very doubtful chances of existence, it is become a very hazardous task to determine, or even to foretell, length of days by the state of health at birth. They add, that an unhealthy nurse, aggravating the hereditary weakness of the child, infused with her milk into his blood the germs of that asthma from which he suffered all his life, and of which he eventually died. These facts accepted--a delicate mother, an unhealthy nurse, an asthma, and constant spittings of blood--it follows that, even with these serious disadvantages to contend with, a man may live and even enjoy life up to the age of sixty-eight. How many healthy men there are who would be content to attain this age! And if the Abbé de Voisenon did not exceed the bounds of an age of very fair proportions, we must bear in mind that, though even an invalid, he constantly trifled with his health with the imprudence of a man of vigorous constitution; eating beyond measure, drinking freely, presiding at all the _petits soupers_--_petit_ only in name--of the capital, passing the nights in running from _salon_ to _salon_, and seldom retiring to rest before morning: a worthy pupil of that Hercules of debauchery, Richelieu, his master and his executioner. Terrified at the delicate appearance of his child, his father dared not send him to school, but had him brought up under his own eye, with all the patience of an indulgent parent and the solicitude of a physician. Five years' cares were sufficient to develop the intellectual capacities of a mind at once lively and clear, and marvellously fitted by nature to receive and retain the lessons of preceptors. At eleven years of age he addressed a rhyming epistle to Voltaire, who replied,--