“ He was educated at the Collège Mazarin, and joined an amateur company of players against which the Comédie Française obtained an injunction. Voltaire supported him for a time and enabled him to act in his private theatre and also before the duchess of Maine. Owing to the hostility of the actors it was only after a struggle of seventeen months that, by the command of Louis XV., he was received at the Comédie Française. ”