One of the disadvantages of biography as compared with fiction is, that in real life many events occur simultaneously, and the dramatic effect of a crisis is often spoilt by that crisis being extended over a long period of time and being interrupted by trivialities.

The Calas case, at whose “dragging” Voltaire had cried out at the end of nine months, lasted for three years—a period which is certainly a severe test of enthusiasm. Voltaire’s triumphantly survived that test. At the end of those three years he was only more eager, passionate, and laborious than he had been at the beginning.

But in the meantime there were Ferney, Tourney, and DÉlices to manage; Madame Denis always needing amusement and Marie Corneille always needing instruction; that busy, hot-headed rival, Rousseau, to be taken into account, to say nothing of friends and enemies, visitors and plays.

On March 25, 1762—just about the time when the first rumours of the Calas story reached Voltaire—“Olympie” took what may be called its trial trip at Ferney. Two or three hundred people sobbed all through it in the most satisfactory manner, and all felt cheerful enough to enjoy a ball and a supper afterwards.

In April, these enthusiastic amateurs were once more delighted by a visit from the great actor Lekain. He had been at DÉlices in 1755; but there was a beautiful new little theatre at Ferney now, where “Olympie” was played again. Lekain looked on as a critic; and Voltaire did the same, being debarred from his dear acting by a cold in the head. “Tancred” was played too, and when there came that line:

the whole house got upon its feet and howled itself hoarse. It would not have been like Voltaire to hide from his friends, even if he could have done so, a subject that so possessed him as the subject of Calas. “It is the only reparation,” he said, writing of the scene, “that has yet been made to the memory of the most unhappy of fathers.”

Charming the audience with her soft voice and round girlish freshness, Marie Corneille was now always one of the actresses. She had by this time a pretty dot as well as a pretty face; and Papa Voltaire, in addition to the proceeds of the Corneille Commentary, had settled a little estate upon her. A suitor naturally appeared soon upon the tapis. But though he was warmly recommended by the d’Argentals, M. Vaugrenant de Cormont seems to have been chiefly remarkable for large debts, a very mean father, and the delusion that he was conferring a very great honour on Mademoiselle by marrying her. He had taken up his abode at Ferney, and when he had received his congÉ was not to be dislodged without difficulty. Mademoiselle was serenely indifferent to him; so no harm was done.

Marrying and giving in marriage was to the fore in the Voltaire mÉnage just then. In May, Madame de Fontaine became the wife of that Marquis de Florian who had stayed with her at Ferney and long been her lover. Voltaire was delighted—not in the least on the score of morality—but because he thought the pair would suit each other, which they did.

On June 11, 1762, “Émile, or Education,” Jean Jacques’s new novel, was publicly burnt in Paris. Nine days after, it was condemned to the same fate in Geneva. “Émile” expresses in nervous and inspired language some of those theories which Voltaire’s friend, Dr. Tronchin, had worked so hard to bring into practice. It was not so much the education of children that “Émile” dealt with as the education of parents. To abolish the fatal system of foster-motherhood, instituted that the real mothers might have more time for their lovers, their toilettes, and their pleasures, to portray a child brought up in natural and virtuous surroundings—even an eighteenth-century censor could not have found matter meet for burning in this. But “Émile” was only a scapegoat. “The Social Contract,” published a little earlier, was what the authorities really attacked.

Neither the publication of “Émile,” nor its burning, particularly attracted Voltaire’s notice at first. Like Lasalle, he was all Calas. On July 21st, he wrote indifferently to Cideville that Rousseau had been banished from Berne and is now at NeufchÂtel, “thinking he is always right, and regarding other people with pity.” For the “Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar” which was “imbedded in ‘Émile,’” Voltaire indeed not only felt, but expressed, a very sincere admiration. But your “EloÏsa” and your “Émile,” and your hysterics generally, why, they bore me, my dear Jean Jacques! And you are so dreadfully long-winded, you know! However, the “Savoyard Vicar” had shown that Rousseau had the courage of his unbelief. It was the kind of heroism in which Voltaire was not going to be behindhand. In July, 1762, appeared his “Sermon of Fifty,” whose excellent brevity was a reproach and a corrective to the four immense volumes of “Émile,” and whose virulent attack upon the Jewish faith was at least as outspoken and unmistakable as the Vicar’s “Profession.”

This fifty-page pamphlet is noticeable as the first of Voltaire’s works which is openly anti-Christian. Goethe declared that for it, in his youthful fanaticism, he would have strangled the author if he could have got hold of him.

Rousseau, of course, took “The Sermon of Fifty” amiss, as he was fast coming to take amiss everything Voltaire did. Jean Jacques was quite persuaded, for instance, that it was Voltaire who had incited the Council of Geneva to burn “Émile”; and, presently, that it was Voltaire’s hand which guided the pen of Robert Tronchin’s “Letters from the Country,” which favoured the burning of “Émile,” and to which Rousseau was to make reply in the brilliant and splendid inspiration of his famous “Letters from the Mountain.”

The truth seems to have been that Voltaire laughed at Jean-Jacques instead of losing his temper with him; or, rather, that he lost his temper with him for an occasional five minutes, and then laughed and forgave him. VÉgobre, the lawyer, who is described as having “no imagination” to invent such stories, was once breakfasting at Ferney when some letters came detailing the persecution inflicted on Rousseau for his “Vicar.” “Let him come here!” cried Voltaire. “Let him come here! I would receive him like my own son.”

The Prince de Ligne also records how, after Voltaire had vehemently declared that Jean Jacques was a monster and a scoundrel for whom no law ever invented was sufficiently severe, he added, “Where is he, poor wretch? Hunted out of NeufchÂtel, I dare say. Let him come here! Bring him here: he is welcome to everything I have.”

All the sentiments were genuine, no doubt. It would have been perfectly in Voltaire’s character to abuse Rousseau by every epithet in a peculiarly rich vituperative vocabulary, and to have received him with all generous hospitality and thoughtful kindness as a guest in his house for months; to have quarrelled with him and abused him again, and once more to have received him as a brother.

After all, Voltaire was not a perfect hater.

That sodden, worthless Theriot came to DÉlices for a three months’ visit in July, with all his treachery and ingratitude amply forgotten; and in October that very showy hero, Richelieu, who was always in money debt to Voltaire, descended upon his creditor with a suite of no fewer than forty persons. They had to be accommodated at Tourney, and fÊtes and theatricals devised for their master’s benefit. The Duchesse d’Enville and the Duke of Villars were also staying with Voltaire, who was quite delighted to discover that a Richelieu of sixty-six still kept up his character for gallantry, and to surprise him at the feet of a charming Madame MÉnage, a Tronchin patient. The pretty face and wit of Madame Cramer also quite vanquished the susceptible elderly heart of the conqueror. Voltaire offered to get rid—temporarily—of her husband. But Richelieu had reckoned, not without his host indeed, but without his hostess. Sprightly Madame Cramer laughed in his face.

The first authorised publication of a work which had been suggested at Richelieu’s supper-table thirty-two years earlier belongs, by some bizarrerie of destiny, to this 1762, which also saw the noblest work of Voltaire’s life—the defence of Calas and the preaching of the Gospel of Tolerance.

Whoso has followed its author’s history has also followed the “Pucelle’s.”

Alternately delight and torment, danger and refuge; now being read in the Cirey bathroom to the ecstatic bliss of Madame de Graffigny, now passed from hand to hand and from salon to salon in Paris, now being copied in Prussia, and then burnt in Geneva, hidden in Collini’s breeches at Frankfort, and stolen from Émilie’s effects by Mademoiselle du Thil—the adventures of the “Pucelle” would form a volume.

Considered intrinsically, it is at once Voltaire’s shame and fame. It is to be feared that there are still many people who are only interested in him as the author of the “Pucelle”; while there are others to whom the fact that he wrote it blots out his noble work for humanity, and the bold part he played in the advancement of that civilisation which they, and all men, enjoy to-day.

That Voltaire took in vain the name of that purest of heroines, Joan of Arc, is at least partially forgivable. He did not know, and could not have known, the facts of her life as everybody knows them to-day. His offences against decency may be judged in that well-worn couplet:

Only one excuse need even be offered. Voltaire wrote to the taste of his age. As the coarse horseplay and boisterous mirth of the novels of Fielding perfectly portrayed humour as understood by eighteenth-century England, so the gay indelicacies of the “Pucelle” represent humour as understood by eighteenth-century France.

The fact that women, and even women who were at least nominally respectable, were not ashamed to listen to and laugh at those airy, shameful doubles ententes, proves that the thing was to the taste of the time; as the fact that “Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews” were read aloud to select circles of admiring English ladies proves that Fielding likewise had not mistaken the taste of his public.

The “Pucelle” is infinitely bright, rollicking, and amusing. Voltaire’s indecency was never that of a diseased mind like Swift. He flung not a little philosophy into his licence, and through sparkling banter whispered his message to his age. Those ten thousand lines of burlesque terminated, it has been said, the domination of legends over the human mind. Condorcet goes so far as to declare that readers need only see in the author of the “Pucelle” the enemy of hypocrisy and superstition.

But the fact seems to be that though Voltaire was constantly hitting out, as he always was hitting, at hypocrisy and superstition, the blows this time were only incidental; and that he wrote first to amuse himself, and then to amuse his world.

That he succeeded in both cases, condemns both it and him.

If Voltaire’s connection with Madame du ChÂtelet was a blot on his moral character, the “Pucelle” was a darker blot. It spread wider to do harm. His passionate and tireless work for the liberation of men’s souls and bodies, for light and for right, make such blots infinitely to be regretted. That the best work in the world is not done by morally the best men is a hard truth, but it is a truth.

Of the “Pucelle” it can only be said,

On February 12th of 1763 the man who had not only written the most scandalous of epics, but had tended Marie Corneille with as honest a respect and affection as if she had been his own innocent daughter, married her to M. Dupuits, cornet of dragoons, handsome, delightful, three-and-twenty, and head over ears in love with Mademoiselle. M. Dupuits united to his other charms the fact that his estates joined Ferney, and that he was quite sufficiently well off. One little trouble there had been. PÈre Corneille disapproved not only of this marriage, but of any marriage, for his daughter. Voltaire sent him a handsome present of money to assuage his wounded feelings, but did not invite him to the ceremony lest young Dupuits should have cause to be ashamed of his father-in-law, and that graceless Duke of Villars, who was also at Ferney, should laugh at him. The ceremony took place at midnight on February 12th, and the wedding dinner was at least magnificent enough to give Mama Denis as Marie called her, an indigestion. There were no partings. The young couple took up their abode at Ferney, where their love-making gave the keenest delight to a large element of romance still left in Voltaire’s old heart, and where presently their children were born.

It was not wonderful that the good fortunes of Marie Corneille should have incited many other offshoots of that family to “come pecking about,” as Voltaire said, to see if there was anything for them. Only a month after she was married, Claude Étienne Corneille, who was in the direct line of descent from the great Corneille, and not in the indirect, like lucky Marie, appeared at Ferney. But Voltaire, though he thought Claude an honest man and was sorry for him, could not adopt the whole clan. His mood was still adoptive, however.

In this very year he took to live with him Mademoiselle Dupuits, Marie’s sister-in-law; and a certain Father Adam. Mademoiselle Dupuits was not less pretty than Marie, and very much more intelligent. Several of the noble Ferney visitors amused themselves by falling in love with her.

On March 2d, Voltaire had written, “We are free of the Jesuits, but I do not know that it is such a great good.”

The suppression of the Order of Ignatius (it was not confirmed by royal edict until 1764) first occurred to him as a splendid tilt at l’infÂme—as the happiest omen for the future that those who had been so intolerant should themselves be tolerated no more. But reflection cooled him. What is the good of being rid of Jesuit foxes if one falls to Jansenist wolves? “We expel the Jesuits,” he wrote to that good old friend of his, the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, in July, “and remain the prey of the convulsionists. It is only Protestant princes who behave sensibly. They keep priests in their right place.”

None of these reflections taken singly, nor all of them taken together, prevented Voltaire from receiving into his house—“as chaplain,” he said sardonically—the Jesuit priest called Father Adam, whom he had known at Colmar in 1754, and whose acquaintance he had since renewed at neighbouring Ornex. To be sure, Voltaire had no need to be afraid of any priestly influence, especially from one of whom he was fond of saying, that though Father Adam, he was not the first of men.

Like the Protestant princes, Voltaire knew very well how to keep his priest in his proper place. The Father was an indolent man, with a little fortune of his own and a rather quarrelsome disposition. But he made himself useful at Ferney for thirteen years by entertaining the visitors and playing chess with his lord and master. One of the visitors declared that Adam was Jesuit enough to let himself be beaten at the game—his opponent so dearly loved to win! But another, La Harpe, who was at Ferney a whole year, denies this and declares that Voltaire frequently lost the game, and his temper, and when he saw things were going badly with him told anecdotes to distract his adversary’s attention. A third authority states that when the game was practically lost to him, M. de Voltaire would begin gently humming a tune. If Adam did not take the hint and retire at once, Voltaire flung the chessmen one after another at the Father’s head. Prudent Adam, however, usually left at once. When Voltaire had become calmer, he would call out profanely, “Adam, where art thou?” The Father came back; and the game was resumed as if nothing had happened.

Another member of a colony, which, as Voltaire said, was enough to make one die of laughter, was the fat Swiss servant, Barbara or Bonne-Baba, who showed her contempt for her illustrious master quite plainly and to his great enjoyment, and assured him she could not understand how anybody could be silly enough to think he had an ounce of common-sense.

If it was a laughable household, it was, as its master also said, a household that laughed from morning till night, and could be, that lively cripple d’Aumard included, as light-hearted as childhood.

But through all, never forgotten for a moment or put aside for a day, was the affair of Calas.

On March 7, 1763, that affair had its first triumph. On that day the Council of Paris met at Versailles, the Chancellor presiding, and all the councillors and ministers, religious and civil, attending, and decreed that there should be a new trial and that the Toulouse Parliament should produce the records of the old. Madame Calas and her two girls were present. All through the winter it had been considered an honour to call upon them, or to meet them at the d’Argentals’ house. Councillors and officials vied with each other in thoughtful attentions to them all. During the sitting of the court one of the girls fainted, and was nearly killed with kindness. Some person, thought to be young Lavaysse, with a style charmingly candid and simple, has written an account of the day. Not only was the court “all Calas”—its eighty-four members unanimously voted for the case to be retried—but her Catholic Majesty, Marie Leczinska herself, who had by no means forgotten to hate their great avocat, Voltaire, received Madame Calas and her daughters with kindness. The King himself had “formally approved” that the papers of the procedure at Toulouse should be sent to the Council of Paris. The hostile influence of Saint-Florentin had been more than counteracted by the favourable, though secret, influence of Choiseul.

When Voltaire, waiting feverishly at Ferney, heard the long-hoped-for decree, his heart gave one great leap of joy. “Then there is justice on the earth; there is humanity,” he wrote. “Men are not all rogues, as people say; ... it seems to me that the day of the Council of State is a great day for philosophy.”

He eagerly concluded that this at last was the beginning of the end. But there was still infinite room for that slow courage called patience.

Now being passed from hand to hand in Paris, and having been so passed since the beginning of the year 1763, was what may be called the fruit of the Calas case: fruit of which men to-day may still eat and live: the pamphlet of two hundred pages which advanced by many years the reign of justice, of mercy, and of humanity—the “Treatise on Tolerance.”

That sermon, of which the text is Calas, is one of the most powerful indictments ever written against the religious who have enough religion to hate and persecute, but not enough to love and succour. Voltaire was no Protestant, but that “Treatise” helped the “definite affranchisement” of the Protestant in Catholic countries as no party tract ever did. It gave the fatal blow to that “Gothic legislation” which, if it was dying, still showed now and then a superhuman strength in acts of fiendish barbarism. Sooner or later, said Choiseul, such seed as is sown in Voltaire’s Gospel of Tolerance must bear fruit. What if the author of it had thrown decency to the winds in the “Pucelle”? What if, basing his attack on seemingly irreconcilable statements and incorrect dates, he had in keen mockery attacked the Scripture and Christianity? Not the less “the true Christian, like the true philosopher, will agree that in making tolerance and humanity prevail, Voltaire, whether he wished it or no, served the religion of the God of peace and mercy: and, instead of anger, will feel a reverent admiration for the ways of a Providence which, for such a work, chose such a workman.”

Voltaire did not avow his little Treatise. What censor would or could have licensed such a thing? For a long time it was not even printed. By Voltaire? What could make you think so? The old owl of Ferney screwed up his brilliant eyes and chuckled. “Mind you do not impute to me the little book on Tolerance.... It will not be by me. It could not be. It is by some good soul who loves persecution as he loves the colic.”

That he foresaw it would be one of his best passports to posterity, did not make him in the least degree more anxious to own it to his contemporaries. Abundant experience had proved to him that if it is “an ill lot to be a man of letters at all, there is something still more dangerous in loving the truth.”

So through the year 1763 the “Treatise on Tolerance” was passed from hand to hand in Paris: by a good priest, you understand; by nobody in particular. And at Ferney, Voltaire, having preached tolerance, practised it.

At the convent into which Nanette Calas had been thrown was a good Superior who had loved and pitied the girl and poured out upon her the thwarted maternal instincts of her woman’s heart. It is very pleasant to see how a hot partisan like Voltaire not only gave the Sister her due, but dwelt tenderly on her tenderness; sent on to his brethren, the philosophers, her kind little letters to Nanette; and warmed his old heart at the pure flame of the affection of this “good nun of the Visitation.”

Then, too, when in June the liberal-minded citizens of Geneva appealed against the condemnation of rival Rousseau’s “Émile,” and when on August 8th that condemnation was revoked at their request, Voltaire was quite as delighted as if Jean Jacques had always been his dearest friend, and as if he had thought anything about that hysterical “Émile,” except the “Profession of the Savoyard Vicar,” worth the paper it was written on. Tolerance! Tolerance!

About the same time he produced the “Catechism of an Honest Man,” which had a like burden; and before the year 1763 was out he was deeply engaged in helping other unfortunates whom the case of Calas and that “Treatise” threw at his feet.

In 1740, a daring Protestant gentleman of that fatal Languedoc, called Espinas, or Espinasse, gave supper and a bed to a minister of his faith. For this heinous crime he was condemned to the galleys for life, and had been there three-and-twenty years when his story reached Ferney. Through Voltaire’s exertions he was released in 1763, and came to Switzerland, where his wife and children were living as paupers, on public charity. After interceding passionately for them for not less than three years, Voltaire succeeded in getting back a small part of the property which Espinas had forfeited on his imprisonment.

After Espinas came the case of Chaumont. In February, 1764, Voltaire was writing to VÉgobre to say that Choiseul had delivered from the galleys one Chaumont, whose crime had consisted in listening to an open-air Protestant preacher—“praying to God in bad French.” He had companions in irons whom Voltaire’s power and pity could not free. But Chaumont himself came to Ferney to thank his benefactor; and all Voltaire’s little entourage made him compliments, including Father Adam.

Though that “Tolerance” was not yet tolerated in Paris; though at the beginning of 1764 it was forbidden to go through the post, as if it contained the germs of some infectious disease; though Calas was still unexculpated, and even powerful Choiseul could not push his authority far enough to liberate the innocent companions of Chaumont, still Voltaire thought that he saw light in the sky, and in the east the beginning of a beautiful day. “Everything I see,” he wrote in prophetic utterance on April 2d, “sows the seeds of a Revolution which must infallibly come. I shall not have the pleasure of beholding it. The French reach everything late, but they do reach it at last. Young people are lucky: they will see great things.” And again: “I shall not cease to preach Tolerance upon the housetops ... until persecution is no more. The progress of right is slow, the roots of prejudice deep. I shall never see the fruits of my efforts, but they are seeds which must one day germinate.”

Tolerance! Tolerance! Between writing it, living it, dreaming it, the thing might have become a monomania, a possession. Only its great apostle was also a Frenchman—the most versatile son of the most versatile people on earth.

At the end of 1763 he had been privately circulating in Paris a gay novelette in verse called “Gertrude, or the Education of a Daughter”; and a little later he was reviewing English books for a Parisian literary paper.

Then, too, in the autumn of 1763 the young Prince de Ligne—eighteen years old, bright, shallow, amusing, “courtier of all Courts, favourite of all kings, friend of all philosophers”—had been staying at Ferney. It is said that before his arrival Voltaire, dreadfully fearing he should be bored, took some strong medicine, so that he could say (truthfully this time) he was too ill to appear. The very self-pleased and much-admired young Prince is now chiefly known to the world by the account he has given of Voltaire intime.

He writes vividly both of his host’s greatness and littleness; tells how he loved the English, bad puns, and his best clothes; how his torrents of visitors wearied him, and what artful designs he invented to get rid of them; how good he was to the poor; how “he made all who were capable of it think and speak”; was charmed to find a musical talent in his shoemaker—“Mon Dieu! Sir, I put you at my feet—I ought to beat yours”—how he thought no one too obscure and insignificant to cheer with the liveliest wit and the most amazing vivacity ever possessed by a man of sixty-nine.

Ligne says he was quite delighted with the “sublime reply” of a regimental officer to the question “What is your religion?”

“My parents brought me up in the Roman faith.” “Splendid answer!” chuckles Voltaire. “He does not say what he is!”

Early in 1764, young Boufflers, the son of that Madame de Boufflers who was the mistress of King Stanislas, and perhaps Madame du ChÂtelet’s predecessor in the heart of Saint-Lambert, also came to Ferney. Boufflers was travelling incognito as a young French artist. He did not forget to write and tell his mother of his warm reception by her old acquaintance. Voltaire, with that rare adaptability of his, easily accommodated himself to his guest’s youth and treated him en camarade; while Boufflers, on his part, drew with his artist’s pencil a clever rough sketch of his host when he was losing at chess with Father Adam.

A further distraction from “Tolerance” and the Calas came in the shape of the first public performance of “Olympie” in Paris, on March 17, 1764. It had already been named by the public “O l’impie!”—a title the author was by no means going to apply to himself; while as for it applying to the piece—“Nothing is more pious. I am only afraid that it will not be good for anything but to be played in a convent of nuns on the abbess’s birthday.”

“Olympie” was well received. But it was feeble, in spite of those many alterations of which the indefatigable author vigorously said “You must correct if you are eighty. I cannot bear old men who say ‘I have taken my bent.’ Well, then, you old fools, take another!”

He also said that he had written it chiefly to put in notes at the end on suicide, the duties of priests, and other subjects in which he was interested; so it was not wonderful that even his friends had to own it a failure.

When another play of his, called “The Triumvirate,” was performed in July—purporting to be the work of an ex-Jesuit, and having cost its dauntless master more trouble in rewriting and altering than any of his other pieces—it was confessed a disaster by everyone.

But, after all, both pieces had served as a distraction to their author; so they had their worth and use.

Another event in the spring of 1764 also changed the current of his thoughts, turned them back to his far-away youth, and to the strifes and weariness of a Court he had renounced for ever. On April 15th died Madame de Pompadour. Voltaire was not behindhand in acknowledging that he owed her much. To be sure, she had supported “that detestable CrÉbillon’s detestable ‘Catilina,’” and had not been always a faithful friend in other respects; but she had been as faithful as her position permitted. She had had, too “a just mind”: she “thought aright.”

Of the easy manner in which Voltaire and his century regarded her morals it need only be said that it affords an excellent insight into theirs.

“CornÉlie-Chiffon” (as Voltaire called Marie Dupuits) “gave us a daughter” in June. Before that date, Mademoiselle Dupuits, her sister-in-law, portioned out of the “Corneille Commentary,” had been married. Ferney was the resort of innumerable English, who came to see M. de Voltaire’s plays, and told him what they thought of them with their native candour. The first volume of “The Philosophical Dictionary” slipped out in July, 1764, anonymously, “smelling horribly of the fagot.” Voltaire of course swore industriously that he had nothing to do with that “infernal Portatif,” and of course deceived nobody.

In September, he smuggled it, by a very underhand trick and with the connivance of some booksellers of Geneva, into that town.

His friends, the Tronchins, were so angry at the ruse that through their agency the “Dictionary” was burnt there in the same month by the executioner.

And then that great work, the rehabilitation of the Calas, was completed at last. In June, 1764, the new trial had been begun. On March 9, 1765, exactly three years since he had paid for it the extreme penalty of that savage law, Calas was declared innocent of the murder of his son. With his innocence was re-established that of his whole family, of Jeannette ViguiÈre, and of young Lavaysse. The accused had to constitute themselves prisoners at the Conciergerie as a matter of form. There all their friends visited them, including Damilaville, who wrote of the visit to Voltaire. Still well known is Carmontel’s famous engraving of this prison scene, with Lavaysse reading to the family, including Jeannette, his “Memoir” on their case.

The Council who tried them had five sittings, each four hours in length, and a sixth which lasted eight hours. There were forty judges who were unanimous in their verdict—“Perfectly innocent.”

As all the money subscribed for Madame Calas by Voltaire’s efforts had been swallowed up in law expenses and long journeys, these forty judges petitioned the King for a grant to her and her children. And his Majesty presented them with handsome gifts of money. The family then asked him if he would object to them suing the Toulouse magistrates for damages.

But of this course Voltaire disapproved. “Let well alone,” he said in substance: and they did.

It must be observed that not only had the sullen Parliament of Toulouse put every obstacle in the way of the new trial taking place, but that it never ratified the judgment of the Council of Paris. But that mattered little. The worst that Toulouse could do was done.

One of the magistrates, the infamous David de Beaudrigue, “paid dearly for the blood of the Calas.” In February, 1764, he was degraded from his office. He afterwards committed suicide. That innocent blood was indeed on him and his children. His grandson fell a victim to the fury of the tigers of the Revolution, who had not forgotten the drama of the Rue des Filatiers.

When the courier came with the news of the verdict to Ferney, young Donat Calas was with Voltaire, and Voltaire said that his old eyes wept as many tears as the boy’s. In a passion of delight he wrote to Cideville that this was the most splendid fifth act ever seen on a stage.

But he had not done with the Calas yet. The King’s gifts of money were insufficient. So Voltaire got up subscriptions for engravings of Carmontel’s picture, and made all his rich friends subscribe handsomely for copies. One hung over his own bed for the rest of his life.

Peter and Donat Calas settled in Geneva. When in 1770 their mother and Lavaysse visited them there, they all came on to Ferney. Voltaire said that he cried like a child. He never forgot to do everything in his power to benefit and help the two young men, and gave at least one of them employment in his weaving industry when he established it at Ferney.

The Calas case was not without wide results on current literature, art, and the drama.

Coquerel, who wrote a history of the case, states that there are no fewer than one hundred and thirteen publications relating to it. It forms the subject of ten plays and “seven long poems.”

Besides Carmontel’s engraving, there are pictures of “Jean Calas saying Good-bye to his Family,” “Voltaire promising his support to the Calas Family,” and many others.

But its most important, its one immortal result, was the “Treatise on Tolerance”—the work of the man without whom Calas would never have been avenged, and l’infÂme been left unchecked till the Revolution.

It is hardly possible to overestimate the nobility of Voltaire’s part in the redemption of the Calas.

A man who did not love him said justly that such a deed would cover a multitude of sins. “Oh mon amie! le bel emploi du gÉnie!” wrote Diderot to Mademoiselle Voland.... “What are the Calas to him? Why should he stop the work he loves to defend them? If there were a Christ, surely Voltaire would be saved.”

When one reflects on the enormous expenditure of time, labour, and money the case required of him, and the fact that he thoroughly knew the value of each, Diderot’s words do not seem greatly exaggerated.

To suppose he had any thought of his own glory in the matter is not reasonable. He persistently gave the lion’s share of the credit to Élie de Beaumont. He himself had already as much fame as man could want. If he had wanted more, he knew to it a thousand avenues quicker and safer than the long Via Dolorosa of a legal reparation.

That kind of fame would only endanger his person and prestige, and make his chances of being well received by King and Court weaker than ever.

But that he did recognise Calas as one of the best works of his nobler self seems likely from a trifling incident.

Thirteen years later, on his last visit to Paris, someone, seeing the crowds that surrounded him whenever he went out into the street, asked a poor woman who this person was who was so much followed.

“It is the saviour of the Calas,” she replied.

No flattery, no honour, no acclamation of that glorious time gave Voltaire, it is said, so keen a pleasure as that simple answer.